Chaser (15 page)

I
t was four fourteen in the morning when the sound of my security system alerted me that my back door had opened. It woke me out of a good sleep that took me the whole night to get into. I sat up in bed and listened. It was Kenny and, from the sound of it, his brother Tim. What the hell were they doin’? I anticipated that Kenny would have gotten locked up at his meeting. That was supposed to have been the plan. What could have happened that led to Kenny being home and not in jail?

I walked down the hall to the top of the stairs to get a better listen. I heard voices, then the refrigerator door opening and closing, then water starting to run. Next there were footsteps coming upstairs. I decided to go back into my bedroom and pretend to be asleep.

“Leah, wake up! I gotta talk to you,” Kenny said the minute he walked in.

I stretched and yawned, then sat up in the bed.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, peeking at him as he feverishly washed his hands in our master bathroom.

“Come here,” he said, his tone not so pleasant.

I took my time getting up. I was trying to think of all the possible scenarios that could have taken place that morning and what bearings they might have had on me.

I went into the bathroom, stopping at the doorway. “What happened?” I asked, concerned at the sight of blood in the sink.

“Never mind that,” Kenny said. “Leah, I need you to tell me everything you and the cop talked about while you was locked up.”

I couldn’t imagine what had gone wrong during the transaction and what it had to do with me and the cop’s discussion while I was in jail. But I knew it couldn’t have been anything good. I became unnerved. My heart was in my stomach.

“What do you mean, what we talked about? Pertaining to what?”

Kenny paused from scrubbing his hands and looked at me. “Everything! From beginning to end! I need to know everything!” He said impatiently.

I exhaled and started from the top, hoping the CI training I got before I was released from jail wouldn’t fail me. “He basically asked me who put me up to staging the accident. I told him that nobody did and that I wanted to speak to my attorney. He said that I was being charged with three third-degree felonies and was looking at about seven years for each charge. And then he asked if what I did was worth me spending the next twenty years of my life in prison—”

“How did he get on the subject of you becoming an informant?”

I took a hard swallow and said, “He basically asked me if I had any ties to Alliance Collision. I told him I knew the owner’s son. He asked
if he was the one who put me up to the staging. I told him no. Then he said don’t lie to him, and he started telling me that he knew about other things that they had done like this and if I helped them build a case against Alliance, then my case could disappear. I told him I still wanted to speak to an attorney. Then I was put back in my cell and granted bail. That’s when I called you to tell you what the bail was, and you told me I should go ahead and give them the information they were lookin’ for,” I reflected. “Why, what’s wrong?”

Kenny dried his hands with a towel, wiped his face off with the same towel, then turned around and leaned his butt against the sink. His hands were folded across his stomach. He was looking straight ahead, focused, as if he was concentrating.

“So when you told him you would do it, did he mention that he had other informants or undercovers watching Nasir and them?”

I thought about my response before giving it. I wasn’t trained on how to answer a question as such, so I wanted to be careful. I was already nervous as hell and didn’t need any slipups.

I shook my head. “Why? What’s wrong? What happened?” I tried to turn the interrogation off me and onto Kenny.

Kenny broke his stare and turned to look at me.

“It was a cop at my meeting spot tonight,” Kenny revealed. “And I’m tryin’ to put the pieces together to see why he was there and how he could have known about the meeting.”

I could feel my heartbeat thumping through my chest. I scanned the room as my mind started focusing on what items were in my reach that I could use as weapons if it came down to it. I was petrified.

“A cop?” I acted as surprised as I possibly could.

“Yeah. And when I first peeped him, we were already in the middle of moving shit, so we couldn’t just switch locations. So I asked the bull who I was coppin’ from, was he settin’ me up? He told me no, so I wanted him to bust shots at the cop’s car to prove it to me. He hesi
tated, so I let a shot off at the car, then somebody else let off shots, and the next thing I know it’s a fuckin’ shoot-out. Two of my homies got killed, and the niggas I was coppin’ from whole squad got plucked off. It was a blood bath out that mafucka…” Kenny described.

“Oh my God,” I gasped, picturing the sight and drawing the conclusion that Detective Daily was dead. “Tell me you didn’t kill a cop.”

At that point my knees buckled. I had to grab on to the bathroom door frame to keep myself from falling.

Kenny turned into a drill sergeant. “Get up, Leah! I need you to be strong! The pressure is about to be on, and I’ma need you to be able to withstand it. You hear me?”

“Yes,” I muffled, dropping my head.

“Look at me!”

I looked up at him.

“I’ma need you to inform me on
everything
the detective tell you about Nas and them—
everything!
And if you hear about that nigga Nas sayin’ my name at all, you need to let me know that shit,” Kenny commanded.

I became more confused. “Why would Nasir say your name?”

“Because besides me and Tim, he was the only one that didn’t die out there tonight,” Kenny explained.

“He was out there?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Kenny said. “I had him out there with the scanners to be somewhat of a lookout.”

“What?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Nasir too mad at me to take any of my calls, but he would agree to be a lookout for Kenny, who had just as much fault as me in using his dad’s accounts to wash money.

“I know.” Kenny shook his head. “That was stupid as shit of me, knowin’ the nigga’s pop and they whole business is under investigation. But that shit didn’t even dawn on me at the time. But anyway, I
know the cops goin’ be houndin’ him for information. And being as though he got hit and his homie got killed, he might be prone to give it to ’em.”

I was floored taking in all the information Kenny was giving me. First, Detective Daily was dead, then Nasir was hit, and his homie, whom I presumed to be Brock, was killed. I didn’t have time to deal with one issue before he had hit me with another and another.

“So I’ma need you to be my eyes and ears while you workin’ with the cops. In the meantime, I need to get to the bottom of why the cop was out there in the first place. I need to find out who is hippin’ the mafuckin’ law to my shit.”

Kenny stood up straight and rubbed his palm over his low haircut. He brushed past me as he left out the bathroom. Then he came back.

“Oh, and everything that we talk about stays between you and me! You understand?”

“Yes,” I whimpered, my eyes staring down at the floor.

“Look at me,” he said.

I turned around and raised my head. Tears streaming down my face, I looked at him.

Then, in a cold and calculated tone, he said, “I don’t have no problems knockin’ anybody off if I even think they takin’ shots at my freedom, you dig?”

I managed to nod, even though my body had stiffened up. My lungs felt like they were closing, and I found myself unable to breathe.

“That goes for you and anybody the fuck else,” he added. Then he left again.

I collapsed to the floor, panting. I was scared breathless.

I
t was the Tuesday after Memorial Day, and I was laid up in the hospital recovering from a bullet wound that had shattered my collarbone. Much worse, though, I was mourning the loss of my best friend. I couldn’t believe Brock was gone. Not Brock, of all people. That was one nigga who never did shit to nobody. He stayed outta trouble, stayed out the way. And all he ever wanted to do was have fun. It hurt like hell picturing his body stretched out on the pavement with all those bullet holes through it, and I’d found myself shedding more tears in the last forty-eight hours than I had in my entire life.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I repeatedly apologized to the nurse for having to clean vomit off me again.

“It’s okay, Mr. Freeman. It’s not your fault. You don’t have to be so apologetic,” she said as she wiped me clean.

“I know. But it’s embarrassin’ to keep spittin’ up on myself.”

“You can’t control it. You’re just one of those patients who can’t take morphine. Consider that a good thing.”

The room grew silent as the nurse continued cleaning me up. She threw the sponge in the bucket that was by my bed and rinsed it. She had a smile on her face the whole time and tried to make me feel okay, but I felt fucked up. I was a grown man throwin’ up on himself and I couldn’t even clean it off. The only thing that kept me sane was the fact that I was alive. I could’ve easily been another homicide victim.

“Oh, it looks like you have visitors,” the nurse said as she helped changed my gown. She gathered her cleaning items and started out the room.

I looked toward the door. Once I got past the bouquet of “Get Well” balloons I realized it was my mom and my dad.

My mom was smiling and crying at the same time as she walked over to my bed. Leaning over, she kissed me on my forehead. I hugged her with my right arm, the one that wasn’t in a sling.

“Stop crying,” I told her.

She unwrapped the balloon strings from around her hand and let the balloons coast to the ceiling. Meanwhile, my dad shook his head as he greeted me with a handshake.

“How you feelin’, man?” he asked, as if it pained him to talk to me.

“Aww, man, I’m alive. That’s all that matters,” I responded, holding back.

“Thank God,” my mom chimed in, shaking her head. “Thank God.” My mom wiped tears from her eyes and then blew her nose. Her legs were shaking uncontrollably. She was an emotional wreck. She couldn’t get herself together.

“Mom, calm down,” I said. “It’s just a broken bone. It’ll heal.”

“You don’t understand,” she said. “You my firstborn, and just the thought of losing you is driving me crazy. And like I told ya dad last
night, we should never go a day without tellin’ our kids we love them. Let alone go weeks without even speakin’ to them.” My mom’s tears returned. “He would have had a heart attack if you would’ve been taken from us, especially while y’all were goin’ through y’all shit. If y’all don’t do nothin’ else, y’all need to squash the bullshit.”

Then my dad cut in. “It’s squashed. This my son. That little shit that happened can’t change that.”

I nodded to my mom to assure her that I was willing to squash the beef as well. “Life is too short to be holdin’ on to grudges,” I said.

“I just wanna get to the bottom of what happened and who did this shit,” my dad said, switching the subject. “The cops said you told them you went up there for a tow and shots rang out.”

“Yeah, pretty much.” I stuck to my story. I didn’t want to tell anybody that Kenny had something to do with the shooting because I wanted to handle him on my own.

“So you didn’t see the pussies?”

I shook my head.

“Not one of them? ’Cause I’m convinced this wasn’t no fuckin’ accident. They hit Brock up like they wanted to kill that nigga, and lookin’ at the truck, I’m lucky to still have my son,” my dad expressed.

“Soon as I heard the shots I ducked down, and that’s why I couldn’t see nothin’.”

My dad rubbed his goatee and asked, “What were you doin’ a tow for at one in the morning anyway? Matter of fact, what were you doin’ a tow for, period?” My dad knew better. He knew that I didn’t tow cars unless they were hits I had gotten.

“Normally I wouldn’t have took the call. But Brock ain’t never do a tow before, and since he was chasin’ full-time now, I told him he needed to learn. So I figured that would be a good time to show him how to hook a car. Plus, it had been slow all night, a bunch of domestic disputes,” I recalled. “I ain’t think it would hurt us to leave the post
for a minute and do a quick tow.” I came up with a good excuse. I usually kept it 100 percent with my dad about stuff like that, but I knew the minute I mentioned Kenny’s name he would be out huntin’ that nigga down. And that was my battle—one I wanted to fight.

“Let me ask you somethin’,” my dad said.

“What’s that?”

“What else are you doin’ besides chasin’?” he asked.

“Nothin’. I mean, I run my bodily injury cases, too, but that’s it.”

“Seriously, Nas, you can tell me,” he said. “Are you hustlin’?”

I smirked and said, “No!”

“Honestly,” my dad insisted, looking me in the eyes.

“Naw, I’m keepin’ it one hundred. I don’t sell drugs.”

My dad took a deep breath and nodded. “All right,” he said, sounding only halfway convinced. “If that’s ya story and you stickin’ to it, cool. But it ain’t addin’ up to me, Nas. I mean, somebody set you and Brock the fuck up! And if that’s the case, let this be a lesson to you. Watch the company you keep. And don’t let me find out you protectin’ the nigga who did this, ’cause you don’t want me to get at ’im! ’Cause I’m ya father, and that’s a decision for me to make not for you to make for me!”

My mom cut in, “Let’s not talk about all of that, please.”

“I’m just sayin’,” my dad continued, “I was chasin’ for six years before I opened the shop. And when I was scratchin’ and scrapin’ on the streets, everybody was cool with me. But soon as I opened the shop and started making real money, that’s when I started seeing niggas for who they really were. The same niggas who I called my friends started turnin’ against me. They couldn’t stand the fact that I was makin’ so much more money than them, and some of them were actually hustlin’, puttin’ their lives on the line, riskin’ their freedom and still comin’ in second to a nigga like me who was on the straight and narrow. Niggas hate to see a nigga doin’ good, let alone doin’ better than themselves. Like that nigga Kenny. He don’t keep you close
’cause y’all was best friends. He keep you close because misery loves company and success breeds envy, son.”

My dad was sharp. He knew in his gut that Kenny had somethin’ to do with my bein’ shot and Brock gettin’ killed. He just wanted me to come out and say it. But I didn’t want to.

My dad concluded his father-to-son by saying that he was goin’ to find out who shot me. He was goin’ to put the word out in the streets that he was lookin’ for whoever did, and when it got back to him, he was goin’ take care of the nigga. I believed my dad, too. He was older and settled, yes, but he had the kind of past that could never completely desert him. He was from the streets and had no problem returning to them if need be.

For the remainder of their visit, my mom and dad went on to discuss other things, like when the doctors planned on discharging me and how long it was going to take for my broken collarbone to heal. After about an hour and a half they left. Before they did, though, my dad demanded that I give him any and all information about the shooting as it came to me. I gave him my word that I would.