12 Day's In December

by Roy Glenn

  Wanda looked at Lo-Lo and tapped her thigh again. “I told you that he wouldn’t remember that either,” Wanda said and I watched Lo-Lo squirm.

  “But I did, and I’m here, so go get dressed,” Wanda ordered as Wanda does and I got up.

  “Come on, Lo-Lo.”

  “Why Lo-Lo gotta go?” Wanda asked. “She can keep me company while you get dressed.”

  I looked at Lo-Lo; she mouthed the words, I’ll behave, and put her hands together. “I won’t be long,” I said and left Wanda alone with a sexual predator.

  I went back in the room to find Anya sitting on the bed fully dressed with the gun still in her hand.

  “Where’s Lo-Lo?”

  “She’s in the living room,” I said on the way to the bathroom. “That was Wanda at the door. She’s keeping her company.”

  “She think she slick,” Anya said and got up.

  “What?”

  “I see how Lo-Lo be damn near licking her lips over Wanda,” she said heading for the door with the gun still in her hand.

  “You not gonna shoot nobody … are you?”

  Anya stopped and looked at the gun in her hand. She laughed a little and put it on the chest of drawers next to mine. I shook my head and got in the shower.

  When I got out of the shower and began to get dressed, I could hear them talking and laughing which meant Anya was behaving herself. I came out of the room expecting to see Lo-Lo and Wanda talking and laughing and Anya sitting in my chair pouting.

  The only thing I got right was that Anya was sitting in my chair. Anya and Wanda were the ones talking and laughing and having a good time. As for Lo-Lo, she was still sitting on the couch next to Wanda, but her arms were folded under her pretty titties and there was a frown on her face. Even when she’s mad, Lo-Lo is so fuckin’ sexy.

  “You ready,” I said and kept walking toward the door.

  “Yup,” Wanda said and got up. “You ladies have a good day.” She looked at Lo-Lo. “You should lay down and take something for that headache.”

  “I will, Wanda, thanks,” Lo-Lo said and followed us to the door.

  “I’ll make sure that she lays down just as soon as y’all leave,” Anya laughed and bounced up. “Not that I’m rushing you, you understand. But Lo-Lo needs her rest.”

  I opened the door for Wanda and followed her out, looking back at my girls.

  They were fun to be with.

  On the ride to Morris’s, Wanda told me about her plan to convert the place into a buffet style chicken and rib joint and the amount of cash that we could legitimately run through there based on Larry’s cash flow.

  “You figure out what to call it yet?”

  “Nope. For right now, it’s a chicken and rib joint.” She paused like she was considering that as the name. “I don’t think so. Too corny.”

  “Something will come to you. It always does.”

  We rode the rest of the way in silence and I thought about all the shit we had going on right now and how it was really cutting into our celebration. We were looking for The Gunner because he took a shot at us. We were trying to find whatever hole O was hiding in, so I could kill him, or at the very least, make him hurt as Mr. Jackson asked me to, and there was still the matter of Simon Parrish owing us a hundred thousand dollars.

  I hated to write off money like that and I knew that Solomon didn’t have that kind of money to cover his debt. It would just be us, beating his ass week after week for somebody else’s debt. I understood that that was the way things worked in our business.

  There were rules, and I lived by those rules. I just didn’t have to like it all the time.

  But instead of doing any one of those very important things, here I am pulling up in front of Morris’s Deli. Okay, this is important too, I’ll admit that. Making moves like this is what’s gonna carry us into the future. I get that, I do. But I gotta say that I’d rather be getting fucked up and still be in bed fuckin’ the shit outta Anya and Lo-Lo. The old Mike Black used to have a lot more fun.

  When we got inside, Erica was in Larry’s office with her head in his books and a sampler platter next to her. Since I hadn’t eaten, when Larry offered to cook me whatever I wanted, I didn’t refuse.

  “You still make those heart attack heros?”

  Larry laughed. “Not in a long time. But for you.”

  A heart attack hero is a sandwich with three eggs, American and swiss cheese, bacon, sausage, Canadian bacon and chopped potatoes and onions, served on a footlong sub.

  “Make it two,” Wanda said and went in the office with Erica. I always wondered how she could eat like a horse and not gain an ounce.

  “Two heart attack heros coming up,” Larry said and rushed off to the kitchen. I went and sat down at one of the tables and watched Chloe and Layla while they worked. I wondered if Wanda’s plan included them and if it didn’t, the plan would have to change. Both of them had been working at Morris’s for years. I couldn’t see me taking their jobs.

  When the food was ready, Larry brought it out to the table and then went to get Wanda. While we ate, Larry sat down and told us old stories of the mischievous children we used to be. And like everything else, it got around to Larry telling us again how sorry he was to hear about Vickie and what a wonderful girl she was.

  “Not like you, Wanda,” Larry laughed. “I think you would make Vickie distract me while you stole cookies.”

  “That’s not true. I never stole anything from here,” Wanda said and looked at me for support. Actually it was me that got Vickie to distract Larry while me and Bobby stole the cookies. It was Vickie’s job and she was great at it. Wanda was always too scary when we were that age. She didn’t get bold and begin her life of crime as a master shop lifter until we were teenagers.

  “No, Larry, Wanda never stole anything from you. It was me and Bobby,” I said, and Larry just looked at me.

  “Really, Mike. I am so surprised to hear that.” He shook his head. “You and Bobby.”

  “Yeah, they were bad boys,” Wanda said and laughed.

  “But despite everything.” Larry patted my hand. “You and Bobby … you turned out to be good men. You should think about doing some good around here.” He stood up and laughed. “But then you’d have to buy up damn near the entire neighborhood.”

  When Larry walked off and went back behind the counter, I looked at Wanda. “You know, he’s right,” she said. “We really could do some good around here.”

  “I agree, he’s right. We’d have to buy up the whole neighborhood. But we could start buying whatever property we can, rent some of these vacant stores around here. Open some businesses and provide some services that people need.”

  “We could make a difference.” Wanda smiled. “And launder this money at the same time.”

  “That’s exactly what I was thinking.”

  It was after two in the afternoon when Erica announced that she was done for the day because she had to work that evening. She promised us that she would be finished with her review by close of business the following day, but at that point she had seen nothing that would prevent us from going ahead with the deal.

  “Where you wanna go now?” Wanda asked.

  “Let’s roll by Bobby, see what’s up with him,” I said, and Wanda took out her phone to call him.

  “Hey, what you doing?” I heard her say. “Me and Mike are on our way over there.”

  “What he say?”

  “Come on. And don’t worry, I’m dropping you off. I have some things I need to do this afternoon and then I got some last minute shopping to do.” She drove a little farther. “You want me to do your shopping? What am I saying, of course you do,” Wanda said, and her voice trailed off.

  I reached in my pocket and handed her some money. “What?”

  “Nothing.” Wanda paused. “Just thinking about Vickie.”

  “Yeah, now you gotta buy your own present,” I said jokingly because that had been the running joke for years.

  If it wasn’t
for Vickie, I’d have to get my own present or I wouldn’t get anything from you.

  But now there were no more jokes. Vickie was dead.

  “That’s not the point,” she said and punched me in the shoulder.

  “Ouch. Damn monkey paws.”

  “I’m sorry, but I miss her, Mike,” Wanda said, and a tear rolled down her cheek. I wiped it away.

  “I miss her too,” I said, and I held her hand.

  I held her hand the rest of the way to Bobby’s house. I only let it go when she needed it to drive, but she quickly returned it when she was done.

  “You gonna be okay?” I asked when we got to Bobby’s house.

  “I’ll be fine.” I started to get out of the car. “You wanna go shopping with me.” Wanda paused. “Never mind,” she said right before I said yes. “Shopping with you would be too hard.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Being around you and Bobby makes me think of Vickie and I know it’s like that for you too.”

  “It is.”

  “So imagine you and me, doing something that we both used to do with her.” Wanda laughed. “Yeah, she told me that you used to go shopping with her to get my present. I just went along with it.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “It made it mean so much more because I knew that you actually picked it out yourself. So imagine us, shopping together and all in our heads about Vickie.” She shook her head. “No, Mike, you go chase women and drink with Bobby, but you can’t go shopping with me.”

  “See you later, Wanda.”

  “Call me, okay?”

  I got out of the car. “Why don’t you just meet us at the club?”

  “I will.”

  I shut her door and went in the building and up to Bobby’s apartment. I let myself in and called for him.

  “Bobby!”

  When I got no answer, I went in the kitchen, got the bottle from the cabinet and poured myself a drink. Shot that and poured another. I was on my way to the living room when Bobby stuck his head out the door.

  “Where’s Wanda?”

  “Said she had something to do.”

  “Okay,” he said and shut the door. I knew then that I might be there for a while, so I finished my drink and made myself comfortable. While I smoked and drank, I focused on what we had to do, and you know, prioritize.

  Finding and killing O before the police got to him had to top the list, and even though it’s a lot of money, Simon Parrish and our money just seemed a little unimportant. But then there was Gun. Every day that he’s breathing was making us look weak, so we needed to find Gun and he had to die.

  Now I needed a plan.

  By the time Bobby came out of the room with Katrina, I had one. “Hi, Mike.” She waved.

  “Hi, Katrina.” I waved back.

  “You ready?”

  “Yeah.” I got up and put on my coat as I followed them to the door. When we got outside, Bobby tossed me his keys and he walked off with Katrina. I got in the car, started it up, turned on the heat and waited.

  “Sorry,” Bobby said when he got in.

  “For what, catching you in the act of being yourself?”

  “For making you wait,” Bobby said and drove off.

  “Wasn’t the first time, damn sure won’t be the last.”

  “She just showed up wearing that coat and nothing else. She had to get fucked.”

  “I’m not disagreeing with you. She’s a bad mutha fucka. She showed up at the crib naked, I woulda had to fuck her too.” At least the old Mike Black would have. I laughed. “What were you going to do if Wanda was with me?”

  “It woulda been a quickie.”

  “She wanted me to go shopping with her.”

  “Why? So she can cry, and you can say you killed Vickie?” Bobby asked.

  “Her realizing that was what was gonna happen is the only reason I’m not shopping now.”

  “So where we goin’?”

  “I was thinking that we could do the same thing we did with Jelinda.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We made Jelinda call Sly and she told him that we would kill her unless he came there. I say we do the same thing.”

  “But it wouldn’t be the same thing.”

  “Why not? You fucked his woman.”

  “I fucked her after that.”

  “What’s the difference. We roll by Kendra’s place and make her call Gun.”

  “Bet. You know where she lives?”

  “No. You’re the one fuckin’ her.”

  “I met her at The Late Night, I fucked her at The Late Night. I don’t know anything else about her. Before right now, it wasn’t important.”

  And since we were out riding, and it was December, we did what we usually do. We still went all the same places that we usually did and fucked around burning and drinking, we were just doing it with purpose.

  “You seen Gun?”

  “Ain’t seen him.”

  “What about Kendra, you know where she lives?” we kept asking until somebody said, “Yeah, I know where she lives.”

  “Where?”

  When we got to the apartment, I took out both of my guns and pressed my back against the wall beside the door as Bobby knocked.

  It took a while, but the door swung open and Kendra burst out the door wearing a silk robe, jumped into Bobby’s arms, wrapped her legs around his waist and kissed him.

  From that, I assumed that Gun wasn’t there, so I lowered my guns. But only a little.

  “Hey, Bobby,” she said and kept kissing him. “How did you find me?”

  “Wasn’t easy. I need you to do something for us.”

  “Us?” She hopped down. “Who’s us?” she asked, pulling her robe together, but it was too late, I’d already seen that she was naked.

  “Hello, Kendra,” I said making sure that she could see the gun in my hand. “You don’t mind if we come in?”

  “Y’all come in.” Kendra smiled and backed away from the door. I followed Bobby in, looked around the room and picked a spot.

  “What you need me to do?” Kendra asked as she and Bobby sat down on the couch.

  “I need you to call Gun and tell him that me and Black are here, and we are going to kill you if he doesn’t come here right away.”

  Kendra looked at Bobby and then at me. My back was pressed against the wall and I had a gun in each hand.

  “You really gonna kill me, Bobby?” she asked looking at me.

  “Of course not,” Bobby said and rubbed her thigh. “Mike will kill you,” he said, and I smiled at Kendra. If she knew me or anything about me, she’d know I’d never shoot a woman. Bobby, on the other hand, won’t hesitate to put a bullet in her brain.

  “I’ll make the call.”

  “Good girl,” Bobby said.

  Kendra picked up the phone and nervously called Gun. When he answered, she said exactly what we told her to say.

  “Baby, Mike Black and Bobby Ray are here, and they said they’ll kill me if you don’t come quickly,” she said and then she listened. When her eyes opened wide, I knew that it wasn’t gonna go like the last time. When Kendra hung up the phone, she looked at Bobby.

  “What he say?”

  “He said that you should go on and kill me, cause I’m a scandalous ho,” she said looking at me.

  “What you wanna do with her?” Bobby asked.

  I put my guns back in my pockets. “You know I’m not gonna kill her, so it’s on you. Give me your keys.” He reached in his pocket and tossed me the keys. “Do what you gotta do with her,” I said, she smiled and inched closer to Bobby. I left him alone in the apartment with half naked Kendra. “Why didn’t you just say, I’ll be in the car while you fuck her,” I said aloud as I walked down the hall. I walked to Bobby’s car, got in, started it up, turned on the heat and waited while Bobby fucked her.

  So, there I am, waiting outside in the car, getting blazed and sipping Remy when I saw a car pull up and park across the street. Gun gets o
ut with three of his men. I put out the bob, drained the cup and eased out of the car knowing that I’d be a sitting duck in there.

  I stayed low and moved away from Bobby’s car, knowing that there was no way I was letting them get away. I checked my weapons, set myself and came up firing with both guns. I hit one of his men and the rest ran and took cover behind a car while I kept firing until both guns were empty.

  When I dropped down for cover to reload, all three opened fire at me. Once I’d reloaded, I moved around to the front of the car. I peeked over the hood and saw them coming at me firing. I was about to raise up and fire, when I saw one of Gun’s men go down. I looked and saw that Bobby had come out of the building and was standing on the steps firing.

  Now that the odds were no longer in his favor, Gun turned and ran. I shot the last of his men when he turned to run. Bobby came down the steps firing at Gun, but he was too far away.

  “Shit! This mutha fucka got away again!”

  I stood up. “That did but didn’t go as planned,” I said as Bobby came toward me.

  “Come on, maybe we can still catch him,” Bobby said, and we got back in the car, which I left running by the way, and rolled around the area looking for Gun’s coward ass. That was the second time this mutha fucka has run on us.

  We rode around for a while and hit a few more spots looking for Gun and O without finding either of them. While we rode, I thought that I should have known that Gun was coming and had a trap ready for him. I had to learn to think things all the way through, not just part of the way like I had today.

  “What you wanna do now?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I did promise Wanda that we’d get with her later. I told her to meet us at The Late Night.”

  “Too early for The Late Night.” Bobby flipped open his phone and called her. She was at home waiting for us, so we went over there to pick her up, because in spite of all we had going on, it was still December and we still had celebrating to do.

  Chapter Nine

  December 21

  On the way to Wanda’s, Bobby was quiet; uncharacteristically quiet for Bobby. I’d known him a long time, long enough to know that whatever is on his mind, it will come out soon because Bobby doesn’t hold anything back. I sat back in the seat as he drove and suddenly I was all in my head about Vickie.