Stealing Candy (40 page)

Saleema parked in the rear lot and walked around to the entrance.

“Hey, Lollipop; I’m Saleema,” she said in a friendly, non-threatening voice.

“You got the money?” the girl said, trying to sound a lot tougher than she looked.

“Yeah, some of it.”

“Some!”

“I have four hundred, for now.” Saleema cracked open her purse, letting the girl see the stack of twenties. The girl seemed hungry for money.

“Where are you staying?”

“A house on Delancy Street. Near Fifty-fourth.”

From Saleema’s memory, Fifty-fourth and Delancy used to be a high-crime area. Helicopters flying around constantly. Street blocked off with yellow tape, bodies outlined in chalk was a weekly occurrence. A women in a wheelchair had been killed in her own home by her husband…a crack addict who shot her for her disability check and claimed that he’d found her robbed and dead when he came home. Police had found bloody footprints leading out of the door and down the pavement. The bottoms of the husband’s shoes were stained with blood.

So much death and destruction on this one block, Saleema was surprised everyone hadn’t picked up and moved.

As they cruised close to the intersection, Saleema gazed down Delancy Street. As suspected, practically every house was boarded up.

“I’m going to park on Pine Street. I need you to go get Bubbles. Meet me on Pine.”

“Aiight. But you have to give me something I can give to Bullet. I can get back out when I tell him I forgot to get him a new lighter.”

Saleema didn’t like the idea. She looked at the quiet, skinny girl who was staring into space. “What’s her name, again?”

“Skittles.”

“What’s wrong with her?”

The girl shrugged. “I don’t know. She used to be normal, but she went crazy a few months ago.”

“What happened?” Saleema had seen that vacant look in the eyes of her best friend, Terelle. After experiencing an emotional break.

“I don’t have time to tell you her whole history. I need that paper.” The girl stuck out her hand.

Saleema peeled off ten twenties. “Half now, and the other half when you bring Portia out.”

“What about the big reward?”

“You need an adult to sign for it,” Saleema lied. “You’re going to have to trust me, okay?”

The girl sighed. “I guess.” She got out the car. “Come on, Skittles.”

“No, leave her here,” Saleema demanded.

“Why? My Daddy gon’ wanna know where she’s at.”

“Make up an excuse.”

“I can’t. He’ll get suspicious if I don’t bring Skittles home.”

Against her better judgment, Saleema watched nervously as Skittles climbed out of the back seat of the car. She watched the two girls through her rearview mirror and then pulled off. She prayed to God like never before that Portia would soon be safe inside her car.

 
 CHAPTER 49

Time ticked by slowly. Five minutes…ten…fifteen minutes elapsed. The girl had lied. She wasn’t coming back. Saleema was going to have to get the police involved. There was no other way she could get Portia out of that house. But the police and a coked-up, crazy pimp did not point to a happy ending.

What should she do?

Aggrieved, she lowered her head on the steering wheel.

The sounds of footsteps made her lift her head.

Saleema’s eyes became misty, clouding her vision as she gazed at an unbelievable sight.
Portia!
She seemed spaced out and smaller than she’d ever been, but it was Portia—in the flesh!

Saleema jumped out of her Camry, gave Portia a quick hug, and then tried to help her into the back of the car. Portia dropped limply into the back seat and immediately closed her eyes.

“Hi, Portia. It’s me…Miss Saleema. Are you okay?” Saleema gently touched Portia’s face. She winced at the scar on Portia’s face, but was grateful that the teen was alive.

Frowning, Portia swatted away the hand that caressed her face. Portia turned away and balled up into a comfortable position.

“She’s always sleeping like that after she goes through a drug binge with Sizzle and Bullet.”

“Sizzle? That name sounds familiar,” Saleema commented as she returned to the driver’s seat.

“She’s a crack ho,” Gianna informed.

Saleema pulled away, and then it dawned on her that someone was missing. “Where’s the other girl?”

“She wasn’t allowed to come back out. Bullet doesn’t let all three of us go out together at the same time.”

“Why not?”

“Can you hurry up and take me to the place where you can sign for that money?” The girl was antsy.

“Sure.” Saleema headed in the direction of her home. Portia was drugged up and scarred, but at least she was alive.
God is good,
Saleema whispered to herself. She tried to concentrate on traffic, but couldn’t stop staring at Portia through the rearview mirror. It was a miracle. Saleema couldn’t control her smile.

Next to her, Lollipop sat in brooding silence.

“We’ll go back to my place and then I’ll call the agency that’s handling the reward. It will be really helpful if you give me your name.”

“Damn, it’s Gianna. Okay!”

“What’s your last name?”

“Strand.” Gianna jerked her shoulder as if giving her real name was killing her.

“Here we are, Gianna.” Saleema parked her car inside her garage, something she seldom did. But today it seemed like a wise choice. In case the pimp had somehow seen her vehicle, she didn’t want him to be able to spot it sitting directly in front of her home.

It was a struggle getting Portia out of the car and up the stairs that led from the entryway from the garage to her basement. Portia was dead weight, so Saleema decided to let her crash on a sofa in the basement.

“Let’s go upstairs and talk,” Saleema said to Gianna.

“Excuse me, Miss. But I’m not tryna be smart or nothing. But it seems like you tryna scam me. I don’t wanna be here. I just want the money. Could you call those reward people, please?”

“Sure. Okay,” Saleema said, still stalling. She’d been counseling troubled girls for two years now. Why was it so hard to deal with this girl?

As they paced through the kitchen, Saleema offered Gianna something to eat.

“I just ate. At McDonald’s, remember.” She folded her arms stubbornly.

“I want to be straight with you, Gianna. You seem like an intelligent girl—”

Gianna dropped her arms at her sides in frustration. “I don’t want to talk.”

That’s when Saleema noticed her finger. Her mouth dropped open in silent horror.

“What happened to your finger?”

Gianna folded her arms again, hiding her deformed finger. “Nothing.”

“Something happened. Let me see your finger.”

“No!”

“Did that pimp do that to you?”

“Yeah, but I deserved it,” Gianna snapped defensively. “He had to teach me a lesson. So he cut off part of my finger.”

Saleema squirmed visibly. Enraged, she realized that the pimp was also responsible for the cut on Portia’s face.

Gianna did a defiant head move. “Don’t worry about my finger. It’s healed now. It’s all good.”

Oh my God! Gianna’s crazy. She’s been mesmerized by a deviant pimp, and she views him as some sort of hero.
She’d heard of Stockholm Syndrome, but never expected to meet anyone suffering from the mental condition.

All of her instincts told Saleema that this situation was beyond her control, but she didn’t want to send Portia back to the detention center without talking to her. Who knew where they’d ship
Portia. No doubt, there’d be lots of red tape to weed through in order to get a visit. That could take months, and Portia would be under the impression that she was worthless and unwanted…and that simply wasn’t true.

Needing desperately to make sure the pimp hadn’t amputated any of Portia’s fingers, Saleema excused herself and raced to the basement.

She scrutinized Portia’s face, telling herself that the scar wasn’t that noticeable. Other than being about fifteen pounds lighter and in terrible need of a bath, Portia seemed physically intact. Mentally? Good question. She was addicted to crack and had spent an entire summer in the hands of a merciless pimp.

Going back upstairs, she made a decision. She couldn’t leave that other defenseless girl overnight with the pimp. She had to get her out of that house.

Saleema shook her head. She couldn’t call the police. But how could she live with herself if she got that innocent girl killed? There had to be another way.

She was able to distract Gianna from questioning her about the reward by taking her to the lavender room and parking her in front of the TV.

Saleema flicked through a zillion channels that she thought might interest the girl.

Finally, Gianna settled for a BET reality show. She was entranced for hours, watching marathon reruns.

Saleema felt guilty for leaving Khalil out of the loop, but she had to handle this by herself. She’d talk to him tomorrow. Right now, she wanted to converse with Portia…to let her know that she would be there for her. She’d help her get though the rest of this ordeal. She also wanted her to know that there was an entire community ready to embrace her.

Though she’d always cared about Portia, Saleema now realized
that she loved the brash girl like she were the pesky little sister she’d never had.

And Saleema couldn’t wait to tell Portia that she intended to file the necessary paperwork to become her legal guardian.

“Oh, my God!” Gianna screamed from the recreation room. Saleema rushed to the room.

Mouth opened in stunned silence, Gianna pointed to the TV screen.

Breaking news.
Reporting from the scene, a reporter was talking: “A dismembered body of a teenage girl was found in this open field in Lower Bucks County today. An eyewitness to this gruesome scene thought an irresponsible resident was burning what appeared to be a bale of hay. Inspecting the burning object, the eyewitness discovered a horrifying sight. A human torso, brutally dismembered, with its arms and legs tied tightly around the torso.”

Next to the reporter, an older Caucasian man wiped his forehead.

“Tell us what you saw, Mr. Cambridge.”

“Well, I saw a fire. Then a cloud of smoke. As I pulled over on the side of the road, I saw a car pull off and roar down the road. A white 2001 Cadillac.” The man shook his head. “Right in broad daylight. Poor girl.” He squeezed his eyes shut, too choked up to go on.

The reporter moved along with the story. “Discovered approximately a mile away from this area, the victim’s head was apparently tossed out of a moving vehicle. The body is believed to be that of missing teen, Brielle Harper, who left Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania with her infant daughter back in late June. Anyone with information on the whereabouts of little Samantha Harper should contact the number on the screen.”

A missing teenage girl and her baby from Wilkes-Barre.
Saleema searched her mind, trying to recall why that rang a bell.

“That’s Skittles,” Gianna sobbed. “Bullet chopped up Skittles and burned her up!”

Saleema quickly jotted down the number on the screen. “How do you know that it’s Skittles,” Saleema said, her voice panicked.

“Because Bullet told me he was going to kill all of us. He said that he’d already killed Skittles, but I didn’t believe him. He was mad because I didn’t come right back.”

“When did you talk to him?”

Saleema had no doubt that she was in over her head. It was time to call 9-1-1.

“I called him and gave him your address when you went down in the basement to check on Bubbles. I didn’t think he was serious. I thought when he got over here and I gave him the fifteen stacks, he’d feel better.”

“How did you know my address? We came in through the garage.”

With a guilty expression, Gianna said, “I saw your water bill… on the kitchen counter while I was talking to him on the phone.”

“Why would you tell a murderous pimp how to find you?”

“He always tells me to keep it one hunnit with him. That’s what I was trying to do. I didn’t want to get in any trouble with him after I collected the reward for finding Bubbles.”

Hearing Portia referred to as Bubbles made Saleema’s flesh crawl. She used to call herself Hershey. She had given herself that name when she was only seventeen, when she’d starting turning tricks at Pandora’s Box.

“All this time, you knew where that girl’s baby was and you haven’t told anyone?” Saleema gawked at Gianna in horror. Maybe Gianna had been so traumatized that she was now deranged.

Saleema hurried out of the lavender room and raced down the hall toward the kitchen to call the police, but her footsteps were
cut off by a gunshot blast that shattered her kitchen window. Screaming, she dropped to the floor. Gianna ran out into the hall.

“Get down!” Saleema shouted. She started crawling fast toward the basement. “We have to get Portia,” she whispered. “Hurry!”

They tiptoed down the basement stairs.

Saleema dragged Portia off of the sofa in the basement and pulled her sluggish body across the tiled floor. “Help me get her into the garage. Did you tell that pimp that I parked my car in the garage?”

“No, I forgot.”

“Thank God! We have time to escape. He’ll have to drive a couple of blocks to get to the back of my house.” They heard another blast from his weapon. This one seemed to have shot out an upstairs window, like he was shooting at any room in the front of the house that had a light on.