I backed up a little bit, so that I could post my back against the wall. His words stung like needles. I took it as they pretty much stopped in their investigation because they found out who Toby really was, and once they did that, his life, and the justice that his life deserved no longer meant anything to them. I know for a fact that if they did their research on Toby, and they found out that he was a law-abiding citizen, they wouldn’t have wrapped this case up in just one week. It hurt to know that he was killed, and we would probably never find out who did it.
The sympathy that they offered me before walking away seemed so fake, and performative. I just got a bland, “I’m sorry for your loss”, and that was it.
I watched them as they went over to the stairs, took them down, and they disappeared. They could give two fucks about Toby. To them, I’m sure they were happy because it was one less nigga on the streets.
Detective Bryant
“You know Rico did that shit, right?” my partner Eddie asked me, as we were heading back to the car.
We were in the parking lot of the apartment complex where Kalani was living with her son, Bash. When Eddie said what he said to me, I paused, scratched my head, and instead of getting in the car, I chose to stand in front of it, posting up on it.
Eddie came over, and he stood next to me as well. I crossed my arms, and I looked at the concrete. After doing that for a little while, that’s when I turned my head, so that I could glance over at Eddie.
“I know he did it,” I responded to him. He laughed and just shook his head.
“I’m with you though. I don’t see anything wrong in what you’re doing. What’s making you want to close the case out though?” he inquired.
“Plenty of reasons. Biggest one of all is that we can’t prove that it was him. On top of that, Bash already recanted. One second, he said that it was Rico that killed Toby, and then the next second, he doesn’t know why he said that. From the beginning, the kid never had any concrete evidence that Rico was responsible for the murder anyways. You know we only questioned him because his name was brought up, and he became a person of interest. Also, to be honest with you Eddie, it isn’t like Toby was some innocent man, you know? It wasn’t like he was at the wrong place at the wrong time and just happened to get caught in the crossfire. What happened to him is the same thing that he was out here doing, which was committing murders,” I voiced.
I sighed before I kept going.
“And to be honest, Rico already has enough shit going on in his life. I truly believe that he’s a good kid. We searched his record high and low. Only thing he has is a couple of petty ass traffic tickets. Call me crazy, but I have a son his age, and I would hate to see my son fighting a murder case. I’m going to close the case and take this one problem off his back. Let him deal with the shit that he has going on with the league, and the media down his back,” I finished, and Eddie nodded, agreeing with what I was saying.
“We can close this one, but that boy better start hanging with a better crowd of people because if he gets caught in some other shit, we can’t close that one too,” Eddie countered.
When Rico goes to sleep tonight, after he finds out that this case has been dropped, I would hope that he would drop down tohis knees and thank God. I got his ass out of some deep shit. So much more digging that we could have done, but my team and I were choosing to bring it to an end.
Chapter 6
Tavion ‘Tank’ Briggs
My Kind of Welcome Home
It was almost midnight, and I’d just landed back in Maimi. I was in Cali for 48 hours. Let my girl tell it though, and she’ll dramatically tell you that I was gone for 48 days. Originally, I was supposed to fly up, and come back the same day, but while I was there, I ended up having to handle shit at one of the smoke shops that I had there, which threw me off schedule, so I stayed longer than I’d anticipated.
Flying to Cali wasn’t optional for me. I wanted a new smoke shop on the west side, but I wanted this one to have a different kind of feel to it. This time, I was thinking on a larger scale. Envisioning the shop with a different layout, that would cater to a luxury lounge experience. The vibe of the shops that I already had, gave off a luxury smoke shop, so it made perfect sense that I would start offering a lounge experience. With that, I needed a location that was bigger than each location that I already had.
My realtor on the west side had been sending shit to me all week, and earlier in the week, she sent something to me that I really loved, but before I signed off on anything, I wanted to fly out to Cali and see it in person. Shit was beautiful too.
I could see that being a spot where people would dress up and spend their weekends there. It had the space for the visionthat I had in mind. I took videos that I sent to both my mom, and Dionne, and they were fans of the space, telling me that they liked it, and that they wanted to see it in person as well.
Things were already in motion. My realtor had submitted an offer, and I was hoping everything would go smoothly so the location could be up and running before my son arrived. Even though we didn’t know what Dionne was having, I was praying for a son. I didn’t mind a little girl, but I knew that my daughter was going to be rotten, so to not even have those problems, and to avoid me being wrapped around her finger the way she would have me, that’s why I was hoping for a son. Don’t get me wrong, my lil man would be spoiled too, but I just felt like it would be harder for me to tell my daughter no, especially if she came out looking like her mama.
It was hard for me to tell Dionne no. Even when I had to get on her, and check her about some shit, I start feeling bad, especially when she starts crying. I could only imagine what that shit would do to me if I had a little girl.
“Excuse me, I don’t mean to bother you. I wanted to say something to you when we got on the plane, but I was scared. Are you currently seeing anyone?” a beautiful woman said to me, as the flight was landing.
We were both in the first row of the plane, and after an almost five-hour flight, she finally asked me what I already knew she had been wanting.
Women made it so obvious when they wanted to ask a nigga something. I kept feeling her staring at me throughout the entire flight, and she did that shit that Dionne does, when she acts like a woman in distress that couldn’t do shit. When we got on the plane, she came on dragging a Louis Vuitton carry- on, and she acted like the shit was too heavy to put on the overhead, so, me being the gentlemen that I was, I helped her out. She made small talk with me on the plane, but she never flat out said what shereally wanted to. She finally did, and now I had to break the news to her. I would let her down easily because it wasn’t in me to be an asshole to women.
To make light of the situation a little bit, I laughed and picked my hand up, so that I could run it down my face.
“Yeah. I actually got a lady,” I let her know, looking her in her eyes.
She was pretty. Brown skin, I could see the curves even with her sitting down, nice teeth, and she smelled good. Hair was nicely styled, nails were freshly painted, and her Chanel purse was sitting right in her lap. I could tell she was a girly girl, which was honestly the only ones I liked.
You could tell that she didn’t like my response because she made a sad face, as if she was hurt by my answer.
