Authors: Tamicka Higgins
“Kevin,” Neeci said, smiling as she thought about the ex-football player. “And that nigga got a big ole juicy dick. Let me see what he up to.”
Neeci sent Kevin a text message, simply asking him what was up. Within minutes, he sent a text back asking who this was that was messaging him. Neeci laughed, knowing that Kevin probably needed only a little reminder of who she was. With that thought, she scrolled through her pictures and found the picture she’d taken a few weeks ago in the bathroom in front of the mirror. Her ass looked extra ample in that picture, so much so that she knew it would jog Kevin’s memory. She attached the picture to a text message and waited.
A couple of minutes passed before Kevin had come to his senses and realized who it was. From that point on, his messages to Neeci were back and forth, and the deeper into the conversation they got, the nastier and more sexualized the text messages became. Neeci laughed to herself, knowing how much she loved the attention of a man. Within ten minutes, Neeci had Kevin agreeing to come through once he’d left one of his friend’s houses over in Gary. Neeci told him to just text her when he was near and she would be waiting, and maybe ready to surprise him.
Neeci dimmed the lights for a moment, as she knew she’d be waiting at least a good hour for Kevin to finish up in Gary and be over. No sooner than she got comfortable on her couch, there was a loud knock at her door. Quickly, Neeci jumped up. She grabbed her phone, seeing if maybe Kevin had messaged her and maybe her phone hadn’t gone off. It wasn’t him. She’d only been off of the phone with him for the better part of ten minutes, after all.
“Who is it?” Neeci called, practically yelling. She marched over to her front door, wondering who would be dropping by her house at this hour on a Saturday night. She looked through the peephole and saw two men, one black and the other one white, dressed in professional clothing. She knew it had to be something serious. Without questioning, Neeci opened the door. She was greeted by two Chicago Police Department detective badges held out in her direction.
“Yes?” Neeci asked, a little confused. “How may I help you?”
“Is this still the residence of an Ayana Stone?” the black detective asked.
Neeci felt her heart sink. She feared the worst. She thought that maybe something had happened to Ayana, something terrible. The mother brought herself back together to hear whatever the detectives were about to say. “Yes, it is,” she said, pushing the words out of the pit of her stomach. “Yes, this is the residence of Ayana Stone. Why, may I ask? I’m her mother.”
“Is Ayana home right now?” the white detective, who reminded Neeci of a more mature version of Ashton Kutcher, asked. “We need to speak with her.”
Neeci opened her door a little wider. “Well, actually,” she explained, “we got into it and I told her little ass that she could leave if she ain’t wanna live here and respect me.”
The black detective peeked into the apartment. “Do you mind if we have a look around and then discuss this?” he asked.
Neeci pressed her lips together. She knew that she could say no to such a request, but saying no could wind up making the situation even worse. Being nice and courteous, she opened the door and allowed the detectives to come in and peek inside of the various rooms inside of the apartment. Once they finished, they returned to the living room to speak with Neeci.
“So, you said you and your daughter had a falling out about something?” the white detective asked. “Do you mind if we ask about what?”
“I do, actually,” Neeci said, not wanting to go into too much detail about her own daughter being intimidated by her mother when it came to men. “May I ask, what the hell is going on? What is this about?”
The two detectives looked at one another before turning back to Neeci. “Ma’am, you really don’t know what’s been going one with your daughter’s boyfriend, Tramar, do you?” he asked.
Neeci shook her head, looking very concerned. “No, I do not,” she responded. “Why? What is going on? This is starting to get a little scary, detectives. Please, tell me what is going on.”
The white detective stepped back to allow the black detective to take the lead. “Ma’am, your daughter’s boyfriend, Tramar, is suspected in the robbing of two banks in the last two days,” he said. “One of the banks is located downtown while the other one is in Indiana. We suspect that he may be connected to a third bank that was robbed by a Jackson Miller because these two men fit the same description of the men who robbed the bank downtown together.”
Neeci covered her mouth and shook her head, not wanting to believe what she was hearing. “Are you serious?” she asked.
“And, Ma’am,” the black officer said. “There’s more. At the bank this Tramar robbed in Indiana, he shot and killed the security guard. He is also wanted on murder charges.”
Neeci suddenly began to feel dizzy. She wasn’t worried about Tramar and his friend Jackson so much as she was worried about her daughter. She really hoped that Ayana hadn’t gone out and gotten mixed up in this situation. There was still a chance that she didn’t know anything about it. When Neeci snapped out of her moment of panic, she tried her hardest to focus on what the detectives were saying.
“Oh my God,” Neeci said. “I can’t believe what you’re telling me.”
“Ma’am, are you sure that you don’t know anything about this?” the white detective asked.
Neeci picked up on the accusatory tone in the white detective’s voice. It did not come across as the least bit flattering to her, either. “What the fuck are you try’na say, detective?” she asked. “You really think that I had something to do with this shit? Do you, huh? I’m just as shocked as any parent would be. Can’t you see the look on my face?”
The white detective stepped back out into the hallway as the black detective stepped in closer to Neeci. She could not help but notice how good-looking he was in the face. She then looked down at how his body filled out in the suit. She smiled into the detective’s serious face. “Ma’am,” he said, “are you sure you don’t know where your daughter could be staying? The local authorities are starting to think that maybe she was the getaway driver with these robberies. But the only way that we’ll be able to clear her name is to actually talk to her and get a statement from her.”
“I told you,” Neeci said. “Me and that little girl had a falling out, and I told her that if she wanted to leave my house, there was the door. I told you, I ain’t even heard from her in a couple days. How I’m supposed to know where she at?”
“Okay,” the black detective said. He pulled a card out of his pocket and handed it to Neeci. “Ma’am, we’re going to advise that if you hear from your daughter, you urge her to come down to the police station rather than have the police looking for her. Trust me, it will be a lot easier for her if she does that, all right? Please, will you take my card?”
Neeci took the card and said goodbye to the officers. When she closed her door and locked it, peeping out into the hallway, she leaned against the door. She simply couldn’t believe what she’d just heard. Hearing that her daughter’s boyfriend was a suspect in robbing banks both in Chicago and in Indiana was just out of this world. Once Neeci comprehended what was said and realized that she hadn’t fallen asleep and had some sort of crazy dream, she rushed over to the couch. She grabbed her phone, knowing that her daughter’s number would be the first number she’d call. Neeci just had to know what was going on, and if Ayana had anything to do with what the detectives were saying.
Chapter 5
Just about every ten minutes, Ayana would grab her phone off of the nightstand and see if Tramar had messaged her yet. He hadn’t, of course, as she was sure that he probably wasn’t even to the grandmother’s house yet. Still, there was so much worry built up inside of Ayana that she gave up on falling asleep even the least bit. Rather, she leaned up on the bed and looked over at Quan, sleeping in the next bed. Seeing his young, innocent body in the bed made her recall when she was younger. Back then, the world seemed much simpler. If anyone were to have asked Ayana what she would be have been doing with her life twenty years from being four years old, she would’ve never thought she’d be helping a couple of bank robbers – in so deep that there would be no point in her going back.
For another hour or so, Ayana sat up in the bed, awake. After seeing that there was nothing good on television that would entertain her, she simply decided to let the darkness keep her company. As the different stresses of the situation overcame her, especially when she would look over at the door, she’d lose herself in thought. If she heard a noise or the thumping of feet out in the hotel’s hallway, fear would cover her like the hotel’s bed sheets and comforter. The anxiety would only remind her just how fragile life can be when you know you have done something wrong.
Ayana heard her phone vibrate on the nightstand. Immediately, she came to life and grabbed it, eager to see if it was Tramar calling from Jackson’s phone. To her surprise, it was her mother. At first, Ayana’s instinct was to set the phone back down. She never thought she’d feel this way, but she was slowly growing to hate her mother. The older Ayana got, the more she could see her mother’s ways—ways that made her want to simply keep her distance altogether.
After seeing that her mother was calling back a second time, Ayana huffed and went ahead and answered. “Hello?” she said, keeping her voice low in consideration of Quan.
“Ayana?” Neeci asked. “Enough of the games, girl. Where the fuck are you at?”
“Why, Mama?” Ayana snapped back. “Why you even care where I’m at? You ain’t care when I was there and stuff, or so you really said. Girl, what do you want? Why is you even callin’ me, Mama?”
“Shut the fuck up talkin’ to me like that!” Neeci exclaimed. “I’m callin’ to find out where you are and tell you that you need to be going to the police as soon as you can.”
Immediately, Ayana sat up, throwing her legs over the side of the bed, facing the wall. “The police?” she asked. “What you mean I need to be goin’ to the police? What are you talkin’ about, Mama?”
“I’m talkin’ about whatever Tramar and his nigga Jackson or whatever his name done did,” Neeci said. “The detectives just left here.”
“Detectives?” Ayana asked. “Left where?”
“Bitch, where the fuck you think?” Neeci snapped back. “I didn’t just up and move to Paris or Nigeria or somewhere. You know where — at the apartment. They said them niggas been robbin’ banks. Do you know anything about that, Ayana? Huh?”
Ayana could hear the suspicion in her mother’s voice. She also hated that she had to deal with this kind of conversation with her mother with no sort of warning. Neeci could hear her daughter’s long silence, prompting her to say her name. “Ayana?” she said. “You gon’ act like you don’t hear me right now?”
Ayana remained silent. She was literally at a loss for words. She could not think of anything she could say that would make any sense. Instead, she opted to throw another question into the equation. If nothing else, she would find out more about what her mother supposedly knows. “What they say, Mama?”
“What they say?” Neeci asked, clearly taken aback. “They said that they might be lookin’ at your ass as a possible getaway driver since you go with one of the suspects,” she explained. “And they said that Tramar is wanted on charges of murder for killing the security guard at one of the banks that they hit. Ayana, what do you know about this? Where are you? Why don’t you just go to the police and tell them that you ain’t have nothin’ to do with this so you can clear your name?”
Ayana sniffled. She was trying her hardest to hold her emotions back, but they were just coming on too strong. When she felt a tear rolling down her right cheek, she quickly wiped it away. “Mama,” Ayana said, somberly. “I love you. I’ll call you when I can.”
“Ayana?” Neeci said. “Ayana!”
Neeci’s voice faded away as Ayana lowered her phone and tapped the END CALL on her screen. She shook her head, thinking about how much everything had changed. She then grabbed her chest, feeling her heart beat a million miles per hour. The nervous feeling she’d had before her mother’s call was now amplified. The giggling of little kids out in the hallway now caused Ayana to gasp for breath.
“We can’t just sit here anymore tonight,” Ayana said, jumping up. “If the detectives are at my mama’s house and shit, then they are onto us. They gon’ be checkin’ what hotels I check into and stuff.” She then thought about how they used her name to check into this hotel, asking her several questions. Even though she didn’t use a credit card, there were still ways to track people down when they were in stationary places.
Ayana walked around the front of the bed and up to Quan. She simply couldn’t take it anymore. Something was telling her that she needed to get out of that hotel room right away. Even if she was wrong, she already knew that she wanted to be safe and not sorry. She didn’t know where she was going to take Quan, but the detectives out and visiting peoples’ houses, asking questions on a Saturday night, could not be a good sign.
“Wake up, Quan,” Ayana said. “Wake up.”
Quan struggled to wake up out of his deep sleep. As he did, Ayana turned on the light, causing the little boy to cover his face with his hand. “What’s going on, Ayana?” he asked.
“We gotta go,” Ayana said, trying to sound positive. “We gotta go, Quan. Come on and get up.”
“Where we going, Ayana?” Quan asked.
Ayana grabbed the clothes that Quan had been wearing last night and tossed them his direction. She then got herself dressed as quickly as she could before grabbing Quan’s book bag and being a little more forceful with him.
“We don’t have time to talk, Quan,” Ayana said. “Just get dressed so we can get outta here. Ayana got a bad feeling. A real bad feeling.”
Quan slid out of the bed and did just as Ayana had told him. He then noticed that his father wasn’t around. “Where’s my daddy?” Quan asked. “Ayana?”
“Uh…” Ayana said hesitantly, not really knowing what to say. “He had to go do something real quick. Just get your clothes on so we can leave and stop asking questions.”
Ayana froze when she heard voices outside of the hotel room door. She was so sure that the voices belonged to some sort of authorities that she froze in her steps. With her eyes locked on the hotel door handle, she expected the door to swing open at any moment. She was not able to calm down until the voices moved on and further down the hallway.
When Ayana and Quan were ready, she slid him into his jacket and shuffled him out of the door as they carried their clothing and the money that Tramar had stored in the room. Ayana looked out into the hallway. Seeing that it was empty, she pushed Quan toward the elevators. She then stopped, as they got halfway down the hallway. The last thing she needed was for them to get onto the elevator just as a police officer or detective was getting on. She quickly grabbed Quan’s shoulder and pulled him back. She pointed at the other end of the hallway. “The stairs,” she said, pulling Quan in the other direction. “We gon’ go down the stairs, okay?”
“But why?” Quan asked, now sounding a little irritated. “Why are we going down the stairs, Ayana?”
Ayana took a deep breath and remembered that she couldn’t really be mad at the kid for asking these sorts of questions. She knew that if she were in Quan’s place, she would want some answers as to what was going on. Ayana simply decided to ignore Quan’s questions by telling him to go on and that they would be walking down the steps. Until they reached the doorway to the hotel staircase, Ayana would look back every so many steps. She couldn’t help but think that the elevator doors were going to open and men in suits, with guns, would come walking out and try to apprehend them.
The hotel staircase was just about what Ayana would expect. It was concrete, hollow, and every little noise echoed. She quickly got in front of Quan and made her way down the stairs with him behind her. All the while, she reminded the confused kid to be as quiet as he could. Just as Ayana and Quan had come to the bottom of the staircase, they heard voices in the hotel lobby. As the door to the stairwell had a window, Ayana could look out. The hotel lobby had two police officers following behind a white guy and a black guy in dark-colored suits. Ayana could have nearly had a stroke from how high her blood pressure was. Her heart thumped so loudly that the sound nearly drowned out her breathing.
As the cluster of law enforcement officers moved toward the doorway to the elevator, Ayana knew that she and Quan needed to get out of sight. It would only be expected that they would send some officers up the staircase, just like what Ayana had seen in numerous movies and television shows.
“Come here,” Ayana told Quan, grabbing his shoulder. “Be as quiet as possible, okay? Be quiet!”
Ayana pulled Quan over to the area under the staircase. Just as the stairwell doorway was being pushed open by a police officer, they quickly ducked under the staircase. There they stood, in the shadows beneath the hotel staircase, as they listened to the police officer climb the stairs. Ayana held one hand over her own mouth while another was over Quan’s. They were not going to move until they’d heard the man go through the door on their floor.
Once Ayana heard the officer exit the stairwell, she pulled Quan over to the stairwell doorway. Quickly, she looked out into the hotel lobby. Seeing that all of the officers were out of sight, she found it safe enough to step out and into the hallway. Just as she pulled Quan and they turned to the left, headed toward the hotel’s back entrance, she could see a police officer standing behind Tramar’s red Dodge Charger in the back parking lot. Suddenly, she felt trapped. She knew that she couldn’t go out of the back without being caught. And there was no telling what would be waiting at the front of the hotel. However, Ayana did remember that there were some side doors in the swimming pool room. She led Quan down the small hallway that led to the gym and swimming pool facilities. Using the keycard to let them in, they quickly rushed into the swimming pool facility.
Ayana felt at least a little lucky when seeing that the 24-hour swimming facility was empty. Her eyes barreled down on the side door. She and Quan quickly walked around the edges of the pool, with Ayana promising him that she would explain what was going on later, once they’d arrived somewhere safe. When they’d gotten to the other side of the pool, Ayana gently pushed the side door open. She looked out, barely poking her head out, before she pulled Quan and the two of them rushed out into the late, fall Saturday night. Airplanes flew low, about to land, as she and Quan rushed across the parking lot, zigzagging between cars.
After pushing through some bushes that acted as a border for the hotel property, the two of them came to a row of parking lots that sat out front of a strip mall. As there were still cars parked in the lot, from the employees who worked the overnight hours stocking and whatnot, Ayana was allowed to use those as a sort of cover in the darkness. She led Quan across the parking lot until they came to a McDonald’s, which, luckily for them, had a lobby that was open 24 hours. They slipped into the McDonald’s, ordered a couple of Number Two meals, and sat down in a far corner. When Ayana got up to go get some napkins, she looked over at the hotel parking lot. The two men she’d seen in suits came walking out of the front entrance. They stood there and talked.
Ayana quickly rushed back to the table and pulled out her phone. As if things could not get any worse, her eyes were drawn to how she only had ten percent battery left. “Fuck,” Ayana said, the anger resonating in her voice.
“When are you going to tell me what’s going on, Ayana?” Quan asked. “Where is my daddy? Where did he go? And why are we running? Why are the police at the hotel?” The little boy lifted his head up to look over Ayana’s shoulder.
Once Ayana finished sending Jackson’s phone a text message, she set it back down. She prayed to God that her battery would last long enough for Tramar and Jackson to have seen the text message and respond. She now looked to the poor, confused Quan. She shook her head, hating that she was about to feed his young mind such a bold face lie.