Return of the Cartier Cartel (26 page)

The beeping from the ventilator roused Cartier awake. She was in minimal pain despite her injuries, thanks to the Demerol dripping through her IV. Three familiar faces sat around flipping through magazines and gossiping, while E! True Hollywood Story played on the television.

Trina noticed her stirring. “Cartier, you’re awake.”

Everyone rushed toward her side.

“I knew you wouldn’t leave me.” Trina could hardly believe her own reaction. She began sobbing uncontrollably as she reached down and gently embraced her daughter.

Janet stood behind Trina, rubbing her back for comfort. The ladies had been through so much spanning over four decades. Soon, Janet inched Trina out of the way and began planting wet kisses on Cartier’s face, her tears dripping on Cartier’s forehead.

The outpouring of emotion brought Cartier to tears. She realized she could have easily crossed over to the other side and left her family forever.

“It’s a great day in the neighborhood,” Janet joked to lighten the mood.

Finally she spoke through a hoarse, raspy voice. “How long have I been gone?”

“Three days,” Trina answered. “The doctor said he wasn’t sure you were going to pull through. You lost so much blood, they had to give you a transfusion.”

The shootout with Marisol came rushing back. The look in her black eyes, the need for vengeance plastered on her face, the deep-seated hatred mirrored Cartier’s feelings as well, but on that day, when Marisol got the drop on her, Cartier was frightened. She remembered that her knees buckled, her heart raced, and her hands trembled, all within a nanosecond.

“Oh, my God! Christian! Where’s my baby?” Cartier screamed. Her heart monitor began to beep erratically. “Please—”

Both ladies hushed her. “Shhh!”

“She’s fine,” Trina said. “A bullet did graze her, but we just left her. She’s in the children’s ward. Fendi, Prada, and Jason Jr. are in there keeping her company.”

“I need to see my baby. If anything had happened to her, I would have killed myself.”

“Cartier, get yourself together. The kids have been through a lot. They don’t need to see you agitated. It’ll cause them more trauma. Gather your thoughts, and we’ll have the nurse get the wheelchair and take you over there.”

Cartier sat back and tried to steady her breathing. “Where’s Marisol? Did she get hit too?”

“She dead,” Trina said matter-of-factly. “It was only one bullet, but it did the deed. Li’l Momma got the drop on her, and at the right moment. You owe her your life, Cartier.”

Cartier was relieved. She remembered letting off a few shots before she blacked out, but she didn’t know if she’d actually hit anything. She looked Li’l Momma directly in her eyes and mouthed the words, “Thank you.” Cartier was weighed down with unspeakable gratitude.

“You know you got an angel on your shoulders,” Li’l Momma told her.

“Two,” Cartier replied, referring to Shanine and Monya.

Her words made Janet smile.

“Li’l Momma, thank you. Words can’t begin to say what my heart feels.”

“Girl, please. You would have done the same shit for me. And, as you said, you do have angels holding you down because I wasn’t even supposed to be on your block that early. I couldn’t sleep the night before, and I decided to walk over to your house and see if you wanted to go to McDonald’s and get breakfast. Like, what adult craves McDonald’s?”

Everyone laughed.

Trina and Janet stayed for hours and took Cartier to see Christian. When they finally left, Cartier realized that Bam hadn’t come.

“Where’s Bam?” she asked Li’l Momma.

Li’l Momma waited for the nurse to finish checking Cartier’s vital signs. When she left, Li’l Momma whispered, “She’s taking a long nap.”

“What? Who got at her? I took out Ryan, you took out Marisol, who else is out there?” Cartier was tired of exchanging bullets with rival crews.

“I gotta give it to you straight. I deaded Bam.”

“You?”

“She was a double agent, Cartier. After you and Christian got rushed to the hospital, Trina confided in me and Janet about what Wonderful had told you. We all sat down going through Ryan’s rolodex, just as you had begun, and listed under Maria’s Daycare was Bam’s telephone number. Trina wanted to handle Bam herself, but I told her I needed to do it. I had to look in Bam’s eyes and try to understand how she could throw away decades of friendship. I don’t know when she flipped, but she did. She didn’t have a beef with me. It was you and Jason she wanted to see dead. She let them know that Jason was out of the hospital and meeting us at Trina’s. That’s how they got the drop on him. And she also told Marisol where to find you.”

The news was unbearable. “Are you sure?”

“She told me herself.”

“She told you?”

“After you came out of ICU, I cruised by to see her. There wasn’t any way I was going in there blazing. What if Ryan’s sneaky ass was setting up Bam? So I approached it giving her the benefit of the doubt, something I knew Trina wouldn’t do. Not when her daughter and granddaughter were laid up in the hospital. Bam was high as a kite, puffing on that shit, talking all fast. She was bouncing off the walls. Check it, she started talking crazy about how you were like the Teflon don of Brooklyn, able to take ten bullets and still be breathing. Then she put on 50 Cent’s “Many Men,” and began singing the lyrics. I was already peeping that her tone didn’t sound too happy that you were alive. Next thing I know, she started acting all paranoid. She kept peering out her window, toting her .45. When I asked who she was looking for, she said you.

“About an hour of trying to put together all her crazy statements, I pieced together that she thought that Big Mike would come into her dreams at night and tell her that she had to avenge his death.” Li’l Momma shook her head. “I had to do it, Cartier. She forced my hand. There wasn’t any way she could get a pass, going against the grain as she did. And I couldn’t wait to see what you’d wanna do when you woke up. What if Big Mike came and told her ass to off me?” Li’l Momma laughed at the silliness of Bam’s mind. “I always said she wasn’t ever too right after Donnie beat her brains out.”

“Damn! I just find it too hard to believe that Bam would go out like that. I mean we’re sisters . . . all of us. And to think she would really want me dead is something I might not fully comprehend, Li’l Momma.” Cartier began to choke up. To hear that Bam was gone was overwhelming. “If she couldn’t handle the Big Mike shit she should have tried to kick my ass, you know, curse me out—spit in my face, but for her to go and plot with Ryan and Marisol shows me that she wasn’t in her right mind. I told her to stop smoking that shit.”

“If it’s any consolation, that was the hardest thing I had to do.”

“I know it was.” Cartier looked off toward the window. Everyone had avoided the topic, but when she first came to from the medication, she purposely didn’t ask because she didn’t want to know. Finally, she asked. “Anyone heard from Jason? Did what Wonderful said have any truth to it?”

The silence nearly killed Cartier. When Li’l Momma’s eyes went toward the floor, it confirmed what she already knew.

“You sure you wanna hear this?”

“Li’l Momma, he’s my husband. I need to know what happened to him.”

“They did torture him, Cartier. They did things to him that the medical examiner said was inhumane. He had over one hundred tiny knife pricks throughout his whole body, missing fingers and toes, his arms were broken in several places with such force, they figured a bat was used. He had burn marks all over his upper and lower body where someone either used a lighter and held it until his skin began to burn, or they used a blow torch. Just sick shit that no one believes really happens. His body was found in the one abandoned building on Miller Avenue by some neighborhood kids. He went unclaimed for days in the coroner’s office as a John Doe because he didn’t have any identification on him. Then Trina went to the precinct and filled out a missing person’s report. They called her nine hours later to ID his body.”

Cartier’s chest tightened at the news. That meant when she went to kill Ryan, Jason was with her. And when Marisol rolled up, Jason was there too. Cartier realized she didn’t have two angels but three.

Li’l Momma left Cartier to come to terms with the events, and promised to return.

Epilogue

New Beginnings

Despite Bam’s betrayal, Cartier still paid for her funeral and gave her a grand homecoming. Cartier picked out an all-white lacquer casket and dressed her in an all-white Chanel dress. A white horse and carriage carried Bam’s body through the neighborhood with her stepmother and family sitting stoically in the back. Bam looked like a sleeping angel. Cartier hoped in her heart that Bam would meet Shanine and Monya in heaven; that they’d still be crew on the other side. Cartier couldn’t help but feel somewhat responsible for Bam’s actions, but there wasn’t anything she could do. The past was the past, and she had her future to think about. Bam was laid to rest on Tuesday, and then they laid Jason to rest on Wednesday.

The kids took it harder than she thought. Each night they would cry and ask for their daddy. Cartier requested a closed casket for fear that Cee Cee and Jason Jr. might have nightmares. She picked out a lavish platinum and chrome casket with a plaque that said h8ter, a gesture she was sure Jason would have appreciated. She knew she would miss him. Despite all they’d been through, he was still her husband and the father of her only child. And although she finally refused to listen to the audio tape of his murder, she believed Wonderful when he said Jason wouldn’t give her up. Finally, she had affirmation that he truly loved her too.

****

On her way to the house Cartier began to feel nostalgic. As she wheeled her car toward 555 Dolphin Court Lane, she rolled down her window so she could hear and smell the ocean. The air was crisp, moist, clean, as she inhaled the salty atmosphere. She took a look at the tree-lined block with expansive mansions and realized how beautiful the neighborhood was. Not just her house, but the overall look and feel of the whole area was breathtaking. Cartier felt she might have taken that for granted before. She’d come a long way from hugging the block and boosting to actually living out a dream that most people had, which was to escape poverty.

Now her future was unsteady. Jason was murdered, Head was in jail, and she had a family of six to provide for. Sure, she had investments, but she didn’t have liquid. Putting the house on the market was her only choice, but how long would it take to sell?

“Ma, what time are the movers coming?”

“They’re supposed to be there around nine this morning. They said it will take them all day to pack everything up, and it’s going to cost you a grip. I don’t know why we didn’t just gather all our friends to help us pack ourselves.”

“Because I didn’t want to inconvenience anyone.”

“Shit. They would have done it to us and not given it a second thought.”

“Maybe.” Cartier shrugged her shoulders. “But it’s already done. The movers will pack up everything the correct way, and honestly, I don’t have the strength to be wrapping plates and folding sweaters. That’s the last thing I wanna do.”

Trina didn’t respond. She knew her daughter had a lot on her mind.

When they pulled up, there were two large 18-wheeler semi-tractor trailers. The eight-man crew had arrived early, ready to work.

The project manager, a brawny, broad-shouldered Russian with blond hair and piercing blue eyes, approached Cartier’s driver’s side door, clipboard in hand. “Mrs. Timmons-Payne?”

“Hi. How are you?” Cartier replied, extending her hand for a shake. “I see you got here early.”

“Yeah, we should begin as soon as possible. This is”—He looked down at his clipboard—“being packed up to go back to our storage unit until further notice, correct?”

“Just until we can find a new place.” Cartier felt a little embarrassed, which she couldn’t understand. They’d been in the house less than a year and already needed to relocate. She was sure the neighbors, all white, would be elated.

Cartier showed everyone in and headed upstairs to her bedroom to gather all her important documents—children’s birth certificates, social security cards, bank statements, and credit cards. She toyed with the idea of bringing all her photo albums too, but quickly thought against it. She didn’t need the extra baggage.

She had been inside her walk-in closet for almost two hours looking through her documents when Trina found her.

“Hey, what are you doing in here?” Trina asked.

“Just trying to weed out what’s important. I would hate to need any paperwork and have to go fishing through a packed storage unit.”

Trina looked at the large pile of photos. “You taking these?”

“Nah.”

“Why not?”

“We’ll get them soon as we find our new home.”

“But what if something happens to them? I hear that storage units get looted all the time.”

“Ma, that’s the last thing someone will steal, family photos. And everything else will be insured.”

Trina could sense a sadness in her oldest child. “Do you need help?”

“Yeah. Could you continue looking through all this paperwork for me and gather the important stuff? I have something I need to do.”

Cartier walked to her sitting area in her room and sat down to write a letter.

What up, Head

Or should I say boo? I know you didn’t ask for me to be there for you, to hold you down while you do your bid. I’m hoping that’s because you know that I will. There isn’t any way I’d let you do this bid without being at your side. Whatever they give you, five, ten, fifteen years, just know that we’re going to do those years together.

I’m not Tawana, I’m Cartier, and she and I are cut from a different cloth. You walked into my life, and I felt love unconditionally. Don’t ever question my heart. This isn’t about Jason not being here. I chose you the first night we made love, and you said you chose me the first day you saw me. I believe that things happen for a reason.