Hostile Takeover

This would be where he’d say that he had a witness that saw me and Bobby beat Silky to death, but he didn’t. He just glanced at Cavanaugh, which told me that he didn’t have a witness. Now it was my turned to glance at Cavanaugh. When he shook his head slightly, I knew for sure that he didn’t. And if he didn’t have a witness, he was wasting my time. “Am I under arrest, Cavanaugh?”

“No, Black, like I said Detective Kirkland just had some questions for you, that’s all.”

“If I’m not under arrest, uncuff me, detective.”

Kirkland and Cavanaugh looked at each other, and then Cavanaugh leaned over and whispered something to Kirkland. He nodded his head and then they both stood up. Kirkland reached in his pocket for his handcuff keys. Once he unlocked the cuffs he said, “You’re free to go.”

I stood up and rubbed my wrists as Cavanaugh opened the interrogation room door and held it open for me. I looked at detective Kirkland. “See you around, Detective.”

“You can count on it, Mr. Black,” the detective told me, and I could tell by the determined look on his face that he meant it.

Chapter Ten

The sun was coming up when I walked out of the precinct, and a cool breeze was blowing. I turned the collar up on my coat and walked home. On the way home, I gave some thought to who could have told Kirkland that I threatened to kill Silky. I thought back to that night, there were plenty of people there, so it could have been anybody.

Truth was that we beat Silky to death in front of his hoes and Joe Bones. I wasn’t really worried about Joe; he lived by a code, which meant he wasn’t telling the cops shit. His hoes, on the other hand, under a little pressure from Kirkland, any one of them could turn and snitch me out. I would send Freeze to talk to them and explain why talking to the police would be a very bad idea. Or I could just have him kill them all.

I hadn’t really slept in two days, so I was tired when I got to my place. I got a little sleep on the bench in the cage before the cops took me to interrogation. I took off my coat, rolled and smoked a bob before I got up and went in my room. When I opened the door, I was surprised to see that there was a woman asleep in my bed and since there was a pile of clothes on the floor near the bed, I assumed she was naked. Whoever it was had their back turned to me, I walked around to the other side of the bed to see who it was, but I had a good idea.

“I thought it was you,” I said when I saw it was Vickie.

Even though she has a place of her own, she has keys to everybody’s apartment, so it was common for her to crash at whoever's apartment was closest.

I thought about waking her up, but why bother?

I pulled back the covers and I saw that she was indeed naked. Vickie says that she’s more comfortable when she’s naked, so I had seen her naked before. We did it once, a long time ago and we both agreed that sex between us felt too creepy. “It was like fucking my brother,” Vickie said, so we’ve never done it again. Since she doesn’t like to sleep alone, we’ve slept in the same bed before and nothing ever happened. Seeing as I sleep naked too, I got undressed and got in bed with her.

“That you, Mike?”

“Who else would it be?”

“I don’t know. Could have been Bobby, or one of your many women,” Vickie said, and snuggled up close to me, laid her head on my chest and I put my arm around her.

“None of them have a key.”

“Where you been all night?”

“In jail.”

“For what?”

“Somebody killed Silky,” I said, but she had already drifted back to sleep.

Now I gotta tell you, Vickie is fine than a mutha fucka, so even though I had seen her naked plenty of times and she was like a sister to me, her naked body pressed against mine did get my dick a little hard. Okay … okay, it was rock hard. But after a while, I was able to talk that bad boy down and then I drifted off to sleep too.

It was dar

k outside and Vickie was gone when I woke up. I laid there for a while thinking about what I was going to do next. I had some place to go, but I needed to decide whether I wanted to or not. And then there was the more important question of what was going to happen if I did decide to go?

I got out of bed and went to take a shower. While the water beat down on me, I weighed the pros and cons of it. Before I broke it off with her, Carmen had invited me to a fashion show at Lincoln Center that night. She always invited me and although I would always promise to be there, I never did make a single one. Since I had never been, I decided that I was gonna go, you know, to see for myself what I gave her up for.

Once I was dressed, I took the train downtown, and even though she told me that she had left a ticket for me at the will call window, I bought a ticket and went in. Seeing that it was at Lincoln Center, I figured that it was gonna be a big deal, but I wasn’t prepared for what I saw.

The shit was major and Carmen was the featured model. She was amazing. Everything that Calvin said about her was true. Her astonishing beauty, her carriage and her poise were all on display. I left there knowing that I had actually done the right thing for a change. Carmen was in her rightful place, on the runway; not rolling around with me, waiting in the car while me and Freeze killed people.

Now I was able to put it behind me.

When I got to The Late Night, we weren’t opened yet but Bobby and Freeze were there. He poured me a drink and I told him what happened the night before after I left him and André in the office.