Lickin' License (19 page)

“Fuck is you going?” Chase said. He yanked Rich's arm.

Instinctively, Rich swung. He connected square with Chase's jaw. Chase stumbled back
and pulled out a gun, but Rich grabbed it. They tussled for control of the .357-caliber Glock.

“Rich!” Vanessa screamed.

As Rich twisted Chase's arm. A shot went off. The hot lead tore through a car window,
sending specks of glass to the ground. Rich head butted Chase and the gun fell to the ground.
Chase kneed Rich in the balls, then dropped him with a right hook to the jaw. He began stomping his Timberland boots into Rich’s chest.

A thunderous clap from a gun sounded and a bullet ripped through Chase's shoulder. He fell against a parked Toyota Camry. Rich looked up and saw Vanessa holding Chase's Glock. Smoke rose from the barrel.

“Bitch shot me,” Chase blurted.

Rich scrambled to his feet and took the gun from Vanessa. He aimed it at Chase, ready to
squeeze the trigger. Then he noticed the small crowd gathering around the scene. He took a step
back and turned to Vanessa. “Come on.” He pulled her toward the Hummer as Candy opened
the passenger side door.

* * *

Rich drove straight to his penthouse, followed by Candy in her BMW. In minutes,
Rich was packing a duffle bag. He didn’t anticipate Chase snitching, but he was not certain
what anyone else who witnessed the shooting would say. More important was what Chase would
likely do to Rich, Vanessa and Candy. Chase
was not only capable of killing, he liked killing.

“Come on, y'all gotta get packed,” Rich said, stepping into the living room.

Candy was hugging Vanessa, rocking back and forth. Vanessa needed to be comforted
after having just shot Chase. She was shell-shocked, mumbling about her nearly killing another human being.

“You did what you was supposed to do,” Candy said, caressing her back.

“Candy, go pack y'all shit. I wanna be outta here in five minutes,” Rich said. After Candy
left, Rich sat beside Vanessa and turned her face toward him. “Baby, you ain't do nothing that Chase wouldn't have done to me if he had the chance. You hear me? You saved my life.”

Vanessa nodded and hugged Rich. “I love you.”

“I never doubted you, but you just proved that in a whole different way tonight.”

Candy retuned with her overnight bag. “I got everything,” she said.

Rich stood and wiped the tears that began to fall from Candy's eyes.

“When I saw that gun, I just froze,” Candy said. “I thought I was gonna lose you like I
lost Dez.” She looked into Rich's eyes, fighting back tears. “I don't wanna lose you, Rich. I love
you.”

“I love you too.” The word “love” had slipped out. But it felt right rolling off his tongue.
At that moment, Rich was certain he was in love with two women. He grabbed Candy's overnight bag and his duffle bag and set them on the couch. “We gotta get outta the city.”

Candy nodded.

“Where we gonna go, Rich?” Vanessa asked.

“Up State. I got a hideout up there.”

“I didn't know that,” Candy said.

“Me either,” Vanessa said.

“It's for emergencies. The less you know the better for all of us. If you don't know
about it, police can't scare it out of you, thugs can't beat it out of you and it won't slip out of
your mouth to your friends if you're drunk or high. But that's irrelevant. Right now we gotta go.
Candy, you follow us in your car.”

Rich stepped out of the door, holding both bags. As they took the elevator downstairs,
Vanessa kept breaking down and crying. At the ground floor, Rich dropped the bags, and held Vanessa's hands. “Everything is gonna be straight. I promise you.”

When the elevator opened, Candy grabbed the bags. “I'll a take these to my car and wait
for y'all.”

“Good.” Rich turned to Vanessa. “Baby, you gotta listen and you gotta listen quick. You went through a serious situation tonight, but it ain't nothing you can't overcome. You ain't by
yourself. You got two other people supporting you. Two people that love you to the fullest. Ain't nothing we can't do or get through together. Now, come on.” He put his hand
around her shoulder and they began walking.

“I'm scared, Rich,” Vanessa mumbled. “I don't wanna lose you.”

“I don't wanna lose me either, baby. Just like I don't wanna lose you or Candy. We a
team, baby, and ain't nobody gonna come between us.” Rich stopped and looked into her eyes. “You hear me?”

Vanessa whispered, “Yeah,” and hugged Rich.

“Now come on, baby.” Rich unhanded her. “We gotta go.” They began walking through the hall toward the entrance of the building.

The doorman ran inside. “Call the police!” he screamed to the receptionist. “A woman was just kidnapped outside.”

Rich's eyes expanded. He charged through the door as a black Taurus turned the corner.
Chase. We used that same fuckin' getaway car to put in massive work. Now it's coming
back to haunt me.

“Mr. Thomas. It was Ms. Johnson,” the pale doorman said to Rich. He pointed to
Candy's BMW that was parked across the street. Her overnight bag and Rich's duffle bag lie on the street beside it. “She was getting inside, and out of nowhere, this car pulls up. Two guys jump out, snatch her and pull off.”

Rich turned toward Vanessa. Her face was covered in tears, she dropped to her knees.
Rich knew there was no avoiding what circumstances were dictating. He was being forced to
revert to the life of killing and crime from which he had struggled so hard to free himself. He
was facing the worse drama he had ever been in. But he was prepared to kill whoever he had to
in order to save one of the two women he ever loved.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Everything was dark. It had been that way for Candy since the masked villains forced her
inside the Taurus and put a black pillowcase over her head. She screamed and tried to fight
back, but her useless attempts to free herself came with a price. She was beat into submission,
gagged with an oily rag, her hands tied.
Her wrists felt like they were on fire. She assumed it was a gun that
hammered her head, which was throbbing. And there had to be a gash because she felt the flow of warm liquid slowly trickling down from her forehead between her eyes and over her nose.

The ride was short and silent. Short indicated to Candy that she had not left Harlem. No
talking was a sign that she was dealing with professionals. Not some James Bond-type
professionals who could beat a man to death in ten blows and evade police with the help of high-
tech gadgets. Candy's captors were the type of professionals who had snatched up so many
people in the 'hood and done so many robberies, that no matter how dramatic a mission was,
they never uttered a word in the presence of witnesses. A familiar voice could convince a jury to
convict. And professionals never were convicted of crimes. Candy had dealt with enough hustlers and street thugs to know real beef when she saw it. But for the first time in her life, she
was experiencing it.

She was snatched from the car. The firm grip on each of her arms felt like gloved
hands—another professional sign of calculated criminal experience. One of her Gucci pumps
came off while she was being drug down a short flight of concrete stairs.
They must be taking me
to a basement.

The first thing Candy heard was the barking of a dog.
There was a third set
of footsteps behind her, presumably the driver of the Taurus. Tears began flowing from Candy's
eyes when she felt a hand squeeze her butt.

They stopped. The irritating sound of chains seemed to come from every direction.
Candy's body was slammed face-first onto a table. Her wrists and ankles were chained separately,
then pulled apart until her body was stretched out.

“Get the fuck off me,” Candy tried to yell through the oil-stained cloth that gagged her.
She shifted and scrambled to free herself to no avail. The chains were locked somewhere on the
table. She heard clicks. Candy kept kicking and turning until another set of chains slammed
against her head and back. More blood. Her hair stopped it from leaking too far.

Her ankles were simultaneously gripped by the gloved hands. The chains jingled as they
tightened, pulling her limbs further apart. Her body was outstretched on the table, a limb at each
end. She felt as if something inside of her had torn, muscles, ligaments, arteries—it was as if anything within her that was capable of expanding was stretched beyond limit.

The pillowcase was partially removed from her face for a second. She got a glimpse of the
basement. It was covered in soot and debris. Tears leaked from her eyes as she felt her clothes
being cut off. The snip of scissors was deafening. Candy was certain that a harsh reality
awaited her once she was nude.

Heels.
Candy could hear the click-clack of shoes. It must have been hard bottoms of
another professional thug. The steps grew louder, closing in on her. The steps stopped and a hand
wrapped in a latex glove trailed from her ankles upward. Her butt cheeks were parted and what felt like a thick tree branch was rammed inside her anus with full force. Candy tried to wiggle
away, but the more she moved the more her body seemed to tear apart. More chains lashed her
head and back. More blood exited her body.

Candy's tears increased when she heard the clicking of a plastic-encased razor being
opened. The sound was familiar. She had carried a razor all her life. Everyone in the shop
seemed to have one. Leah, Meisha, Chanel—everyone but harmless Vanessa. Candy's muffled
screams did not go much further then the rag in her mouth as the razor dug into her butt cheek.
Each one of them was slowly and carefully carved. It was the type of precision that went into
surgical incisions and sculpting fine art.

The chains were removed from her limbs and she was turned over. When she tried to
break free, chains slammed down on her face and stomach, over and over until piss and shit
leaked from her. She was beat back into the toxic pool of blood, feces and urine that covered the
table. Candy had been so focused on trying to avoid the severity of her situation and block out
the pain, she forgot there was a child in her womb. That agonizing truth set in when
Candy could not scream. She could not think. She did not know who she was or where
she was. All she knew was she did not like what she was experiencing.

* * *

Candy had been bleeding all night. She awoke when the Taurus hit a pothole.
She was in a steamy trunk filled with the hot stench of her waste that covered her body. Her
entire body was sore and she was too fatigued to move. The Taurus came to a halt and the trunk was opened. Through the pillowcase covering her face, Candy could feel the sun and see some of
its glimmer. Then she felt a pair of hands lift her. Her body cringed as she slammed against the
hard, tar-paved street. The door of the Taurus slammed and its tires peeled off. There was a haze of burnt rubber that Candy could hardly smell through the waste ingrained on the pillowcase and her clothing.

“What the—”

Finally. A familiar voice. Tears rushed from Candy's eyes. The voice had snatched her back into the harsh reality of her life. The pillowcase was removed from her head. When the blinding sun wore off, Candy
looked into Leah's eyes. Both women were in the center of one of the lanes on Lennox Avenue
in front of the shop.

Leah took off her jacket and wrapped Candy's body. She removed the oily rag from Candy's mouth and screamed for help.

VANESSA

Vanessa was snatched from her sleep at 9:03 in the morning by the sound of gunshots.
She crawled from bed and crept out of the bedroom in search of Rich, but she couldn't find him.
She peeped through the curtain of another room, toward the sound of the gunfire. She exhaled
when she saw Rich shooting at bottles in the woods behind the cabin they had arrived at the night
before. She ran out the back door and called Rich. He kept shooting. She covered her ears,
walking closer, noticing a small arsenal of guns and bullets spread out on a bed sheet on the
grass.

Rich turned to her. In his hand was a .50-caliber Desert Eagle. In his eyes were tears. Vanessa slowly approached and hugged him. She remembered that Rich had not gotten much
sleep when they arrived at the cabin tucked discretely in the woods. Rich had blamed himself for
Candy's kidnapping. Vanessa had tried telling him it was not his fault, but he insisted that had he
not punched Chase, Candy would be with them.

Vanessa had also wallowed in self-pity since the incident. She shouldered the blame
because she shot Chase. She felt that if she had not been so weak, Rich would not have been
consoling her inside the penthouse lobby, leaving Candy to exit the building alone with the bags Rich was supposed to be carrying.

Staying cooped up in a cabin in Balmville, New York only enhanced Vanessa's
frustration and guilt. The wealthy Orange County enclave was just an hour and twenty minutes from Harlem, but Vanessa felt like she was in another world. During the ride upstate, she took in the scenery—the country club, mansions, golf course, a seemingly endless sea of trees and perfectly
trimmed lawns. The nearest house to Rich's cabin was a large two-story ranch backed by
towering hills. The peaceful atmosphere of Balmville was the type of environment Vanessa
would enjoy under normal circumstances—circumstances in which Candy was safe and present.

“What are we gonna do?” Vanessa asked as she parted from Rich's embrace.

“I got a plan. Don't worry. I made some calls late last night. People got they eyes open in
Harlem. Don't worry. Candy gonna be back and motherfuckers gon' get it!” He looked down
and pointed at his guns. “Pick that gold one up.”

“Huh?”

“Pick it up,” he demanded. “The little gold one.”

“Why?”

“Because I don't want you having another nervous breakdown if you have to use a gun again. And the way shit going down, you need to learn how to protect yourself.”

Vanessa stared at the gun, then back at Rich. She took a deep breath and picked up the weapon. Rich laid his on the bed sheet. Vanessa's hand shook nervously. Her mind doubled back to when she shot Chase.

“That's a Three-Eighty Llama. Three-Eighty is the caliber of the bullet.”

“Exactly what is a caliber?”

“The caliber is the diameter of the bullet based on an inch. So the bullet in that gun is three hundred eightieths of an inch. It's all fractions, baby. The gun I put down is a Fifty-Caliber. That means the bullet is a fiftieth of a inch, which is mathematically a half of a inch.”

“Oh.” Vanessa nodded, twisting the .380 in her hand.

Rich stood behind Vanessa, placing his hands over hers. He showed her how to aim
through the sights of the gun, how to use the safety, load and cock the gun, then fire. Within half
an hour, Vanessa had gone through over 100 bullets. Her aim needed improvement, but she had
become comfortable holding and shooting the gun. She was surprised how empowered she felt with it in her hand.

She sat back, watching Rich shoot bottles. She kept thinking of how just days ago,
everything in their lives was perfect. Now Candy was missing and a man who had left the streets
behind was teaching Vanessa to shoot. She wondered if things would ever be how they
were.

Rich's phone rang and he answered it. He stood speechless, dropping his BlackBerry to the ground.

Vanessa rushed to his side. “What happened?”

“Candy's in the hospital.”

***

Vanessa had been quiet during the ride to St. Luke's Hospital in Manhattan. Neither she,
nor Rich knew what Candy's status was, only that she had been beaten and dumped in front of the shop naked.

Vanessa and Rich neared Candy's room. Besides Leah being present, Vanessa was surprised to see Chanel, Meisha and Mimi outside of Candy’s room. Everyone was moping around with teary eyes. They gave Rich and Vanessa a group hug.

It was Leah who had called Rich to relay the bad news. She now revealed that a large “C” had been carved into each of Candy's buttcheeks.

Rich held Vanessa up, as her knees buckled in response to the heinous details of the
crime to which Candy had been subjected. “It's my fault,” Vanessa kept screaming until Rich managed to calm her.

When the doctor stepped out of Candy's room, everyone swarmed him. “She suffered
severe trauma to most of her body.” He told them that Candy had also been sodomized. One result of the blunt trauma was a miscarriage.

Vanessa's head dropped and everything became a blur. Faces turned to silhouettes and
voice seemed slurred. She staggered to a chair as the doctor continued talking. Vanessa wanted blood. Chase had to pay for killing the child Vanessa looked forward to helping raise. Candy did
not deserve the punishment she had received. She was suffering simply because of her
association and love, Vanessa rationalized. Within a few days, Vanessa had been transformed
from a joyous young woman with an open heart to a callous soul shattered by the unwanted
destruction of her family.

Rich cried as he stared at Candy's swollen face and the IV running into her body. The bruises, dry blood and gashes in her head made her almost unrecognizable. There was little left
of the woman with the face and figure of a model. She tried to smile, but it was obvious the pain
was too much for her to completely remove the frown from her face. Rich kissed her forehead and held her hand. He noticed welts on her wrists. He wiped her watery eyes and whispered, “I love you.” He called Vanessa over, sliding his hand on her shoulder.

“I'm so sorry,” Vanessa said, hugging Candy.

Rich sat on a nearby chair, allowing the other women to speak to Candy. He had never felt so weak, helpless and guilty. The loss of his son kept haunting him. The fact that his child
had not yet been born did not matter. There had been a million visions in Rich's mind of his son.
Now, those visions would not materialize.

Chanel sat next to Rich. “I ain't even gonna front like I know what you going through,
`cause I don't. And I know I ain't been on the best terms with you or your women. But I know nobody deserves this shit. And I know that you get busy, or whatever. But I'm gonna tell
you to think before you make a move. You got two women who love you and you still got a baby on the
way from one. You don't wanna give all of that up going after Chase.”

Fuck that.
Nothing would stop Rich from his murderous plan. Chase's selfish desire to stay
in the game had disrupted everything that Rich was building outside of a life of crime. Chase had earned every bullet that Rich had reserved for him.

Rich stood and walked outside of the room. He paced for a while, thinking of how he would
function on a daily basis, while being haunted by the image of Candy's scarred body. The
sight of one of the two women he loved in such a brutalized state would push Rich to murder anyone,
even if he did not want to. But Rich
wanted
to kill Chase, so the
need
for revenge was a logical
reaction.