“Hi, Bobby.”
Once she was in, I closed the door and Bobby dropped the smile.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“I couldn’t leave her alone. I’ll explain later.”
Bobby shook his head again. “I am dying to hear this shit,” he said and got in the car. I went around to the other side, got in the back seat with Michaella and we went to meet with Billy.
While Michaella waited in the car, we moved the body from Bobby’s trunk to Billy’s van, and he put me on to something.
Something we needed.
“Old man Leibovitz is retiring, talking about selling or closing the funeral home. Wanda said that you were looking for legit businesses to buy, I thought this might be something that you’d be interested in,” Billy said once we got the body in his van.
“Fuck we need with a funeral home?” Bobby laughed.
“I just thought you might find owning a business that has a machine that burns bodies down to the bone and eliminates all soft tissue useful.”
Me and Bobby looked at each other and then we looked at Billy.
“Ashes to Ashes,” Billy said.
“Dust to dust,” I finished. “I’ll have Wanda get in touch with him,” I said.
Now, with that taken care of, I turned my attention to Michaella because she needed to be taken care of too. So, instead of going back to her apartment, I told Bobby to take us downtown and I got us a premier suite at the Marriott Marquis.
Even though we were in bed naked, we didn’t have sex. I laid there with my arm around Michaella and we talked instead. Well, she talked mostly about what just happened, of course, and she talked about us, especially about whether there was any future for us considering she almost died just from her association with me. I made no promises, but I listened and that seemed to be enough because she fell asleep in my arms. I like her, and I enjoyed being with her, and it wasn’t just because her sex was incredible. Like I said, I like Michaella, she was one of those smart women I was beginning to find so interesting and I enjoyed being with her, so I planned to do more of it.
We stayed there until Sunday night and then we went back to her apartment. On Monday morning, Michaella dropped me off at my apartment and she went on to work at the bank. I called Bobby.
“Where you at?” I asked.
“At the Residence Inn.”
“Come scoop me up, we need to talk.”
“I’m kinda busy right now. But Lo-Lo and Anya are here, wondering why you ain’t. I can have them pick you up.”
I laughed. “Tell them to come on and I’ll see you when you ain’t busy,” I said because my plan to spend more time with Michaella had nothing to do with me, Lo-Lo and Anya. They were my girls.
Anyway.
Once we dropped the women off at Cynt’s, me and Bobby went to see Andre at Ricky’s after-hours spot to see if he knew anything about Montel having a son. I had a question that needed answering.
“You know who you should talk to about that?”
“Who?”
“Sonny Edwards,” Andre told us. “He’s here now.”
Andre said that Sonny Edwards was a gambler; but him, Montel and Big Sky robbed a bank back in the day. They both stopped fuckin’ with Montel when they found out what kind of man he was.
“Montel was a backstabbing, sell his grandmother for a dollar mutha fucka,” Sonny said. “After a while, I couldn’t trust him with shit.”
He went on to tell me that his son’s name was Titus Maris; his mother Prentiss, was a hooker that was hooked on heroin and as the story goes, Montel wanted nothing to do with either of them. Sonny told us that she worked the streets until she had the baby prematurely at five months.
Once she had the baby, she went back on the street and left her heroin addicted son in the hospital. The boy was eventually claimed by her grandmother and he stayed with her until she died when he was five years old. After that, he went to live with his mother.