The Glamorous Life (27 page)

“You know that CD by Master P that you listen to sometimes, ‘Bout it Bout it.’ And he talking about the boys in the park selling water?”

“Yeah.” Bambi nodded.

“Yeah, well they talking about embalming fluid. They call it wet, water, love boat. It’s just a lot of different names for it. It all depends on what part of the country you in.”

Ruby shook her head and continued. “Girl, and this shit here is a whole bunch of shit. As a matter fact, we need to get the fuck up out of Dodge. This shit here can land both our asses up under the fucking jail. All this shit in here can get us a kingpin charge. And the vanilla extract jars, and the Karo Syrup jars. He was going to empty that stuff right down the drain and then distribute it in those. See, you got to sell it in glass, and he has different sizes. See, this is just an ounce and he probably using these as samples,” Ruby said, holding up the small vanilla extract jars. “And this is four ounces.” Then she held up the bigger size. “But, look, you see the majority of the bottles are the Karo Syrup bottles—that’s sixteen ounces. That nigga is ’bout to get paid.” Ruby put the bottle back down in the box and paced the floor.

“You know what, Ruby? I honestly ain’t got no problem with him getting his money. But for real, it’s personal now because every single one of these boxes is addressed to me, and this apartment is in my name. He didn’t even have enough courtesy to put it in an alias name. Nothing here but a few clothes even links him to this place.” Anger took over her whole
body as she raised her voice a little. She stood up and pointed her finger. “And to top it off, now that I think about it, the whole time this dude was acting like he really cared and wanted the best for me. How about the whole time he was using not only me but my business, too. He even had me fucking laundering money.”

“What?” Ruby said.

“All those times I did trips over in the Caymans, he was getting me to add money to the account and then write him a check for half of the money.”

“And you know to clean money, they pay forty to fifty percent,” Ruby chimed in. “So technically he paid you to do it without even saying. He knew what he was doing.”

“Well, he can count on his money gettin’ straight bucked on, ’cause he ain’t getting none of it back.”

“I don’t blame you. Girl, don’t be no fool. Well, I know I don’t have to say that.”

“Girl, the feds could come and get me any day, and how about I’ll be guilty as fuck!” she said, breaking one of the bottles in rage.

Ruby just nodded her head and said, “You so right.”

Bambi broke down and started crying.

“How could he do this to me? This dude played me like a piano,” she screamed.

Ruby didn’t answer, because tears formed in her eyes as she flashbacked to her own past. “B, please don’t cry, because you are going to make me cry. I know exactly how you feel. I’ve been there, done that, for real. You know I have. I’ve got the T-shirt and ten years to show for it.”

Bambi hugged Ruby, and Ruby told her, “Come on. Let’s just go.”

“Wait a minute. Just for kicks I gotta see what is in these other boxes and what else he might have in here.”

She ransacked the apartment with Ruby’s help. This time they were more prepared for what they found: cocaine and more than three hundred thousand dollars in cash.

Bambi cried, dropping to her knees. Once again, love had not loved her back. Once the initial shock was over, she had to get her mind right and think quick.

What can I do to let him know he done fucked with the wrong bitch? He used me, and no telling how many other chicks he’s using or has used. I can’t rob him and get away with it, although I am sure that the stuff at the apartment isn’t going to make him or break him. He’d come looking for me. Now, let me think. How can I make a clean getaway from him? He told me that I could just walk away if I wasn’t happy or didn’t feel he was treating me right. But how will I ever be able to sleep at night knowing this man put my freedom in jeopardy and everything that I worked and struggled for? How can I walk away? I need the last laugh. At the same time, how do I get back at a multimillionaire nigga that can have any woman he wants? How do I hurt this nigga and make him feel sooooo fucked up?

For one minute she stopped and thought about something that her grandma had told her: “Baby, bumps come in the road. Some of them you just slow down and roll over; others you have to cautiously go around. And some of the time you have to analyze and use your common sense. Realize this though, sometimes you have to get yourself something bigger. Then you put the pedal to the metal and roll right through it!”

That’s what I need to do. I need to be like a Hummer and roll over this nigga. Now how do I do that? It’s only one way: to take his livelihood from him! How do I take his way of living? He’s a millionaire with money, power, respect, and more money. It ain’t but one way to strip him down and that’s … the feds! Believe me, niggas is afraid of the feds. When they hear feds, they run!

B
ambi was up at the crack of dawn, mapping out her plan. She first went over to her office and gathered all her files and computers. Luckily, everything was able to fit in her and Ruby’s cars.

At 8 a.m., she called almost every moving company in the Yellow Pages until she came across the one with the smallest ad.

“Adkins Moving Company,” a man with a deep voice answered after the third ring.

“Yes, who am I speaking with?” Bambi asked.

“Who you want to speak to?” the man inquired.

“The person in charge.”

“You selling anything?”

“No, just trying to see about getting my stuff moved,” Bambi explained.

“Well, lady, you calling the right place and the right person is on the phone.”

“Who is this?”

“Rocky,” he said with such pride.

“Rocky, how soon can you move my stuff out?”

“Where’s it going, ma’am?”

“Cross-country,” she responded, the words like music to her ears.

“You know that’s gonna cost you a pretty penny.”

“Okay, but how soon can you move my stuff?”

“As soon as you’re able to pack the stuff up.”

“It’s already packed and pretty much ready to go.”

“Well, I can be there at about eleven a.m.,” he said. “For long moves like this, I prefer to be paid in cash,” he added.

“That’s no problem. I don’t want no mess from you, Rocky. I’ve seen
20/20,
and I know what type of shit movers put in the game.”

“Look, I am just trying to make me some money. Where do I have to take your stuff?”

“Virginia.”

“Okay. I’m gonna need about a week and a half to get it there.”

“How about a week?”

“Okay, a week it is. I require half of my money up front and the other half when I get there.”

“That’s fine,” she said, cutting him off, wanting him to hurry over to get her belongings out of the apartment.

Damn, good times always have to come to an end. Texas showed me a lot of love, but me and Events R Us got to get the hell up out of Dodge,
she thought to herself, disappointed that she would have to close her business down so abruptly.

On the way to meet the movers, they stopped by FedEx to send the office boxes off to Virginia, only to find out that she had two accounts under her business name: one that she had been using for her business and another that Loot’chee had set up. This only got her blood boiling even more at his betrayal.

When she first saw Rocky, her initial thoughts were to send him on his way. He looked like Uncle Jesse from the
Dukes of Hazzard.
He had a beard, pot belly, and faded light blue jean bib overalls. His truck even had Confederate flag seats.

“I don’t know about this,” Ruby said. “Girl, I’m desperate, the block is hot, and me and my shit needs to get out of Texas!” she whispered under her breath to Ruby.

Although Rocky didn’t look too promising, after talking to him face-to-face, Bambi had a better vibe about him. Rocky and his crew got all the boxes and the furniture out of the apartment. It took them more than four hours to load up the truck. While Rocky was loading up the truck at the apartment, she had other movers over at her and Egypt’s house packing up the stuff there. She was through with Dallas. If she wanted to expand her business, she could always go to Atlanta or Miami. Once Rocky was finished, she instructed him to go and pick up the other stuff, which he did.

Before the end of the day, Bambi and Ruby were headed to the airport. She had to make one stop; she randomly chose and stopped at an attorney’s office.

“Hello, how are you today?” the receptionist asked, greeting Bambi.

“Hi, my name is Bambi Ferguson, and my car broke down. My cell phone battery is dead. Is there a way I could possibly use your phone to page my boyfriend to tell him what’s happened to me?”

The receptionist looked her over and could tell Bambi must have some money. “Sure, Ms. Ferguson. What’s the number you need to dial?”

Bambi recited Loot’chee’s sky page number to the receptionist. “Please call Bambi—it’s an emergency—at …, ” she said, and gave the Skytel operator the number that the receptionist had given her.

In a matter of minutes, the receptionist answered the phone and put the caller on hold. “Mrs. Ferguson, I am going to put you in the conference room so you can have some privacy,” she said.

Bambi followed her into the conference room and waited for her to leave before she picked up the phone to talk to Loot’chee.

“Hey, baby. What’s such an emergency?” he asked. “When I got back yesterday, the police came into the apartment and locked me up. I’m at my lawyer’s office and just got out on bond.”

“Who was it, the local or the feds?”

“The feds,” she responded, and as soon as she did, the phone went dead. He had hung up. She paged him again, but he never called back. Within two hours his number had been changed, and in a matter of days he had gone underground, disappeared, vanished, gone, and was never to be heard from again. She was free of him. No more Mr. Flamboyant, no more balling out of control, driving fast, expensive cars, or spending major paper. His name was now Mr. Incognito, and U.S. soil was not a place that he’d be stepping foot on any time soon. He would be sure that she had rolled over on him and was probably expecting at any given time that he’d see his face plastered on
America’s Most Wanted.
So distance is what he put between him and anyone he knew. She had succeeded in stripping him of his livelihood.

She had heard people talk about how ballers were not afraid of anything, no ghost, gunshots, dogs, snakes, tornados, hurricanes, or earthquakes. Now she knew firsthand exactly how much they feared the DEA, ATF, and the FBI—the feds!

Those four little letters … Feds pack a lot of power!
she thought to herself.

CHAPTER 27

Back on da Bricks

O
nce Rocky and his moving crew arrived in Richmond and stacked all her belongings in the self-storage, Bambi’s prime focus became Lynx. He was able to get her name on his visiting list in a matter of days, and every other weekend she was at the FCI-Atlanta visiting him.

Having Lynx back in her life filled a void. Even though he was broke and in prison, there was something about him that confirmed for her that he was “the man” for her. She felt secure in her relationship with him. Their major complaint was the limited amount of communication they were able to have on the telephone. The feds only allowed him three hundred minutes a month in fifteen-minute intervals. The first month they went through those minutes in just ten days talking only twice a day. It frustrated Bambi to have to go without talking to her man by phone for the rest of the month. She wrote letters every day to inform him of all the things going on in her life. She had to figure out a way to expand their phone communications.

It came to her one day as she sat in the beauty parlor under a hair dryer, reading
Vibe
magazine. She saw a sky pager being advertised—and it wasn’t just the pager but a watch that had pager features. As soon as she left the shop, she ordered the watch and had the service activated.