by Mary Monroe
“Ow! I hate hotels! They are too impersonal!” he hollered. He rubbed his chin and snorted. “You do have a place to yourself, yes?”
I nodded. “Uh-huh. But it’s nothing fancy, see. Just a little studio apartment with the bare necessities. It’s not far from here. I’m staying there because the . . . uh . . . condo I just purchased is currently being refurbished.”
He pulled me closer and whispered. “Your studio has a bed, hmmm?”
I giggled. “Yes.” I giggled some more. “And two bottles of wine in the refrigerator.”
“Good! I give thanks. That’s all we need!” he yelled, squeezing my waist. I didn’t want to say it out loud, but I also kept a big supply of condoms at the studio.
I was led like a sheep to a black SUV with a sticker from a rental agency on the front window. After Anoseki asked directions to my apartment, he ignored me all the way there, even though I had my hand on his thigh the whole time. I could not believe that he was the same man who had swept me off my feet at the club. I blamed his fickle behavior on some cultural thing. What did I know about Nigerians? Nothing. But that didn’t matter tonight.
I had seen a lot of romantic movies, and read a few romance novels. Whoever wrote that fluff had to believe in fairy tales, too. Things between a man and a woman rarely went as smoothly as some folks tried to make it sound. As soon as we entered my secret apartment and right after I flipped on the light, the man was all over me like a cheap wig. I wondered why he had bothered to ask if I had a bed. With the couch-bed already let out, he still shoved me toward the La-Z-Boy facing the couch-bed and bent me over the back of it. He slid my dress up to my waist, snatched my thong panties down to my knees and plunged in and out of me so fast I almost fell after he released me. I was stunned beyond belief. I was relieved to see a condom dangling off his thick, but short dick.
“Where is the loo?” Anoseki asked in a gruff voice.
“The what?”
“Rest . . . room is what you call it here,” he said impatiently.
I nodded toward the area near the kitchenette. He gave me a quick nod and rushed out of the room. The walls in the apartment were thin. Not only did I hear him flush the toilet, I heard him talking on his cell phone. His conversation was not in English, so it didn’t matter what I heard. I rolled my eyes, recalling how the sexy Mexican I’d spent the night with in Puerto Vallarta had called up his wife right after he’d made love to me.
By the time Anoseki returned, I had filled two glasses with wine, removed my clothes and stretched out on the bed on top of the covers.
“Is everything all right?” I asked, sitting up with a breast in each hand and a seductive look in my face.
Instead of answering, Anoseki marched over to me with one hand inside his jacket.
“If you do as you are told you will not be hurt,” he grumbled.
“What . . . what do you mean?” In a split second fear consumed me. I swung my legs to the side of the bed. Before I could rise to my feet, he was in front of me pointing a gun in my face.
CHAPTER 73
I rarely talked about what had happened to me that day in Daddy’s liquor store, but that incident was often on my mind. Just two nights ago I had a nightmare where my assailant had attacked me again. This time it was in my own bedroom and the shape of the birthmark on his face had changed from a half-moon to a dagger. Though my current situation was different I still felt like I had worked myself into the same position: my life was at stake again.
“My purse is over there,” I croaked, pointing to the counter next to my sink. “I . . . I don’t have much money.”
“Listen, the games are over. I was sent to retrieve what you took and I will not leave without it,” Anoseki said in a voice so smooth I thought he was joking.
“What do you mean? I just met you tonight. What do you mean you were sent? Sent by who? Sent from where and for what?”
“Look, lady. I have a job to do and I intend to complete it. You give me what you took and I leave immediately. Where is it?” He shook his fist and waved the gun so close to my nose I had to breathe through my mouth. “One million dollars is what you stole. I want it and I want it now! Or you will suffer in a million ways.”
My eyes burned and a huge lump formed in my throat that almost choked the life out of me. It looked like I was going to die one way or the other. “I don’t know what you are talking about. I don’t have a million dollars. I’m just a secretary.”
Anoseki, the man I’d envisioned as my own personal knight in shining armor, slapped me so hard my face felt like it was on fire. “Bah! Where is it? Where is the money, woman?” he roared, looking around the room. His eyes alone were enough to scare the daylights out of me. Long, jagged red lines outlined his dilated pupils. His eyebrows merged and wiggled like one long, angry worm. “Where did you hide it?” Snake eyes. That was what his eyes looked like now.
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” I whimpered, holding the side of my head. The gun was still dangerously close to my face. My eyes felt like they were on fire as I blinked to look at him. “What makes you think I have that kind of money?”
“You stupid woman! I was told that you were a smart lady, but you are just like all the rest. A fool. You parade yourself around until some weak man mounts you so you can take advantage of him. Well, you’ve been mounted enough. Giles was a fool to involve himself with an American woman!”
“Oh, my God!” I shrieked so hard my tongue felt like it had frozen. “You think—you think I’m Ann Oliver! I spoke to that Mr. Giles several times.”
“You did more than that for Giles, you cocksucking tart. It was because of your intimate talents, and his foolishness, that he thought he could trust you with his money! Now we know.”
It took me a moment to realize that the cackling laugh I heard was coming from me. “I’m not Ann. I was just pretending to be her. See—I used her information to get credit cards and this apartment in her name! I was going to stop it all—”
“Don’t play games with me, too!” Anoseki sprinted across the floor, leaping over an overturned end table with the grace of an antelope. He grabbed my purse, fishing out my wallet. He flipped to the fake driver’s license bearing Ann Oliver’s name and my picture. “Do you think I’m stupid?” Then he let out a weird laugh. He whipped out his own wallet and flipped to a picture of Ann wearing the same hairdo I had my hair in now. The resemblance was remarkable.
“Uh, she’s older than I am. Can’t you see that? Her nose is larger than mine,” I cried, pointing to the picture. “And look at the teeth—her teeth are smaller!” I lifted my head, clenched my teeth, and spread my lips open as wide as I could with my fingers.
“If you die tonight, it makes no difference to me. I will still get paid,” he told me in a dead calm voice.
“Would you really kill me? Do you think you can get away with it?”
“Look, lady, this is nothing new to me. Don’t flatter yourself by thinking that you are the first . . .”
I was spellbound. It felt like my spirit had separated from my body and was floating along the wall witnessing the latest nightmare I’d stumbled into.
Freddie’s face flashed through my mind. “I know!” I shouted, waving both hands. “The woman who was with me tonight—she’ll tell you my real name. She’s known me most of my life,” I hollered. I scrambled from the bed and ran to the telephone with Anoseki right behind me. I was so terrified I couldn’t even remember Freddie’s number. When I finally got it right Freddie’s answering machine came on. “Freddie, if you hear me, please pick up the telephone. Please pickup, Freddie!”
The last thing I wanted to do was piss on myself again. But that’s exactly what I did when Freddie answered because I was just that happy to hear her voice. “What’s up?” she asked, sounding half asleep.
“Freddie, listen carefully. I want you to tell someone who I really am.” I handed the telephone to Anoseki as I hopped from one foot to the other with urine still streami
ng down my legs.
He listened for a few moments with a cold expression on his face. After a few grunts, he said, “She is Ann Oliver, you say?” he said, nodding with a pronounced frown on his face. “I know she is. I thank you very much.”
I grabbed the telephone. “Freddie, tell him the truth! Ann fucked up in Jamaica with that Mr. Giles I told you about and he sent Anoseki up here to take care of the problem. She stole a million dollars from these people!”
“Girl, what in the world is going on over there!” Freddie yelled.
“You have to tell this man that my name is Trudy. Tell him how I was using Ann’s name! He’s got a gun!”
“Shit! Put him back on the telephone!” Freddie screamed. I handed the telephone back to Anoseki. It didn’t matter what Freddie told him. He grunted and hung the telephone up and grabbed me around my throat anyway.
“She is your friend and she lies for you now,” he said, glaring at me. “She’s a fool, too.” He slapped me again. This time so hard I stumbled back to the bed where he beat me so savagely about my face I passed out.
I don’t know how long I was unconscious but when I came to he was standing over me with that gun in his hand. “You want to tell me where the money is now?” He glanced at his watch. “Your time is running out, m’lady.”
“I swear to God. I don’t know anything about any money. I’ve never been to Jamaica. Why don’t you call that Mr. Giles and let me speak to him. He’ll remember me,” I bleated.
“Giles is a busy man. He has no more time to waste with you.”
“Freddie’s probably calling the cops right now. Please go and leave me alone,” I whimpered, forcing myself to remain focused on staying alive. It was hard for me to speak with a busted lip and a few loose teeth.
Anoseki nodded and caressed his chin. “I go, you go with me,” he said, pulling me off the bed. He tossed my clothes at me but I just stood there holding them and shaking like a leaf. “Hurry, or I will shoot you down like a mad dog right now and leave you to fester! Go!”
I got into my clothes somehow, putting my dress on backwards and my shoes on the wrong feet. In less than five minutes he was pushing me out the door.
Just as we got to the parking lot, a familiar car drove up and stopped right in front of us. It was Daddy’s car. As much as I resented “Old Bessie,” I was never so glad to see that piece of junk before in my life. All four doors swung open, each one with a piercing squeak. Out tumbled Freddie, LoBo, Daddy, Spider, and James.
CHAPTER 74
“Trudy, what in the hell is gwine on here!” Daddy hollered. At the mention of my real name, Anoseki let go of my arm. The alcohol that I had consumed at the club was threatening to erupt out of my mouth. There was a lot of confusion going on, but a howling dog somewhere in the distance distracted me. It was an ominous wail and it made the current situation seem even more sinister. That distraction gave me enough time to pull my senses together long enough to keep from throwing up.
“Daddy, he’s got a gun!” I shouted. Everything in front of my eyes suddenly seemed distorted. Daddy’s face seemed unusually long and painfully sad. I felt so light-headed I thought I was going to faint and would have if I had not been so concerned about my daddy. With my legs wobbling and the foul taste of bile in my mouth, I looked Anoseki in the eyes and cried, “Please don’t hurt my daddy. He had nothing to do with this.”
Anoseki stomped his foot on the ground and muttered something under his breath in a language I did not recognize. Then he threw his head back and laughed. I doubt if it had anything to do with the fact that he was amused. He abruptly stopped laughing and looked at me with enough contempt in his eyes for five people.
“You miserable trollop!” he barked, grabbing my arm again, gripping it much harder now.
“Where the fuck is the damn cops I called?” Freddie screamed, looking frantically around the darkened parking lot. “Get your black hands off my friend!” she continued, pummeling Anoseki’s back. As soon as he dropped the gun, James and Spider wrestled him to the ground. For a man who had already started to let himself go, James was reasonably strong. Spider was fairly strong for a man his age. Daddy, rubbing his chest and gasping for breath, was stumbling around more than I was. Anoseki bucked and reared like a wild stallion until James went flying one way and Spider went the other.
Anoseki retrieved his gun and aimed it at me. “There is no place you can go where I won’t find you again,” he vowed. With a maniacal grin, he waved his gun at me again. Then he ran to his vehicle and shot out of the parking lot like a missile.
James scrambled up from the ground and ran to me, brushing off his clothes. For a minute that seemed like an hour, he just stared at me. The pain in his eyes was tremendous. I had never felt more contrite in my life.
James’s lips moved silently for a few seconds. It seemed like the harder he tried to speak, the harder it was for him to get his words out. All he could produce was gibberish. After several attempts he finally managed to speak coherently. “Trudy, what in the hell did you get yourself into? Why?” In all the years that I’d known James, I’d never seen him so horrified, confused, and hurt. He didn’t even sound like himself. His voice was weak and hoarse, and so low I could barely hear him.
“I don’t know,” I sobbed, tears gushing out of my swollen eyes. “That Nigerian, he thought I was this other woman. He beat me. He thought I stole some money.”
“It sounds like you stole more than money!” Daddy yelled, shaking a fist in my face.
“I didn’t steal any money from him! It was the other woman!” I sniffed. “I . . . I was just trying to have some fun.”
“Fun? Is this what you call fun, gal?” Daddy’s words flew out of his mouth like rocks. “From what Freddie told us, you cooked up a lot more than that!” Daddy shouted. “I oughta whup your behind myself! Girl, don’t you know you can go to jail for what you done?”
I looked at Freddie with my mouth hanging open. The look she gave me told me more than I wanted to know. She had exposed my crime to the last people in the world I wanted to know.
“Let’s go inside and sort this mess out,” Freddie suggested. LoBo, still silent, stood off to the side looking like he wanted to crawl into a very deep hole.
As soon as we all made it into my apartment, James, Daddy, and Spider started looking around the room. LoBo, who had been to the apartment before, went straight to the refrigerator and snatched out a beer.
“Trudy, I had to tell them everything,” Freddie said, standing in the middle of the floor with her arms folded. She had a trench coat on over a long white nightgown. “I’m sorry. They know it all. They know every detail. The gifts you bought me, the trips to Reno, Mexico. Everything. It was the only thing I could do.”
My face felt like it had been left out on the beach and burned by the sun. Every time I blinked, a sharp pain shot through my eyes, making me see colored auras around all the people in front of me.
“If I had known you’d get yourself into a mess like this, I never would have helped you get that shit in that other woman’s name,” LoBo said, wiping beer from his lips. “Brother Bell, James, Trudy didn’t stir up all this mess by herself. I helped her get them credit cards,” LoBo confessed, looking from Daddy to James.
“Logan Botrelle, I hope you proud of your part in this mess,” Daddy scolded before he turned on Freddie. “And, Freddie Ann, I know you had more to do with this than you ownin’ up to, gal!”
Freddie dropped her head and sniffed, then looked at me. “I did try to talk some sense into Trudy. I tried to talk her out of all this a long time ago.” I couldn’t get mad with Freddie because she was telling the truth.
“James, I’m sorry,” I whimpered. James looked at me like he was seeing me for the first time. I couldn’t imagine what was going through his head. Spider, the last person in the world I expected to rescue me, looked amused. “Spider, thanks for coming to help . . .”
“Oh, this kind of shit ain’t nothin’ new to me. But
if you want some advice, I suggest you choose your future men friends a little more carefully, darlin’.” Spider waved his hand and laughed. It was the most he had ever said to me at one time.
“That ain’t all she ought to do!” Daddy snapped, rubbing his chest some more, still looking around the apartment. “What possessed you to do such a foolish thing as this?” He waved his hand around the room. “What did you hope to gain by posin’ as this other woman? What was you tryin’ to prove, gal?”
I ignored Daddy and looked at James. He shook his head and turned away. “James, we can talk about this when we get alone. I’ll explain everything.” I was shaking so hard one of the teeth that Anoseki’s fist had loosened popped out of my mouth and rolled across the floor like a loose coin.
“I thought I knew you, Trudy. I guess I was wrong,” James said, his eyes following my runaway tooth, his voice cracking. “You had me fooled, too.”
“We better get out of here before that motherfucker come back,” LoBo said, looking nervously toward the door.
“That’s the best thing I done heard all night,” Daddy said, coughing and moving toward the door.
James drove with Daddy in the front passenger seat fussing all the way, repeating the same things he had already said.
I occupied the backseat, squeezed between Spider and LoBo, who held Freddie on his lap. She patted my knee and gave me an awkward embrace. “I’m glad this is all over. I knew it was going to end like this . . . or worse.”
My right eye was swollen shut. I closed the other one, too. And kept it that way all the way home.
CHAPTER 75
James stopped the car in front of his apartment building. He mumbled something to Daddy then he climbed out without a word or even a glance in my direction.
“James, I’ll call you tomorrow. We can talk,” I yelled after him. But he didn’t respond. He sprinted across the ground to his front door without even looking back. That was the last time I saw him.
