Playing Dirty (19 page)

As I waited in front of the bank of elevators, I paced back and forth. Although the lobby was crowded with people coming and going, I didn’t notice anything strange, and I never made eye contact with anyone. Back in my room I dug through the little bit of things I had there and got my stuff together. My identification was the most important thing I’d come back for.

As I made my way around the room, I noticed a manila envelope on the bed.
Ms. Lomax,
it said on the front. My fucking heart immediately went still; I had to remind myself to breathe. No one at the hotel knew me as Ms. Lomax; in fact, only my clients referred to me as Ms. Lomax. Who the fuck knew I was there? Panic struck me like a hammer, crashing into my plans. I thought I’d done a great job keeping a low profile, but obviously someone had figured out my little game.

I looked around the room, feeling like I was not alone. Hands shaking, I slowly picked up the envelope and unwound the little red floss that held it closed. Inside were pictures, several pictures. I stared at the first of the stack; it was a picture of Mr. Santana. I furrowed my eyebrows as I stared at the picture. Mr. Santanta was strapped to a chair, naked and bleeding all over his face. Blood covered his entire chest. There was so much blood, I couldn’t tell if he was dead or alive. One thing was for sure, I knew he wasn’t going to be alive after they finished with him.

“Oh shit!” I gasped, because deep down inside I knew that this had to be the work of Sheldon’s people. So to know that they had finally gotten to Santana before the police could, that gave me a bittersweet feeling. And then I started thinking about how in the hell they were able to get ahold of Luis. I mean, this guy always had at least ten bodyguards around him at all times. So I figured that this had to be the work of an inside job.

The next picture was of Adrianna and it was clear that she was already dead because of the way her eyes were rolled up into her head. All of her fingers were gone, her throat slit, and her body posed in a sexual position. The way I saw it, they wanted to humiliate her, even in death. The whole thing made me sick, and I began to gag.

As bad as I thought I was, and as much as I wanted revenge, this shit was crazy. What had I done? I was the cause of these people getting murdered—the solution I thought was the right one for what they’d done to my life. And although I didn’t want to see any more, something beyond me forced me to keep looking. So I continued flipping through the pictures, and the next one shocked the shit out of me.

It was a picture of Brad in a jail cell, and he’d clearly been beaten senseless. He had been hog-tied, his feet were blue, and he had what looked like a broomstick rammed up his ass. I held my chest in disbelief. What the fuck was going on? How did Sheldon find out that I even dealt with Brad? Now this shit was getting scarier by the second. Brad was dead. But why? I never saw anything in the media about his death or even about him missing.

Tears came to the front of my eyes but did not fall. Not until I looked at the next picture. It was a picture of my mother—feeble, skinny, and sick—sitting in her wheelchair and looking dazed and confused. She had not been harmed; I could tell that. Nonetheless, that picture was the thing that finally caused the tears to stream out of my eyes. These ruthless motherfuckers had gone and found my mother.

There was no doubt in my mind that he was threatening me with these pictures, basically sending me a message—telling me that he was capable of killing her if he wanted. But would they really hurt her to get back at me? I asked myself, although I already knew the answer.

I frantically moved on to the next picture. My hands were shaking so badly, I could barely hold on to the stack. The next picture answered my question. It was a picture of Scott Maxwell, my fucking lawyer, the only person I had left in the world to help me. He was still alive, his mouth duct-taped, and he was also strapped to a chair with a sign on his chest:
PLEASE HELP ME, YOSHI.
At the sight of Scott in bondage, my knees buckled. I looked around the room, scared as hell.

Suddenly the phone began to ring. My heart raced inside my chest so hard, it threatened to jump out. I got nauseous as hell because I knew Sheldon’s people could be anywhere. I mean, they had to be somewhere nearby to know that I was at the Ritz-Carlton. Not only that, they could’ve just come in and killed me right on the spot. But there was a reason why they hadn’t. It wasn’t about money with Sheldon, I knew that. He had plenty of money.

The phone continued to ring, but I was too afraid to answer it. Finally I said fuck it. But by the time I reached for it, it stopped ringing. So I stood still for a few seconds, not knowing what to do. But then after two whole minutes passed, I decided that the best thing for me to do would be to get out.

Just when I was about to walk away from the phone, it rang again. It startled the hell out of me. My heart started pounding, even harder this time. I waited for it to ring four times before I answered; then I nervously snatched the phone up.

“Hello,” I said in an audible tone.

“You have until midnight to bring Sheldon Chisholm’s money to the West Side,” a man’s voice threatened. Just the sound of him gave me the fucking chills. I was scared to death. But what was even scarier was that I had been gone from Scott’s house for only a couple of days and they’d already found me. So instead of responding, I slammed the receiver back down and fell to my knees; the sobs came in waves, huge waves big enough to crush a city. I cried and cried, feeling hopeless and trapped, until a knock at my hotel room door startled me out of my misery. I looked over at the door and felt like all of the blood had rushed out of my body. There it went again, a soft knock.

“Housekeeping,” a soft Hispanic woman’s voice sang from the other side. I didn’t trust a soul and I didn’t answer. I knew if it was really the housekeeper, she would be coming in with her card key, once she didn’t get an answer. I waited…but nothing. My hands became sweaty and my eyes darted around the room. I just knew any minute Sheldon’s men would come rushing in the door with machine guns blazing…but still nothing. I got up off the floor and crept until I was standing behind the door, listening. I could hear the housekeepers speaking Spanish to one another in the hallway. Then I heard someone put a key into my door; then there was a beep and a click. I ran inside the bathroom, but it was too late to close the door behind me. I stood still behind the door and waited to see what was about to happen next. My heart was beating uncontrollably as the door began to open wide. And then the housekeeper entered my room. I heaved a sigh of relief when I saw the little Hispanic woman roll her cleaning cart into the room. I stepped from behind the door.

“Ayi!”
she screamed. “You scared me,” she said with her thick accent.

“I’m so sorry, but you scared the hell out of me, too,” I apologized.

“Is it okay for me to clean your room?” she asked.

“Yes, you can go ahead,” I said, and then right after I gave her the okay, an idea popped into my head. “What’s your name?” I asked as I moved closer to her.

“Blanca,” she said.

I walked toward her and extended my arm around her shoulder. “Blanca, would you like to earn some extra money?”

She looked at me, really puzzled. “What will I have to do?” she wondered.

“Come over here and I’ll show you,” I insisted.

Now, I honestly didn’t know if she’d go forward with the plan I had just come up with, but when it was all said and done, I was going to make her an offer she would not be able to refuse.

M
y hands trembled as I used these dull-ass-bladed scissors to hack off the last long lock of my beautiful hair and let it drop into the bathroom sink. The sight of wads of my hair lying in that sink made me feel horrible. I’d always taken pride in my hair, keeping it long as a sign of beauty. But I now had to chop it off in order to save my own life. I felt like throwing those scissors and breaking the glass as I stared at my reflection in the huge vanity mirror; I was definitely a different person—inside and out. The new short, butchered haircut made me look gaunt in the face and it made my slanted eyes look even more prominent. “Damn!” I mumbled.

I officially looked like shit, but it was either look like shit for a little while or die at the hands of those psycho-ass Haitians. Now when Blanca had agreed to help me, I became elated as hell. I sent her on an errand to purchase me a bottle of Clairol fire red hair dye and a pair of almost an inch-long fake eyelashes. She also got me some press-on nails and a housekeeping uniform in my size.

When I first offered Blanca the $10,000 for her uniform, the little Hispanic lady started disrobing that second. As it turned out, though, I was too tall and too slim to fit her uniform. Wanting the money badly, she had told me to wait and she would get me a uniform from one of the younger, more slender housekeepers. Just like she agreed, she came through for me with the uniform.

When I offered her five thousand more, she ran to the store to purchase a few more things I figured I would need to complete this mission. When I was done changing myself into the new me, I came out of the bathroom to show Blanca what person I had turned into.

“Different,
mami…
you look very different. You don’t look like the same person at all,
señora,
” she told me.

When I looked at myself in the mirror, I thought “different” was an understatement. I looked like a pack of crayons had exploded on my head. Well, let me just say, I felt like I was going to a Halloween costume party. How those housekeepers wore that cheap polyester up against their skin every day was beyond me.

After I was all done changing, Blanca showed me the staff entrance and exit to the hotel. There was no way I would be able to go out the front entrance, even in disguise. I was sure that these monsters probably had all of the exits covered. I also assumed that they would have the service exits covered as well, so Blanca assured me she knew a way to get me out of the hotel safely without alerting anyone.

I felt bad after I said this, but I lied and told her that I was running from an abusive ex-husband, a story I knew she would likely sympathize with. And I was right, because her face turned beet red and she immediately started flying off the handle about how she hated when men put their hands on women. I let her vent about her experiences as she escorted me through the back quarters of the hotel. By the time she finished with her story, she had taken me to where I needed to be. The only other thing I needed at this point was a ride out of here. So I asked her if she’d call me a taxi. That’s when she said, “Oh no, I call my boyfriend for you. He drives taxi.”

“Okay, great! Call him,” I insisted.

She pulled out her prepaid Boost Mobile phone and got her boyfriend on the line. I heard her tell him to get down to her job right now because she needed him. And when he told her that he’d be there in the next twenty minutes, she hung up. We stood around at the back entrance of the laundry chute and waited patiently.

Meanwhile, as I was standing there, I noticed how hard these women worked. Sweat was pouring from their foreheads and I had not heard one of them complain the entire time. And through it all, I couldn’t help but think about my old housekeeper, Ophelia. She was a good woman and she was a hard worker. Never complained one day and I loved that about her. It was funny how you learned to appreciate someone after they’re gone. Boy, I was going to miss her.

Finally, after waiting for approximately ten minutes, Blanca’s boyfriend rang her cellular phone to tell her that he was outside. She pushed open the door and grabbed ahold of my hand so we could walk out together. Before I took the first step, I took a deep breath and exhaled. I wanted to tell Blanca that I was really on the run for my life, but I was afraid that if I told her I was running from one of the most dangerous drug dealers in Miami, she would have left me high and dry and told her man to get out of here before he got caught in the middle of it. I knew I was putting them both in harm’s way, but, hey, what was I going to do? I needed them. And when you needed someone so desperately, then you would resort to anything.

Blanca’s boyfriend was waiting outside, near the laundry drop-off area. He was waiting patiently for my arrival. When I approached his car, he got out and opened the door for me. “Thank you,” I said.

He was definitely your average Hispanic. To me, all Mexicans look the same; he definitely fit the bill with his height and features. He had to be every bit of five-four. Yes, he was a very short man, stocky too. But he carried his weight well, I might add.

“Señorita,
where you want to go?” he asked.

“I have a few places I need to go, but right now all I need you to do is get me out of here,” I told him, and hopped in the backseat.

“Okay, I take you anywhere you want to go,” he replied.

I liked the sound of that, but he had absolutely no idea how far I needed him to go. Although I knew I wouldn’t use her boyfriend to get out of Miami, I could sure use him to get halfway where I needed to go. Blanca knew I had money and was willing to pay just to make it out of that hotel alive. Before he and I pulled off, he reached over and gave her a kiss. I kind of looked the other way to give them some privacy. And right before he got into the driver’s seat, she whispered something into his ear. He looked down at her pocket, where I believed she stashed the money I had given her, and smiled.

I knew right then she had told him that I paid her a nice piece of change, which was probably a clear indicator to him that I was about to do the same for him. I didn’t let on that I read right through their little whispers and eye movements, because to me, it was harmless.

“Ready to go?” he asked the moment he closed the door and looked into his rearview mirror.

I sighed. “I was born ready,” I told him.

At that very moment he stepped on the accelerator and bailed the hell out of the service area. I looked out the back window and Blanca was there waving us good-bye. She looked like a guardian angel to me at that point. Somebody up high had been looking out for me; maybe it was Maria.

Now her boyfriend angled the cab down the back streets, just like I had instructed him, and I remained crouched down in the seat until we hit the highway. “What is your name?” I asked.

“Pedro,” he replied.

“Thanks so much for your help, Pedro, but do you have a telephone?” I wanted to know.

“Sí,
I have one,” he told me, and reached into his ashtray and handed me his cellular phone.

I grabbed the phone out of his hand and then I dug down into my bra to get the card I had written the number on. It had taken some maneuvering to get the fucking number, since I didn’t have my BlackBerry and had no idea where to find it. Maybe the cops had it. My hands shook as I fumbled with the card and the phone. Finally, with shaky hands, I dialed the numbers. I placed the phone to my ear and said a silent prayer that someone picked up. It was ringing, and with each unanswered ring, my heart sank deeper and deeper.

“C’mon…c’mon,” I wished out loud, swinging my legs back and forth nervously. Finally he picked up the line. “Hello?” he said into the receiver.

Whew!
I exhaled a sigh of relief and cleared my throat. I was never so happy to hear a man’s voice in my life; his words sounded like sweet music to my ears.

“Hi, Lance, it’s Yoshi,” I said, my voice cracking despite my efforts to sound sexy.

“Damn, I thought I’d never hear from you, Ms. Big Shot.…What’s good, ma?” Lance exclaimed at hearing my voice. I’d spoken to him only a few times since our little trip, and, truthfully, I expected him to curse me out and hang up, but he didn’t. He was still a perfect gentleman.

“Listen, I need you to meet me at the piers. Remember you said if I ever needed you, I could call on you? Well, I need you right now.” I huffed out my words, closing my eyes and waiting for his reaction.

“Shit. I’m at the studio right now, ma…everything alright?” Lance asked, changing his tone to serious.

“No, Lance, everything is not alright. I know you’ve seen the news,” I said, growing tired of his little act.

“Hell yeah, sounded like you need a lawyer yourself. What the fuck is up with you?” he answered, not holding back.

“No, I don’t need a lawyer right now. What I need is for you to meet me at the piers. I need you like never before, Lance. It’s a matter of life and death, and this time I need you to save me,” I pleaded. I didn’t let my pride get in the way this time.

“A’ight, just for you. I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” he agreed. He was really a fucking ride-or-die type of dude. He didn’t ask any more questions and didn’t seem to care what kind of trouble I was in. When he had told me that he would be forever grateful to me for getting him off and saving him from a life sentence, he meant it. I was glad that I’d thought to call on him. Lance Wallace—drug dealer turned platinum rapper, former client—was my only fucking hope right now.

I looked out the window at the cab’s location on the highway. Twenty minutes would be perfect, as I estimated it. Lance and I should make it to the pier at the same time. I returned the phone to Pedro, who was looking at me strangely…almost like he knew me from somewhere.

He kept looking at me through the rearview mirror until he had made me so uneasy, I had to address it.

“Is there a
problemo
?” I asked him, frustrated.

“No,
mami,
” he answered, turning his eyes back to the road. He was fucking making me uneasy, staring like he didn’t have any sense. I told him to take me to the piers and I leaned my head back on the seat and prayed that Lance would agree to help me get away.

When we pulled into the pier, it was crowded as usual. There were people boarding cruise ships and party boats, and the rich people were boarding their yachts. I scanned the crowds with my eyes, trying to see if I recognized any of Sheldon’s henchmen. They would have lots of places to hide at the crowded-ass pier. I had to be very careful, and I knew it. I wasn’t in the clear just yet. As far as I could tell, the Haitians were nowhere around, but you could never know for sure. I didn’t see anyone acting suspicious in the crowds. That was a good sign.

Maybe they were still looking for me in the streets of Miami? They were probably shocked that I wasn’t in the hotel room, since their men never saw me leave out the front. They probably had the Ritz-Carlton on lockdown right now as they searched for me, which was good. It would buy me some time.

I lay low inside the cab, waiting to see if I saw Lance. I had noticed Lance’s yacht docked and anchored in the same spot it had been the night we went on our trip.

“There…that white-and-green yacht, with the gold writing, pull up to it,” I said to Pedro.

“Green and white?” he asked, trying to understand me.

“Yes! That boat there…the green-and-white one!” I yelled. I was so nervous, my frustration was shining through.

“Okay…okay,” he replied.

“I’m sorry, I’m just in a rush,” I apologized, although I knew he couldn’t really understand me. He finally got what I was saying and pulled up behind
La La’s Love
. We sat in the car for what seemed like an eternity, and then I saw Lance. Flashy and fine as ever, he bopped down the pier with all of his sex appeal. Of course Lance was flanked by his entourage and was talking and laughing very loud. I wished he would’ve come alone. I noticed him looking up and down, as if he were trying to find me.

I was so happy inside that he came at all, so I couldn’t be picky about him having people with him. It was a first step. Now I just had to convince him to help me get the fuck out of Miami, and fast.

“Thank you so much,” I said to Blanca’s boyfriend, handing him a thousand, just as I had agreed. He immediately flipped through the money and smiled at me.

“Gracias,”
he returned.

I slid on my dark shades and my huge sun hat and stepped out of the cab. I walked slowly toward Lance; I knew he wouldn’t recognize me. He was laughing and talking with his homeboys when I approached them.

“It sure feels good to see you after all this time,” I said in a low whisper, touching his chest.

He looked at me strangely; it was good that he didn’t recognize me. I guess he was approached by so many women every day, his bodyguard stepped between us.

“It’s me,” I said softly as I tilted my glasses slightly away from my eyes; the only thing I couldn’t change was my eyes.

“Yo! I didn’t recognize your ass with the new look. What’s up, Yoshi?” he yelled, grabbing me for a greeting hug.

“Shhhh,”
I said, instinctively placing my pointer finger over his mouth. I couldn’t take a chance on someone hearing my name. “Can we get on the boat? Can we go somewhere and talk? For a sail?” I asked, desperate to get off the streets.

“That’s not a problem, c’mon, just me and you,” he said. He could tell by my urgency that something was going on.

He signaled to his friends that we were boarding the yacht. At this point I didn’t mind having extra people around. Lance and I walked toward his yacht in silence, taking quick steps. I knew he’d have a lot of questions and I was ready to answer them.

La La’s Love
seemed so inviting. I don’t know if it was because I wanted to get on that fucking yacht and sail and sail until I was at the tip of the earth, or if it was because it was the last hope I had for saving my own life. He pulled up on the lever to hoist the anchor and I climbed the steps onto the yacht first. He was right on my heels and his bodyguards right on his.