An Urban Drama (16 page)

“So, is that the nigga you been fuckin’ around with?”

I started to say, “Hell yeah, and unlike you, he fucked the shit outta me,” but I figured the loud noise I heard was Victor’s body hitting the floor. I had to be nice to this asshole. “Cedric, please, I barely have any feeling in my hands or feet. Please, Cedric, untie me.”

“I said is that the nigga you been fuckin’ around with?” Cedric yelled. He grabbed me by the hair and dragged me into the living room where Victor’s body was lying. “Is this the nigga you picked to fuck wit’ over me?”

“No! Please, Cedric, just untie me.” Now I was really scared. There was a lot of blood on the back of Victor’s head. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing or not.

Cedric began wandering around the apartment like he was looking for something. Then he threw the gun on the couch and left the room. “Get up. Please, Victor, if you can hear me, you need to get up now and get us outta here,” I whispered. Cedric came back in the room with the phone cord from the bedroom. “What are you doing?”

“Since he tied you up, I want him to know how it feels.”

“I told you, Cedric, I got robbed and they left me tied up,” I said to him, but he wasn’t listening. He picked up Victor’s body from the floor and tied him to a chair. Cedric picked up the gag that had been in my mouth and put it on Victor. “Wake up!” he yelled,
then
started slapping Victor until he opened his eyes.

Cedric began punching Victor in the face. “Stop! Stop it!” I yelled.

“Shut up!” Cedric said and hit Victor again. “Shut up, bitch.”

Cedric went back in the bedroom. When he came back, he had a pair of my panties in his hand. He smelled them and then he grabbed me by my hair again. I screamed, and when I did, he shoved the panties in my mouth. Cedric went back to Victor and began hitting him in the face again and again. He hit him so hard that the chair fell over, but that wasn’t enough to stop him.

I cried as Cedric kept kicking Victor in the face and stomach. He turned the chair back on its legs. “You think this nigga is pretty, Nina? Well, he ain’t gonna be pretty no more,” Cedric said, then punched Victor in the face. He hit him and hit him so much, I know his hands must have hurt.

Cedric came over and sat down on the floor next to me. The way he was breathing was more like he had been in a fight, than beating a defenseless man tied to a chair. “How you like your pretty nigga now?” Cedric asked as he snatched the panties out of my mouth.

“You didn’t have to do that, Cedric. He ain’t
nobody
. I barely know him.”

“Well, if he ain’t
nobody
, what’s he doing here?”

“He just came to untie me; that’s all.”

“You think I’m stupid, huh? I know this the nigga you fuckin’, bitch. Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not lying. I barely know him,” I said, knowing that I had to do something now or he was gonna kill both of us. “But it sure made me hot watchin’ you beat him.”

Cedric looked at me. “Really?”

“Oh, yes. It made me hot for you just like it did after I saw you jump out of that window.”

“Really?”

“Yes, Cedric, just like that. You know how hot I was for you after that,” I said softly. “Come on. Untie me, Cedric. Please. Untie me so you can fuck me.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes, Cedric. My pussy is throbbing for you.”

“You a freak bitch, ain’t you?”

“Your freak bitch. Untie me so I can fuck you.”

Cedric stood and went into the kitchen. Victor still hadn’t moved. I hoped he wasn’t dead. When Cedric came back, he had a knife in his hand. “Untie me so I can fuck the shit outta you.”

Cedric used the knife to cut the cord between my feet. It felt good. When Cedric started to pull off my jeans, I said, “Not like that, baby. Not with my hands tied behind my back. Untie my hands so you can get the pussy right.”

Cedric looked at me for a long moment. I turned around and held my tied hands in front of him. He cut the cord and put the knife down. As soon as he put it down, I turned around and kneed him in his nuts. He screamed and I ran for the door. I guess I didn’t knee him hard enough, ’cause Cedric ran up behind me, grabbed me by my hair, and slammed my face into the door. He spun me around and started punching me in the face. I couldn’t run ’cause he was still holding my hair.

When he finally let me go, I ran and started throwing everything I could get my hands on at him. I made it to the kitchen, where there was a pot of water on the stove. He came at me and I hit him in the head with it. He fell back and slipped on the water. He hit the floor. Hard. I tried to run for the door again, but Cedric caught me and flung me across room. I tried to crawl away, but he was on me too quickly. He picked me up and hit me again, then threw me on the couch so hard that it tipped over.

I was lying on the ground and his gun was right next to me. I picked up the gun as I saw him coming around the couch. I pointed it at him and I pulled the trigger. His body fell on the floor next to me.

I don’t know how many times I shot Cedric, but he was dead. I wanted to move, wanted to get up and see about Victor, but I couldn’t move. I guess one of my neighbors heard the shots and called the cops. I was never so glad to see them in my life. They found me sitting on the floor, crying in between Victor and Cedric, with the gun still in my hand.

One of the cops walked toward me slowly with his hand out. “Take it easy, lady, and just hand me the gun,” he said. I let him take the gun out of my hand and he helped me get on my feet and to a chair in the kitchen. The other cop checked Victor. “Is he alive?” the cop asked.

“I got a pulse,” the other cop said.

“What about that one?”

He looked at Cedric’s body. “Judging by that pool of blood he’s lying in, I’d say he’s dead,” he said, but checked his pulse anyway. “Yeah, he’s dead.”

They never did ask me what happened. I guess it was pretty obvious. I heard one of them call for an ambulance and the crime scene technicians. I don’t remember too much after that. I do know that when the ambulance came, they took me and Victor to the hospital.

The next afternoon, I woke up in the hospital. The doctor told me that I was all right. “Just some cuts and bruises.”

“What about the guy I came in with?”

“I don’t know, but I can find out for you. What’s his name?”

“His name is Victor. Victor Bell.”

When the doctor came back, I could tell by the look on his face that it wasn’t good. He said that Victor’s condition was just upgraded from critical to stable. “He took quite a beating. He’s lucky to be alive. Your friend has a concussion from some type of trauma to the back of the head. His retina was detached, his jaw was broken, as were several of his ribs, and there was quite a bit of internal bleeding,” the doctor said, and I cried.

To make matters worse, two detectives came in after the doctor left. I told them my story and they said they would have to arrest me for murder. “You’re kidding, right? He was gonna kill me, and he beat my friend almost to death. It was self-defense.”

“I believe that, ma’am, but that’s for a court to decide if they wanna try you for it.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, but that’s how I got here.

The first thing I did was
call
Leon
and explain the situation to him. He listened to my story without interrupting, then he said, “Should have called me sooner, Nina, and I would have taken care of that bitch nigga. I’ll talk to you later.” Then he hung up the phone. He was there that evening.

He told me not to worry; he would take care of everything. He arranged my bail and got me a lawyer. Somebody he’d known since back in the day.

“Nina, this is Wanda Moore. She’s an old friend and the best lawyer in the city. Wanda, this is my cousin, Nina,”
Leon
said.

“It’s good to meet you, Ms. Moore, and thank you for seeing me.”

“No need to thank me. And please, call me Wanda.”

After I told my story, Wanda looked at
Leon
,
then
she looked back at me and stood. She walked to the window and looked out. “You should have told me that this involved drugs,
Leon
.”

“Is this more serious than I thought?” I asked.

“Oh no, Ms. Thomas. Your case shouldn’t be a problem. As long as you’ve told me everything, you shouldn’t have anything to worry about. It was clearly a case of self-defense. I’ll make sure you get a good lawyer.”

“No, Wanda, you gotta do this,”
Leon
said passionately. “This is my family, Wanda. It’s because it involves drugs that Nina needs you.”

“You know I don’t take these
kind
of cases anymore.”

“Come on, Wanda, this is me you’re talkin’ to. All
them
drug-related
cases you used to handle back in the day, now you can’t get your hands a little dirty?”

“
Leon
, you know what Mike is gonna say about this. He’ll give me that look, and say ‘Drugs, Wanda?’ ”

“Mike Black! Didn’t I hear somewhere that he married a drug dealer?”
Leon
laughed. Wanda did too, and I wondered why.

“What are y’all talkin’ about?” I asked, but was ignored except for the
shut-up-little-girl-grown-folks-are- talkin’ look I got from
Leon
.

“Look, Wanda, this is me. We go too far back and I was down for Black too many times. And when Black started talking that dead-zone shit, I didn’t go to war with him like everybody else. I took my business elsewhere.”

“With his blessing and support,
Leon
. Don’t forget that,” Wanda said quickly, but absolutely.

“I know that, Wanda. I owe him, but I’m still asking.”

After that—whatever it was—Wanda agreed to handle my defense. When Wanda left,
Leon
started to explain it all to me. It was some long, drawn out, back-in-the-day stuff between the two of them, and whoever this Mike Black character was.

In the end, everything worked out for me. The grand jury didn’t return a murder indictment against me. I was so relieved, I cried.

Now that, that was behind me, I had something else on my mind—the girls who robbed me.

They didn’t follow me to Jimmy’s; they were waiting there for me. They had to know that I would be at Jimmy’s and where I lived. I looked at Teena and wondered how they knew that.

The story continues in The Cost of Vengeance