The Corner III (No Way Out) Read online

  He joked, “You must be one of those crazy women. Uh oh, I might need to snatch one of those guys off their bikes and make a run for it.”

  She stepped to Slim, lightly grabbed his light blue rayon/cotton blend camp shirt and pulled him toward her. She lightly kissed him on the cheek then said, “Pedal on Lance Armstrong.”

  Trish didn’t know why she’d kissed Slim but was glad she did it. There was something about him, and she was having such a nice time that she just did it. They had been to a matinee, and the movie was great. They were now walking on the beach getting to know each other, and she was feeling him after simple things like that—simple things she wasn’t used to.

  Slim smiled, held her hand, and they started back walking. He said, “I think I better stay here and keep you company. Besides, when I pick a woman up from her home, I return her there, no matter how the date goes.”

  A real man, Trish thought.

  As they walked, Slim told Trish some history of the beach. He told her that the city’s park commission built a breakwater which extended from North Avenue to Oak Street, and then even farther south to Ohio Street. That the project included a new sand beach at Oak Street in the late 1890s, thus with the scenery of downtown as the backdrop, it was the most appealing beach in the city. When she asked what a breakwater was, he told her it was a wall built in Lake Michigan so when storms came it would lessen the impact of the waves that led to erosion of the land and beaches.

  Trish loved the fact that Slim was so smart and when she asked how he knew so much, he told her that his uncle used to give him books to read all the time and whenever he rode in the car with his uncle, he used to tell him the history of various landmarks.

  Slim and Trish made their way back to his car. They were standing on the passenger’s side of his Cadillac STS. He leaned on the door and faced Lake Michigan. She leaned her back on him, and he wrapped his arms around her waist.

  Trish smiled as she watched seagulls fly and the red sun as it began to dip its way into the lake. “This is so beautiful,” she said as she whisked strands of hair from her face.

  “That it is.” Slim said.

  They were quiet for a moment then Slim asked, “Hey, would you like for me to fix you dinner? I know you have to be hungry.”

  Not sure if she should go to Slim’s place, she said, “Well, I think I better be getting home.”

  Slim caught the hesitancy. His lips were near her ear as he whispered, “Look, dinner and that’s it. I’m just not ready for this to end.”

  Trish felt a tingle in her side from the closeness of Slim’s lips to one of her erogenous zones. She held on to his hands that were resting on her waist and gave them a light squeeze when she said, “Okay, I trust you.”

  * * *

  Feet and a couple of youngsters were sitting in the stash spot waiting for Greg and Shaun to show with ten of the fifty kilos of cocaine they’d picked up from one of the Russians. Feet and the two young men would break down and package the cocaine. Some would be cooked into crack, and the rest would remain in powder form but stepped on with a cutting agent. Greg liked to use procaine because it seemed to keep the quality of the cocaine and stretched the drug better than other cutting agents.

  Feet walked down the stairs into the basement where two of his soldiers were drinking a beer, playing rap music and Madden on XBOX. He shook his head as he walked to one of the men and slapped the wireless controller from the man’s hand.

  “What the fuck, Feet?” the heavy-set man barked as he stood chest to chest with Feet.

  Feet, who was about five-feet eight and thin, was one who was never scared, and it didn’t hurt that he always packed heat and wasn’t afraid to use it.

  “Nigga, you best to sit your stupid ass down. We got kilos coming in and y’all niggas down here drinking beer, playing video games and tellin’ lies on your dicks.” He turned and faced the young man who was still sitting and continued. “Greg is on his way and what you think he’s gonna say if he see y’all niggas loafin’ like this?”

  Red, the skinny one, stood and walked to the game system and turned it off. He picked up the empty beer bottles and threw them in the trash saying, “My bad, Feet.”

  Red, an eighteen year old light-skinned kid with a few freckles on his nose, had grown up in the hood and used to get teased about his looks, but once he joined up with Feet who was employed by Greg, he was part of a team who was not to be fucked with. He was wet behind the ears but eager to learn.

  Parker, the rather large man who’d stood chest to chest with Feet, had been on the team for about six months, but Feet didn’t care too much for him. Greg had put Parker on the team, and Parker had put in work, but nevertheless, Feet didn’t care for him. He was twenty-seven, six years older than Feet, and it didn’t sit well with Parker that he had to take orders from a much younger and smaller man. Feet noticed the hate and always kept a watchful eye on Parker and had no problem with slumping the big man if need be.

  Feet’s cell rang, it was the two soldiers he had upstairs keeping watch for Greg and Shaun.

  “What’s up?”

  “Man, I think undercover is on us.”

  “What? I’m on my way up,” Feet said as he ran up the stairs.

  Once in the living room that had the lights off, Feet asked Dave, “Why you think that?”

  The soldier replied, “A black Charger rolled through about thirty minutes ago. I didn’t think anything of it, but I was using these,” the young man held up a pair of stolen night vision binoculars a dope fiend had given him for some crack a week ago. “And saw the same car parked down the street. He probably thought he couldn’t be seen since it’s dark out.”

  Feet remembered when Dave had got the binoculars and thought it was stupid of him to trade the crack for the equipment. But the twenty-dollar piece of crack for night vision binocular transaction was about to be worth hundreds of thousands to the crew. As Feet looked through the binoculars, he saw the vehicle and knew who owned the vehicle—Detective Styles.

  “Good job, shorty,” Feet said as he handed Dave his binoculars and pulled out his cell and made a call.

  * * *

  Elisa, nicely built, but tough sista with a tattoo of a pit bull on her neck, barked, “Y’all bitches know what to do! Start breaking that shit down, and let’s get to work!”

  Elisa was yelling at the three women she had working for her. They were women who were under her control. They were all dykes who did as told—by Elisa that is. She’d met the women while doing time and had control over them while locked up in Lincoln Correction Center. It was there where Elisa controlled several women with her mind and violence. She learned at an early age, when she realized she liked women and not men that all she had to do was employ tactics like the pimps she used to watch in the old movies, and she could control women just as men did.

  The women were in a basement standing and sitting at a buffet-type table that had the cocaine Greg and Shaun had dropped off on it. They cracked open the packages and began weighing, separating and cooking it into crack. Sitting on a stool watching was a rather large bald man holding a sawed off shotgun and wearing a shoulder holster with a .45 caliber automatic in it.

  One woman was taking her time, and that’s when Elisa smacked her upside the head. “Bitch, get a move on it. We ain’t got all night. You want to get paid, and you want some of this, you need to get to work,” she said as she grabbed her crotch then kissed the woman hard on the lips.

  The man shook his head at the lesbian scene, and that’s when they heard a loud commotion upstairs. Then the words POLICE being yelled by some men. The man jumped from the stool and looked at a black and white monitor that showed men standing on the other side of the secure metal door up the stairs. He looked over his shoulder at the women. “Y’all bitches know what to do!”

  Elisa yelled, “Get a move on it, hoes!”

  Elisa and the women began flushing the drugs in the toilet and washing them down the sink as the police wer
e banging on the door with the battering ram.

  “Hurry the fuck up!” the man with the shotgun yelled knowing that eventually the police would get through the door.

  The women had worked quick and efficiently, and Elisa was dumping the last package of cocaine down the drain when she yelled, “The bleach bitch!”

  One of the women grabbed the two bottles of bleach, handed one to Elisa, and she used the other. They poured the bleach down the drain on the table and around the toilet. Everywhere cocaine could have fallen. They all were throwing their rubber gloves and all the packaging in a metal garbage can when the door finally opened. Elisa glanced at the detectives as they ran down the stairs. She squirted lighter fluid in the can and set the items on fire.

  The man with the shotgun had set his weapons on the ground, and Spivey was cuffing him. Rivera and Johnson rushed toward the women. Rivera realized that they had gotten rid of all the drugs and was pissed.

  “Nothing going here, detective. We were just about to party with our man over there. What, y’all crashing the orgy?” she laughed.

  Rivera punched Elisa in the nose and the butch of a woman’s head snapped back violently. “The dope may be gone, but you’re gonna tell me where the money is, bitch!”

  * * *

  “What you got?” Styles said into his phone as he sat in his Dodge Charger.

  Spivey said, “The dope’s gone—”

  “I figured that with their layout. The boy said they’d flush it if hit. It’s their money I want.”

  “That’s the thing, Styles, the dyke bitch is tough. Rivera whipped her ass like she was a dude, and she still didn’t give up shit.”

  “If they have the dope, then the niggas who left have the money. Let me give Barnes a call, he’s on ’em. Just sit tight until I call you. Don’t do anything stupid.”

  Styles called Detectives Barnes who was in a red Mustang, keeping a loose tail on the two men who had just left the drug house in a black Maxima.

  * * *

  Shaun drove the Nissan Maxima the speed limit as he cruised through the South Deering neighborhood of the south side. He and Greg had just dropped off ten kilos at Elisa’s house on 93rd Street. Greg’s cell rang, and he noticed the number.

  He answered, “Yeah, nigga, we’re running a little late. We’ll be at the party in less than thirty.”

  Talking in code Feet said, “Fuck that party, it ain’t happening. Some bitches we ain’t cool with might be crashing it. I’ll meet you at that bitch’s crib, and we’ll kick it there.”

  Greg frowned, knowing that Feet was talking about the police may have hit or were about to hit the house. Regardless, Feet alerted them to back off.

  “Fuck,” Greg barked. “Let’s head to your girl’s spot.

  Shaun asked, “We’re not heading to Hyde Park, what’s up?”

  “Feet says the police are in the mix. We gotta lay back and get off the streets with the bricks.”

  “Damn, you think they were on the house out here? Shit, they might be following us,” Shaun said as he glanced in his rearview.

  “If they were going to hit us, they would’ve knocked us by now, I’m thinking. Just in case, let’s go to plan number two,” Greg said as he rubbed his chin, something he did when he was thinking.

  They continued to drive, and within five minutes they saw what they assumed to be an undercover vehicle. The Ford Mustang was a safe distance away, but when Shaun turned a few unnecessary corners and then drove through an alley, he and Greg knew that it was the police following them.

  “Okay, my nigga, that’s five-o on our ass. You know what to do,” Greg told Shaun.

  They were only minutes from a parking garage and Greg knew if they made it there, their chances of getting away were good. The entire time they were being followed, Shaun was driving in the direction of the parking garage.

  Greg dialed his cell. After two rings, a woman answered the phone. Greg told her, “We’re on our way. About three minutes, get the car running and be ready.”

  “Okay,” Teresa said as she started the engine to the Nissan.

  Shaun drove as he repeatedly looked in the rearview mirror. He was nervous and had the right to be. In the trunk of the black Maxima he was driving were ten kilos and one hundred and eighty thousand dollars they received from Elisa for ten kilos. They also knew they should have dropped off the kilos to the stash spot first, like always. If they got knocked, he knew Noonie would be pissed and would relay the loss to Slim who would in turn penalize them for not following protocol.

  About ten car lengths back, Greg saw an unmarked police sedan join the Mustang.

  Greg barked, “There we go!” He handed Shaun a card when he turned into the garage. It was after hours so there was no attendant.

  Shaun slid the key into the slot and the arm rose. He immediately pulled in and they were on their way to the second level, section H, as the detectives came to a halt at the entrance. They had no pass key so one of the detectives fished money out of his wallet, sifting to see if he had enough change.

  Shaun and Greg quickly jumped out of the car and into the one Teresa had waiting for them. It was an identical Maxima—color, year, make and model. Teresa jumped into the one they were driving, backed into the space and laid down as the men sped off. The switch took less than ten seconds and they were off on their way to the exit. Shaun stopped and used the keys as the detective barked for them to stop. They kept going, heading west. The detective backed their car from the entrance and followed the men. They were on the cell with Detective Styles who had a blue light on his dash flashing as he sped to the location of the detectives following Greg and Shaun.

  “Go ahead and stop them,” Styles commanded the detectives.

  The sedan hit its siren and lights in the grill and on the dash illuminated.

  Shaun looked over at Greg who smiled and said, “Pull the car over in that grocery store lot with all those law abiding citizens. Can’t have five-o trying no funny shit.”

  As the sedan and mustang came to a halt, Greg pressed the speed dial as he held the phone low and out of view. Teresa answered and Greg said, “Okay, baby, we’re being stopped. Leave and wait till you hear from me. We went west, so you need to head east. That’s to your left.” He ended the call as two detectives approached their vehicle with their guns drawn.

  * * *

  Elisa had talked much shit to Rivera. She had called him everything from a wet-back, banana boat rider, bean eater to a spic. She was tough as nails and wasn’t going to tell the police shit. They had nothing on them, and it was obvious they were there to rob. Rivera and the other detectives were waiting for a call from Styles. They hoped their partners had stopped the men and got the money. The narcotic detectives were good detectives in the sense that they did good police work and made many cases and good arrests. But there also was an evil side to them—they did whatever they could to get money. And they had a tip that many kilos and money was being moved. The detective sat on the houses two weeks ago and everything went as the young man said, so when he called and said that the same move was being made, the detectives jumped at the chance to get the money because they all needed it. Spivey and Smith were gamblers who stayed in debt from the casino riverboats. Barnes, an avid fisherman who was born and raised in Huntsville, Alabama, was saving all his dirty money to buy a house on the Gulf and to open a bait shop. Rivera and Bates had a penchant for partying, gambling and women. Detectives Styles, well, he was simply greedy and loved power.

  Rivera’s cell rang, and he immediately answered. “What’s up, boss?”

  Styles, who was pulling in at the scene where Bates and Smith had the Maxima pulled over in a Jewel grocery store lot, said, “Clear out, and make sure they know this shit never happened.”

  Rivera slid the cell in the front pocket of his jeans then said, “Y’all free to go.” He looked at Elisa saying, “This shit never happened or some for real shit will happen. Feel me?”

  Elisa, whose face was swollen f
rom the beating Rivera gave her, didn’t say anything; she simply glared at the detective, etching his face into her long term memory, she had made up her mind after the first punch, she was going the get the detective back no matter what it took.

  * * *

  Barnes and Smith had Shaun and Greg handcuffed and sitting in front of the sedan. Styles had his badge hanging from his neck chain resting on a black T. “What you got?” Styles asked as he walked up to Barnes who was pretending to run the young men’s information for show since there were a few spectators.

  “Stopped them for speeding and running a light,” Barnes lied. “We smelled marijuana on them, and to my surprise, the pretty boy right there consented to a search,” he said as he pointed to Shaun.

  Styles was pissed, but with the bystanders he didn’t show it. With Shaun agreeing to the search without hesitation that most likely meant the men weren’t carrying.

  After the search of the vehicle failed to produce anything, Styles had the men uncuffed and told them they were free to go. It burned him inside to have spent all the time trying to come up on the lick. In a low voice, he told Barnes he’d call him that he had to call the informant to see what had happened.

  * * *

  Feet walked into the basement to tell his soldiers that it was time to shake the spot, that there was nothing happening. As soon as he reached the bottom of the stairs, Parker’s phone rang. He glanced at the phone saw the number and didn’t answer.

  “Damn, nigga, that’s why shit always fucked up. You niggas always got bitches calling when you supposed to be getting money,” Feet spat. “Let’s break camp, shit’s fucked up right now.”

  “Damn, they ain’t bringing the shit? That mean we ain’t gonna get paid,” Red hissed as he headed for the stairs.

  “I got you, shorty. I take care of my people. I’ma break you off with something,” Feet told him just as Parker’s phone rang with the same ring tone.

  Parker didn’t bother to answer, and his demeanor had changed. Feet took notice.

  “Answer the phone, nigga!” Feet said.