A Sticky Situation (27 page)

“What’s going on?”

“Man, this new chick I’m fucking with wants me to go in with her to start a business and she needs for me to hit her off with my half. I’m trying to scrape up all the dough I can.”

“How much you gotta come up with?”

“Just $30,000.”

“You ain’t got that?”

“I did. But I fucked around trying to play Big Willy and lost most of it at the Hard Rock Cafe Casino in Hollywood, Florida a few days ago.”

“Damn son, that wasn’t a smart move.”

“I know. And right now I’m paying for it, too.”

“A’ight. Well, come by my crib later and I’ll set you straight.”

“What time?”

“Come by about three o’clock.”

“A’ight.”

After I hung up, I sat on the edge of my bed and wondered if Mike bought all that shit I was feeding him. All the excitement in his voice had me believing that he was looking forward to making new moves, so I could only assume that he took the bait. Time would tell, though.

Other than that, I could only wonder how much dough he was supposed to be pushing in my direction for that hit I put on Jay. I knew that nigga better not come at me with a little bit of pocket change, because I would definitely tell that nigga where to stick that shit. Murdering niggas nowadays paid anywhere from ten to one hundred grand, depending on how important that cat was. Regular niggas could get slaughtered for less than five grand, but I wasn’t wasting my time with those types, because they weren’t worth it. By the time you suited up, scoped out the area you were going to murder the nigga at, and then executed the mission, you felt just like you just went to war. For that little bit of dough, it wasn’t worth it because you had to take so many risks. I would stick with the big dawgs and leave the smaller jobs for the amateurs.

Before I knew it, three o’clock was there in a flash, and I was right at Mike’s doorstep a minute after. Lacy answered the door with a bright smile, which made me wonder if she knew how crooked her husband was. She seemed like a sweet and laid back type of chick. Lacy was always laced up in Christian Louboutin or something by Chloë or Oscar de la Renta. She was one bad-ass chick walking around carrying a big-ass load in her belly. Then again, my eyes could’ve been playing tricks on my ass. For all I knew, the broad could be a crooked-ass snitch like her buster-ass husband. If she was, she was going to fuck around and catch a few slugs in her head right along with her man if she didn’t watch out.

“How you doing?” she asked.

“I’m doing fine, and yourself?” I replied as I stepped into the foyer.

“I’m fine, sweetie.” She closed the front door behind us. “Come on, Mike’s in the TV room.” She escorted me in that direction.

When I walked into the room where Mike was chilling, I found him lounging back on his recliner watching the Steelers playing the Patriots. This nigga was so into the game I didn’t think he realized I had walked into the room until Lacy said something to him.

“Mike, don’t you see Seth standing here?”

Mike turned around in slow motion. “Oh shit, son! What’s good?” He stood up to greet me.

I smiled as we shook hands. “Nothing much.” I watched his wife as she left the room. “So, who’s winning?” I asked as I took a seat down on the loveseat right across from him.

“The Patriots is killing them niggas!” he said with happiness.

“Oh, so the Patriots must be your team?”

“And you know it!” Mike’s face lit up as he said it.

“What quarter is it?”

“The fourth, and we ain’t got nothing but two minutes left in the game.”

“What’s the score?”

“My boys are leading by fifteen.”

“Oh yeah, the Steelers are finished,” I agreed and then looked down at my watch to give this nigga a hint that I was kind of pressed for time. Of course, he fed right in to it.

“What’s up? You got somewhere you gotta be?” he blurted out.

“Yeah, I told my girl I was going to meet her at her crib with the dough in the next thirty minutes.”

“Where she live at?”

“In Chesapeake.”

Mike smiled. “Damn nigga, when did you meet her?”

“I met her when I first came home but we only hung out a few times,” I tried to conjure up a story. “And then about a few weeks ago, she stepped to me and told me she was ready to make it official.”

“How she look?”

“Yo Mike, shorty is bad as hell! She’s got that baby face like Rhianna, but she’s got the body like one of them big butt video chicks.”

Mike looked at me in amazement. “So, whatchu gon’ do about your other girl, Samantha?”

“Shit, I’ma have her too,” I responded nonchalantly.

“Yo dawg, you got it going on!” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of money. “Here, take your paper!”

“How much is it?” I asked him.

“It’s fifteen grand. That nigga only had forty-five grand in his crib, and I promised you a third, so that’s your cut.”

“A’ight, that’s cool!” I stuck the wad in my pocket.

The game went to a commercial, so Mike turned all the way around in his seat and shook his head in frustration. I knew he was about to put me through test mode. I put on my game face and waited for him to come at me with his first question. This would be his opportune moment, since this was his first time we stood face-to-face since the shootout. Whatever he was about to say, I knew I had to be ready for.

“What’s wrong, son?” I coached him.

“Man, I just can’t get my mind off losing all that dough Trina went to pick up from Jay.”

“Yeah, I don’t think I would be able to get that shit off my mind, either.”

Mike sat there in silence and watched my facial expressions. I was kind of wondering what was going through his mind. Instead of dwelling on it, I changed the subject. “So, what’s going on with the spot? Those niggas you got over there taking care of your business?”

“Yeah, they’re doing their thing. But remember, it’s still your spot, so anytime you ready to go back, just let me know.”

“That’s what’s up,” I said. Then I switched the conversation again and asked him how he had been since Trina was gone.

“Yo man, it’s been hard as hell because I’d been fucking with her for a couple of years. I mean, she was like my right hand. She did shit for me my wife wouldn’t even do.”

“I’m feeling you. So, have you talked to any of her peoples since that shit went down?”

“Yeah, I talked to her moms a couple of times since then. I even went by there to drop off some money, since the family didn’t have enough dough to pay for her funeral.”

“Did she have any kids?”

“Nope, she sure didn’t.”

“So, whatchu gon’ do now? I mean, are you still trying to find out who those niggas were that came through there, busting their pistols off at us and murdering her?” I asked to watch his facial expression this time, but this nigga didn’t flinch. He held his composure to a tee and played the part. I knew one thing: If Trina had not warned me about this clown-ass nigga, I would’ve been ’round there ready to kill somebody else for him. Not anymore, though, because this nigga was next on my list.

“I got a few cats on the lookout for me. And they know a lot of people, so somebody is bound to throw some names around. Soon as they do, I’m gon’ be on them.”

“Well, just let me know when you find out who they were because I want to get them myself. Those niggas tried to kill me along with Trina, so my beef is personal.” I stood to leave.

Mike stood up too. “Yo, son, thanks for everything, man,” he said and hugged me.

When the nigga patted me on my back I almost got sick to my stomach, but I stuck to the script. “You know I’ma always have your back,” I replied with assurance and stepped back. “Well, let me get out of here.” I turned to leave.

“A’ight. Well, hit me up as soon as you hear something from your cousin.”

“I will,” I told him and then I dipped out of there.

SETH

It Is What It Is

It seemed like the farther I got away from Mike’s crib, the better my stomach felt. What really fucked me up inside was how sincere that nigga acted when I questioned him about still searching for the niggas who murdered Trina. And when that nigga told me that he was, that sealed the deal for me. That nigga was as good as gone in my eyes. The quicker I could cut off his oxygen supply, the better off I’d be.

The fifteen grand Mike gave me went straight into my stash. Right before I closed the metal box back up, I took one last look at my dough and smiled. “I’m gon’ get me and Sam a lot of expensive shit with you!” I commented before I closed the top.

Sam called me exactly at six-thirty like she said she would, and she had a lot of shit to talk about, too.

“I just found out that they’re gonna let me out at eight o’clock in the morning, so I want you to be outside, front and center.”

“A’ight. So, how was your day?”

“It was very boring. I had to see my counselor and the case manager, and we had to sit in this group meeting for three hours, so you know I wasn’t too happy about that.”

“Well, it’s over now, so don’t even sweat it.”

“I know. You’re right,” she agreed. “So, whatchu been doing?”

“I had a meeting with Mike today, and then I ran a few errands for my moms, but that’s it.”

“What was Mike talking about?”

“Nothing much. I just went over his crib and got some dough he owed me.”

“So when am I going to spend it?”

“Soon, baby, soon.”

“Well, can you take me out to lunch tomorrow after I take care of my business?”

“Come on now, Sam. You know I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”

“Well, can we go out of the country?” she asked me and then giggled.

“Out of the country?” Thoughts started racing through my head.

“Yes, I would love to get the hell away from here.”

“And go where?” I coached her along to see where she was going with this.

“I don’t know. But I’ll tell you that anywhere beats here, especially since your P.O. is going to be breathing down both of our necks to keep us from being together.”

“Don’t worry about her. I got that under control.”

“Yeah, I hope so, because I’m telling you right now if that bitch ever try to run up on me, or try to get my P.O. to violate me behind some dumb shit, I am gon’ fly off the motherfucking handle and beat her ass.”

“Calm down, ’cause you ain’t gon’ have to do none of that shit. Believe me, I’m working something out as we speak, so we are going to be a’ight.”

“Look, I understand all of that, but I ain’t gon’ stop looking over my shoulder until we are far away from that bitch. Quiet as it’s kept, if I had enough heart, I would walk out of this halfway house right now and I would never look back.”

“Where would you go?” I asked her again.

“Probably somewhere where I couldn’t get extradited back into the states, like Mexico or Cuba.”

“You’d go there?”

“You damn right I would. To get away from all this shit around here, I would do it in a heartbeat,” Samantha replied earnestly.

I sat back and thought about the possibility of that happening. I also thought about the chances of us getting caught, which were slim to none. I figured if we traveled to Mexico, all we had to do was cross the border, and that couldn’t be hard.

Right when the pay phone was about to disconnect our fifteen-minute call, she asked me if she could call right back. I told her yeah, so we hung up, and within seconds we were right back where we had left off. For the next five phone calls, she wanted to talk about all the things we were going to do on her first weekend pass. She sounded so excited.

If she knew like I knew, she hadn’t experienced the type of excitement I was about to introduce her to.

After my last call with Samantha ended, I called Maxine because she blew my phone up the entire time we were talking. She sent me a couple of text messages, basically saying that she was not stupid and that she knew I was either laid up fucking another ho or I was on the phone with that bitch Samantha, and if she found out either was true, I was going to wish that I had never met her. Another message said that I’d better have a damn good reason why I was not at her house right now and that if I didn’t call her with an explanation in the next ten minutes, she was going to have the U.S. Marshals at my door before I could blink my eyes. After I read her insane-ass messages, I got her silly ass on the phone.

“What’s your damn problem?” I snapped.

“Where are you?” she asked, instead of answering my question.

“I’m at home.”

“Well, why didn’t you answer your house phone when I just tried to call?”

“That was because my moms was on it,” I lied.

“I called your phone too and you didn’t answer that one either,” she screamed.

“Maxine, will you please calm down and stop yelling?”

“And why should I do that? It seems like when I yell and go off on your ass, you start acting like you got some damn sense!”

“Listen, Maxine, there is no need for all this. Just so you know, I was not out in the street fucking a ho, and I wasn’t on the phone with Samantha.”

“What were you doing then?”

“I was ’sleep part of the time, and then when I got up, I jumped straight in the shower. I didn’t notice you called me until after I came back into my room to get dressed.”

“That sounds like a bold-faced lie!”

“Baby, I swear I am not lying to you. Wanna ask my moms? She’ll tell you the same thing.”

“No, I don’t want to ask her anything because you’d probably get her to lie for your ass!”

I laughed to myself because she was right. My moms would lie for me in a minute and especially to Maxine, because she couldn’t stand her.

“Listen, just tell me what I can do to make it up to you.” I hoped this would calm her silly ass down.

“Don’t play stupid with me, Seth! You know I wouldn’t be bitching at you if you were where you were supposed to be.”

“So, whatchu telling me is that I’m supposed to be at your house?”

“Exactly.”

“A’ight, I’ll be over there in a few minutes. Just let me get my moms situated.”

“Seth, what time are you leaving?”