Instinct moved through Nard, like a thief in the night, and like lightning, the bullet from that tiny .22 pierced through
Jeremy’s chest and threw him back several steps, as his body began to slump against the door. His fingers unable to grasp,
he dropped his gun and looked down at the blood pouring out of his body, then fell to the floor, lying on his back. He stared
up at the ceiling as his body stopped breathing. Jeremy didn’t even see it coming, it just happened so fast. Nard hit him
with the strike of magic and poof, just like that, Jeremy was gone.
“Fuck!” yelled Nard, holding his head in his right hand, his gun still in his left. “Fuck, god damn it. Fuck you come here
for, stupid-ass motherfuckers?” he yelled, angrily interrogating a dead Jeremy and a dead Lance. “Damn, what the fuck am I
gonna do now?”
He surveyed the room as he talked and cursed the dead bodies around him. “Motherfuckers!” he said as he kicked a lifeless
Jeremy.
What am I going to do? What the fuck?
He checked the three bodies lying on the floor for a pulse, starting with his man, Poncho.
“Damn, Ponch, man. I’m so sorry, man. I’m so sorry,” he said as he felt Poncho’s wrist. “I love you, man. I love you. Fuck!”
He started thinking about the consequences of what had just happened. “Fucking police, man. Fuck, what am I going to do?”
He just couldn’t think straight, his brain was overwhelmed, to say the least. He threw all the crack, vials, and other paraphernalia
into a duffel bag that was lying under the table and left the other one, which was empty lying on the floor. He looked around
the room, grabbed everything that belonged to him, tried to wipe off the table, doorknobs, and everything else he had touched
in the crack spot and quickly ran out the door and down a flight of stairs.
“Hey, Nard, be careful, they shooting in the building.”
He quickly turned around, his gun still in his hand, but tucked inside the front pocket of his hoodie.
“Hey, Shorty,” he said as he looked at a kid standing in the vestibule. He couldn’t have been more than nine, maybe ten years
old. He didn’t know the kid’s name, but this kid knew his. “Yeah, you be careful too, kid.”
He quickly brushed past him, threw his hoodie over his head, made his way out the door, and quickly walked down the street
to his car.
“DaShawn, get in here! Don’t you hear them shooting? Come on, boy!”
Nard looked up and saw a young black girl hanging out a window, hollering for the same young kid that Nard had just brushed
past inside the building.
“I’m coming, Ma. I’m right here.”
Nard could hear the little boy as he walked away from the spot.
Please tell me this kid ain’t no problem, or the window chick. Fuck, man, fuck! I need me an alibi. And where the fuck is
Sticks? Simon is gonna be heated, but at least I got his coke. That’s all I need to do is get at Simon. I got to get rid of
this gun, too. Yeah, that’s all I’ll need is an alibi and I’m good.
N
ard drove through the park and made his way to West Philly. Even though he hustled down North, he actually lived in Southwest
Philly with his grandmom and Uncle Moe on Fifty-seventh and Hatfield Avenue. He opened the door, and as usual Moe had fallen
asleep in an old recliner in the far corner of the living room. He tiptoed right past him, glancing at the clock hanging on
the wall in the dining room behind an archway that separated the dining room from the living room area. Too dark. He flipped
on the light switch and quickly flipped it off.
Damn, it’s three-thirty in the morning,
he thought to himself. He quietly made his way upstairs, tiptoeing by his grandmom’s bedroom door. He walked down the hall
to his room. He opened his closet door and put the duffel bag inside it. He sat on the bed and thought back over everything
that had happened.
Where did they even come from? What the fuck was they thinking coming up in there trying to rob us like that? Fuck!
But of it all, he kept hearing Poncho over and over yelling inside his head.
“Take him, Nard, what the fuck is you waiting fo… what the fuck is you waiting fo…”
What the fuck?
He got up and shook the spirit of Poncho out of his head as he paced around the floor. His adrenaline was in overdrive and
his speed had bypassed the limit the instant his .22 dropped Lance to the floor. He had committed a double murder. As it stood
he had two bodies.
Why they have to come in there?
He could honestly say that had they been wearing masks, the situation might have played out completely different. But the
wheels of time had already been set in motion. And he couldn’t bring time back.
He picked up the phone and dialed Sticks’s pager.
Wait till he finds out what happened. This shit is all his fucking fault. Had he been there on the lookout, things could have
really been different. Damn it! And that god damn little boy, DaShawn, and his fucking mother hanging all out the window.
“Take him, Nard, what the fuck is you waiting fo… what the fuck is you waiting fo…”
He saw Poncho, bright as day, right there in his grandmom’s house, talking to him, gunman holding the gun to his head and
all, bright as day, right there.
Man, come on, man.
He waited for the series of beeps, dialed Sticks’s number, and hung up the phone. He knew what had happened tonight was something
that would haunt him for the rest of his life. He sat on the bed and began to rock back and forth.
This shit is crazy, man, what the fuck, I should have taken all them guns, not just mine. I did try to wipe down the table,
but damn, I didn’t do all the doorknobs, did I, or the back bedroom, and I didn’t do the bathroom. Fuck, man, where the fuck
is Sticks
. His nerves had him wired, murder had him high. Wasn’t no way he was going to sleep. He couldn’t if he wanted to anyway.
He had way too much to do. He had to get that duffel bag of crack cocaine out of his grandmom’s house. That was the first
thing he had better do ’cause god help him if the cops ran up in there and found Simon Shuller’s key of crack in a red duffel
bag. Not only would his grandmom kill him, but Simon Shuller himself would make sure that he ended up in a duffel bag. If
there was one saying he had taken heed to, it was “Never shit where you sleep.” This was the first time he had ever brought
drugs into his grandmom’s house, and this would be the last. Therefore, that bag had to go. The second thing was the gun.
He still had it. But, in his heart of hearts, he felt he needed it and couldn’t let it go. If he had a replacement killer,
it wouldn’t have been no questions about it, that gun would have been gone. But he lived on the Southwest side of Philadelphia,
and living was at an all-time low, what with junkies, crackheads, and other rivals who were simply crabs. And crabs claw at
you and they don’t stop—don’t mean they scratch you, but they still claw. So he couldn’t afford to walk out of his house without
a hammer on his person. That was just the way it was.
Okay, how am I going to do this?
He had to have a plan, he needed to be strategic.
Out of nowhere, the ringing phone startled him and brought him out of his reverie. He answered on the first ring.
“Hello.”
“Yo, what’s cracking?”
“Man where the fuck is you at?”
“I got caught up out here in Germantown with my baby moms. Why, everything all right?”
“Fuck no, two guys ran up in the spot on me and Ponch and—”
“What you mean, two guys ran up in the spot?”
“Stickup boys, and Ponch, man, they… they killed him.”
“What? Who killed him?” Sticks anxiously asked. “Wait, wait, don’t say nothing else on the phone. Where you at?”
“My grandmom’s.”
“I’ll be right there.”
Sticks hung up the phone, his brain formulating a hundred and one questions in his head.
Man, can’t nobody hold they own without me.
Sticks set his oversized cell phone down on the seat and made a U-turn, making his way crosstown. He knew trouble when he
heard it, and that call was a double dose of trouble all day long and runnings.
He stepped on the gas and within twenty minutes he was outside Nard’s grandmom’s house. Nard came dashing out the front door
and onto the porch like a superspy, body all hunched down, looking all around, from side to side, as he ran down the porch
steps and jumped in Sticks’s Beemer, throwing the duffel bag into the backseat.
“You okay?” asked Sticks.
“Man, fuck no. Poncho’s dead, Sticks,” said Nard, sweat rolling down the side of his face.
“What the fuck happened?”
Sticks sat back and listened as he turned off the block and parked on a nearby side street. Nard told him everything he could
think of, describing Jeremy and Lance to a tee, not holding back anything, and even telling him that if he had taken the shot
Poncho wanted him to, Poncho might still be here.
“Listen, all demons gots to sleep, remember that. There’s no regrets, no regrets. You can’t blame yourself, feel me?” asked
Sticks, listening to the series of unfortunate events and wondering what could have happened to him had he been there as he
was supposed to have been.
“Did anyone see you?” asked Sticks, looking at Nard for the truth.
As soon as he popped the question, Nard could see the little brown-skinned boy, no more than ten, maybe eleven, interrupting
his great escape with small talk. “Be careful Nard, they shooting in here.” Not to mention his mother hanging out the window
calling for him. “DaShawn, come on, boy, get in here! Don’t you hear they shooting outside.”
“Hey, you here?” asked Sticks waving his right hand in front of Nard’s face. “Did anybody see you?”
“Yeah, this little kid, from down the hall. Then his mom, she saw me walking down the block.”
“Fuck, that’s not good. It always be them little kids, don’t it? Always somewhere they asses don’t belong.”
“What I’m gonna do; you think the kid’s a problem?”
“Man, I don’t know. I’d feel better if he wasn’t, you know. Shit, I’d rather be safe than sorry, feel me? That’s all the coke
back there?” asked Sticks, waiting to hear a drop was missing.
“Yeah, that’s all of it.”
It would be different if Nard was running game. But Sticks knew he wasn’t. Sticks knew he was telling the truth.
“Listen, just in case it’s a problem, just in case, let’s get some kind of alibi straight. You need to be somewhere else altogether.
Let me think… I might be able to take care of that. The only question is the little kid, and I can’t call that ’cause I can’t
call what the kid may or may not say, feel me? I just know I wouldn’t want to take the chance.”
“Yeah, yeah, you right.”
“Where’s the gun, did you get rid of that shit?”
“Naw, not yet, it’s right here.”
“Man, that’s the first thing you should have done. You’re bugging. Here, give it to me and I’ll get rid of it for you.”
Nard looked at him like he was crazy. Dead body or not, he wanted his piece. It was tiny, but she did her job. His .22 was
faithful and trustworthy. “Man, I would feel naked without a gun. You got another one I can hold?”
“Yeah, here, take mine,” said Sticks, handing him a .44 magnum and taking the .22 from Nard, already knowing what he was going
to do with it.
“You sure you got me on that alibi, right?” questioned Nard, still nervous.
“Man, relax, just relax. I’m gonna make some calls and I’ll let you know.”
Nard got out of the car and closed the door. Sticks rolled down the window and leaned over to the passenger side before driving
away from the curb.
“You just worry about tying up the loose ends, you feel me?”
Detective Tommy Delgado walked into the vestibule of the apartment row home and made his way up the flight of stairs. He stopped
and looked into the doorway. His first mental note was of the three dead bodies sprawled out on the floor.
Definitely a drug spot, definitely.
And then a quick survey of everything around him. He took out a pad and paper and began jotting down notes, from a duffel
bag on the floor, to how many cigarette butts were in the ashtray, to an open unfinished bottle of beer, a pizza box, some
old Adidas running shoes, and even the channel the television was on. He lifted the yellow police tape hanging across the
doorway and stepped over the first body lying in front of him. He silently surveyed the room as his partner, Detective Merva
Ross, entered the crime scene behind him.
“Wow, what happened here?” Ross asked as she looked around.
“Ask him, that guy right there—he looks like he would know,” said Delgado, pointing to a dead Lance Robertson.
“Ha, ha, you’re so funny,” said Detective Ross, adding, “Do we got a time of death?”
“Um, they’re pretty fresh, maybe twelve, no more than sixteen hours ago,” said an officer as he watched Delgado writing on
his memo pad.
“Detective Delgado, I think we got something.”
An officer led Delgado down the hall to the bathroom and showed him the window.
“It’s a window. Hey everybody, we got a window!” Delgado teased aloud.
“Yes, sir, it is, but it’s opened and we found a piece of material that appears to ma—”
“It’s a match, Honing, it looks like a match,” another detective yelled from down the hall.
“Yeah, see, dead guy number two, he’s wearing a jacket, but if you look really close, the side pocket is torn and we found
fibers and the piece of his jacket that’s torn, sir, was on the windowsill, which would lead us to believe that possibly he
was an intruder breaking into the apartment, entering through the window. We’re sending the fibers in for a positive match.”
“Are you checking outside for prints?”
“Of course, but come here. Let me show you this. These guys, these two right here, muddy shoes, the same mud too. This guy
has clean bottoms,” said the officer, leading Delgado around the crime scene.
“Good work,” Ross commented. “When will people learn to wipe their feet?”
“I hate that,” said Delgado sneezing into his hand.