Street Chronicles Girls in the Game (29 page)

The face from last night was the face of her best friend's man. She let her head fall back as she came to the realization, which caused her head to sting.

Oh, my God! Teesa and Bobby set me up. It's him
—
I remember his face.
She thought hard and long, but the previous night's activities were almost a blur. Then faintly she remembered having sex with Teesa, and the mere thought made her sick. The vomit that filled her throat got no release. She regurgitated as visions of her sucking Teesa's pussy went from blurry to being crystal-clear. Again, she needed to vomit. The Alize and Hennessy came up this time and began to seep from her nose. Delilah could not breathe. She tried to inhale through her nose, but that was clogged with vomit. She continued to gag as she hurled her insides up a third time.

A
t one twenty in the afternoon Guy pulled up to the designated spot. He saw the empty white Maxima parked on the curb and
peered around. The block wasn't overpopulated, but there were enough people walking by. He sat for ten minutes thinking about his wife and who could have set him up. At one thirty sharp he got out of the car with a Nike duffel bag hanging off of his shoulder. He walked over to the Maxima, lifted the trunk, dumped the bag inside, and slammed it shut. He looked around and, of course, as always, the busy people on the Brooklyn streets paid him no mind. He hopped into his car and drove away. He waited for his phone to ring, but nothing happened. He traveled back to Jamaine's house, and hours passed as they waited impatiently for some kind of communication.

“I think we should call the police,” Jay said.

“Are you fuckin’ nuts?” Guy said. “The only thing that will do is lead back to me and what I do. I just want my wife back safe.”

Then an awkward silence invaded the room as Guy began to suspect his own friends.

How the fuck did Jamaine call so fast? It was only minutes after twelve. Did he just go outside and find my wife's scalp in the fuckin mailbox, and why was that shit still in the mailbox and not on the ground when I got there? Who checks their muthafuckin mail so early in the afternoon anyway?
In the middle of his thoughts he looked at Jay.
Why was this nigga so calm when I told him what happened? He know where everything in the crib is. He has the combination to the safe, and he is the only person Delilah can let in while I am OT.

As he took his attention off of Jay and looked at Rome his cell phone rang. He answered and heard that same male voice again.

“I got my paper,” the voice said. “It's all here, and so is your wife. Go to the Holiday Inn on Route Seventeen. She is in room four twenty-seven, and you better hurry. Your bitch don't look so good. You should take her to the GYN or something.”

The voice laughed and then hung up. Guy didn't say a word.
He looked at his friends as he stood up slowly. He was lightheaded so he immediately sat back down.

“You all right, nigga? Was that them? What did they say?” Jay questioned.

“They said Delilah is at the Holiday Inn on Route Seventeen in room four twenty-seven, and she needs to see a doctor,” Guy answered.

His boys were winded by the news, but stood quietly wrapped up in their own selfish thoughts that involved what they would have done if they were in the same situation. Jay stood and grabbed his boy by the hand, pulling him off of the couch. Guy was weak at the knees and could barely stand, so Jay placed Guy's arm around him and helped him out of the house into his car.

Guy was beside himself the entire ride to New Jersey. His wife was only fifteen minutes away from their lovely home.
Why the fuck didn't I think to look there? I should have searched every damn hotel in this area,
he cursed himself inside.

When they pulled up in front of the hotel, Jay hopped out and Guy remained seated. He didn't know what to expect. Every kidnapping he'd known of in the past ten years left the victim for dead, whether the ransom was made or not. Jay came around to the passenger side of the car and helped his man to his feet.

Onlookers found it odd that a man would be that drunk this early in the day. Naturally, that was what everyone in the Holiday Inn assumed Guy was—drunk. Even the police officer who had pulled him over had mistaken his swollen eyes for alcohol, when it was only a severe case of guilt mixed with grief.

They entered the hotel lobby and took the elevator to the fourth floor. It was a silent ride as each man feared what they might find. As they exited the elevator, they found their way to room 427. The gold slam lock was wedged between the door and
its frame, so Jay was able to push it open with ease and literally dragged his man inside. As soon as they walked into the room, sex and sulfur filled their nostrils. They couldn't believe their eyes. Delilah lay there naked on her side, bound and seated in a chair that lay on top of the bed. Brown bile leaked from her nose onto the starched white sheets. Her head was bare and painfully red, with only patches of several long strands of hair sprouting from it. There were pus-filled boils and bumps with dried-up blood and raw flesh in the places where her hair was gone. Her eyes and mouth were covered by duct tape.

Jay turned his back to the bed, and Guy fell at her bedside. He tapped her arm, but she didn't move. He shook her in the chair and she still did not budge. In a panic he checked for her pulse, but it was nowhere to be found. He dropped to the ground at her bedside and cried like a newborn baby as Jay picked up the phone and dialed 911.

As Jay yelled into the phone in panic, Guy suddenly went blank. His emotions ceased as if he had done nothing more than turn off a switch. He stood up and wiped his tears away, but before leaving his wife's side, he bent down and whispered in her ear and then kissed her on the cheek. Someone had made the mistake of thinking that the game was over. They were probably somewhere now enjoying his money and the benefits his tragedy had brought to them. But, in fact, they were sadly mistaken. The game was just beginning, as Guy had just vowed to his dead wife that he would see to it that everyone who had any part in her demise would pay … they would pay with their lives.

Guy looked over at Jay, who had just hung up the phone. Jay returned the stare, almost not recognizing the friend who stood before him. Guy almost wasn't recognizable to himself. He had put on his game face, that of a coldhearted man out for revenge, determined not to rest until the death of his wife was avenged.

There was no loving Tahjanaya Cortez, aka, Tahj. When it came to her, grimy, mean-ass muthafuckas either hated her or hated her more. She was that bitch broads made friends with just to keep her close. Besides, it was far better to pretend to be her friend than to for real be her enemy.

Tahj was an in-your-face, I-don't-give-a-fuck type of girl, and she wasn't no backstabbin’ broad, that was for sure. She'd put the knife right through a muthafucka's heart. Someone once said, “Why tell the world that you are coming when you can just show the fuck up?” They obviously had never encountered Tahj. When it came to her, a warning was definitely in order.

As a child, Tahj was the sweetest chocolate chip in the bag.
Out of all four of her brothers and sisters she was the most obedient. While the others were acting out in school, stealing money from their mother's purse, drinking and smoking weed, or fucking in their mother's bed, Tahj was always doing what she was supposed to do.

She wasn't a genius when it came to school—an average student at best—but she got her work done. In high school most of her brothers and sisters were known by name by the school administrators. This was due to the fact that they were always in the office being reprimanded for one thing or another. But Tahj, on the other hand, brought very little attention to herself. Although no one could mistake the five children for anything but kin, with each of them being the spitting image of their pretty brown-skinned mother, Tahj fought not to be compared to them. It was almost as if she wished she weren't any kin to the badass fuckers. Unlike her rowdy or fast-ass siblings, Tahj was timid and shy growing up. She didn't have any boyfriends. It wasn't because she wasn't pretty. She had straight jet-black hair that almost touched her shoulders. Her dark brown skin was clear, and her brown eyes almost looked black, they were so deep. She had a cute set of dimples and perfectly straight white teeth. But growing up in the loud, out-of-order, three-bedroom, zoolike apartment, Tahj didn't stand out. She was hardly even noticeable. But by the summer following Tahj's senior year of high school, all of that would change.

After high school there wasn't anywhere for Tahj to go. She had never thought about it—or life after turning eighteen, for that matter. The school counselors, even though they had no trouble out of her, figured she was doomed, due to her living circumstances and the influence of her siblings, so they never even presented her with the idea of college. She was the middle child; her two oldest siblings had moved out to torment society, her younger brother had gone to jail, which was where his father was, and her
fourteen-year-old sister, the baby of the family, had just given birth to a baby of her own. So it was Tahj, her baby sister, the new baby, and their work-a-twelve-hour-shift and go-out-and-get-crunked mother left in the apartment. Once she turned eighteen, as far as her mother was concerned, Tahj was officially grown, so she looked for reasons to kickTahj's ass out of her house. Well, on one particular night, Tahj gave it to her.

It was five months earlier, only four months after Tahj's eighteenth birthday. Tahj, her sister, and the baby were sound asleep on a Monday night when their mother and her company made a noisy entrance into the apartment. In a matter of minutes, loud music shook the house, and the cries of the baby followed.

“What the … ?” Tahj said, sitting up in her bed, rubbing her eyes. She looked over at the digital clock on the nightstand that sat in between her and her little sister Lena's bed. “It's two o'clock in the morning.”

“Damn,” Lena groaned. “I finally just got the baby to go to sleep. All she been doing is staying up crying with the colic, and now she's up again.”

“Go on and pick her up. Lay her on your stomach and see if the sound of your heartbeat will soothe her back to sleep. I'll go see what the hell is going on out there.”

As Lena proceeded to follow her sister's advice, walking over to the crib that sat in their bedroom, Tahj put on her robe and headed for the living room.

Walking down the hallway to the living room of their one-floor apartment, Tahj could hear voices trying to talk over Beyonce's and those other two girls in the group. Once she made her way to the living room she saw three black dudes, a white chick, some heavyset red bone, and her mother. They were drinking, talkin’ loud, and about to set up for a game of spades. Tahj couldn't believe her eyes. It was two in the morning on a Monday
night. Tahj thought that only her mother could work all day at the post office as part of the janitorial crew, head straight to the bar, and still have enough energy for a nightcap. The fact that Tahj's mother ran the streets like a teenager had never really bothered her. Hell, when her mother was home, if she wasn't fussing about nothing, she was lying in bed ordering her around to bring her food, drinks, or just to turn the television up in her room. So Tahj didn't mind at all if her mother ran the streets, but what she did mind was the streets running up in where they had to lay their heads.

“Ma,” Tahj said tiredly Her mother was too busy shaking her ass up on one of the men. Tahj had seen the man before. He had been to the house a couple of times to pick her mother up. This was his first time coming up in the apartment, though. Usually he just pulled up in his heather-gray Lexus and blew the horn for her. He was a nice-looking brotha, a little younger than her mother, but nice-looking all the same. “Ma,” Tahj repeated, a little louder. Still getting no response, Tahj decided to walk over to the CD player and turn the volume down.

“What the hell is going on?” her mother said, slurring her words. She then looked up and saw Tahj standing by the CD player. “Turn that back up, girl. That's my song.” Her mother started singing the words without the song playing.

“Ma, it's two in the morning. You woke the baby up, and it took Lena all night to get her to sleep. You know the baby got colic. Lena's got school in the morning. I got work. You got work, too. You should be sleep.”

A sudden silence that was as sharp as a knife filled the room. Tahj's mother couldn't believe her child was standing in her living room trying to lecture her like she was the child. As hard as she had worked to keep a roof over her family's head and feed them, never mind if she didn't have time to properly tend to her children
and give them the love and attention they needed to be productive in life—but she'd be damned if one of ‘em was going to stand in her own house and try to tell her what to do in front of her company.