Wifey 4 Life (20 page)

Walt and Tony both turned to look out the side window as Jeff
stepped on the brakes.

“Where she at?” Walt asked me.

“She’s right there walking up to that guy on the bike,” I said.
Kasey had changed clothes from earlier. Now she was wearing a green-and-yellow Oakland
A’s jacket with a pair of dark jeans and a dark-colored ball cap turned backward.
If I hadn’t seen her before, I would’ve sworn she was one of the boys hanging out
on the block.

Jeff pulled the van over to the right side of the street. He
didn’t bother shutting off the ignition or the headlights, so I assumed we stuck
out like a sore thumb.

Walt must’ve figured out the same thing, because he made mention
of it. “Kill the headlights.”

“Nah, we need to go around the corner and come back,” Griff
suggested.

“No, we can’t take that chance,” I said. “She might be gone by
the time we circle the block.”

Griff turned around and looked at Walt. “Wanna get out right
here while Jeff circles the block?”

Walt looked at Griff, and then he looked at me. “If I give you
a burner, do you think you’d be able to hold this motherfucker until we get back
in the van?”

I thought for a second, and then I looked at Tony. His wrists
and ankles were tied up, so there was no way in hell he could get away, even if
I didn’t have a gun pointed directly at him. “Whatcha think he’s going to do while
he’s tied up like this?” I asked.

“He ain’t gon’ be able to do shit! I just thought it would be
proper for you to hold your own shit, just in case,” Walt said.

“Well, in that case,” I said, and then I extended my hand toward
him. He handed me a Ruger revolver. The motherfucker was heavy, but I managed to
hold it without looking like I was inexperienced.

Right after Walt and Griff hopped out of the van, Jeff pulled
off very slowly. I watched Walt and Griff as they walked away from the van, but
I also used my peripheral vision to watch Tony. I wanted to be fully aware of my
surroundings, just in case he tried to do some funny shit.

Two minutes into the drive, Tony got up the courage to open his
mouth. It didn’t matter to him that Jeff was in the van with us, because he knew
that his life was on the line. I was utterly disgusted that he even had to breathe
the same air I was breathing, but I left well enough alone, and allowed him to get
his few seconds of fame.

“Kira, I know I was fucked-up for setting you up earlier. And
I know I can’t turn the clock back either, but if you give me a chance to redeem
myself, I will.”

I gritted my teeth before I uttered one word to this asshole.
He wanted to redeem himself after he’d put my ass on the chopping block. He had
no love for my ass earlier when he traded me off to four goons for some small cash.
I had every right to put a bullet in his head right then, but I didn’t. I couldn’t
wait to give him the same treatment I’d suffered.

I sucked my teeth. “Tony, spare me all the bullshit! You know
damn well you don’t give a fuck about me. You cared nothing about me when Rhonda
and I were friends, and you couldn’t care less about me now, so cut it out.”

“No, Kira, you got it all wrong. I didn’t want to set you up
for real, but I was broke and I was about to get put out of my apartment. Your uncle
came to me with the plan to snatch you up and put you in an abandoned house so he
could get you to tell him the real story behind his daughter’s murder. He called
me right before he left to go to Houston to identify Nikki’s body. And you wanna
know something else? I didn’t tell him yes until after he called me while he was
there and told me that he had seen you.”

“You think that makes it better?” I snapped. “You handed me over
to some motherfuckers that wanted to kill me! And if I didn’t escape, I would probably
be dead now, so don’t feed me that bullshit!”

“Kira, I swear I wanted to turn back around and help you after
I saw Kasey knock you out. That whole shit kept playing in my mind the whole time
after I walked out of that house.”

“Yeah, what the fuck ever! Tell me anything. Because if it was
bothering you that much, you would’ve come back for me.”

“Yo, Kira, I swear if I could have, I would have. Breon and Dré
weren’t gonna let me walk back up in there and get you after I made the trade-off.
They would’ve probably tried to kill me if I stepped back in there talking about
I was taking you back out of there.”

“Look, Tony, leave it alone. What’s done is done. You already
fucked up with me, so I ain’t got nothing else to say.”

Tony frowned. He looked like his whole world had just fallen
apart around him. “You gon’ let them kill me?” he asked.

I hesitated before I answered. I badly wanted to tell him that
his ass was as good as gone as soon as he got my uncle on the phone and convinced
him to meet us somewhere. But I didn’t feel like it was my place to tell him what
his fate would be. Walt was in charge of this mission, so he should be the one to
tell him. And, besides, I wasn’t in a position to pull the blinders off Tony anyway.
As long as he believed that we weren’t going to harm one hair on his head if he
helped us, then he’d be a willing participant in helping us find Dré, Breon, and
Uncle Lanier. “Look, Tony, all you need to worry about is helping us find everybody,
and you gon’ be a’ight.”

I had always been good at lying. So when Tony asked me if his
life would be spared, it took little effort for me to tell him what he wanted
to hear.

From the time I’d started dating my late husband, up until the
time we got married, I was taught how to lie. He didn’t know it, but he embedded
that in me. He lied to me on so many occasions, the shit started rubbing off on
me. And the way things looked, I was only gonna get better and better at it.

By the time Jeff rode around the block and made it back to the
same spot where Griff and Walt had gotten out of van, the streets looked empty.
There was no one in sight. Griff and Walt were nowhere to be found.

“What the fuck just happened?” I asked, directing my question
to Jeff.

“Shit! That’s a good question. But I don’t know what to tell
you.” He continued to drive the van slowly.

“You think they got in a shootout?”

“If they did, we would’ve heard the shots being fired when we
were riding down the next street over.”

“Well, something happened. And I don’t like this feeling I’m
getting in my stomach,” I said.

“I’m getting a weird feeling too,” Jeff said. “But I don’t know
what the fuck to do.”

“Well, whatever you do, don’t stop.” I looked out the window
on either side of the van.

Jeff kept his foot on the accelerator the entire time, and before
we knew it, we were off Johnson Street and right back on the next street we had
just driven down. When we arrived at the corner to make the turn to drive back down
Johnson Street again, he came to a complete stop at the stop sign.

“You’re not gonna go back down there, are you?”

“I wasn’t trying to, but I don’t want to leave Walt and Griff
hanging.”

“Call one of their cell phones.”

“I ain’t got Walt’s number, but I got Griff ’s.”

“Well, call ’im then.”

Jeff sat there at the stop sign and pulled out his cell phone.

I instantly became nervous. “You gon’ stay right here at this
stop sign and try to call him?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“I think you should move on and keep driving. If you sit at the
stop sign, you gon’ bring attention to yourself. Remember, we are the only ones
out here.”

“She’s right,” Tony said.

Jeff looked through the rearview mirror at Tony. “Nigga,
shut the fuck up! Ain’t nobody talking to you.”

“Damn, champ. I was only trying to help,”

“Nigga, I ain’t cha champ!” Jeff roared. “And so you know, I
got this shit over here covered, so take your mind off me and worry about yourself.”

“Yeah, a’ight.”

I chuckled to myself after I heard Jeff break down Tony’s dumb
ass. The shit was funny as hell. And after I got my laugh on, I turned my attention
back to Jeff. But before I could open my mouth to say something, Jeff had Griff
on the phone.

“Nigga, where y’all at?” Jeff asked.

I couldn’t hear Griff ’s response, but I knew he couldn’t be
that far away, because as soon as Jeff pulled off from the stop sign, he drove to
the next block, which was Washington Street, and made a right.

After he disconnected the call, I asked, “Where they at?”

“Griff said they were walking up Washington Street toward
Church Street.”

“Did they get Kasey?”

“He didn’t say.”

A few seconds later, Jeff pulled alongside the curb of Washington
Street where Walt and Griff were waiting. They both jumped back into the van.

“Did you get her?” I asked.

Walt sat on the seat beside Tony. He acted like he was out of
breath, but he managed to respond. “Nah, we didn’t get her.”

“What happened? And where did everybody go? It looked like a
ghost town when we drove back by the spot we dropped y’all off at.”

“As soon as Griff and I got out of the van, the narc drove right
onto the block and everybody scattered like roaches. So me and Griff started running
and cut through this old lady’s backyard.”

“Y ’all didn’t have time to snatch up Kasey?” I asked.

“Nah, ’cause when the narcs drove up, they came hard. One of
the narcs drove an undercover car onto the sidewalk where them niggas was standing,
while the other narc car drove up in the parking lot of that brick duplex. They
didn’t look my and Griff ’s ways at all. They were more focused on that duplex and
them niggas that was standing outside.”

“You think they ran up on Kasey?” I asked.

“Yeah, they did run up on her. I saw one of them big ass white
boys slam her on the hood of his car and put handcuffs on her.”

“So what we gon’ do now?” I asked.

“There ain’t shit we can do,” Walt said. “She’s gone downtown.
And, besides, it’s hot out Huntersville right now. Our best bet is to get the fuck
out of here before one of them narcs tries to pull us over and arrest us for having
all these motherfucking pistols.”

“So you ready to bounce?” Jeff asked.

“Yeah, let’s get the hell out of here,” Walt answered.

I was becoming depressed. I really wanted Kasey’s head, wanted
to see her beg for her life. “So what’s gonna happen now?”

Walt said, “We gotta move on to the next nigga’s spot, since
we can’t get to that chick.”

Out of everyone on my list, I wanted Kasey in the worst kind
of way. It was burning me up inside that she’d gotten away like that. She was one
lucky bitch.

T
he moment we exited Huntersville, Walt instructed Tony to show
us where Dré lived. Turned out, Dré lived in Barraud Park, which was only a few
blocks away from Huntersville. It only took us a couple of minutes to get there.

“What part of Barraud Park he live in?” Jeff asked.

Tony sat up in his seat. “Him and his girl live in the houses
right by the play park, but they live on the left side of the street.”

Jeff followed Tony’s instructions, and when we drove onto the
street where Dré lived, Tony pointed out the house. “You see that small yellow house
with the light on in the living room?”

“Yeah,” Jeff said. “Is that the house?”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

Griff turned around and looked at Walt. “What’s the plan, Walt?”

“We gon’ get Tony to call this nigga out the house, and then
we gon’ blast his ass.”

Tony looked nervous as hell when he heard Walt’s plan. He held
his composure, though, and acted like he was willing to do anything to keep his
ass out the hot seat. “Come on, let’s do it,” he said.

Walt turned around and looked at me. I shrugged my shoulders
and gave him a half-smile. Everybody in the van could tell that Tony was doing a
little ass-kissing, trying to stay on Walt’s good side for as long as he possibly
could. And guess what, if the shoe was on my foot, I would have been doing the exact
same thing.

After Walt coached Tony on what to say he dialed the number Tony
gave him, placed the phone under Tony’s mouth while it was on speakerphone, and
waited for Dré to answer.

“Yo, what’s good?” Dré asked as soon as he answered his line.

“Hey, yo, man, I know where Kira is,” Tony said.

“Nigga, you bullshitting me?”

“Nah, I just saw her.”

“Where?”

“I saw her go into the lobby of her hotel.”

“Did you call Lanier and tell ’im?”

“Nah, not yet.”

“Nigga, you better call him. You know he’s out beating down the
bricks to find her.”

“I was gon’ call him, but I wanted to call you first to see if
you wanted to get with me so we could both go to him and try to get a finder’s
fee, since we the ones who saw her first.”

“That nigga ain’t gon’ come off on no more money. He’s already
in the hole for five grand with me and Breon, so I say, let him deal with that shit
on his own.”

“Come on, Dré, do you know how valuable this chick is? I know
for a fact that Lanier would come off some more dough to get his hands on her. Remember,
he wants to get to her before she goes to the police.”

“I understand all of that, but what if she done already went
to ’em? We’re fucked.”

“Dré, man, I don’t think she went to the cops, especially after
the way I saw her walk up into that hotel. She looked like she was in a rush, to
me.”

“So what’s your plan?” Dré asked.

“Well, I think we should get her ass and take her to Lanier.”

“Now how the fuck you think we gon’ pull that off when she’s
in a public place? I mean, it ain’t like she’s going to come running to us.”

“Yo, Dré, man, I know whatcha saying, and I know it’s gon’ be
really hard, but we can come off and make Lanier pay us top dollar for her if we
play our cards right. So I say let’s put our heads together and make this shit happen.”