Numbers (27 page)

Agent Flask entered the room with Agent Smith trailing him, holding a recording machine in his hand, looking more confident. They’d apparently had time to go home and
rest and change up their wardrobe. Numbers would’ve paid a small fortune for a good meal, a shower, and fresh gear.

“Dupree, this is your last chance. Come clean and you may walk out of here before you’re sixty,” Agent Flask said.

Agent Smith placed the device on the table and plugged it in to the wall socket. He pressed Play.

Numbers listened to the taped conversation he and Coney had a day and a half earlier. Just as he suspected, there was nothing there to incriminate him. The authorities were grasping at straws. Even the wiretap from their meet revealed nothing.

“It’s all right here, as clear as day,” Agent Flask said, pointing at the machine. “You don’t have to confess to being a drug kingpin. We got all the evidence we need. You and Nathan ‘Coney’ Patterson are finished.” This was the first time Numbers had ever heard Coney’s government name.

“Agent Helen Keller, I got no idea what you talking ’bout.” Numbers rebutted Agent Flask’s claim with disrespect, fueling the agents’ contempt. “Y’all ain’t see me do or say nothing illegal. I gave that faggot exactly what he asked for—a key. My mother will vouch that it was her car, and she gave me permission to get rid of it.”

Agent Flask was hot. Partly because he knew Numbers was right and partly because of his slick lip. Flask knew Numbers was precise in his evaluation, but he continued to press, trying to make a case against him, hoping Numbers would slip up. He’d expended too many man-hours on Coney’s information; somebody was going to fry. He had his sights set on Numbers’s ruin.

They harassed and interrogated Numbers for almost sixty hours before he was given his one phone call. He immediately called Joshua Spitz, Coney’s former lawyer. Coney could no longer afford him, but Numbers had put him on his payroll. Numbers was released a few hours after Spitz was called, with no charges levied against him. Coney, on the other hand, was stick-a-fork-in-’im
done. Numbers exited the court building welcoming freedom like a slave completing his trek through the Underground Railroad. He had no money and no phone. He’d left his cell phone at his mother’s house. He didn’t want Jake going through his contacts. That would have surely spelled trouble. They’d taken the measly one hundred bucks he had in his pocket as evidence. The beast would most likely have breakfast on him with that. Spitz offered him cab money, but he opted to walk home. He strolled from downtown Brooklyn toward his mother’s house. On a good day, it would take anywhere from twenty minutes to half an hour. Today was a good day. Numbers was free. There were a few clouds in the sky, but it could have rained, sleeted, or snowed and Numbers would have thought it was a beautiful morning. He couldn’t wait to get to his mother’s place and freshen up. He smelled like he looked—three days old.

Numbers walked across DeKalb Avenue past Fort Greene Park and was coming up on Carlton Avenue, barely five minutes from his mother’s brownstone, when he saw a young lady who made him do a double take.
It couldn’t be!
The girl he had his eyes glued to looked exactly like Waketta. He continued walking toward her as she strode effortlessly down the uneven sidewalk, seeming to manipulate gravity’s pull. Numbers kept thinking he would wake up any moment.

“Hey, Numbers,” the beautiful buxom brown honey said, smiling at him. “Long time no see. I been meaning to get at you. I got something that I been holding for you for years.” Then, as if she just really noticed how he was dressed, “Damn, boy, you look like you been through some shit. You all right?”

Numbers paused for a long moment, still taken aback by how much this gorgeous young lady looked like her older sister, Waketta. Lateesha had grown up.

“Yeah, I’m good. Nothing a shower can’t handle.” Numbers embraced her like a long-lost love, all the time wishing when he
let her go that it would be Waketta, but it wasn’t. She smelled like fruit, flowers, and happiness, the way all women should smell. It was a fragrance Numbers was used to his women having.

“I miss you, too,” she said, as if reading his mind, slowly letting him out of her arms. She was nearly the same height as Waketta was, with the same enticing pretty browns and luscious ruby lips. She was a real stunner. “How long you in town?” she asked.

“Not long.”

“Too bad. I thought we could get together and catch up.”

Numbers could tell she was flirting with him. He wanted to say yes but knew he had too much to do and too much at stake.

“Maybe another time, Teesha. I gotta head back down low.” He wanted to kick himself for declining.

“No problem, but listen, before you leave, come by the hood. I got something I need to give you. Promise me you will?” She wasn’t going to take no for an answer. She stood there waiting for him to say the magic words.

He smiled slightly at her bossiness. It reminded him of her sister. “I promise.”

“Here, take my math and call me when you’re on your way, aiight?”

“Will do.”

Numbers went to his mother’s house, showered, ate, and slept well for the first time in over two and half days. When he awoke six hours later in the middle of the day, he called Rosa and let her know he was all right and would be home soon. Then he called Jarvis and his cousins. Neither answered. The next call he made was to Sanchez. Sanchez informed him that Jarvis and his cousins had never shown up.

Something was fishy. No one had heard from any of them.
Was Sanchez lying? Did they get stuck up for all that cash? Or did they split with the loot?
After all that Numbers had been through, he knew
this was a dirty game and anything was possible. But Jarvis wouldn’t cross him. He was equally confident his family wouldn’t cross him either. He went back to his original thought: anything’s possible, and he knew his cousins and Jarvis had the tendency for greed and power. Maybe they had their own plot—one that didn’t include him.

Numbers said good-bye to his family and jumped into his triple black BMW 745. He called Lateesha and met her on Park Avenue near building 68. She jumped into the passenger seat.

“Now, this is the Numbers I remember, looking good,” she stated, sexing him with her eyes.

Numbers was equally impressed. She looked even better the second time around.

“I’ve been holding this letter for you since the funeral.” Her demeanor changed. She spoke with a glum look on her face. “Ketta wanted you to have it.” Numbers took the worn, sealed envelope from her, wondering if she knew what was in it.

“Do you know what this is?”

“Nah, but I know how she felt about you and that she wanted you to have it. It’s got your name on it. I wanted to give it to you personally to make sure you got it.”

“Thanks, Teesha. Good to see you. You looking well,” he said, meaning she was looking very well.

“Don’t be a stranger,” she encouraged. She kissed him gingerly on the lips with her wet glossies. Then she opened the door and slid out, smiling seductively.

Numbers watched her move up the courtyard. She strutted just like her sister. He knew what he was thinking was wrong, but he couldn’t help but fantasize about being with Lateesha. She was just as fine as her sister.

He tore open the envelope and read the enclosed letter:

“Fucking Jar,” Numbers cursed, punching the horn on his ride several times. It all started to make sense now. Jarvis set him up to get killed, and that’s why Waketta was dead now. That’s why he was able to catch Crush out there sleeping and why he murked him before he could ask him any questions. Jarvis was probably the one who let Rosa know about him and Waketta.
He’s been plotting against me all this time,
Numbers realized.
Why? Why would he do me dirty like this?
Numbers was baffled. They were like brothers. Had he really been that salty about him and Waketta all this time? Numbers didn’t want to believe his right-hand man had dogged him.

Then again, the evidence was there. Jarvis had attempted to undermine and destroy everything Numbers had built. There was no limit to his deceit; he was possibly the one who’d set up Coney as well. He’d put everything that Numbers loved in jeopardy. Rosa and even his son could have been killed when Ketta was shot—and
he had been the real target. Had he been plotting with Crush all along?

“Nah, that nigger’s dead,” Numbers vented out loud, furious. He wasn’t letting this shit slide. Numbers had never actually pulled the trigger on anyone in his life, but that was about to change.

He was on a mission. He parked the car where he sat, then walked to his old building. He wanted to speak to Jarvis’s mother or sister or someone. He wanted answers. He knocked and knocked, but no one was home. He hit the streets. He rode around BK for the rest of the night, blowing up Jarvis and his cousins’ phones trying to locate them, to no avail. At a little past one in the morning, he made up his mind to head back down low. He was tired, but the thought of Jarvis and possibly his cousins double-crossing him kept him awake and on point.

When he pulled up to his colonial home with the well-manicured landscaping next to his lady’s brand-new gold 2003 Lexus RX 300 at nine that morning, he was greeted by Rosa and R.C. He walked into their nearly empty house. Rosa had done exactly as he had asked her and packed and moved almost everything for relocation.

A couple of weeks earlier when he’d laid out his plan, he had his lady go down to Charlotte, North Carolina, and find them a house. Whether things went as planned or not on this road trip, he was done with the drug game and they were moving. The last piece of the puzzle was his cousins and Jar.
Where the fuck are they?
Numbers couldn’t understand it. He’d instructed his cousins to get in touch with Rosa when they got back into Virginia. He had a feeling he would be detained. He called over to his aunt’s, then Wynter and John-John’s, but nothing. No one had heard from either of the brothers.

Did they plan this all long?
Numbers remembered when Jarvis came down to visit. He and his cousins had hit it off. Numbers remembered
coming into the stash house and them huddled up, talking, until he walked in and they seemed to go hush-hush. He thought long and hard about this theory. Something was awry, but Numbers couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He wished at that moment that he was as good at predicting the future as he was at predicting the cards.

The second evening after Numbers was back in Virginia, five days since he’d had any contact with his cousins or Jarvis, the phone rang. It was his mother. She was frantic and hysterical. He listened for a moment, then dropped the receiver. His face went blank. He stared off into the twilight zone. Tears began to roll down his face.

“What, Dupree? What?” Rosa queried, sensing something was terribly wrong. After a moment passed and Numbers hadn’t answered, she picked up the phone and spoke.

“Oh my God!” she cried. “I’m so sorry, Momma Jenny. I’m so sorry.” Tears streamed from her eyes. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m sorry,” she repeated, not knowing what else to say. “Momma Jenny, I’ll have him call you back.” She hung up.

Numbers looked up and saw his son looking at him. He grabbed him and his lady close, hugging them like it would be the last time he’d touch another human. He wept uncontrollably. He prayed for forgiveness as he embraced them even tighter.