Black Widow (14 page)

After about twelve straight hours of fucking, Isis was still at full throttle, thanks to the pills, but Logic had dozed off. Once again, she had been singing every song that came on the radio, even the ones that she didn’t know the words to. She nudged Logic and asked, “Are you asleep?”

He never opened his eyes. The performance that he’d put on had exhausted him. “Not anymore,” he did manage to say.

“I need something to help me to go to sleep,” she begged. “Do you have any sleeping pills?”

He did have some sleeping pills, but he wasn’t about to let her put anything else into her system. “Oh, no you don’t. It’s not good to mix the two together,” he said. “You wanted to roll with the big girls, you gonna have to ride it out like a big girl.”

After three more hours of pretending to be Janet Jackson, Mary J. Blige, Diana Ross, Betty Wright, and every other singer whose song was played on the radio, she finally wore down and fell asleep—just about the best she had slept in her life.

Chapter 14

No Witness…No Crime

When Isis woke up, a day and a half had passed. She wasn’t even sure where she was.
Logic? Where is he?
She looked on the other side of the bed, and there he was.

“How you feeling?” he asked. He was holding a cup of tea that he had prepared once she began moving around in bed. He knew she was about to wake up. “Drink some of this, it will make you feel better.”

“How bad was I?” she asked, afraid that she might have done something to turn him off.

“You don’t do a good Whitney Houston impersonation.” He chuckled.

“What else?” she asked. “I’m embarrassed.”

“Don’t be,” he said. “I fucks with you because you are not afraid to be you. I’ll take you however you are over a fake bitch any day, throwing up, drunk, high, or at your best.”

“Well, damn. I mean…thank you,” she said. “I fucks with you too.” She wanted to give him a kiss, but she knew that her breath was truly stinky, so that would have to wait.

Logic allowed her to rest a little longer before he demanded that she eat something. He didn’t have to do much persuading. She was famished.

They were sitting at the table, almost done with lunch, when Logic’s phone rang. He had gotten four calls back to back before he said, “Let me see what this mu’fucka want.” He hit the green phone button to see what Jacob was being so persistent about. “What, nigga?” he spat.

“I managed to catch up with an old friend of ours,” Jacob informed him. “Found him trying his luck in the casino.”

“Word?”

“Yeah. I got ’im wit me right now.” Jacob knew that there would be a sizable reward for his deed.

“Where’re you at now?” Logic asked, with a tinge of excitement noticeable in his voice. Although this sack of shit had been off the radar for a while, Logic had known that it would only be a matter of time before he would resurface.

“You can meet me between the glades and the wood.” Jacob was referring to a fairly secluded area commonly used to dump trash.

“Naw,” Logic said. “Make it that spot right off of the Florida Turnpike.”

Jacob knew exactly where he was speaking of. “Okay, we’ll be waiting.”

After ending the call, Logic looked to Isis and said, “Bring that tea with you; we got some business to take care of.” And on that note, the two prepared to leave the house.

Isis rode in the front seat beside Logic, admiring the brilliance of the orange-red sun as it set until it was ready to surface again at dawn the next day. It was beautiful. The days in Miami were moving so fast; she had just gotten out of the bed, and now it was dinnertime already. She marveled at the lights shining from the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino as Logic took the Griffin Road exit off of the turnpike and navigated to the spot where he had arranged to meet with Jacob.

The meeting place was an alligator-infested swamp. It didn’t take long for him to spot Jacob’s car even though it was parked out of sight. Jacob had Donnell at gunpoint, but once he saw the headlights of Logic’s Aston Martin peek around the bend, then saw what had to be Isis riding shotgun, he knew that Logic was only going to talk to him. He pulled Donnell out of the car. As Logic put the car in park, Isis’s phone began to vibrate. It was her sister. For a minute she thought to ignore the call, but she hadn’t spoken to her sister in three days, so this would be a good time for her to catch up while Logic was talking to his boys.

“Sit tight, Princess,” Logic said as he opened the car door. “I’ll be right back.”

After he was out of the car and looked back to make sure Isis was okay, she replied, “No problem. My sister is on the phone anyway.”

“Tell her I said, ‘What’s up.’”

Isis smiled as he walked away from the car, and then she turned the volume down on the CD that had been playing. Before she could greet her sister and begin to tell her about what had been going on for the past three days, she heard Phoebe say, “Can you talk? I really need you for about thirty minutes.”

Isis knew that Logic wouldn’t be out of the car for thirty minutes, so she promised her sister she’d call her back just as soon as she got back to the condo.

“Okay,” Phoebe said, “but please, don’t forget.”

“I won’t.” Isis hung up the phone wondering what it was that her sister wanted to talk about. She would just have to find out tonight when she called Phoebe back. Meanwhile, less than twenty yards away, she could see Logic and Jacob. They had another guy with them, but he had his hands taped behind his back. Isis rolled her window down and strained to hear what was going on.

“Look what we got here,” Logic said, walking over to the two men. “You’ve been MIA for a minute.”

His once-trusted friend didn’t say a word. He had been around Logic long enough to know that regardless of what he said, things would more than likely lead to the same results.

“Me and Jacob was just talking about you the other day,” Logic said. “Thought you had joined the army and was hiding out over in Iraq. Jacob figured that you were too scared to enlist in anybody’s army and fight.” Logic smiled. “But I told ’im you would be safer in the Middle East fighting sand niggas than running off with five hundred thousand dollars that belonged to me without so much as a note to let me know what was going on.” Logic shot spit between his teeth and onto the ground.

“Logic, man, I know it gotta look fucked up right now, but please be patient with me. I was gonna call you. On my grandmother’s grave,” Donnell swore. “I’m just having a string of bad luck.”

Logic didn’t respond to Donnell’s begging. This was a method he had learned a long time ago: The less you said, the longer a scared motherfucker would beg. And Logic was enjoying this.

“Man, I know you invested a lot of money in me,” Donnell continued, “but you know as well as I do that you can’t get blood out of a turnip. Think about how far we go back. You know my mother and father, my kids. It’s only money! But us, we’re like family. For God’s sake, man. What you gon’ do? You gonna kill your family?”

Logic noticed that Donnell had gotten braces. He hadn’t noticed them until right at that moment. “That might not be a bad idea, now that you’ve mentioned it.”

Jacob raised his gun. “Shall I?” He spoke to Logic but glared at Donnell.

“Wait.” Logic put his hand up, lowering his head as if he was some gangster out of a movie.

“I know yo’ grandmother, yo’ sister, yo’ whole family—come on, man,” Donnell pleaded one last time.

Although he hadn’t intended for it to come off that way, Donnell’s last effort sounded too much like a threat for Logic to stomach. “Kill this fucking coward, man.”

Jacob did as he was told, and the two bullets that chased each other out of the barrel of Jacob’s gun, through the front of Donnell’s forehead, and out of the back of his skull left him speechless, useless, and lifeless.

Isis witnessed the entire thing. It had all happened so quickly. She was in shock but didn’t scream. There was no need. It wouldn’t have helped anyway. In her eyes, it was inevitable. What’s meant to be is meant to be, and none of us can change that, so there was no need for her to fret.

Besides, it wasn’t the first time in her life she had seen a man die. After all, this man who was just killed was a stranger. She had loved Dave with all of her heart and soul when she’d watched the State of Virginia kill him. He had died right in front of her eyes, and she hadn’t shed a tear. Isis kept her cool and, once again, removed herself from the situation, as she had done before. It was something she was getting used to doing.

Jacob looked up from Donnell’s dead body and looked directly at Isis. “What about her?” he asked Logic.

“What you mean, ‘what about her’?” Logic glanced over toward his car. Isis was sitting there picking her nails as if she didn’t have a care in the world about what was going on outside of the car she was in.

“What do you always preach?” Jacob asked. “‘No witnesses, no crime.’”

“That there ain’t no witness.
She’s
my future.”

Isis tried to pretend she didn’t hear Jacob trying to convince Logic of the need for her end. Hearing those words flow from Logic’s mouth put her at ease, but it also made her think about what the psychic had told her when she was in Las Vegas:
The man who will love you will address you as his princess…. Every-thing thirteen will forever be a bad omen for you….
She was in a daze. Seeing the brains of another human being blown out in front of her very eyes, the psychic’s words’ becoming reality, what Dave had said in his last letter, and the fact that this was indeed the thirteenth day she’d spent in Miami with Logic sent her mind to another place. Her physical body was sitting in the car, but another part of her was a million miles away. But this wasn’t the time to be drifting off. She needed to be concentrating on the right here and right now. Although scenarios in her life had changed, she hadn’t.

Jacob had a wild look in his eyes. “You got to be kidding me, man! Tell me that you’re joking…. We got too much at stake,” he said. “Don’t let your dick get us life in the joint.” Then Jacob made the most profound statement he’d made all evening. “Three people are way too many people to keep a secret of this magnitude. Our lives are at stake.”

Dropping his head, Logic replied in a quieter voice, “You are right. I don’t know where my mind was at.” Logic took out his gun and started over toward his Aston Martin.

“That’s why we call you Logic, my nigga,” Jacob said. “Leave nothing to chance. Handle yo’ business.” Jacob smiled.

As Logic walked to the car, he had thoughts of Isis: how calm she was, how she trusted him, the intimate moments they had shared together, the blunt, the E, the laughs, Vegas and their intimate talks. Although Isis had seen and done a lot, there was something about her innocence that he genuinely liked, that he was drawn to. Logic was three steps from the car when Isis realized what was about to happen. She began silently saying the Lord’s Prayer, while gazing into his eyes.

But then Isis watched in disbelief when Logic turned around and called out, “Jacob?”

Jacob’s eyes grew wide with a look of pure terror. The three bullets flew out of Logic’s gun and found their target, and Jacob’s body crumpled to the ground. The sound of the shots was muffled by the silencer he had had specially fitted for the Glock .40-caliber. Now there were two dead bodies to dispose of.

Logic never checked to confirm that Jacob was dead; he knew that the powerful weapon had done its job. And if he was wrong, by the time someone found Jacob in this deserted swamp area, both he and Donnell would be stinking.

Without saying a word, Logic got into the car and started it up. He then looked over at Isis, whose only response was “I never liked him anyway.”

Logic chuckled, then kissed her on the cheek. “That nigga must’ve been crazy, suggesting that we kill my baby. Shit, I just found my baby.”

I can’t believe he just killed for me
, Isis thought. She leaned over and returned Logic’s kiss to the cheek.

He then gazed into her eyes. “I know this is short notice and will probably go down as one of the craziest proposals in the history of marriages, but will you marry me…tomorrow?” Logic had fallen in love with Isis, but he also knew that the court couldn’t force one spouse to testify against another. If she said yes, he would be killing two birds with one stone.

“Why so soon?”

“Why not?”

She thought about his question and then gave an ultimatum of her own: “I’ll marry you right now, but on one condition.”

“What is it?”

Isis took a long look into his eyes. “You have to make sure my sister is at the wedding.”

“Where is she? I’ll have her flown in tonight.”

Chapter 15

Wedding Bells

The next morning, wedding bells were ringing. Isis and Logic had a suite at the Ritz-Carlton and had pulled together a makeup artist, a hairstylist, and a photographer to make the day as memorable as possible. Lola brought over a rack of dresses for Isis to choose from to wear to the city hall, where the justice of the peace would perform the ceremony. A florist showed up and helped Isis choose the perfect bouquet. The ceremony’s being held in city hall didn’t mean that they couldn’t do it in style.

Before 10
AM,
the most important guest had arrived—Phoebe. She came through the door with a cart full of luggage, as if she was going to be staying with them for months.

The sisters greeted each other with a huge bear hug. Isis looked toward her sister’s bags. “How long you gon’ stay with us?” Isis wore a white Ritz-Carlton terry-cloth robe.

Phoebe hadn’t seen her sister in a while. She gave her a once-over and welcomed the glow she saw on her face. “Sis,” she said, “you getting married! I didn’t know what you might need, so I brought some of everything. I packed one suitcase with things new, one with things old, and one with things borrowed. You caught me with my panties down, you know; I had only about six hours to prepare, pack, and get here.”

“Thank you, sis, but all I needed was for you to be here.” Seeing Phoebe’s effort to make her day right had Isis one slow song away from being teary-eyed. “Let me introduce you to Lola. I told her your size, and she has a couple of dresses that you can choose from.”

After picking a dress, Phoebe turned her attention back to Isis. “So, what time is the wedding?” Phoebe asked.

“Maybe three-thirty,” Isis guessed.

The fact that Isis didn’t know the time of her own ceremony wasn’t a good sign to Phoebe. “Sister, you sure about this? I mean, you know I’m down for whatever, as long as it makes you happy.” Phoebe shot from the hip. “So are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Are you happy?”

Isis’s answer was delayed by the ringing of her phone. “Hold on, sister, it’s Logic.” She pushed the button to answer the call and put the phone up to her ear.

“Hello, Princess.” When Isis heard Logic’s voice, her face lit up like Times Square on New Year’s Eve. Phoebe had never seen Isis that happy in her entire life, not even with Dave.

“Hello to you, baby,” she said, smiling.

“I just called to see if your sister was in yet,” he said. “I want to talk to her.”

“She’s right here.” Isis handed the phone to Phoebe. “He wants you.”

Phoebe was surprised, but she took the phone anyway. “Hello?”

“How was your flight?” her brother-in-law-to-be asked her.

“It was good. What could be better than first class?”

“A private jet, but that’s not why I called. Your sister kicked me out of the suite because she said something about it being bad luck if I see her before the wedding. I don’t know about all of that, but I do know that it wouldn’t be right for me to wait to meet my only sister-in-law until after the wedding. So how would you feel about meeting me for a drink? Or a cup of coffee, if you feel it’s too early for alcohol.”

“Too early?” she said. “I’ve been up ever since last night when I got the phone call from you and my sister and I’m so excited. Actually I need something to calm me down.” Phoebe wanted to see, firsthand, the man who had her sister beaming like a child at Christmastime.

“Meet me in the lobby. You’ll recognize me by my good looks,” Logic joked.

After meeting Logic, it didn’t take Phoebe long to discover why her sister wanted to marry the man. What wasn’t there to like about him? He had charisma by the pounds and he was good-looking; the man was simply marvelous. Before they even left the hotel restaurant, Phoebe was already referring to him as her brother.

The wedding ceremony was quick and sweet. Afterward, they had a small dinner party with Phoebe and a few of Logic’s friends and family. The next day, Phoebe said she needed to get back to Texas, but not before making Isis a promise that she would come out to visit them again soon after they got back from their honeymoon in St. Tropez.

Isis looked forward to her sister’s return visit, but for the next seven days, it would be just her and her husband, creating their new lives together as one. If only the psychic had told her how wonderful that was going to be…