The Safe House

by Kiki Swinson

  “Think he know us?” Rich sounded worried.

  “I don’t know, dude. But let’s get out of here before they start fucking with us,” Mike insisted, and then he continued to make his way out of the 7-Eleven parking lot.

  While he drove away with caution, I watched the car with the agents inside while they were in view. The farther Mike drove away from them, the more relieved I became knowing that they weren’t following us. Rich seemed more relieved than I was. “Thought I was gonna have to blast those niggas!” Rich announced.

  “Me too,” Mike agreed.

  “Damn right! I won’t let them niggas take me down, especially after Hitler just hit me off with that pill package.”

  “You got that shit on you now?” Mike wanted to know.

  “Yeah, where else is it gon’ be? The nigga stopped by the spot and gave it to me right before you got there.”

  “What he want back from that joint he gave you?”

  “A grand.”

  “Damn! That’s it?”

  “You damn right! That nigga knows what time it is. He knows I be putting in that work. And I ain’t never been short when I gave him his dough,” Rich bragged.

  “Remember he gave you that bad shit two weeks ago. Yo, Rich, you acted like you was about to kill that nigga!” Mike joked.

  “Yeah, I almost gave that nigga the business when he did that shit. But when he kept telling me he was sorry that he didn’t know and took the price down, I couldn’t do nothing but let ’em slide. I did tell ’em not to play with me like that again, because having that bad dope can fuck up your clientele. The worst thing that could happen to you in the hood is to be known for having bad dope. And you know that I ain’t trying to have that shit lingering over my head. And that’s why he made shit right between us. He knows I’m that nigga!” Rich boasted proudly.

  “He didn’t want you to pull that strap out either,” Mike continued to joke.

  “Nah! He sure didn’t.” Rich chuckled.

  I sat in the background and listened to these idiots talk about how much respect they got in the hood and how ruthless they were. And that cats in the streets know they be hustling hard. Those two even talked about how many hos they were fucking. Rich acted like he had the most women chasing him to give him the pussy, and Mike complained about how much his girlfriend was getting on his nerves. The way this borderline fat boy looked, he had no room to talk about how his girlfriend stressed him out. In my opinion, he needed to constantly remind her about how good he had it. Because if I was the only chick left in the world, I still wouldn’t fuck him. No way!

  Rich was also boasting about how well a chick named Precious sucked his dick. I mean, he was really rooting for this woman, telling Mike that hands down Precious sucked his dick better than any of the chicks he ever had. The downside to her working her magic on him was that she worked all the time. “Man, a couple nights I called her and told her that I wanted to see her. But she told me that she was at work. So I told her to tell her boss that she had a family emergency and that she had to leave, and she told me that the only way she’d do it is if I pay her for the hours she’s gonna lose. So I told her ass, hell nah! I don’t pay for pussy. Then she said, ‘Okay, I gotta get back to work,’ and then she hung up.”

  “She hung up on you?”

  “Yeah, that ho hung up on me.”

  “And what’cha do?”

  “I didn’t do shit! After she hung up, I called the next bitch!” Rich bragged. “And guess what?”

  “What?”

  “When I told the ho I wanted to see her, she said a’ight and brought her big-booty ass over to the spot. And I fucked the shit out of her ass too. I took my frustrations of that first chick out on the one that came through and let a nigga like me bust two nuts. I punished her ass!”

  Listening to Rich tell his story about how he treated the women he slept with immediately made me think about how Terrell used to treat me. And the more Rich bragged about how disrespectful he was to the women in his life, it brought back bad memories of the horrible things Terrell did to me.

  I remembered the first signs that he was cheating on me. He went from laying his cell phone around wherever he felt like it, and would answer all his calls in front of me, to either turning his cell phone off completely or he’d leave it in his car while we were chilling in my apartment. I didn’t say anything about it at first. I didn’t want to be that jealous girlfriend all guys run from. But then he started being blatant about it, by going outside to talk on his phone and not answering his phone at long hours of the day when I called him. And from there, it got messier. One night he and I had just come from the movies. On our way to my apartment, he decided to stop at the BP to get gas. When he got out of the car to go inside the store to pay for it, he forgot that he had his cell phone on his lap, so it fell down on the floor. I started to tell him that he dropped his cell phone, but then I thought, how would I find out who he’s cheating with, if I didn’t have the evidence? It was now or never.

  As soon as he stepped foot into the store, I snatched his phone from the floor. When I pressed the Home button, the screen lit up and I was freaking devastated to see that this nigga had activated the thumbprint function so I couldn’t get into his phone. There was no doubt in my mind that this nigga was cheating on me. I was so upset that I couldn’t log in to his phone.

  But let me tell you how God works.

  While I was sitting there with his phone in my hand, the damn thing started to ring. My heart did a nosedive into the pit of my stomach when the name Simone was displayed on the screen of his phone. I didn’t hesitate to answer the call. Simone and I had a very quick conversation about Terrell, because when he realized that he didn’t have his cell phone on him, I saw him race out of the store and start running toward his car. Before he was able to open the car door and snatch his phone from my ear, Simone told me that they had been screwing around with each other for a couple of months. She told me where they met, how often they saw each other, and she even told me that they were talking about getting married. I swear, my whole world was turned upside down when she told me that. I remember Terrell yelling at me, asking me why I answered his phone. And how fucked up I was for doing it. I mean, he really turned that thing around on me like I was the one who had cheated. He was a piece of work.

  From there, my insecurity level plummeted and I began to question if I was pretty enough to be with him. At the end of those thoughts, my answer was always no. To prevent myself from wallowing in the unhappy life I had with Terrell, I decided that it was time to take myself from that toxic relationship some months later. What was unfortunate was that when he noticed that I had officially left him, he started stalking and became physically aggressive toward me. I wished that things hadn’t gone the way they did, because if he would’ve just left me alone, he’d be alive today.

  20

  TRAP HOUSE

  Mike finally pulled into the neighborhood where he and Rich sold drugs. “Home, sweet home!” Rich commented after pulling up on the block where his trap house was located. We were on Bland Street in the Norview area of Norfolk. Like on all the blocks in the hood, you had to have a few cats on the corner watching out for the narcos when drugs are being sold on that street. They were called the lookouts. When we passed them, I knew the drug spot was only yards away from the corner.

  “Time to make the donuts,” Rich commented after Mike brought the car to a complete stop. After Rich closed the passenger-side door, Mike got out of the car next and I followed suit. I gave this old-ass brick duplex a look and was instantly grossed out with how it looked. Trash cluttered the small parking area. The smell of urine dominated the amount of trash we had to walk through to get to the front door.

  Rich walked ahead of Mike and me, so he entered into the house first. I walked into the house second and Mike followed me. “Make sure you lock that door,” Rich told him.

  “I’m on it,” Mike assured him.

  “You can sit righ
t here.” Rich pointed toward a love seat that looked really dingy and grimy. I’m talking juice stains, pizza sauce stains, other food stains; you know it, it was there. I started to protest because how filthy the sofa looked, but I knew I wasn’t in any position to win this fight. He didn’t need me; I needed him. So I zipped my mouth and kept my thoughts to myself. The television had already been turned on, when we walked through the door, so I just sat there and started watching it.

  “Want some juice or something?” Rich asked me while he walked toward the kitchen.

  “No, I’m good,” I told him. But in reality, I was kind of thirsty. I just didn’t want anything from his house. It looked like a hoarder was living here. Shit was all over the place.

  “You sure? We got Patrón,” Mike said as he walked behind Rich.

  “Yeah, I’m sure.”

  “You hungry? ’Cause we can put a frozen pizza in the oven.” Mike was pressing the issue.

  “Yo, nigga, leave her alone. She’ll let us know if she wants something,” Rich interjected before I could even open my mouth to answer Mike’s question.

  “Yeah, a’ight,” Mike replied, brushing Rich off by shaking his head.

  I watched Rich and Mike both as they were in the kitchen. Rich took a small aluminum foil–wrapped item from his front pants pocket. The package item was about the size of the palm of his hand. After he had it in his hand, he placed it on the table and took a seat down on one of the kitchen chairs. “Mike, hand me that scale from the drawer,” Rich instructed Mike.

  Mike grabbed a digital scale from the drawer next to the stove and handed it to Rich. After Rich took the scale, he placed it down on the table in front of him. There was a plate, clear sandwich bags, and razor blades already on the table. When Rich dumped out the contents inside the aluminum onto the plate, I instantly recognized it. This negro was selling crack cocaine.

  “That shit looks like a missile,” Mike commented after he took a seat across from Rich.

  “Yeah, I’m only gonna cut up twenty blocks,” Rich told Mike as his razor cut the first rock.

  Mike chuckled. “That shit looks like ten block.”

  “I bet’cha I get twenty for it.”

  “What’cha wanna bet?” Mike challenged Rich.

  “Nigga, I’m not betting you for real! Look, if they don’t wanna give me twenty, then I’m gonna tell ’em to get out of my damn face and haul ass!”

  Mike continued to chuckle. “Man, you’re a funny-ass dude!”

  We hadn’t been in Rich’s trap house a good ten minutes before people started knocking on the door. Mike got up from the kitchen chair to answer the front door. “Who is it?” he asked.

  “It’s Ray-Ray. I gotta sixty sell,” I heard the guy say from the other side of the front door.

  “A’ight, hold up,” Mike said, and then he walked back to the kitchen. The guy Ray-Ray stood at the front door and waited for Mike to come back. The moment Mike approached Rich, he dropped the money down on the table.

  “Who that at the door?” Rich asked.

  “Ray-Ray. Somebody out there wanna spend that whole sixty dollars.”

  While Mike was conducting the exchange with Rich, this Ray-Ray character stood at the front door and started eyeing me up and down. I couldn’t get a good look at him because it was night out. But I heard him as he began to flirt with me. “How you doing?” he asked.

  “I’m fine,” I replied nonchalantly.

  “Got a man?” he asked me.

  “Yes, I do,” I lied.

  “Well, can we at least be friends?”

  Before I got a chance to answer him, Mike interrupted the conversation. “Ray-Ray, cut it out. She doesn’t want your crackhead ass.”

  Ray-Ray chuckled. “Come on, man, why you cock-blocking? I was about to ask her if I could take her out.”

  Mike handed him the drugs. “Take this shit and get out of here.”

  “Mike, I thought you were my boy?” Ray-Ray laughed and then he ran off.

  After Mike closed the front door, he looked at me and said, “The day in the life of a crackhead.”

  I didn’t respond. I just shook my head with disgust.

  Mike headed back into the kitchen. He sat back down at the table and started having small talk with Rich. They talked about how much money Rich was going to make once he sold all the crack cocaine. They also talked about how they could change the way they distributed their drugs too—only allowing one drug runner to come to the house. This way, they could eliminate a lot of foot traffic. Mike agreed.

  Once all the dope was cut up and packaged, Mike rolled up a blunt filled with some strong-smelling weed. Immediately after he rolled it up, he lit it, took the first drag from it, and then passed it to Rich. Ten seconds later, Mike released the smoke from his nose. “Now that’s some good shit right here,” Mike commented.

  “Yeah, this shit is a missile,” Rich agreed after he blew the smoke from his mouth.

  As Rich passed the blunt back to Mike, someone knocked on the front door again. Mike stood up from the kitchen chair and walked back to the front door. “Who is it?” he asked.

  “It’s Monty and Jason,” I heard a guy say.

  Mike opened the front door and in came two thug-looking cats. They were both dressed in blue jeans, Michael Jordan sneakers, and hoodies. They spoke to me as they walked by me. I spoke back and turned my attention toward the television.

  They didn’t notice it, but I started watching them both from the corner of my eye. And when they entered into the kitchen, I was able to get a full view of them. Both were fairly decent-looking guys. They were around the same height, so one didn’t stand out more than the other, expect that one wore a Caesar haircut and the other one red-colored dreadlocks. They even possessed that bad-boy exterior. Rich called out the guys’ names and they appeared before him in the kitchen. “What’s good, Monty?” Rich asked the guy with the Caesar haircut as he shook his hand. The guy with the red dreadlocks walked into the kitchen behind his friend. Rich shook his hand second. “Jason, when you gon’ take that bright-ass color out’cha head? You know your ass is hot. Every policeman in Norfolk know who your ass is,” Rich joked.

  “That’s why I wear my hoodie all the time,” Jason told him.

  “It’s too late now,” Rich replied.

  “Nigga, never mind about my hair, pass me that damn blunt,” Jason continued, and reached for the blunt. Rich handed it to him.

  Mike, Rich, and Monty made small talk as they watched Jason take a long puff from the blunt. As soon as he took the blunt away from his mouth, he passed it to Monty. And then Monty passed it to Mike. They started a rotation while they joked with one another. They started talking about the drought of cocaine they were experiencing and how it was important not to run out of product. Then the conversation’s topic changed, and I was the topic.

  “Yo, who that chick in there with?” Jason asked Rich and Mike.

  “Ask him,” I heard Mike say.

  “That’s your girl, Rich?” Jason pressed the issue.

  “Nah, nigga, she’s my meal ticket to some Arab cats with a lot of fucking money,” Rich told him after he took another puff from the blunt and passed it on to Mike.

  “What’cha gonna do, rob ’em?” Monty asked.

  “You damn right! I’m tired of these out-of-town cats coming to my city and taking money out my pockets. It’s time that they start paying restitution,” Rich expressed.

  “Yeah, bro, I’m wit’cha on that,” Jason agreed.

  “Yeah, me too,” Monty agreed.

  “Need any help? Because you know me and Monty got yo back,” Jason offered.

  “Say no more,” Rich told him after he blew more marijuana smoke from his mouth.

  “So, when you trying to do this?” Monty asked.

  “I gotta check out a few things first. I’ll know by tomorrow night,” I heard Rich say.

  “What’s her name?” Jason repeated his earlier question.

  “Misty,” Ric
h told him.

  “She got a man?” Jason wouldn’t let up.

  “Ask her,” Rich insisted.

  Seconds later, Jason came walking toward me. “Hi, Misty,” he said.

  I dreaded looking in his direction, but I did it anyway. “Hello,” I replied.

  “Hey, wait, did that nigga just say her name was Misty?” Monty interjected. When he did that, I knew he knew something about either the pharmacy robbery gone bad, or he knew what I did to Terrell, which was something I would continue to deny doing.

  “Yeah,” I heard Rich say.

  “Yo, is that the chick that supposed to have killed that nigga Terrell?” Monty wouldn’t let up.

  “What’cha watching?” he asked as he took a seat on the chair next to me.

  There was a commercial running, so I gave him a pass. “Family Feud,” I replied quickly, because I wanted to hear what the guys were talking about in the kitchen, especially since they were talking about me.

  “Yeah, that’s her,” Rich confirmed Monty’s question.

  “Got a man?” Jason asked.

  “Yes,” I lied. I said it as quietly as I could, so I could hear the dialogue between Rich and the new guy Monty.

  “Well, the next time you see him, tell him his services are no longer needed because I’m gonna take you from him?” he commented.

  “I know a couple of niggas looking for her,” I heard Monty say to them. And instantly I became panicked. All I could think about was how that guy Monty was going to put the word out that he knew where I was and collect on the bounty, once he delivered on the goods, which was me. “That bitch April told the police that that chick in there murdered that nigga, and that April and Tedo cut up his body and then they got rid of it. The same niggas got two chicks in jail that’s gonna murk that bitch April. And they said that if Tedo hadn’t gotten shot in that shoot-out, he would’ve gotten dealt with too.”

  “Did you hear me?” Jason asked me. He knew I wasn’t listening to him, but he had no idea why.

  “No, I’m sorry. My mind just drifted off for a minute,” I told him. But inside my head, I did more than that. The words that had come out of Monty’s mouth not only affected me emotionally, but they affected me mentally. It was hard sitting here, trying to answer this guy’s questions. Whether he knew it or not, my life was on the line, and for the moment, his friend Monty had my life in his hands.