by Rio
His iPhone started ringing with a call from Lil Cholly, a Vice Lord he’d been dumping kilos on for the past few months. He eased back in his seat and answered.
“Back at me already?”
“Nah,” Lil Cholly said. “Shit getting’ too hot out this way. Way too hot. It’s like the Wild West out here. Lil niggas shootin’ everybody, police everywhere you look. Fuck this shit, I’m about to fly out to Florida for the rest of the summer, or at least till all this gunplay slow down a lil bit.”
King Royce was silent as he pondered over all the money he would undoubtedly miss out on if Lil Cholly suddenly skipped town.
Then Lil Cholly offered a remedy to that monetary problem, and King Royce smiled tightly as he ended the call.
Seconds later, King Royce’s driver turned the Benz around and, followed by two SUVs full of heavily armed Latin Kings, headed back to Chicago.
~Chapter 33~
An hour had passed since I’d blown Manny’s brains out and I was more paranoid than ever. The Kush I’d smoked intensified my paranoia tenfold.
“There’s about a hundred police out there,” Shay said, peeking out the living room window.
I was pacing a tight circle in front of the wall-mounted flat-screen television. I was afraid that at any moment the CPD would come crashing through the door with their guns drawn; which is why I was holding my 9mm Glock with the 50-round drum in an unrelenting grip while I chewed the thumbnail of my other hand down to the flesh. I was determined to join Pops in the grave before I joined my niggas in prison.
My two Louis Vuitton duffle bags were on the floor next to the sofa. The $200,000 ransom was packed into one of them and the rest of my cash and drugs—aside from the $8000 I had in my pants pockets—was packed up in the other one.
“Nigga stop pacin’. You makin’ me nervous,” Scrilla Man said. He and Rose were standing near the door looking more paranoid than I was.
“They’re letting people move their cars now,” Shay said.
Thinking quickly, I put my pistol in one of the duffle bags, then picked both of them up and walked over to Shay.
“Here,” I said, handing her the keys to the Caprice. “Put these bags in the trunk of that orange Chevy, drive down sixteenth to Trumbull, and park right there at the corner. We’ll meet you there in five minutes.”
“Nah, she gotta take my truck, bruh,” Scrilla Man said. “We got two bricks in that muhfucka.”
He was right. It was best to get all the drugs away from us as soon as possible.
Scrilla Man gave Shay his keys and I took mine back.
“You niggas better not get me locked up,” Shay said. She lifted the duffle bags and walked to the door. “Hand me my purse.”
“Don’t go out there lookin’ all suspicious and shit,” I advised.
Rose grabbed Shay’s Chanel bag off the coffee table and gave it to her. I held my breath as she descended the staircase.
My heart dropped when Scrilla Man peeked out the window and murmured, “Damn! Shit, bruh!”
“What?!” I said.
“Cop just stopped her.”
I slapped my palms to my forehead.
“She just put the bags down.”
‘Oh, shit!’ was all that came to my mind.
“She diggin’ through her purse for somethin’ now. Prob’ly her ID.”
I held my breath again.
“Aw, she good. She getting’ in my truck now,” Scrilla Man added a moment later.
We all let out a sigh of relief. We waited ten minutes before leaving out. Several police officers approached us as soon as we stepped off the porch. They asked for our IDs. I showed my driver’s license, since my state ID was in Lacresha Radcliff’s possession. They asked me if we had seen anything. Of course, we hadn’t.
As I was getting behind the wheel of my Caprice, I glanced at the white sheet that covered the dead snitch’s body and fought back the urge to smile.
Then I started the engine, drove slowly to the corner, and released another sigh of relief as I made a right onto 16th Street.
Rose was the first to start laughing from the backseat. Scrilla Man followed suit, and soon I was laughing, too.
“Maaaan,” Rose said, clapping his hands against the back of my seat, “I can’t believe this shit. On Larry, lil fam, you’s a certified nutcase.”
“This the craziest day ever,” Scrilla Man said, still laughing.
But our laughter diminished instantly when we made it to the corner of 16th and Trumbull.
My brother’s Escalade was nowhere in sight.
**********
Once again I found myself driving aimlessly through my neighborhood searching for a vehicle. A bunch of people had seen the Escalade driving down 16th—an SUV on thirty-inch rims was hard to miss—but no one had seen it make any stops.
Furthermore, Shay wasn’t answering our phone calls. For a while her phone just rang, and rang, and rang. Then it started going straight to voicemail.
“That bitch got us, lil bruh.” Scrilla Man was shaking his head, texting Shay for the ninth time. “Bitch got our guns, our dope.”
“Fam, that whole brick wasn’t even mine,” Rose said. He, too, was shaking his head. “I owe my Folks half o’ dat.”
“She can’t get too far away. I’ve been to her house before, wit’ Kisha,” I mumbled, hopefully. “Shit, but we ain’t even strapped up. I left my choppa in the Expedition. Ain’t no tellin’ where Tyrone and Joe-Joe at.”
I dialed Tyrone’s number and got his voice mail.
‘This really is the craziest day ever,’ I thought, eyeing the gas meter as I prepared to hit the highway.
Shay lived in Michigan City, Indiana.
I was on my way to pay her a visit.
~Chapter 34~
It only took Shay fifty minutes to make it to her small, one bedroom apartment in Michigan City, Indiana.
There were a few drug dealers and thugs living in Coolspring Apartments. But for the most part the complex of apartment buildings housed blacks, whites, and Hispanics who worked nine-to-fives and spent their spare time drinking, popping Molly’s and x-pills, smoking weed and/or crack, and cheating on the lovers they claimed to be so faithful to. Michigan City was nothing like Chicago—the locals were more into fighting than shooting—but it was still a crazy little city, full of dope boys, easy girls, and all-out drama.
Shay pulled the Escalade into a parking space next to her boyfriend Berry’s green Delta 88. Berry—an unknown Vice Lord from off Washington and Kostner on the west side of Chicago—was sitting in the Oldsmobile smoking weed with his right-hand man, Santana—a BD who was also from Chicago. The two of them looked visibly surprised to see Shay climbing out of an Escalade on thirties, and Shay was glad to see that their pistols were on their laps.
“Baby, we gotta hurry up and pack up so we can leave,” Shay said, opening the Escalade’s rear driver’s side door to grab the duffle bags.
Berry stepped out of his car and flicked his blunt roach at the glass door of Shay’s apartment building. He was light-skinned, shaped like a body-builder, and laughing like he always did when he smoked.
“Daaamn,” he said, studying the Escalade’s gaudy exterior. “Who you fuckin’? I see I’ma have to put a end to yo’ lil Chicago trips. Last week you came home wearin’ Louboutins, and this week you show up in a ‘Lac truck, pullin’ out Louis Vuitton duffle bags.”
“Don’t stop her now,” Santana said as he got out and walked around the car. He was short and dark, with ridiculously long arms and a receding hairline that was worse than Lebron’s.
“Nigga, like I told you before,” Shay said, dropping the bags onto the ground and unzipping them, “let me do what I do best.”
Berry and Santana immediately got excited. Shay smiled at her man as he dug his eager brown hands into one of the bags and pulled out a bundle of hundred dollar bills and Mikey’s gun with the big drum magazine.
She slapped the cash and pistol out of his hands and
laughed as they plummeted back into the duffle.
“Baby, we gotta pack up some stuff and leave here ASAP. The nigga I took this from has been here before and I just watched him kill a nigga in broad daylight.”
“Fuck we need to pack for?” Berry asked. “We can go shoppin’ wit’ all this money.”
“Boy, I ain’t goin’ nowhere without my shoes,” Shay said as she picked up the duffle bags and rushed into her apartment.
~Chapter 35~
I stopped at a Speedway gas station when we made it into Michigan City, Indiana to fill up my gas tank. I ended up paying a middle-aged black couple a hundred dollars to lead me to Coolspring Apartments. The couple led us to the apartment complex’s front entrance and I parked there as they drove away.
“What the fuck we gon’ do now?” Scrilla Man asked. “We ain’t got no guns. What if she got some niggas wit’ her that’s strapped up?”
“We gon’ have to find out the hard way,” I said.
Slowly, I cruised into the apartment complex, scanning my eyes around at the cars and people that were coming and going.
A dusty van full of hoodrats pulled up beside my Caprice. Its diver—an acne-faced dark-skinned girl with a tight little ponytail hanging out the back of her Bull’s cap—stuck her head out the window and shouted, “Heeeey boy, where you from?” She was practically drooling over my rims.
“Flint, Michigan,” I lied. “I’m out here lookin’ for my cousin Shay.”
“Who, skinny Shay?”
“Yeah.”
The girl pointed toward the rear of the complex. “That’s them leaving right there in that green Delta. That Escalade must be yours, too, huh?”
Ignoring the girl’s question, I stepped on the gas and lanced toward the green Oldsmobile that was leaving out the complex’s rear entrance.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Scrilla Man’s SUV parked in front of Shay’s apartment building. I hoped that I wasn’t on a wild goose chase going after the Oldsmobile.
I wasn’t.
Turning onto the deserted back road, I saw through the car’s rear window that Shay was sitting in the backseat behind two men. Shay glanced over her shoulder and her eyes went buck as she caught sight of my rapidly approaching Caprice.
“Hold on, y’all,” I said and rammed the back of the Oldsmobile.
I wasn’t prepared for what happened next.
The man in the Delta 88’s passenger seat stuck a pistol out his window and started blasting, sending bullet after bullet through my windshield.
We all ducked down in the Chevy and I sped forward and rammed the Oldsmobile again.
The sound of gunfire ceased, replaced by the screeching of tires, and then the ear-piercing sound of crushing metal and shattering glass.
I stomped on the brake and cautiously raised my head.
The Oldsmobile was flipping sideways down the long, tree-lined road. It landed on its roof, with its tires spinning freely in the air.
The three of us got out and ran up to the upside-down wreckage. Surprisingly, Shay and the other two passengers were still breathing, though just barely.
They would not be breathing for long.
I reached in the back window and grabbed my duffle bags, while Scrilla Man dragged Shay out the other side and demanded she tell him where the keys to his Escalade were.
After finding my Glock inside one of the duffle bags, I tossed the bags to Rose and walked around to where Scrilla Man stood over Shay just as the nigga in the passenger’s seat was attempting to crawl out of the car.
I aimed the Glock at his head and pulled the trigger, blowing his brains out. Then I squatted, reached into the car, and put two bullets in the side of the driver’s head.
“I’m…sorry,” Shay muttered, lying flat on the ground with a puddle of blood in her mouth. “I’m sorry, Mikey. Please…”
“Sorry ain’t gon’ cut it,” I said icily.
Then I put a bullet through her right eye.
~Chapter 36~
“Do you have any idea how hard it is to take care of a special needs baby all by yourself? Huh, Kisha? I have a daughter, who will never be able to see, and she doesn’t even have a father. I don’t even know who he is! I thought I was a damn virgin when I found out I was pregnant with my baby. I started dancing at Arnie’s so I could pay my way through college and the next thing I knew, I was three weeks pregnant.”
Kisha was sitting quietly in the chair with tears in her eyes and tape on her lips, listening to Lacresha’s sad story. The two gunmen were fast asleep on the tattered sofa in the corner underneath the staircase. A Jill Scott album was blaring from somewhere upstairs and Kisha wondered if whoever was up there vibing to the music was aware of what was going on right under their feet.
“I think one of those nothin’ ass hoes at the club slipped somethin’ in my drink the night I got pregnant,” Lacresha continued. “I remember having to do a bachelor’s party with Platinum and Kitten around the time I got knocked up. But I don’t even remember goin’, let alone what went down when I got there.” She wiped her moist eyes, shifted uncomfortably in the chair she was sitting in, and let out a short laugh. “I know this shit probably sound like somethin’ out of Player’s Club, but bitch I swear it’s true.”
There was a bottle of Remy Martin and a glass full of ice on the floor next to Cresha’s chair. She and the gunmen had been drinking for most of the evening, and now the bottle was nearly empty. She leaned over and poured the last of the Remy into the glass. Kisha glanced at the clock on the wall and saw that it was 9:41 p.m.
‘Two more hours and nineteen more minutes,’ Kisha thought to herself. ‘Lord, please let Mikey be there with that money.’
Lacresha’s monotonous sob story continued for the next half hour. She told Kisha that she planned to use the ransom money to get silicone injections in her butt. Then she’d move to Miami and get rich dancing in strip clubs, maybe even modeling.
“All I need is a fat ass to get me a baller,” Cresha said as her phone began ringing. She looked at it and added, “This King Royce callin’ me now. He rich as fuck, but the nigga won’t pay for my surgery no matter how many times I beg his fine ass. He say I’m already beautiful. Evidently I ain’t too damn beautiful if I’m broke!”
Cre stood up to answer the call and headed toward the stairs.
“I gotta pee, bitch. Be back in a minute,” Cresha said.
‘Bitch, I gotta pee too,’ thought Kisha.
The sound of the basement door awakened one of the gunmen. He got up and stretched. Then he walked to the staircase and looked up at the door.
Kisha cringed as his menacing brown eyes shifted to her.
She squeezed her eyes shut and dropped her head, praying he wasn’t thinking what she thought he was thinking.
But indeed he was.
He held his gun to her neck as he untaped her from the chair, threatening to kill her if she tried to fight or run. Kisha wanted to live so she didn’t resist as he snatched her up from the chair and pushed her face against the wall.
He lifted her dress, ripped her panties off, and entered her from behind. A pained groan rumbled in Kisha’s throat. The boy’s dick was huge. It felt like someone was fucking her with a beer bottle.
She closed her eyes and again she prayed.
~Chapter 37~
We made it back to Chicago without incident and laid low at my Uncle Mutulu’s home on 13th and Sawyer until 11:30. The three of us sat in the guest room, smoking bunts and reminiscing on the good and bad times we’d shared with Pops. Treecy came in and kicked it with us, but she didn’t say much. Momma and Mutulu stayed in the kitchen with a few other relatives, listening to oldies and drinking their Crown Royal.
I had finally gotten a call from Tyrone during the ride home from Indiana. He and Joe-Joe were chilling out front in the Expedition when we stepped out the front door.
I told Tyrone to stay a few car-lengths behind us, and to be ready to set it off with my AK-47 if anything
went sour.
Then I got in my Caprice with Scrilla Man and Rose and traveled the dark west side streets until I made it to John Hay public school on Laramie Avenue.
I looked at the time on my dashboard and saw that it was exactly midnight, twelve o’clock on the dot.
I held the nine-millimeter Glock in my hand and waited.
To be continued…..
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