PREACHER
I stood in my room. A ray of sunlight shined through the worn curtains. The room smelled musty like the rest of the house. It was drab, decorated with simple amenities—a dresser with a dusty bible and a single twin bed with a gray blanket covering it.
For the last thirty minutes, I had been staring out the window at the crowds of people walking the street, mostly junkies and dope boys. Mike Brown’s nephew, Bam, really spooked me earlier that day. It was almost as if they had been waiting on me, I thought as I continued to stare. Then, suddenly, it dawned on me my grandmother didn’t pick me up from the bus station. I still had the cordless house phone in my pocket from when I called my parole officer to let him know I had arrived on time.
I dialed my grandma’s number and she picked up on the fourth ring. “Hello,” she said sounding winded.
“Hey, grandma.”
“Heeey, baby,” she exclaimed joyfully. “I had to run all the way from the kitchen, I almost missed your call. I’m fixing you and everybody at that house a big dinner. Can y’all have people food?”
“I guess so, grandma, but I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to come here,” I said, still looking out the window.
I saw two women get out of a car. One of them had on a pin stripe pantsuit; she was heavyset with a pleasant, oval face and wore a long ponytail. The woman with her was a redbone in a miniskirt. I couldn’t help but notice her lady humps bounce as she walked and so did everyone else on the block. All the guys began catcalling at her as she sped up her pace to catch up with the woman in front of her.
“Why can’t I come there?” My grandma asked.
“Because I’m in one of the worst parts of the city, off Belair Road,” I said, still watching the chick in the miniskirt.
“Belair? What they send you there for?” She screeched.
“It’s part of a reintegration program to help me get off parole.”
“And help you get into the grave yard or back into prison. With all that killing going on over there, child, you was safer in prison,” she said sarcastically.
“I’ma be okay—”
“No you ain’t okay. You staying there in that war zone and back messing with that girl Tanya. I know you still got feelings for her but you need to find yourself a good girl. Stay away from her. You hear me, boy?”
“I ain’t messing with her no more, grandma.”
“Well, why did she call me and tell me you wanted her to pick you up from the bus stop instead of me?”
At hearing that, I tore my eyes away from the pretty girl in the miniskirt and groaned under my breath. “Oh, no.” Tanya was up to her tricks again.
“What did you say, boy?”
“Nothing… It was just a misunderstanding, grandma.”
“Well, lately it seem like Tanya been doing a lot of misunderstanding. She misunderstanding that you don’t get pregnant by your boyfriend’s best friend. Then to top it off she got that new baby by that other guy.”
My grandma is kind of longwinded when you get her going and it suddenly occurred to me I needed to find a way to get off the phone.
“Grandma, I ain’t messing with that girl. As soon as I get situated, I’ma come by there to eat,” I said trying to ease off the phone. But it was too late I had got her going.
“And not just that, it’s something else I need to talk with you about, but you gotta promise me to stay out of it.”
“I promise,” I said nonchalantly.
I heard the front door close causing the curtains to slightly sway. As I looked back out the window, a tricked out Chrysler Charger drove by and the color of the car changed from red to purple when the sunlight hit it. I bugged out. It had what looked like twenty-eight inch monster rims with an earthquake stereo system that rattled the bedroom windows. I had never seen anything like it in my life.
“The police picked up Steve for your mamas murder, then they let him go. Tanya knows all about that, plus Steve was in a shootout at some club with Mike Brown.”
“Wha…what?” I was perplexed.
My heart suddenly raced in my chest. I sat on the edge of the bed and ran my fingers through my hair. Steve used to be my best friend and when I went to prison, he promised to look out for Tanya. He did and he got her pregnant.
Tanya enjoyed the finer things of the ghetto, so she was always with a dope boy and had trophies to show for it—babies by each dude. I suspected she was messing with a drug dealer, judging from the nice whip she picked me up in.
“The police arrested Steve for my mother’s murder?” I asked with a wrinkled brow as I stared at my reflection in the mirror.
“Now you listen to me, boy. That don’t mean a damn thing! He may not have had nothing to do with it. I’m just telling you this before you let one of them damn fools get into your ear and put a battery in your back and get you to go back into your old ways. The thing with Steve and Mike shooting at each other at the club was over Tanya when she was pregnant. That might be Mike Brown’s baby-.”
“Shit she got a baby by Mike Brown?” I accidently blurted out.
My mind flashed back to Tanya giving me a ride with the baby in the backseat. I mentioned Mike Brown’s name and instantly she started acting all jittery. Then I thought about Mike’s nephew confronting me with the shotgun, almost as if him and his mans were waiting for me.
“Baby, I’ma be honest with you. I don’t know, but I do know one thing for sure—it all boils down to the money they say you took from that Brinks truck. Baby, if you got it, take it and run with it. Or you can give it back, but I’m telling you that money got blood on it. You can’t stay in the ghetto with that kind of money and expect to live. Whatever decision you make, I will support you. I love you, my grandbaby…You hear me, boy?” Her voice trembled with emotion. I nodded my head as I held the phone tight, stood up and stared out the window, watching people who suddenly looked more suspicious. There was a crowd across the street next to an abandoned building.
“Yes, ma’am, I hear you,” I swallowed the dry lump in my throat.
In the silence, my thoughts raced, as time stalled like a clock without hands. So much was going on inside my head. My first instinct was to holla at Steve. My mama had been tortured and murdered, and if he had something to do with it, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from reverting back to my old ways. Then, I thought about calling Tanya to pick her brain. I quickly pushed away all those thoughts as my grandma’s warning ruminated in my head. It would just lead to more drama. Finally, my mind reflected back on the money, the 1.2 million. Truthfully, I wasn’t even certain the money was still where I stashed it.
“Baby, you still there?”
“Huh, yea, grandma,” I said with my mind churning. Then I heard someone call my name from downstairs.
“Jamal?” It was Ms. Diane. For some reason, her booming voice startled me.
“Grandma, I gotta go. I’ma try to come by there today to get a plate of food but don’t you come over here.”
“Don’t you forget what I said. You stay away from that girl and outta that mess with them boys. You gotta let God deal with them and don’t forget to bring your butt over here and get some of this food I cooked for you.”
“Okay, grandma, I love you.”
“I love you too, baby.”
I hung up the phone and hurried to see what Ms. Diane wanted. When I made it downstairs, the chubby woman with the ponytail and the chick with the short miniskirt were standing there talking in a huddle.
"This is the person I was telling you about,” Diane said. “Her name is Lourdes Beaumont, and I need you to keep her with you at all times. Her room is right across from yours, so it shouldn’t be hard.”
My mind took a mental stutter step as I looked at Lourdes. Her starry green eyes held mine and wouldn’t let go as she stared up at me meekly. Time escaped me as I tried not to stare back at her but I couldn’t help it. It was as if I had seen her before someplace, another time. Eerily, she reminded me of someone and my heart quaked.
She had an angelic face. Mounds of curly brown hair cascaded down her slender shoulders and I could tell it was her real hair. She was mixed with some other ethnicity that made her features look exotic. I allowed my eyes to travel down the curves of her body.
She was dressed in chic, short miniskirt that hugged her plumb hips and wide thighs. A ray of dim light coming from the window made her skirt transparent. I wanted to avert my eyes, but I couldn’t. It looked like Lourdes Beaumont wasn’t wearing any panties. The first two buttons on her blouse exposed supple breast. Nimble nipples, large, erect as if in defiance of gravity protruded forward. Her amber skin tone was tinged with brownish orange as if she had been sun kissed by a glorious sun. Then it dawned on me where I had seen her before. She looked just like…She looked just like my mama when she was a whore, when she was selling her body for drugs. Pain panged in my gut. Lourdes Beaumont was a whore. But she was also the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. Suddenly, I told myself I despised Lourdes, everything about her.
I asked if there were any men who needed help and Lourdes made a disrespectful comment about my sexuality, something that, in prison, could have gotten her gutted.
But through it all, after the mindless comment, Lourdes’ dreamy eyes still had a hint of mystery. All I was told about her before she came was that she was in trouble, running from something and I was to help her if I wanted to stay in the reintegration program and get a good grade. For all I knew, she could have been a snitch running around setting people up.
I gave Lourdes an icy glare and sighed. “Follow me,” I told her.
My words held venom just to let her know I wasn’t interested in whatever she was selling. I didn’t want to go back to prison messing with some chick with no morals. This was my only shot at freedom and nothing was going to stand in my way.
With feline quickness, she ran up the stairs and walked so close behind me that when I slowed, she walked right up my damn leg and collided with my back. Her breasts pushed up against me and the heat from her soft body engulfed me along with the succulent scent of her flesh. She was wearing some kind of cheap perfume that smelled expensive on her. I told her not to walk so closely and we continued our route to her room.
I tried to sound stern but her sweet perfume infiltrated my nostrils like an aphrodisiac and I felt something stir in my body as I did my best not to look down her breasts.
She had awakened some insatiable desire in me. Something I needed to rid myself of. I needed to repel her, the woman who reminded me of my mother and had a mysterious past.
As soon as we entered the tiny bedroom she was assigned to, I lashed out at her, fully expecting a hood rat battle. I got something else instead. She began to cry.
Her entire facial expression changed. Her shoulders slumped as she hung her head. She tossed her briefcase, flopped on the bed and began to sob uncontrollably. I’ll never forget the look of helplessness and despair in her eyes. Her skirt rode a little up her thighs, and her cries rocked her body. Lourdes Beaumont definitely wasn’t wearing any panties. I was certain of that now.
I walked toward her, to tell her I was sorry, but something evil was coming over me. I hadn’t been with a woman in over ten years and Lourdes had a body like a Goddess. I reached to caress her hair and then pulled my hand back as if she could burn me in a furnace of my lust. That’s when I felt my erection rising and then another thought went through my head as I watched her half dressed body. Immediately, I took a step back to free myself of her and the carnal lust that threatened to consume me.
As soon as I stepped into the hallway Diane confronted me as a couple of guys walked by.
“Is everything okay in there?” She asked and brushed at a strand of hair from her forehead, yawning. “Why is she crying?”
“She wouldn’t share it with me,” I lied. “But she’s okay.” My voice sounded strained to me. It felt like I was leaving a crime scene and, in some ways, I was.
“Okay, I’m going home,” Diane, continued. “It’s been a long day. Be sure all the doors are locked. You got my number. If you need anything, call me.” She stifled another yawn and I could see the dark bags under her eyes. I nodded my head and watched her walk off.
As soon as I entered my room, the house phone rang. I started not to answer it but I did anyway.
“Yo, let me speak to Jamal,” a raspy voice with a deep Baltimore accent said. I could hear music in the background along with a woman’s laughter. Something about the voice piqued my curiosity.
“This is Jamal. What’s up?” I asked.
“You, nigga. Mothafuckas on deck, riding around with that rocket looking for your ass and that Brinks truck money. Fuck with a nigga and I’ma make sure shit be lovely for you out here. Feel me?”
I pulled the phone away from my ear and lost my composure. Some nigga was trying to press me. “Who the fuck is this?” I yelled into the phone.
“It’s Steve. Nigga, you know my voice.”
Instantly, my blood turned to ice water. “Steve,” I repeated his name with my top lip curled in disgust.
There was a soft knock at my bedroom door.
“Who is it?” I yelled.
“Lourdes…I need to talk with you please,” she said in a soft voice. I wished that she would go away as I ignored her and focused on the phone.
I held the receiver so tight it felt like I was going to crush it when I spoke.
“Damn, nigga, I come home and this is the respect I get after what you did with Tanya?“ I asked with my jaw clinched.
“Dawg, I’m playing good Samaritan, for real. Tanya don’t even know who the baby daddy is. I just stepped up to the plate. But yea, I hit it. Shit happens, ya heard?”
“No, I don’t know what you mean. I’m the same nigga who, when your daughter was kidnapped, put in the work, put some niggas in the dirt, put my life on the line out of love for you and that baby.”
“I appreciate that but a lot of shit done changed.”
“That’s good because I changed,” I said. “Gave my life to Christ because if I hadn’t, there would have been a problem. I would have camped out in your mama yard with that chopper, waiting on anything that rolled up. You know how I rock. I taught you the game, nigga. And now your name came up in my mom’s murder. What’s up with that?”
“I ain’t have shit to do with that but niggas had been sniffing around your mama crib for years looking for that cheddar.”
“And you didn’t try to stop ‘em?”
“You was gone too long and it’s too many goons in this city. You a street dude, you know what the business is.”
“All I know is you was stealing niggas bombs, about to get wacked in the projects when I took you under my wing. I showed you how to slump a nigga and not get caught, how to dispose of a body, even kidnap a nigga in broad daylight in a matter of minutes.”
“Yea, you did, but I took this shit to another level. Your shit outdated,” Steve boasted and again I heard a female cackle in the background. “Nigga, you need to get on the team.”
“Or what? Nigga, don’t take this religious thing lightly and make me go back into the old me.”
“You’ve been gone too long…”
As Steve talked, I saw some suspicious activity across the street. A powder blue Chevy came to a slow creep in front of the house and just sat there. The windows were tinted and I couldn’t see inside. Several people began to scatter, my instincts told me something was about to go down.
“Fuck with me. Come on out and let’s go for a ride,” Steve’s voice became gritty when he said sinisterly, “Don’t try to buck, you know what this is, my nigga.”
My legs nearly buckled as I watched Steve step out of the Chevy parked in front of the house. Lourdes’ knocking on the door grew louder.
“Come on, man, you can’t be serious!” I shouted into the phone as it suddenly dawned on me what was about to go down.
Lourdes entered the room, probably thinking that I had shouted for her to come inside. She looked like a bundle of nerves as she wrung her hands together rapidly. Her eyes scanned the room and then landed on me. I shot her a warning glare as fear crept through my gut like a serpent. I watched two dudes get out of the car. One of them was slender and tall, and the other guy was muscular with broad shoulders and no neck. He was built like a tank. They each had AK-47s.
“Nigga, this ain’t for me and you. I know damn well you ain’t fitting to do what I think you gonna do,” I yelled into the phone and Lourdes flinched like she wanted to run out the room.
Steve was about to abduct me, take me to some honeycomb hideout and beat and torture me until told him where the money was. I knew this because I taught him ghetto guerilla warfare on how to inflict as much violence and terror as possible in less than three minutes.
Steve was thirteen when I took him on his first caper to abduct Shawn Swanny, an old school kingpin. Now, looking out the window, the tables had turned; karma had come searching for me with an AK-47.
“Man, I’ma keep it one thousand with you. It’s a lot of niggas, thirsty niggas, trying to come off in that bitch to get at your ass. Mike Brown and them niggas was going to run up in there earlier. I don’t know what the fuck you moved to Belair Road for. Tanya even tried to get you to move with her and you wouldn’t.”
“Oh, so she down with the lick too?” I asked.
He denied she had anything to do with it but his slip of the tongue revealed the truth.
I watched him nod at the two dudes with the assault weapons then glance at his watch. They pulled their ski masks down over their heads and rushed toward the house.
“Oh, shit! Oh, shit,” I blurted out and I frantically looked around the room for something to grab, anything to use as a weapon. On the dresser next to a dusty Bible there was a vase containing pencils and pens, and a pair of old barber shop scissors.
Scissors?
I grabbed the scissors just as I heard the front door open with an explosion that sounded like hell’s furry on earth. Someone had been shot and was crying out in pain.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The gunshots resonated again.
In precise military fashion, just as I had taught Steve, he sent his goons to extract me from the house. It wouldn’t take over three minutes, a hundred and twenty seconds of agonizing terror and bloodshed.
I raced over to the door, nearly knocking Lourdes down as she watched me with intense eyes. But I made it there too late. I could hear footfall approaching. I shut the door. My heart ricocheted around my chest as I motioned for Lourdes to hide. Her eyes opened wide with terror. But there was no place to hide in the small room, except under the bed.
Just as she was getting ready to move, there was another shotgun blast; it tore through the door, propelling Lourdes across the room like a rag doll. Wood splinters and debris, along with a plume of smoke, rose in the room. The whole time, I was shaking like a leaf on a tree with the large scissors in my hand. My back was pressed tight against the wall when the tall gunman entered cautiously. All he had to do was look to his right, where I was standing in plain sight.
“I got him,” I could barely hear him say to his partner. Debris clouded my vision. I think he thought he shot me but he still cautiously entered the room.
With the eight-inch scissors in hand, I held my breath and waited. He took another step into the room. There was no way he was not going to see me pressed to the wall. He took a step forward with his hand on the assault rifle.
Silence.
Something cracked under his feet, but he didn’t look down. I continued to hold my breath. Lourdes moaned and began to move around and that got his attention but it didn’t help much, either. He took another timid step towards her thinking she was me. In the distance, I could hear a siren. The police were coming. I can’t lie, that may have been the first time in my life I was happy to hear police coming.
“Hurry up!” his partner said, and that got his attention.
He slightly turned his head as he walked further into the room. With all my might, I drove the scissors into his eye as far as I could. I felt them hit the base of his skull. He howled sharply as blood squirted in a stream across the room. Inadvertently, he squeezed off a shot that shattered the bedroom window. I grabbed the AK-47 out of his hand just as his partner let off a shot that barely missed my head.
I shoved the dying muscle-bound man into his partner, who then slipped on some blood, sending them stumbling to the floor. More shots were fired. I heard a woman scream and a vase was thrown across the room at the gunman. To my surprise, Lourdes was on her feet and she was bleeding. The tall gunman tried to run downstairs. But he was at a severe disadvantage; he would have to turn his back.
Just as he reached for the doorway, I let off a shot and blew hole in his back. Blood splattered the wall like paint and the blast tore away a large chunk of his rib cage. That was when I saw A.J., one of the participants in the program. He was standing in the door of his room with a look of shock in his eyes. I never liked him anyway. He was probably the inside man that helped set me up. I thought about shooting him too.
“I’m outta this bitch,” I said and turned, looking at the dead man sprawled on the floor with a hole in his chest and blood pooling around him.
“Take me with you,” Lourdes shouted from the top of the stairs. Her voice was a fearful falsetto.
Startled, I turned in her direction. There were tiny cuts on her face. She had a deep gash in her arm from where she was grazed by a bullet. She was lucky to be alive. Her hair looked frizzled, like she had stuck her finger in an electrical socket.
With two dead bodies, another man wounded, and a chick bleeding, there was no way in the world I was going to be able to explain that to the cops. I went back to my room to grab my book bag that still had a few of my meager belongings. With the AK-47 in hand, I stepped over the dead dude with the scissors protruding from his eye and headed for the hallway.
“Take me with you,” she shrieked again. This time, she grabbed my arm with a bloody hand and something panged deep inside of me, as the sirens grew louder.
“No,” I shouted.
This crazy chick ran into her room and grabbed her briefcase and then ran back into the hallway as I checked the magazine in the chopper. The briefcase fell open as she caught me at the top of the stairs. All kinds of cosmetics and what looked at a syringe spilled down the stairs. With agility she managed to scoop each item up as she spoke.
“I’m going with you. Please don’t make me stay here,” she said as tears streamed down her blood-streaked face.
“Listen, shawty, once I walk out of here it’s going to be some serious gun play and bullets flying. Stay your ass in here.”
“I’m going with you. I’ll be okay.”
There was something about her that touched my heart and I hated it.
The moment we walked out the front door, it was on. Steve stood outside waiting by the car for his goons to return with me, their victim. He glanced at his watch again and looked up. The last person he expected to see was me as I stepped out the house, making that chopper sing.
The first shots riddled the Chevy, rocking it so violently the passenger windows shattered and one of the doors nearly came off. Steve jumped two feet in the air, dodging bullets and seeing me fast approaching using the same element of surprise I taught him. The scene could have been comical the way all the dope fiends and hustlers scattered, but it was deadly. Steve pulled out a 9 mm and fired a couple of shots and then took off running, just as a white Baltimore City police car turned the corner. Trapped, Steve could have turned back and engaged me in a gun battle, but instead he fired at the police officers, causing the patrol car to crash into a parked car.
The police returned fire and more pandemonium erupted. I hopped into the blue Chevy and the keys were in the ignition. Lourdes tried to get in on the passenger’s side but the damaged door wouldn’t open. Just as I was about to mash out, burning rubber in the process, she tossed the briefcase in the car and dove into the passenger window headfirst.
Her naked ass hung out halfway and her legs dangled dangerously outside. She eventually pulled herself in and sat in the seat. I pulled over into the parking lot of KFC. A stream of police cars, with their sirens blaring, sped right by us.
“You could have killed me,” she yelled adjusting her skirt. The gash on her arm looked worse.
“I never told you to bring your ass in the first place,” I yelled back at her just as a police helicopter appeared out of nowhere and hovered overhead.
We both stopped yelling. I had the AK-47 on my lap. The sun and my own salty sweat burned my eyes as I squinted up at the sky. The helicopter took off westward. Relieved, I scanned the streets for more cops.
“You may need some medical attention,” I said.
“I just want to go home,” she responded. “I don’t like Baltimore.” Her bottom lip trembled and she hugged herself and began to rock.
“Okay, I’ma get you home,” I said with my thoughts elsewhere. I didn’t even know where home was.
I did know I was in big trouble. The kind of trouble that only Weinstein could get me out of. Thank God that house had cameras to show that this wasn’t my fault. I just hoped the cameras worked.
I turned down Perry Hall because I needed to ditch the car and find a phone and a place to lay low.
Lourdes must have read my thoughts because she winced in pain and yelled, “Let’s stay over there!” She pointed at the La Quinta Inn.
“What?” I asked. There was a partial blunt in the ashtray along with a plastic bag with some weed in it.
“I need a bath and change my clothes,” she continued. “Plus my arm is hurting and if we go there maybe we can think of another plan.” She grabbed the weed out of the astray.
That may have been the smartest thing Lourdes said that day. I made a U-turn in the middle of the street, parked behind the hotel and watched as a young black prostitute walked into a room with her white trick.
I didn’t have any money for a room, but to my surprise, Lourdes opened up one of the cosmetic cases and took out a crumpled wad of cash. “Officer McDonough gave it to me before she left.”
I shrugged not knowing if she was a whore or an addict. It didn’t matter because she saved us and I was able to rent a room. Ironically, they placed us on the backside, right next to where the young prostitute and her trick were lodged.
Once in the room, I headed straight for the phone to call my lawyer. Lourdes placed her briefcase on the bed and switched on the T.V. with the remote. Immediately, my prison picture appeared in the end segment of the newscast.
“Jamal Shield, who was arrested a decade ago in connection with an armored truck heist, is armed and dangerous. If you see this man, you are asked to contact the police.”
Lourdes’ jaw dropped as she looked at me befuddled. All I could do was stare at the TV, stunned. How was I going to explain this to my daughter? I had let her down.