Watch Out for the Big Girls (8 page)

It was a letter unlike any other that he received from him weekly. It revealed that all of Frenchie's appeals were denied, and him being sentenced to the death penalty was going to stick. According to the letter, he wanted to free his conscience of all mental burdens that had him trapped and make things right. He explained how he had known exactly what happened to Freeze's father and why. Most importantly, who did it. Freeze remembered shaking his head in disgust as he read how his father was killed by one of his young jealous female lovers. Although she had known about his wife and kids, she was enraged to find out that Freeze's father was expecting another baby by another young female from the housing projects across town. Freeze had never bothered to seek out his other sibling.

He had appreciated the clarity on his father's death, but he couldn't handle what Frenchie had written him about his mother. It was his heroin that his mother had overdosed on. He expressed how he felt he was responsible for his mother ODing on the drug. Freeze was crushed by the revelation. That day, he too placed blame on Frenchie. In his mind, he believed his mother would have still been alive had Frenchie not had the stash in the box. That letter marked the turning point of his bid and his life in general. That single letter, with nothing else to stand on, irreversibly transformed Anthony Frost into Freeze.

As if I don't have enough stuff on my plate.
He felt as if he was somehow losing his grip on things in the streets, in his life. He knew before he could let that happen he had to do something. With that being his only thought, Freeze took another hit of his blunt and pulled back into the ongoing traffic.

Monica woke up to the early morning sounds of birds chirping. The sun had just risen. The warm rays spread lightly across her beautiful naked body, which was tangled up in the linen sheets. A cool, refreshing breeze occasionally crept its way through the open balcony door, pampering her as she unintentionally overslept. She slowly opened her eyes and stared at the high, unfamiliar ceiling. She then sat up in a panic as reality hit her.

Oh my God! What did I do? I blew it! Oh shit! I blew it! Damn!
She smacked her forehead with the palm of her hand and cursed herself.

She quickly scanned the lavish room for her clothes. They were across the room on the far end. She wrapped her body in the sheet and stood up. Her feet comfortably sank down into the plush carpet as she surveyed the room with surety that her mission was blown or at least compromised.

How much did I have to drink?
she questioned herself as she felt her forehead while wobbling. She felt dizzy and could feel blood rushing to her brain. She looked around, trying to find anything that could salvage the mess that she had just gotten herself into. It would be all for nothing.
Nothing at all.

Monica looked over at the balcony's glass door. It was wide open. She walked past it and went straight for her clothes. They were neatly folded, sitting on top of a plush leather loveseat that sat in front of a huge sixty-inch plasma flat screen hanging on the wall over a virtual fireplace, with
SportsCenter
playing on the screen.

As she tiptoed over and reached for her red dress, she noticed the pair of slacks folded right next to it. She looked behind her with caution to make sure she was still alone before feeling the pockets and digging in them. After finding what she was looking for, she opened up the gator-skin wallet and studied the driver's license. She looked at Prime's face, his name, and the address. She assumed that was where she was, instead of a hotel suite, due to of all the personal items in the room. She could even smell the odor of the ocean drifting through the open balcony door. She thoroughly searched through his cell phone contacts until she heard a noise. It sounded as if it came from within the room. She quickly put his stuff back the way she found it and began to get dressed. She had never realized that there was another door in the back of the room. It slowly opened.

Prime reemerged from the master bathroom with a huge smile on his face. He stood in the doorway with nothing on but a thick Polo towel wrapped around the lower half of his damp muscular body. He stared at Monica as she slithered her thickness back into her dress.

Monica turned and stared at him. She almost lost her breath as it all came back to her in minor glimpses and flashbacks. The restaurant, the food, the wine, the dancing, the ride back to his house, the walk on the beach, the flirting, the resistance, the temptation, the seduction, the sex, the regret, the blackout. It all seemed to be like a movie. And she wished it were.

She was sure that everything she had worked for was gone. The reality of losing it all began to introduce itself. She had waited for years for this opportunity. The position. The timing. The trust. The execution. She had the easy part compared to the rest of the operation. She couldn't fathom it all going to waste over something so meaningless.

Tears began to stream as she sat down on the edge of the sofa. She rested her elbows on her knees and her forehead into her hands. Her actions caught Prime totally off guard. His cocky smile turned into a look of warm compassion and concern. He rushed over and dropped to his knees directly in front of Monica. He was a sucker for a damsel in distress. Especially one he'd enjoyed as much as he had her. He put her head on his shoulder. She tried to push him away at first, but eventually embraced him as he begged her to let him know what was wrong.

Monica knew she couldn't reveal what really had her in tears and disturbed.
You jeopardized everything,
she beat herself up. She could feel Prime's eyes on her. She knew she had to tell him something. A thought quickly jumped in her head. “I'm so sorry. I'm stupid. You're going to kill me,” she rambled.

“Whoa, slow up.” Prime rubbed the side of her shoulders.

Monica lifted her head. When she did, she could see the genuine concern in Prime's eyes. At that moment she felt like shit. Despite his apparent occupation, Monica could see that he was a decent guy. Still, she had to remind herself of the bigger picture. Prime was just a small fish in a big pond. And small fish were often sacrificed for the bigger ones, Monica concluded. She took a deep breath before she continued. “I was only supposed to be using you. I'm so sorry,” she blurted out.

Prime cocked his head back to look Monica in her eyes. Her words caught him by surprise. “Using me?” he repeated. He could already feel his temperature rising. He had felt that something was strange last night but she had put him at ease. He prided himself on being a man always on point and he couldn't believe he had almost gotten caught slipping.

“What?” he asked with a lot more aggression in his tone. He ended his physical support and now had her gripped by the side of the arms.

“Yeah. It's true. I was supposed to get close to you—” she confessed.

“For what? Like a . . . hit? You was put on me?” he jumped in before she could finish.

“Nooo!” She shook her head rapidly.

“But I supposed to be dead? You was setting me up for some niggas?” he boomed, already drawing his conclusion as to who had put Monica on him.

“No, I told you, and not exactly,” she replied.

Prime scowled. “So, what the fuck is it?” he wanted to know. He was already searching around for his nearest pistol to help speed up the process.

Monica peeped it. “It's the Double Gs!” she exclaimed. “They wanted me to get close to you and tell you that Freeze was pillow talking about you so that it would cause tension or beef between the two of you,” Monica confessed.

Prime's menacing look softened. His scowl was replaced with a smirk as he let out a light chuckle. “Did they choose me as a target? Or did you?” His demeanor was calm but stern.

“They did,” she confirmed, still sobbing.

“I heard some shit about them bitches,” he admitted. The name Double G had crossed his path on several occasions throughout the years. He had mainly heard it through the crooked cops and politicians he sometimes rubbed elbows with. At some point they all had asked him if he had any information on the organization, as if he had more clout and pull than the government or law enforcement. No one ever went into detail as to why they were inquiring, but somehow the Double Gs had tracked him down and he wanted to know more.

“Where are they? What do they want from me?” he asked all at once.

“I don't know. I don't know anything. I wouldn't have known until I got in. But now it's over. No one who had ever had sex with their intended target is allowed in.”

“Well, how would they know?” he shot back. He had already begun to devise a plan.

“Trust me. They know almost everything else. This wouldn't be hard for them to find out,” she proclaimed, lightening up on the tears while wiping her eyes. Prime's hands quickly joined hers with pure gentleness. Monica's eyes widened as she looked up with disbelief.
He should be smacking me up or trying to choke me to death by now.

Prime was an opportunist and smart. He knew last night the sexy female in the red dress was too good to be true and he kept a watchful eye on her. He planned ahead like an expert chess player. He pretended not to see her texting someone while he was outside his car. His first thought was to drive off into the desert and leave her with a bullet in the back of her skull, but he instead decided to take full advantage of the situation. He thought Freeze had put her on to him, but he shook that notion off. That would be giving him too much credit, he knew. Now he was getting closer to the truth. He put his softest tone on as he forced her head right back onto his shoulder.

“It's okay. Don't cry. I'll get you in. Just tell me what it is that I have to do,” he stated, trying to conceal the tone of his hidden intentions in his voice. Everything had unfolded right on schedule. The drug he had slipped into her drink last night actually sped things up. There was much more time to play now, but at the end of the day, for Prime, it was all about business.

Behind Prime's back, Monica had a hidden smile of her own. Twisting the truth was her last resort and it worked perfectly. She couldn't believe that Prime had bought her story. True, she had been put on him by the Double Gs, but the instructions she was given were not what she had just told Prime. He had no clue or idea about her intended plan that he nearly foiled, who she really was, or what she was really going after.
I guess drug dealers really aren't as smart as they think they are,
she concluded, pulling the wool over Prime's eyes so easily.

Ten minutes later, Prime was fake strapped to his bed and was reading the memo that the Double Gs required their victims to read on the handheld recorder Monica possessed.

If he only knew what they really had new recruits do to their potential victims, he would've definitely tried to kill me,
she thought.

Rob-C spent the last fifteen minutes yelling into his cell phone at the top of his lungs. He paced back and forth across his living room's hardwood floors inhaling a mouthful of the loud-smelling blunt in between each line of the escalated dialogue.

“I don't give a fuck, bitch! It's whatever. I ain't one of those fuckin' puppets connected to your strings. You got the wrong nigga! You got me fucked up! I'm R-o-b to the mother fuckin' C! This conversation is over. Lose my fuckin' numba!” he yelled into his iPhone.

He partially heard the woman on the other end try to calmly respond before he hung up on her in midsentence.

Feeling the extra boost of confidence, he relit the blunt as it went out and then he went into the bathroom for the second half of his ritual. He pulled down his pants and backed his 280-pound ass onto the porcelain toilet seat. A few seconds later, his phone rang again; he checked the caller ID and declined the call, returning to his thoughts.

He looked at the time on his Rolex watch and calculated a quick estimation. He had almost a half hour to drop off a brick and a half of coke to one of his workers. Rob-C controlled the entire east side of North Las Vegas. Every hustler up there either had his work or was at least supposed to. And he planned to keep it that way. He paid his goons well. He figured that after he got off of the toilet, there would be just enough time for him to get to his stash house and over to the drop-off location on schedule. He believed in clockwork and punctuality when it came to any type of business legal or illegal.

Rob-C thumbed through a
Straight Stuntin'
magazine. He stopped in his tracks when he heard a sudden knock on the door. It startled him for a second. He wasn't expecting any company. He was super cautious. No one knew where he lived. Not even his main girl. He quickly wiped his ass, hiked up his pants up in nervous haste, and exited the bathroom. He snatched up his Glock from the dresser and made his way into the living room, tiptoeing in case he wanted to act like nobody was home. He was still very anxious to peek out the curtains to see who it could be. Just as he got close, he flinched as a flashlight beam hit him. Two flashlight beams swayed back and forth, followed by a hard tap on the window. Shadows of faces appeared out of nowhere and Rob-C was faced with a drug dealer's worst nightmare.

“Open up! It's the police!”

Rob-C didn't know what to do. He was sure they had seen him. He made a quick mental assessment. The house was clean aside from a few jars of weed in his coat pocket. He also had a registered gun with all of the necessary documents in his bedroom closet. He felt he was straight. If he was wanted for any of his illegal activities, they would be so big that he was sure it would be the Feds kicking in his door with SWAT, not local police announcing themselves with flashlights.

Rob-C quickly got himself together. He sniffed his own shirt, noticing the fact that it and the entire living room smelled like purple haze. He nonchalantly brushed it off and opened the door with the safety chain still on.

“Can I help you?” he asked the black officer.

The white officer stepped up, shining the light into Rob-C's face and inside of the house while he spoke. “We received a call about a loud domestic dispute. It was reported to this address. Is there anyone else here with you?”

Rob-C was confused at first. And then he thought about the out-of-control phone conversation he had just had and he laughed to himself, but still he wondered how his neighbors had heard him. He figured that they had to be eavesdropping in the first place. So he brushed it off, expecting the cops to go away.

“Nah. Nobody's here with me. I'm alone. Everything's cool. The neighbors probably just heard me on the horn,” Rob-C explained through the cracked door.

The white cop acted as if he didn't quite buy the story. He looked past Rob-C and never stopped shining the light into the house the whole time they stood there. “Well, I hope you can understand that since the O.J. incident, we just need to be sure,” he seriously joked, to lighten the mood. “So if you don't mind, we'd just like to have a quick look around and we'll be on our way.”

Rob-C instantly got defensive. He was tempted to ask for a warrant, but thought better of it. He knew his crib was clean, so there was no reason to draw extra attention to himself than he was already doing just by having the cops on his porch. He realized they weren't leaving, so he felt it was better to let them in so the nosey passers-by could at least wonder which house they were at as opposed to having the answer right in front of them.

“Okay. Look. I was really on my way out. So please, just make this quick,” Rob-C asked them as he closed the door, unchained it, and reopened it.

“Go 'head, Blake. I'll be in the car,” the black cop stated.

“Ten-four, Douglass,” Officer Blake confirmed.

Rob-C shut the door behind them. He led the officer upstairs first in an attempt to distract him from the weed scent, giving the downstairs more time to air out. It was no use though. Rob-C turned to the officer as he reached the top of his steps. He was sure by the look on Officer Blake's face that he had smelled the strong aroma. There was no way of knowing why the broad smile appeared across the officer's face though. Rob-C had no clue as to why the officer was so adamant about entering his home or why he was really there.

Ten minutes later, Officer Blake returned to the passenger side of the squad car. Office Douglass just stared at him, watching as he sat down and closed the door, removing his standard-issue leather gloves.

“Well?” Officer Douglass uttered.

Officer Blake glanced over at his partner. Instead of responding, he reached for the charcoal gray unmarked car's radio and cleared his throat. He instantly got into character. “We have a black male, five foot nine, late thirties, down! He appears to have been strangled. No signs of a breach or a perp. I need medical assistance and forensics notified,” Officer Blake radioed in.

Officer Douglass dropped his head in shame as he sat in the driver's seat across from his partner. He had taken an oath to protect and serve but for the past few years of the seven years he had been on the force he had been dishonoring that oath.

“This just ain't right,” he shook his head and uttered under his breath as he pulled out his small flip phone Blake had been given when the blackmailing began. Although years had gone by, he was still trying to figure out how he had allowed himself to get tangled up in the web he found himself stuck in.

“Come on partner, not today.” Blake grimaced. “This was the last one, buddy,” he offered, before Douglass had the chance to complain about their conduct for the past three-plus years. He too knew what they were, or rather he was, doing was wrong, but he had no choice or say-so in the matter. He had made his bed and knew he had to lie in it. The video he had been forced to watch was still burned in the back of his mind. His fetish for young hookers had cost him more than money could ever buy. It had been a hard pill for him to swallow, but he had been living with being the Double Gs' puppet. What ate at him the most was the fact that he had dragged his partner, who he knew was as clean as an old wooden squeaky screen door up until this, into his mess and corrupted him, tarnishing his reputation. That was his biggest regret, but he was grateful to have a friend like him.

“I promise,” Blake reassured him.

Douglass looked over at him. “I hope so, bro.” Both his stare and words were solid.

Blake faced him. “We're on the same page. The sooner you let them know, the sooner this'll all be over and we can go back to being the good cops we've always been prior to my hiccup,” he replied.

Douglass nodded. He opened the flip. Target deleted, he texted to the woman he knew as Starr: the mastermind behind the predicament Blake had gotten him.

A thumbs-up emoji followed by a smiley face was the reply he received.

“This fucking bitch!” he cursed at her arrogance. “This really better be it, Blake!”

“What now?” Blake scowled.

Douglass showed him the screen of his phone. Blake chuckled.

“Shit ain't funny!” Douglass bellowed. “You lucky I fucking love you, bro,” he reminded Blake.

The two formed an unbreakable bond the moment they became partners six years ago. They had been having one another's back both personally and professionally from day one. Which was why Douglass had even considered hearing his partner out. Had it not been for the story his partner had told him, which had been forcing him to break the law, Douglass knew he would have never agreed to aid his partner in murder or any other crimes for that matter. Although he was empathetic to what had happened to Blake and this was not their first time doing something illegal, it was still bothering him that his partner had just committed murder and made him an accessory. Officer Douglass was glad to hear that this would be their last and final time doing something that went against their shield, because he didn't know how much more or if for any longer he could take it.

For your sake, partner, this better be over,
was Officer Douglass's last thought before he exited the car with the yellow crime scene tape.