Authors: Endy
“So do you want to know what he said?”
“Not really, but I know you’re going to tell me anyway.”
“Girl, he want to push up.”
“He’s not my type, Bev.”
“Your type? Shit, a paid nigga like that is any bitch’s type. You trippin’, Rae-Rae.”
“Bev, I don’t want to talk about this right now. I’m tired. I’ll talk to you later about it.”
Beverly shook her head in disappointment. “You better let go of Bunchy, Rae-Rae. You need to move on with your life, and if a paid nigga like Ish wants to get down, then you need to get with him,” she stated, leaving the room and closing the door behind her.
Desiree took her shower and went to bed. She lay in her bed, not able to fall asleep. She thought about Ishmael. Should she go on with her life? She felt the need to be loyal to Bilal, no matter what. Since she started working at IHOP, she had begun to save her money. Beverly was nice enough not to charge her rent, but Desiree still gave her something every week she got paid. The rest she put away. She was saving to get her own apartment. She would be starting school in the fall, and she needed to move into her own place.
Just the other day when she was coming up the stairs to the apartment, she smelled the familiar scent of burning cocaine. Her stomach began to bubble, and the anticipation of getting high ran all through her body. She could almost taste it, but she pushed forward and went into the apartment.
As she lay on the bed, she reminisced about when she first met Bilal as she slowly drifted off to sleep.
Desiree met Bilal at Don Pepe, a Portuguese restaurant downtown. At the time, she was an outside sales representative for a international computer software company. The software business was booming, and Desiree raked in more than seven grand a month in sales alone, not including her sixty-thousand-dollar-a-year salary. She created her own hours and drove a company car. The company also supplied her with a cell phone, credit card and an expense account. She traveled back and forth from California to Florida. She enjoyed her career and had the ambition to become a partner in the business. At the age of twenty-four, she had it going on.
Desiree and two of her coworkers pulled up into the restaurant parking lot. The valet opened her door, and she stepped out. Her lean legs were exposed by the split that ran up the front of her skirt. The young attendant eyed her smooth legs with hunger. He placed a ticket into her hands and looked away shyly as she locked eyes with him for gawking at her legs. The women strutted toward the restaurant. After being seated, they all ordered their drinks and began to discuss the latest gossip.
After lunch Desiree signed the receipt for the bill, charging their lunch to her expense account. She leaned back in her chair and smoked her cigarette. The women continued to talk and giggle freely. They each were a little tipsy from the two pitchers of sangria they had consumed. Desiree excused herself to go to the ladies’ room.
Once leaving the ladies’ room, she stepped out of the door and ran smack into a tall gentleman. He grabbed her to keep her from falling, apologized to her, and asked if she was okay. At first she was angry because she was almost tossed to the floor from the collision—until she looked up into his handsome face. She blushed and excused herself, walking briskly back to her table.
Bilal went back to the bar where he sat with friends. He watched her the whole time she remained there. They made eye contact, and he smiled at her, but she wouldn’t hold his eyes for long before turning away.
Desiree and her coworkers made their way into the parking lot to retrieve their cars. Desiree walked over to hers and got in. She put the key into the ignition, and someone tapped on her window, causing her to scream. She looked up, and it was Bilal.
“Are you crazy?” she yelled.
“No. I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to leave with the possibility of me never seeing you again.”
She stared into his almond-colored eyes and melted.
From that moment on, they were inseparable. Desiree loved everything about him. She believed he was her soul mate. He was ten years her senior, and his experience turned her on. The knowledge Bilal held was unbelievable. Desiree couldn’t understand why he wasn’t some type of professional businessman. He was a city trash worker. He made pretty good money, but Desiree felt he had much more intelligence than to settle for a city job.
They dated a few months, and Bilal moved into her quaint two-bedroom townhouse.
One day she came home from work and Bilal was sitting on the sofa with the remote in his hands. He appeared to be falling asleep. His head fell forward in slow motion. The remote was hanging on the edge of his fingertips, and a cigarette clung to the corner of his mouth. The ash that protruded from the end of the cigarette had reached the length of the cigarette itself. It had not been plucked since its lighting.
Desiree stood in front of Bilal, watching him. He never sensed her presence. She called out to him, and he jerked his head and the ash fell from the cigarette. The excuse he gave her was that he was really tired and had a hard day at work. This incident and other signs were evidence of Bilal using heroin.
Eventually his addiction was exposed. Instead of her nipping the sticky situation in the bud, she accepted his crutch because the love she had for him wouldn’t allow her to leave him.
She found herself being jealous of the relationship he had with heroin and wanted to be a part of it, thinking it would bring them even closer. However, Bilal knew how deadly the drug was. He knew that a dope addict’s life was a living hell on earth, and he couldn’t see his queen, the woman who accepted him out of love, ever experiencing the downfall that came with using.
But Desiree, being the stubborn, demanding woman she was, kept insisting. With the pressure on, he had no other choice, so he introduced her to cocaine. She snorted the substance until she no longer could acquire a proper high. That’s when she graduated and joined the millions of others in the world of crack.
M
ost of the squad met at the garage at the same time. They were following out their plans as scheduled. Damon had called Ishmael twice the night before, stating he spotted one of the brothers, and he had a clear shot to take him out, but Ishmael had to let him know that he needed to be patient, and they were going to stick to the script.
The garage was an old mechanic shop that sat next to an empty lot. The owner of the shop was Derrick’s uncle who used to fix cars. Now he was too old to fix himself a cup of tea.
Long ago he had let Derrick have the shop with hopes that he would carry on the long line of mechanics who were in the family. Derrick led his uncle to believe that’s what he was doing. He did so by letting The Mob Squad come to the shop to work on their personal cars, but in reality it was their meeting place. They’d done everything including decapitating bodies, planning their strategies for upcoming jobs, screwing broads on the second floor in the garage’s bedroom, and just lounging around.
All in attendance were wearing black gloves. They gathered around the two brothers who they had placed at the saw table, which was nailed to the floor. Each of the twins’ legs were roped to the table’s legs, and their bodies were tied to their chairs. Their hands were placed securely in the vice grips that sat in front of them. The vice grips were mounted to the table in front of them.
Their mouths were duct taped, and they were blindfolded. They were drenched in sweat, fearing the worst. They jerked their heads simultaneously in different directions detecting all in the room.
Ishmael removed the blindfold from Ronald first and instructed one of the men to remove the one from Donald’s eyes. The look on both the men’s faces were identical—horrified.
“What’s up, fellas?” Ishmael stated, smiling down at both of them.
Ronald tried to speak first, but his words were muffled. Ishmael ripped the tape brutally from his mouth, causing the man to scream.
“Ish man, what’s going on?”
“What’s going on? What’s going on is my money, nigga.”
“What money, Ish?”
“Here we go with the same ole bullshit. Listen, I ain’t even sweating the money no more. It’s the G.P., nigga. I’m setting an example for mafuckas like you two. Don’t fuck with Ishmael’s shit,” he stated in his usual calm demeanor.
Donald began making loud noises like he had something to say, so Ishmael ripped the tape from his mouth as well. Ronald and Donald both began to speak at the same time.
“Yo, shut the fuck up. You had your turn. I’m finished with you,” Ishmael yelled at Ronald.
All who gathered in the garage were now alert, if they weren’t before. Ishmael was not a yeller. He was not one to lose his patience easily, but when he did, watch yo’ back.
Ishmael looked at Donald, giving him the opportunity to speak.
“Listen, Ish—” he said, taking a deep breath, “I know what you thinking, but listen, man, Rallo said we was gonna hit this small-time nigga. On everything that I love, we had no idea that it was yo’ shit, man,” he pleaded.
“Just like I thought, you ain’t got shit to say either. Yo, check this out, Rallo’s breathing dirt right now. There ain’t no coming back for Rallo. So y’all can kill that shit. You feel me?” Ishmael growled at the two of them.
“Yo, Ish man. Listen, man,” Donald yelled.
“We got the money. Just give us time to go get it,” Ronald finished the sentence.
“Picture that shit. Silence them niggaz,” Ishmael yelled as he walked away from the table.
Duct tape was reapplied to the men while Ishmael paced the garage floor for several minutes, trying to get his head together. He wanted to pull his burner out and pop both of them in the dome with one single bullet each, but that wouldn’t be satisfying enough for him. They wouldn’t suffer. No, he wanted them to suffer. He stared furiously at the two men.
The twins whimpered and cried, trying to break free. Damon began to have a little fun with the men by teasing them and punching them in the face.
Derrick pulled a box of two-inch thick-as-nails straight pins that he had taken from his sister’s sewing kit from his pocket. He held up the box and shook it at Ishmael, getting his attention. It was as though Derrick had read Ishmael’s mind. Ishmael smiled and took the box from his friend’s hands.
“Blindfold them fuckas,” Derrick instructed.
When the blindfolds were applied. Ishmael showed the men what he wanted done without opening his mouth and saying a word. He didn’t want his victims to know what was about to happen to them. Damon jumped up in front of Ishmael with his hand held out, letting him know he wanted to put in work, so Ishmael gave him a handful of pins and the other half to Little Cash.
One by one the men jabbed the straight pins underneath the fingernails of the twins. One member held one chair while another held the other chair to keep it from rising off the floor.
The duct tape did nothing to muffle the sounds of shrills and screams that came from the men. Derrick turned on the garage’s stereo system with surround-sound speakers to drown out the screams. Ishmael looked over at two of his crew members, Dice and Nate. They kept turning their heads as the pins where inserted into the twins fingers. Ishmael laughed to himself thinking how these two dudes would body a nigga in a New York minute but couldn’t watch the scene.
As each pin was inserted, blood squirted everywhere. Ronald began to fart and defecate on himself, and each time he did this, Damon would ram another pin in him while he taunted him.
“You punk-ass mafucka, shitting on yourself. You ain’t think about that shit when you was parlaying with Ish’s money, did you? Huh? Mmm,” he said after each pin he inserted.
Satisfaction was written all over Ishmael’s face. Donald was in so much pain he passed out.
“Hold up. This mafucka passed out,” Little Cash stated.
Click, another member of the crew, cracked Donald across the face with his gun, awakening him. Click acquired his name for being known to empty an automatic weapon and keeping his finger on the trigger well after the rounds where discarded, causing the clicking noise.
After being cold copped with the gun, Donald came to and began to scream as realization of the pain from the pins hit him again.
Ishmael instructed the two men to pull out the pins. From the way the twins screamed, you couldn’t tell which was worst, putting the pins in or taking them out. Damon pulled out the pins in slow motion, enjoying the pain.
Ishmael noticed that Derrick was irritated with the whole scene. He knew torture was not Derrick’s forte and that he only tolerated it to please him. With frustration settling in, Derrick pulled out his knife and stood behind Ronald. He grabbed Ronald’s forehead, pulling it back, and slit his throat. Derrick held on to Ronald’s head and allowed the blood to back up in his throat.
Ronald began to gurgle and choke on his own blood. After his body stopped twitching, Derrick let go of Ronald’s head, and it fell forward with his chin resting on his chest.
Everyone looked on with amazement. Ishmael shrugged and walked over to a shocked Donald.
“Hey, Don,” he shouted to get his attention. “See you in hell, baby.”
Ishmael then turned to Nate and Dice. “Slump his ass.” He instructed them to do what they do best.
“After you, man,” Nate said, extending his hand.
“No, by all means, after you,” Dice returned the courtesy.
The two men spoke like they were English chaps.
“Much oblige to you, my friend,” Nate said and pumped Donald in the neck with a bullet.
Dice then completed the job by popping a bullet to Donald’s eye. Damon was laughing hard. He thought they were the funniest thing since BET
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Ishmael and Derrick’s work was done.
“Chop ’em up and dump ’em,” Ishmael instructed as he and Derrick left the garage.
Ishmael was silent while Derrick drove. It was 4:30 a.m. They rode through the blocks checking with each team’s captain before moving on to the next destination.
“So what’s up? You calling it a night or what?” Derrick inquired.