Wifey 4 Life (23 page)

“He’s right,” I said. “That makes a lot of sense.”

“So think of another spot then.”

“Stick him in the trunk of his car,” I said.

Walt shook his head. “Nah, that’ll be too risky.”

As Jeff put the van in gear and drove away from the basketball
court, I looked out the back of the van window at Lanier’s wife’s car. Knowing she
was going to call 9-1-1 and report her husband missing in the morning made me think
about how a person could be here one day and gone the next. Life had a funny way
of throwing stones at you. I was just hoping I would be able to duck each one thrown
at me from this day forward.

By the time Jeff got back to the main road, Griff and Walt had
both figured out where they were going to dump Tony’s body. I didn’t quite agree
with their decision because of the risk they were going to take, but since I didn’t
have a say in the matter, I let it go. I prayed to God that everything would work
out, so I could walk away from this thing and get back out of town as quickly as
possible.

I watched my uncle as he lay on the floor of the van. I noticed
that he wouldn’t look at me, so I made it my business to torment the hell out of
him.

“You can’t look at me, can you?” I asked, but of course he ignored
me.

Walt said, “He knows he fucked up. That’s why he can’t look at
you.”

While Walt was talking to me, I couldn’t help but look at the
blood that was drying on his face. It made him look really sadistic. I began to
look at him in another light. I was beginning to see this other person. He wasn’t
the man my mother used to be with when I was a child. Back then he was a sweetheart,
and I could tell that he had a heart. He used to treat me like I was his biological
daughter, and he still did, but for some reason I didn’t see that glow in his eyes
anymore. Tonight his eyes were dark, and I didn’t like it. So, instead of commenting
on what he’d said about my uncle, I turned my attention to the left side window
and watched the streetlights and the cars as we drove by, on our way to complete
my mission for revenge.

T
he dumpsite for Tony’s body was the Pretty Lake section of Ocean
View, which was a neighborhood off Shore Drive in Norfolk. I’d always known Ocean
View to be plagued with gang violence and heavy drug trafficking. Police were known
to frequent this part of Norfolk, so I was leery from the beginning when they suggested
that we dump Tony’s body there.

I sat back in the van and plotted a getaway just in case the
police ran up on us. When Jeff stopped the van at the lake on Third Bay Street,
I climbed into the seat beside Walt so I could make my escape if their plans were
derailed.

Jeff got out of the van first, and Griff and Walt followed. Each
of them checked their gloves to see if they were intact before they moved Tony’s
body out of the van.

Walt instructed me to keep an eye on Lanier. “If he moves one
inch, don’t hesitate to shoot his ass!” he told me.

“I won’t.” I still had the gun Walt had given me earlier, so
I was ready for whatever. My uncle looked at me like he was surprised, but he wasn’t
in a position to say one word.

Between watching Walt and the guys remove Tony’s body from the
van, and trying to keep an eye on my uncle, my mind was running in circles. I also
made it my business to watch my back. I refused to let a police officer run up on
this van while I was holding my uncle at gunpoint. We would have a fucking shootout
right here in Ocean View, if they thought I was gonna let them take me downtown
in handcuffs. No way!

“Damn, nigga!” Jeff said to Griff. “Can you hold his legs better
than that?”

“What the fuck you think I’m doing?”

“It feels like I’m carrying him by myself.”

Griff snapped. “Man, shut the fuck up complaining! You act like
you’re putting in more work than me and Walt.”

“Nigga, you the one that needs to shut the fuck up! You been
complaining since we picked up Walt and homegirl.”

“Look, both of y’all need to cut that shit out! Let’s take care
of our business and get the fuck out of here before somebody sees us and calls the
police.”

“He’s right, y’all.” I peered out of the van at the apartment
buildings in the area. “Because as soon as someone hears y’all voices, they’re going
to look out their windows. And y’all don’t want the heat that comes from that.”

Jeff chimed back in. “Tell this nigga to handle his part and
I won’t complain no more.”

Walt looked at them both as they all scrambled to carry Tony’s
body toward the lake behind the apartment buildings. “Can we just finish what we
started without y’all saying another word to each other?”

“Just tell this nigga to do his part, Walt, and I won’t have
no beef,” Jeff said.

Walt refused to jump on anyone’s side. He wasn’t that type of
guy. He just wanted shit to run smooth, no matter what it was. So when I saw him
switch places with Jeff to relieve him of some of the burden, I knew he was tired
of hearing their mouths.

As I watched my uncle, and occasionally looked outside the van
to see if anyone was watching us, I thought about how badly I wanted to get Kasey.
Her body should be thrown in this lake along with Tony’s.
I just couldn’t believe
how she’d gotten away from us just like that. God must’ve been on her side and had
a plan for her, because if it was up to me, that bitch would be expired by now.

While I was deep in thought I heard a soft whisper calling my
name. It kind of scared me a bit because my mind was somewhere else. When I tuned
into the voice and realized it was my uncle calling me, I gave him the nastiest
expression I could muster, and then I asked him what the hell he wanted.

“Please can you find it in your heart to forgive?” He kept the
volume of his voice down, because he refused to let Walt hear him talk to me. He
knew it would be hell to pay if he did.

“Forgive you, and you almost killed me? Are you fucking crazy?”
I lashed out, not even realizing how loud I’d gotten.

Walt yelled at me from the lake to be quiet, and he was about
two hundred feet away from me.

“Kira, I know you must think I’m crazy, but I turned into a madman
after I lost Nikki. I had just lost my mother to that Hispanic guy from D.C. who
was after Nikki. So can’t you feel my pain?”

If I was a dragon, fire would have spewed out of my mouth every
time I opened it. “You act like you’re the only one who lost someone. Grandma meant
more to me than you would ever know. She was like my mother, so when I found out
she had been murdered, a huge part of my heart felt like it was yanked out of my
body. And as far as Nikki is concerned, it hurts me to know that she’s gone too,
but I’ve got to tell you that she wasn’t the angel y’all made her out to be at her
funeral.”

I waved the pistol Walt gave me back and forth in his face.

“Right before we went to Texas I noticed that something about
Nikki had changed. But I figured she was just going through a rough time because
we had just lost our grandmother. So when we got to Texas, everything about her
did a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. She started competing against me when it came
to certain things, she talked about me to other stylists behind my back, and she
fucked my fiancé without me knowing.”

“No, not Nikki. She wouldn’t do that to you. She loved you like
a sister. She used to tell me how she looked up to you.”

“Shut the fuck up, Uncle Lanier. You don’t know what the fuck
you are talking about. That precious little daughter of yours took me through more
shit than any of my enemies. She tried to sabotage everything I put my hands on.
And you want to know something else? Your little angel helped set up a few women
to get killed back in Texas.”

“That can’t be. Nikki wasn’t like that. She wouldn’t hurt a soul.”

“That’s a motherfucking lie. Nikki helped my fiancé rape and
kill innocent women for his own sick gratification. She went to nightclubs and lured
these women to him so they could all get in a threesome, and then those poor women’s
lives would end soon thereafter. And you want to know something else?”

He just continued to look at me dumbfounded.

“Nikki was killed because she was involved in some scandalous
shit. I was there when the guy shot and killed her and my ex-fiancé, and I couldn’t
do anything to help her.”

My uncle lay there on the floor and shook his head in disbelief.

I knew it was hard for him to swallow that pill, but it was the
truth. His daughter had moved to Houston with me and lost her fucking mind. I didn’t
know who the hell she was anymore when she flipped the script on me.

Thankfully, all that shit was behind me now, and when I took
care of him and left this godforsaken place, this chapter in my life would finally
be closed.

The conversation between my uncle and me didn’t stop after I
blew his mind with the story about his little girl helping Fatu’ kill all those
women in Houston. He tried to talk my head off about letting him go. He promised
that, if I let him go, he wouldn’t go to the homicide detectives in Houston and
tell them what I told him about Nikki’s murder. He also promised me that he would
give me all the money he saved up for his retirement.

I looked at him and told him that I didn’t need his money. I
honestly wanted to tell him that I had over two million dollars back in Anguilla,
where I now lived, but I didn’t want to let on how well-off I was, or that the place
I called home was out of the country. He was a fucking traitor to me, so I couldn’t
trust him with that type of information. It was bad enough that I told him the truth
about his daughter. But, hey, I figured since he was about to lose his life, it
wouldn’t matter one way or another. I mean, it wasn’t like he could pick up the
phone and call the cops on me. He had one foot in the grave, and the other was treading
on thin ice, so I was all right anyway I looked at it.

I looked at the time on the dashboard of the van. It was eleven
fifteen p.m. Time was flying by at the speed of a comet, and we still had one more
job to do before we could call it quits. I looked over at the lake and saw the men
struggling to dump Tony’s body in the water.

I heard Walt telling Griff and Jeff that they needed to tie something
heavy to his legs so his body could sink to the bottom of the lake.

“We can’t have anyone finding him right after we dump him in
this lake because his body resurfaced to the top of the water,” Walt said.

“What about this old car tire? You think this could work?” Griff
asked.

Walt hesitated and then said, “I don’t know. Bring it here and
let me check it out.”

While Griff carried the tire to Walt, Jeff said, “Hey, I see
a couple of sandbags over here.”

Walt turned in his direction. “Now that’ll work.” He instructed
Jeff to bring the bags to him.

I watched Jeff carry both sandbags to Walt, and then he set them
on the ground near Tony’s body.

Ten minutes later I wanted to ask them why the hell they hadn’t
gotten rid of Tony’s body yet. I wanted to get the hell out of there.

“Kira, can you please find it in your heart to forgive me? I
swear if you spare my life, I will forever be indebted to you,” my uncle said again,
taking my focus off Walt and the other two guys.

“Why do you keep asking me the same fucking question? Do you
know that I don’t even feel sorry for you? So stop wasting your breath, because
ain’t nothing gonna change. You are going to get dealt with as soon as Walt takes
care of Tony. That’s it, and that’s all.”

Tears started falling from my uncle’s eyes.

In all the days of my life, I had never seen this twenty-year
army veteran who’d fought in Vietnam shed one tear. Growing up around him, he’d
always had a hard exterior, so to see him about to have an emotional breakdown really
got me to think about this situation from another perspective. Either he was really
sorry for what he did to me, or he was afraid of dying.

“Remember when you were seven years old and you and your mother
came to my house to celebrate Nikki’s third birthday?”

I sucked my teeth. “Yeah, so what?”

“Do you remember we were all in the house eating and you decided
to go take a swim in the pool and almost drowned?”

Getting aggravated, I said, “What point are you trying to make?”

“Do you remember that day?” He pressed the issue.

“Yes, I remember.”

“Do you remember who saved your life and performed CPR on you
after you were pulled from the pool unconscious?”

I sucked my teeth once again. “Where are you going with this?”

“All I’m trying to say is, there was no other adult in my house
who knew how to perform CPR, so I immediately pulled you from the pool and saved
your life. You were unconscious for three whole minutes. Everybody there, including
your mother, thought we’d lost you, but I was determined to bring you back. You
were like a daughter to me, and I wasn’t about to let your mother bury you at such
a young age. You were her only child, and you were my only niece, so letting you
leave us like that wasn’t an option. Your life was in my hands then, and now my
life is in your hands. So I’m begging you to let me live.”

My uncle’s words started to sink in. He was right. My life was
in his hands that day, and he did save me. What was bugging me out right now was
that I held the cards to either end his or save it. And the more I thought about
it, the more I started to understand his position.

“Kira, let’s end this deadly cycle right now. We already lost
your mother, your grandmother, your husband, and Nikki. No one else needs to die.
So please have a change of heart so we can walk away from this thing,” he said,
and then he fell silent.

I looked him dead in his eyes and they were very glassy. Something
on the inside of me wanted to reach out and hug him because of the hurt he was going
through. But then the other part of me wanted to kick him like Walt had done earlier.
I just couldn’t erase what he’d put me through. And every time I tried to put it
out of my mind, it resurfaced.