Changed Man

by Roy Glenn

  I took a step closer. “Let her go, bitch-nigga,” I said and Michaella’s eyes opened wide. “Prove to me that you’re a man.”

  “I am a man!”

  “No, you’re not,” I said calmly and took another step closer to him. “You’re a punk ass, bitch-nigga that gotta hide behind a gun and her skirt.” I laughed and took my hands out of my pockets. “This is how real men settle shit.” I held up my balled fists. “With these,” I said and put my hands back in my pockets and my fingers back on the triggers. “Be a fuckin’ man, punk. Let my woman go and face me like a fuckin’ man!”

  I could see that the words, my woman, made Michaella smile a little and I looked at her in a way that said, be cool. I’m gonna get you outta this.

  “I am a man!” he yelled again.

  “All right, prove it to me. My woman doesn’t have anything to do with this. So, let her go.” I took a step closer. “I don’t have a gun,” I lied. “Be a man, put down the gun and fight me like a man.”

  He seemed to be thinking about it. His grip around Michaella’s waist was loosening and he was looking at me like he was thinking about whether or not he could take me.

  “I don’t need this gun!” he moved it away from her head. “And I don’t need her!” he screamed and let her go.

  As soon as he did, Michaella ran away from him screaming. “Help!”

  When she did, he turned and watched her with his eyes opened wide like he was surprised that she screamed. He raised his weapon, but he was too late. My gun was out and pointed at his head. I fired once and he fell to the ground. I walked over to him, looked down and put two more in his chest.

  I put my gun away and looked at Michaella, glad that we were able to escape death tonight. She rushed into my arms.

  “Are you all right?”

  Michaella didn’t say anything. She just nodded her head and held me tightly as tears rolled down her cheeks. She was probably glad to escape death tonight too.

  “I gotta get him off the street. Go upstairs and call Bobby at The Late Night. Tell him that I said to wake up Billy and then get over here now. Nothing else. Understand?”

  “I understand.”

  I held up her chin and kissed her. “Come on now. And stay inside until I come back,” I said and then I watched Michaella until she got inside.

  I got ready to move the body thinking that this was the thing that took Vickie’s life. This was why instead of fighting to keep her, I let Carmen go before it took her.

  Death.

  These streets and this dirty game we play for money were filled with it. And tonight, death was right here, ready to take me and Michaella along with him. I wonder sometimes will I survive. But since I had no answers and I was still alive, I moved his body away from the car and out of the light. Then I covered his body with garbage bags and waited for Bobby to get there.

  Before I let you go …

  … I need to tie up some loose ends.

  When Bobby pulled up, he helped me place the body in his trunk and then I went to check on Michaella while Bobby waited outside. I found her sitting on her couch, rocking back and forth and rubbing her arms. She had just been through the most traumatic experience of her life and I knew she needed me to comfort her, but I had shit that I needed to do. So, I told her that I would be back after I took care of the body. She looked at me like I was Boo-Boo the Fool.

  “After what just happened, I do not want to be alone.” Michaella stood up and stepped to my chest and I could feel her body shaking against mine. She looked up at me. “I am going with you,” Michaella said in barely a whisper.

  Since I couldn’t argue with her logic, I didn’t. “Let’s go.”

  When I came out of the building with my arm wrapped around Michaella, Bobby just shook his head and then he opened the back door of his car for us.

  “Hello, Michaella,” Bobby said with a smile as she got in.

  “Hi, Bobby.”

  Once she was in, I closed the door and Bobby dropped the smile.

  “What the fuck are you doing?”

  “I couldn’t leave her alone. I’ll explain later.”

  Bobby shook his head again. “I am dying to hear this shit,” he said and got in the car. I went around to the other side, got in the back seat with Michaella and we went to meet with Billy.

  While Michaella waited in the car, we moved the body from Bobby’s trunk to Billy’s van, and he put me on to something.

  Something we needed.

  “Old man Leibovitz is retiring, talking about selling or closing the funeral home. Wanda said that you were looking for legit businesses to buy, I thought this might be something that you’d be interested in,” Billy said once we got the body in his van.

  “Fuck we need with a funeral home?” Bobby laughed.

  “I just thought you might find owning a business that has a machine that burns bodies down to the bone and eliminates all soft tissue useful.”

  Me and Bobby looked at each other and then we looked at Billy.

  “Ashes to Ashes,” Billy said.

  “Dust to dust,” I finished. “I’ll have Wanda get in touch with him,” I said.

  Now, with that taken care of, I turned my attention to Michaella because she needed to be taken care of too. So, instead of going back to her apartment, I told Bobby to take us downtown and I got us a premier suite at the Marriott Marquis.

  Even though we were in bed naked, we didn’t have sex. I laid there with my arm around Michaella and we talked instead. Well, she talked mostly about what just happened, of course, and she talked about us, especially about whether there was any future for us considering she almost died just from her association with me. I made no promises, but I listened and that seemed to be enough because she fell asleep in my arms. I like her, and I enjoyed being with her, and it wasn’t just because her sex was incredible. Like I said, I like Michaella, she was one of those smart women I was beginning to find so interesting and I enjoyed being with her, so I planned to do more of it.

  We stayed there until Sunday night and then we went back to her apartment. On Monday morning, Michaella dropped me off at my apartment and she went on to work at the bank. I called Bobby.

  “Where you at?” I asked.

  “At the Residence Inn.”

  “Come scoop me up, we need to talk.”

  “I’m kinda busy right now. But Lo-Lo and Anya are here, wondering why you ain’t. I can have them pick you up.”

  I laughed. “Tell them to come on and I’ll see you when you ain’t busy,” I said because my plan to spend more time with Michaella had nothing to do with me, Lo-Lo and Anya. They were my girls.

  Anyway.

  Once we dropped the women off at Cynt’s, me and Bobby went to see Andre at Ricky’s after-hours spot to see if he knew anything about Montel having a son. I had a question that needed answering.

  “You know who you should talk to about that?”

  “Who?”

  “Sonny Edwards,” Andre told us. “He’s here now.”

  Andre said that Sonny Edwards was a gambler; but him, Montel and Big Sky robbed a bank back in the day. They both stopped fuckin’ with Montel when they found out what kind of man he was.

  “Montel was a backstabbing, sell his grandmother for a dollar mutha fucka,” Sonny said. “After a while, I couldn’t trust him with shit.”

  He went on to tell me that his son’s name was Titus Maris; his mother Prentiss, was a hooker that was hooked on heroin and as the story goes, Montel wanted nothing to do with either of them. Sonny told us that she worked the streets until she had the baby prematurely at five months.

  Once she had the baby, she went back on the street and left her heroin addicted son in the hospital. The boy was eventually claimed by her grandmother and he stayed with her until she died when he was five years old. After that, he went to live with his mother.

  “She had a room where she took her tricks and young Titus would stay in the bathroom while his mother worked. That went
on for years.”

  Bobby shook his head. “That’s fucked up,” he said. “Little kid having to sit there and listen to that.”

  “One night, when it got quiet,” Sonny continued. “He came out of the bathroom and found his mother dead. Her trick had strangled her with a pillowcase.”

  “Now that’s fucked up,” I said.

  “When she didn’t pay for the room the next day, the manager found the boy sitting by the bed next to her body. After that, he went into the system and that was the last I’d heard of him,” Sonny said.

  It was a sad story and it made me feel sorry for him, but if he was at the spot that night, him and Montel must have hooked back up.

  I thanked Sonny for his time and then me and Bobby rolled by Montel’s house. When we let ourselves in, it was obvious from the mess and stench of food containers, some of it only days old, that somebody had been staying there.

  “He was a nasty mutha fucka,” Bobby said as we looked around the house. It was when we went into the basement that I got the answer to my question.

  “Take a look at this, Mike,” Bobby called out from another room.

  “What you got?”

  “Big ass hole in the wall.”

  “What?”

  When I came in the room, Bobby was standing by a big ass hole in the wall. But it was the hole where Montel hid his money. “Titus probably just found the money and that’s why it took so long for him to come at us.”

  I had heard rumors that Montel had money, jewelry, guns and drugs stashed all over that house, so we spent the next few hours tearing the place apart. And you know what? The rumors were true. When we left, we left with almost a hundred thousand in cash, enough ice to make you blind and a couple of pounds of quality weed, but no guns.

  A good day’s work.

  With that taken care of, there was one more thing that I had to do. I called Mirella to ask her when her father was having lunch at Beccofino’s Italian Restaurant.

  “For this you can pick up the phone and call me, Mikey,” she said, and once she got finished busting my balls and I promised to come break her back, Mirella told me that he was having lunch there that next day.

  When I got to the restaurant, his men stopped me at the door and were about to search me, but Big Tony called them off.

  “Let him come, Mikey’s not gonna shoot me,” he said, and I went to his table, which was filled with big bowls of steamed mussels, stuffed eggplant and baked manicotti.

  “How are you, Uncle Tony?”

  “I’m good, Mikey. Now sit down.” He pointed his fork at me. “You know I don’t like nobody standing over me or my food for that matter.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said and sat down.

  “I know why you’re here, Mikey.”

  “I came to say thank you.”

  “No, you didn’t. You came here to find out what I want for taking those two fucks off your back.”

  “No, sir. I came here to say thank you, Uncle Tony. You didn’t have to do what you did. I don’t even know what you did, but I want you to know that I appreciate it, sir. That’s what I came to say.”

  “Come on,” Uncle Tony laughed. “Get real, Mikey.”

  “Okay, I do want to know what I can do for you for taking that fuckin’ psycho off my neck?”

  Uncle Tony laughed. “I hate to sound like a cliché, Mikey, but one day, and that day may never come, but on that day …” Uncle Tony paused and then he waved his hand. “You know the rest.”

  “I understand.”

  “Good. Now have some of this stuffed eggplant, Mikey. It’s delicious.”

  THE END OF CHANGED MAN

  Mike Black will return.

  12 DAYS IN DECEMBER

  ROY GLENN

  12 Days in December

  Roy Glenn

  Escapism Entertainment

  © Copyright 2018 Roy Glenn

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior consent of the publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Any references or similarities to actual events, real people, living or dead or to real locals are intended to give the novel a sense of reality. Any similarity in other names, characters, places, and incidents is entirely coincidental.

  Chapter One

  December 13

  “I'm fucked up.”

  That was the last thing I remember saying before I passed out. But at least this morning I knew where I was and more importantly, who these two women are, and trust me, that hasn’t always been the case this month. It was December, me and Bobby's birthday month, and we’ve been celebrating since Thanksgiving and the celebration won’t end until after New Year’s.

  Now, some of you may have noticed that I didn’t mention us celebrating Christmas. That’s because we don’t. I mean Bobby is better about it than I am, but even though it was twelve days away, I barely acknowledge that my birthday and Christmas exist in the same month. Like everything, it stems from childhood. It comes from year after year of that birthday Christmas present shit. There, I fuckin’ said it and now I’ll leave it alone, but people that were born in December, you know what I’m talking about.

  Anyway, the day began with somebody banging on my front door and Lo-Lo elbowing me.

  “It’s Bobby at the door. You don’t hear him banging?” a groggy sounding Lo-Lo asked and elbowed me again.

  “I do now.”

  “I do, too,” Anya said, pulling the pillow over her head and moving closer to Lo-Lo.

  I got outta bed wondering why he doesn’t just use his key. I grabbed my pants from the floor, put them on and went to let Bobby in.

  “Happy birthday,” he said when I walked out of the bedroom. I guess he decided to use his key after all that banging.

  “Thanks.”

  “Get dressed, we got shit to do,” he said as I plopped down in a chair. “Fuck you sitting down for? We got shit to do,” Bobby said standing over me.

  “I’m tired, Bob.”

  It was after eleven in the morning, so it wasn’t like it was that early. Bobby had dropped me off at Cynt’s after four, but Lo-Lo had a customer that was dropping big cash on her, so me and Anya waited for her. Thinking that there was a light at the end of the tunnel, he kept feeding her cash until it was after six and he was just about broke.

  Now, Lo-Lo is one bad sexy chocolate mutha fucka, so watching her dance had me and Anya feeling her, but instead of going into our private room and releasing some of that pressure while we waited, we decided to wait, and watch, “and we be absolutely insane for her sexy fuckin’ ass when we get to her,” Anya suggested and that is exactly what happened during the cab ride home and we exploded when we came through the door. So, yeah, I was tired and shit, it was my fuckin’ birthday.

  “Fuck that. You can sleep in January.” Bobby laughed. “Ain’t that what you told me?”

  “It was funny when I said it to you. Now…not so much.”

  But I knew he was right, birthday or not, we did have shit to do, so I got up.

  “Who you got back there?” Bobby asked.

  “Lo-Lo and Anya.”

  “Oh,” he said looking disappointed as I went in the room. The reason for that was that Lo-Lo made it clear to him that neither one of them would give him any pussy under any circumstance.

  “We are yours, Black,” Lo-Lo explained to me. “We know that you fuck with other women.”

  “Like Michaela,” Anya spit out, rolled her eyes and looked away. More about Michaela in a second.

  “But unlike them two scandalous skanks he be fuckin’ with.” Lo-Lo shook her head like they disgusted her. “We don’t fuck with no other mutha fuckas. Pink Diamond and Jenae will jump on any dick that wave money in their face.”

  “That is not how we doin’ this,” Anya told me.

  “You are our man. We belong to you and you alone,” Lo-Lo said.

  “Shit,” Anya said. “Don’t need no one
else.”

  And I was pretty much theirs, I mean I really wasn’t fuckin’ anybody else but them. Not really anyway, because I really didn’t need to. Trust me, Anya and Lo-Lo were enough to handle, but that does bring me back to Michaela.

  After getting snatched up and held at gunpoint, she, quite intelligently, decided that having me in her life was exciting, and definitely satisfying, but was too dangerous for her. So, like I said, at this point, it was pretty much me, Anya and Lo-Lo. And shit, I’m good with that.

  After I got dressed and said goodbye to my girls, we headed out to Kennedy Airport to try and catch up with Jay Solomon. We were looking for him hoping that he would lead us to Simon Parrish, who called himself a venture capitalist. He lost a hundred thousand dollars gambling at one of my tables and didn’t have the money to cover.

  Me and Bobby were about to show him the error of his ways, when Solomon stepped in and vouched for him. Since we had history with Solomon, and he was a regular player, we backed off, but it’s been two weeks and we haven’t heard from this fuck.

  Me and Bobby went to see Solomon’s wife and once Bobby took the gun out of her mouth she told us that he was returning to New York on American Airlines flight 292 arriving from Los Angeles, at two thirty-four and we planned to be there to meet him. The reason that we had to leave so early was because Bobby knew a woman that worked security at Kennedy and she was going to get us into the gate area during her lunch break, so we had to get out there on time.

  When we got there, she got us in the terminal and to our gate with no problem. Then she and Bobby disappeared so he could compensate her for services rendered. After that we waited. We ate and drank in one of the bars and I even got in a little nod before Bobby woke me up.

  “He’s here,” Bobby said as passengers began exiting the plane and coming in to the terminal. We stood up and moved to a spot where Solomon wouldn’t see us until it was too late. I had no interest nor desire to have to chase him down.