The Banks Sisters (13 page)

“Boom, boom, boom, boom!”

Spoe ducked his head. Tariq fired back. “Bbbrat! Bbbratt!”

“Yeah”–Bbratt-Bbratt—“it's only a scratch.”

Suddenly the shooting stopped. Dino announced, “No way you make it out alive, Sty.” His accent was so strong that his words were hard to make out. But their meaning was crystal clear.

Spoe retorted by bucking back, squeezing the trigger. “Bbbratt!”

“You need to worry about your own mortality.”

“Bbrratt! Bbratt!”

“Besides I've decided not to let the possibility of death, get in the way of living,” Spoe said confidently.

“Then have it your way, Sty.”

“Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom. . . .”

A downpour of hot lead stung the loft like a swarm of killer bees. They took cover behind the leather sofa, which ate the brunt of the damage. But the longer they stayed still. The more their chances of getting away lessened. Tariq looked to Spoe. “What's the plan?”

“Boom! Boom! Boom!”

“Bbbratt!”

“Down the hall,” Spoe said. “It's a bedroom facing the way we came in. We hit the window and run for it.”

Tariq did the quick math, “That's a thirty foot drop minimum.” The house had vaulted ceilings.

“Got a better idea.”

“Boom! Boom!”

“Bbbratt! Bbbratt!

“Any plan beats no plan when facing a life or death situation.”

“Lead the way.”

They eased from behind the sofa, racing down the hall toward the bedroom Spoe, had peeped earlier. Dino and his crew didn't see them dip. Tariq and Spoe hoped to get a sixty second head start before Dino and assassins realized that no one was shooting back. Spoe kicked the window out and sound of the breaking glass drowned out by the echo of gunshots. Using the suitcase, he knocked away shards of glass that were sticking out from the frame. Then he threw the suitcase out of the window. Fifteen seconds after abandoning the sofa in the loft the suitcase landed calmly, with a
thump
in the backyard. But lucky for it, it didn't have bones to break, but it was a whole other story for a person.

The impact alone from a bad landing, could jam their thighbones pass their pelvic and into their stomach. No walking away from that. Spoe took a quick glance at the door. Then turned to Tariq and said, “See you at the bottom.”

Spoe hit the ground hard, but the tuck-and-roll, maneuver he used, absorbed most of the impact. Besides the tweak in his ankle, he was Gucci. The duffle bed tumbled from the window next, with Tariq right behind it. He nailed the tuck-and-roll landing, like he'd been on a mission with Field Team 6 and was on his feet.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
The shots came from the window Spoe and Tariq had just jumped from. Bullets kicked up dirt near where they lie.

“Oh, shit!” They didn't expect it to come so soon, but they took off running.

“They in d'back yard headin' for d'woods.” It was Dino, he ordered his crew to get down there. “And let Brutus and Cleopatra out of their cages.”

After hearing their master's voice. The two silver back pit bulls bit the chain on the cage, trying to eat the lock off, to get in on the action.

Slugs followed Tariq and Spoe into the woods the van they had driven was on the other side, half a mile away.

Spoe's ankle was worst off then he thought. He was having trouble walking, let alone running. And the suitcase, which weighted more than thirty pounds with the money, was wearing him down.

“Let's split up.” It was a decision that would later haunt Spoe. “Take the suitcase, I can move faster without it.”

Tariq didn't like the idea of splitting up, but with gun toting Jamaicans and two bloodthirsty pit bulls in hot pursuit, there was no time to debate it.

Reluctantly, he said, “I'll meet you at the car.”

Spoe's ankle was throbbing, and he didn't want to slow his partner down. If I'm not there five minutes after you, I'll see you at the crib.”

They split up for the second time tonight the first time was when they searched for the money. Spoe hoped that, that bitch Lady Luck was in a good mood and would continue to ride with him. He'd got his answer soon enough.

Spoe's calf felt like it was on fire. Blood poured from down his leg. He tried to keep it moving, but his leg called it quits. He'd been shot.

“What I told ya, Sty?” It was Dino, with dogs barking in background.

“Dead-mon walkin', Sty.”

Spoe aimed his gun into the direction of the voice and pulled the trigger, but the MP-5 didn't bark; its clip was empty.

Dino's turn . . . he pointed the gun at Spoe's head.

Spoe's last thought was of Bunny. Her birthday was next Friday and he was going to surprise her with a trip to St. Thomas. Even the thoughts of the love of his life, wouldn't allow him to go out like a sucker. He would never beg for his life from a motherfucker. Instead he looked that nigga in his eyes and waited. Dino pulled the trigger, making good on his promise . . .

The bullet penetrated the skull of Spoe's right ear and sliced through his brain as if it was kosher deli meat.

“No, mo' walkin',” Dino said, after spitting on Spoe's body. “Just dead-mon.”

He made sure that his crew dumped the body so that if it was ever found, it could never be traced back to him.

Lights out!
Everything went black.

“This is just bullshit!” she screamed pounding the steering wheel of the car taking all of her frustration and anger at this piece of shit she was now forced to drive. How could she pray to a God that had taken everything she had been given away including the only man she had truly ever loved. Everything had been taken away; her father, her sense of safety, her car, credit cards, medical insurance, and now her health. What the fuck? Was this some cosmic joke played out for God knows what reason? Life just wasn't making sense to Simone anymore. And just as luck would have it, at a time when she just want to be alone to collect her thoughts, her phone won't stop ringing. Her phone was blowing the hell up, but after that last phone call from the doctor she wasn't in any rush to answer an unfamiliar telephone number again. She couldn't bear to get any more bad news today. But then it dawned on her that maybe it was one of her sisters calling because something had happened to Me-Ma.

“Hello?” Simone's soft voice gave no indication that this could be the same person who moments earlier had been screaming at the top of her lungs in a rage.

“This is Detective Mark Dugan, do you have a moment Ms. Banks? I need to ask you some questions?” Of course the detective sounded polite enough but after the day Simone had been having she couldn't bring herself to respond like a normal human being.

“What do you want?” she snapped at him, her voice came out sharper than she expected but she didn't care enough to apologize.

“I just need you to come in and take a second look at your original testimony. There is a possibility that you may have left something out yesterday. You've gone through a very traumatic experience and often victims subconsciously block out some things that resurface when they go over their statement.”

“Detective, I told you everything that I saw happen. There is no way I would or could ever forget any of what I saw yesterday.”

“I understand, but you would be doing us a great service if you could come down to the station. Oh, and we're ready for you to reclaim your belongings. They have been photographed and logged in and we won't be needing them. Because the suspects are dead there wont be a trial.”

“Fine. I'm on my way.” When Simone hung up all her thoughts went to her Chanel bag and the possibility of having order restored at least in one small area. It was a small yes in the victory column, but she'd take it. Luckily she wasn't that far from the station so she took the back roads and made it there within ten minutes. When she entered the station she immediately started to feel nervous. Something about being around all those uniforms and guns made her feel very uneasy. Even though she had never committed a crime in her life Simone could not shake her feeling of discomfort.

You would have thought a purple spotted giraffe or some other creature had entered the room from the amount of interest Simone's appearance had generated. Officer Johnson, a tall, good looking man in his thirties who had never met a woman he didn't find fuckable, motioned to his partner, Darby Cole, a seasoned veteran in his forties with a wife and three kids he magically forgot about on Tuesday's when he visited his mistress. The officers were just about to make a wager on the hottest woman they'd seen in ages without the distance of a television or movie screen between them. This was their thing, betting to see who could date attractive women, usually damsels in distress who came into the station alone. Their coworkers were busying themselves suddenly finding things to do in Simone's general area so they could at least get a good look at her ass.

“May I help you,” a young white officer Peterson, jumped the line and rushed over to help Simone.

“Dammit,” Johnson and Cole couldn't believe they had been beaten to the punch by one of the rookies who had as much chance of hitting that as Manson did at being granted his freedom.

Officer Peterson didn't bother to disguise his interest in helping Simone in other ways, too.

“I'm Simone Banks, here to see Detective Dugan,” she answered glancing around for him.

“Damn, he always gets the fine honeys,” another dejected officer across the room joked with his buddy as if Simone would have been interested in either of them. Like all the other grey-eyed Banks girls Simone had grown so used to men making fools of themselves for her benefit that it almost didn't phase her. At an early age Simone's father realized that his daughter would have men after her, strictly based on her appearance so he'd made her work so hard on her academics, wanting her to have something other than beauty as currency.

“Right this way,” the officer led her through the station hoping to use the opportunity to work up his nerve to ask her out on a date. Black women intimidated the hell out of him with their brazen confidence, but he had always been attracted to their beauty. Even though he came from a very old fashioned Italian background where his parents expected him to date “his own kind”, all his girlfriends had always been Black. “So are you friends with Detective Dugan?” he asked hoping like hell that this was some business call and he could have his shot at her. Simone pierced him with her eyes, this sister was not in the mood to be his first foray into the dark and lovely club and that was putting it nicely.

“No, I'm a suspect in a crime,” she informed him certain he would lose interest. But if the officer was deterred he certainly didn't show it. Actually he took that whole innocent until proven guilty thing seriously, but it would be another two years before he flipped that script and begin to see all suspects as guilty.

“What did you do? Steal a man's heart?” Officer Peterson tried, desperate to see more of this gorgeous creature. Her look cut him down and quickly neutered all thoughts of them together just as they arrived at the doorway of the detective's office. Spotting Simone and the young officer he had to stop himself from chuckling as the cop stared lustfully after her. Detective Dugan had to admit that her beauty put most women to shame, but for him this was strictly business he reminded himself.

“Ms. Banks,” he greeted her only to be met with the coldest stare he'd encountered in recent memory. This version was decidedly different than the one he'd experienced the first two times he saw her.

“So, can I have my purse and get out of here?” she asked as she took a seat in one of the chairs directly in front of the officer's desk.

“Police stations make you nervous, huh?” he asked. His job had taught him to read people quickly and her aversion to the precinct was only one of the things he had assessed in that moment.

“Don't they make everybody nervous?”

“Mostly the guilty ones,” he laughed attempting to put her at ease. In his experience if he could get a person to let their guard down by some friendly bantering it usually helped him to learn what he needed to know about a person.

“I'm here for my bag,” she told him standing there stiffly. Without meaning to he found himself staring at her. The detective couldn't help, but wonder what happened since the last time he had seen her. She had been upset, but under the circumstances that made sense but this version of Simone, he couldn't quite reconcile with, she acted kind of nasty which surprised him.

“Yes, and I will give it to you, but first I have a few questions I need to ask you.” As soon as she heard that Simone's arms folded across her chest as an icy cold frost set in. The detective told Simone, “I didn't realize a woman's purse could cost that much money?”

“Then you haven't shopped at Hermes before,” she quipped not giving a shit if she sounded rude. What was really rude was him dragging her in here to pick up belongings the police should have never taken. And she really missed her purse. Foolish as that might sound, Simone always cherished her purses and treated them as if they were their own entities. This particular purse was dear to her because it was the last purse she had purchased with her father.

“Excuse me for saying it, but isn't it a bit excessive for a person with your revenue stream?”

“You mean how the hell does a lowly bank teller afford a purse that costs more then my yearly salary? Is that what you want to know?”

“Well, frankly yes. And it's not like the rest of your wardrobe is off the racks from Kmart or nothing. You have very expensive taste.” And what he didn't say was very tasteful it was, too. Most of the women tromping through here made damn sure you knew that they were flossing expensive shit. They strolled through the doors with their labels on full display to prove they could afford some classy shit, but unless you knew quality Simone's high-end designer clothing slipped under the radar. That quality alone interested the detective because he wasn't used to people like Ms. Banks.

“You think that if I can afford to shop in high-end shops then I must be doing something illegal? Is that what is? I'm a kept woman or a booster? That I lie, cheat, and steal for a living? If I were a white woman I doubt you would be so quick to quantify my belongings.” She sat back shooting poisonous looks at him.

“Did I say that?” the detective hated that she had busted him for putting her in a pile with the rest of the people he met in his line of work. If only she knew that he didn't think of her like that. That it was just one of the pitfalls of the job to categorize the people that you met, good, bad, pimp, hooker, thief, victim. He did not want to admit his prejudices out loud.

“You didn't have to say it. I saw it all over you.”

“Fine. You're probably right, but your situation does not add up. You don't have a work history so it's more than a little suspicious that it's your first official day working at the bank, and that very same morning, the bank gets robbed. You wouldn't find that the least bit suspicious yourself? Come on? You seem like a very intelligent woman, be honest with me.”

Now Simone had just gone from riches to rags but she also wasn't going to admit that the detective had a valid point.

“Whatever! But let me tell you that if I were dumb enough to rob a bank I'd be smart enough not to waste six whole minutes threatening a teller and taking her purse to give to my ghetto fabulous wanna-be girlfriend. Do you feel me? Any girl in the hood with that person would have to flash it and then that woulda led you right to her boyfriend so the whole thing is just plain stupid if you ask me.” She rolled her eyes at him.

“Okay. So you don't know any of the perps?”

“I can not answer that question truthfully because they were wearing masks so I did not get to see their faces. Therefore, I cannot wholeheartedly say that I did not know them. I lived in this neighborhood with my grandmother in my childhood years and then I went to live with my father. Now, I've been living with my grandmother for a few months so it could be that I've seen them around the way if I knew what they looked like. But like I said, I did not get to see their faces so again, I can not efficiently answer your question.” Simone smugly sat in her seat. She was not going to be tricked into answering certain questions in order for the prosecutor to try to turn her words around later and try to implicate her. She was too smart and educated to fall for that, “But I will say this,” Simone concluded, “it is highly unlikely that I would have known the robbers.”

“Can you at least look at their photos? Maybe they will jar your memory?” he said before he pushed a set of mug shots at her. He watched her closely to see what her reaction to them would be. The slightest reaction and he would know that she was in on the heist. Simone didn't bother to hide her surprise from the detective. She shoved the photos back toward him. “So, do you recognize any of them?”

“Yes. I recognize all of them. They were just kids from the neighborhood. Jason Kill? He dated my sister Tallhya about five years ago. She fell hard for his swagged out bad boy behavior. He put her through it having so many baby mama's and boy was he mad that she wouldn't give up her birth control to become the next one. Told her that if she loved him then she would have his baby. Me and my other sister, Bunny, told her that if she ever became pregnant by that thug she better keep it moving. We were not going to be related to anybody that stupid. I think it scared her enough not to give up her pills. But she wouldn't give him up because he was her first love. One night she was supposed to go out with him, but our grandmother said she wasn't feeling well. She's actually kind of psychic and something told her to keep Tallhya at home so she didn't go and he wound up getting shot trying to stick somebody up at a convenience store. Thank God Tallhya listened to our grandmother that night because he made his side chic go with him to drive the getaway car and she was arrested and charged along with him. My sister told me he and the girl were sentenced for a few years. I thought he had a longer bid and was still locked up, but when I moved in with my grandmother, I saw him around the neighborhood. The rest of the guys, I can't tell you much of. I've seen them around with Jason, but I didn't know any of their names.” Detective Dugan kept watching Simone. He hadn't expected her to admit that she knew the guys even after it showed up on her face that she did.

“So you're admitting you knew the ringleader. The one who set up the robbery and got the others to go along. That's interesting.” Detective Dugan stared

“The only thing me and those thugs have in common is the color of our skin and the neighborhood I happen to reside in at the moment. We are nothing alike and if you try to connect us you will be sorely disappointed. Our social circles couldn't be more different.”

“So is there anything about that day that struck you as odd?”

“You mean other than winding up with a gun to my head because a group of thugs decided to rob the bank that morning? Or having these young kids kill the person standing next to me while I feared for my life? Or having a gun pressed against my head? Or watching a man get his head blown off for moving his hands? You mean aside from those events did I find anything odd about what happened yesterday? No, nothing else out of the ordinary officer. ”