by Kiki Swinson
I sat back in the van and plotted a getaway just in case the police ran up on us. When Jeff stopped the van at the lake on Third Bay Street, I climbed into the seat beside Walt so I could make my escape if their plans were derailed.
Jeff got out of the van first, and Griff and Walt followed. Each of them checked their gloves to see if they were intact before they moved Tony’s body out of the van.
Walt instructed me to keep an eye on Lanier. “If he moves one inch, don’t hesitate to shoot his ass!” he told me.
“I won’t.” I still had the gun Walt had given me earlier, so I was ready for whatever. My uncle looked at me like he was surprised, but he wasn’t in a position to say one word.
Between watching Walt and the guys remove Tony’s body from the van, and trying to keep an eye on my uncle, my mind was running in circles. I also made it my business to watch my back. I refused to let a police officer run up on this van while I was holding my uncle at gunpoint. We would have a fucking shootout right here in Ocean View, if they thought I was gonna let them take me downtown in handcuffs. No way!
“Damn, nigga!” Jeff said to Griff. “Can you hold his legs better than that?”
“What the fuck you think I’m doing?”
“It feels like I’m carrying him by myself.”
Griff snapped. “Man, shut the fuck up complaining! You act like you’re putting in more work than me and Walt.”
“Nigga, you the one that needs to shut the fuck up! You been complaining since we picked up Walt and homegirl.”
“Look, both of y’all need to cut that shit out! Let’s take care of our business and get the fuck out of here before somebody sees us and calls the police.”
“He’s right, y’all.” I peered out of the van at the apartment buildings in the area. “Because as soon as someone hears y’all voices, they’re going to look out their windows. And y’all don’t want the heat that comes from that.”
Jeff chimed back in. “Tell this nigga to handle his part and I won’t complain no more.”
Walt looked at them both as they all scrambled to carry Tony’s body toward the lake behind the apartment buildings. “Can we just finish what we started without y’all saying another word to each other?”
“Just tell this nigga to do his part, Walt, and I won’t have no beef,” Jeff said.
Walt refused to jump on anyone’s side. He wasn’t that type of guy. He just wanted shit to run smooth, no matter what it was. So when I saw him switch places with Jeff to relieve him of some of the burden, I knew he was tired of hearing their mouths.
As I watched my uncle, and occasionally looked outside the van to see if anyone was watching us, I thought about how badly I wanted to get Kasey. Her body should be thrown in this lake along with Tony’s. I just couldn’t believe how she’d gotten away from us just like that. God must’ve been on her side and had a plan for her, because if it was up to me, that bitch would be expired by now.
While I was deep in thought I heard a soft whisper calling my name. It kind of scared me a bit because my mind was somewhere else. When I tuned into the voice and realized it was my uncle calling me, I gave him the nastiest expression I could muster, and then I asked him what the hell he wanted.
“Please can you find it in your heart to forgive?” He kept the volume of his voice down, because he refused to let Walt hear him talk to me. He knew it would be hell to pay if he did.
“Forgive you, and you almost killed me? Are you fucking crazy?” I lashed out, not even realizing how loud I’d gotten.
Walt yelled at me from the lake to be quiet, and he was about two hundred feet away from me.
“Kira, I know you must think I’m crazy, but I turned into a madman after I lost Nikki. I had just lost my mother to that Hispanic guy from D.C. who was after Nikki. So can’t you feel my pain?”
If I was a dragon, fire would have spewed out of my mouth every time I opened it. “You act like you’re the only one who lost someone. Grandma meant more to me than you would ever know. She was like my mother, so when I found out she had been murdered, a huge part of my heart felt like it was yanked out of my body. And as far as Nikki is concerned, it hurts me to know that she’s gone too, but I’ve got to tell you that she wasn’t the angel y’all made her out to be at her funeral.”
I waved the pistol Walt gave me back and forth in his face.
“Right before we went to Texas I noticed that something about Nikki had changed. But I figured she was just going through a rough time because we had just lost our grandmother. So when we got to Texas, everything about her did a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. She started competing against me when it came to certain things, she talked about me to other stylists behind my back, and she fucked my fiancé without me knowing.”
“No, not Nikki. She wouldn’t do that to you. She loved you like a sister. She used to tell me how she looked up to you.”
“Shut the fuck up, Uncle Lanier. You don’t know what the fuck you are talking about. That precious little daughter of yours took me through more shit than any of my enemies. She tried to sabotage everything I put my hands on. And you want to know something else? Your little angel helped set up a few women to get killed back in Texas.”
“That can’t be. Nikki wasn’t like that. She wouldn’t hurt a soul.”
“That’s a motherfucking lie. Nikki helped my fiancé rape and kill innocent women for his own sick gratification. She went to nightclubs and lured these women to him so they could all get in a threesome, and then those poor women’s lives would end soon thereafter. And you want to know something else?”
He just continued to look at me dumbfounded.
“Nikki was killed because she was involved in some scandalous shit. I was there when the guy shot and killed her and my ex-fiancé, and I couldn’t do anything to help her.”
My uncle lay there on the floor and shook his head in disbelief.
I knew it was hard for him to swallow that pill, but it was the truth. His daughter had moved to Houston with me and lost her fucking mind. I didn’t know who the hell she was anymore when she flipped the script on me.
Thankfully, all that shit was behind me now, and when I took care of him and left this godforsaken place, this chapter in my life would finally be closed.
The conversation between my uncle and me didn’t stop after I blew his mind with the story about his little girl helping Fatu’ kill all those women in Houston. He tried to talk my head off about letting him go. He promised that, if I let him go, he wouldn’t go to the homicide detectives in Houston and tell them what I told him about Nikki’s murder. He also promised me that he would give me all the money he saved up for his retirement.
I looked at him and told him that I didn’t need his money. I honestly wanted to tell him that I had over two million dollars back in Anguilla, where I now lived, but I didn’t want to let on how well-off I was, or that the place I called home was out of the country. He was a fucking traitor to me, so I couldn’t trust him with that type of information. It was bad enough that I told him the truth about his daughter. But, hey, I figured since he was about to lose his life, it wouldn’t matter one way or another. I mean, it wasn’t like he could pick up the phone and call the cops on me. He had one foot in the grave, and the other was treading on thin ice, so I was all right anyway I looked at it.
I looked at the time on the dashboard of the van. It was eleven fifteen p.m. Time was flying by at the speed of a comet, and we still had one more job to do before we could call it quits. I looked over at the lake and saw the men struggling to dump Tony’s body in the water.
I heard Walt telling Griff and Jeff that they needed to tie something heavy to his legs so his body could sink to the bottom of the lake.
“We can’t have anyone finding him right after we dump him in this lake because his body resurfaced to the top of the water,” Walt said.
“What about this old car tire? You think this could work?” Griff asked.
Walt hesitated and then said, “I don’t know
. Bring it here and let me check it out.”
While Griff carried the tire to Walt, Jeff said, “Hey, I see a couple of sandbags over here.”
Walt turned in his direction. “Now that’ll work.” He instructed Jeff to bring the bags to him.
I watched Jeff carry both sandbags to Walt, and then he set them on the ground near Tony’s body.
Ten minutes later I wanted to ask them why the hell they hadn’t gotten rid of Tony’s body yet. I wanted to get the hell out of there.
“Kira, can you please find it in your heart to forgive me? I swear if you spare my life, I will forever be indebted to you,” my uncle said again, taking my focus off Walt and the other two guys.
“Why do you keep asking me the same fucking question? Do you know that I don’t even feel sorry for you? So stop wasting your breath, because ain’t nothing gonna change. You are going to get dealt with as soon as Walt takes care of Tony. That’s it, and that’s all.”
Tears started falling from my uncle’s eyes.
In all the days of my life, I had never seen this twenty-year army veteran who’d fought in Vietnam shed one tear. Growing up around him, he’d always had a hard exterior, so to see him about to have an emotional breakdown really got me to think about this situation from another perspective. Either he was really sorry for what he did to me, or he was afraid of dying.
“Remember when you were seven years old and you and your mother came to my house to celebrate Nikki’s third birthday?”
I sucked my teeth. “Yeah, so what?”
“Do you remember we were all in the house eating and you decided to go take a swim in the pool and almost drowned?”
Getting aggravated, I said, “What point are you trying to make?”
“Do you remember that day?” He pressed the issue.
“Yes, I remember.”
“Do you remember who saved your life and performed CPR on you after you were pulled from the pool unconscious?”
I sucked my teeth once again. “Where are you going with this?”
“All I’m trying to say is, there was no other adult in my house who knew how to perform CPR, so I immediately pulled you from the pool and saved your life. You were unconscious for three whole minutes. Everybody there, including your mother, thought we’d lost you, but I was determined to bring you back. You were like a daughter to me, and I wasn’t about to let your mother bury you at such a young age. You were her only child, and you were my only niece, so letting you leave us like that wasn’t an option. Your life was in my hands then, and now my life is in your hands. So I’m begging you to let me live.”
My uncle’s words started to sink in. He was right. My life was in his hands that day, and he did save me. What was bugging me out right now was that I held the cards to either end his or save it. And the more I thought about it, the more I started to understand his position.
“Kira, let’s end this deadly cycle right now. We already lost your mother, your grandmother, your husband, and Nikki. No one else needs to die. So please have a change of heart so we can walk away from this thing,” he said, and then he fell silent.
I looked him dead in his eyes and they were very glassy. Something on the inside of me wanted to reach out and hug him because of the hurt he was going through. But then the other part of me wanted to kick him like Walt had done earlier. I just couldn’t erase what he’d put me through. And every time I tried to put it out of my mind, it resurfaced.
Finally Walt, Jeff, and Griff tied both sandbags to Tony’s body and threw him into the lake. When his body hit the water, I heard a big splash. I couldn’t see where they threw his body, but I knew he was in there. I then saw them standing by the lake looking into the water. I assumed they were waiting until his body sunk to the bottom, because they didn’t make another move.
“Kira, please let me go. Don’t let Walt be the one to tear the rest of our family apart. You’ve got the control in this situation.”
“No, I don’t. It’s out of my hands now. After I escaped you, I went to Walt and he said that he was going to handle everything for me.” I turned my attention back to Walt, Jeff, and Griff.
“Did you ever find out the real reason your mother left Walt?”
Shocked by my uncle’s question, I turned my attention back to him. “What?”
“Did your mother ever tell you the real reason why she left Walt?”
“No.”
“Had you ever asked her about it?”
“Well, all I asked her was why we were moving back to Grandma’s house.”
“And what did she say?”
“She never really gave me a straight answer. All she said was that they were separating, so we had to move out. But Walt told me that it was you and grandma that broke them up.”
“I hate to break it to you, but that was a lie. When your mother started dating Walt, he was a pimp, and she didn’t know it until after y’all moved into his place. And before your mother knew it, he had her strung out on drugs and tricking on Church Street.”
“Nah, I don’t believe that. My mother would not have ever stood on the streets and sold her body. She was too high-class for that. She wore more designer name brands than most celebrities on TV.”
“That period in her life started after she left Walt and entered rehab.”
“Rehab? My mother never went to a rehab!” I roared, jumping to her defense.
I didn’t remember her ever going to a rehab center, and I sure as hell didn’t remember her tricking on Church Street. However, I did remember her coming late at night to Walt’s house, and Walt asking her where his money was. I always heard her tell him that it was in her purse, but I never thought anything of it. I chalked up those conversations to her either borrowing money from him, or her taking money out of his wallet without him knowing it.
“Kira, do you remember when she used to leave you at grandma’s house every other night and tell you she had to go to work?”
“Yeah.”
“Where do you think she was going? She wasn’t clocking in at the nightclub doing bartending work like she had you believing. She was out on the corner working for Walt.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “I’m sorry, but I don’t believe it.”
“Well, do you remember the morning your mother picked you up and you asked her why she had that black eye? And she told you she got into a fight with a guy who tried to mug her when he was leaving work.”
I sat back and thought back to that particular morning, and I did remember that. As a matter of fact, he and my grandmother were both there encouraging her to stay at the house with them. “Yeah, I do remember that,” I told him.
“Walt was the one who hit your mother, Kira. He was very abusive and controlling toward her. He was the guy who beat her up that night before she came to pick you up.”
“Why?”
“Because she told him she didn’t want to live her life like that anymore, and that she wanted to get off the streets. But he wasn’t trying to hear that. He wanted her to continue working for him. And when your mother stood up to him and told him that night was her last night selling her body, he punched her in her face and tried to hurt her pretty badly. As soon as I saw her face, I went to his house with my gun in my hand, pointed it directly at his head, and threatened to pull the motherfucking trigger if he ever put his hands on her again.”
“What did he do?”
“He couldn’t do shit. He was alone, and I didn’t give him a chance to get his gun from inside his house. So I pretty much had him on his knees. But now the tables have turned. He got me on my knees now. So I know he’s itching to get me back. I saw it in his face when the other guy brought me around the side of the van.”
“Maybe he is, but I don’t think no one wanted you more than me.”
“Nah, I don’t think so. When I pulled my gun out on him that
day, I tested his manhood, and he didn’t like that one bit. He has had a personal vendetta against me for many years, and he�
��s not going to be happy until he gets back at me.”
Hearing my uncle tell me what I had always wanted to know was disturbing. But what really messed up my head was how I’d confided in a man who had no respect for my mother and damn near took her life. He’d introduced her to drugs and forced her to be a fucking prostitute. I couldn’t believe how he had pulled the wool over my eyes all this damn time. How grimy could he be?
I wanted to confront him at that very moment with this shit, and put him on blast, but this wasn’t the right time. Plus, I didn’t know how he’d react. I had never seen Walt’s bad side until I saw him pistol-whip the hell out of Tony. He looked menacing, and if he unleashed that same demon on me, I wouldn’t know how to handle it.
I sat there for a moment and tried to figure out how I would play out this scene. I was still upset with my uncle and wanted his head on a chopping block, but at the same time, the thought of what Walt had done to my mother, and the fact that he had fooled me all this time sent my blood pressure through the roof. I wanted his head on the chopping block alongside my uncle’s. But I knew I couldn’t have it both ways, so I had to figure out which one deserved to be there more.
Tony’s body must have finally sunk to the bottom of the lake, because Walt, Griff, and Jeff began to walk back toward the van. From the moment they took their first step in my direction, my heart started beating out of control. My uncle couldn’t see them, but he heard their steps, so when he started talking to me again, there was some urgency in his voice.
“They coming for me, Kira. So what’s it going to be?”
I thought for a second about my uncle. It was already etched in stone that Walt would take his life, and I still didn’t have one ounce of sympathy for him. Everything he’d done to me warranted the plans Walt and I had for him. But by the same token, I wrestled with the thought of what Walt took my mother through back when we lived with him. I knew I couldn’t get both of them the way I wanted, so I had to make a choice, and I also knew that I needed to do it quickly.
I looked at my uncle and said, “If I help you get away, are we gonna end this on a good note and go our separate ways?”
