Heartbreak of a Hustler's Wife: A Novel (23 page)

Before Des could answer, they heard a car in the driveway slam on its breaks, probably making skid marks on the pavement.

A moment later Yarni put her key in the door.

“Baby luv?” Des called out to her. “We in here.” Then he focused his attention back on Desember. “Now, what about you? Trying to sleep with the enemy.”

“It ain’t nothing like that, when I went to meet up with Rocko about some business, we ran into Cook’em-up. I know he’s supposed to be Aunt Bambi’s husband’s friend, but something isn’t right about that dude.”

Des remained quiet. Listening closely.

“Something about him gave me the creeps. I could feel it deep in my gut; I don’t think he likes you either,” Desember came right out and said. “When he found out I was your daughter, he gave me a vile look. He tried to hide it fast but his eyes kept giving it away.”

Yarni chimed in. “She’s right, Des.”

With every syllable Yarni used to describe the surreal encounter she had had with Cook-’em-up while at work, Des’s blood ascended to a torrid pitch.

He wasn’t sure if Cook’em-up had a death wish, but whether he did or not, Des was sure that by the morning Cook’em-up would wish he was never born.

Papa Was a Rolling Stone

The minute Yarni was done filling Des in, her “Papa Was a Rolling Stone” ringtone went off. Lloyd let it be known that he was on his way over with valuable information and instructed them to stay put.

When he arrived, he got right to the point. “Look, man, you hotter than fish grease at a New Orleans cookout. You gotta fall back and let the old-timers handle this.”

“Man, you ain’t no killer, you a bank robber.” Des wasn’t trying to hear this. “No disrespect, Lloyd, but you got your rep taking money, not lives.”

Lloyd held his ground. “We do this my way, and if anything goes wrong I’ll take the rap. The son of a bitch threatened my daughter and granddaughter. Let me do this for you. You’ll be doing me a favor letting me handle it—my plan, my score to settle, my soldiers.”

Des wanted to remind him that it was
his
wife and daughters; his beef, but this wasn’t the time for a family argument. Lloyd was not only stuck in the seventies, he was stuck in his ways.

Instead, Des spoke strategy. “If he went to see Yarni today, you know he’s calculated this. He won’t be out in the street waiting to be knocked off. He’s dumb,” Des said, “but not that dumb.”

“He expects for us to run out like madmen searching the streets,” Lloyd agreed. “My plan is to make him come to me.”

Easier said than done
, Des thought.

He studied his father-in-law’s eyes. They were devoid of emotion. “And how do you propose to execute this plan of yours?” Des wanted to know.

Smiling, Lloyd picked an apple from the fruit bowl on the kitchen island and wiped it off with a paper towel. “I know where his grandmother lives. I plan on him being a good grandson.”

Des didn’t like it. Sounded too familiar.

“It’s too close to the stunt he tried to pull when he sent the kid to my mother’s house. Too predictable,” Des surmised.

“That’s exactly the reason why I think it’ll work,” Lloyd said, then paused.

Des waited for Lloyd to finish.

“What makes it unpredictable,” Lloyd said, “is that he will never expect you to perpetrate a move he’s already made. It’s the last thing he’d think to see from you.”

For the first time in a while, Des cracked a smile. More like a half smirk.

Sometimes simplicity was best. And this simple plan was lucid enough to work.

Live by the Sword

Bernice Weathers soundly slept in her pink sponge rollers and light green nightgown, unaware of the masked men creeping into her house at three o’clock in the morning. The men were heavily armed and quietly searched the small home to be sure that she was the only person there before waking her up gently, by tapping her shoulder with a gun.

Bernice awakened and although her sight wasn’t what it used to be, she couldn’t miss the giant gun barrel that sat on the edge of her nose. The woman damn near had a heart attack once she realized it wasn’t a dream but a real gun in her face.

“Oh Lord, please Lord! Help! Don’t take me now. Don’t take me like this!”

“He ain’t the one you need to call, Ms. Weathers,” Lloyd said from behind his ski mask. “If you don’t want to die, you need to call your grandson and get him here.”

“I don’t have anything to do with that good-for-nothing scoundrel.” Bernice guessed what these men had planned for her grandson and she probably should feel sorry for him, but she didn’t. Chris “Cook’em-up” Weathers had never been a good person. He was a jealous-hearted, selfish child who grew into an even meaner teenager. By the time he was seventeen he was a full-blown monster who didn’t give a damn about anybody but himself. He killed for money, and God only knew what else.

Bernice recited a silent prayer before saying, “I need my glasses to get his number out of my phone book.”

Lloyd handed the lady her glasses from the night table. With her bifocals in place her vision cleared and she saw three more men in her bedroom, also holding big guns. “Do you mind passing me my housecoat because I don’t want to let it all hang out and alarm anybody.”

Lloyd did as the old lady asked. After putting on her robe she located Cook’em-up’s phone number and dialed the digits on her old-fashioned rotary phone.

Des stood in the shadows by the door. The lady was living in a time capsule, he thought to himself. There was an old television set with rabbit ears attached, outdated appliances in the kitchen, and old furniture that should have been thrown out twenty years ago. It was obvious that the lady was living on a fixed income and hadn’t benefited from any of the luxuries that Cook’em-up could have afforded his own grandmother.

Bernice’s hands were shaking so hard it was difficult for her to dial. It seemed like it took forever. Lloyd reminded her, “It is not our intention to hurt you, ma’am.”

“Don’t worry; I won’t give you a reason to. I’m going to do as you ask of me,” she said, finally able to complete dialing. Bernice looked up at him with humility in her face as if she could see through the mask. “It’s ringing,” she said with hope in her voice. Then after a few moments, she sighed and hung up the phone. “He didn’t answer.”

Bernice was terrified of what might happen next, being that she couldn’t contact that fool of a grandson of hers.

Lloyd tried to calm her down some. “Don’t panic. We’ll just sit here for a few and then you can try him again,” he said. “We’re not in a hurry.”

Two minutes later, to everyone’s surprise, the old phone rang. It sounded like a school fire alarm. “Hello? I’m doing just awful,” she faked a cough. “I need you to get my prescription filled for me at the twenty-four-hour CVS. I need it tonight! If I don’t get ’em you may be burying me in the morning,” she exaggerated. “I feel just horrible.” She sounded convincing. “I need my medications right now.”

“Damn, Grandma, can’t it wait until in the morning?” the dirty bastard on the other end of the phone asked.

“I’m an eighty-five-year-old woman, and you’re leaving me to die,” Bernice protested.

Des was on the phone in the living room, listening to the conversation to make sure she wasn’t sending Cook’em-up any coded messages, and as far as he could tell, she wasn’t.

The guilt trip worked.

“I’m on my way, Grandma.” Bernice heard her grandson swear under his breath before hanging up.

Lloyd instructed her to get dressed. She modestly pulled a sweat suit over her nightgown before sitting down to wait, praying her grandson wouldn’t let her down.

Cook’em-up must’ve not been into anything too serious, because twenty minutes later he was putting a key in his grandmother’s front door lock, letting himself in. Before he knew what hit him, he was snatched up and cracked across the back of his skull with a heavy pistol before his foot could touch the thirty-year-old threadbare carpet covering his grandmother’s floor.

“Oh shit!” He grunted both from the shock of the situation he was in and the pain from the head blow. “What the fuck is going on?”

His grandmother refused to let her last words to him be a lie. “You disgust me,” she said, “and this world would probably be a better place without you. You live by the sword, you die by the sword.”

Des took Bernice out of the house, put her into a car and drove her to a hotel. “I apologize, ma’am, for interrupting your beauty rest.” He gave her ten one-hundred-dollar bills, then hoping that she had insurance on the boy but figuring she probably didn’t, he dug in his pocket and gave her everything he had. “Don’t waste one penny burying that fool. Treat yourself to whatever it is that your heart desires,” he instructed her.

She nodded and asked, “Can I go now?”

“Yes, you can—and remember, we ’re still going to be watching you, so leave the police out of this.”

Des pulled away and took off the mask. He was calling it a night, heading home to be with his wife and daughters.

Rock Hard

At a construction site on the outskirts of town, Lloyd and the old-timers were having a little fun. At first they used torture tactics on Cook’em-up that would have been frowned upon if done to the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Cook’em-up was praying that they would hurry and kill him.

A funnel was stuffed into his mouth and cement was poured slowly down his throat a little at a time. As Cook’em-up was forced to drink the concrete, Lloyd smoked a cigarette and watched with a smile. “So it wasn’t enough that you had gotten away with what I’m guessing—with all the players you had in place—was close to or more than half a million dollars from whatever role you played in the robbery of the church?” Lloyd took another pull of the Newport. “That just wasn’t enough, huh? You should have packed a bag and left the city, at least that’s
what any smart man with as much blood as you have on your hands would have done.”

“He ain’t smart,” Johnny, the stocky old head holding the funnel said. He and Lloyd’s friendship started over forty years ago in a juvenile dormitory.

“Yeah, then you go fuck with my daughter. You ain’t seriously thinking there wasn’t going to be any repercussions, were you?” Lloyd looked at Cook’em-up’s face, which wore a look of terror.

Cook’em-up wanted to beg the man to shoot him, to get it over with, but the cement was beginning to clog his vocal cords. Lloyd read the utter despair in Cook’em-up’s eyes and felt no pity.

“Ain’t no need to beg, nigga. None at all.

“You not only went to my daughter’s office and fucked up her workday, but you had to shoot threats at my granddaughter too. What happened to a man’s woman and children being off-limits?” With a slight chuckle, he shook his head. “You got shit really fucked-up.”

Lloyd eyeballed Cook’em-up and saw the look of death.

A broken, desperate man was always a pitiful sight, and Cook’em-up was no different.

“None of this was my idea,” he croaked to Lloyd and whoever else would listen. “I was just a pawn. Everything was so obvious, but Des couldn’t figure it all out. If I tell you who was really after him, will you promise to kill me quickly?”