Chaser (12 page)

I
t was a Friday, the first one in May, and I had a lot on my plate. I was chasing with Nasir as usual and thinking about everything I had to do after he dropped me off at my mom’s. I had to drive about twenty-five minutes from my mom’s apartment on Seventy-fourth and Haverford Avenue to the 7-Eleven on Forty-second and Walnut Street to meet all the shop workers to collect their checks. Then from there I had a meeting with Detective Daily at a Starbucks way out Blue Bell, about forty miles away. He wanted to do a briefing with me, which he had begun to request more frequently.

And I was worried about going to this one because that morning when he called to set up our meeting, he stressed to me that I needed to start giving him more vital information. Apparently what I had been giving him he hadn’t been able to prove and thus he couldn’t
make an arrest. He told me that the statute of limitations on my fraud charges were expiring really soon, and that if my information didn’t lead to Kenny’s arrest before the expiration date, my file would be turned over to the prosecutor and my case would be tried. I had been thinking about that all day, and it had me stressed.

“You all right?” Nasir asked as he pulled his truck over in front of my mom’s complex. “You seem like you got a lot on ya mind today.”

I nodded. “I’m cool. I’m just tired,” I said somberly. “And I still gotta take my mom a couple places before I go home.”

“Yeah, I know how ya Fridays be,” Nasir said referring to the lie I told him about having to take my mom to her job to pick up her check every Friday. It was my excuse for having him drop me off earlier at my mom’s on Fridays than the other days. I couldn’t tell him that I actually had to meet his dad’s employees.

I got out of his truck and walked toward the front door of the Copley Place, casually speaking to the various neighbors who were out on their balconies basking in the sun. Once inside the complex I took the elevator to the third floor and walked down the hall. I got to my mom’s door and used the spare key she had given me to let myself in. My mom’s job as a housekeeper at a nursing home required her to work overnight, so she usually slept in. So after two days of my coming to her house and knocking on her door at nine in the morning right after I lost my job, she decided she couldn’t take it anymore and she gave me back my old key. That was fine by me. It allowed me to come and go as I pleased without disturbing her or relying on her to be there.

I walked in the door, prepared to say hi and good-bye to my mom and then walk right back out to go make all my runs. But my plans were abruptly changed when I saw that Kenny was standing in my mom’s living room. I froze up with fear, especially when I saw that he
was closing my mom’s sliding-glass door as if he had just come in from her balcony. Had Kenny seen me get out of Nasir’s truck?
Shit,
I thought. I instantly started trying to come up with something.

“Kenny?” I asked, stunned. “What are you doing here?”

Before he could say anything my mom spoke. “I told him you had stopped by here on ya lunch break and had went to the store for me. But he insisted he’d wait for you to come back,” she said with attitude. She was sitting at the kitchen table smoking a cigarette and shaking her leg. She looked tired and was talking like she was short-tempered, like she was seconds away from cursing somebody out. I didn’t know how long Kenny had been there waiting for me, but from the multiple cigarette butts that were in the ashtray in front of my mom, it looked like he’d been there stressin’ my mom out for a while.

Kenny rubbed his face with the palm of his hand, then said to me, “I’m goin’ give you five seconds to tell me why the fuck you just got out of Nas’s truck and where you been for the last three hours.”

I was caught completely off guard, and even though I didn’t want to go along with my mother’s lie that I had gone to the store for her, it seemed like my only option. My mind was blank. I couldn’t think of anything else. But Kenny shut it down anyway.

“And don’t say nothin’ about no fuckin’ lunch break, either, because when I drove by the shop earlier, the painter bull said you got fired from that mafucka! So where the fuck was you at? One, two, three…”

Okay, there went my alibi. I was scared stiff. It seemed like my mom’s small living room was closing in on me.

“Four, five,” Kenny finished. Then
pop
! He smacked me across my face.

At that my mom snapped. She stabbed her cigarette out in the ashtray in front of her and jumped up out her chair. “Hold the fuck up now!” She raised her voice, the scratchiness evidence of her habitual smoking. “I be goddamned if you think you goin’ put ya hands on
my daughter in my house!” she protested as she scrambled through a drawer and retrieved a medium-sized steak knife.

I looked at Kenny as my mom walked toward him bearing the knife. His face wrinkled up with intense fury. He looked like he was seconds away from seriously hurting somebody. I never saw him so mad before. The first thing I could think to do was stop my mom from approaching him. I rushed in front of her and started pushing her backward, careful not to cut myself.

“Ma, chill! Let me handle this!” I cried, trying to prevent an all-out war.

It was one thing for him to hit me, but if he had hit my mom I didn’t know what was liable to happen. Somebody fucked around and ended up dead in that house.

My mom didn’t challenge me and keep going at Kenny with the knife. However, she did continue to tell him off.

“Well, you cut his ass then, Leah! Shit, I’m tired of him thinkin’ he can hit on you! And in my house? He must’ve lost his rabbit-ass mind!”

Kenny couldn’t keep silent any longer. “Ms. Linda, you better listen to ya fuckin’ daughter and chill!” he shouted over my mom’s screaming. “You ’bout to get ya ass hurt for real!” Kenny warned, not at all threatened by my mom or the knife.

“What?” my mom persisted. “Motherfucker, I wish you would!”

“Ma, please!” I yelled, trying to contain my mother, who had started tryin’ to attack Kenny again.

“You better chill! Matter of fact, you better get the fuck outta my house before I call the cops on ya punk ass! I’ll tell ’em everything about you hustling drugs! See how long you can last in jail! You know you really a bitch! Only bitch-ass men put they hands on women!”

“Yeah?” Kenny tested. “Call the cops on me, and I’ll burn this whole fuckin’ buildin’ down!” he retaliated.

“Kenny, just leave! Please!” I begged. “You don’t need the trouble right now! Especially not over somethin’ small!”

I was trying to say all the right things that would encourage Kenny to walk away from the fight. The longer the two of them went at it, the greater the chances were of a tragedy occurring. And that possibility scared me to death. So I tried to mediate as best I could.

“You know what, you right,” Kenny concluded. “I don’t need the trouble. Come on, Leah. We out,” he said, turning toward the door, but not before grimacing at my mom.

“Leah, don’t do it!” my mom said, giving Kenny the same look of disgust that he had given her. “Enough is enough,” she said.

It pained me to have to walk out the apartment with Kenny after he had disrespected my mom to such a degree. But the fact of the matter was, I had to. I had only a short amount of time left to help the cops book Kenny, and if I didn’t, I was headed to jail. I was stuck between a rock and a hard place—even worst, death and hell. And even though I desperately wanted to stay at my mom’s and wash my hands of Kenny for good, I felt like I had no choice but to leave with him.

“Mom, I have to. I hope you understand. I love you and I don’t wanna have to choose—”

“Leah, come the fuck on!” Kenny demanded from out in the hall.

My mom looked at me with tears in her eyes. She took a hard swallow and said, “I love you, too, Leah.”

Then, as I was leaving the apartment, I heard my mom gasp, “Lord Jesus, protect my child!”

I closed the door and followed Kenny down the hall and onto the elevator. My heart was beating at an alarming rate. I had never felt so frightened in my life.

“Give me your car keys,” Kenny ordered.

I dug in my pocketbook without reservation and grabbed my keys. I handed them over to Kenny.

“Press two,” he said, as he took only my car key off the ring and then tossed the remaining keys back to me.

I did what I was told. Kenny got off the elevator on the second floor and told me to hold the elevator doors open for him while he went to the apartment of one of his workers and gave the guy my car key.

After a few minutes Kenny returned to the elevator. “Sheen goin’ get mad pussy drivin’ his new car around,” he mumbled to himself.

I took that as his way of tellin’ me that he had given my car to one of his workers. And it didn’t hurt me, either. I had bigger problems on my hand. I didn’t know what Kenny was going to do to me. I had missed my meeting with the workers, and it looked as if I was going to miss my meeting with Detective Daily, too.

I followed Kenny out of the elevator, out the front door of the apartment building, and up the street to where his Suburban was parked. I was quiet the whole time, afraid to open my mouth about anything. He got in the driver’s seat and I got in the passenger’s seat. He started the SUV and pulled off.

Kenny didn’t say anything more to me about my being dropped off by Nasir or about my having gotten fired without tellin’ him. Although I knew he felt some type of way about all of it still. And that was what scared me. I didn’t know how he was takin’ it or when and how he planned to address it again. In the meantime, three days had gone by, and neither of us brought the subjects up. Matter of fact, we didn’t do much speaking to each other about anything. Kenny had been staying out a lot, working, clubbing, and most likely spending time with his side chicks.

I just stayed in bed mostly, gettin’ up only to eat, to use the bathroom, and to shower every night. I was depressed. I hadn’t answered my phone all weekend, not for Nasir, my mom, none of the workers at the shop, and not even Detective Daily. I didn’t even check my messages until that Tuesday morning.

The first message was from Detective Daily;
“Leah, you pulled a no-show on me. What’s goin’ on? Call me ASAP. I need a status on you.”

The second one was from Joe, the painter.
“Hey, Leah, it’s Joe. Joe Parker. Listen, um, I was wonderin’ if you was goin’ come through with that money like we been doin’ because I lost my ID and can’t cash my check. I was kind of depending on you Friday. What happened? Please call me because I need to get my check cashed. Thanks. ’Bye.”

Then there was a message from Nasir, except he didn’t say anything. I knew it was him, though, because I heard scanners in the background.

The last message was from my mom.
“Leah, where are you? Answer ya phone. That guy Nasir been by here for you this morning. I didn’t tell him what happened, but maybe you should. Maybe he can kick Kenny’s ass for you. He seems like a nice guy. And it’s obvious you two like each other. Why don’t you leave Kenny’s sorry ass while you can. And give that nice guy Nasir a chance. Call me. Let me know you’re all right.”

I hung up my phone, and the only person I called back was the detective. He didn’t answer his phone, so I left him a message. I simply stated, “Hi, it’s Leah. I am sorry for missing our meeting. An emergency came up. Call me to reschedule, please.”

I ended the call and lay back down in my bed. I wanted to cry, but I didn’t feel any tears. I guessed I was all cried out.

I
hadn’t spoken to Leah since I dropped her off at her mom’s almost a week ago. I was a little worried because she seemed out of it that day, like she wasn’t herself. I hoped she was all right.

I was at the barbershop sitting in the chair gettin’ a shape-up when I got a call from a blocked number. I answered it quickly, thinking it was Leah.

“Hello.”

“Nas,” my dad’s voice sounded, disappointing me. “Where you at?”

“The barbershop,” I said.

“Well, soon as you get done, I need you to meet me at the shop. I need to talk to you about somethin’, but not over the phone,” he said with a mixture of urgency and anger in his tone. “Hurry up, though,” he added, then hung up.

My barber, Mel, finished me up. I paid him and then got in my truck and headed to the shop. Brock was in the passenger’s-side seat waiting for me. I had been lettin’ him chase with me those few days that Leah was MIA. He had been doin’ good listenin’ to the scanners, being able to make out what the dispatchers were saying through all the static, and he was starting to learn the different codes that some of the dispatchers used to describe accidents, like MVA, instead of just saying “auto accident” like they normally did. So I trusted him to sit in the truck and be my ears while I was in the barbershop.

“Where you drivin’ to all fast?” he asked. “Ain’t no accident come out. I been listenin’.”

“Naw, I know. I gotta go to the shop real quick. My pop wanna holla at me,” I told him.

“Oh. What’s wrong?” Brock asked.

“I don’t know. He sounded like he was mad though.”

“All shit,” Brock said. “TGIAF.”

“What? Fuck that mean?”

“Thank God it ain’t Friday,” he explained. “Get that nigga mad on a Friday, and he mess around and don’t pay nobody. And I don’t need that kinda drama right now. A nigga gotta pay rent.”

“Pay rent to who, ya grandmom? Don’t you still live in her basement?” I laughed.

Brock played cool. “Yeah, but it’s decked out, though. It’s like my own little apartment down there. Got a bathroom, a TV, a mattress. Everything I need. And shit, long as the chicks dig it, I’m cool.”

“What chicks? Chicks don’t dig bein’ in nobody’s basement on no mattress, dog. Especially not at ya age,” I teased him. “You thirty years old.”

“Age ain’t nothin’ but a number, my nigga,” Brock said. Then he started rubbing his face. “Plus, I got this smooth baby face, nigga. The girls think I’m still in high school.”

That was true, too. Brock didn’t have any facial hair, with the ex
ception of a light-ass mustache. I could believe it when he said girls thought he was still in high school.

“Unlike you,” Brock went on, “who look like somebody’s old-ass sugar daddy.”

I chuckled and continued to be entertained by Brock as I weaved in and out of the traffic heading to the shop. Brock had me laughin’ the whole way. He was a natural comedian. That was why I fucked with him heavy. He was the coolest dude you could meet, always smiling and laughin’, even when shit wasn’t goin’ his way. He was the type of dude you would never see mad. Life was just funny to that nigga. So no matter what obstacles he faced, like not being able to read and write, and having been abandoned by his mom and dad when he was a kid, he always seemed to be the happiest dude on the planet. That was why, out of all the guys who worked at my dad’s shop, I clicked with him the most. He was just a positive person. He was my homie.

I pulled up to the shop and threw the truck in park. On my way out, I turned to Brock.

“I’ma need you to hold it down for me while I see what my pop want. It might be a little slow now with the morning rush hour almost over, but don’t be discouraged. You just gotta ride it out, ’cause ever so often somethin’ come out and you can get it because you the only nigga that stayed out during the dry period. All the other niggas go in,” I schooled Brock.

“I’m cool, though. I can stay out all day long as I can play the PlayStation. Man, that’s the best thing you could’ve put in ya truck.”

“It was either that or get a daily blow job to keep me still,” I told him.

“Well, I think you made the right choice. A blow job only lasts about five minutes. You would be ready to roll after that.”

I laughed and said, “Nigga, you funny at breakfast.”

At that moment the scanner produced a long and steady beep,
which usually preceded a call to an accident. Brock and I both grew quiet as we listened for the dispatcher to announce the emergency.

“
Medic Nine, Four-seven and Baltimore…
” the female voice said.

“You heard that?” I asked Brock.

“Yup. Four-seven and Baltimore,” he repeated.

Then the voice came back: “
Robbery victim shot in abdomen. Suspect a black male wearing dark blue Dickies and a navy baseball cap headed south on Baltimore on foot.
”

“Damn,” Brock said, “I’d rather be funny at breakfast than shot at breakfast. Niggas be wilin’ early in the morning.”

“You stupid, man,” I said as I got out of the truck. “I’ll call you when I need you to come pick me up.”

“All right,” Brock said, getting out of the passenger’s side and walking around to the driver’s seat.

I walked in the shop and sensed an eerie feeling right away. I spoke to Frank, the parts manager, who was organizing a bunch of different parts on a shelf. Then I said what’s up to Joe Porter and the rest of the workers. They all said what’s up back, but none of them had a joke. None of them asked me to hold a couple dollars. None of them had an outrageous story to tell me. Nothin’. They all seemed like they had lost a loved one. I wondered what I was walkin’ into.

I went in my dad’s office, and he had a bunch of papers laid out on his desk. He wasn’t frowning or nothin’, but he looked upset.

“Shut the door,” he instructed.

“What’s up?” I asked, following his instructions.

“Yo, you know anything about Leah washing my checks?”

Immediately, I thought about how I had been giving Leah checks every Friday, and my defenses went up. I couldn’t let that be known, especially not now while there seemed to be a problem. “Naw! What you mean?” I dumbed down.

“I mean, like taking checks that I write out to people and changing them to be made payable to mafuckas she know.”

“I know what washing checks means. But I don’t know nothin’ about Leah doin’ that.”

“You sure?”

“I’m positive. Why, what happened?”

“Well, recently I had moved some money around, and a check I wrote bounced. I had ya mom pull up the account online to see which check it was, and it was made out to somebody I ain’t know. So I looked into it and found a bunch of payroll checks that I had wrote out to my employees that ended up being rewritten to other mafuckas who I ain’t never hear of. So I started askin’ questions around this mafucka, and eventually I got some answers. What she been doin’ was takin’ everybody’s paychecks every Friday, washing them, and depositing them in bank accounts that belong to other businesses or people. Like this one,” he said, holding up a computer printout of a cashed check. “I wrote this check out to Joseph Parker—”

“The painter? Joe?” I clarified.

“Yeah,” my dad said. “But she gave Joe cash and took his check, erased my writing, and wrote it out to whoever she wanted to, basically usin’ my check to pay other people for shit like plumbing services, construction work, interior design, property management, all this shit.” My dad was rummaging through the many printouts of checks. “The bitch is slick.”

I got a little shook up. I didn’t want my dad to find out that I had been a participant in what was looking like a scam against him. First of all, that wasn’t the case. I never intended to scam my pop. I would have never been down for no shit like that. I mean, granted, I was wrong for goin’ behind his back with the shit that I had done, but it was not on some scandalous shit like what my dad was revealing to me. I needed to get to the bottom of what Leah had goin’ on and the scope of what she had possibly involved me in.

“I don’t get it, though,” I said, trying to wrap my head around what my dad was suggesting of Leah. “If she had the money to give Joe and everybody else, why wouldn’t she just use it to pay all the people you say she paid with the checks? Why would she need people’s checks at all? I don’t see the point. Maybe Joe and everybody is throwin’ her in the fire to cover their own ass, and maybe they chose to blame Leah because she’s the only one not here anymore to defend herself.” I didn’t want to believe for one second that Leah would fraud my pop. Not my pop. I mean, she might have been capable of doin’ her share of dirt, especially with a nigga like Kenny in her ear. But I refused to believe that she was capable of crossing me or my mothafuckin’ family.

“Naw,” my dad disagreed. “None of these niggas are sophisticated enough to have been able to pull off nothin’ like this. That’s number one. Plus, don’t none of them have the money to cash nobody’s checks.”

“True,” I mumbled. As hard as it was for me to face, my dad was right.

“It had to be Leah, dog. She was usin’ me to clean that nigga Kenny’s money up,” my dad concluded. “I told you she was fuckin’ trouble. Didn’t I say it?”

I nodded, then went deep into thought. “But that’s crazy, though,” I said. “What was she thinkin’?”

“Yo, get her on the phone right now,” my dad demanded.

Without hesitation I dialed Leah’s cell. There was no answer, like I figured. Ever since I dropped her off that past Friday, she hadn’t been answerin’ any of my calls or callin’ me. I went to redial her from the shop phone just to see if she would pick up then.

“Naw,” my dad stopped me. “Don’t even worry about it. I ain’t goin’ ask her shit. Joe said she still be meetin’ them after work on Fridays to switch off. So this Friday I’m goin’ go to the 7-Eleven where she meet everybody at, I’m goin’ catch her ass in the act,” my dad concluded.

On that note, my dad told me that if I spoke to Leah between then and Friday, not to say anything to her about the checks. He didn’t want her to be tipped off.

I gave him my word that I wouldn’t warn her, but deep down I wanted to. I wanted to ask her straight up if she had done what my dad’s workers had said she’d done. But shit, she wasn’t even answerin’ my calls, so I couldn’t ask her shit if I wanted to. And it was eatin’ at me, too. I started thinking that maybe that was the reason she had been duckin’ me. Maybe she got wind of the fact that she had been exposed. Whatever the case may be, I was anxious to find out the truth. I found myself counting down the three days until Friday.

It was prom season, so over the past week limos, gowns, and suits had flooded the streets. It seemed like every time I turned around, somebody I knew little sister or cousin was goin’ on a prom. And on that particular Friday I had like five people to see off between seven and nine. But first and foremost, I had to go with my dad to the 7-Eleven to see what the hell was goin’ on with Leah.

We were in my dad’s Yukon. We didn’t want Leah to see my truck or my dad’s truck and get scared and leave. It felt like we were on a stakeout.

“I swear on everything if this shit go down, all them niggas is fired. And that bitch, oh man, I got some plans for her ass, too,” my dad said, spazzin’.

I wasn’t mad like my dad, not yet anyway. I really was hopin’ that we were wastin’ our time out there. I hoped Leah wouldn’t show. I didn’t want that shit about her to be true.

My heart was starting to beat faster as the clock crept up to five fifteen, the time Leah was expected to pull up into the parking lot. I was looking out the side mirrors to see if I could spot her. There was no sign of her, and I started to feel anxious. I willed the clock to fly
past 5:15 and for Leah not to show. I wanted more than anything for it all to be one big misunderstanding.

Then my dad sat up in the driver’s seat and adjusted the rearview mirror. “I think this is her,” he said.

A gray Maserati, the same color as Kenny’s, pulled into a parking space two cars away from where my dad and I were parked. It was Kenny and Leah. Kenny was driving. Leah was in the passenger’s seat. Once parked, neither of them got out of the car. Instead, they waited while Leah made a phone call on her cell. Seconds later, a scared-looking Joe walked out of the store. He glanced over at my dad and me and twitched his eyes, lookin’ real suspicious. He walked over to Leah’s car. As they were exchanging something, my dad and I walked up on them.

“Get the fuck out the car, man!” my dad instructed Kenny. Then he turned his attention to Joe. “Yo, Joe, give that mafuckin’ money up. Nasir, get that shit from ’im.”

At that point Joe handed me the cash Leah had given him. He started apologizing and beggin’ my dad for forgiveness, talkin’ about he didn’t know what Leah was doin’ with the checks. My dad wasn’t tryin’ to hear none of that shit, though. He told him he’d better leave now while he still had legs to do so. Joe took off running out of the parking lot and around the corner.

Meanwhile, Leah’s face looked like she had just seen a ghost. She had one hand over her heart and everything.

“Fuck is you doin’, man?” I snarled at her, not able to withhold my anger toward her.

“Get them fuckin’ checks from her, Nas!” my dad said. Then he turned back to Kenny, who remained in the car with a smirk on his face while he sipped on a supersized McDonald’s drink.

“Niggga, you heard what the fuck I said! Get out the mafuckin’ car! I know it was you who put her up to this shit!” My dad approached the driver’s side, where Kenny was sitting.

“Whatchu talkin’ ’bout?” Kenny asked with arrogance.

My dad then opened the door himself and gripped Kenny up out the car. At that Kenny threw his drink on my dad and swung on him at the same time. My dad didn’t swing back, but he pulled out his pistol and cracked Kenny across the face with it.

Leah screamed and started crying as she fiddled to open the glove compartment and retrieve two checks. Her hand shaking, she handed the checks to me, practically throwing them at me.

I quickly glanced at the checks and started to stuff them in my pocket when I had to take a second look at them. One was made out to me, dated for last Friday, the day I had dropped Leah off at her mom’s, then hadn’t heard from her again. I put that one in a separate pocket from the one that was made out to Joe. I had to remember which pocket I put which check in because I didn’t want to run the risk of giving my dad the check that was made out to me. That would have put me in the same category as Joe and them other niggas—sheisty. And even though my reasons for giving her checks were different from the others’, my dad wouldn’t have seen it that way. Goin’ behind his back was goin’ behind his back. Disloyalty was disloyalty.