The Versace League (9 page)

He hoped for his siblings to leave The Versace League alone and live normal lives. They had the potential to be anything they wanted and seeing Cortez's degree on the wall proved that. It proved that they had risen above the hood they were from and that the criminal life was just a choice. Unfortunately for Cortez that choice had led to his death.

    
             
A tear slid down Yamin's face as he walked around the desk and sat in the huge chair. He melted comfortably into the cushion and was hit right in the face with a picture of Ashley. His heart skipped a beat and his chest felt like it would cave. She was sitting on a swing and was wearing one of the most beautiful smiles Yamin had ever seen. He hadn’t spent very much time with her before the incident happened, but he promised himself that once he got her back, that she would be his number one priority.

      Yamin placed the tip of the blunt between his lips and began to dig through Cortez's file cabinet. There were mainly old papers from when Cortez was in school and a few personal items, but not what Yamin was looking for. Donica informed him that Cortez kept a private account that he used specifically for her and Ashley, she didn’t know how much was in it, but that it was what he used to pay her bills and to save money for the two of them.

He also wanted to get a copy of Cortez’s will. The last thing he wanted was Patrice to find it before he did, if she hadn’t already. In due time, he would be contacting their lawyer to ensure Cortez’s funds were appropriately handled in the way he would have wanted.

             
After not finding the paperwork Yamin closed the file cabinet and wiggled his hand over the computer’s mouse. He waited for the three computer screens to awaken from its sleep and was stopped by a lock screen requesting a password. He sat back in the seat and took a puff of the blunt and then blew out a cloud of smoke. Yamin was stumped.

He had no idea what Cortez’s password was and wasn’t even going to waste time trying to figure it out. He pulled out his cell phone to call someone that he knew would be able to help him. Cortez was a computer scientist and always feared that someone would hack him just like he hacked others. He was sure that his password was not some shit that an average person would’ve chosen.

             
“Aye, I need a favor,” Yamin said into the receiver of his phone.

             
“Anything,” Katrina gleefully answered.

             
“Find me somebody that can break into Cortez’s computer and bring him over here to his place.”

             
“Alright, give me a few hours.”

             
“Trina, I don’t have a few hours. I need to get back to looking for Ashley. I’ll see you within the hour,” Yamin hung up. He stood up and walked out of the office. He started to go outside with Manny, when he decided to go into Cortez’s bedroom instead. The fact that whoever had killed Cortez and kidnapped Ashley knew so much personal information about them, he couldn’t help but wonder if this extended passed something that he’d done to someone. He had to consider all possibilities.

             
He pushed the door opened to Cortez’s room and looked around. The bed was neatly made and only a pair of basketball shorts and tennis shoes sat on the floor. He strolled over to the walk in closet and stepped inside. There were hundreds of tennis shoes lined against the wall and even shoeboxes sitting on a shelf that was stacked to the ceiling. All of Cortez’s clothing was neatly hung on one side and oddly the other side of the closet was completely empty. Patrice and Cortez did not live together, but she kept clothing here just as he did at her place downtown.

             
“When the fuck did she take her shit out of here?” Yamin asked as he exited the closet. He walked over to a tall dresser that sat against the wall and pulled the first drawer open-it was empty. He did the same for the second drawer and it was also empty. Yamin stood still and looked around the room once more. Cortez hadn’t mentioned anything about he and Patrice having problems and he wondered if all this had happened before or after Cortez’s death.

             
Yamin began to type a text message to his brother Aasir:
Has Patrice mentioned to you that her and the youngn was having problems?
As he waited for Aasir to respond, he walked out of the bedroom and went downstairs to join Manny who was posted up outside.

             
“Hey, did my youngn’ ever mention to you that he was having problems with his old lady?” Yamin asked Manny the same thing.

             
“Nah, he never said nothing about that bird,” Manny said while puffing on a cigarette.

             
“Has she asked you to bring her by here, or has she mentioned that she’s been by here lately?”

             
“Nah, I haven’t seen her since the funeral and she didn’t say nothing bout it before then. Let me ask my bro if he heard anything like that,” Manny said and pulled his cell phone from his pocket.

             
Yamin paced back and forth as he waited for Aasir to hit him back and for Katrina to show up.

***

“Okay, this should work right here,” the computer tech said as he tapped the keys. Katrina showed up over an hour ago with some guy she pulled out of the West End of Dallas and he had been working for the last hour trying to get into Cortez’s computer but to no avail. Yamin almost wanted to give up, but wondered what he would find if he gained entry.

             
“Has the FBI or the police not been by here? I’m surprised to see that Cortez’s place looks this damn good,” Yamin wondered, but aloud.

             
“No, this isn’t the address that Cortez has listed on his driver’s license and I don’t believe that the police knew about it. The FBI definitely don’t have record of it.-I mean I only know about it because of course I’ve been here plenty of times before. He only has Donica’s address listed everywhere,” Katrina explained.

             
“Mmgh,” Yamin nodded.
             

             
“So, it was nice meeting your wife the other night,” Katrina said.

             
This was the first time her and Yamin were able to speak since a few nights ago when she met him at Red Lobster. She’d gotten the ultimate surprise when she showed up and saw that he was cuddled up having dinner with his wife. The first thought that came to mind was walking out and getting up with him later, but she wanted to see what made Jessica so special. What was it about her that made Yamin completely stop fucking with her without so much as an explanation?

             
“Was it really, Katrina?” Yamin asked as he placed his hand above his head.

             
“Yea, she is really, really pretty. She seems very bourgeois though. Doesn’t seem like your type, like you only married her cause it was easy or something. I know that’s why I hadn’t met her before then.”

             
“She’s very much my type Katrina. She’s smart, sexy, independent, and she has a mind of her own. She doesn’t need me to think for her unlike others I know,” Yamin said. He was beginning to become very frustrated with everyone around him at that moment. His plans were to quickly grab the paperwork he needed and leave. Now he was waiting on Cortez’s computer to be hacked and wondering about Patrice. What pissed him off even more was that he’d sent Aasir several text messages and he had yet to respond.

             
“Wow, I can’t believe you feel as though you have to think for me. How can you say that Yamin?” Katrina asked. She felt herself about to cry and did everything in her power to hold the tears in. She’d done so much crying behind Yamin that she couldn’t believe she had any tears left for him. He’d hurt her deep when he ended their relationship. She couldn’t understand how he could just move on from what they shared as if it meant nothing to him when it clearly meant the world to her. She loved Yamin and had never experienced the kind of feelings for anyone that she experienced with him. He was so gangsta but yet so smart and sexy at the same time.

             
Katrina loved the bad boys and when she met Yamin she knew that she just had to have him. She loved being a part of The Versace League because she was able to prove to him how far she would go just to show him how deeply she cared. Jessica wasn’t like that. She could tell that Jessica was uppity and probably knew nothing about holding a man down. She didn’t understand what Jessica had that she didn’t. Aside from her beautiful dark skin, and sexy full lips, Jessica looked to be very thin and lacking in areas that she was well equipped in. She didn’t get it.

             
“Oh God, I finally got it. Damn, it’s never taken me that long to get into a computer. This guy was very cautious,” the computer hacker said and stood up from the desk.

             
“Yamin-”

             
Yamin reached into his pocket and pulled out several hundred dollar bills that he placed into the man’s hand. He looked over at Katrina and he could see that she was very much into her feelings, but he didn’t have time for that. He was sick of her bugging him, sick of her calling his phone whenever she wanted, and sick of her sending text messages about how much she loved him. He didn’t mean to hurt her and had he known that she would’ve gotten so deeply involved, he would have never started sleeping with her.

             
“I’ll get up with you later ma. How about you get out there and look for Ashley? I don’t see why they handed y’all the case-ain’t doing no better than the damn police,” Yamin said and shook his head. He hated to be so mean to her, but when he tried being nice, she didn’t get it.

             
“Just tell her thank you for stepping in when she did. There was no evidence of your messages or calls on the records by time they were pulled,” Katrina told Yamin.

             
“Cool. Talk to you later.”

             
“Can we finish this discussion later?” Katrina asked desperately.

             
“Yea. I’ll hit you up,” Yamin answered as he took a seat at the computer.

He waited until they left the office and then placed his hand over the mouse and kept his attention on the screen directly in front of him. There were several windows already opened and he clicked on the one that was connected to the internet curious to know just what Cortez had been searching before he died.

There was a blown up picture of Patrice and next to it-suddenly the session refreshed and a message stating that the session had timed out displayed across the screen. He scrolled over to click on the log in link hoping that Cortez would have his password automatically saved, but he didn’t.

.
             
Yamin sighed. He could have sworn that it was a mug shot of Patrice, but he wasn’t too sure. He clicked on the next opened window and saw that it was
Lexis Nexis
site, a place that was used to check backgrounds. His face wrinkled in confusion as he wondered if he had been searching this site for Patrice as well.

             
After an hour of going through Cortez’s computer, Yamin didn’t find any usable information; just that he’d been heavily prying into his girlfriend’s life. This wasn’t out of the ordinary for Cortez, he’d done it to many others before, but he’d never wound up dead behind it.

             
Did this bitch have my brother killed and she just sending me messages to throw me off?
Yamin wondered.

He stood up from the chair and stretched his arms out ultimately dropping his phone to the floor. He got down on his knees to retrieve his phone when he noticed some papers clipped together that had seemingly fallen behind the desk. He reached for the papers and saw that it was a thick wad of store receipts that had been stapled to a stack of bank statements. He glanced over some of the receipts, but didn’t become alarmed until he looked at the bank statement. It was a Bank of America account that was in Cortez’s name and the balance was only $55.62.

             
“What the fuck?” Yamin was puzzled and even more so when he scanned over the statement and saw several large withdrawals that had been done over a two-week period just before Cortez was killed. He immediately thought back to the last night he was chilling with Aasir and Cortez, the night that picture had been taken.

             
Yamin brought up Katrina’s name in his call log and pressed down on it and placed his ear to the phone waiting for her to pick up.

             
“Hey,” she quickly answered. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

             
“Nah, I’m a just call the lawyer in the morning. Maybe he already has everything,” Yamin cleared his throat, “Look I need you look into Patrice. Cortez complained a few months ago that she had been stealing money from his account and even after he confronted her she was still doing it. When I looked on his computer, I saw what I think was a mug shot. He suspected that bitch of something and I pray to God that hoe didn’t kill my brother behind no fuckin’ money.”

             
“Oh wow, yea. I have to be at work at 6 in the morning. I’ll go in a little earlier and get right on it. Do you think she would do that? And take Ashley?” Katrina asked in disbelief.