Always Unique (15 page)

Concealed inside a tricked-out stash box built behind the Rover’s dash were three handguns: a Smith & Wesson 9mm, a Glock .40, and his favorite, the .44 Desert Eagle. He was both comfortable and competent with any of, what he called, “the tools of the craft.” Tools that he’d learned to respect.

According to Bone, immediately after the
situation
that took place with him and Fat Tee—as if his trying to rob and kill the dude was just some type of misunderstanding—that Fat Tee acted like his shoes were on fire and packed his shit and beat his feet up out of Madelyn’s.

This alone made Drop-Top a step behind the prey.

Then Bone told him, “But not to worry”—as always, for precautionary measures, he’d had one of his boys with an eye on the building before and after the sting. The lookout had followed Fat Tee to an off-brand hotel a block off of Atlantic Avenue in Crown Heights.

Drop-Top pulled into the parking deck of the same hotel.

After finding a suitable parking space he turned on the hazard lights. Pushed the cigarette lighter in. Then, with his right foot, he tapped the brake pedal, twice. He heard the mechanical hum from the hydraulic system as the previously concealed compartment behind the dashboard opened, revealing its hardware. Of the three handguns inside, Drop-Top chose the 16-shot blue-steel Smith & Wesson. For three reasons: it was lightweight, easy to handle, and fitted with a machine-threaded silencer. The nine was as quiet as a bashful lover whenever he decided to bust off.

Less than ten minutes later, two crisp big-face Ben Franklins and a smile for the chick at the desk got Drop-Top the room number he was in search of and two more big-faces bought him the keycards for the doors.

Gotta love Brooklyn
.
Four hundred dollars is about to bring me forty thousand cash from Kennard and this don’t even add in what I get from this nigga in the process.
He reminded himself that he knew better than to count his eggs before they hatched. But how couldn’t he? This was going to be like taking candy from a baby.

According to Shorty Girl working the front desk, the man matching Fat Tee’s description copped a couple of rooms on the eleventh floor—1116 and 1118. Drop-Top used the stairs. There was no need involving any more potential witnesses than necessary. Besides, these days most hotel elevators had digital eyes in the ceiling monitoring who came and went.

The cement block stairwell was hot and narrow—absent the smell of urine. It reminded Drop-Top of the ones in the project tenement where he grew up in the Fort Greene projects. His thoughts momentarily drifted back to when he was twelve years old, the first time Kennard had ever come to his house to visit.

Drop-Top—well, everyone still called him Tyrek back then—and Kennard were in his bedroom playing Galaxy on Tyrek’s new Saga Genesis when they heard a loud thump, then a crashing sound. They both jumped up to investigate the noise. Both were surprised when they saw Tyrek’s mother, Betty, lying on the small kitchen floor, holding her face.

Her boyfriend was standing over top of her. “Why the fuck you ain’t fix me nothing to eat?” His words were slurred. “I bet the hard-head-ass little knucklehead motherfucker of yours done had something to eat. Haven’t he?” Betty was a small, petite woman. Compared to her boyfriend’s six-foot frame she appeared childlike herself.

Back then, another year or two before Tyrek would hit his growth spurt, on a good day, he stood only at five feet. Kennard had already passed him in height by at least five inches but none of that even mattered. Without a second thought Tyrek picked up a plate from the sink and slammed it against his mother’s boyfriend’s head. It caught him solid, breaking right across his dome. But Betty’s boyfriend shook off the blow and backhanded Tyrek, so hard that Tyrek slid across until the wall stopped his momentum.

That’s when without hesitation Kennard intervened.

His hands were so fast it was hard to keep up with what they were doing. A flurry of quick, short punches to the dude’s kidneys bent him over to size.

Kennard’s father, a professional boxing trainer, had taught Kennard the craft young. Early on he could tell that his son had the natural-born talent to be a champion one day. Power, speed, and smarts—Kennard had it all. And Kennard unleashed it all on Betty’s drunk, abusive boyfriend. A twelve-year-old kid pummeling a grown man into submission; it was a sight to see. It was a display of boxing artistry worthy of a Pay-Per-View slot.

Kennard and Tyrek, being in the same class, were already mad cool, but from that day forward they became brothers.

Three years later, a kid from uptown snatched Kennard’s mother’s pocketbook. Tyrek got word of who’d done it and with an old Maxima and a .380, Tyrek returned the favor. He caught the dude in front of a trap spot, slipping. The poor purse snatcher had no idea that a kid he’d never met was about to introduce himself. Tyrek said “hello” by way of two quick shots from the automatic handgun, flipping the pocketbook thief’s head back and earning the name Drop-Top at the same time.

Kennard’s enemy was his enemy. If Kennard hurt, so did Drop-Top. Whoever Kennard liked, Drop-Top had affection for, and this included Unique. She was not only Kennard’s woman, she was considered Drop-Top’s sister, and nobody violated anybody he cared about.

When Drop-Top reached a metal door with the number 11 stenciled with red paint on the front, his focus returned to the moment. Hinges screamed out like they hadn’t seen a drop of lubricant in a century as the door opened.

The hallway was empty.

Around twelve, maybe thirteen rooms were on each side.

The dull brass plate on the first wooden door to his right read
1102
; across the hall, catty-corner to refrain nosy guest from peeping in their neighbor’s rooms when the doors were open, was
1101
.

Stoically, not too slow or too fast, Drop continued down the hallway as if he belonged there and owned the place.

1104
 …

1106
 …

1108
 …

1110
 …

1112
 …

1114
 …

At
1116,
he stopped.

Fat Tee was either in this room or the one next door. Drop-Top sighed. It was fifty-fifty. A pistol gripped in his right palm, a keycard in his left, Drop-Top put his ear to the door. He didn’t hear anything that would change the odds as they stood. Not even a television going.
Damn.
He shook his head.

Slowly, he slid the keycard into the slot, knowing he could easily be walking into a trap, but willing to risk it. The light on the lock changed from red to green.

Hoping that the door’s hinges wasn’t as dry as the ones on the stairwell, he pushed open the door to room 1116.

“Maintenance,” he said out loud, at that moment hoping that his Dickie’s khakis could pass him off as such.

Inside was an average-sized hotel room with a bed, a nightstand, a dresser, a closet, and a bathroom, everything that was supposed to be there … but no signs of Fat Tee. The bed looked as if it hadn’t even been slept in. With his pistol leading the way, Drop-Top checked the bathroom just to be sure. Satisfied that the room was empty, he walked out as quietly as he’d entered.

1118.

Ear to the door; he didn’t hear any sounds coming from this one, either. He was hopeful that he’d caught the dude asleep. Drop-Top slipped the card into the lock the same as he’d done next door, making virtually no noise.

With the silencer of the nine taking the lead, he stepped in, primed and ready.

Fat Tee was lying underneath the cover. Apparently the dude was a late sleeper.
Where you’re going
, Drop-top thought,
you’ll be able to sleep as long as you want.

Index finger caressing the trigger, Drop-Top squeezed. Twice.

Phssst! Phssst!

The pair of hollow-points barely made a sound as they flew from the barrel of the nine, slamming into the body of Fat Tee.

To be sure that the job was complete and Fat Tee wasn’t still sucking in oxygen, Drop-Top walked up to the bed with a smile cut across his face and pulled back the covers. What should’ve been a corpse were three fucking pillows.

A handwritten note was laying on the one where the head should’ve been, a bullet hole in its center.

Fuck you! Try again! You bitch-ass New York niggas …

“Those VA cats weren’t as dumb as they looked,” Drop-Top said to himself as he left the room. “But we’ll see who gets the last laugh, VA—we’ll see!”

KARMA IS A MOTHER …

Since the big confession, Kennard hadn’t said much to Unique, who had been tiptoeing around the house, trying to give him space to figure out what he wanted to do with their relationship. The energy in their home had been off since she had poured out her heart to him about her past. Even on the chilliest New York night, it had never been that cold between the two of them.

She couldn’t really blame him and took it as if he was just trying to digest everything that she had told him the night before. She didn’t like it but what could she do? She was grateful that he hadn’t asked her to leave yet. In fact, she was thinking about going to stay at her friend Tyeedah’s house until his head was clear.

This wasn’t the way she had planned it, but she was willing to accept the consequences of her actions.

She was in the den, watching Lifetime, preparing herself because she was certain that her life was about to play out like a movie. She could hear him on the phone, and she had decided that when the flick was over she was to get up and get dinner going. Though she knew he was talking to someone, she couldn’t make out the words because she wasn’t ear hustling—she didn’t want to get in his way by any means.

As she watched the last scene of the movie, tears started to form in her eyes and that’s when Kennard poked his head in the room. “Yo, throw on your sweats and sneakers and come on.”

She perked up quickly. “Where we going?” She was glad to go anywhere with him—or glad he wanted her to go somewhere with him.

“We’re going to deal with that nigga, Fat Tee’s bitch ass,” he said in a nonchalant way, but she knew it was about to get serious.

Kennard had put the word out on the street looking for Fat Tee and had gotten an inside tip from a desk clerk that he was laying low at a hotel in the Bronx.

“Awww, baby.” She was so happy that Kennard still cared. Unique could not believe that Kennard was going to roll out for her like this. This made her love him more and though she, more than anybody, wanted Fat Tee to get what he had coming to him, she didn’t want Kennard to get in any kind of trouble. “Thank you so much but I don’t want you to get caught up in this bullshit.”

“When that nigga had the balls to enter
my
house and rape not just any woman but
my
woman, then had the gall to put his hands on you, that motherfucker made his own death wish.”

“But he ain’t worth you getting involved.”

“Baby, him making you lose my baby … Look, I understand that you have been through enough with this nigga so if you wanna stay here while I go deal with this problem, then I understand. But it might be the best therapy for you to see firsthand this motherfucker get his and hear him beg you for his shitty-ass, worthless, two-bit life!” Kennard emphasized every word he said but he wanted to see them wheel Fat Tee’s lifeless body out of the hotel under the white sheet.

“Oh no, baby! If you go, baby, I go!”

Unique tied her sneakers up and was on the way out of the door when the TV bolted to the wall caught her attention. She had turned to the evening news. They were broadcasting a story about stolen diamonds. The story stopped Unique in her tracks and led her to pick up the remote from the table beside the bed and turn up the sound.

“Babe, babe,” Unique screamed out for Kennard at the top of his lungs, “come quick.”

Kennard came rushing into the bedroom. “What’s wrong, babe?” He heard the volume of the television up loud and saw the stunned look on her face that was focused on the tube, which prompted him to immediately give his attention to the news’ breaking story as well.

They both stood and listened to the newscaster’s report.

“Thirty-one-year-old Mr. Terrell Gump, from Richmond, Virginia, was apprehended by TSA at LaGuardia Airport yesterday after a body scanner revealed that he had an unusual-shaped mass lodged in his anus.” She seemed to be fighting the urge to laugh as she read the teleprompter. “After a perfunctory cavity search,” she continued, besting her emotions, “the object turned out to be an estimated 1.2 million dollars’ worth of stolen diamonds.”

The producers cut to a still frame of the hot ice lying on a table. The shiny gems glistened under the camera’s light.

With a WTF expression on her face, Unique looked on with Kennard. The temperature of her blood going from warm to white hot, both nervous and shocked, her mouth opened, forming the shape of doughnut.

The screen switched back to the anchor, Pamela Pitchford.

“Sergeant McDaniel of the NYPD said that Mr. Gump had allegedly been trying to sell the stolen diamonds—one at a time—to various underground jewelers. The problem, which Mr. Gump obviously wasn’t aware, was that the diamonds were registered, making each diamond identifiable. There was also a tracking device in the bag in which they were originally stolen, which for some reason Mr. Gump kept.”

They showed a mug shot of the suspect: a dark-skin dude with a mouth full of silver teeth.

The two worst-looking pictures in the world always seemed to be DMV’s and a mug shot and his mug shot didn’t do Fat Tee one bit of justice.

“If convicted, Mr. Gump could get up to life in prison,” Pamela Pitchford pointed out.

Her co-anchor chimed in: “That’s a long time to serve for trying to dodge a luggage fee.… In other news…”

“Yo, that shit is crazy.”

“It is!”

“Better that the spooks get him than me, I guess,” Kennard said, disappointed, but there was still a devilish grin plastered all over his face.