End of the Line (20 page)

Mario drove over to Raven’s house and saw what was left of the frame. Seeing several small shrines of flowers and teddy bears piled up on what was once the porch, he turned the bottle that he was drinking all the way up. After sitting there for close to an hour, he started his engine and drove over to the parking lot of the store where his brother Tone died. Going into the store, he grilled the clerk as if he was the police wanting to know what his brother’s last minutes on earth were like. He wanted to view the security tape, but they swore to him that the homicide detectives investigating the case had confiscated it. Purchasing another bottle, Mario practically swallowed the fifth in three gulps. He’d been drunk since the moment he knew for sure Tone was gone. He was going to find his brother and Raven’s killers if it was the last thing he was going to do.
These raggedy niggas up here is fucked up. Grand Rapids can’t hold a real Detroit goon down!
Staggering, his eyes were barely open when he fell off the curb and into oncoming traffic. Thank God for Mario, his pain was brief.

* * *

Dino had been driving around for hours trying to figure out his next move. All his friends were either dead or had double-crossed him. He wanted to go and find Rell and split his shit to the white meat, but he was still trying to cope and process everything that he’d ear hustled up on earlier. He never knew what happened with Marlon and Dre. He assumed that Marlon had jumped in the driver’s seat after he left the store and peeled off. Dino went to sleep believing that Marlon and Dre were somewhere tripping out about what popped off and how he’d pulled a disappearing act on all their asses. Dino was stressed out that Marlon was gone and Dre was gone also. He’d never talk shit with them again or clown the other one about this or that. He knew that they all chose to be in the streets and make money and with that decision came the threat of jail or death. Yet, like most people out doing what they do, neither one of those things they thought would be their fate. Now as Dino drove around in Monique’s car unaware that the DEA Task Force was making its rounds and he was next on the list, all he could do was try his hardest to just say good-bye to the city he was born and raised in and jump on the freeway, destination unknown.

Sitting in the far rear side parking lot of Bob Evan’s watching families go inside, he took stock about who he really was as a man. There it was; all the dirt he’d done and about the one person that never betrayed him or turned their back on him until he drew first blood: J-Rite. He wanted to call her or maybe just take his chances and go to the house that they once shared; after all, she was carrying his baby. But considering there was a war going on between them, he knew they were history. He pulled out of the parking lot and hit the road.

* * *

J-Rite wanted nothing more than to turn back the hands of time but knew she could not. She had been through hell and back and just wanted to get some rest. After trying to call Leesa a few more times and getting her voice mail, J-Rite popped two valiums and lay across the couch to take a nap. Shortly into her much-needed nap she thought she thought she heard a knock at her front door but was not totally sure. Praying to God it was Leesa who had come to her senses after listening to her messages or Mario coming back by to chill out, she opened the door without first asking who it was. Groggy, she was speechless as her jaw dropped open.

“Hey, Jessica, I missed you!”

Before she knew what was happening next, she was being shoved back inside the living room, knocked upside the head, and pushed down on the couch. J-Rite knew she’d taken two pills and that was one more than her small frame could ever take without being down for the count for days. When she took them, she had all intentions of just hibernating under the blanket until better days, no matter how long it would take. Now, here she was totally caught off guard and not in her right mind having to deal with this.

“Oh my God, what do you want? What are you doing here?” She held the side of her head not believing she’d been hit.

“I came to see you; to be with you. Wasn’t that always the game plan? Wasn’t that what we always said?” His words were deliberate, and his questions needed no answers. The expression on his face showed that he was here to claim what and who he felt was his one true love.

J-Rite tried to focus her eyes on her uninvited guest. She tried to think of what would make him think it was okay to just show up on her doorstep, but could not. So much time had gone by since they were together, his presence made no sense to her. In between Raven’s and Tone’s death, she had no time to deal in matters of the heart. She just wanted to mourn in peace. “Hey, listen, what was popping off then with us ain’t popping now. You know that. I told you a million times, but I guess you thought I was playing.”

Word of Raven and her family’s dreadful murder had traveled. It was being reported on just about every news station in the country, and Detroit was not the exception. Mike Mike had stolen one of his friend’s cars and hit I-96. He had been off his meds for a few months and with J-Rite abruptly cutting him off from sending cash, he had been living life like a crazed man. He’d lost the house, sold all his video games for food, and oftentimes slept on the street if he had to. Mike Mike felt his life was perfect when he and J-Rite were together. It was torture for him to hear from the grapevine that she was up in Grand Rapids living life like it was golden; making money, driving good, eating good, and messing around with some new nigga, spending all her bread on him. Mike Mike was devastated his girl had just got up and thrown him and their love away like garbage. In his mentally deranged mind, the two of them had made a pact years ago that no one or nothing could ever truly break them apart. He never cared about her dancing or selling a little pussy here and there. Their bond was still their bond; at least in his eyes.

“I know you didn’t mean what you were saying. I know that ho-ass nigga they said you was fucking with put you up to not talking to me anymore.” Mike Mike hadn’t had a haircut in what appeared to be several weeks, or even a bath. Jessica had never seen him look so bad and quickly realized he was having one of his infamous episodes when he was off his meds.

She sat back and let him rant and hopefully get it out of his system.

“Baby, look, I didn’t mean to hit you like that. It’s just that when I saw you I kinda had a flashback of how you been playing me far off to the left since you bailed. I know things weren’t perfect, and I was gonna get a job. You just didn’t give me time!”

“Crazy-ass nigga.” She could hold her tongue no longer. “I did everything I could for you; for us. And all you wanted to do was play video games and smoke weed. Get the fuck on! Of course, I was gonna find me a real man and leave your ass alone!”

Jessica’s words angered him even more. As he stood over her with his fist balled ready to attack, Mike Mike calmed himself down and smiled.

“What the fuck you smiling at like that?” Jessica hissed, wishing she had strength to get up on her feet and fight him toe to toe.

“A real man? Are you serious right about now? You mean, a man that was cheating on you with some other bitch he got pregnant? A man that was taking all your money spending it at the strip clubs and treating you like shit? A dude that couldn’t come see you at court or give a damn that you lost his damn baby—that you should’ve never been thinking about having from jump! Or you mean that would beef with you and probably was the one that killed Raven and them kids?”

Jessica was stunned. She was speechless that Mike Mike was standing in her living room reading her like he had. “How . . .”

“What, you dumb bitch? How did I know? Because unlike your greedy out-for-self-opportunist ass, Raven didn’t come up here, start making money, and turning her back on her friends back home. She told Wild Child what was going down up here, and she told me.”

“Really?” J-Rite wanted to call Raven and chin check her for running off at the mouth and telling Wild Child all of her business, but she couldn’t.

Mike Mike wasn’t done with his tirade. “You was so busy saying I wasn’t about nothing, but I ain’t never did half the shit that lame Dino did to you, and you was just like, fuck me. Truth be told, it’s your fault Raven and them kids dead, and everybody back home know it. They all talking about if you never came up here in the first place dealing with Buzzy’s good snitching in the fed joint ass, Raven would’ve never followed!”

J-Rite’s spirit was crumbling. She knew half, if not all, of what Mike Mike was saying was true, as harsh as he’d delivered it and as painful as it was to hear. Lately, her life had been turned upside down and full of regret. Ready to just give up, she had no more fight left in her. “Look, you probably right. I know I been leaving foul, and, yeah, that was wrong for me to stop looking out for you because of some nigga; especially one that got something to do with Tone and Raven getting killed.”

On bended knee, Mike Mike perched on the side of the couch. Using the backside of his hand, he softly caressed the side of Jessica’s face where he’d struck her. When she didn’t flinch, part of him prayed that he had a chance to make things right between them. “Okay, baby, I know I look fucked up, and I know I ain’t got jack shit to offer like before, but can you at least just come back to Detroit with me and chill? Maybe we can go somewhere and watch movies all night like we used to. Maybe that’s what you need to do to get your mind right; get out of this bad-luck city. What you think? All this bullshit will be here when you get back.”

Jessica still wasn’t thinking straight, but had been missing her old life. Although Mike Mike was talking out of the side of his neck, for the most part, he was right. He’d never fucked her over or did her wrong like Dino had on so many occasions. Maybe a trip back home was what she needed. Besides, then she could get him some help to get back on his meds and make sure he got back on his feet. “You know what? You right. That’s what the fuck I’m gonna do.”

Mike Mike didn’t expect things to really go his way. In reality, he’d come there to kill himself and Jessica, having nothing else to live for. Now, she was flipping the script, letting him feel they had another chance at a new life. “Are you for real?”

After having Mike Mike help her gather a few of her things to toss in a suitcase, she tried to call Leesa and Mario once more before leaving and received their voice mails. Still weak, she leaned on her ex’s arm as they walked to the rental she was still driving.

As Mike Mike went toward the rear of the vehicle to put her bag in the trunk, he noticed a flat tire. Reassuring her that he was good to drive, she got in the stolen car he’d come in and settled into the passenger seat slumped over, wanting to sleep. Now totally high as a kite off the pills, Jessica didn’t care that the steering wheel column was broken and that he’d started the engine with a screwdriver. All she knew that she was on her way home. Mike Mike was turning left off her block at the exact same time the DEA Task Force was turning onto it. Not paying attention to the car that was not on their description of vehicles Jessica Sanders was known to drive, they kept the federal convoy moving, ready to raid and execute yet another person on their indictment list.

Hazel and her people were livid. After months of investigations, surveillances, and losing sleep, some of their raids had definitely not gone as planned. Coming up empty-handed at J-Rite’s residence was one of them. They’d searched every single inch of her home, and there was no sign of the small-in-size wannabe drug queen. She had vanished, but Hazel was confident she’d catch up with her sooner or later. Her years in law enforcement taught her that females like J-Rite couldn’t stay out of the limelight for long; they had to be seen and heard.

Receiving a call from the captain in charge of the raid of Dino’s home, Hazel’s spirits were once again dampened hearing that their target Dino, like J-Rite, had somehow eluded capture. After kicking the door off the hinges, the team discovered his girl Monique, pregnant on the floor, throwing up blood. The only thing she was interested in was hopefully saving the life of her unborn child. As the ambulance took her away, she was more than eager to tell them that Dino had not only tried to kill her, but he was in her car. Monique provided them with all the information so they could track the GPS and locate the vehicle and Dino.

* * *

Mike Mike hated to wake Jessica up, but he looked at the dashboard and saw that the gas light had just popped on. Taking it upon himself, he unzipped her purse and took a twenty-dollar bill out of the many rubber banded rolls of cash she had stuffed in there.
Same old Jessica, always about her money,
Mike Mike smiled as he pulled off the freeway and into a gas station. Pulling up at pump number seven, he reached under the seat retrieving his screwdriver to turn the car off. Watching her curled up in the front seat with her jacket serving as a blanket, he got out to pay for the gas admiring the pearl-white sports car on the other side; pump eight. Looking back over his shoulder at the car, he grabbed the handle of the door, not watching where he was going. “Damn, my bad.” Mike Mike immediately took a cop apologizing to the guy he’d accidently bumped into coming out of the gas station.

“Yo, you dirty, stinking-ass nigga! Watch where the fuck you going! And, damn, nigga, get a haircut or some shit!”

Mike Mike was unbothered by what the guy had said. First, because it was true he did smell badly and knew it, but second, he was on cloud nine because he had Jessica back on his side; what he’d been praying for since the morning she walked in with the plan to leave.

After giving the cashier the money, he pumped his gas, then pulled over to the far side of the station to put some air in all of the bald tires. Mike Mike didn’t want to take any chances on him and Jessica getting back to Detroit where they both belonged. Putting air in the last of the four, he dropped the hose to the ground as over ten police cars, some unmarked, roared up into the gas station. He didn’t know what to do. This wasn’t who he was, a car thief. He just wanted to find J-Rite, maybe find the courage to kill her and himself, then rest in peace. Now, he was about to go to jail for stealing a car.

Frozen, he took a deep breath, then exhaled as all the cars whizzed by him and surrounded the pearl-white sports car and the rude guy that was sitting behind the wheel rolling up a blunt. As the cops jumped out of their cars, guns in hand yelling “DEA Task Force, put your hands up!” Mike Mike looked up to sky thanking God for sparing him from that bullshit. Seeing that they were all preoccupied snatching the man out of the car, slamming him down onto the ground, Mike Mike started the engine and eased out of the back way of the gas station. J-Rite never once woke up to see Dino getting arrested. In bliss, she was deep in a dream that she was back home in Detroit living her old life.

And soon she would be.