by Kiki Swinson
“His luck just ran out, because I’m getting ready to serve his ass to you on a silver platter.”
Before Walt could respond to my comment, his cell phone rang. He looked at the caller ID screen then answered, “What’s up, Griff ?”
I couldn’t hear what the caller was saying, but whatever it was, it was something Walt wanted to hear.
“OK, that’s what I’m talking about, brother.” Walt smiled. “Come on through. I’ll be waiting for you.” He then disconnected the call.
“You ready to take a ride?” he asked me.
“I guess so,” I responded, not knowing what was about to transpire. I did know that Walt was about to create a lot of bloodshed, and this time it wasn’t going to be my blood.
While we waited for Griff to arrive, Walt went into the kitchen and grabbed a beer from the refrigerator. “Want something to drink?”
“You got bottled water?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll take one of those then.”
Five seconds later Walt walked back into the living room with his beer in one hand and my bottled water in the other. He handed me the water and sat back down on the sofa next to me.
After he sipped and swallowed some of his beer, he looked at me and asked, “How long has it been?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Since I seen you.”
I thought for a second. “It’s been a few years now.”
Walt fell silent and thought for a second.
“Yeah, you’re right, because the last time we talked was when I gave you and Ricky those tickets to the Redskins game.”
I nodded. “Yeah, you’re right. Wow! That was at least two years ago.” He nodded too. “Yep.” He took another sip of his beer.
After he swallowed the beer, he switched the subject on me. I knew it was coming. I just didn’t know when. And what was even crazier about it was, I wasn’t prepared for it. Walt was a very straightforward guy and held back no punches, which was why he would forever be respected.
“Tell me what went down with that federal case you and Ricky was involved in.”
“What do you want to know?” I asked, trying to buy some time. I figured he’d heard a lot of different stories on the streets, a lot of which, I was sure, were blown out of proportion.
“Just tell me everything.”
Knowing that he wanted me to tell him everything almost drove me to throw up all over his carpet. I didn’t want him to label me a snitch. And I definitely didn’t want him to throw me out of his house and renege on helping me with my problem. I needed him. He was the only person left in my life that I could trust. Too bad I hadn’t thought about him before now. I guess when you stay out of touch with people for long periods of time, you tend to forget about them.
I had to give God the credit for this one. He knew I needed help, so He used a total stranger like Fro to bring me to Walt. Funny how life worked.
I took a deep breath and exhaled. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. Walt gave me his full, undivided attention, and there was no other way around it. I had to come clean with him, so I did. Well, I almost did.
He blurted out, “Just tell me what they said about you on the streets wasn’t true.”
“What did you hear?” I thought turning the question back on him would take me off the hot seat and relieve some of the pressure for a moment.
But Walt didn’t fall for my tactics. “You know I don’t get into all of that,” he said. “I never repeat shit I hear. That’s why I go to the source. Now tell me what happened,” he said, looking me straight in the eyes.
I instantly felt a lump form in my throat, and I felt sweat seeping through my pores from my armpits. I did my best to remain calm, because Walt was a pro when it came to sniffing out a liar. I didn’t want that to happen with me, so I held my composure and pulled myself together.
“Well, what happened was, my cousin Nikki got caught transporting some product for Ricky, so when the narc busted her, they locked her up, refusing to give her bail because they knew the feds would pick up her case. So when the feds picked up the case, Nikki got scared. She freaked out and started telling everything she knew about Ricky’s drug dealings, so she wouldn’t have to do time. And when the indictments came through, everybody but me got arrested.”
“Why is that?”
“Why is what?” I asked, knowing damn well what he meant. I tried to throw a stupid card out there to see if he’d bite.
“Why didn’t you get arrested?”
“Because she told them I had nothing to do with his organization. She told them I didn’t even know that she was transporting drugs for him. She said she went behind my back and did it.”
“And the feds bought that story?”
“Evidently they did, because they didn’t touch me. Now, they came by my shop and harassed me a few times to see if what Nikki was telling them was a lie, but other than that, they didn’t fuck with me.”
Walt stared deep into my eyes. I’d heard people say that you could tell when a person was lying by looking into their eyes, so I guessed that was what he was trying to do. I just acted normal and rode with it.
“When did you get out of the Witness Protection Program?”
Oh my God! Now where in the hell did that question come from? I’d never mentioned to anyone that I was in that program but my immediate family. But apparently word got into the streets. I hadn’t spoken to Walt or seen him for two years, so I knew this was a trick question. It was a test to see if I snitched, even though I claimed that I hadn’t. No one went into the Federal Witness Protection Program unless she was an informant who needed to be protected from the niggas she testified against. Or if she was an innocent bystander who witnessed something that could cost her her life, which wasn’t my case. Those are the two options. That was it, cut and dry.
I looked at Walt like he was out of his damn mind. “I was never in the Witness Protection Program. I mean, don’tcha have to testify against someone and be afraid for your life to go into something like that?”
Walt looked deeper into my eyes. “That’s what they say.” He took another sip of his beer. “Then where did you disappear to?”
“What do you mean? I was home,” I lied.
“You sure? I mean, you know you can tell me anything. I used to take care of your butt just like you were mine, so you know your secret is safe with me.”
“So did my uncle, and look what he did to me,” I said underneath my breath.
“You say something?”
“I just said I know I can trust you.”
Walt poured the last of his beer into his mouth and set the bottle on the coffee table. He looked back at me without blinking. I was extremely uncomfortable, but I didn’t let him know it.
“I read in the newspaper that Ricky got murdered by a couple dudes from a Spanish mob,” Walt said. “Was that true?”
I sighed heavily. “That’s what I was told.”
“Why you think they did it? Did he owe them money?”
“Not to my knowledge. I don’t think he owed anybody.”
“Think he turned snitch?”
“Walt, I can’t tell you what Ricky had going on. He pretty much kept me out of the loop with everything dealing with the streets. The only thing he couldn’t keep from me was all those bitches he fucked around with.”
Walt was about to comment, but a knock on the back door prevented him from doing so. “I’ll be right back,” he told me and stood. He headed toward the back door.
While he went to see who it was at the door, I let out a loud sigh. I felt like he’d had me in a fucking chokehold while questioning me, and that wasn’t a good feeling.
Walt returned to the living room, accompanied by a young guy, who looked to be around twenty-five or twenty-six. Average height and clean-cut, he reminded me of the comedian Mike Epps. He looked at me with a serious expression. He was definitely here on business.
“Griff, this is my stepdaughter, Kira. She’s th
e one I was telling you about.”
Griff nodded. “What’s up?”
“Hey.”
Walt asked me, “You ready?”
“Yes.” I didn’t know why, but my heart started beating like crazy.
“Go ahead and follow Griff outside. I’ll come out in just a minute.”
Walt headed down the hallway that led to his bedroom. He didn’t have to tell me he was going in the back to retrieve his pistol, or whatever type of machinery he had stashed away. I knew him well enough to know that he wasn’t going to leave his house without carrying something heavy-duty.
I was hesitant to follow Griff outside. Shit, I didn’t know him from a can of paint. For all I know, he could’ve been there to kill me like my uncle and everyone else who had it in for me. But I took a chance. I figured if he got me after everything I’d been able to escape that night, then it really was my time to go.
There was a dark blue Caravan with tinted windows sitting outside. I saw a guy in the driver’s seat waiting patiently. By the time we reached the van, Walt had come outside.
“When you get in, sit in the last row,” Griff told me as he rolled back the door.
As I climbed into the back, I noticed that there were large sheets of heavy-duty plastic spread across the floor of the van and draped across the middle seat. Seeing this type of shit gave me the chills and made me want to step back out of the van and run as fast and as far as I could. I’d known cats who laid down large amounts of plastic in their vehicles because they didn’t want blood to splatter all over the place after they’d butchered somebody. I was just hoping that it wasn’t my blood they were after.
Walking across the plastic covering was pretty noisy, but I made the best of it.
Griff turned around in his seat to make sure I hadn’t damaged the plastic in any way. The driver didn’t look my way at all. He didn’t turn around one time to see who I was or how I looked. That shit gave me the creeps, but, hey, what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t get back out of the van and tell them I didn’t need their help. They would’ve looked at me like I was fucking crazy, so I took a seat and said a quick prayer before we pulled off.
“Let’s get the show on the road!” Walt said as he slid the van door closed and sat down in the row ahead of me.
Doing a Drive-By
“Where we going first?” Griff asked from the front passenger seat.
“Let’s ride out to Huntersville first,” Walt said. “I want to see if these niggas are still at the spot where they had her.”
Knowing we were on our way to the house where I had been held and tortured made me nervous. I thought about the possibility of falling back into the hands of my uncle or one of those retarded-ass niggas if Walt’s plan went sour. I didn’t like the thought at all, so I tried to block it out of my mind.
There I was in the back of a van about to witness a fucking bloodbath. If I wasn’t angry and bitter, I would not have been able to take that ride with them. I was the type of chick that didn’t like controversy. That was why so many niggas used to get over on me. I was used to sweeping shit under the rug, so I wouldn’t have to deal with it.
But tonight I felt different. I was tired of being walked on. I needed to show motherfuckers I wasn’t a woman that could be pushed down and abused. And I meant that from the bottom of my heart.
Walt didn’t live that far from Huntersville. The drive from his house to the spot where I was couldn’t be more than two miles, if that. During the course of the drive, while Walt made comments about their plan, I kept looking out the window, pretending I was uninterested.
“You got all the tools we gon’ need?” Walt asked.
Without turning around, Griff said, “Yes.”
I wanted to know what kind of tools they were talking about. Since Walt was the go-to man when it came to getting burners, they had to be talking about something other than guns.
While I racked my brain trying to figure out what they were talking about, Griff pulled out two loaded pistols, laid them across his lap, and began to do an overall inspection of them. I heard him eject the magazine, and then I heard him push it right back into the handle. Then he performed the same routine with the other pistol. I couldn’t see what kind of semi-automatic weapons they were, but from the sound of them, I assumed they would do the job.
“Which street do we turn on?” the driver asked.
Walt turned around and looked at me. “Which street did you say it was?”
“The house is on B Avenue.”
“Which side?” the driver asked.
Walt turned around and looked at me again. Before he could repeat the driver’s question, I blurted out, “It’s the third house on the left.”
The driver slowed down at the corner of Church Street and B Avenue and then made a right turn. My heart started beating uncontrollably as soon as we approached the house. To my surprise all the lights were out, and it looked deserted. My chances of seeing those animals getting paid back for all the shit they’d put me through began to look slimmer and slimmer by the minute.
“It doesn’t look like anybody is there,” I said.
The driver slowed down a little bit more.
“She’s right,” Griff said.
“What y’all want me to do?” the driver asked.
Walt told him, “Circle around the block one time.”
“Whatcha wanna do that for?” Griff asked.
“I wanna see if any one of those niggas is walking around in the streets.”
“Well, we might as well drive down every block, if you wanna see that.”
“A’ight. Well, let’s do that then,” Walt said.
After getting the OK from Walt, the driver pressed down on the accelerator. He drove down every street in Huntersville. Every block and side street this place had, we were on it, but we had no luck finding the motherfuckers who’d assaulted me.
At the end of every street we drove through, Walt shook his head. After the driver had driven down every street in Huntersville, he pulled over on the side of Goff Street and asked Walt where he wanted to go next.
Walt looked back at me. “You ready to pay that Tony guy a visit?”
I tried to reply, but I got a lump in my throat, so I had to give him a nod instead. But then I thought about it. I wanted to know if he planned to have me somewhere around so I could see the nigga’s face when he was down on his knees, crying and begging for his life.
“I know we hadn’t discussed it,” I said, “but I was wondering how you planned to get Tony and my uncle. I mean, Tony may be easier than my uncle because he ain’t gonna have his kids with him. I was with him when he dropped them off, so there’s a good chance that he could be home alone, unless he got word that I escaped. And as far as my uncle is concerned, it would be crazy to go in his house when his wife is there, because if she saw one of y’all trying to take out her husband, she’s going to scream or call the police. She’s one crazy bitch! And I hate her fucking guts.”
“Don’t worry! We got all of that under control. Just sit back and relax, because all we’re gonna do is ride by your uncle’s house to see if he’s there,” Walt told me. “And if he is, we gon’ go to Tony’s place to snatch him up and use him to get your uncle to come out of his house.”
“Oh, OK.”
I sat back in the seat and watched as the driver took directions from Walt. My uncle lived in the plush part of Virginia Beach. His neighborhood was seventy-five percent Caucasian, ten percent black, and the other fifteen percent was a mixture of Hispanic and Asian. The houses in this community were priced at a half million dollars or more. For years, I wondered how he was able to afford his home on his salary as the general manager at Wal-Mart. When I finally found out that he stole a lot of high-end electronics from the warehouse and sold them on the streets, I almost fell out. I knew his self-righteous ass was into some type of illegal doings, and I didn’t buy that bullshit act when he and his wife used to talk trash about Ricky. In my opinion, he acte
d like he was a bit jealous, because Ricky and I lived in a neighborhood similar to his, but we were so much younger than him.
The ride to my uncle’s house took the driver approximately twenty minutes, but to me it seemed like forever.
“Make a left turn on the next street,” I instructed the driver. I had a funny feeling that my uncle was two steps ahead of us, and was squatting somewhere in the bushes alongside his house, waiting patiently for us to drive by so he could do some damage.
“After you make the left, keep straight, and make another left at
Evergreen Place,” I said.
It seemed like the closer we came to Lanier’s house, the more nervous and jittery I became. I was a fucking nervous wreck. I had never before ridden around in a van and pointed out niggas for another nigga to kill ’em. Hell, I was married to a fucking notorious gangster, and he didn’t get involved with shit like this, so this was something new to me.
I pointed. “It’s the fifth brick house on the right side.”
“I don’t see any cars in the driveway,” Griff said.
“They probably got them inside the garage.” Walt turned around to face me. “Do they normally park their cars inside the garage?”
“Yeah, sometimes they do.”
As we rode by, everyone in the van noticed that all the lights in the house were shut off, except for a light coming from a room on one side of the house.
Walt asked me, “Do you know what room that is?”
“Yeah, that’s my uncle’s study. That’s where he keeps his computer, fax machine, and all the freaking books he collects.”
“Well, it looks like he may be in the house after all,” Walt said.
“You might be right,” I said.
“All right, Jeff, let’s get out of here,” Walt said.
Jeff, the driver, very quickly jumped back on Highway 264 and headed toward Chesapeake. Walt asked me to give Jeff directions to Tony’s house, so that was what I did.
Going back to Tony’s apartment felt different this time around. I knew I wasn’t going there for a friendly visit. All of the brotherly love I’d felt for him was gone. I couldn’t care less about him anymore. It didn’t matter to me that his kids were gonna be without a father. He had crossed the line, and I wanted to make sure he paid the consequences.
