“Ain't that a bitch!” mumbled Mike B under his breath. Now all was confirmed. That night Jeff did have his whip. The same night his cousin was spotted in the area.
That was the very same night they had bumped into Twan down there up in the club.
Could words have transpired that night between the two of them
? he thought. He believed it had to have happened like that.
“Damn!” he cursed to himself. He was thinking that had he not been intoxicated, he would've been more on point and peeped whatever tension was between his friend and family and squashed the beef. Because of his drunkenness, unnecessary blood had been spilled and he had no clue as to why. The only thing that he really could remember was waking up the next morning to a complaining Lenore.
Why was she complaining that day?
he wondered as his mind drifted. There was something about that morning he thought, he just couldn't put his finger on it. There was something that he was supposed to have done that day. No, something he had promised Lenore the night before, he started to remember, but what?
If he was with Jeff on the eleventh then the next day would be the twelft. What did he promise Lenore on the twelth? He questioned himself, racking his brain.
Why am I even trying to remember
? he wondered. What was the importance? Something about his promises meant something, he was sure of. He just didn't know what
. Think, Mike B. Why the fuck I smoke so much weed
? he thought, continuing to run through his mental file cabinets.
“The twelfth? January twelfth,” he kept repeating.
Detective Wilson just stood there watching as Mike B talked to himself. He could see that he was in deep thought trying to remember something. Something that had Detective Wilson curious himself. “What was on the twelfth?”
He began to count the days of January down starting with the first. He was positive that New Years, 2004 was on a Thursday because he, Jeff, Denise, and Lenore spent Wednesday, which was New Year's Eve of 2003, in New York watching the ball drop. From there, he began to tally up the days of the week with the dates. He knew that Club Palmers pumped the hardest on Saturday nights. So he was sure that the eleventh fell on a Saturday, but still he counted any way.
“Monday the fifth, Tuesday the sixth, Wednesday the seventh, Thursday the eight, Friday the ninth, Saturday the tenth, Sunday the eleventh.” He stopped when he reached the eleventh. There had to be a mistake he thought. There's no way the 11th fell on a Sunday. There's no way they would've went to Palmers on Sunday, that much he knew. Again, he started from the first and counted again, only this time something clicked.
“Oh, shit!” he said aloud to himself.
It had all come back to him now. Saturday was the tenth, and on the tenth Jeff did have his whip. And on the eleventh, that's what the complaining was about when Lenore woke him up, now remembering what he had promised her.
She had been reminding him all week that her and Denise were going to church on Sunday and she wanted to take the Benz. It was her complaining that caused him to call Jeff and have him give the Benz to Denise to come pick Lenore up for church. What he once was sure of before, he now had doubt, realizing that Jeff was not in possession of his car.
Maybe it was just a coincidence that a Benz that favored mine was in the area,
he thought. But then he realized that couldn't be the case because the DMV traced it back to his Mercedes. Now Mike B was more confused than before. Realizing that Lenore had his car and not Jeff threw him for a loop. Quickly, he began to play back Detective Wilson's words. He remembered him saying that Jeff's prints were found on the weapon used in the killing of Gee. That made no sense to Mike B at first, but then he thought about something else Detective Wilson said. That his prints were found on the weapon retrieved from Jeff's crib that bodied Jeff and was involved in Gee-Live's killing. Mike B cursed himself for being so stupid. He wondered why he couldn't figure out this twisted triangle sooner as evidence appeared and revealed itself. Outside of him and Jeff, there were only two other individuals that had access to and knowledge of the whereabouts of the business, and that was their wifeys, Lenore and Denise. Now it started to make sense to him. Neither Jeff nor Gee-Live played any parts of his cousin Twan's murder, nor did he play any parts in Jeff's. The fact of the matter was, that he and Jeff had been played like puppets and if he had to bet money on it, he would bet that both Lenore and Denise were the puppeteers. How two females could be so devious and deceptive was amazing to Mike B. In all of his years in the game, females or anyone else for that matter, had never played him to this degree.
Now after summing up somewhat of the situation, Mike B was now faced with an uncomfortable dilemma. He now had an idea who was the cause and the mastermind behind such a scheme, and no clue as to what drove these scandalous chicks to concoct such a plan. Whatever the case, Mike B was now put in a position to where as though he had two options. One he could respect what took place and charge it to the game and take all that happened on the chin, or two, he could go against the grain and give the detective the spill in order to help make it easier on himself.
Mike B sat there silently just shaking his head in disgust, fighting with the decision he intended to make.
By now, Detective Wilson's patience had run out. He had given Mike B ample time to get his thoughts together and now he wanted answers.
“So what's it going to be Money? Is it going to be my version or your version?” Detective Wilson asked, waiting for a response.
Mike B took in a deep breath then exhaled. He had come to a decision and made up his mind. He knew what he decided would change his life forever, but nonetheless he was prepared to live with the consequences and repercussions behind his decision.
“All that you just said to me Wilson,” Mike B started out with. “I don't know nothin' about,” he emphasized.
Detective Wilson was thrown back by Mike B's response. He was confident that Mike B would cooperate being his compromising position but when he refused, the detective no longer felt sorry for him. He made up his mind that Mike B belonged where the rest of the criminals were, in prison, and he was determined to see to it that that's where he wound up at for a long time.
“Okay, tough guy. Have it your way!” were the detective's concluding words before leaving Mike B to himself.
The only thought that crossed Mike B's mind, as the door slammed was, “Grimey hood bitches!”
Chapter Eighteen
“All passengers please take your seats and fasten your seatbelts, flight number sixty-seven, departing from Newark Airport to Miami, Florida,” the stewardess voice announced over the PA system.
Both Lenore and Denise complied, along with the other passengers.
It is finally over,
thought Lenore. She couldn't believe it. All of her planning, deception, and conniving these past months had paid off. She had not an ounce of regret or remorse for her actions. To her, when it came to survival, she strongly believed that the only thing in this world that could help you was money. Her motto was to obtain it by any means necessary, which is exactly what she did. She knew both the history as well as the bad blood between Jeff and Gee-Live based on what she learned from Denise. She used the tension between the two rivalries to execute her twisted plan and capitalize off of it. Timing couldn't have been better when Denise introduced her to Mike B. For her, it was never about attraction. Although Mike B was nice to look at and was an all-around good dude, it was strictly business from day one. It took a lot of blunt smoking, Alize Bleu drinking, and not to mention a lot of coochie licking, to convince Denise that it was a good plan. Upon agreeing as fate would have it, Lenore met Gee-Live one night at Deltas in New Brunswick while Mike B was out of town. The two of them instantly hit it off. After several shots of Hennessey, a couple bottles of Rosé, and a nice blunt of Purple Haze exotic weed, the two of them found themselves in the same bed together in a sex crazed frenzy.
Gee-Live found out later that Lenore was from L.A. but lived in Jersey, in a town near his, Piscataway. But what he didn't know was that she was the wifey of his arch nemesis' right hand man. The more they sexed, the more open Gee-Live became. He had been allowing her to be up under his roof whenever she wanted. In a short period of time, Gee-Live was catching feelings for Lenore and expressed this to her. He started wanting to see more of her than just the two times out of the week he was limited to. He had even offered her to move in with him, but she said it was too soon. He didn't agree. The fact that he didn't know where she lived or who she lived with didn't matter to him. Her past or her present outside of him meant nothing, all he was concerned about was having a future with Lenore.
One particular night when both Jeff and Mike B were down south, Lenore reached out to Gee-Live and asked if she could she come over. She told him she had a surprise for him. More than happy to be seeing her for an additional day outside of the two that he was privileged to, he answered yes without hesitation. Unbeknownst to him, but not the least disappointed or with complaint, the surprise was Denise. That night they smoked, drank, sexed, and partied until Gee-Live passed out. A combination of exhaustion and intoxication had him counting sheep and snoring like a grizzly bear, which couldn't have been any better for Lenore and Denise. They combed through his home with a fine tooth comb in search of some type of safe or stash spot. Finding the location of what they were looking for, the two girls exited the house, leaving Gee-Live laying knocked out in bed.
Two weeks later, again as fate would have it, when she went to pay Gee-Live a visit he was highly upset about an altercation with someone at a bar who had thrown a drink in his face at a strip club. That someone was Twan, her boyfriend's cousin. That gave Lenore the final piece of her masterminded plan she had been working on. For the next few weeks, she made it her business to find out what Twan's days consisted of, trying to figure out the best opportunity to ignite her scheme. On the third week, shortly after she had just been an accomplice to a kid that owed Mike B and Jeff a substantial amount of paper, both Lenore and Denise followed Twan to the Scotchwood Diner. It was where he went every Sunday morning for breakfast. They patiently waited for him to come out. It was like a scene straight out of a West Coast movie. As soon as Twan stepped out of the diner and headed toward his car, the engine of the stolen Honda started. Lenore and Denise were parked a short distance away from where Twan's car was parked. As soon as he reached the parking lot on the side of the diner, Denise flipped on the high beams and threw the car in drive. Had Twan not been high and a tipsy he may have been able to react differently and more efficiently. Instead, he threw up his right hand to block the blinding lights out of his face. He never had a chance. Lenore cut him down with the silenced, semiautomatic weapon that Jeff had used on his and Mike B's last hit, before peeling off. Denise planted the gun in Jeff's house. It seemed like only yesterday that her plan had gotten off the ground, but it had been an entire nine months and things had gone just the way she expected them to. Twan's life was sacrificed. Gee-Live became the fall guy decoy. Mike B and Jeff took him out the equation. Jeff would've been the actual accused for Twan's death but taken out of the equation also. Mike B would become the real fall guy and wear the weight for everything. Lenore and Denise would make tracks to Florida for a better life, to live happily ever after, with no worries. Those were her all her thoughts as she sat next to the woman she loved. She grabbed a hold of Denise's hand and squeezed it. The two of them faced each other.
“I love you,” Lenore offered.
“I love you too,” Denise returned.
They shared a smile, only Denise's was partial. She turned and looked out of the jet's window. Her mind was somewhere else. As her and Lenore held hands, she couldn't help but to think about the last part of their scheme they had just carried out, or rather Lenore carried out. Unlike Lenore, Denise actually had feelings for her ex-lover, whom she had just agreed to have murdered. Her heart no doubt belonged to Lenore, but a piece of it also belonged to Jeff. He was the first and only man that ever made her feel like a real woman and that meant a lot to her. This was part of the reason why it was so hard for her to come to terms with what she had allowed Lenore to do. With her free hand, she placed it on her stomach as the turbulence began. Tear drops began to trickle down her face. She had hoped that Lenore didn't see them. The other part of the reason that made it so difficult for her to cope with, hurt her the most. She rubbed her stomach. How could she live with herself, knowing that she played a part in the death of her unborn child's father? But furthermore, how could she explain to Lenore that she intended to have this baby?
So many thoughts circled around inside of her head as she gazed out the airplane window into the clouds. She knew that she had to inform Lenore of her condition before the two of them got settled in Florida. She hoped Lenore would understand and accept her decision to keep the baby. The two had talked about kids in the past so she knew Lenore was totally against it, since she herself was unable to conceive. It had been years since the subject had come up, but she was almost certain that Lenore still felt the same way about the matter. No matter the case, her mind was already made up. Seven months from now, God willing, she would be giving birth to a child. Her biggest concern was not how Lenore would react to the news. Her concern was how she would explain the absence of her child's father. With that in mind, Denise sat back and closed her eyes as the 757 Boeing began to lift into the air.