Deliver Me From Evil (4 page)

“My husband loves me,” I insisted. But I had to wonder just how much Jesse Ray loved me after the way he'd hemmed and hawed when Wade called him up. I wasn't so sure anymore.

Wade rotated his neck and brought his lips together with such a quick move, they snapped shut like a coin purse. With his eyes on my face—and with a look on his face so lifeless, you'd have thought that he was watching this year's most boring movie—he slid his tongue out and moistened his lips before he spoke again. “Your husband loves you? Uh-huh,” he muttered, nodding. “And is that why you are trying to cheat him out of half a million dollars?” Wade laughed.

“I
don't like it when people laugh at me, Wade.” I pushed his hands away and gave him the dirtiest look I could manage, but that didn't even seem to faze him. He kept laughing. “I wish you'd stop that!” I snarled, pinching the side of his arm. The two pillows that had been on the mattress were now on the floor, too flat and flimsy to be of any use, anyhow, so it didn't matter where they were. I propped my head up on my arm, with my cheek pressed against my elbow, breathing out of the side of my mouth. Wade had eaten the day-old sardines and oysters, but there was such a foul taste in my mouth, it seemed like I'd eaten some, too.

“Then stop humoring me,” he said, looking serious now.

“I signed a prenup,” I said in a low, hollow voice, holding back a belch of my own.

“You did what?”

One of the few things that I didn't like about this man was that I often had to tell him the same thing more than once. I couldn't remember how many times I had already told Wade that I'd signed a prenuptial agreement. But I told him again, anyway.

“I signed a prenuptial agreement. If I divorce Jesse Ray, I get next to nothing. I've already told you that.” For some mysterious reason, I had a feeling that this would be the last time I'd have to tell him this. I gave Wade a pleading look. “I can't stay on with him the way things are.” I cleared my throat, but it was still hard for me to continue speaking. “Jesse Ray has changed. His work, his family, they all come before me now. It wasn't always like that,” I said hoarsely.

“Christine, will you get mad if I say something I probably shouldn't say?”

“You are too late for that, so you can say whatever you want to say now,” I said firmly, giving him a guarded look. “I'm listening.”

Wade took a deep breath and then let it out. He held his hands out toward me, palms up, like he was about to do something I'd like. He was one of the few men I knew who was good with his hands. But he didn't use them to do anything erotic this time. He covered my hand with his. “Baby, I know that what I'm about to say is going to sound crazy coming from me, especially at this point in time. But if you couldn't stand living with your husband no more, couldn't you have just moved in with a girlfriend or back home with your mama or something? Faking something as risky as a kidnapping is pretty extreme.”

I didn't like the tone of Wade's voice. He sounded too serious and more than a little frightened.

I gave Wade an exasperated look and snatched my hand out of his. “If you don't want to go through with this, you need to decide now,” I said sharply, panic rising in me like a kite on a windy day. “The more time we let pass, the harder it's going to be for me to talk my way out of this if we back out.”

“If this is what you really want, I'm still in, baby,” Wade told me. “As long as I'm getting paid, I'm going to stay in.”

I shook my head. “I just want to get this over with as soon as possible, that's all.”

Wade's cell phone rang. But with the room being such a mess, it was hard to tell where the phone was. After six rings, he located it on the floor, tangled up in a jockstrap under a mountain of dirty clothes. “Yeah,” he replied, holding up his hand in my face. “Cool. We are on our way.” He tossed the phone on top of the same mess and sucked in so much air, he had to cough.

There was a familiar look on his face. Satisfaction was too mild a description. It was more like the look of rapture, because it was a haunting look. His face darkened, his eyes and lips trembled, and his nostrils flared. It was the same look that I always saw on his face right after his dick erupted in me like a volcano. “That was Jason,” Wade announced. The way his lips quivered I was surprised that he could even talk. But the words came tumbling out of his mouth like rocks down the side of a mountain. “My homeboy, he got us a motel room in his name down on San Pablo Avenue!”

To reach the dresser, where he'd left his watch, Wade had to hop across the floor to avoid stepping on dirty plates. He was still naked, and it was a sight to watch his long, thick dick swing back and forth like a pendulum. “Go in my closet and pick out some of my shit to wear,” he ordered, waving me to the closet in the corner, by the door. He paused and looked around the room. “And don't forget to put on that cap. Make sure to hide all your hair,” he told me, sliding his watch onto his wrist, muttering under his breath about how cheap the watch was and how he was going to get himself a Rolex with part of his ransom money.

“Put on my sunglasses and one of my jackets,” he added. “A loose one so your titties won't show. If we run into anybody I know, don't you open your mouth unless you have to. If somebody tries to make you talk, act like you from Brazil or Nigeria or some other fucking foreign country and you don't speak English. With the cap and them sunglasses, they might just think you just another dude. Or just some dowdy bitch that they don't want to know, no way, no how.”

Even though Wade was obviously impatient, I took my time getting dressed. He stuffed the two-hundred-dollar skirt and the ninety-dollar blouse that I'd worn to his house into a plastic grocery bag and took them out to the trash. By the time he returned, I had slid into a pair of his baggy, tacky jeans and a plaid flannel shirt with sleeves so long, I had to roll them up to my elbows. Both items still had the Goodwill price tags attached. It broke my heart to know that this was the best he could do. And, it also broke my heart to know that he was going to splurge on a Rolex when there were so many other things he needed. Like a decent wardrobe and a car. When I didn't feel like driving us around in my Lexus and when his mama's old jalopy wasn't available, we traveled from one hotel to another in cabs and buses.

I had the sunglasses in my hand, just staring at them. As the wife of a millionaire, it had been a long time since I'd worn something so cheap looking.

“Woman, you better get a move on. Stop standing there looking at them shades like they're something good to eat. We gotta get up out of here before my mama comes home!” Wade barked.

My hands were shaking as I fumbled with the glasses. I dropped them twice before I got them to stay on my face. Wade slapped one of his baseball caps onto my head and pulled it down over my ears, hiding all of my hair. Just a few hours earlier, I'd spent over a hundred dollars on a press and curl at Thelma's House of Beauty. If I had really thought everything through the way I should have, I would have brought a wig with me to hide my hair.

But if I had thought everything through the way I should have, I wouldn't have concocted such a clumsy and desperate plan in the first place. And that was what a little voice had been trying to tell me. But my head was too hard for me to let that little voice penetrate my brain.

“You all right?” Wade asked, with a forced smile.

“I'm fine,” I said, adjusting the cap and the glasses. I was still nervous and apprehensive about my role in this crime. But since I was the mastermind and the one who was going to profit the most, I had no intentions of turning back now.

“Aw shit!” Wade hollered, clapping his hands together like a seal. There was a wild-eyed look on his face.

Everything on my body froze except my eyes and mouth. I looked at him, with my eyes stretched open as wide as they could go. “What's wrong?” I asked, with a gasp, looking toward the door, then each window.

“Them shoes!” Wade yelled, pointing at my three-hundred-dollar Italian sandals. Before I could respond, he shot out of the room like a ball of fire. A few minutes later he returned with a pair of limp, brown moccasins. “Put these on. Mama don't wear these no more,” he said, tossing the tacky shoes onto the mattress.

Without hesitation, I eased down on the mattress and kicked off my sandals. “Next time you go to Goodwill, take those shoes,” I said, with a sigh, nodding toward my sandals. “I spent three hundred dollars on these puppies, and I've only worn them twice.” Wade's eyes got as big as teacups.

“Goodwill my ass. I can get a pretty penny for these bad boys at one of them consignment shops. I just wish you had told me how much you spend on your shit before I threw that skirt and blouse you had on in the trash. Now I got to dig that shit out and get—”

Then something hit me like a thunderbolt. “Wade, I just thought of something! You can't donate any of my stuff to Goodwill, and you can't sell it,” I gasped. “That's a chance we can't take.”

“Who is going to find out and how?”

“I don't know, but I don't want to take that chance,” I said, shaking my head. “Detectives are way too smart these days. My DNA is all over my shit.” I frowned as I eased my feet into the moccasins.

Wade gave me a thoughtful look; then he looked nervous again. It was ironic that two people who got as nervous as Wade and I did would even be involved in any type of crime together, especially a scheme as elaborate as kidnapping. “So you do think that your old man might go to the cops?”

“I didn't say that,” I wailed, rising from the mattress. The moccasins were so flimsy and thin, my feet felt like they were bare.

“Then what the hell are you talking about detectives for? If you don't think that your old man's going to the cops, why would you be worried about detectives going to Goodwill and finding your shit?”

“I just don't want to take that chance. I know enough to know that a lot of people have been destroyed because of DNA. Not only is my DNA on my clothes and shoes, but yours is, too. If, and I do mean if, something happens and the cops do get involved, how would we explain both our DNA on my clothes? It could be that one slipup that ruins everything. The ransom money will be more than enough,” I said.

Wade sighed and shrugged. Then he snatched another plastic grocery bag up off the floor and slid the sandals in it. I followed him outside to the backyard to make sure he put the shoes in the trash, where he'd already buried the rest of my things under a pile of filth in a can with two lids.

“Happy?” he asked, marching me back into the house, goosing my ass all the way.

“I just don't want you to get greedy, Wade,” I said, turning to face him once we made it back to his bedroom.

“Greedy? Girl, I ain't half as greedy as some of the folks I know,” he told me, with a strange look on his face. That gave me something else to worry about because I didn't know what it meant.

L
ike most of the houses in this neighborhood in the southern part of Berkeley, the house that Wade shared with his mama was on a corner, across the street from a liquor store. Winos and stray dogs patrolled the area more than the cops. The outside of the old house was pretty grim. It hadn't been painted in so long, it was hard to tell the original color. The wraparound porch in the front of the house looked like it was slowly sinking into the ground. With another strong earthquake, it would. Cheap plastic curtains covered the windows downstairs.

But the motel that Wade took me to in his mama's old car was even more depressing than the house we'd left behind. Fast-food containers, empty beer cans, whiskey bottles, used condoms, and women's underwear practically covered the ground that surrounded the cheap motel.

Jason Mack, one of Wade's many shady friends who would do anything for money, was in the room, sitting on the squeaky bed, with a large pizza box on his lap. There was a battered shopping bag on the bed, next to him. His run-down shoes sat on the floor, next to his long, sour-smelling bare feet. “So did you make the call?” he asked, looking at Wade.

Wade had added Jason to the mix without my knowledge or consent. I couldn't do anything about that now. But just knowing that somebody other than Wade and me were in on this bogus kidnapping scam made me very nervous. Especially somebody like Jason Mack.

I didn't like Jason, and he knew it. For one thing, I didn't trust him. Who could trust, or like, a thirty-three-year-old unemployed man who bragged about the five children he had with five different women? He supported them all, which was a major surprise to me. But it was with money that he made as a burglar, and any other shady way he could come up with. He'd even done time for robbing the Bank of America where my husband stored his money. But that was just one of the many crimes that he'd done time for. With a prison record as long as a mop handle, it was no wonder I didn't trust him.

Jason and I had associated with some of the same rough crowds back in the day, but we'd never been friends. We had both come a long way. At one time he'd been one of the best-looking black boys on the block, with his golden brown skin and thick, straight hair. His features were so delicate, a lot of people thought he was gay until he started getting women pregnant left and right. But his skin now looked like sandpaper, covered with scabs, scars, sores, and a mysterious walnut-size knot on his lower jaw. He had fewer than a dozen teeth left. All were at the bottom of his mouth, except for one.

“I made the call,” Wade said, looking around the room, with one hand on his hip. His other hand was rubbing his nose. “Man, this place is a dump!” he exclaimed, gazing at me with a tortured look on his face. I didn't comment on the motel room, because it didn't look any worse than Wade's bedroom. As a matter of fact, it was cleaner and more organized than Wade's room had ever been during my visits.

“What did you expect for what you wanted to pay?” Jason sneered, still ignoring me. “And, for a man about to come into a half million bucks, you don't need to be so tight. Shit! After this Friday, we'll be living like kings.” The thick, beautiful black hair that used to cover Jason's head was a lot thinner now and had more strands of gray than black.

Wade gave me a quick glance. I didn't know what all Wade had told Jason. I just assumed that we were all on the same page. Apparently, Jason didn't know all of the facts, but he did know that half a million dollars were on the table, and that disturbed me. The fact that Wade had been stupid enough to reveal that information to an ex-con like Jason was just one more reason why I had to break off my relationship with him once and for all as soon as I could. Wade and I had gone over our plan at least half a dozen times. Wade was to get fifty thousand for his role. And out of that, he was supposed to break Jason off with ten thousand. The rest was mine.

Once Jesse Ray paid the ransom, I'd be “returned” to him unharmed. After a week or two, I'd still be “traumatized, frightened, and depressed,” so I would “leave” Jesse Ray and eventually divorce him. With my share of the ransom money, I could move away from Berkeley. Hawaii seemed like a good place for me to reinvent myself, and that's what I had told Wade. But I had other plans. Plans that I didn't plan on sharing with Wade or anybody else I knew.

I was not going to go anywhere near Hawaii, or any other place where I thought Wade would eventually come looking for me. I had never lived anywhere but California, and I didn't want to give it up. I liked Sacramento, and nobody would think of looking for me there. But I still didn't plan to take any chances. Once I made the move to Sacramento, I planned to change my hair and make a few other alterations to my appearance. By the time I got done with my makeover, my own mother wouldn't recognize me. As far as Mama and Daddy were concerned, I planned to tell them the same story that I planned to tell Jesse Ray and everybody else: I was moving to Hawaii. I even had a story ready for the people who'd ask me how I could afford to move to Hawaii. And that story was that I'd borrowed the money from a friend. It would be a friend that didn't exist, of course, so that was one more lie I didn't have to worry about being exposed.

It saddened me to know that my life had come to this. I had not been happy for years, and my marriage had become a joke. But Jesse Ray wasn't the only man I needed to remove from my life. My relationship with Wade was, and had been, a dead-end situation for years. As much as I hated to admit it, the sex was the main reason I was still involved with Wade. Yes, it was just that good. He could make me come just by rubbing the side of my arm.

Wade interrupted my thoughts by snapping his fingers in my face. “Take off that jacket,” he told me, removing the baseball cap from my head and tossing it to the floor. I took off the sunglasses myself. “Jason, get busy,” Wade hollered over his shoulder. “Do your thing, brother.”

I looked past Wade. Jason removed a grocery-store brown paper bag from the shopping bag on the bed and started walking toward me. I was surprised to see that he now walked with a limp. He ignored me and handed the bag to Wade.

“What's all that?” I wanted to know. I was no angel and never had been. But I did not make a good criminal. Not only was I too nervous for my own good, but I felt that my role as the “mastermind” had been compromised. It seemed like Wade was calling all the shots now. I was still pissed off with him for involving Jason in our plan. And, now it looked like he and Jason had cooked up another part to my scheme without my knowledge or consent.

“We have to make this look real good,” Wade said, talking out the side of his mouth. He removed several pieces of rope and a piece of black cloth from the bag. “Where is the camera?” he asked, turning to Jason. Without a word, Jason plucked a Polaroid camera from the shopping bag.

“What's all this for?” I asked, looking from one item to another. “You've already called J.R., and he knows the deal. We don't need to overdo anything,” I protested, holding up my hand.

“You got any black make-up or a black eyebrow pencil?” Wade asked me. “A black eye would add a nice touch.”

“No. Black eye, my ass. I don't want to upset my husband that much. Taking his money will be bad enough. And you didn't answer my question,” I snapped. “I want to know what all of this shit is for?” I asked, pointing at the items that Jason had just produced. “This wasn't part of our plan. And if we, or you and your boy, start making up things as we go along, we are going to slip up and fuck up.”

“We just want to sweeten the pot,” Wade told me, wrapping one of the pieces of rope around my wrists. “We've come this far. We might as well go all the way,” he said, looking from me to Jason. Wade stripped me down to my underwear. And, for the first time, Jason smiled at me, his eyes stretched open wide as he stared from my crotch to my chest.

Jason snorted and gave me a thoughtful look. Like he didn't know what to say next. But then he started talking like he didn't want to stop. “Shit, shit, shit! The brother is right,” that snaggletoothed sucker said, grinning. “It might take more than a phone call to make this thing work. A few good pictures will sew this thing up tight as a virgin's honeypot.” Jason snapped his lips shut as his eyes roamed up and down my body some more.

I sighed and tilted my head back for Jason to tie the blindfold around my eyes. Now at least I wouldn't have to look at his leering face for a few minutes.