“What you on, fool?” Kiss asked, ashing the blunt before passing it to me.
Zeke moved to the middle, leaning on the backs of our chairs. “Come in and see, pussy.”
I pulled from the blunt, looked at him through the rearview and pulled from it again before finally putting it out. I grabbed my keys, and my gun and got out.
It was pitch dark out. The only light illuminating the large parking lot was one attached to the grimy building. A few feet up ahead I noticed a family of rats scurry by. Could have been possums though, they were so got damn huge.
The nighttime air brushed by my face, giving me a whiff of the mountains of trash in the alleyway behind us. I pinched my nostrils and fixed my attention on Zeke with a frown. Millard's Potato Chip factory had been closed for over a decade. The residents from the neighborhood used the alley to store overflowing trash the garbage company failed to pick up. Fiends gone off only God knows what lingered around the area, polluting it with dirty needles and a bunch of other shit. The area around Millard’s was deserted and abandoned as hell, but that didn’t stop a few stragglers from hanging around. Teenaged kids that had no business in the area, prostitutes… it was a real shithole. A shithole Solomon and the congregation tried to clean up countless times. But clearly failed.
“What?” Zeke asked me, stuffing his gun into the back of his pants.
“Fuck we out here for?” I questioned, looking around, eyes settling on a parked white van with blacked out windows.
“I just said come and find out, nigga, damn. Don’t you trust me?”
He walked off and Kiss and I followed him. Whole time, I kept my head on a swivel. Had to.
We made it to a worn, black metal door with a little window on top of it. Zeke tapped on it a couple of times, and turned away, looking around like Kiss and I. After a couple of seconds,I put my eyes on the little window and made eye contact with a pair of cocked eyes I could recognize anywhere. Cash’s.
He opened the door just enough for us to walk in. He held his hand out for us to dap. Kiss dapped him up—I didn’t. I never did. I didn’t want whatever he had on him to get on me. Be it germs, or energy, I was smooth on it. Niggas knew though. I didn’t shake hands. As a token of respect, I made direct eye contact and nodded. Which I did with him.
He nodded, and said, “Big Dawg. You good, baby?”
“Hell yeah,” I grumbled, looking around, noticing water leaking from the high pipes. “Get to why we here so I can get the fuck out of here.”
Places like this made me uncomfortable. Not because I was scared or no shit like that. Too much shit lingered on the walls in this bitch. Buildings like these held a bunch of memories. Stale, lingering energy that made me uncomfortable. A lot happened behind these walls, with the majority of it being after it closed down.
Zeke sucked his teeth and walked off. We followed up until we got to the middle of the factory where I was sure morning meetings were once held. The space was big and unoccupied. Well… free of clutter and machinery at least. Seated in the middle of the room was a young white woman, bound to a chair, her dusty blonde hair tossed wildly in her face. Her mouth was covered with duct tape. Her legs and arms too. She squirmed. The light from the moon creeping into a broken window showed me the look of terror written on her face.
Kiss and I looked at each other before simultaneously turning to Zeke.
“It’s under control,” Zeke said. “Nobody’s looking for this crackhead bitch.”
She murmured, her words fighting against the tape covering her mouth.
“Nobody’s looking for a white crackhead,” Kiss said with a snort. “Yeah, aight.”
“You think she would be here if I felt like somebody was?” Zeke shot back.
I said nothing.
Stood there with my hands resting in front of me, fingers interlocked, staring at her. I didn’t have anything to add. Not yet. I would. In a few days. Maybe in a few weeks… months. When timing permitted. When this backfired and there was some fallout behind it. I didn’t know for sure. I never knew shit for certain. But things like this, if not properly handled, came back to haunt you. And because I knew my brother, better than he knew himself on most days, I knew he hadn’t done his due diligence. Every t wasn’t crossed… every i might’ve been dotted but with shit like this you have to be meticulously careful. And that wasn’t Zeke. He trustedhimselftoo much.
Zeke walked around, glancing from the bitch to us, and then back at the bitch again. “She told me the house would be empty. She told me she knew his schedule and?—
“You trusted the word of a crackhead bitch?” Kiss asked, asking what I was thinking.
I took in a deep breath, shifting my eyes away from Becky, over to Zeke. His eyes caught mine for a second before he looked away, wildly running his hand over his wild locs.
“She a crackhead but she ain’t a crackhead-crackhead.”
“A crackheads a crackhead,” Kiss stated, spitting a couple of feet away.
Zeke waved him off, glanced at me, and then away again.
“Why am I here, Zeke?” I asked, finally speaking up.
“I’m sayin,” he said. “I got the bitch responsible for what happened to bro. You… I’m… shit… I’m handlin an issue.”
