“Man she going to call soon,” Tariq trying to assure his friend since third grade as he was a little concerned about the awkward silence between the two of them.
Spoe began to think to himself, how he hated breaking his routine of doing things, but then he thought about his cut of the million dollars that could be in his safe tomorrow.
Just then the phone rung, a smile covered a relieved Tariq's face, as he answered quickly the second he saw the caller ID revealing Tiffany's number.
“Yeah, beautiful,” he said as he winked and smiled at Spoe. There was no doubt that he was trying to convince his childhood friend that he really wasn't sprung out on Tiffany as he was. Tariq put the call on speakerphone so Spoe could be privy to the info she had. She let out the address and that was the green light to proceed with their plan.
Spoe went into the bedroom for a quick change into his work clothes, and went over to the bed where Bunny was stretched out watching television, and laid on top of her.
He blessed her with a long passionate kiss, “We just got the call.”
“You sure this Tiffany bitch is okay?” she questioned.
“Yes, I guess, Tariq said he bet his life on it,” Spoe said.
“He better and hers, too. Hope that bitch value hers cause if she ain't on the up and up, I'm going to deal with her myself,” Bunny promised.
Spoe knew that Bunny meant business. His wifey was extremely territorial. He knew that she didn't like the fact that he had to depend on any other woman besides her, for anything. Spoe wasn't going to even entertain the treacherous thoughts of what Bunny would do to Tiffany if the information she gave, wasn't on the up and up.
“Well, that the girl is all about her money, and she want her cut.”
“Seems like it,” Bunny agreed.
“Why you say that?” Spoe questioned Bunny as if she knew something that he didn't.
“I looked at her Instagram page and I saw her.”
Spoe kissed his wifey-boo again. “You something else,” he said not even surprised that Bunny knew everything, including the girl last eye exam, there was to know about Tiffany.
“Hand me that phone on the night table,” she said to him. He did and she started showing Spoe Tiffany's pictures she had posted on her page.
“You don't be playing do you?”
“Nope not when it comes to my man, I don't. Nope not about mines.”
He kissed her again, “I love you woman, and you know that!”
“Yes! And know that I love you more,” she kissed him back and embraced him tight. Then asked, “I just wish you could stay here in my arms all night.”
“Me too baby, but duty calls. Gotta go get the bacon.”
Bunny sighed and for a couple beats there was silence between the two. Then she jumped into character, “What you need me to do to help you get ready.”
“Nothing I'm good babe, I got it covered.”
“You sure?” she questioned as Spoe got up and slipped into his all black gear. She tried to do any little thing to help him as if he was her son. He didn't mind. He gave her a long hug.
“Go and get that money baby and bring it back to Momma,” she kissed him and smiled at him.
“You better believe it baby,” he said as he headed for the door. “Come lock the door, babe.”
Bunny walked behind him and he turned back around and spoke to her.
“And if Ginger call back, let 'em know, not to panic. We got 'em as soon as they give a bail.”
Once she shut door and watched them get into their work van and pull off, she wondered exactly how Ginger was holding up.
-15-
“Bail denied!”
The decision not to grant Ginger, a bond came from behind a bulletproof glass by an overworked magistrate. A deputy grabbed her arm and began to usher her away before a stunned Ginger could respond.
Ginger jerked her arm away. “Hold the fuck up! I didn't even get a chance to speak. Y'all acting like I done killed somebody or something. Damn, even the Briley Brothers got a damn bond.”
Deputy Foster allowed Ginger to vent, as long as she didn't get too out of pocket, she was cool. He'd been doing his job, escorting detainees through Henrico Jail for better than fifteen years. Some of them were innocent, but most were as guilty as charge. Their crimes were none of his business; he just did his job.
“Are we in America or North-fucking Korea?” Ginger huffed. “Credit card fraud and grand larceny, that's all I'm charged with and I can't get no gotdamn bond? Fuck!”
Actually Ginger had twelve counts of fraud, and eight counts of grand larceny and a list of other white-collar charges.
Tightening his grip this time, Deputy Foster directed her back toward post processing, a room where they changed the detainees out of their street clothes and into prison beige stock jail uniforms.
“I'm willing to bet the reason the Magistrate refused to give you bond,” he informed Ginger, “is because you don't have a valid ID. You could be a serial killer for all we know. For all you know they could be a terrorist . . . you got four IDs and none of them are you. The Boston Bombers didn't have IDs as intricate as yours. So you can't really blame them for taking those precautions.” Deputy Foster got to a door and handed Ginger off to a female officer to get changed out.
“Jane Doe, no bond,” he told his colleague and looked to Ginger, “Behave.”
The female's badge read Duncan. Deputy Duncan was short, with chocolate skin, and a military fit body. She sized Ginger up with a pair of hazel eyes. “Small,” she was referring to Ginger's size, and it came more off like a statement then a question.
What size smock she took was the least of Ginger's concerned, she had much bigger fish to fry, which was a lot harder to do being that she was the one in the hot pan of grease. It turned out that Olive Oil, the anorexic white chick from the Louie store, had called five-oh, with the omnipresence of surveillance cameras, it had been easy to go back, to pick up Ginger's movements after leaving Louie Vuitton, she and Deidra leaving the mall, putting the bags in the car and the license plates of her Honda as they rode off.
“Take all your clothes off and put them in this.” Deputy Duncan handed her a small medal basket, “And hurry up. We don't have all day honey.”
Chile please. Bitch you much be crazy . . . like you really think I'm going to hurry up to get locked down? Think again
, Ginger thought as she unbuttoned her blouse slowly.
Two buttons . . . Deputy Duncan rolled her eyes. “Get a move on it,” she tried to rush Ginger, but Ginger wasn't having it.
She rolled them right back like,
whatever
. The blouse finally unbuttoned, Ginger took off the blouse, folded it up neatly and then placed it into the medal basket. Thanks to all the hormone pills she had taken since age eighteen, a killer pair of C-cup breasts filled the cup of the Victoria's Secret royal blue lace bra.
Deputy Duncan walked her eyes down to Ginger's ironing board flat stomach and then slowly back up to her breasts with the healthy appetite and appreciation of an admiring lesbian.
“Good,” said Deputy Duncan with no shame in her tone. “Jeans and shoes.”
Ginger saw the lust written all across Duncan's face, and she milked it, taking her time. Deputy Duncan deaded her fake hurry, enjoying the striptease that Ginger was putting on, while it lasted. Ginger wished she'd worn more clothes.
And finally in nothing, but matching lace panties and bra, she struck a pose. Then gestured for the prison rags to replace the garments she'd disrobed.
Ginger's heart skipped when Deputy Duncan said, “. . . everything.”
With a lot to conceal and nowhere to conceal it, Ginger sighed at the perplexity of her situation.
“You sure about that,” Ginger said in her sexiest voice. This may be too much for you,” she licked her lips and batted her long mink eyelash extensions, in a seductive way.
“Trust me, I can handle what . . . ever you got.” Duncan shot back. “Now strip.”
“Okay, have it your way,” she moaned in a way that she knew turned on Duncan, as she unsnapped her bra, freeing a set of perfectly round of mounds soft flesh, sitting at attention like two puppies awaiting a treat. A nod at the panties from Deputy Duncan, trying to conceal a smile, but Ginger had other things that needed to be concealed.
They were at ground zero when Deputy Duncan unleashed a wild scream. “Package!”
Thinking that Deputy Duncan had discovered drugs on the Jane Doe's person and by the sound of her shriek, was engaged in a physical confrontation. Deputy Foster to assist his colleague.
Confused, Deputy Duncan stammered, “S-she'sss a dude,” pointing at the seven inches of proof, strapped between Gingers legs and ass cheeks.
“What the fuckkkk?” Foster was shocked, too.
-16-
Under the pale light of a full moon, Spoe and Tariq stepped from the cover of a thick patch of wood, about half a football field from a white plantation style mansion.
In what little time they did have to prepare, they'd done their homework. It was a Thursday, every Thursday around 11:00 p.m., the Bloody Lion Crew left the house together, usually for a couple of hours, but never more than three or less than one. So, Spoe and Tariq figured they had at least an hour to find the bread and get ghost, but had decided to only allot themselves thirty minutes to make it happen.
The cribâ7,200 square foot, on three acres of rural property belonged to a dread called Dino. Dino was the head of a crew from New York, called the Bloody Lions Posse, who was heavily into distribution of cocaine and Ecstasy. But even after doing their due diligence, Spoe still couldn't help his feeling of uneasiness combined with a bad vibe.
“That bitch Tiffany, is sure she seen a mil-ticket?” Spoe had to make sure.
Tariq eyes still on the empty house, “She's never steered me wrong before and I'm sure she's not going to start now.” Tariq looked his man in his eyes, “She said it was
at least
a million dollars.”
“In a suitcase with a gold lion head?” Spoe questioned, then added, “It sounds like some shit you'd see in a movie?”
Tariq hunched his shoulders, he had to agree, “True dat. But you know like I know, real life can be crazier than fiction. Take this house for example. You wouldn't think a black person would be living in it, unless they were the help. The shit looks exactly like Candy Land, the house Jamie Foxx blew up in the movie Django.”
The sound of barking dogs rang out.
Woof! Woof! Woof! Woof!
The barking originated from two silver back pit bulls. Together the dogs weighed more than 200 pounds, and had heads the size of watermelons.
Spoe gripped the handle of the sub-machine gun hanging from the strap around his neck. Busting a cap in the dog to keep from becoming a Scooby snack wouldn't be a problem. Fortunately for all parties involved the pits were chained and caged in a 12x12 pin.
“Nah, man, let them live.” Tariq suggested. “Let's focus on this bread.”
“Tonight is their lucky night,” Spoe said, as he looked at the trained attack dogs.
Focused back on the house, Tariq said, “We keep to the script.” According to Tiffany, she was upstairs when she'd seen the suitcase. So, she had no idea where Dino kept it. “We toss the house for no more than twenty minutes and then we out with or without.”
Spoe didn't like scavenger hunts. His preferred method was to snatch somebody up. It never mattered if it was the actual victim, victim's ole girl or ole lady. He'd torture them until he got what they needed.
Tariq could see his friend's apprehensiveness, but he said, “Spoe yours is normally riskier than this.”
“Yeah,” it's always produced results for us. Big results.”
The problem: these dreads originated in Miami and had no family in Virginia and to top things off, their entire crew was treacherous to the core. These were the kind of gangstas that would rather die a violent death than bow down to cowards to torture.
“A'ight man. It's your play?” Spoe said as they crept through the darkness wearing all black. “We'll do it your way.” He had no reason not to trust Tariq's judgment, after all the two had been in business together in some sort of way for over fifteen years.
The house was wired with an alarm system from one of the companie that put their signs in in the yard as a warning for casual trespassers and kids. For anyone with even average knowledge on how the system worked, the alarm was as usual as the caged guard dog.
Tariq was far from average when it came to disengaging alarm systems, he was a pro. A good alarm took him three minutes to disarm. In sixty seconds give or take they had bypassed the crap system and was standing inside the kitchen. The fridge, stove, and dishwasher were all high-end stainless steel appliances. The islands black marble top matched the onyx-colored floor. The kitchen opened up into an extravagant styled living room, a seventy-inch TV mounted over an enormous granite style fireplace. Gold tables, white Italian leather sofas, and Arabian silk high back chairs. Everything was spotless, and not to mention the place looked like a museum.
“Are these cats really drug dealers or does Martha Stewart live here?” Spoe half joked with a raised eyebrow.
“Shit is unbelievable right?” Tariq impressed by the one and only lick that he had ever brought to the table.
“It is but we don't have no time for a tour, we need to get to this money.”
“Let's start upstairs,” Tariq said, for the first time taking the lead. “Come on.”
Spoe followed as Tariq lead the way. They turned left, by passing the grandiose living room, through an archway and up an oversized spiral staircase, which was also marble and wider than two driving lanes of I-95.
At the top, was a loft with more rooms going in either direction, “Man I know this is yo' show, but in all this house and the time we on, there's no time for roaming. I think its best for us to split up. You take the rooms to left and I will hit the right, then look for the master bedroom.”
Tariq agreed with the plan, adding, “Good idea. We start at the furthest point and work our way back to the loft. Either of us find the loot we holla and we out.”
Spoe, taking the responsibility for tossing all the rooms east of the loft; Tariq all the rooms west of the loft.
“Sounds Gucci to me.”
Then they parted like two determined prizefighters, after bumping gloves in the middle of the ring to their respective corners, except they were retreating to their separate corners of the house, not a ring. And before a purse would be divided, they would have to find it first!
Tariq opened the door of what seemed to be a mini theatre, he didn't think it was a likely place to hide the bread, but one would never know if they didn't look. The walls were textured and red. Thick leather, reclining chairs with cup holders the same ox blood red as the walls faced the 120 foot white screen. It was improbable that a suitcase would be able to fit inside or under the recliners, but he lifted the seat cushions and felt under each one anyway. The only money he found was $3.17 worth of loose change. He ripped the screen off the wall, checking behind it. Nothing there.
Something caught his attention on the wall near the front to the left of the screen. It was a barely noticeable vertical seam. A door; a door with no discernable latch.
The only purpose for having a hidden door would be to conceal something. The question was, what was being concealed? One thing for sure, two things for certain, he'd find out soon enough.
Tariq tried pushing it at the door; first in the center, then on each corner, hoping it was one of those pressured-spring latches.
Negative.
The seam was too narrow to slip anything between it, so prying it open wasn't an option.
He was wasting time.
Get the fuckin' door open Tariq. Come on man this is yo' shit. This the shit you do,
his self-conscious was talking to him.
Touching the wall, to the right of the seam, he ran his fingers from top to bottom. Nothing. He went out a little wider with his hands, repeating the process.
Bingo!
Camoplauged in the textured material, sound proofing material was a small button. He pressed the button and the door slid open, on a recessed, mechanical track. Inside the space, were racks of electronic material. A sub woofer, DVD player, tuner, hard drive, amp, etc....
No money.
Who the fuck goes to this length of secrecy to conceal a stereo?
Tariq thought. The answer was no one.
The longer Tariq looked at the audio and video equipment the more he sensed something was definitely offbeat.
What was it?
He was wrecking his brain trying to figure it out, but knew he didn't have but so much time to jerk off in there.
The minute he was about to give up, and then it hit
him
. He hit himself with the heel of his hand for not pinning it off top. It was the dubwoofer. Toshiba made all of the equipment inside of the closet, except for the subwoofer. It was also at least a couple of years older than, the other stuff.
After closer scrutiny, Tariq was on to the charade. The subwoofer was one of those “in your face,” stash boxes. Like the fake rock people hid in the spare door key in and left in the front yard. Inside the shame sub woofer were eight neatly wrapped bricks of coke.
It wasn't the million dollars that they were looking for, but it was a heck of a bonus to a great start. Tariq stacked the bricks inside of the duffle bag before moving on to the next room, one room down, and four to go.
Meanwhile, Spoe was ready to toss the third room on his end. The first two, besides a couple pieces of jewelry-were a bust. Before he was about to go to work, he took a deep breath to clear his head.
When Spoe was thirteen and was running wild, an OG name Butter took him under his wing and blessed him with some food for thought.
“Productivity,” Butter said, “comes to the brotha that most persistent
and
patient. Remember that young blood.” Spoe swallowed the gem whole and kept down. He'd been shining every since.
Spoe took a deep breath to clear his head, before he got back to work. Though the master bedroom was bigger than, the entire apartment of some projects he'd been in, he didn't get discouraged. If the money was truly there he'd find it. He flipped the mattress on a king-sized bed, and found a 22-shot Glock. He put the pistol in his waist, got on his knees and looked underneath the box spring.
Nothing at all, but a few specks of dust was all that he found.
He pulled the bag from behind the wall and checked behind the headboard. Nothing. He didn't stop there, he continued to look, underneath and behind the oak dresser, chest, and the two night tables, still came up with still nothing. One by one he removed a collection of paintings from the wall, looking for hidden safes. The room had a fireplace almost as big as the one they had passed downstairs. He searched inside the fireplace and around the hearth, for loose bricks, concealing stash spots. He continued from the floor to ceiling, book shelves, bathroom, and a sitting area framed by a bay window and an antique armoire, where he found nothing besides a collection of high-end watches bammered in a wooden box inside of the armoire.
As he made his way toward a closet, he hoped Tariq was having better luck. And quickly let the random thought go. If Tariq had found the money they wouldn't still be inside the house searching. They'd be in the truck celebrating, but that wasn't the case at all.
Spoe opened the door to the walk-in closet, which was the size of a two-car garage. Just like the rest of the crib, the design and organization could have been over saw by Martha Stewart herself. Clothes were coordinated by colors and seasons. To Spoe, except for the guns, it seemed like something more suitable for a cat like Nick Cannon than a drug-dealing cat like Dino.
Dudes were seriously strapped hanging from a customized pegboard, were two AKs, a M-14, a Heckler & Coch UMP, and an array of semi-automatic pistols. Spoe took noticed that a few spots on the wall were currently unoccupied, letting him know that Dino and crew were strapped.
Then he noticed something else. On the floor, beneath the guns, was a suitcase. Brown. And embossed in its leather was a lion's head.
Bingo!
God was good! They'd finally found what they'd come for and more than they'd expected.
Motivated by the ease of the score, Tariq wanted to keep searching. “This spot is a fucking gold mine.” He said to Spoe, adjusting the strap on the duffle bag, weighted down with coke, over his shoulder. “No telling what else we might find.”
“Yeah. Like a hot ball and a cold casket,” Spoe nodded toward the suitcase in his hand. “I'm Gucci with this.”
On their way down the steps, Tariq asked his friend since third grade, “So, when did you start letting the possibility of death hold sway over how you live life?”
Good question
, Spoe thought. He was contemplating an answer when the gunshots rang out.
“Bbbrrat! Bbbrrat!” The barrage of 9 mm hollow points from the MP-5 hit home. Boring through the flesh of its targets. Blood poured through their fingers as it clutched at the fatal holes.
From the elevated position on the stairs, Spoe had a better fight line. He'd spotted the dreads creeping before they spotted him and squeezed off the first shot, dropping two of Dino's men.
Dino watched his two soldiers chest open up right in front of him. The severity of the wounds, they'd bleed out in a matter of minutes. It was nothing he could do for them, but see to it that their killer would die, and hard. The remainder of Dino's crew sparked back, sending the sound of gunfire echoing through the house.
“Boom, boom, boom, boom . . .” Spoe shoved Tariq down. “Back upstairs.” The odds weren't in their favor going down. “We've got to find another way out.”
Bullets slammed into the steps, all around them, kicking up chunks of marble as Spoe and Tariq army crawled on their stomachs back to the top of the stairs. Attempting to slow down the pursuit, even if only for a second. Tariq fired blindly over his shoulder.
“Bbbrrat! Bbbratt!” A lucky shot winged one of the dreads in the arm. Tariq caught one in the shoulder and two slugs would've split Spoe's dome if he hadn't moved his head just in time.
When they made it to the loft, Spoe saw that Tariq was bleeding. “You okay?” He asked, and then fired off a few more shots. “Bbbrrat! Bbbratt!”