The Plug's Wife (19 page)

              “I have something for you,” he said, flicking a picture in front of her.  “Just in case you think of calling your soldiers on me.” 

Summer bent over and thought about lunging for her purse with the gun inside.  The image in the picture quickly changed her thoughts.  She collapsed to the floor and let out a squeaky yelp.  She quickly covered her mouth with her hand and hot tears fell once again.

              “Diego…please,” Summer croaked.  The man chuckled evilly. 

              “I know this would get your attention,” he spat.  “Ah yes, your precious Carrera is here in the states.  If you want to save her from a fate similar to yours, then we will need to have a little chat about your business dealings in the drug empire first.

Summer clutched the picture of her butt naked, bound and gagged sister.  It was his way of scaring the women he smuggled into submission when they first arrived in America. 

              “Juliano?” she rasped, her throat like sand paper. 

              “He’s here as well.  Who do you think I’m using to condition the girls to work for me?” Diego smiled.  “You would be proud of how cruel that boy can be. Just like you, he likes the taste of blood.  Even his own sister’s.” 

Summer’s shoulders slumped.  She wanted her siblings to live a better life.  It was all her fault.  All of the stealing.  All of the sex for money.  All of the lies she told since coming to the United States had been for naught.

              “In your new business, I want to be partner fifty percent.  Think about it, but not too long.  You know it didn’t take me long to break you down,” he reminded.  “Carrera is nowhere near as strong willed or beautiful as you were Lourdes.  She might not make it through as easily as you did either,” he chuckled wickedly.  He rubbed the top of her head as if she were a dog before stepping over her body.

              Summer bit down on her lip until it gushed with blood.  The metallic taste coated her tongue and she sucked it down like she needed it to stay alive.  She crunched the picture up until it was a ball.  She was at a crossroads and she knew it.  Either she could give in to the demands or use her position as boss to stand up and finally take back her life.

Chapter 15 
Cracking Under Pressure

“Dayumm, boss lady!  I was just about to come looking for you inside that place.  I’m on edge about you right now.  Plus this lil dude talked me into la-la land in here,” Billy joked when Summer slid back into the car.  He quickly changed his tone when he saw how pale and out of sorts she looked.  Summer’s eyes looked like she had been crying for hours.

              “What’s inside there anyway?  E’erything ai’ght?” he asked, his eyebrows furrowed with concern.  Summer turned around and saw that Jesse Jr. grew quiet.  She checked the rearview and passenger side mirrors for any followers. 

              “Don’t ask me any questions. Just drive.  We need to lay low some place until I can figure out a place for the kid and me,” Summer replied, barely above a whisper.  Billy snapped his lips shut.  He knew how unpredictable his boss could be when she was angry.  Summer went into her pocketbook and pulled out a bottle of pills.  She tapped two capsules into her hand and dry swallowed them. 

Billy looked at Summer out of the corner of his eye.  She was throwing back pills a lot lately—sometimes more than twice a day. 

Summer reached down and turned up the music.  Rick Ross’ “Diced Pineapples” blared out of the speakers.  Summer leaned her head back, closed her eyes and waited for the meds to ease the tension in her mind.  First the war with Pedro Millenia and now she had to deal with Diego.  She just wished she could feel Jesse’s touch right then; that she could hear his voice telling her that everything was going to be fine.  She was fighting hard to hold back the tears prickling her eyes. 
I caused his death.  They killed him to hurt me. 
Summer couldn’t stop thinking about her brother and sister too. 

              “Tell me about yourself Billy,” Summer said, not bothering to open her eyes.  She needed to distract her mind for a bit. 

              “Whatchu wanna know?” he asked while reaching over to lower the volume on the music.  Jesse Jr. was fast asleep in the backseat.

                Billy didn’t know how to respond.   

              “I wanna know
you
.  Everything about you.  Where you’re from  How you got to work for JB.  Why you’re so loyal.” More importantly, Summer needed to know who she could trust. 

Summer could immediately see him struggling with her request.  His lips were pursed, his eyes were hooded over, and his hands suddenly gripped the steering wheel so tight his knuckles paled.  Maybe his past was too painful to discuss.

              Billy cleared his throat.  He always did what he was told.  His boss asked for his story and he was going to comply. 

“A’ight, I’ll be straight up with you.  My story ain’t for the tender-hearted.  Feel me?  I’m whatchu call a throw away kid.”

Summer had never heard that phrase used before. Her curiosity was peaked.

              “I was one of them kids that nobody wanted from day one.  From the day I took my first breath, I was not wanted.  I was told by many foster mothers that I was that baby that was left in a dumpster to die with the umbilical cord still attached and all.  I think they said the sanitation man found me.  I was on the brink of death—blue in the face n’ shit.  How you think I got this white boy ass name? I was named ‘Billy’ after the sanitation motherfucker that picked my ass out of the garbage.  I found out later he got his face in the papers and the whole nine yards,” Billy continued.  His voice, which was usually as deep as the bass singer in an acapella group, was now deep in the middle but mousy and soft on the edges.  He had Summer’s full attention. 

              “I would think people would’ve scrambled to adopt a newborn, right?  I mean people are paying big bucks to get newborn babies these days,” Summer replied sympathetically.  Billy shot her a look. 

              “I was born in the eighties.  Black families ain’t want the kids they had with Reagan-nomics fuckin’ shit up.  The only thing people were adopting was bad habits like Crack.  The state of the black family was crazy fucked up.  Back then, white people wasn’t tryna adopt no black-as-tar-ass baby like me.  Who you think wanted a kid with skin so black it was almost purple?  That adopting black babies ain’t become popular with these white motherfuckers until the stars started doing that shit,” Billy explained in college professor mode.

Summer nodded.  What he said made perfect sense.

              “Psssh, man, boss lad, you just don’t know.  I live like a motherfuckin’ king now, but I had it rough all my life until I was old enough to be on my own.  I don’t even remember much about being a kid.  Childhood—what the fuck is that?  Do you know I never had a birthday cake in all my years on this earth?  Never!  It’s still up in the air when my real birthday is anyway.  They estimated by the color of the cord and all that when they found me and just assigned me a birth date.  Shit, I fought my way out of the gutter from day one, so you can’t go nowhere but up after that.  My first memories are of me at the age six or seven.  I remember that time only because I had been accused of starting a real big fire that broke out at my favorite foster home.  It was fucked up because I had really liked the foster mother a lot.  Her name was Ms. Lenore and I’m tellin’ you she was a genuinely nice lady.  She had a round face like those baby angels you see on wallpaper in churches, only she was much prettier.  She always wore colorful housecoats and matching slippers, even when she took us to school.  She was the only person I can remember that had actually treated me like a little kid.  She never reminded me that I was a motherless child.  Ms. Lenore smiled a lot and her lips were always pink.  She was just a happy person and that’s why I liked her so much.  Most foster mothers were bitter, mean bitches that seemed mad all of the time.  But not Ms. Lenore.  She was sweet as Kool-Aid with ten bags of sugar in it.  She even called me “baby boy.”  She gave me hugs at night and always said ‘sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite’ in that soft voice of hers.  She fed me whatever I wanted to eat and damn she could cook.  Best fried chicken you would ever wanna taste.  For real, when I lived there I felt like a normal boy with a normal life,” Billy told his story, his mouth relaxed and eyes alight.  Good memories sometimes chased away the ugly, even if only temporarily.

“I don’t really remember how long I got to stay with Ms. Lenore, but I know it wasn’t long enough.  One day, the bedroom I stayed in with another foster brother went up in flames.  That shit was blazing so big and fast that Ms. Lenore grabbed all the kids and ran out of the house just in time.  When the fire was put out, they all blamed me.  The foster care worker came and I heard her telling Ms. Lenore that in my file it said I had a lot of mental problems.  I knew the other kid that stayed in that room with me was the one who started it, but I refused to snitch on him.  I guess you can say I learned the code of the streets from early.  I was loyal even to those who fucked me over.  I guess loyalty has just always been ingrained in me.  Snitching and backstabbing just isn’t in my fuckin’ nature.  Even if it cost me the chance to be a normal little boy with a normal mother-type figure in my life.  After the fire, foster care workers swooped in and snatched me from Ms. Lenore’s house and transported me to another home.  I bounced around for a few years after that.  I never trusted nobody really after that.  Wasn’t trying to make no friends.  Hardly spoke to any of the kids or the parents in the other foster homes.  Finally, the motherfuckers decided a ‘troubled boy” like me needed a home with a strong male presence.” 

Summer had asked him to revisit his past, but she had no idea how depressing his story would be. She felt terribly ungrateful for always feeling bad for herself.  There apparently were all different kinds of evil and suffering in this world.  At least she had her grandparents to love her and care for her through difficult times.  And at least she knew that her parents loved her before their untimely deaths.  She could only imagine how Billy felt not knowing where he came from, his last name made up by the nurses who’d cared for him at the hospital.

“So they finally find this home for me with a strong male presence,” Billy continued. “Yeah, fuckin’ right.  That fuckin’ house was straight fuckin’ hell.  The male presence was what made that shit hell too.  See, that’s what I mean about them city workers not knowing what the fuck kids like me needed.  First off, the house was raggedy as shit.  It was an old brownstone that always needed something to be fixed.  It was cold as shit inside and the boiler never worked.  We had to wash up in ice cold water and barely had blankets to cover us at night.  Pastor Shelton and his fat wife, who we called M’dear, kept the refrigerator padlocked.  I mean those two was fuckin’ nutz.  They would make us starve all fuckin’ day long, then at dinner they’d give us Ramen noodles while they piled their plates with chicken, steak, ham or whatever Ms. Piggy decided to cook for them two.  I was losing weight by the day living in that fuckin’ place.  One day, so blinded by the hunger pains cuttin’ through my guts, I took one of Pastor Shelton’s hammers and banged that fuckin’ pad lock right off that refrigerator door.  I went inside that shit and took a bite out of everything in sight—cold chicken, a block of cheese, grapes, apples, whatever I could get my hands on.  As a result, four of my front teeth got knocked out.  Just for eatin’ food like any human child,” Billy gritted like he could feel the pain all over again.  He turned his face so Summer could see that the grill of gold and diamond teeth he wore was permanent.  Summer looked on, speechless.  Billy smiled wickedly, his head moving strangely. 

              “Yup, I was a lil’ fuckin’ kid.  I had gotten beatings from Pastor Shelton before, but that time that motherfucker was tryna kill me.  He was hitting me like I was a grown ass man that he caught fuckin’ his wife or something.  He was breathing like a demon n’shit and he kept asking me if I thought I was a man.  Or if I thought I was the man of his house.  I kept saying ‘nah, nah’ but that didn’t change shit.  He hit me so hard and so much, I thought my legs would collapse.  Then the bastard hauled off and straight Floyd Mayweather-ed my ass in the mouth.  It was lights the fuck out after that! I can’t remember when I finally came back around, but I know they couldn’t send me to school for almost two weeks because of the damage to my face—teeth knocked out in the front, broken nose, and swollen eyes.  Something in me changed after that.  I wasn’t scared to die no more.  I wasn’t scared of shit no more.  I started fighting any and everybody.  I became ruthless.  I didn’t have anything left inside of me that could even come close to caring about life or other people’s lives.  By the time I got transferred from Pastor Shelton’s hellhole to a boys group home at thirteen years old, I was one cold bastard,” Billy went on, his voice rising and falling like ocean waves at high tide.

Summer watched his infamous jaw moving fiercely against his dark skin.  His eyes were hooded over and his nostrils opened and closed with each pump of his heaving chest.  Obviously his emotions were running high.  Summer had her own fists clenched so tightly her nails dug half-moon shaped craters into her palms. 
How could someone do that to a little kid? 
Unfortunately, she knew all too well about it from her own experiences growing up.

              “Group home life is not for the faint of heart.  By then, I was sold on the fact that I wasn’t shit, wasn’t never gonna be shit and couldn’t ask for shit.  We ain’t get nothin’ in that dirty ass place except three meals of garbage.  Clothes were fucked up.  Shoes were holey.  The system in New York was so fucked up at that time.  I heard big checks were being paid for each kid in the system—supposedly for our care—for clothes and shoes and shit like that.  Them checks that were being paid out for me sure wasn’t making it to my hands, my back, or my feet.  The teasing and bullying in those boy homes would make any sane kid go crazy.  Seemed like I was the target right away when I got there.  You know, kids are fucked up and they ain’t got no cover for their mouths.  Kunta Kente.  Black Tar.  Tar baby.  Black nigga from the lagoon.  I got called names all the time, even by some of the workers there.  Then this kid Buddha arrived.  My man Brian “Buddha” Martin.  Yo, this dude reminded me of Biggie Smalls.  He was fat as shit, lazy eye, huge soup cooler lips, and hands the size of dinner plate.  Everybody was scared of him.  He used to snore on his feet, no lie, wide awake and snoring like a bear!  For some reason, Buddha took to me though.  I guess we was cut from the same cloth—black as night skin, considered ugly n’shit you know.  We just wanted to be left the fuck alone.  Buddha was my introduction to the streets.  He gave me my first burner and took me to Coney Island beach one morning when we cut school to show me how to use it.  We must’a let off sixty to seventy rounds that day.  He was my dawg for real.  He showed me how to snatch and grab in the stores and we came up quick.  Columbia jackets, Guess jeans, Jordans, Timbs; you name it, we got it.  Man, we was the shit out there in them Brooklyn streets.  Black and ugly no more—we got mad chicks on our shit—hawking.  He came up with  new schemes to get more money and gear.  He was the closest thing I ever knew as family.  Then one day, shit changed,” Billy choked, his voice going dark as he came to an abrupt end to his story. 

It was like listening to an old fashioned record player and someone dragged the needle across the LP and it scratched.  Just like that, Billy was done.  

              “What?  What happened?” Summer urged, her foot involuntarily tapping on the floor of the car. 

              Billy was solemn for a few seconds; his eyes squinted into dashes and his head moving from side to side.  He quickly looked over at Summer, then straight ahead again.  It was like he was trying to find his voice.  He opened his mouth one more time, but again no sound came out.