"This may sound like a stupid question, but you never know. Was she alive when you left her?"
"Of course she was."
Once they finished terrorizing my apartment, we went to my office and they did the same. Since I didn’t kill Jake or Lisa, and there was nothing in either place to connect me to Vogel or Rodrigez or who ever he was, I wasn’t sweatin’ the search. Until — "Detective Kirkland, I think we got something here." Kirk looked at me, smiled, and walked away. I had no idea what they had, but I was goin’ to see. I fell right in behind Kirk.
"Take a look at this."
The officer had Jake’s file in his hand and gave Kirk a piece of paper. At least it wasn’t the murder weapon. Kirk looked over the paper carefully, and then handed it to me. It was the formula for synthetic crack. What a time for Monika to start filing.
"What is this?" Kirk asked me.
The officer gave Kirk another piece of paper. It had to be the analysis that Monika’s friend had done.
I waited for Kirk to finish reading before I answered. Kirk handed me the paper. "Does the phrase withholding evidence, or obstruction of justice mean anything to you."
"They do now."
"Book him."
* * *
Chapter Twenty
The more I thought about it, the surer I was that Monika, and Jett were right. This private investigating stuff sucked. I hate cops. And I had been spending too much time with them fuckas. Now I had to help them. It just went against everything.
Me and Kirk had a long conversation, during which he threatened to charge me with murder if I didn’t start cooperating. I knew he couldn’t make a case there. However, withholding and obstruction they had me on, but I still stuck to my story. "I don’t know anything about that." I still felt like a snitch sittin’ there. This shit sucks. He wanted to know how I got the formula. No biggie there since he already figured I got it from Jake’s safe. I gave him that and told him that I had only got the analysis back yesterday. "Jake was already dead. Case closed, so we filed it."
We danced around the same points for hours and then he had some uniforms take me to the holding cell. The benches were cold and hard. Naturally, it was crowded with just us.
Thursday July 23: 12:45 PM
Jett arranged my bail, and I was out by lunchtime. When we got back to my apartment, Monika was there waiting for us. Not only had she cleaned up after the cops, but she had cooked. Monika never cooks. She hates it. So even though I was skeptical about eating it, I know it was made with love. For the rest of the afternoon we sat around and talked about our situation until the sun went down. Monika got up to leave. "Where you goin’?" Jett asked.
"I’m goi
n’ to meet Chilly," she replied, heading for the door.
"I thought you got with him last night?" I asked, getting up to see her out. "You ain’t fallin’ in love with him, are you?" Me and Jett laughed, but Monika on the other hand, saw no humor in it at all. She stopped dead in her tracks.
"You two silly ass mutha fuckas done lost y’alls gotdamn minds! This is strictly business, understand!" With her finger on my nose. I still was laughing. "Business that you’re sending me on. So remember that." And with that, she left.
"She’s kinda touchy. Must be that time of the month," Jett said as he got up. "I’m outta here too, Nick. I’ll catch up with you tomorrow."
"I’ll git wit ya, Jett."
With the house now empty, I gave some thought to sleep. Which I hadn’t done since the day before. So I put on some music. Freeze had been bumpin’ some bootlegged 2Pac, and he let me borrow it.
Jake’s funeral was the next day, so I thought about whether I would make a cameo appearance. I took a shower and fell asleep to the sound of Pac tellin’ me how I was fuckin’ wit the wrong nigga.
I don’t know how long I had been asleep; it was quiet, but somebody bangin’ on my door soon replaced that quiet. My first thought was that it was Freeze, exacting a measure of payback from the day before. I picked up my gun and opened the door, prepared to shove the gun in his face.
"Remember me?"
"Felicia."
"Surprise!" she threw her arms around my waist and kissed me the kiss I’d been dreaming about since the last time she kissed me. I responded in kind.
"What are you doin’ here?"