The darker-skinned, muscular guy stood up from sitting at his couch. He walked over to his stainless steel kitchen and picked up his phone. Dressed in a white tank top and red sweatpants, he stood at the counter. After calling Byron again, he decided to leave a message: “Nigga, what the fuck is up with you? I been callin’ you for like two days now, and you ain’t hit me back. Damn, nigga, is the pussy that good?”
Ryan hung up snickering, knowing that his brother would laugh upon hearing his message. His laughter did not last long, however, as his gut continued to tell him that something was going on. He shook his head, looking at his car keys on the other side of the counter. Something was telling him to ride over to Byron's house to see if maybe something had happened.
Ryan walked into the master bedroom of his two-bedroom apartment to change his clothes. After putting on some black jeans and a Polo shirt, he slid into some boat shoes, grabbed his jacket and keys, and was headed out the door. On the way up toward Byron’s subdivision, which was twenty minutes or so from Ryan’s north side neighborhood, Ryan found himself having to consciously slow down. It was so easy for him to push the accelerator, especially when he would check his phone and find that there still was no call from Byron.
When Ryan got off of the interstate and rolled up the wooded road that led to Byron’s area, the strange feeling he’d had at his apartment intensified. He just couldn’t pinpoint the reason why he felt this way. As Ryan turned into Byron’s subdivision and took the windy lane back toward the house, his eyes were glued to Byron’s house once it was in sight. The very first thing he noticed was that Byron’s Bugatti was not parked out front.
Ryan pulled into Byron’s driveway. As he climbed out of his car and looked up at his brother’s big house, something about it seemed very empty.
“Fuck,” Ryan said, looking at his keys. “Let me make sure I still got the key to the house on here, or else I’mma have to run back home or something.”
As Ryan scanned his keys, he paced over toward the garage. His original thought had been that maybe Byron had parked his Bugatti inside of the garage rather than outside. He looked into the garage windows and saw a couple of cars, but not the Bugatti. Ryan shook his head, now concerned as he checked his phone for the umpteenth time. He took a few moments to decide if he was going to go around the back and get in through the French doors in the basement, or if he would try the front door. Just to be safe, and to avoid the police being called on him because a black man was walking around to the back of the house, Ryan went up to the front door.
At first Ryan knocked then rang the doorbell. After standing there for a few minutes and not getting any response, he decided that he’d let himself in. However, when he went to unlock the door, he found that it was already open.
“What the fuck?” Ryan said to himself as the door swung open and hit the wall behind it. “How the fuck the door open?”
Ryan entered the house in a very nervous state, and it didn't help any that his brother's house was so large. Normally, he would never do anything like this without at least carrying some heat with him. Anything could have happened, and the reason could very well still been in the house. Still, he was not going to drive all the way back home to get his gun, and he certainly wasn’t going to get the police involved. He cautiously pushed forward, saying Byron’s name loudly. It echoed around the big house.
“Where the fuck is this nigga?” Ryan asked himself once he’d finished looking around the first floor of the house. He then made his way up to the second level, checking all the bedrooms. After finding nothing out of the ordinary in the bedroom, except for a messed up bed, Ryan checked the attic. Once again, it looked as if nothing had been touched in a couple of days at least. Byron’s toothbrush was as dry as a bone. His clothes were not out of place. The television was not even on. There were absolutely no signs of Byron having been in his own house within the last couple of days.
“I know this nigga wouldn’t have just gotten up and went outta town without tellin’ me,” Ryan said, to himself.
With that thought in mind, Ryan headed back downstairs. As he was walking back into the kitchen, he noticed that the door to the basement staircase was slightly opened. Immediately, he found this strange because Byron always had a way of being a little bitch when people came over and left the basement door open when they came up from downstairs.
Ryan quickly pulled the door open and headed down the steps. Within seconds, a smell hit him in the face. It wasn’t very strong, but it reminded him of spoiled meat, even while being faint. His heartbeat sped up as he feared the worst. He practically jumped down the rest of the steps. At the bottom, he looked around, still seeing nothing. However, a few steps forward, he saw the most alarming thing in the world. Byron’s French doors had been burst through. A cool, September breeze was whipping into the house and slamming into Ryan’s body.
Ryan walked forward, toward the French doors. “What the fuck happened here?” he asked himself out loud. No sooner than he could get a good look at the French doors, he caught a glimpse of legs spread out behind him and to the right. Quickly, Ryan turned around and found his brother on the floor. It was too much for the man to see him with a bullet in his head. Ryan rushed over to him, tears building in his eyes.
“Byron? Byron?” he said, not realizing that Byron was long gone. “What the fuck happened to you, nigga? What the fuck happened?”
Ryan wept as he looked at the blood spatters on the wall and made sense out of everything that he was seeing. He glanced back at the French doors and realized that whoever had busted in here must have done so to kill Byron. That was really the only plausible excuse based on what he saw. Ryan could feel the rage building in his veins. Byron was his only brother, and they were like the best of friends. Not only did they grow up together, but they also shared women together and did business together.
Reaching down and hugging his brother, Ryan mourned the loss of his life. Once he’d gotten the strength together to stand up and walk away so that he could think, he began to have thoughts about finding the person who did this. “You come for mine,” he said, shaking his head, “then I’mma have to come for you. I’mma kill whatever nigga did this shit to my brother. I’mma kill’em, swear to God.”
After looking back at Byron, Ryan realized that he needed to get out of the basement so that he could think clearly. Pulling himself away, he made his way toward the staircase. He then noticed Byron’s phone on the floor next to the couch. He quickly rushed over and swooped the phone up before heading upstairs.
Up in the living room, Ryan sat on the couch and cried a way that only a grown man can cry. “Fuck, this is some fucked up shit,” he said. Ryan then pulled Byron’s phone up with the idea of looking through it to see who the last people were that Byron had interacted with before all of this could have happened. Wiping his streaming tears away from his face, Ryan could not remember the pass code to get into Byron’s phone. After trying several possible numbers that came to mind, the phone locked up. He tossed the phone onto the couch and planted his hands into his face. “Fuckkkkkkkkkkk,” he cried.
Ryan then remembered that he had the numbers to Juan and Knight, the two guys who were basically his brother’s handymen. As much as he didn’t care for either one of them, because they weren’t the sharpest nails in the toolbox, he’d had them do some work for him a couple of times. For whatever reason, Byron liked dealing with them and kept them around. Ryan had always thought that it was probably because they were easy to control if nothing else.
Ryan called Juan. No answer. He then called Knight. No answer. His deceased grandmother’s house then popped into his mind. Ryan remembered talking to Byron and him saying that he’d had some things going on at their grandmother’s house down on the southwest side of the city. What Ryan had found strange was that Byron didn’t go into many details about what exactly he had going on over at that house. Since their grandmother died, only a few people had been over to that house before Byron bought
it. Byron was not and had never been a family person.
Ryan looked back at the basement door, knowing that he couldn’t leave his brother down there forever. Byron was a good man and a good brother. He deserved the biggest and best funeral in the world. Ryan, deciding that he was going to do the right thing and get his brother’s body taken care of, called the police. As he waited for the police to show up so the coroner could get Byron’s body, Ryan knew that he was going to go down to his grandmother’s house and see what was going on down there. Something was telling him that his grandmother’s house had something to do with this story, especially since it was one of the main things that Byron had mentioned the last time they spoke with one another.
***
When the police left Byron’s property with his body, Ryan couldn’t help but feel a little salty toward them. He already didn’t trust the police, like most other black men. However, what really pissed him off was the fact that he was grieving, and the police insisted on treating him like a suspect. In the living room, Ryan felt as if he were almost being interrogated with the line of officers’ questions. At first, they asked what Ryan did for a living, as if that made any difference to his brother being dead in the basement. They then asked what Byron did for a living and if he’d do anything that would cause him to have any enemies. Rather than go off, like he wanted to, Ryan kept up the story that Byron had built so well: he owned real estate around Chicago and had gotten an inheritance from his aunt and grandmother passing. And Ryan did not care about the suspicion in the officers’ voices. He was now on a mission, just like the detectives, to find out who killed his brother. He had a bullet waiting for them.
Before the police showed up at Byron’s house, Ryan had grabbed his brother’s phone. The last thing he needed right now was for the police to use any little bit of information in Byron’s phone to make it look like he wasn’t worth investigating. This was especially so since the cops were known for neglecting the deaths of young black dudes with money. In their eyes, it was just another “thug” off the streets.
Ryan headed back to the interstate then back toward downtown Chicago. With the cluster of skyscrapers in the distance, he pulled out his phone and called his buddy Rocko. Rocko was this guy who had spent several years at the University of Chicago studying computers and things of that nature. However, after being falsely accused of rape and having to fight to get the case dismissed, he decided to take his life in a different direction. Now, he was the computer guy for many dudes in the hood. Essentially, if you had a problem with a computer or cell phone, he could fix it. And Ryan was determined to get into Byron’s cell phone.
“Hey, wassup nigga?” Ryan said, when Rocko answered the phone.
“Wassup, my nigga,” Rocko said, his voice a bit groggy and certainly deep. “Been a while since I seen you, nigga. What can I do for you?”
“Man, I need to know if you can get into this phone I got that is locked up, and I don’t know the password or whatever,” Ryan said, as he was switching lanes around the airport interstate exits. “You think you can do that shit for me or what, nigga?”
“Hell yeah,” Rocko said. “I get into phones all the time. Shit, a nigga can do that shit in his sleep. When you try’na have me do it?”
Ryan sniffed, thinking about his brother and the last hour or two he’d spent up at his house dealing with the Chicago Police Department and their finest. “Shit, today nigga, if you can,” Ryan responded. “I’m headed over to a family member’s house real quick. When I get done over there, I can hit you up and come over if that’s cool. You still’ stayin’ with your baby mama or what?”
“Yup!” Rocko said. “Just hit me up when you on the way, and I can be ready for you, nigga.”
Ryan agreed and hung up the phone. Once he’d gotten off of the interstate just south of downtown, he made his way over to his grandmother’s house. No sooner than Ryan turned down Holston, he could see what looked like a naked, darker-skinned dude sitting on the front porch. Like any normal person, he was alarmed by what he was seeing. He quickly pulled into a spot out front, dashed across the street and up onto the front porch.
Knight, who was hungry and practically dehydrated, turned his neck to look at who had come up onto the porch behind him. He smiled faintly and said, “Shit, man, thank God. I been out here for like two days and some shit.”
Ryan quickly untied Knight and helped the naked dude to stand up. Once Knight turned around, exposing himself to Ryan, Ryan couldn’t help but turn away. “Fuck, nigga,” he said. “What the fuck happened?”
“Man, can we just get inside?” Knight asked, putting a hand over his manhood. “Can you please just take me inside, and I can tell you what shit happened? They in there tied up too.”
Ryan looked at the front door, realizing that there was definitely more to this story than he realized. The last thing he’d ever thought he’d see when pulling up at his deceased grandmother’s house was a naked dude tied to a chair on the front porch. Quickly, Ryan pushed the front door open and let Knight inside. Inside, Ryan then saw how Juan was tied to a dining room chair. Each looked to be nearly lifeless, as if they’d been in the house for a couple of days, without food and or water like Knight had said.
“What the fuck happened to y’all two niggas?” Ryan asked. He hurried to untie Juan, looking at the entire situation with confusion.
Juan stood up from the dining room chair, stretching and rubbing his stomach. Knight, feeling the most humiliated and ashamed out of anybody, slipped into his underwear as quickly as he could.
“Come on niggas,” Ryan said, sounding a little more forceful. “Tell a nigga what the fuck happened?”
“Man, them niggas Tramar and Jackson,” Juan explained. “They ran up in here and did this shit. Fuck them niggas. Wait till I see them niggas again. I’mma kill them.”
“Who the fuck is Tramar and Jackson?” Ryan asked, trying to make some sense out of all this.
“They the niggas that Byron was lookin’ for and shit,” Knight chimed in and said. “Them niggas ran up in here while we was fuckin’ them bitches you just saw run out the door. They tied us up and shit while holdin’ us at gunpoint and shit. Byron came and put me on the front porch, facing the street. Man, once daylight came, I had to scoot my ass over to the side so people wouldn’t keep walkin’ by. Wouldn’t nobody come up onto the porch and help a nigga. All they did was snap a picture and keep goin.”
“Nigga, shut up with that little dick whining you do,” Juan snapped. He looked back at Ryan. “See what had happened was Jackson and his boy Tramar ran up in Byron’s house last week and stole some money and shit.”
“From the safe upstairs?” Ryan asked, wondering why his brother hadn’t told him anything about this.
“Yup,” Juan said. “And that’s when Byron had us go get the other nigga, Tramar’s, family. His father and stepmother. We was keepin’ them here in the bedroom.” He pointed toward the bedroom hallway on the other side of the dining room. “Look, man, I’m so sorry. We was fuckin’ with them chicks, and Tramar and Jackson came to the door and said that they was the neighbors over here. They even said Byron’s name and everything. When we opened the door, they had the heat and did this shit to us. Byron came over on Saturday night and saw us and ain’t even do nothin’ about it. Instead, he just walked out the door and left us here.”
“Yeah, and put me out on the porch and shit for the world to see,” Knight said.
“Nigga, what the fuck I say?” Juan snapped. “Don’t nobody wanna hear about your little dick struggle, nigga. Grown men over here talkin’ bout somethin’ serious.”
Juan looked back into Ryan’s eyes. Ryan shook his head, feeling like this was something out of a movie. “So, them niggas got away with the daddy and step mama?” he asked. “Why was Byron holdin’ them here to begin with?”
“‘Cause he wanted them niggas to come up with his money, or they was never gon’ see they family again,” Juan explained. “That’s why they went
robbin’ them banks and shit.”
“Robbin’ banks?” Ryan asked, surprised. “Wait a second, nigga. You talkin ‘bout them niggas they been showin’ all over the news? Them niggas that robbed the bank downtown and shit one day then two banks over in Indiana the next day?”
Juan nodded. “Exactly,” he said. “Look man, I wanna tell you everything that been goin’ on and shit, but a nigga is starvin’. We ain’t had nothin’ to eat or drink since Saturday and shit, nigga. Have you heard from Byron? He supposed to be payin’ us and shit, and I need the fuckin’ money.”
Ryan looked away. The cold, dead body of his brother slouched down on the floor in the basement was still at the front of his mind. He took a deep breath. “Actually,” he said, his voice trembling, “that’s where I’m comin’ from right now. That’s why I came over here because I hadn’t heard from Byron in a couple days.”
“He probably went lookin’ for them niggas, Tramar and Jackson,” Juan said. “That’s prolly what he doin’. He was furious with them niggas for gettin’ away with that shit, and he still ain’t have his money.”
“Well,” Ryan said, “he dead now.”
Both Juan and Knight were shocked. “What you mean he dead now?” Juan asked.
“Nigga, what the fuck you think I mean?” Ryan snapped back to such a stupid question. “You either alive or you fuckin’ dead. I just came from his house. I found him in the basement on the floor. He was dead, with….with…a bullet in his head.”
“Fuck,” Juan said, looking away. He shook his head. “Man, I’m so sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah,” Ryan said, his nostrils flared. “Y’all niggas still try’na do what y’all do or is you out of the business now or what?”
Juan and Knight shrugged. Neither of them had any plausible employment prospects they could really take advantage of. In fact, this was the only life they knew at this point, and they’d made good money thus far because of it.
When It All Falls Down 4 - It Just Ain't Over Yet: A Chicago Hood Drama (A Hustler's Lady) Page 4
