A Clean Up Man

by M. T. Pope

  “So are you ready for the big day?” I asked him as I looked at the game that was on the screen across the room. My eyes would instinctively watch the front door as each new person entered the establishment. Jarrod had me on pins and needles and I hated it.

  “Man, I don’t even want to think about it.” He looked at me seriously.

  “What do you mean? You changed your mind?” I asked, trying my best to not look at the front door.

  “Nah, it’s just that we have started planning the wedding for a few months from now and I am trying to figure out how all of this is going to get paid for and what am I going to do after I get married. You know Carla and I can’t just live happily ever after in my mom’s house. I love my mom’s but I think that Carla and I should have our own. You know?”

  “Yeah, man, that is true. You can’t get your freak on with your moms in the next room and on that twin bed you got.” I laughed. He just smirked at me.

  “Sorry,” I apologized, because the joke was in poor taste.

  “No, you right. But I was just thinking about my mom and her being alone in the house. I mean, after that robbery I just couldn’t just up and leave her. Carla has her super small one-bedroom apartment, so I know that my mom and I couldn’t move in with her. My mother loves her house. It was the house that we moved into when we were forced out of the house that my father moved us in when we first moved to the country. It is her home. I don’t even know how to bring it up.”

  “Wow, man. That is a dilemma.” I nodded my head and looked around the room again, just in case I missed Jarrod coming in or something.

  “You know it. I have some money saved up and so does Carla, but I don’t know if will be enough to pay for the wedding and move into a house.”

  “Well, have you and Carla thought about just going to the courthouse and getting married? That way you can have a small reception and have money to maybe put a down payment on a house.”

  “You know, I never really thought about that. I just assumed that Carla wanted a big wedding like most women do. I think I will just ask her to see if she is game for it.”

  “It won’t hurt to try.” I grabbed a hot wing off of the plate that we were sharing and tried to concentrate again on the game that was playing.

  “Hey, are you still looking for your father?” I asked him because he just mentioned his father a few seconds ago.

  “Man, I came to a dead end on that. It just seemed like he disappeared. I mean I found some court stuff on him, but that was a long time ago and all of the addresses that came up for him were from years ago.”

  “Damn, man. I’m sorry to hear that.” I frowned.

  “I know, right. But hey, as they say, you can’t miss what you never had.” He smiled faintly. I knew that he was looking hard to find his father and to fill that void in his life. He wanted completion just like I did.

  “True that . . . True that.” Even though that wasn’t something that I believed in, I still nodded my head. I did miss my father, or maybe the relationship we could have had. “You never know, though. Keep looking; you just might find something.”

  “Maybe you’re right.” He nodded his head.

  We continued to eat and watch the game until both of us decided it was time to go home.

  Chapter 29

  Cat and Mouse

  I was awakened at two-thirty in the morning by the ringing of my phone.

  “Hello,” I answered, groggy and tired.

  “I see you are sleeping well for someone who likes to try to wreck homes.”

  I was wide awake now that I had recognized Jarrod’s voice. I took the phone away from ear to look at the caller ID. It read: UNKNOWN. I immediately hopped out of my bed and over to my window. I had to check and see if he was parked outside my house or something.

  “Hello?” he called out to me. I had sat back on the bed, trying to think of something to say. I didn’t know what to say.

  “Yeah.” I was nervous. No, I was scared for the first time in life. I was in fear. Everything in me tensed up and my stomach churned really hard. I felt my stomach lurch a little, like I was going to throw up. My free hand shook as I tried to find something to do with it. I got up and walked around the room like I was lost. I fumbled with various things as I walked aimlessly around my room.

  “So, how am I supposed to respond to the box you sent me?” He sounded so calm and collected. It scared the shit out of me even more.

  “I . . . I . . . I don’t know. I’m sorry.” At this moment, if he had been in front of me I would have kissed his shoes, licked his ass, anything to let this slide. I didn’t think that was going to happen. I knew that it wasn’t. He was the cocky type. His reputation and the way that people saw him was of the utmost importance to him. That’s with most DL men, anyway. They need to appear the part even if they aren’t. They are the original Transformers.

  “You know the other day I was sitting in my living room, watching cartoons with my kids—you know, the ones you tried to take from me—and we were watching Tom and Jerry. I loved that show as a child and so do my children. Though, I did have one problem with it as a child. I watched the show, but in real life the cat that I had growing up wouldn’t have gone for all of the games Jerry, the mouse, played. I watched my cat catch a mouse and play with it and let it linger close to death and continue to play with it, not hard enough to kill it, but then when it got tired of playing with it he put it out of its misery. Do you see where I’m going with this?”

  “Uh.” I didn’t have a clue about anything right now. I didn’t know if any answer would have made him madder or angrier.

  “You are the mouse and I am the cat.” His voice was so smooth and calm. Again, I was scared . . . too scared to answer.

  “Hello? . . . Cat got your tongue?” He laughed maniacally.

  He was right. The cat did have my tongue.

  “So what was all of this for? You think you are going to rid the world of DL men? You think you some type of hero?”

  “You don’t even who I am, do you?” I put the fear I had on the back burner for the moment. A burst of adrenaline surged through me and spoke freely.

  “Know who you are?” He sounded confused.

  “Yes, I’m someone from your past that you fucked over . . . literally.” I spoke and I thought some spittle flew from my mouth.

  “You’re going to have to be a little more specific. I fucked a lot of people.”

  “You remember the last guy you fucked in the frat house before you left Howard University?”

  “You mean the sissy boy I met in the library?”

  “Yes, I’m the man you fucked up and then skipped out on.” I spoke with confidence.

  “You got to be fucking kidding me!” He sounded pissed off. “Dude, that was just a couple dudes getting a nut. What, you thought we were in a relationship or something? I can’t believe this shit. You on some get back because you thought that I left you high and dry. Are you crazy? Do you have some type of abandonment issues or something? I can’t believe this shit. All of this shit was so you can ruin me? Because I left you? This is some dumb shit. Here I was about to play with you a little bit . . . make you scared and then leave you alone. But now I got to go all out and show you what some real get back is like. You know I started something a few days ago and then I pulled back, because I was going to give you the benefit of the doubt, but I’m going all the way with it now. You tried to ruin my family, now I got to go after somebody close to you. Now guess which one I’m going to start with, or have already started with.” Click.

  I held the phone in my hand for a minute before I put it back on my nightstand.

  “Everything he said was right.” I started talking to myself. “Abandonment issues? Was he right about that?” It had never crossed my mind that I had abandonment issues.

  I stood still in the middle of my nice plush brown-carpeted room and wondered if this chance meeting with running into Jarrod again on the highway was a chance meeting or fate. Was
all of this supposed to happen like this? Did God plan all of this out to show me something about myself? Did I mess up what he was trying to show me and now I had to reap the rewards of my own vengeance?

  It scared the mess out of me to even think about what this sadistic person was now planning for me and my family. I shook my head in confusion and regret. But it was too late for that now. I had to wait and see.

  “My father left. He left me, and I was afraid Carlos was going to get married and forget about me. Abandonment issues?” I spoke as I walked down my steps, through my dining room, and into my kitchen.

  “I did all of this shit to find that out. All of this sleeping with married men was so they wouldn’t have a chance to abandon me. I wanted to do the abandoning and that is why I was attracted to married men. Married men just wanted fun with no commitment and I knew that and that was my safety net.” Now my safety net was gone and I had to play the waiting game and watch Jarrod try to dismantle my family one by one.

  Chapter 30

  First Strike

  Rinnnnnngggggg . . .

  “Hello.” I answered the phone groggily. It was a couple days after I spoke with Jarrod and I was asleep in my bed in the early Friday morning hours.

  “Kraig . . . Oh my God . . . Oh my God . . . Oh my God!” It was a female’s voice that was completely animated. I looked at the phone and saw Carlos’s number and put two and two together.

  “Carla, what’s wrong?” I sat on the side of my bed, scared for umpteenth time in three weeks. “What’s going on?”

  “The police . . . Carlos . . . The police . . . Carlos . . . The police.” It sounded like she had a breathing problem or something.

  “Slow down and speak slowly,” I tried to coach her over the phone.

  “The police . . . took . . . Carlos.”

  “For what?” I almost yelled. My heart started to race and my stomach flipped.

  “We were asleep in his room and then we heard a big boom and then next thing we knew they was throwing Carlos on the ground. I was screaming, his mother was screaming and going crazy. I was crying. They started ripping stuff apart and throwing things around. It was a mess. They said they had a tip of a drug operation going on at his house.” I was scrambling around my room as she talked, throwing on some clothes and shoes. I was shaking. They took my best friend to jail. “And that’s not the worst part. They found a big bag of marijuana.”

  “What! Are you serious?” When she said it I immediately stopped in my tracks. Marijuana? I questioned myself, half believing what she said. “You sure?”

  “Yes, I am. I almost passed out when I saw it. I work for a lawyer and I know what time people get for that stuff. I am so scared, Kraig. Why would Carlos do something like this knowing that we were getting married? Why would he lie to me?” I hoped he wasn’t trying to get some quick money for the wedding. I knew he wouldn’t do that.

  “Carla, I’m a hundred percent positive that Carlos had nothing to do with drugs, okay?” I assured her.

  “Are you sure?” She sniffed back some tears.

  “He’s not that kind of guy, Carla. He loves you too much to lie to you.” I knew that to be the truth with all my being.

  “But they found it in one of his coat pockets.” She threw another fact at me. The situation was getting even more serious by the moment.

  “Really?” I was confused for a second. “Look, don’t go by what you see. Just believe me when I say that he had nothing to do with that.”

  “Okay.”

  “Where are you?” I quickly put on some deodorant and hightailed it down my steps, missing a few in the process. I grabbed my keys off of the living room table, ran out the door, and jumped into my truck within seconds.

  “I’m at Sinai Hospital.” She was crying.

  “The hospital?” My mind immediately went to Carlos being shot or something and tears lined the sides of my eyes. “Why are you at the hospital?”

  “Well, during the raid Carlos’s mom was yelling and screaming and she jumped on a police officer and they had to Taser her.”

  “What!” I was driving and trying to pay attention to her.

  “Yes, she passed out and I had to call the paramedics to come and get her. It’s such a mess, Kraig. I don’t know where they took Carlos.”

  “Look, let me make some calls and I’ll call you right back.” I pulled over into the nearest parking lot and called down the central booking lockup to see if Carlos was there.

  As soon as she hung up, I started crying like a baby. This had Jarrod written all over it. It was a low blow. I cried even harder when I remembered that the drug charge we got on our record was for marijuana. This wasn’t a good look for me. This was my entire fault. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to see he was going after my best friend first. I could tell this wasn’t going to be an easy fix. Jarrod was really going to try to ruin my family. They say seeing is believing. Now I see.

  I called and sure enough that was where they had Carlos. I heard horror stories about being in lockup down at central booking in the city of Baltimore: fights, stabbings, and killings. I could only imagine how Carlos felt right now. I was responsible for sending my best friend to jail and I felt like shit about it. Jarrod must have checked our backgrounds when he stopped us on the highway and now he was setting up Carlos. He must have seen our marijuana charge from a few years ago and got the ball rolling. He’d gone after Carlos first and the next plausible person would be my mother, and he was probably saving me for last. I was in over my head with this shit. It was a good thing Angie was a cop because she could keep my mother safe until I got back in contact with Jarrod to get him to back off.

  “Shit, this is some mess I got myself into,” I scolded myself out loud.

  I called Carla back after a few more minutes of sitting in my truck.

  “Hello,” she answered immediately.

  “They have him down in central booking.”

  “Oh, my God!” The way she said it didn’t make me feel any better. “What are we going to do?”

  “Well, I have to call back later on to see about bail and all of that, but I need you to call your boss to see if he can take the case. I think he is going to need him.”

  “Okay, I’ll give him a call right now.” She hung up the phone before I could say anything else to her. Not that I had anything else to say. I was truly stuck in between a rock and a hard place.

  I sat in my car and cursed myself out some kind of terrible, but I knew that this was not going to get Carlos out of trouble. I couldn’t believe that Jarrod would go this far. I mean really, sending my best friend to jail was low.

  Chapter 31

  “Mi Hijo, Mi Hijo”

  I woke up on Saturday morning with a splitting headache. I tossed and turned all night long. I had a lot on my mind. Turned out Carlos would have to spend the weekend in jail because he couldn’t see the commissioner who decided if he got bail until Monday. Carla told me that his job called, because he didn’t show for work on Friday, and asked about his whereabouts and she told them that he got locked up. My stomach took a nose dive when she told me that he was fired because they had too many problems with him in the past. Now he was out of a job and locked up.

  I got up and went to take a nice hot shower since I would be going to the hospital to bring Carlos’s mom home. She had slight irregular heartbeat after the police electrocuted her.

  She must have been going hard. I chuckled a little and then got serious real quick because the situation was dire. She could have actually died or something. I didn’t even want to think of the ramifications if that had happened. I thought Carlos would really try to kill me if he found out something like that was from my messiness.

  I picked up my phone that was vibrating on dresser. “Hello.”

  “Hey, Kraig.” It was Carla and she sounded super depressed. “Are you dressed yet?”

  “I will be in a few. I’ll scoop you up from your house and then shoot over to the hospital to pick up Ca
rlos’s mom.”

  “Okay, I’ll be waiting.”

  I hung up the phone and jumped in the shower real quick. It took all of seven minutes and I was getting dressed. I threw on some jeans, loafers, and a button up. I was out of the house within a half hour. I grabbed me a Pop-Tart, a bottle of water, and an Aleve before I left, as well.

  I pulled up to Carla’s house within fifteen minutes and continued our drive toward the hospital.

  The look of sadness and despair on her face on the entire ride over to the hospital was killing me. It made me want to confess to everything, but I couldn’t. I didn’t know where to begin. I knew what was going on was wrong and completely fucked up on my end.

  I parked the car in the parking lot and before I got out Carla pulled at my arm and looked me dead in the eye.

  “Kraig, I want to thank you for being Carlos’s best friend and being here doing all of this. He needs all of us right now and I am glad you that you are doing all that you can.” She sniffed back some tears. Shit, I wanted to too. I was the reason behind all of this mess. I was risking my life, friends, and family all for some get back.

  “Hey, don’t cry. We are going to get through this together.” I reached over and pulled her into a hug. The fact of the matter was I really needed one myself.

  We hugged for a long period time and she sobbed on my shoulder and a few tears of mine fell onto her shoulder as well.

  “You ready?” I pulled away and looked at her and smiled. A faint smile crept across her face. Carlos had a gem of a woman. She was the best thing for him.

  We both got out of the car and made our way into the hospital. When we walked into the hospital room that Carlos’s mom was in she was sitting up in a chair next to the bed with her things ready to go.

  “Hey, Mami!” Carla’s face lit up as she walked over to her. I guessed she was putting on a brave face for her.

  “Hey, Mami!” I tried to be just as upbeat as Carla when I went over to hug her.

  “I ready to go home. I want to see me son.” She had a serious look on her face. Carlos was her everything and she didn’t play when it came to him. I had to let her know that Carlos probably wouldn’t be home until Monday evening at the earliest.