by Mary Monroe
I found Odette in the kitchen, burning up some popcorn. Her CD player on the windowsill over the sink was blasting 50 Cent so loud, the windows were rattling. I marched right over and turned it off. Odette whirled around and faced me, with contempt. I slapped her hand when she attempted to turn her music back on.
“What’s your problem?” she demanded, hands on her narrow hips.
“Odette, did you take a message for me from a lady named Corrine last Monday?”
“I take a lot of messages. I don’t know no Corrine,” she snarled.
“She called to tell me her mama died. You remember Miss Odessa, that old lady I used to live across the hall from. Corrine said she left a message with you.”
“I don’t remember taking no message from no Corrine,” Odette snapped. “You want some popcorn?” she asked, reaching for a bowl next to the CD player. There was popcorn, some burned and some still unpopped, all over the counter, waiting for me to clean it up.
I was seething with so much anger, I knew that if I didn’t get away from this girl in time, I would not be responsible for my actions. I just looked at Odette and shook my head. Then I left the room.
It was around eight o’clock when I finally got in touch with Wade. His mama was in the hospital, having her breasts lifted with money she’d borrowed from a dozen people, so we didn’t have to check into a hotel this time. He had left the back door open for me to get in, and I had to stumble over a dozen beer cans to get to him in the living room. For the first time since we’d resumed our relationship, we didn’t rip one another’s clothes off. He was in a pretty rotten mood himself.
“My unemployment checks ran out this week, and I can’t get an extension,” he complained, his arm around my shoulder as we lay on the lopsided sofa, facing a huge window in the front of the house. “I need new clothes to go looking for a job. I need money for transportation. Mama helps me when she can, but she’s struggling, too. And, I’d hate to have to borrow money from you.”
“And I’d hate for you to ask me for money,” I gasped, sitting up so I could see his face better. He looked stunned and disappointed. “Wade, I don’t have any money,” I told him, shaking my head.
“What’s that supposed to mean? You are living large, if I don’t say so myself. Fine clothes, fine car. Credit cards with sky-high limits.” Wade chuckled. He gave me a critical look, his eyes looking me up and down like I was up for inspection. “Me, I’m eating neck bones and rice almost every day.”
“Jesse Ray controls all the money in my house. He gives me money for household necessities and credit cards, but other than that, I’m almost as broke as you are.” I looked at the wall. “Being married to a millionaire is not all that it’s cracked up to be,” I complained, letting out a sour breath. I was still sad about Miss Odessa’s passing and still angry with Odette for not telling me in time so I could attend the funeral.
“Millionaire? Big-lipped Jesse Ray is doing that good? The video rental business is that hot?”
“It is for Jesse Ray. But he’s got other things on the side going on, too. He cleans up in the stock market. If he’s nothing else, he’s a shrewd businessman.”
“You can’t get out of that prenup you signed?” Wade asked, scratching his chin. There was a sparkle in his eyes that I’d never seen before.
“No. It’s rock solid. If I leave Jesse Ray—and if things don’t change soon, I will—I’ll leave with nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Well, next to nothing. I’d get a few dollars for a year, not much. Then I’d be on my own. Unless …”
“Unless what?”
“Unless I can come up with a plan.” The voice drifting out of my mouth like smoke sounded nothing like me. It was hollow and low and husky. It was the voice of a desperate woman. And, that’s exactly what I had become.
“What kind of plan are you talking about? You going to set him up to get robbed?” Wade laughed, slapping his knee.
“No, nothing like that,” I said, shaking my head. “He never has more than a couple of hundred on him at a time, and there’s too much security at the stores. He’s got teeny-weeny cameras hidden in places where even I can’t find them.” I sucked in a deep breath and looked in Wade’s eyes. Our eyes locked until I looked away. “Wade, I think I know a way. I think I know a way I can leave Jesse Ray with enough money for me to start all over. But I need your help.” I pressed my lips together and looked at Wade again. His gray eyes had darkened in the glow of light above his head.
“Look, baby, I don’t know what you got on your mind, but jail is not on my agenda. I found that out the hard way when I let some Mexican chick talk me into helping her pull an insurance scam down in L.A. And, all I got for my troubles was two years in the joint and two years probation. Uh-uh. Count me out. With all these smart-ass cops these days, you can’t kill your old man and get away with it.”
“What are you talking about?” I spoke so fast, I almost choked. “I didn’t say anything about killing anybody. I would never think about hurting Jesse Ray, or anybody else for that matter,” I insisted. Even though I was a desperate woman, and I was willing to do just about anything to change my situation, I drew the line when it came to causing Jesse Ray physical pain.
“Then what do you have in mind?”
“You don’t have to worry about jail if we do this right,” I said in a subdued voice. “What if you kidnapped me and asked for a ransom? Half a million dollars is what we’d get. I’d give you, uh, fifty grand, and then I’d take the rest and stash it away somewhere until things cooled off. Once you released me back to my husband, and once things settled down I’d divorce him. Then, eventually, I would just up and leave town with my share of the ransom. It would be more than enough for me to relocate and start a new life. And I think we can make it work.”
Wade looked at me like the voice coming out of my mouth belonged to a demon. It was the first time I’d ever seen fear on his face.
CHAPTER 55
“What’s wrong with you, woman? Have you completely lost your mind?” Wade asked, pushing me away like he’d just heard that I had a fatal disease and was contagious. Then he reared back and stared at me in slack-jawed amazement. “I can’t believe my ears! Kidnapping is one of the most serious crimes you can commit in this country. That ain’t too far from being a terrorist!” He wobbled up from his seat and stood in the middle of the floor, with his hands on his hips, staring at me now, with his mouth hanging open in a yawn so wide, I could see the base of his tongue.
“Not if you don’t get caught. And, if we do everything right, there is no chance of that happening,” I assured him.
As far-fetched as my scheme sounded, even to me, I had given it a lot of thought. It had been on my mind for several days now, but this was the first time I’d felt brave enough to put it on the table.
“But it won’t be a real kidnapping,” I added. “I’ll hide out with you somewhere, and you make the call.”
“What call?”
“The threatening voice that calls my husband to tell him that I’ve been kidnapped and am being held for ransom,” I answered, not even trying to hide my exasperation. Wade was supposed to be so streetwise, but he was as dense as he could be.
Wade opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out at first. He shook his head as if that was the only way he could get the words to move. “You think I could pull it off? Do you honestly and truly think that I could pull something like that off?”
“You’re an actor, brother,” I snapped. “If you can’t, I don’t know who can.”
Wade shook his head and then looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “How do I know you ain’t trying to set me up?”
“Why would I be trying to set you up?” I asked, rolling my eyes. “What the fuck would I have to gain by sending you back to jail, Wade?”
He massaged the side of his head and let out a loud sigh. “All right. Talk to me,” he ordered. “Tell me everything I need to know.”
“Then you’ll help me?” I asked, my eyes as wide as a child’s on Christmas morning. “You’ll do it?”
Wade nodded, but with noticeable hesitation. “If we don’t do this thing right, it might be the last thing we ever do,” he warned.
“It’s a simple plan, baby. Now listen …”
It was a simple plan, my plan. It took me only ten minutes to lay it out. If Wade followed my instructions, we’d both be very happy with the outcome.
When I stood up to leave, Wade grabbed my hand. “I just want you to change one detail.”
“What?” I asked, annoyed and alarmed. “I thought we had everything worked out.”
“We did. I mean, we do. It’s just that I need a little more time.”
“More time for what? You want to give this some more thought?”
“Not really. I am going to do it, but I just don’t want to do it tomorrow like you said. I think we should wait at least a couple of days more.”
“What is there to wait for? You’re going to rent a motel room for me to stay in. You’re going to call up my husband and tell him you’re holding me for ransom.”
“What if he won’t pay? Then what? Do you go on back home and pick up where you left off with him and his crazy-ass family, or what?”
“He’ll pay,” I said firmly. “He’s all about money. He’s never turned anybody down that asked him for money.”
“Christine, this is not the same thing as that snow-cone truck–driving brother-in-law of yours asking your husband for a few dollars. Or that Harvey or Adele asking for money to go on cruises and shopping sprees with. Those are not crimes, but they should be,” Wade said, with a dry laugh.
I gave Wade a pensive look. “If he doesn’t pay, I leave, anyway. I might even go to L.A. with you.”
“And if he does pay? What is your next move? Whatever it is, it better be good.”
By the time I left Wade’s mama’s house, we had ironed out our plan some more. If Jesse Ray paid the ransom, Wade would take his share and go back to L.A. and resume his Mickey Mouse “acting” career. If he was smart, he’d use some of his money to hire a good manager or a publicist who could help open a few doors for him. And, from what I knew about his career, he was going to need all the help he could get if he wanted to do something that he could be proud of.
Besides Wade, I didn’t know any other people in the movie business. But I knew enough about the business from reading the tabloids and watching shows about entertainers on the E! channel to know that Wade had had his fifteen minutes of fame. In his case, he’d even been cheated out of that. His fifteen minutes had been more like two. But the saddest part was the fact that it had been two minutes of shame. I didn’t know about other people who had been reduced to starring in porn movies, but I knew enough about Wade to know that he had too much pride to let his mama and the rest of us know the truth.
I told Wade that my plan was to go to Hawaii and start over. Other than that, I was as vague and evasive as possible. I avoided telling him where in Hawaii I planned to go. When he asked me for the fourth or fifth time, I said the first thing that came to my mind. “Uh, Maui.”
“I’ll wait a few months; then I’ll come visit you,” he told me. “But”—he paused and let out a tired sigh—“if dude don’t pay and you still want to get away from him, you can come on down to L.A. and stay with me, if you don’t mind sleeping on the pallet in a studio with two other folks ….” Wade paused again and let out another tired sigh. I was not counting, but I was convinced that he had let out enough sighs to blow out a streetlight. “Until you find a job. It’s the least I could do.”
I knew in my heart that my relationship with Wade had finally run its course. What he had to offer as far as a future was concerned didn’t appeal to me at all.
“Sure,” I mumbled. I said whatever I thought he wanted to hear because I knew that if things went the way I wanted them to go, Wade would not see me in the future.
And neither would Jesse Ray.
CHAPTER 56
I had come to believe that anybody who chose to commit a serious crime had to be stupid in the first place. But I’d only felt this way since I’d married Jesse Ray and become “respectable.” However, I knew from experience that a lot of people committed crimes out of necessity. The most honest man in the world would steal food if that was the only way he could feed his starving family. That was all about survival. I felt that I had something in common with that honest man trying to feed his starving family. I needed to survive. I had convinced myself that I wouldn’t survive if I stayed with Jesse Ray.
Leaving him was going to be painful because I would be giving up a lot. I loved the house he had bought for us to grow old in. It was kid friendly, with a recreation room and a spacious backyard. But none of that mattered now. Because even if I stayed, the only kids who’d enjoy all that would be Adele’s and their obnoxious friends.
The next night I called up Wade a few times on my cell phone from my spacious bathroom, a location I used to enjoy being in. Right after we’d moved into the house, Jesse Ray had installed a plasma television with a flat screen in our master bathroom so that I could watch my favorite shows during my long bubble baths. Those days were gone. With so much going on in the house now, my time was severely limited. I had to use it wisely. An hour-long bubble bath was a luxury that I rarely enjoyed anymore. I didn’t even like to use the bathroom at all unless I had to. Especially after I’d caught Odell peeping at me through the bathroom-door keyhole and jacking off while I was doing my business on the commode. Now I always covered the keyhole with a towel. And just to make it even more difficult for that sick puppy to get off with the help of my bathroom activities, I ran the water in the bathtub and in the sink so he couldn’t hear what I was doing in there, either.
Even with all the background noises in my bathroom, running water, and Anita Baker on my CD player, I still whispered into the phone. “Wade, I just wanted to go over one more detail. When you release me, you’ll have to keep and destroy my purse and everything in it.”
“Why?” he asked, breathing hard.
“Wade, if somebody really did kidnap me, one of the first things they’d probably do is dispose of my purse. A real kidnapper would not want me to have access to the cell phone that I always carry in my purse when I’m away from home. And, what if the cops stop us and ask for ID before you get me to wherever you’re going to hide me? As a brother, you of all people know that if the cops stop you when you are ‘driving while black,’ they want to ID everybody in the car.”
“And that’s another thing,” replied Wade. “Speaking of cars, what are we going to use for transportation? I don’t know any kidnappers, but I doubt if any of them haul their victims around on a bus or in a cab.”
“We can rent a car,” I said.
“And now you’re talking about leaving a paper trail, too? Christine, why don’t you just forge your old man’s signature on a piece of paper and take it to the bank and get you some money that way? Or why don’t you find somebody that looks like old Jesse Ray and have him go to the bank with you?”
“Wade, now that is a straight-up felony if ever there was one,” I hissed.
“And kidnapping is not?”
“How many times do I have to tell you this is not a real kidnapping?”
“You don’t need to tell me no more. You save all that for the man when they slap them cuffs on you.”
“So what are you telling me? Are you backing out? There is fifty thousand dollars in this for you.”
Wade took his time responding. “Okay. Be cool, baby. It’s all good. I just want to make sure we got every little deal worked out,” he told me.
I got sick of going over “every little detail” three and four more times all in the same conversation. Each time that Wade attempted to talk about us getting caught, I steered him in another direction, assuring him that if we stuck to my original plan, that was not going to happen.
When I met up with Wade again a few
days later at his mama’s house to go over the plan one more time, Miss Louise was still in the hospital, but Wade was not alone.
“This is Jason. He’s going to be our backup,” Wade told me as soon as I got inside. “He’s got a car, so now we don’t have to worry about taking a risk with a rental.” I gave Wade a horrified look. I wanted to make sure he knew how I felt. But he tried to minimize it by shrugging his shoulders and giving me a weak smile. I looked at Jason, giving him the same horrified look that I’d just given to Wade.
“Wassup, sister?” Jason said, walking toward me, with his hand out for me to shake. “Long time no see.” Jason Mack was no stranger to me. He’d been in a lot of my classes at Berkeley High, but he’d spent more time in jail than school for burglarizing homes and businesses and robbing old ladies on the street in broad daylight. And, with his shifty snake eyes and snaggletoothed grin, he looked like the type who’d knock an old lady down and run off with her purse. But that had not stopped him from having an extremely vigorous social life. He’d married one of the girls from my old gang, but he’d also carried on affairs with several other women at the same time. Every now and then, I caught a glimpse of him out in public with one of the five women that he’d had five babies with. This was the closest I’d been to him since the tenth grade, and I didn’t like it.
I ignored Jason’s ashy hand and turned to Wade again. “What the hell is this?” I gasped, rotating my neck. I took a few steps back toward the door. I still had my car keys in my hand, because I didn’t plan on staying more than a few minutes. It had not been easy for me to get away from my house. I had not been able to reach Nita so that she could come stay with Miss Rosetta. Out of desperation, I’d wheeled Miss Rosetta out to my Lexus and loaded her into the backseat. The only other times I did that was when Miss Rosetta had a doctor’s appointment. I was glad that that happened only a couple of times a month.
