Riding Dirty on I-95 (29 page)

“Hey you startled me,” she said. She hadn't noticed that he had gotten out of the car.

“I startled you, huh?” He moved in closer.

She nodded her head, knowing that something was wrong. “Yeah, you surprised me. I didn't see you standing there like that.”

“And you surprised me, too,” he said in a bitter tone.

“What are you talking about, Cleezy?”

“You stole my fucking money.” Cleezy looked at her dead in her eyes. His eyes watered with tears of anger.

“What?” Paula shot him a look that could have killed him. The stare was filled with hurt, confusion, and anger.

“Yup, you just told me not even a month ago that I had one hundred seven thousand dollars, and now I only got forty. What? Was you hoping the prosecutor's star witness would keep my ass behind bars so you could spend up the rest of my shit?”

“Yo, don't even come at me like that,” Paula said, walking off.

“Fuck you going, bitch?”

“You know what, Cleezy, fuck you!” she screamed. “I'm so tired of this fucking bullshit. Tryin to prove my love to you. Over and over again. It's all bullshit. I do everything, and it ain't ever enough.”

“Look, Paula, I would have given you whatever you wanted. Anything, but you ain't ever ask for shit, and now my money is gone. The whole time you masquerading like you hit the number, and you got all these new clients and that's how you going to Gucci and Louis Vuitton. But the whole time you jerking my money off.”

“Think whatever. I don't owe you an explanation. Fuck you, motherfucker. I done did all I can to show you where we at. As a matter of fact, I would've been better off hollering at your boy when he was at me hard while you were fighting your case. But I ain't even want to tell you about how that nigga was some shit and how he was straight begging to pay me to eat my pussy. I ain't even want to bring that shit to you while you were locked up. You had enough shit to worry about.” Cleezy never responded because he
wanted to believe what she was saying, but then out of anger, she hit him with the ultimate blow. “And from what I hear, that nigga had a way bigger dick than yours,” she added, just to insult his manhood so that he would feel less than a man the same way he was making her feel less than a woman.

Cleezy's heart broke at that moment, and he snapped. He pulled out his pistol and without even taking a deep breath he pulled the trigger and put three to her heart.

“Y
our Honor, the prosecution and the defendant have agreed on a plea,” the prosecutor on Mercys assault case said as the bitch-ass hotel clerk sat at the defense table and sniffled.

Mercy was relieved that the hotel clerk had pled guilty, because she didn't want to take the stand on anybody. Not even her worst enemy. She just wasn't raised to be nobody's snitch bitch, not even against the person who had the gun to her head and left her for dead. Being a snitch bitch was not in her genes.

The court-appointed lawyer got up out of his seat, buttoned his jacket, and began to speak. “The defendant, Andrew Long, has agreed that the facts supporting his guilty plea are as follows: that he, along with his alleged accomplice, Mr. Samuels, forcefully entered into Ms. Jiles's hotel room with the intent to rob her. They assaulted her with a deadly weapon, that weapon being a stolen gun. They held her against her will, resulting in the charges of attempted murder, abduction, and aggravated assault. Mr. Long understands that the victim in this case, Mercy Jiles, suffered serious injury. As a part of the plea agreement, my client promises to pay restitution as well as cooperate with the authorities to provide information about other serious criminal acts.”

A lame motherfucker
, Mercy thought as she sat in the courtroom.
He ain't no big man now. He could beat me up and play Mr. Bad-Ass when it came to me, but now this motherfucker wanna be a prostitute and turn snitch and puppet to the police.

The judge sat up in his chair and looked at the former hotel clerk. “Mr. Long, is this correct?”

“Yes, sir,” Andrew replied, with his head down.

“Has anyone forced you to enter into this plea?” the judge asked.

“No, sir,” he answered.

The judge wrote something on the case file sitting before him before speaking. “Mr. Long, your plea of guilty has been entered and is accepted by the court. Sentencing will be set for a later date.”

Mercy listened as the attorney and prosecutor went through their calendars to come up with a date. Once the date was set, court was adjourned and Mercy and Chrissie, who had been there for support, strolled out of court not believing that ol' dude had just rolled over on his man.

“That stupid motherfucker was the one who dropped his ID,” Mercy said. “They didn't know nothing about his man being there until he said something. How he just gonna snitch on his man like that?”

“That nigga is weak,” Chrissie added.

“Don't get me wrong. I'm glad that they got both of them coward-ass rat bastards.”

“Me too, but Mer, if we ever did some ol' wild shit, you gon' hold yours, right?”

“You know I would.”

“Damn, Mer, you were just worrying about having to take the stand on a motherfucker who damn near killed you.”

“I mean, even though I had been subpoenaed, I still felt bad. But hey, that nigga made it so I wouldn't have to.”

“Girl, you really are a real mothafuckin gangsta bitch and straight up true to the game,” Chrissie said as they exited the courthouse and prepared to hail a taxi.

Mercy was distracted with her cell phone. “I wonder who this is calling me from up top,” she said as she looked down at the phone and saw that someone with a
646
area code had called a couple of times under her missed calls.

“Girl, it ain't no tellin like Pete told Helen,” Chrissie joked as she flagged down a cabbie. The girls got into the taxi, instructing the cabbie where to take them.

In the taxi, Mercy tried calling the
646
number but only got a voice mail. Once the cab dropped her and Chrissie off at their hotel, they stopped into the hotel restaurant to get something to eat and then headed up to their room. Mercy's cell phone rang as they entered the hotel room. She looked down at the caller ID and saw that it was the mysterious
646
number again.

“Hello,” Mercy answered.

“Hello to you, too,” the voice on the other end said.

“Heeeeyyyy Baaayyyybeeee.” Mercy was all smiles, happy to hear Hyena's voice.

“Congrats are in order. Both on the outcome of the trial and your new projects.”

“Thank you!”

“I saw the video, and I must say you are very talented. I am proud of you.”

“Thank you so much!”

“I see everything is good for you.”

“You know what, Hy?” Mercy said as her voice declined. “I'ma keep it real. I'm doing dirt-ball bad. I need some help bad. That deal with that company was no good.”

“Don't worry,” Hyena said in a consoling tone. He must have missed her as much as she had missed him. “I need some help like
you. I'm going to wire you some money, and I need you to bring your bathing suits. Is it cool for me to have Uncle Chris pick you up at Granny Smith's tomorrow?”

Mercy knew that he was talking in code. He was asking if he could send the money in Chrissie's name and that he needed her to meet him in the Big Apple. She chuckled a bit and then replied, “Yeah, that's cool.”

“All right. So I'ma knock that out, and then we're headed to the beach for the family reunion when you get to Grandma's.”

Hyena's call was right on time. Although a part of Mercy told her to hang in there, try to stay legit, and let things work themselves out, Mercy now had a little bit of hope. She could see a flickering light at the end of the tunnel—she just hoped it wasn't the train headed straight for her. This time, just like the last, she told herself it would be her final run. She slept well that night before she and Chrissie headed back home the next morning.

When Mercy got home, she was greeted by a warrant in debt, a court notice that she had not paid her rent. Yeah, Hyena's call was definitely on time. At first she was reluctant about making the run for him, but once the reality set in, the call from Hyena was a godsend, and one job was what she needed to catch up on her bills. So she prepared herself mentally to do the damn thing. Everything went as planned as Mercy arrived in New York. She hopped in the rig with Farmer John just as she had done before, and this time headed to Miami.

S
ince Paula's death, Cleezy had gone on with his life as if the time he'd spent with Paula never existed. At least he tried to pretend that it hadn't. He stayed focused on stacking as much paper as he could. As he got ready for his biweekly trip to Miami, he stopped by his mother's house to get the new Triple A card that she had been worrying him to come and get for the past three weeks. It would be his luck that just as soon as he didn't go by there and get it, he would end up needing it.

As he went through the mail on the new dining table, he couldn't find the card anywhere. He went into his mother's office and began looking in the drawers of her new cherrywood desk. Cleezy just happened to stumble upon his mother's bank statements. Ordinarily, he wouldn't care less about what his moms was holding, but for some reason, this little voice inside his head kept nagging him to take a look at them.

Cleezy couldn't believe his eyes as he flipped through the past bank statements only to find that each month the balance was growing increasingly larger. He knew that her factory job wasn't kicking out for that kind of money. No way could his mom just have that kind of money at her fingertips. If that was the case,
Cleezy should have been joining her at Bingo a long time ago. Cleezy did a double take when he saw plain as day that there was over forty thousand dollars in his mother's account. He stood there stunned.

“Ain't this a motherfucking bitch?” he screamed. He thought about Paula, and a rush of rage came over him. He threw the bank statements across the room, kicked the desk chair into the wall, and knocked the computer on the floor.

Why was he surprised that his mother had played him just like she had played every other man that she'd ever had in her life? The writing had been on the wall for many years, especially the past few months since he had come home from jail. The new living room suite, the nice Cartier watch, the fine jewelry, clothes, the expensive trips, and all of the things that she claimed she got from working overtime, winning at Bingo, and using her good credit to finance. Never had the thought crossed Cleezy's mind that his mother would have robbed him of his riches, an act that he blamed Paula for and made her pay for with her life. It was a low blow, and he could not understand why his own mother would steal from him. He had given her everything that she wanted, spoiled her better than any of the women that he had ever fucked.

Cleezy made his way downstairs in a zombielike daze. His limp body collapsed in the new sectional furniture in the den. Almost robotic, he turned on the stereo. Listening to the surround sound of Jay-Z's tune “Song Cry,” he thought about Paula and he cried like a baby. For the next couple of hours, he drank one Heineken after another as he waited for his mother to arrive home. By the time she did, Cleezy was all cried out. He heard the automatic garage door open and Lolly's car pull up into the garage.

“Cllllleeeeezzzzyyyy,” she called out, after spotting his car parked out front. “Hey, baby,” she shouted. As she was bringing
in her shopping bags, he appeared and just stood across the room. “Boy, you better help yo' momma with these bags.”

“For what? It looks like you done helped yo'self,” he said dryly.

“Baby, what's wrong? You look like some woman done broke your heart,” his mother said as she got closer.

“Yeah.” He nodded with tears in his eyes.

“Come here and tell Momma all about it.” Lolly reached out to him as if she wanted to embrace him with a hug, but he refused her gesture.

“Momma, stop faking,” Cleezy said as he pushed her away.