Dutch III: International Gangster

by Teri Woods

  “Where are you?” she asked, not having heard from him in a month of Sundays.

  “It don’t matter where I’m at. Who’s that nigga you got in my house?” he asked again, ready to hop a plane and strangle her.

  “Brother Faheem,” she whispered.

  “Faheem? From the Masjid?” Rahman asked, his heart dropping.

  Ayesha didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. Rahman already knew.

  “What is he doing there?” Rahman asked, fire in his eyes.

  “Do you really want to go there?” she asked, knowing there was no coming back if they did.

  “Ayesha, don’t play games with me! I asked you what is he doing there?!” Rahman shouted.

  “I married him at the Masjid two days ago. He’s my husband,” she said, shooting a dagger through his heart.

  “What? How could you do this to me? What the fuck is wrong with you?” he yelled, his heart sinking lower and lower with every word she spoke.

  “I didn’t do anything! You did this to yourself ! You did this to us! I begged you not to leave but you did anyway! You knew I needed you and you left me anyway, for what? Huh, Roc, for what? I need someone that wants to be with me, that won’t leave me. Faheem loves me and he loves the children. He’s here for me when I need him.”

  “Fuck Faheem! Fuck you, too, Ayesha. You ain’t shit, you hear me? You ain’t shit. And when I get back I’m going to kill that motherfucker, you hear me? He’s a dead man walking,” said Roc, meaning every word he spoke.

  Ayesha hung up before Roc could say another word or make another threat. When he called back, she wouldn’t answer and simply took the phone off the hook. He tried a few more times, but the line was busy. He hung up the phone and tried for calm in the middle of his fury. He walked back to the hotel, to his room.

  Roc was very angry. He remembered that nigga Faheem from the Masjid. He always sat next to him during prayer. His fake ass was merely pretending. Roc never thought that a brother from the Masjid would break the code and bed his wife. Is this nigga crazy? For anyone who knew him, to turn against him and move in on his wife and family, they had to know they were wrong. And never in a million years did he think that Ayesha would turn to another man, especially one that he knew. He honestly believed that she would wait for him to return. Roc was so angry all he could think of was killing Faheem, even if it meant going back to prison. He didn’t realize his own jealousy. He didn’t realize his own anger. Out of nowhere he punched the wall and hurled a clock radio at the television, cracking its screen into a thousand tiny pieces that fell to the floor.

  He heard a knock at the door. Slowly he opened it and peeked out.

  “You all right in there, motherfucker? I can hear you all the way down the hall,” Craze said, standing barefoot, covered only by a pair of Fruit of the Loom boxers.

  “Nothing, man, nothing,” said Roc, walking away from the door.

  “Got to be something—television all fucked up, holes in the wall and shit,” said Craze, observing the scenario as he lit a morning blunt to get the day started.

  “It’s Ayesha. She’s fuckin’ with this nigga named Faheem. The mothafucker is at my house right now. He just answered the phone. I’m gonna kill this mothafucker, Craze. I swear to Allah I’m going to kill him. I need to leave here tonight.”

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go home right now,” advised Craze, knowing that nigga wasn’t going nowhere.

  “Yo, I can’t let this nigga be around my kids.”

  “You can’t change what is already done. He’s already there, she’s with him. You said it yourself last night. You guys broke up. So what do you care who she’s with? You can only care about yourself and your kids, nothing else.”

  Roc sat down on the bed and began to rock back and forth, holding his head. The thought of Ayesha and Faheem in bed together made his stomach turn. How could she do that to him, how? He realized at that moment that he had made the right decision by leaving, and that she wasn’t for him. She wasn’t who he thought she was.

  “Yo, Roc, you know I’m here for you, if you want to talk,” Craze said, placing his hand on his shoulder, ready to crawl back in bed with his companion from last night.

  “I’m good, it’s all good. I’m okay, it’s okay. You’re right, I can’t change what’s done. I walked away and so did she. It’s good, it’s all good,” said Roc, trying to get a perspective on the situation and keep his composure all at the same time.

  “You sure you straight? ’Cause I know you got a lot going on with yourself,” said Craze understandingly.

  “Naw, nigga, I’m all right,” said Roc, embracing his friend and giving him a pound.

  “ ’Cause shit, I used to know this nigga named One-eyed Roc. He was my friend and I been looking for him now for a long time,” said Craze, waiting for Roc to respond.

  “Don’t worry, I’m right here, baby. One-eyed Roc is back.” Roc smiled.

  “That’s what’s up,” said Craze, giving Roc a pound before walking back to his room.

  Newark, New Jersey

  It was ten o’clock and Delores was fast asleep when she was awakened by the sounds of screams. It was Bernard again, having another nightmare. She went into the bedroom where he was sleeping and held his hand. He was covered with sweat. He screamed out in agony again.

  She bent over the bed, rubbing his forehead gently, waking him out of his sleep.

  “It’s okay, Bernard, I’m here,” she said, taking a towel and using it to wipe his face.

  He opened his eyes and stared up at her, not saying a word.

  “You okay?” she asked as he began to weep like a little boy. “Oh, my God, Bernard, what is it? What happened?” Delores didn’t know what to do. She sat quietly on the bed with him, still holding his hand.

  “They killed ’em, Delores. They killed them all,” he said, shaking as if he was scared to death.

  “Who, baby, killed who?” she asked, wanting desperately to help him.

  “All of ’em,” he said, staring into space somewhere far, far, away.

  “Bernard, all of who?”

  He looked around the room for a moment, silently remembering 1948 and a warm summer evening that would change his life forever.

  “I was ten years old. My daddy had come from killing hogs. I remember that night. Momma cooked that pig meat up and made some soup and some homemade bread and we all sat down and was eating when a band of white men covered in white sheets on horses galloped around the front of the house calling for my daddy to come outside. Turned out they believed that the hogs my daddy and his friends had killed earlier that day were stolen from Bob Olsen’s hog farm.”

  Bernard went on to describe in detail how his mother was able to get him and his brother safely out the back window.

  “Run into the woods, you hear me, and don’t look back.” That was the last time his momma would ever speak to him. Just as his body hit the ground, knocking over his little brother, he heard the Ku Klux Klan bust down their door. The screams of his older sister rattled his ears, and he could hear his mother begging for her life. His father fought them off as best he could but was no match for the gang of men. They hogtied him and made him watch as they burned a cross and set his house on fire after savagely raping and beating his wife and daughter to death.

  “You fucking niggers think you can steal and get away with it, but you’re gonna learn. God sayeth the word, nigger. Thou shalt not steal. God sayeth the word. God sayeth the word. Say it nigger, say it.”

  “I didn’t steal nothing, I didn’t. I swear to God I didn’t steal no pigs,” Rufus Harrison pleaded as the men tied him up and dragged him back into the woods. Rufus was telling the truth. He had traveled all the way to Rosewood and bought the pigs from Wallace Gaines of the Gaines family. No one had stolen anything. It was just pure hatred, pure jealousy, and the American way of treating blacks at that time. Little Bernard and his smaller brother, William, could see the sticks of fire through
the woods and could hear their father’s screams of torment ringing in the night air. They tiptoed through the woods toward the sounds of their father’s screams. They crouched in the shrubs behind a tree and watched as their father’s bloody body was stood up, both his arms held tightly, as one of the men walked straight toward him and with a sharp razor sliced off his ear. Rufus yelled in pain, screaming in agony. They quickly lifted him off the ground and onto a horse. The side of his head was bleeding profusely from where his ear had been cut off as a souvenir.

  “Daddy,” whispered Bernard at the sight of his tortured and barely alive father. They took a noose and placed it over a pleading Rufus’s head as he sat on the back of a horse under a tree branch. Seconds later one of the KKK fired a shot in the air, causing the horse to buck, leaving Rufus dangling from the tree branch, the sound of his neck cracking as the noose tightened caused a young William to scream out for his father.

  “Daddy!” the tiny boy screamed in pain watching his father swing from the tree branch.

  The white-hooded men turned around with their hoods over their faces lifted, and Bernard could see them clearly. He knew all of them. It was Sheriff Faulkner, Deputy Cotton, Mister Boss who was the local shoesmith, Mister Murphy who ran the general store, Mister McMellon who had the local barbershop, and Mister Carroll who worked with Mister Murphy. He even recognized some of the locals: Mister Allen, Mister Brewer, and Mister King, Mister Volpe, Mister Wiese, Mister Koon, Mister Wind, and Mister Powell. There were many more, wearing those white robes and pointy hoods, but young Bernard didn’t know them.

  “Get them little black bastard niggers,” yelled Sheriff Faulkner as he covered his face with his white pointy hood.

  “Get ’em! Don’t let them get away!”

  Bernard remembered that fateful night. He grabbed his little brother’s hand and took off like a jackrabbit. Scared of being tortured by the white-hooded men, he ran faster than he had ever run in his life. He never felt his brother’s hand break free from his. All he remembered was the pitch-black night, his pounding heart, and being surrounded by fear as he dodged through the trees in the dark, shadowed forest.

  “I lost his hand. I lost my brother’s hand,” said Bernard, staring into Delores’s eyes with his own, full of sorrow and pain. “I stopped running and I turned around and I waited for him. I thought he’d be running in back of me, but he never came. So I turned around and went back into the woods. I must’ve walked ten miles looking for my little brother, and just as the dawn was turning the morning sky gray, I found him… all hung up in a tree,” he said, his voice cracking as tears ran down the side of his face.

  Delores didn’t walk in his shoes, but she understood that his shoes had to have hurt his feet, real bad. She had her own horror stories of being degraded, being denied, and being treated like something secondhand. She didn’t doubt one word he spoke.

  “A man found me in the woods and took me home. I never saw my family again. He named me James after his family,” he said, staring off into the distance. “All my life, I’ve been fighting… fighting and hating. I hate them for everything they took from me, everything they did to me; to this day, I still do.”

  Delores didn’t say anything. She understood him and she understood his reasoning. He had every right to feel the way he did. His family had been brutalized, tortured, mentally degraded, taught to believe white was better, white was good, white was God, and black was nothing, and therefore he was nothing. As far as Delores was concerned, America had owed a debt to blacks and America needed to ante up. She had raised their son to believe that notion as well.

  “It’s okay, Bernard, I understand, you know I understand,” she said, comforting him. “Everything will be all right, don’t you worry. One day, things will be different, one day.”

  Paris, France

  “Are you ready, Nina?” Dutch asked politely, waiting to take Nina’s arm.

  He had planned an evening in Paris. First they would have dinner at one of Paris’s most exclusive restaurants, L’Arpège, then Moulin Rouge. Even though Nina had seen the movie, it couldn’t compare to actually sitting in the historic theater. Following the show, Dutch drove out to the countryside. A full moon lit up the night sky as Dutch pulled into a lookout spot on top of a hill.

  Nina was speechless looking out at the city lights below.

  “I used to come out here and think about you,” Dutch said, looking into her eyes. “And you would fill my mind.”

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure,” Dutch replied.

  “Why did you wait so long to tell me you were alive? Why did you let me think you were dead all those years?”

  “Many reasons. The first was my freedom. I couldn’t tell anyone, not even my own mother. The second reason was you refused me once before, remember? All those invites asking you to meet me… You never showed,” he said, remembering everything like it was yesterday. “I didn’t think you were willing to start over again. So, when it was time for Craze to go back for Angel and Roc, I decided to come for you again.”

  “You did.” Nina smiled, thinking of the past three years.

  “Yeah, I did,” said Dutch seriously.

  “Did you think I would come?”

  “I knew you would,” Dutch replied with confidence.

  The two of them sat looking down at the city. It was a perfect date on a perfect night, but little did Dutch know that it wouldn’t stay perfect for very long.

  LIVE WIRE

  The next day, Odouwo phoned Dutch and set up a meeting. He was on his way to Paris, after a short stay in Switzerland, then back to Nigeria. His power was growing, and he was selling more diamonds around the world than DeBeers, all from his own mines. And now with his uncle in place he could have what he wanted—oil. The permits to drill and the licenses to sell and export oil had been restricted and inaccessible until now. With the diamonds and now the possibility of drilling for oil, the Odouwo wealth and riches were endless.

  Mr. Odouwo called Dutch to let him know he was downstairs and on his way up to the penthouse suite. Odouwo rolled his large Louis Vuitton suitcase across the expansive lobby floor and took the elevators up. The elevator door opened and Odouwo entered.

  “Craze. How are you doing, my friend?”

  “I’m well. And you?”

  “I’m very good. Today is a very, very good day. It is so wonderful to see you again,” Odouwo said, greeting everyone. “Mr. James, may I speak with you in private?”

  Dutch gave the signal and Craze waited for the Charlies before closing the door behind him. Mr. Odouwo waited for the door to close before he took a seat at the table.

  “So what brings on this sudden visit?” Dutch asked, trying to figure out what he was up to.

  “Well, I have great news, great news indeed. A deal is on the table for our Sierra Leone mine. A company called Lancaster, an Australian diamond mine, offered five hundred million dollars today.”

  “Five hundred million.” Dutch smiled as the word million rolled off his tongue.

  “I knew this news would please you. I wanted to deliver it to you myself. I figured a toast was appropriate.”

  Dutch had nothing but gratitude for the man who had helped save his life and had changed his destiny. Mr. Odouwo had brought Dutch to Paris and shown him an entire other world. Dutch had managed to save close to $60 million over the past three years. But now with the cash out of a half billion, Dutch’s take would be a cool quarter billion. Not bad for a brother from Newark, New Jersey.

  “I just need you to do one thing for me, Dutch.” He then reached inside his suit pocket and pulled out some paperwork. “I just need you to sign this agreement between us for the quarter billion dollars, and just for signing,” he said, rolling the Louis Vuitton suitcase over to where they sat, “here is an initial payment of twenty million until the deal is finalized.” Odouwo watched as Dutch opened the suitcase and looked at the stacked rows of money. Dutch took the Mont Blanc pen Odouwo had laid
next to the paperwork and signed his name.

  “You will hear from me in the next few days, as soon as everything is finalized,” said Odouwo, folding the paperwork back into an envelope.

  Dutch shook Mr. Odouwo’s hand and walked him to the door. Craze, Angel, and Roc were out in the hallway when Mr. Odouwo came out of the room.

  “You all have a good day,” Mr. Odouwo said, smiling, as he tipped his head and walked down the hall.

  “Everything good?” Craze asked once Mr. Odouwo was out of sight.

  “The best it could ever be.” Dutch smiled, not letting the cat out of the bag just yet. He wanted to make sure Odouwo came through with the money. And he would. Odouwo had every intention of getting Dutch out of the way, completely.

  While Angel was off with her cohorts, Goldilocks snuck out of the hotel and made contact with Director Burns.

  “Everything is fine, sir. Just one question. Why is Agent Shipp overseeing my operation, sir?” Kimberly snipped at the director. She had waited for the perfect opportunity to phone in just to ask that question.

  “Look, Reese, everyone needs backup in the field. He’s there to assist you, not take your case. I know who infiltrated Dutch’s organization. You just do your job and let Agent Shipp do his, you got that?” asked the director, not wanting to hear about anyone’s personal feelings until Bernard James had been brought to justice.

  “Yes, I understand, sir,” she said.

  “You just do your job and bring down James.”

  Agent Reese hung up the phone and continued jogging as if nothing had happened. She ran back to the hotel where Angel was waiting for her.

  “Where you been?”

  “Nowhere, baby, just went for a little exercise,” said Kimberly, lying as usual.

  “Well, come on, get dressed. We’re going out,” said Angel, already undressing.

  “Okay, where we going?”

  “With Dutch, out to dinner,” said Angel, unexpectedly.

  “Okay, let me hop in the shower.” Reese closed the door behind her. This is it, tonight’s the night. I just need to see your face. Please let me see him, please let me see him.