“I uploaded the traffic cam footage to the system. This shit is confusing, the whole fucking thing.”
I pulled up the video from the night of the accident. The car she was driving pulled up to the light before getting on the freeway. Several work vans and a truck followed her. There weren’t any work vans out, usually out at night. These happened to also be black, brown, and a dusty green color instead of white. They were old, but you could tell they had been modified. The vans started to weed out the other cars. The truck moved in front. The vans lined up, and she was boxed in. It happened in the blink of an eye. The traffic cleared, and they were on the highway alone. The truck in front stopped short, with nowhere to swerve; she slammed into the back of it.
The rest of the vans guided the disabled car off the road. A crew of a few men jumped out of each van and converged on the vehicle with semi-automatic weapons drawn. I could only imagine what was going through her mind. There was a pause in action after the driver’s side door was opened. What made them break before taking her out of the car? There was a five-minute pause between the time they pulled off the road and before they took her body out of the car. She was either knocked out or playing into her situation; she never moved. The crew from the left side slid in, took her body out, put her in the back of this dark brown van, and drove away. Then the crew from the truck pushed the car into the back, and they drove off. The last two teams stayed around and cleaned up any debris from the crash. Once it was cleaned, they left. I skipped through the camera systems to find the dark brown van or which way it went. It seemed to have vanished.
“Do you see what I am saying? How the fuck did a whole van disappear? More importantly- why the pause before they took her out of the car? They hesitated.”
“I don’t know why they paused. They are definitely communicating with someone else. We know someone made the call,” Blacked rubbed his chin in thought.
“I don’t know whose car this is. I tried to get a closer shot at the plate, but I couldn’t make it out.”
“Send it over to Jacob; I know he can clean it up.”
“Done. Now, what do we know for sure at this point?” I sent the files to Jacob.
“The police don’t know shit. She was kidnapped. At this point, we can presume it was the Tanazinte Family.”
“We, also, know some kind of deal went wrong. Is she part of some side deal? Is she freelancing and not telling me about it?”
“That would explain why she is driving a car you don’t know anything about. She may be doing extra work on the side. Maybe it did catch up with her.”
“How the fuck could she hide something like this from me? We have a family.”
“She wouldn’t want to put you in danger, Kae. So if Kari was doing this, then she didn’t want you to get caught in the middle,” He rubbed my shoulders.
“She knows damn well I will go through hell and back for her. It wouldn’t matter what happened. So…”
“Kari knows what you’ll do. We know she is alive out there somewhere and waiting on us to find her and bring her home.”
My personal phone rang. I damn sure didn’t want to answer, but I didn’t have a choice. We still had to deal with each other.
“What do you want?”
“Why you always talkin’ hostile to me? Huh? You never say nothin’ nice,” Gio’s voice wafted through and irritated me instantly.
“Boy, what do you want?”
“It’s been over a week, and I want to see my kids. Where they at? I’m coming to pick them up,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone.
“Gio, now ain’t the time to piss me off! Ain’t nobody here to save yo’ ass,” I growled between my gritted teeth.
“Ain’t nobody got time for your threats and shit. I want to take them away from the craziness they have been surrounded by lately,” he popped his gum in my ear.
“Why didn’t I think of some shit like that a fucking week ago!”
“Man, why you always playing games with me, yo? They got a family and they going to be with me! I don’t give a flyin’ fuck what you or DaKari thought!”
“’Cause you’re a joke, Gio.” I hung up.
He was a fucking joke if I had ever heard one. I could punch him as the punchline if I could. DaKari was his safety net, and without her, who was there to stop me? I needed to stay focused on getting her back, and I didn’t need him to distract me. Black gave me a bottle of water, and I calmed down.
“He’s a piece of work if I do say so myself. You can’t keep him from his kids forever, though. He could make a lotta noise, and that isn’t what we need right now,” he sighed.
“He can make as much noise as he wants. He can be silenced too.”
“They have been through enough. You want to kill him too? You’re a cold woman.”
“No one would miss him but his mama. And she would be paid handsomely. I’m sure she’ll get over it quickly.” I rolled my eyes and sipped my water.
“Damn. Would you kill me?”
“Don’t ask stupid questions. I got shit to do,” I faced my computer.
“Promise I won’t ask again. I’m going to go meet up with Dallas and Houston and see what else they may have heard.”
The phone rang, but this time it was the work phone on my desk. We both saw the caller ID say Broker II. I peered at him to see what his face said. He shifted his gaze for a minute and then smiled at me. He knew I would answer. He shook his head, chuckled, and climbed the stairs to the first floor and left by the garage. I answered the line and waited to hear what Broker II offered.
“Name, Simone Whitley. Price, $350,000. Crime, Confidential. Confirm by yes or no,” a female voice said.
I paused to think if I really should take a job or try to find my wife. Could I focus on the job? The bills still had to be paid, and these houses don’t pay for themselves.
“Yes.”
Within the next five minutes, half of the fee was deposited into my account. A file with the MI (mission information) came in my email. I opened the file about Miss Simone Whitley. She was from England, raised around the world due to her diplomat mother. I’d heard of her several times but nothing on this level.
“What have you turned into, Miss Whitley? You must have crossed someone in the worst way. They want you gone,” I continued to read.
She attended some of the best schools in the United States but had no degree. She grew up with the children of presidents, kings, queens, and then some. Miss Whitley, it seemed, loved the company of young women. Not illegal, but just barely above the line. She loved every color, race, and size. Simone fancied herself some kind of Madam. Even though she had a love for women, she still kept a warm fire for men. Sometimes it roared, and occasionally it crackled this fire. Of course, she wasn’t dumb enough to charge for the ladies. But it wouldn’t be hard for money to magically disappear in her world. Miss Whitley had disturbed a member of the Canadian Legislative Assembly. Someone thought Simone would expose a dirty little secret, and someone wanted her to disappear forever.
The only thing that mattered to me was the mission. Simone’s beautiful crystal blue eyes sparkled at me from her picture, and I had to decide how to take the light out of them. Simone stayed in British Columbia for the most part, and she lived in the best hotels in town. There was a loft in her bodyguard’s name where she had been seen. It’s a place I needed to check out for myself. My mind clicked into place what would be required for this mission. The second basement where we kept weapons and other trinkets of the job was the best place to think. As I came into the room, the lights automatically came on, and the room lit up with white light. If a gun could be broken down and carried in a case, it was on my wall. I had the choice to hit from over 300 yards away or to walk up and take you out with a simple pen gun.
There were natural poisons in pens, darts, pills, and small vials. My attitude was always the same: different weapons for different jobs. Guns couldn’t solve every problem; sometimes, you had to get creative. I liked to
be creative. Everyone couldn’t have a hole blown in his or her ass. I took a tablet off the wall, pulled up the Whitley case, and walked around the weapons room.
She was having a party the following week at the Empress of Oak Bay. It would be a pre-birthday celebration in the split-level penthouse suite. This would need to be done swiftly and quietly. My medicine cabinet, as I called it, revealed shelves of poisons in different forms. The drops were nice and neat. Two vials and some capsules will do the trick—a couple of .45’s and silencers, a couple boxes of ammo just in case. In the closet, a winter dump bag was ready to go. It was filled with basic supplies for a trip into a cold country: boots, parka, a couple of thermals, gloves, those sorts of things. The guns were packed in their travel cases. These cases had secret compartments—a natural place to hide the poison. My man, Ernie, was the pilot for the job. He would have me in and out without a trace. My concentration was broken when the business phone rang.
“You sure you should be working right now?” he asked as soon as I picked up.
“What should I be doing, Simeon? Sitting on my ass waiting... I still got to work,” I said with an attitude.
“Wait, hold up. Good morning, Kae. I’m sorry,” he said in a fatherly tone.
“Good morning. Apology accepted. Now, you were saying?”
“Nice to hear you smile. I saw your name on the roster this morning. I had to call; I couldn’t wait until the sun came.”
“I still have to make a living. I have four kids to provide for. Have you heard anything?” I grabbed my bag and case and went back to the office above.
“We are talking five million south. Word is, the money and the jewels are missing.”
“Listen to me and listen to me well: Kari is alive. Someone from the Tanzanite Family kidnapped her,” I put my bag down by the next set of steps and sat at my desk.
“She is!? Well, shit, that is more like it! I guess she’s the ransom. When did Kari get into dealing in jewels? It doesn’t seem like her thing, you know what I mean?” the wind whipped by his open car window.
“There are a lot of things that I don’t understand. Trust me, I will put it together. Call Black and talk to him to see what he has found out. I’ll catch up with y’all later.”
“Does he know you took this job?” he asked.
“Yes, but I don’t think he likes it. He left a little bit ago,” I pulled out a fake passport and put it in my bag along with some Canadian cash.
“I had to know if you were ok to take on a job. I ain’t trying to stop you. That would be crazy. I had to hear it out of your mouth.” Again with the fatherly thing.
“I can’t sit around waiting for clues to come in. It would drive me crazy, and you know it. I keep working and moving, and I will be fine. I love you, Simeon.” I hung up.
I sat at my desk and stared at a picture of Kari and me in New Orleans for Mardi Gras ’03. We looked so happy; I remembered being happy. We were building an excellent reputation in the community. We didn’t have any kids, and us being together hadn’t come across our minds. Kari was my best friend and the best business partner I’d ever had. Our eyes were innocent even though we had been cleaning up messes a while by then.
She and Gio had recently met. I met Black in middle school, we happened to reconnect out in the field. We weren’t working for opposite sides, and I was thankful. I was amazed how Black and I managed to end up basically in the same line of work. Gio wasn’t in our line of work. He was a planner, promoter, and find-it-man. If you needed it, he could find it for the right price. He made good money to set up safe meetings back then between the high rollers.
He didn’t necessarily mistreat DaKari, but he couldn’t have been my man. Every relationship goes through shit. You choose to stick it out or let it go. Black and I did several times. How we ended up with twin girls in the midst of it still baffled me. I wouldn’t have had anyone else be their daddy, however.
On the other hand, Gio wasn’t the model I would’ve wanted, but we wouldn’t know that until after Kari’s twin boys came. The boys looked like Kari, and that’s when the bullshit started. The boys had Gio’s golden eyes that shine like a fire lit by the sun. It wasn’t good enough for him. My girls had their daddy’s dimples and long jet black curly hair; that’s about it. The rest of them are me. Black, on the other hand, wasn’t even close to being ready to be a daddy. He even told me he wasn’t sure he could be there 100%. I was pissed and broke up with him.
I didn’t want some half-assed man in and out of their lives. I told him not to come back until they’re 18. When they were grown and could choose for themselves. He stayed gone the whole pregnancy, and since Kari and I were pregnant at the same time, we grew closer. We leaned hard on each other. I was scared to have a baby in our line of work. Who did that type of shit? We both thought we were crazy. We decided we would make it work and do whatever we had to. We were so young and stubborn back then. Now, we’re a little older and stubborn. We saved up enough money and opened The Queen’s Cleaning Service. We became bosses, and we could take jobs when we wanted to. We didn’t have to answer to anyone, and we could live our life on our terms. We bought an old house way outside of the city and had it renovated.
Black worked with us, but he had his own recovery company. He took the bodies that the cleaners killed back to where they should be. He either disposed of them or performed whatever the particular contract called for. The other side of his business cleaned the location. Black had a Master’s degree in chemistry, chemical engineering, and math. Microscopically not even the best forensic science team would be able to solve a crime he had cleaned up after. Being this good is what got him very much respected in this business.
Things for Gio and Kari took another twist when she started making more money than him. For him, it had become an ego thing. He didn’t like the fact that the mother of his children, he finally claimed, made more money than him. She had better connections than him, and her reputation as a top-notch cleaner was respected through the community. He, on the other hand, lost his touch. The times changed, and the need for his services dwindled. Instead of shifting with the tide, he seemed to be stuck where he was.
Kari was my best friend. Whatever she needed to make her happy, I wanted to give. She was determined to make it work with him and have the family she always dreamed of. The kind of family with two working parents, vacations out of the country, and road trips to crazy tourist places. A mother and father who loved each other more than life itself and one big, cohesive, loving unit. She wanted the boys to have a father in their life and to see the love she didn’t get to see.
Me and Black, on the other hand, were rocky but did our best at the time. When he left, I prepared myself to never see him again. He made a choice, and we weren’t it. Then the weirdest shit happened about two weeks before the girls were due and two months after the boys were born. Black showed up at my front door with his arms full of baby things for the girls and a shit load of more stuff in his car. He dropped it at my feet, fell to his knees, kissed my belly, and cried. The twins swirled around at his touch. He apologized for leaving me and how selfish he had been. He did love me and wanted to be a family. He even proposed and gave me a beautiful ring. I turned him down on the proposal but said yes to the family. I kept the ring though, it was huge. Black moved in with us, and somehow we were a perfect little family. Gio wasn’t happy about Black moving in mainly because Kari wouldn’t let him move in. Gio started to act out. He finally proposed to Kari, and she said yes. It was the final step she needed to have her picture-perfect family.
Once Kari moved out, our lives changed a lot. We didn’t or couldn’t see each other every day like before. It felt like we were living two separate lives for the first time in a very long time. Black said we were lost without each other. We would catch each other in the office sometimes. We didn’t have as much girl time as before. When we did have a chance to spend time, Gio acted like he had to make his presence known. We would be talking alone, and the
n he would come around being loud and, in general, an asshole. So many times, I wanted to throw a penknife in his esophagus. Kari redirected my attention. Sometimes she would give me a look, and I’d let it go. He constantly tested the fine line with me. When he was drunk, it was worse.
The more successful DaKari became, the more he drank and resented her. He stopped work altogether. His reason: why should he work when Kari makes enough for every fucking body? We tried to hire him to be a reconnaissance man. His job was to scout out targets, build reports on their maneuvers, take pictures and report back. It was supposed to relieve the workload at the time. Gio was too lazy to do the job. More times than not, we had to go behind him and do the work ourselves. The work flowed in, and we rode the wave. I never thought so many people would need to have someone killed before. I grew colder; nothing seemed to matter. Get the job done, go home, and love on my kids was the goal. They were the ones who kept me sane and grounded. If I didn’t have them, I might not have maintained some empathy. Targets were a casualty of their personal war. I was merely the landmine.
Kari never lost her warm heart. She said a prayer after the job was done. It was for the soul of that person. She prayed they did better in their next life. I always wondered what my next life could be. After this one, it has got to be more simple. She was the one who got me to believe in past lives and that kinda stuff. I knew there was a God. Heaven and hell were a myth to me. Hell was reality, and heaven was what you made it in my book. She was right. God gave us chances to get it right. Kari’s memories motivated me to get this job done and get back home to find her. I uploaded some files to my tablet and locked down the system. Grabbed my coat and bag and went upstairs to the kitchen. I made a salad and grabbed a bottle of grape juice.
“Hey, Ernie, my man, how are you?”
“Dollface, I’m still trying to spend my money.” He laughed and coughed that smoker’s cough.
“I need to get on the shore of the upper harbor of British Columbia. Close to the bridge as possible. Can you do that for me?”
Tears of an African violet Page 6
