Games Women Play

by Zaire Crown

  Being that DelRay had no particular beef with either Brianna or Baby Doll, he felt saddened by their deaths. Tuesday did too because in the end they were just innocent victims of Jaye’s manipulation and not her true enemies.

  Tuesday figured that they must have been killed while Slim was gone with Danielle; in which case, she wasn’t there to see it. Tuesday knew something like that could scar her for life. Danielle had survived the ordeal, but Tuesday was worried that the experience had killed that something precious inside her. Tuesday hoped that she still had the same spirit; that same sparkle in her eye. She hoped that nothing had been done to change her personality from that bright, bubbly little girl she met at Chuck E. Cheese who made friends so easily. Tuesday felt like killing that part of her would be no different from killing her period.

  Refusing to eat in itself was not proof that she was traumatized. Right then, she appeared to be sleeping peacefully, and if she was emotionally wounded, only time would tell to what degree.

  When he closed the door on Danielle, Tuesday took DelRay to the trunk to settle up with him. She felt like she owed him big-time for coming through on this and the Tank incident, but he had no idea how much gratitude she was about to show him.

  Tuesday watched DelRay make his funniest face ever when she unzipped the black case and started smashing 50K bundles on him: one after the other until she reached ten. Even with his beefy arms and huge hands, he fumbled to hold them all.

  “Girl, is you serious?” He stared at the cash with wide eyes and his mouth hanging open like a dead fish. “What the fuck is this?”

  Tuesday ignored his question. “Do you know where Face’s Auto Collision is on Grand River?”

  He nodded that he did.

  She explained, “Grab all yo niggas, a moving van and get over there ASAP. There’s an office connected to the garage, with a room hidden underneath that. It’s enough guns in that bitch to make you millionaire.”

  DelRay looked confused. “Why is you doing all this?”

  Tuesday said, “Because real niggas do real shit and loyalty should always be rewarded.”

  Then as an afterthought she added, “Oh yeah, The Bounce is yours too if you want it.” She zipped the bag closed. “The paperwork gone still be in my name but open that bitch as soon as you ready and start getting your money. It’s not a gold mine but it will turn a decent profit. I was just a greedy bitch feeling like I needed more.”

  DelRay either didn’t or couldn’t comprehend what she was doing for him. “I’ll run it for you and handle the day to day if you need me to.”

  “I ain’t promoting you to manager, I’m saying it’s you now, nigga! You own it flat-out.” She closed the trunk. “All I ask is that you look out for Ebony and throw Mr. Scott a couple racks from me for twenty years of free rib dinners.”

  DelRay agreed that he would. He also knew that without saying it, Tuesday was telling him that he would probably never see her again. It was unspoken but clearly understood.

  He smiled. “This a lot of money but I’m still gone miss smacking that fat ass!”

  Tuesday laughed and threw her arms around the big man. He leaned into it but couldn’t hug her back without dropping his severance pay.

  Tuesday was headed for the driver’s side of the Audi when he called to her, “Boss Lady, do you know where you goin’?”

  Tuesday shook her head. “Nope, but I know I’m gone be straight when I get there.”

  She climbed inside and couldn’t resist taking one last shot at him before leaving. “Ay, nigga, you rich now. Buy you a new car and junk that raggedy-ass Monte!”

  DelRay looked down at the pile of cash with a smile. “I guess I can finally get the bumper fixed, huh?”

  She left DelRay with nothing else to do but drop Danielle off to Marcus then hit the highway. Little Dani slept the entire ride out to Romulus. Tuesday rubbed her head as she drove. As much as this had been about the money, in some strange way, Tuesday was actually more satisfied to have her back. She would have never thought she could care so deeply about someone in such a short time. Danielle had ignited maternal feelings in her that she never thought she could have and exorcised some of the demons Tuesday had about her own absentee mother. Tuesday kept glancing over at her as she drove. Not only was she thinking about how much she would miss little Dani, she was secretly wondering if there was even the slightest chance that Marcus could forgive her so the three of them might be together.

  Remembering that she was wanted instantly killed any pie-in-the-sky hopes she had of them being a family. Marcus and Danielle had their own lives and Tuesday couldn’t expect them to give up everything to go on the run with her. Even if he didn’t hate her as much as she was sure he did, Tuesday could never ask someone she loved to make that kind of sacrifice.

  They finally made it to his house and as she pulled into the drive Tuesday was trying to think of the quickest, most painless way to say good-bye. She would’ve loved to fuck one last time, because she was going to miss riding that big dick as much as anything else about him.

  She tried Marcus’s phone but again her call went directly to voice mail. She cut the ignition and was about to step out the car when all hell broke loose.

  Out of nowhere a set of black GMC Yukons pulled in front and back of the Audi, boxing her in the circular driveway. She was blinded by flashlights and the pulse of red and blue beacons lit up the night. Two dozen people swarmed the car, all screaming orders to her at the same time.

  Tuesday couldn’t understand them but their guns conveyed the message. That and the blue windbreakers with DEA in bright yellow lettering. She threw her hands up and yelled a warning that there was a child in the car.

  Danielle woke up to the sound of the ruckus. She cried as she watched Tuesday being dragged from her seat and thrown roughly to the ground.

  As Tuesday lay there facedown on the cold hard cement with a knee in her back, she wasn’t even concerned with her own well-being. All she thought was Damn, this little girl is having a real fucked-up day!

  Tuesday was cuffed, thrown in the back of a Yukon, then driven to a nearby precinct where she was photographed, fingerprinted, and detained. She spent the first two hours in a holding cell with a fat Mexican prostitute who had no business charging anybody for sex. After that she was taken to a small interrogation room that had nothing but a table and chairs, insanely harsh light, and a huge two-way mirror.

  She was grilled for almost eighteen hours straight.

  They would take Tuesday in shifts: two agents would come in to question her for three hours, then they would leave to be replaced by two more. She wasn’t read her Miranda rights, wasn’t allowed a phone call, and had to threaten to piss on the floor just to get a bathroom break. They tried good cop/bad cop and all the other psychological tactics in the book—one agent would threaten her with jail time, the other would offer something while trying to convince her it was in her best interest to cooperate. They would leave her alone and cuffed to her chair for long stretches trying to make her go stir-crazy. They used sleep deprivation because during those alone times, the moment she would start to nod, another agent would show up with more of the same questions.

  They asked her about the guns on the backseat and Tuesday claimed to know nothing about them. She also knew nothing about the two and a half million dollars in the trunk. They had a bunch of questions about a shooting that happened at a condominium downtown and she knew absolutely nothing about that either.

  However those were all just warm-ups, because Tuesday soon realized that she wasn’t really their focus. From the door most of their questions were concerned with the little girl she was with and the man who called himself Marcus King.

  This was why Tuesday dummied up immediately. Tuesday claimed she didn’t know a Marcus King, even though she was arrested in front of his house while driving a car registered to that name. Even when they showed her surveillance photos taken of their first date eating together at Gaucho’s, she still played
ignorant.

  It was about the twentieth hour of interrogation when they sent in a black female agent, probably thinking she would have better luck, with Tuesday being the same race and sex. She was brown-skinned, early forties, wearing a gray pantsuit and black heels that Tuesday instantly peeped as low-budget. She came in all friendly and apologetic, offering to get her food and promising to be brief. Tuesday knew they were trying to use her fatigue against her so she asked for a six-pack of 5 Hour Energy but never got it.

  She slid a picture of Marcus in front of Tuesday. “You might think you know this man, you might even think you love him. You might think he’s just this handsome single parent who’s struggling to get by and raise his young daughter, but you don’t know the half of it. Girl, you don’t have the slightest idea of who you’re really dealing with.”

  The agent tried to take a casual tone as if she were talking to a girlfriend. Tuesday just glanced at the photo then looked back up at her like she was speaking a different language.

  “Do you even know what the man does for a living?” she asked. “Have you ever heard of Abel Incorporated?”

  Tuesday knew that was the company Marcus worked for and his father owned, but she just shook her head.

  The woman explained: “Abel Incorporated is a very large multinational import/export company owned by your boyfriend. Now on the surface they’re squeaky clean: they’re on the Forbes list, they pay their taxes, they even give away millions each year to charity.

  “But that’s just the face they show to the public. Secretly we believe it’s a front for a drug distribution network so vast that it spans from Thailand to Mexico, from Cuba to Canada. It’s one of the largest operations in the U.S. and has been for years.”

  Tuesday asked, “And why are you telling me all of this?”

  “Because the man had gotten away with the shit right up under our noses for twenty years, but he’s finally about to go down. And if you’re not careful, you’re about to go done with him.”

  “I already told you that I don’t know nothing about this man or what he does.”

  “Do you know why he’s been able to operate for so long without being on the radar? He does nothing in person; all his deals are done through other people. He even uses front men for the legitimate side of his operation. Plus he doesn’t leave loose ends—he’ll eliminate anybody who he even thinks knows his secret. Have you ever heard the name Sebastian Caine?”

  Tuesday shook her head.

  “They don’t just call him the Invisible Man because nobody ever really seen him. It’s also because he can make other people disappear. He is a cold-blooded murderer who’s suspected in more open homicides and missing person cases than I can count.”

  Tuesday just shrugged. “Sounds like a real bad guy. Good thing I don’t know him.”

  The agent smiled at Tuesday, then leaned back in her chair to get comfortable. “Let me tell you a story. About five or six years back your boyfriend here had a different woman. He was even engaged to her.”

  Tuesday remembered the conversation they had where he did admit to once having a fiancée but Marcus never went in depth about what happened to her, other than a brief comment about her cheating. Tuesday stayed quiet and continued to listen.

  “Your boy is very much in love but he finds out his woman is creeping on him, and with his best friend at that. This was in early February, so he waits until Valentine’s Day, then you know what he does?”

  Tuesday was curious but had to play it off. “What? Buys her a lovely charm bracelet and teddy bear?”

  The woman’s frown revealed that she was getting tired of Tuesday’s flippant attitude. “He took her out for a nice dinner then brought her back to a hotel room where some of his men had her lover waiting. He made her watch as they cut off the man’s head then did the same thing to her. That’s the man you think you know!”

  Tuesday thought back to when he said his best friend had died on February 14, because she found it odd that he would remember that date so specifically. Alarm bells were going off in her mind but she played it cool.

  “Then to add insult to injury,” the agent said, continuing the story, “he takes his best friend’s then three-month-old daughter and keeps her. Just changed her name and started raising her like she was his.

  “Now the bodies were never found so we can’t officially prove any of this, but let me ask you something. The little girl you had in the car with you, she stays with him, right? And isn’t she about five?” She gave Tuesday a facetious smile.

  Tuesday looked at her, trying not to give up anything with her eyes. “I don’t know. I babysit from time to time but I don’t know how old she is.”

  The agent took the photo of Marcus and slid it back into a folder. “You think this little routine is cute, but you’re really just being stupid, Ms. Knight, Ms. Green, or whatever else you want to call yourself. We caught you with thirteen illegal assault rifles and two point five million in undeclared cash. Who’s to say you’re not planning a terrorist attack? Under the Homeland Security Act you have no Constitutional rights; which means we can pretty much detain you indefinitely.”

  She leaned forward and gave Tuesday a glare that was meant to intimidate. “If you don’t start talking right now, you’re going to do so many years that little Danielle will be collecting a retirement pension before you get out.”

  Tuesday kept her game face on but inside she was shaking like stripper ass. She was having visions of being locked up in Guantanamo Bay being water-boarded and whipped by the military police until she was ninety.

  Just then an older white man came in and Tuesday thought they were about to double-team her again. To her it seemed like the walls were starting to close in and the air was starting to get thin. She didn’t know how much more of this she could take.

  Neither woman could believe it when he went behind Tuesday’s back to undo the handcuffs then said that she was free to go.

  Tuesday looked even more surprised than the black DEA agent, who screamed: “Free to go?! She’s a material witness in a pending federal investigation and a wanted suspect in a local homicide! On whose goddamned authority is she being released?!”

  “Agent Jackson!” the old man barked in a way that meant she should watch her tone. It also let Tuesday know that he was her boss.

  “It’s not like I want this either but there ain’t crap we can do about it! This came down from the top. The agency director himself called the section chief and the chief called me personally to order her release.”

  He glared at Tuesday with some combination of animosity and fear. “I don’t know who the hell she is, but she’s got to have some powerful friends in high places to pull that off!”

  When Tuesday walked out the front of the station, she was still massaging wrists that were sore from almost a whole day of being handcuffed. There were moments trapped in that little room when she felt like she would never see outside again, so she took a couple of deep breaths of the crisp night air.

  Tuesday didn’t know where Marcus was and hadn’t seen Danielle since her arrest. Agents pulled Danielle out of the Audi and drove her away in a different Yukon. When Tuesday inquired about her at the front desk, she was only told that the little girl had already been picked up by a guardian.

  Tuesday hardly knew where she was. She looked up and down the street, then scanned the surrounding neighborhood and saw nothing familiar. Tuesday figured she was somewhere close to Romulus but had no car, no purse, no phone, and no money. She came down the steps of the precinct and just stood there for a moment looking lost. She checked her watch and saw that it was close to midnight.

  She had nowhere to go and no way to get there but didn’t just want to stand in front of the police station. She feared they would change their mind or find some reason to re-arrest her so Tuesday started walking east.

  She was halfway up the block when a black sixty-two-inch Maybach pulled up next to her with the rear curtains closed. The same chauffeur wh
o drove the Rolls Royce for them in California jumped out and held open the door for her.

  Tuesday beamed a smile and sprinted to the car, but when she climbed in the backseat, it surprised her to see that the person sitting next to her was not Marcus. It was the handsome older gentleman who had been introduced as his father, Brandon King. He was G’d up in a suit with a cashmere overcoat and scarf.

  “I guess I’m not who you were hoping for,” he said, reading the disappointment on her face. Once the driver closed the door for Tuesday, he slipped back behind the wheel and they pulled off.

  She said, “So I guess you’re the powerful friend in high places that got me outta there.”

  He shook his head. “It wasn’t me. We both have a powerful friend. There are a few senators for whom Abel Incorporated is a major campaign contributor and he called in a favor. Of all the things a company can invest in, nothing beats a politician.”

  “You’re not really his father, are you?”

  “And you’re not really a nurse,” he said, smiling at Tuesday. “I’m just a humble employee. I’m on the board of Abel Incorporated and oversee the daily operations of his many businesses, but this is because he wants it that way. As you can guess, my boss likes to keep an extremely low profile. He’s a man who enjoys his anonymity.”

  “Where is he? And where is Danielle?”

  “Danielle is safe. And for obvious reasons he couldn’t be here. Certain things have come up that require him to leave the country for a little while.”

  “Why?” she asked, confused. “Why is all this shit coming down now?”

  He explained: “Ms. Knight, Abel Incorporated is a hundred percent legitimate and has been for several years, but before that my boss’s primary interest was not. There are certain people within the government who believe he’s still involved with his previous business. They can’t accept that he’s a changed man.”