“I ain’t hatin’, but pimping our son ain’t one of your, as you call them, investments,” Felisha said as she turned toward him and put her back against the door as she continued telling Mercy Bondz about himself as a father. “Noe-Noe can get killed in that thing or fuckin’ crippled!”
“Bitch, first lower your fuckin’ voice!” he checked her, pointing his cubby finger in her face. “Any muthafuckin’ body can be killed at any time, doing anything and everything. That boy can be killed just walking down the street, and I can’t be worrying about that. I can’t control that shit. But what I can control is how he lives the life I gave him. Lisha, it was my money that bought all of that pricey-ass equipment that your babying ass wanted for him back when you put him in them classes.”
“It was for his safety.”
“He would’ve been just as safe if you got that shit from Play It Again Sports. So he is an investment that I’m allowing to keep over 50 percent of his winnings,” he slipped up and told her, wishing he could take it back as soon as he did.
“Really, Mercy! How about I start buying your shit from the Goodwill and see how you like it?”
She could not help herself from laughing at the thought of her husband in anything low fashion or used.
“Ha ha, you’re funny.”
“So if you get 30 percent of his money, that means I get 50 percent of yours, since he’s half mine and it was my idea to put him in the classes. If that’s not reason enough for you, let me throw in that I’m your wife?”
“Girl, you lucky your pussy’s too good to share with your big-head ass,” he told her, pulling over and parking in front of their modest suburban south-side home.
“Ummmm, show me it’s good to you, daddy,” Felisha said as she pulled him into a passionate kiss, knowing that it would get deeper once she got him started.
They were making out in the front seat of the big SUV, like they used to do when they were young lovers, when suddenly the window on Felisha’s side imploded and sprayed her with bits of broken glass. She screamed loudly when she saw a shadowy figure reach through. It grabbed her and snatched her over to the opening by her shirt sleeve. Before Mercy Bondz could make a move for the gun that he kept between the seats, he was shot in the hip through his door.
Fame was not shooting to kill. He was just letting Mercy know not to make any sudden moves until Slim was through with him.
“Agggghhh!” Mercy cried out in pain, quickly abandoning his idea of going for the weapon. “You can have it all, just please don’t hurt my wife!” he pleaded, holding Felisha’s hand tightly while putting pressure on his wound.
“So this is your bottom bitch, huh?” Slim exclaimed, hitting her in her pretty face with a hard backhand. “I thought your punk ass only liked young hoes.”
Fame snatched open the driver’s door and demanded all of the cash the pimp had on him right there, because he did not trust walking either of them into the house. Fame was sure that a nice amount of cash and jewelry could be found in there to cover the personal job he was on for Slim’s family, but robbing people wasn’t really his thing, so he let it go.
“Here, take it and just go. That’s over fifteen Gs. Y’all can have this truck, too. Just let us go!” Mercy Bondz pleaded.
“Nawl, I don’t want your truck!” Slim barked before he reached over and caressed Felisha’s bruised cheek while flashing Mercy a deceitful grin. “I want you to know how it feels to have someone you love taken from you!” he told him before shooting Felisha in front of him. Her warm blood splattered onto Mercy’s face. “That’s for taking my lil’ cousins! Bitch!” Slim told him, and then pressed his gun to Felisha’s head and pulled the trigger, putting her out of her pain.
Fame saw that his friend was not in his right mind, so he quickly pumped two bullets into Mercy’s chest. He then fled the scene, but not before Fame caught movement in one of the home’s windows. Unknowingly, they were being watched by someone in the Bondz home after Fame’s very first gunshot.
THREE
As always, before going out for the evening, Felisha had gone over the emergency contact instructions with her part-time playthang and loyal live-in nanny, Heaven. Heaven was also one of Mercy Bondz’s working girls. Even though Heaven had not once sold her body for the pimp, she still belonged to him. The young whore was saved from the streets because Felisha took a liking to her the very first day she laid eyes on her. Even more so, after finding out that Heaven was drug-free, except for smoking a blunt or two here and there, Felisha told her husband she wanted Heaven to help her out around the house and with the children. It was always whatever Felisha wanted, she got with the seasoned pimp. So Mercy Bondz agreed and made Heaven their live-in nanny.
After putting the little ones down in bed for the night, Heaven quickly warmed herself up two big slices of pizza and rushed back into the family room to finish watching Noeekwol’s matches on the 65-inch HDTV that hung nicely over the polished stone gas fireplace. She curled up in the corner of the velvet La-Z-Boy sofa with her pizza leftovers in one hand and a cold wine cooler in the other. She smiled when she heard his signature hype music by Yo Gotti begin playing for the third time that evening. Heaven had watched Noeekwol win his first two fights with lightning-quick knockouts. She knew that if Noeekwol won his last match he would be crowned the new light heavyweight champ and have a shot at fighting in the Ultimate Fighter Champions’ steel cage.
Just like the two matches before, an official checked him over and then gave him the okay to enter the ring. The guy he was fighting was much bigger than the others.
“Oooh, hell no! That punk looks like he eats weights for fuckin’ dinner!” Heaven said aloud to the TV.
She did not believe the big European opponent was only seven pounds heavier than Noeekwol because the two were the same height. She figured they were trying to cheat with him.
Heaven sat on the edge of her seat watching Noeekwol stand toe to toe in the center of the ring in an all-out slugfest with the big man known as the Viking.
Then suddenly they tied up, both bleeding and both trying to get a break in the last few seconds of the clock. The bell rang, ending the first round. Heaven dashed out of the room and into the kitchen for another wine cooler and another slice of pizza, just in case. She made it back in front of the TV just as round two began.
Noeekwol was chopping on the Viking’s legs with hard leg kicks. Heaven knew the kicks would have broken down anyone else, but the Viking was still standing and trading jabs with Noeekwol while looking to take it to the floor. When Noeekwol went for a high round-house head kick, he slipped, lost his footing, and slammed to the floor hard. The Viking dove on top of him, but Noeekwol somehow managed to keep the big man in half-guard. They stayed down wrestling for better position. The Viking was tired, so much so that he made the mistake of easing up when he heard the tap of the two-minute warning. That was when he suddenly found himself in a savage armbar.
Heaven cheered as Noeekwol cranked on the arm with all he had in him, trying to make his opponent tap. He was about to give up when the Viking roared out in pain while simultaneously patting him on the shoulder. The referee rushed over and forced Noeekwol to let go of the man’s arm and declare that the match was over by tap out.
Heaven screamed with joy. She was happy for Noeekwol, when all of a sudden she heard screams followed by gunfire coming from right outside the house. She felt something was wrong, so she dropped to the floor and crawled over to the front window, just in time to witness two men standing outside of Mercy Bondz’s Escalade with guns pointed inside.
* * *
Social media friends were in a hot gossiping hysteria because sometime in the early morning hours, a well-known pimp and nightclub owner, along with his wife, a self-proclaimed same-sex rights activist, were murdered. Mercy and Felisha Bondz were found shot to death inside of their fancy Cadillac parked right in front of their home. The breaking news reports on the television showed all of the neighbors standing out on the sur
rounding lawns and sidewalks intrigued as they watched the police secure the appalling crime scene. The Bondz family’s humble six-bedroom, single-family home and SUV were almost surrounded on all sides by the bright flashing lights of the MPD squad vehicles, EMS forensics vans, and a bunch of TV news media crews. The busy area had been blocked off by yards of cold yellow police warning crime scene tape.
The execution-style homicide of the couple was now the fastest high-profile murder case in the city of Milwaukee, and the media liked nothing more than a violent murder mystery to follow. Besides, Mercy Bondz was the perfect victim to gossip about. The nightclub owner’s true identity was well known in the hoods. Mercy Bondz was a heartless pimp that used his nightclub as a front for his real business, which was sex-trafficking mostly sexy, curious teens. The pimp’s only kryptonite was his wife and bottom bitch. She was a sexy, quick-witted Angie Stone look-a-like with a major in business and the mother of his children. Mercy Bondz had fathered approximately ten children with a host of different young women, but the ones he had with Felisha he cherished the most because of her. She was the only woman who had ever truly stood up to Mercy, which is how she became his wife.
They left behind a son, Noeekwol, age twenty-four, and two daughters, ages nine and seven. And Mercy had another son, Beysik, age twenty-one, whose mother took her own life after she found out that he had married Felisha instead of her.
FOUR
Noeekwol proudly wore his well-deserved light heavyweight belts over his should-ers as he broke away from his own victory celebration to have a private party with an exotic blond Asian woman. The champ had the sexy ring girl believing she had been his lucky charm. The ring girl had given Noeekwol a congrat-ulatory hug and kiss on the cheek after winning his first match.
As soon as they stepped out of the building, he powered on his phone and was immediately flooded with a rush of missed calls, alerts, and text messages, many of which delivered the tragic news of his parents’ murders. The champ was so distraught by the news that he got into an Uber and left the beauty at the casino’s curb feeling confused and self-conscious. Noeekwol returned Heaven’s calls and then made arrangements for the next flight back to Mil-waukee.
* * *
Detective Tabitha Allison had just finished writing the last of her homicide case report when she was called out to the Bondz homicide scene. Tabitha Allison was an athletically built, Emily Blunt look-a-like in her early thirties. The detective was only running on three hours of sleep after the previous case that she and her absent partner, Morton Sadd, had just closed. Tabitha was starting to feel the effects of her sleep deprivation when her new commanding officer, Chief Ludwig, arrived on the scene. She knew he would be waiting on her to give him something to make himself look good. The commander needed some information to feed the people when he did his press conference. The media address was specifically done for those in the city who did not believe that black lives mattered to the police. All lives mattered to Chief Ludwig, and he was not going to take these murders lightly.
Tabitha did her on-scene inspection of the two victims’ bodies as they were found in the Cadillac. She took down detailed notes before allowing the forensics team to take photographs of the couple. The team then removed the Bondzes from inside the SUV to be photographed once again before they were hauled away to be autopsied. When the bodies were moved, the detective did a more thorough inspection of the Escalade, hoping to find something that could help shed light on what had taken place at the time of the ambush.
She next interviewed the neighbors who called in the shooting to 911. She started with the ones who had the best view of the SUV from their bedroom windows.
“You’re late!” Detective Allison barked at her partner when he finally decided to show up at the crime scene.
“Hey, I got here as fast as I felt I needed to be here!” Detective Sadd shot back at her, not liking the grumpiness he heard in Allison’s voice.
Detective Sadd reminded most people at first glance of the comedic actor Jack Black. He was almost forty-five years old and had been a MOD detective for two months shy of fifteen years.
“What?”
“I made a pit stop at the station to try to catch you there; and to my bad luck, you had gotten called out already,” he lied when he caught up to her.
“Sadd, what the fuck do you have a cell phone for if you never read your text messages? I sent you three texts telling you about this call and that I was already here.”
“I said I was sorry. Now can you please just drop it and fill me in on what we got here? I don’t know how your man deals with all of your damn complaining,” he said after flipping open a small leather-bound notepad as he prepared to jot down what she told him about the crime scene.
“Fuck you!” She frowned, storming off toward the Cadillac.
“Really, Allison? Are you being serious right now?”
Sadd did his best to stay in step with her. Tabitha stopped in her tracks and took a couple quick calming breaths before addressing Detective Sadd again. They had only been partners for about four months, and, so far, she hated working with him.
“You missed two dead bodies: one male, the other female. Both shot while sitting inside the Caddy over there,” she explained as she pointed to the SUV that was being loaded onto a flatbed. “They’re believed to have been married, and both lived there.”
Allison pointed once again, this time at the house where a couple of uniformed officers were walking in and out, across the street from where the two of them were standing.
“Wait. What did you say the vics’ names were?” he asked, with his dark blue eyes focused on the Cadillac Escalade sitting on twinkling gold-tipped chrome 26-inch rims.
“Markee and Felisha Lee Bondz,” she answered without having to look at her notes.
“Mercy fucking Bondz!” he exclaimed excitedly. “I thought I recognized that Caddy from somewhere,” he said with a smile. “So he finally got his ticket punched, that old piece of shit!”
“Okay, it’s good to know how you really feel, but I said Markee, not Mercy.”
“Yeah, I’m thinking they are one in the same because that fancy whore sled over there belongs to Mercy Bondz.”
“Okay! Good, you know one of the vics. So that should make my job a little bit easier,” she added as she pulled out her pen and pad. “Tell me everything you can remember about him.”
“Well, one of our vics is a pimp that went by the name of Mercy Bondz. I know the Feds have been trying to bust him on human trafficking charges for about a year now—maybe longer. I know he has a son that I really believe we need to locate and get off the streets right away, if we don’t want to be picking up any more bodies anytime soon.”
“Do you got a name for the son so we can put out a warrant for him? If not, we can get it from someone inside the house.”
“Nope. Damn! I can’t . . . I can’t think of it right now,” Sadd responded, frowning as he racked his brain to remember. “But Allison, in my defense, it’s a really weird one. I wrote it down at the time, but this is a new notebook.”
“It’s okay. Let’s just get it when we do the interviews with the family members inside.”
“Wait, you didn’t do that first?”
“I saved that for last, because I was waiting for you!” she shot at him before she marched off in the direction of the house.
Once they were inside the Bondz family home, the detectives met Heaven, and she gave them two names before she stopped talking and shut down. The name of her boss’s eldest son was the first one, and the second was the name of the family lawyer. She made sure the detectives understood that she knew her rights and was not allowed to continue talking to them without either of them present. Heaven then asked them to leave the house until one or both of the men she had mentioned made it to the house.
“What the hell was that? I’m not going to just fucking sit waiting outside until some sleazebag lawyer gets here or that asshole son returns from fucki
ng Arizona!” Sadd exclaimed when they got outside. “She has our cards. We can come back later! Come on, Allison, you know I’m right. And it looks like you’re moving like a zombie right now because you’re so tired.”
“Okay, when you’re right, you’re right!” she conceded with a telling yawn. “I’ll call in the warrant for the son and then call it a night and go home.”
“No, Supergirl, you’ve done enough here. I was the last one late to the scene, so it’s only right I handle the rest. Go home and get some Zs. I will call you as soon as he’s in custody and not before.”
“Morton, the only way I’m going to agree to that is if you can tell me the name she gave us,” she said, waiting with a silly grin on her face for him to answer.
“His name?” he repeated, fishing out his notebook from his pocket. “I got it right here,” he retorted while quickly scanning the pages. “Noeekwol Bondz,” he said softly, and then again louder for her. “This name doesn’t ring a bell, but I got it. So, there, are you happy?”
“No! Not so fast. Spell it for me please?”
“Are you being serious right now? Come on, I just read it off to you from my notes. Don’t you think I had to spell it to write it? I mean, I had to graduate some schools, too, to get this job,” he joked.
“Yeah, I don’t know. I’m still in the air about that. I may need to see your diploma,” Allison shot back while still grinning. “Partner, what I want to know is how you spelled it.”
She already knew he was not paying attention when she asked Heaven to spell the son’s name for them. Sadd was too busy checking out one of TMJ 4’s female news reporter’s ass as she did her job in front of the camera.
“I’m not going to play with you on this, Allison. Either you go home, or you can stay here. I’m done being Mr. Nice Guy.”
Scarred Knuckles Page 2
