The Apostles (22 page)

When Maine-Maine heard the trunk's locking mechanism release, he lifted the trunk lid and saw a gang of clothes. Bending over he began digging through them until he reached the bottom of the trunk—no shotgun. Not understanding the absence of the shotgun, Maine-Maine started to straighten his back and said, “A, homie, I don't see it.”

Out the corner of his eye, Maine-Maine saw something long, shiny, and sharp glittering in the hand of the dope fiend the second before Insane Wayne plunged the hunting knife into the side of his neck. With an outward ripping motion, Insane Wayne snatched away most of Maine-Maine's throat with the serrated blade of the knife.

Maine-Maine clutched at the space where his throat used to be with a look of utter amazement on his face. He wanted to run but his legs gave way under him as his body catapulted into shock. All Maine-Maine knew at this moment was that he wanted to ask the grinning dope fiend why he had killed him. The white fabric of his Denver Nuggets jersey turned scarlet red in milliseconds as his blood cascaded over his clutching fingers. In slow motion he sat
down in the vacant lot. His hands were still trying to form a makeshift bandage as he fell over on his side.

Insane Wayne chuckled as he pulled a Green Bay Packers hat from the trunk and tossed it on the ground beside Maine-Maine. As his victim bled to death, Insane Wayne pulled slowly out of the vacant lot.

T
HIRTY-FIVE FLOORS OF POLISHED GLASS AND STEEL GLEAMED
in the night. A midnight blue Chevy Impala glided to a stop in front of the North Shore condo building. Behind the tinted glass of the automobile, Solemn Shawn collected his bag of Bennigan's food as Murderman sat behind the steering wheel and watched him.

“Them some big-ass salads, A,” Murderman commented.

“These boys be right too,” Solemn Shawn assured him. “Nessa be fucking with the garden salad joint, but I get down with the country fried chicken joint with blue cheese dressing, A.”

“A fried chicken salad? I bet a sister thought of that. It sounds like it's good though.”

“It is, A. You should try one.”

“That's all right, yo. If they make an Italian beef salad or a gyro salad then I'll get down, A. Are you in for the night?”

Solemn Shawn looked up at the building. “Yeah, I'm about to chill, A. I'm going to eat this salad and watch the NBA on TNT. Play-off time. What you about to get yourself into, A?”

“Me and Yo-Yo got a little business to take care of. We found out that bitch Vee and his ho-ass Governors are behind Ghost getting offed. We gone send that bitch a little message, you know what I mean?”

“Be careful,” was all Solemn Shawn said as he opened the car door and climbed out.

Murderman waited for the Head Apostle to get safely inside the
building's lobby before he zoomed off into the night to handle his business.

In the lobby of the condo building, Solemn Shawn ignored the probing eyes of an elderly white couple as they waited for the elevator. He was used to the cold silences and even colder stares of the building's mostly well-to-do tenants. On the elevator the smell of the fried chicken in the salad wafted from the Bennigan's bag. Solemn Shawn could have sworn he heard the older man's stomach growl. That brought a smile to his lips as he listened to the soft jazz leaking from the elevator's speakers. At the sixteenth floor he left the elevator and walked to his apartment door. He unlocked the door and went inside.

In the foyer, Solemn Shawn kicked his off his shoes and padded into the darkened living room. He set the salads down on the table behind the modern deco sofa and flicked on a lamp. To his surprise, Vanessa was sitting on the couch. Her legs were folded under her and she was hugging a large throw pillow. On her feet were a pair of pink Footees, and she was wearing a pair of loose-fitting pajama bottoms and a pink baby T-shirt. Her multicolored silk scarf was in place over her braids.

“Hey, baby. What you doing sitting here in the dark?”

Vanessa didn't answer.

Solemn Shawn raised his eyebrows as he headed for the kitchen. He pulled two iced teas from the fridge and returned to the living room. He set the drinks on the coffee table and announced, “I stopped at Bennigan's and got you one of the garden salads like you like.” He lifted her tray out of the bag and walked around the couch to hand her the garden salad, but Vanessa wouldn't accept it. Unsure what to do, Solemn Shawn stood there for a moment holding the salad. Finally he shrugged his shoulders and set the salad on the coffee table beside her beverage.

“Woman, what's wrong with you?” he asked as he walked back around the couch to get his salad.

Vanessa still didn't answer him.

Quickly Shawn scanned his memory for something he could have done or not done to piss her off. He couldn't think of anything, so he picked up his salad and took a seat on the other end of the sofa from her. He reached for the remote of the forty-two-inch plasma television and powered the set on. Vanessa was still silent, so he started eating his salad and watching a play-off basketball game. Even though it was only the first quarter it was already a heated battle of buckets. It took only a few moments and he was engrossed in the game.

He knew that he wasn't wrong for ignoring Vanessa's funky mood. If he knew her, and it was hard not to know someone you'd been with for eight years, he knew she would let him know what was wrong with her. Through the second quarter and halftime she was silent. At the beginning tip-off of the third quarter, however, she got up off the couch and walked over and switched the television off. She retook her seat.

Shawn looked at her like she had lost her damn mind.

She looked up from her pillow and asked, “How long we gone do this?”

Slightly pissed off, he asked, “Do what, woman?”

“How long we gone act like we live this normal life. Like you work an honest job.”

Shawn rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “What brought this on, Nessa?”

Her voice rose a few octaves. “The fact that I felt like cleaning the apartment like a good little woman and I found not one, not two, but three guns. Three pistols. And why you sitting there looking like I'm the one that's crazy; I bet you got a gun on you now.”

Bashfully, Shawn grinned. He had forgotten about the mini Intratec 9mm in the back pocket of his jeans. “Would you rather I get caught out there without heat? In case you've forgotten, sometimes I'm around not-so-nice people. I don't even know why you acting like that. The first time you met me I had a pistol on me. That's the kind of life I live, Nessa.”

“That's what I'm talking about,” she said as a tear ran down her pretty face. “What kind of life is that to live? My grandmother told me anywhere you got to take a gun to go, you don't need to be there. We can't even go out with my friends from work and just have some fun, a few drinks and dancing. You might bump into one of your enemies or someone might step on your shoes or something and your security might have to kill them.”

Shawn waved her off. “C'mon, now, Nessa. That is totally absurd. Where is this stuff coming from? I've never heard you talk like this before.”

“I'll tell you where it's coming from,” Vanessa sobbed. “It's coming from the woman that agreed to marry you and wants to have your children someday.”

“Vanessa, what are you talking about—you can't even have kids.”

“I can,” she muttered, burying her face in the pillow. “I've always been able to.”

“What did you say?” Shawn asked.

“I've always been able to have children,” Vanessa confessed. “I just told you that so you wouldn't ask. In the beginning I was taking the pill. For the last few years it's been the three-month shot.”

Shawn was stunned. Over the years he had relegated himself to being childless as long as he was with Vanessa. He felt a slight feeling of betrayal wash over him. All he could bring himself to say was, “Why?”

His woman was silent.

“Why, Nessa?” Shawn repeated bluntly. “Why would you have me think for all these years that you couldn't have children?”

“I'll tell you why,” she said softly. “I watched my friends, cousins, hell, even one of my sisters fall for guys that live like you. Gangsters, thugs, live niggas, whatever you want to call them. I watched these women fall in love with these bad boys. They had babies by these men and planned lives with these men. Everything was gravy as y'all say—for a while anyway. Then they started getting killed and
locked up. They started getting high on the shit they was selling and dragging these women into their bullshit. I watched my sister go to the penitentiary because she loved a nigga so much she took a case for him.

“While she was in prison this same man kept hustling and ended up getting killed. I used to drive my mother and my nephew to the joint so this little boy could see the only parent he had left living like a caged animal. I vowed to myself then that I would never have a baby by a man like you. I'm sorry, but I couldn't put a child of mine through that uncertainty. Can you understand that, Shawn?”

Shawn said, “I can overstand that. I can't even be mad at you. It's true, Nessa. A lot of cats don't make it out the game. You know that and I know that. You've always dealt with that fact though. That's what made me sure that I want to make you my wife. Your decision shows that you have convictions, morals, and beliefs that you hold strongly to, but my question has to be, Why is this surfacing now?”

“Because I want my husband to be with me now and forever. I don't want to talk to you through some thick-ass glass. I don't want to be one of those wives who has to visit her husband in the graveyard. I don't want you paralyzed, or in prison for life. I don't want to have to worry about unseen enemies. Or if one night someone will break in here and kill all three of us in our beds.”

Shawn allowed her words to marinate in his head. “Well, since I know you never open your mouth about a problem unless you've thought it through, I suggest that you tell me your plan instead of sitting there pouting.”

After a pause Vanessa said, “You really think you know me, don't you. First rule of management: Instead of bitching about a problem find a solution, then bitch. You know my cousin and her husband moved to Tacoma, Washington. Renee, the one I went to visit last year. I've been talking to her a lot lately and I have to admit that the place is ripe for investing.”

Solemn Shawn interrupted, “What kind of investments?”

“Don't laugh, you promise you won't laugh.”

“Woman, tell me.”

“Krispy Kreme doughnuts.”

He wanted to laugh, but he knew Vanessa was serious. Still he asked, “You want to sell doughnuts? I mean, they are some pretty good doughnuts, but you expect to get rich selling them?”

“You ain't got to say it like that,” she sneered. “Yeah, doughnuts. When I was out there I noticed a million Starbucks, but no Krispy Kreme. All I kept thinking was that that good-ass coffee needed a good-ass doughnut to go with it. So I did my homework on purchasing a franchise and starting it up out there. Krispy Kreme is like a new age franchise. If you got the cash they'll send you everything you need and send you to school, plus invest money with your franchise so you can expand. I made a few calls and everything is favorable. With my projections we can be building our second store within a year of opening the doors of our first one. In five years' time we'll be worth millions off of selling doughnuts.”

“It's that simple?” he asked.

“Yeah, it's that simple,” Vanessa replied sarcastically.

“Let me get this right. You're saying that all we have to do is pick up and move to Tacoma to get rich. So where do you propose we get the seed money?”

Vanessa spread her arms wide. “Look around. This condo is worth two hundred thousand easily. I got about sixty thousand in savings, and no telling what you've got. I'm telling you, Shawn, I didn't work my ass off to get a master's degree in business to be stuck in somebody's bank as a glorified teller. I know the ins and outs of running a business.”

Shawn rubbed his clean-shaven jaw. “Sounds good, Nessa.”

“What do you mean, ‘sounds good’?” she challenged, ready to assail him with more facts and figures.

“I mean I like the way it sounds. Let's do it.”

“For real, Shawn?” Vanessa gushed.

“I said yes, woman. I just need a little time to get clear of a few commitments, then we can fold our tents here.”

“Thank you, baby,” Vanessa said as she reached out to hug her man, but he grabbed both of her wrists, stopping her embrace. “What's wrong, Shawn?”

He looked her in the eyes. “Now I might not have college degrees like you, but I think you know that I'm not slow. I might not know trigonometry or nothing but I think I got the simple math thing down pat. I'm only counting two of us here. A while ago you said ‘the three of us.’ “

“H-H-Huh?” she stammered.

“Don't start stuttering and muttering now, woman. What exactly did you mean by the
three of us
?”

Vanessa's head dropped as she breathed, “Me, you, and the baby.”

Shawn's heart skipped a beat. “The baby? What? I thought that you just told me that you had been getting the shot?”