When It All Falls Down 4 - It Just Ain't Over Yet: A Chicago Hood Drama (A Hustler's Lady)

by Tamicka Higgins

  Durrell snickered before he spoke. “Whew, she be on one,” he said. “So, here’s the deal. She said she got this car that this nigga she used to fuck around with left over at her place. The dude got arrested and shit and got sent to this prison out in the country for like ten years or some shit. So, she said y’all can come use that shit if you want. You just can’t say where you got it from.”

  “Bet,” Jackson said. “Thanks, man. That shit will work.”

  “Yeah, thanks for lookin’ out for some niggas,” Tramar said. “But, man, I gotta ask. What is this chick like? Like she ain’t gon’ be pullin’ guns on us and shit when we come up to the door, is she?”

  Durrell shook his head. “Naw,” he said. “Well, she might have the gun out but she ain’t gon’ pull the trigger. I mean, she’s nice…when she wanna be.” His head shook again as he couldn’t help but smile. “She do be on one, though. Every time she break-up with some nigga, she be on my case and shit, try’na get me to come over and shit. Just like now. But, she coo. Her name is L’Akeeshi.”

  Immediately, all three of their faces squinted up in confusion.

  “What the fuck you say her name is?” Jackson asked. “Keesh what?”

  “L’Akeeshi,” Durrell said, this time pronouncing the syllables more slowly. “She real coo. It just take a little time to get used to her. Anyway, she said that if y’all wanna come over in a hour or two, she won’t be watchin’ her niece and nephew no more because they mama is about to pick them up in a little bit. She live over by one of the universities. I’ll give y’all the address and shit when you ready to go. I do gotta warn you, though.”

  “Warn us about what?” Tramar asked. The idea of going to see this L’Akeeshi chick was slowly not setting too well with him. “I mean, man you got a nigga over here a little worried.”

  “Man, I promise y’all niggas,” Durrell said. “She ain’t crazy or nothin’. She half Haitian and somethin’ else, but was raised here. She a interesting person. What I was gon’ warn y’all niggas about is this chick’s accent. Sometimes, it can be a little hard to understand what she sayin’. But she knows about that money, best believe that shit. Oh, and yeah, she said that the nigga’s car is a 2008 Mitsubishi or some shit like that. I forget what it was, but it sounded like some low-key shit to me. She said if you got five stacks, she’ll let you take it. She said the plates don’t expire for like another couple months or some shit, so y’all should be good.”

  “All right, then,” Jackson said. “That sounds coo then. We can come up off of five stacks for a car that will keep us off the radar.”

  “So,” Durrell said. “Y’all niggas said that y’all was gon’ get rid of that cold Bugatti you pulled up in. Why whoever gon’ be lookin’ for it?”

  Jackson looked at Tramar, not sure how deep into detail he’d want to go with the answer to such a question.

  “Whoever care that a nigga got a bullet in his head,” Tramar said. “The nigga who car that is is dead, and we gotta hurry up and get rid of that shit before the police know they need to be lookin’ at it.”

  “Damn, okay,” Durrell said. “What was y’all thinkin’ ‘bout doin’ to get rid of somethin’ like that? I mean, you can’t just take some shit like that to the junkyard or nothin’ like that, especially if yo name ain’t on it. Especially around here, because they will pick up on that shit real quick. There’s a little bit of niggas around here with money like that to be buyin’ a car like that, but they few and far between. People gon’ be lookin’ at y’all’s asses like y’all deal drugs or some shit.”

  “I know,” Tramar said. “When I went and got that food this morning and shit, I saw people up in the parking lot and the drive-thru and shit lookin’ at a nigga and shit. Shit, them niggas in the fuckin’ window workin’ at one restaurant looked like they was damn near about to jump through the shit and come out and hug the car.”

  “Yeah, that car is gon’ get y’all a lot of attention,” Durrell said. “That’s why I was thinkin’ that it might be kind of hard to get rid of because wherever you put it, people gon’ notice real quick.”

  “Shit, we was thinkin’ bout just leavin’ it on a street downtown,” Tramar said. “I mean, we thought that could work and just leave the keys in that shit. Whoever find the shit and hop in and drive it gon’ be the one they think killed that nigga back in Chicago.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Durrell said.

  Jackson and Tramar looked at each other once more. They could tell that Durrell wasn’t all that thrilled about their downtown idea. “I got a better idea, though,” Durrell said. “I mean, some shit like that could work if it was back in the nineteen nineties or eighties or some shit like that. This may not be no Chicago, but we got cameras all over downtown like any other big city. Watch the news here. They seem to be gettin’ shit on tape all over the fuckin’ place, even in places where you ain't even think they would have no fuckin’ camera and shit.”

  “Fuck,” Tramar said, holding his balled fist up to his mouth. “That’s the exact shit that a nigga was scared of.”

  “So, what you thinkin’ we should do?” Jackson asked.

  Durrell nodded his head as he looked back up and into their eyes. “Y’all niggas, when you go and see L’Akeeshi in a little bit,” he said, looking at the time on his phone, “talk to her ass. She might just take the car off your hands.”

  “How she gon’ do that?” Tramar asked. “I mean, with a car like that, she gon’ already know that some shit is up or something. We ain’t try’na set her up to get in some fucked up situation if she gon’ help us out and hook us up with a car that we can use.”

  “Naw, naw,” Durrell said. “Listen, nigga. She ain’t like that. Trust me, this chick can get anything in and out of Omaha that she want. Talk to her when y’all go over there and see what she say. She might be able to do somethin’ where she just take the car right then and there, and y’all ain’t got to worry about doin’ nothin’ extra that might get you caught.”

  “Okay, okay,” Jackson said. “We’ll see what she say. And if she can’t take the car?”

  “Then we just gon’ have to leave that shit somewhere,” Tramar said. “I mean, we ain’t got no other choice. Y’all said that yourself just ten, fifteen minutes ago, remember?”

  Chapter 4

  Detective Sloan pushed papers away from the center of his desk and concentrated on his notes for the armed bank robbery and murder case. The 40-year old was beginning to feel frustrated. He hated when he had all of the necessary information for a conviction, but simply didn’t have the suspects. Furthermore, he badly wanted to clear Ayana’s name. Something was telling him that she’d gotten mixed up with the wrong kind of guys and could really be in fear for her life. However, the facts, as he’d written in the notes, proved otherwise. The moment she got the hotel room out by O’Hare, and disappeared into the night, she had officially become a suspect. Up until that point, everything had been pure speculation.

  At the central station of the Chicago Police Department, phones rang nonstop in the background as the chatter never ceased. Clusters of wooden desks were spread about the two-level room. Law enforcement employees and agents of different levels, walked by the balcony up above, occasionally looking down at detectives working cases and officers forcefully hauling suspects in through the front entrance. As of right now, Sloan and Rodgers had what was without a doubt the biggest case in the Chicago area. It had far outdone the other cases of crime in the area, even including the city’s Southside neighborhoods.

  Rodgers sat down at his desk across from Sloan. He tossed a ham sandwich over to his partner, noticing that he was in a mood. “Man, we’re gon’ get’em,” Rodgers said, leaning back in his chair. The light above shined down on his brown skin.

  “I just don’t get it,” Detective Sloan said. “I’ve been over here lookin’ at my notes and stuff because the captain said that he wants us to come up with some sort of idea where they may be now or may be headed. But, shit. I don�
��t have much of anything to go off of. And I’m just worried that they might be bold enough to hit another bank as soon as we’re not looking.”

  “Just give them a little time,” Rodgers said, sounding optimistic. He also thought about how well he knew his “people.” If there was one thing he had learned in life, it was that black people tended to have the hardest time hiding the fact that they had money. In the several years he’d been working as a detective in the inner city of Chicago, he’d noticed time after time the amount of black criminals who probably would have gotten away if they’d simply hidden the fact that they had any money. The attention was often their downfall, leading Rodgers to believe that time was all they needed.

  “Fuck, man,” Sloan said. “We don’t have a lot of time, that’s the thing.”

  “Okay,” Rodgers said. “Let’s go back over what we got so far.”

  Sloan held up his notes as he looked at them. “Okay, so they robbed the White Savings & Trust Bank downtown on Friday, during evening rush hour.”

  “Right,” Rodgers said. “Mass chaos downtown, all the traffic is what saved their asses from getting caught.”

  “You know the department has talked to the mayor about getting more police downtown on bikes and what have you, but they’re more worried about pedestrian safety and all that kind of crap,” Sloan said. “Then they robbed the two banks over in Indiana. As far as we can tell, they had no connection to the town whatsoever. In fact, it appears that they chose those banks completely at random.”

  “But this Tramar shot and killed the security guard at that bank,” Rodgers said. “Once again, they caused confusion.”

  “Yeah, hitting two banks at once in a small, sleepy town on a Saturday,” Sloan said. “You know some of those towns aren’t prepared to handle that sort of thing. But that fact is that Tramar killed the guard at the bank he robbed. And, as far as I can see, there was no connection between the two of them either, which tells me that it wasn’t personal.”

  “He probably just got scared when the security guard came out and fired,” Rodgers said.

  “Okay, so then we got the mother of his child,” Sloan said, really wanting to use the phrase baby mama. However, his captain had spoken with him about using terms that were a little less derogatory, and certainly more racially sensitive. “What did you think about her?”

  Rodger shrugged. “I mean, typical single mother who probably doesn’t talk to the father much except when he comes and picks up the son,” he replied. “I mean, she could very well know something and not want to give it up.”

  “Why do you think she wouldn’t want to give it up?” Sloan asked.

  “‘’Cause,” Rodgers said. “Sometimes they think that if they give him up, they’ll never get any more money out of the guy. I know, I know.” He held his hands up in a surrendering way. “It doesn’t make much sense, but the effect that some of these young guys out in the streets have on these young girls is just unbelievable. I grew up in that kind of environment and a lot of these young girls need the attention and love of a man and will do anything to have it.”

  “Alright then,” Sloan said. “So, I think she probably does know something but won’t say.”

  “Well,” Rodgers said. “I can’t really be surprised about that.”

  “Okay, but what I’m trying to figure out is their motive for robbing the banks,” Sloan said.

  “Why do you care what their motive was for hitting a couple of banks?” Rodgers asked. “Who said they even had a motive? For all we know, they could have just been doing that instead of getting a couple jobs for themselves. Plus, man, you’ve never worried about a robber’s motives before. Why do you care now?”

  “Because,” Sloan said, looking around the station. “I feel like this might go deeper than this. I mean, think about it. They were damn near professional with how they robbed the bank right downtown.”

  “Yeah, literally,” Rodgers said. “They even wore suits, which, I must say, is something I’ve never seen black men robbing banks do.”

  “Exactly,” Sloan said. “In all my years, I’ve never seen that either and, don’t take it the wrong way, but I’ve seen a lot of black people pull off some crazy crimes in some interesting ways. However, with Tramar and Jackson, the downtown bank was different than their approach out in Indiana. I mean, think about it, man. Downtown was practically planned. Think about the security footage.” Sloan pulled up the security footage from White Savings & Trust downtown. Once the imaged popped up onto his screen, he turned the screen around so that it would face Rodgers. Rodgers leaned in as Sloan continued talking. “If they had just robbed the bank downtown and only the bank downtown,” he said, “they very well could have gotten away with it.”

  “You’re right,” Rodgers said, nodding his head. “In this footage, you can barely see their faces or any identifying descriptions that could catch them. Also, the way they came in and out, and the way they controlled the bank during the robbery, was somewhat professional.”

  “Exactly,” Sloan said. “Now you see what I’m saying. On top of that, what did they do to get away afterward?”

  Rodgers leaned back. “I see,” he said, pointing his finger. “We don’t even know. It was that smooth.”

  “I’m telling you, Rodgers,” Sloan said, confidently. “I really wouldn’t be surprised if this young lady, Ayana, was the getaway driver for the bank downtown. She obviously wasn’t the getaway driver for them out in Indiana as they used their own vehicles. But, back to my original points, look at the banks out in Indiana. They didn’t go through near as much effort to hide their faces. It wasn’t planned. They chose poor locations, and the only reason they managed to get away is because the whole damn town was so confused with something it just hasn’t had to deal with before. But, I say all that to say that the banks in Indiana were done kind of sloppy in comparison to the one in the middle of downtown at rush hour. That was strategic. So, what I mean is that I think this goes deeper… It almost seems to me… It almost seems to me as if they had to come up with some money.”

  “Right,” Rodgers said, “because we then found the money in the motel room. It was like they were trying to get to a certain amount. When I went and talked to the father today, he was very standoffish.”

  “What do you mean?” Sloan asked. “I was meaning to ask you if you’d gone and talked to them. You know Captain sent me to work on this other case.”

  “I don’t know,” Rodgers said. “It just seems like he was holding something back. Both he and his wife seemed as if they were under some sort of stress.”

  “You mean like they were being held hostage in their home or something while you were talking to them?” Sloan asked. “You don’t think that is the case, do you?”

  “No,” Rodgers said. “I didn’t get the feeling that anybody else was in the house with them. What I’m saying is that they just seemed very stiff. When I talked to the neighbors, they said the two had been gone for a couple of days. What was interesting about that is the fact that they are pretty well liked and connected with their neighbors. The neighbors were sure that they would have told them if they were going to be gone for a couple of days. They said that in the past, when they’d even be gone overnight, somebody on the block knew that they would be going.”

  “Interesting,” Sloan said, turning back toward the computer screen. His eyes glanced over the various still shots of Tramar and Jackson, dressed in suits, in the White Savings & Trust Bank downtown. “So, what do we got here? We got a couple of guys, and one of their girlfriends, out on the loose. Armed with guns with silencers, which really means that they were planning to pull some stuff. We just don’t know why. I’m telling you, Rodgers. I really do think that this goes deeper. It almost seems like something is pushing them.”

  “Some form of desperation?” Rodgers asked.

  “Maybe,” Sloan said. “Maybe.”

  Just as Sloan was about to exit out of the still shots of Tramar and Jackson, Detective Price
came walking up. At five foot seven and shapely, the 30-year-old Puerto Rican woman, who had been raised in Brooklyn, New York was known for shaking things up in the office. There had been a running joke going around that men were purposely doing crimes so that they could get pulled over by her when she was patrolling the streets. She never confirmed or denied such an idea.

  “Well, hello boys,” Price said. “You two look a little down.”

  Rodgers looked Price up and down, wondering when she was going to finally go out on a date with him. “Well, I’m guessing you’ve come over here to cheer us up. What is it, Price?”

  Price rolled her eyes and slammed a folder onto the desk. Rodgers grabbed it and opened it, interested in what was inside.

  “It’s a case I got today about this guy, Byron, who was shot to death and found by his brother up in a house in Barrington, about twenty minutes north of the city,” she explained.

  “Okay,” Sloan said. “But what does something like that have to do with us and our case right now, Price?”

  “I’m getting to that,” Price said. “So, anyway, the guy was definitely questionable and was known for not really having a valid source of income and so on. But, what I found really interesting about this case that caused me to find a connection to yours was the fact that down the road from this Byron’s subdivision, a car was found on a wooded property. The owner of the property was walking a real estate appraiser around the property and found that someone had driven the car up into the dead-end driveway and had left it there.

  “Well, when the car was brought into the impound lot up there, they did a search on the VIN number and the plates.” Price leaned in and flipped over to the next document. “And what do you know?”

  Rodgers looked at the information more closely. “I see,” he said. “They don’t match. The license plate belongs to a Ruby Harris, who died three months ago and left numerous vehicles in her estate it says. And… the VIN number to the car is registered to…” Rodgers paused and looked up and across at Sloan, “a Jackson Miller.”