“I’ll be in touch.” Ruxs watched JJ walk away before climbing back in the truck.
Green started the engine and headed back to the interstate so they can start the work-up on this bust. They had a lot to find out and not a lot of time to do it. They’d need to start surveillance immediately on that warehouse, too.
My Damn Mom
Green didn’t press Ruxs to say anything else on the ride back to the office. He could see there was still something heavy weighing on his mind, but he couldn’t figure out what. Ruxs was usually an open book with him. Maybe it was the fact that he had to see his mom today. Fuck that woman was a piece of work. Green had been a narc long enough to know that sometimes it was the drug addiction that fueled a lot of the hateful things that addicts said, but that woman could make Donald Trump walk away with a deflated ego.
Green felt he would’ve given up on her if it was his mom. But that was easier said than done. She was the only family Ruxs had. She was too mean to find a man to get her pregnant twice. So Ruxs had no siblings, no cousins, just nothing. Well, he had him. And he was going to be there for him, whether he wanted him to or not.
As soon as they walked back into the office, Green’s face lit up. “Hey, buddy. What’s going on?”
Curtis ran up and gave Green a one-armed hug. “I waited for you guys to get back to see if you wanted me to pick up your groceries too.”
Green walked over to his desk and sat down. Curtis hopped up on his desk like he always did. The street-smart seventeen-year-old boy was busted by God and Day a few years ago when he was trying to stick up a mom and pop grocery store to get enough money to pay his electric bill. His mom was sick with kidney disease, and he was the man of the house. At only fifteen. He showed God a fake ID that said he was seventeen because he always feared that someone would call social services since he held down a job and had to care for his mom instead of the other way around. Day and God were so smitten with the kid and his story they never took him to juvie. Instead they drove him home and Day had actually paid his bill for him so his mom would have electricity to use her dialysis machine.
Now two and half years later, he was working for them. Under the table of course. He ran errands for all of them, since they had such hellish hours. He grocery shopped for them, handled most of their dry cleaning, took their cars for maintenance and washing, he handled whatever menial jobs they didn’t have time to do. Now he’d begun helping Vikki with filing and copying. The kid was sharp. He wanted more office responsibilities and basically he had all of them wrapped around his pinky, so they did whatever he asked. He easily made five to six hundred a week between all of them.
But he held a very special place in Green’s heart. The kid was smart as a whip, a straight A student, and he had a good heart. It was touching the way he cared for his mom. Green and especially Ruxs could admire a young man like that all day long. Even though he thought he needed to resort to crime to get out of a horrible situation, he quickly saw the error of his ways. Now he wanted to be a lawyer and work with youth offenders. This was the perfect place for him to spend his free hours.
Curtis’ huge key chain hung from his messenger bag. It had over thirty keys on it. Each one labeled with one of their names on it. He had a key to each of their houses, he even had a few car keys on his ring.
“Yeah, buddy. I do need a couple things from that Fresh Market a few blocks from my place.” Green smiled when Curtis eagerly pulled out his notepad. “I need a bag of pecans, jar of nutmeg, and almond milk.”
Curtis looked up and grinned, his bright blue eyes sparkling with the understanding of what Green was sending him to get. It was Curtis’ favorite. “Do you want me to pick up some vanilla ice cream, too?”
“Yep.” Green nodded his head and Curtis hopped off the desk and did some weird dance and Ruxs busted out laughing as Curtis sang, “Cinnamon rolls, cinnamon rolls, cinnamon rolls and baseball.”
While Curtis did his little jig out the door Green turned and saw Ruxs reclined back in his chair watching him closely. He wasn’t laughing anymore and his eyes narrowed as he asked in his deep timbre, “Am I invited, too?”