In My Hood (21 page)

***************

Ishmael tried to call Derrick again, but Derrick didn’t answer his cell. It was the third time that day he had tried to reach out to him and got no answer. Lately that had been happening a lot. Ishmael knew Derrick was laid up with the new shorty he was talking to, but he still hadn’t met her. The couple of times Ishmael inquired about her, Derrick would either change the subject or tell him she wasn’t a street girl, and he didn’t want her to know what he was into. Ishmael didn’t press the issue.

He headed over to Desiree’s to spend time with her before she went to work. He smiled to himself just thinking about how happy he was now that she was in his life. With all that was going on, Ishmael didn’t have a clue of the calm before the storm.

***************

The paramedics were putting the body bags of two victims in the back of the wagon. Cohen stood by and watched.

“That’s the third body in two weeks,” he stated to Sergeant Nicholas.

“I know, cap. There was a lot of body parts in those suitcases. Whoever did this made sure they chopped them up well. All we know is that there’s two bodies, now are all pieces to both bodies there? That’s what we have to try and figure out by DNA, because the heads are missing,” he said.

“Fuck!” Cohen shouted, walking away.

Earlier that day, two women were walking the trail exercising in Weequahic Park, when they saw the two huge suitcases lying in the shallow woods. They went over to investigate. They could see the dried blood that had soaked through the suitcase onto the ground underneath them. The stench from the dead bodies was stomach turning. They reported the whereabouts of the suitcases to a policeman who was sitting in his patrol car in the park.

In the suitcases were body parts chopped into small portions. From what the paramedics could make out, it appeared to be two bodies missing the heads. Just last week cops had found the body of Rallo Jennings in a heavy-duty garbage bag. Rallo was the young boy who had participated in robbing Ishmael. His head had been decapitated as well. There was a missing report filed on him, and through DNA it was confirmed to be his body. The family had to bury the young man without his head, which was still missing.

Cohen walked into his office, slamming the door behind him. The officers who sat at their desks looked on with eager eyes. They knew the captain was pissed about something.

He sat at his desk and threw his hat to the floor in frustration. He reached in his bottom drawer and pulled out a bottle of bourbon. He took a deep swig from the bottle and leaned back in his chair.

He had a strong instinct that Ishmael was behind the murders, but he couldn’t prove it. He had nothing solid to pin the bodies on him. He heard some talk about Rallo having something to do with robbing one of Ishmael’s workers, but that lead to a dead end. Anything that had Ishmael’s name involved pissed him off. He hadn’t received any money from him as of yet, but Bowen told them that he was cooperating.

Something was going on, and Cohen was going to bust his balls to find out.

I
shmael and Desiree were cuddled up on the sofa watching the old movie
Life
with Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence on DVD. Her new puppy sat on her lap while they watched the movie, which had them in good spirits.

Desiree sat up and looked deep into his eyes.

“What’s up, baby?” He kissed her on the lips.

“I need to talk to you,” she said, setting the puppy on the floor. He went running off into the bedroom.

“Come on, let’s talk,” he said, giving her his undivided attention.

“You know I’m still having nightmares sometimes,” she admitted.

“Yeah, I know. You had one the other night, but I didn’t want to wake you.”

“Well, I remembered when you said that in order to move on I should talk about my past and get it all out in the open.”

“Yeah, I thought you did that.”

“No way. There’s a whole lot more.” She giggled.

“Damn. Okay, shoot.”

“Well I’m a recovering addict.”

He looked at her like she was crazy.

“No, you’re not.”

“Yes, I am. I was a free-baser. I smoked rock for a long time. I was a mess.” She shook her head.

“I can’t believe that,” he said, looking at her. “So that’s why you don’t want to be around it.”

“Exactly. That’s why I have a problem with you slinging. I promised myself that I wouldn’t surround myself with the very same things that got me where I was when I was locked down.”

“Yeah, I feel you,” he said.

“But there’s more.”

“Okay,” he said, interested at what could be worse than armed robbery, serving time in prison, and being an outright crack head. This woman was full of secrets, he thought.

“When I lived on Fifteenth Avenue, one day I was at home getting high with a good friend of mine. My then boyfriend, Bunchy—you know I told you about him—”

Ishmael nodded. He stared deeply into her unique beautiful green eyes and played with her long hair while she talked.

“Well, he was cutting his friend’s hair when some thugs busted the door down to our apartment.” She stopped talking and began to twiddle her fingers, fighting back tears.

“Go ’head, baby. You can do it. I’m right here for you.”

She took a deep breath and continued, “They busted into the apartment, and the door fell on Bunchy. They shot my friend Tracey. I’ve never seen anything like that before. They blew off half her face and her arm.” The tears began to stream down her face. “They hit Roc in the face with the gun, and he fell out. There wasn’t nothing I could do to help them.”

Ishmael stared at her blankly while she talked.

“So much was going on that I can’t remember every little detail, but I remember the murders clearly. I remember they all were wearing black and had on ski masks. I remember the head gunman grabbing me by my neck, and his breath smelled like violets. That’s why I asked you to stop eating the candy, because it reminded me of that day,” she said, sniffing.

Ishmael was in a state of shock. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. This couldn’t have been the same people he and his crew murked years earlier. No way it was Desiree. Those were a bunch fiends they ran in on.

“All I kept seeing for a long time afterward was when the dude pointed his gun at Roc’s head and pulled the trigger.” She lay on his chest and continued to cry, letting all the bottled-up secrets spill out of her eyes.

Ishmael sat in silence, holding her and thinking back on that day. Was that her? Then it hit him like a ton of bricks. Those eyes. It was her. That’s where he knew those eyes from. His heart started to beat faster. There was no way in the world he was ever going to let her find out that he killed Roc.

“So now that you know all about my past, do you still want to be with me?” she asked like an innocent child.

“Of course I do, baby. The past is the past, and don’t you ever forget that. Anything that happened in the past stays there.” He tried to look like nothing was on his mind. In fact he was tripping out on how he hooked up with the very same person who could put him behind bars for life.

They sat on the couch cuddled up until it was time for her to get ready for work. He dropped her off at IHOP and set out in search of Derrick. He couldn’t wait to catch up with him and tell him what he found out about Desiree.

I
shmael drove around town checking on his blocks and asking Derrick’s whereabouts. No one had seen him. He tried to reach out to him again on his cell phone and still no answer. He swung by Derrick’s crib and his truck wasn’t there. There was no answer at the door either. He couldn’t figure out where Derrick could be. He checked with Nate, Dice, and Click, but nobody knew anything.

He was scheduled to meet with the deliveryman and security in a couple of hours, so he reached out to Damon to see if he heard anything from Derrick. Most likely he hadn’t, but Ishmael figured it was worth a shot.

What’s up, Ish?” Damon shouted into the phone.

“What’s good? You heard from Rik?”

“Naw, man, I ain’t see that nigga in like months and shit,” he exaggerated.

“Yeah, a’ight.”

“Where you headed?” Damon inquired.

“I’m on my way to the crib. I need to re-up today.”

“Oh, a’ight, so what time I need to come through to the drop house?”

“Maybe in about four or five hours, I don’t know. I’ll hit you when it gets there.”

“A’ight, man.”

“One!” Ishmael disconnected the call.

Something wasn’t right. It had been several days since he talked to Derrick. Now he knew Derrick was sweet on this new bitch he was seeing, but damn.
The bitch must can suck the fuck out of some dick to have this nigga in hibernation,
he thought. Oh well, he needed to take care of business.

The first thing he was going to do was check up on the house and pick up the buy money, then he would drop it off at the stash house with Nate, Dice, and Click. After that, he would check up on Beverly to see if she had heard from or seen Derrick.

***************

Derrick was sitting on the sofa in Nettie’s apartment. She was in the kitchen cooking him up a nice meal.

They had been shacked up together for days. He was enjoying himself with her. She was a little freak, and she knew just what to do to him. She was a good cook and kept his belly full. She would give him great massages, and they took long showers together. Derrick was really feeling her, and he wanted to take what they had a step farther. At that point he didn’t care what anybody thought about them. She brought him his plate. He set it down on the tray and pulled her close to him. He kissed her deeply. He smacked her hard on the ass as she went to fetch her own plate.

“So I know your boy think you’re missing in action,” she said, sitting next to him.

“Yeah, he been hitting me up. I’ll get with him in a few. Today is pickup day.”

“Oh, so y’all go over and pick up weight?” she inquired.

“Naw, we got people to do that. We don’t touch no product,” he said, shoving a forkful of homemade lasagna in his mouth.

“So y’all just give y’all money to somebody else to go pick up for y’all?”

“Yeah.”

“That shit is crazy. What if they beat y’all for the loot?”

“Nett, that ain’t gonna never happen,” he assured her.

“You can’t be trusting niggaz out here like that.”

“I been in this shit for a minute. I know what I’m doing.”

“Okay. If you say so.” She bit a piece of buttered Italian bread. “So let me get this straight, y’all be riding around with a whole lot of paper to pass off to someone else who then goes and picks up and then they bring the product back to y’all?”

“Something like that, except we don’t touch the product. It goes to another spot to get cut and bagged. Now can you let me finish eating and watching this game?” He pointed toward the TV.

She sucked her teeth and rolled her eyes at him. He grabbed her arm and pulled her toward him and shoved his tongue in her mouth. She smiled at him, and they continued to eat their meal.

An hour later Derrick was getting the hell sucked out of his tool by Nettie.

Nettie looked up at him while she sucked him off. His face was showing her just how good she was making him feel. But then again the face of every man she sucked off looked like that. She knew she had skills. She was definitely nice with hers, and she had that shit down to a science.

Derrick moaned and groaned while Nettie slurped his juices after he nutted in her mouth. She continued to suck on him like he was a pacifier.

Derrick let out a blood-curdling scream. Nettie sat up and watched him squirm and wiggle as he yelled and cried out. His blood spilled from her mouth and ran down to her chin.

She had sliced the top half of his dick off and spit it to the floor. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, got up, and walked around to the side of the bed.

“You bitch,” Derrick yelled, gasping for breath.

He held on to his crotch as blood quickly soaked the sheets. He was losing blood by the pound, and it was getting hard for him to breathe.

Nettie removed the blade from her mouth and grabbed Derrick by his dreads. She held his head back, exposing his neck. He grabbed her arm with force, almost throwing her to the floor. She quickly regained her balance, and she pounced on him like a black cat.

Before Derrick realized it, Nettie had slit his throat from ear to ear. Her work was done.

S
ecurity had just left the stash house.

“A’ight, something stinks,” Ishmael said to the members who were in attendance.

“Rik didn’t show up for the pickup. On the real, something’s up. Are y’all sure none of y’all has seen or heard from him?” he asked.

They all agreed that none of them had seen him.

“Check it, I want all of y’all to hit the streets and find out whatever you can. I don’t care if you have to yoke a few mafuckas up to get word, do it.” His gut was working overtime. He knew something had happened to Derrick, but he didn’t know what or even who. Derrick was not a dude who could be easily taken down. He knew there wasn’t any way a bitch had Derrick hemmed up for that amount of time.

They all filed out of the stash house on a mission. Ishmael sat there a while longer then he left. He drove around aimlessly, looking for his friend. He checked the time, and it was 3:00 a.m. Desiree would be getting off work in four hours. He figured he would swing by, pick her up, and drop her off at home, then hit the streets again.

He was tired. He didn’t get much sleep the night before. Since Desiree didn’t have to work, they had a fuck session like no other. He had left that morning to run errands, and he stopped by the braid shop to get his hair done. Once he’d done all his running around, he was back with Desiree, watching a movie until it was time for her to go to work.

He thought again about what she had told him earlier. It was freaking him out that she was actually in the house when it all went down. This world was definitely too small. You never knew who was who.

While Ishmael drove around stressing out about Desiree and Derrick, he never noticed that he’d been followed for the last hour.