It was 7:57 p.m., and Blac sat watching Eric sitting nervously behind the wheel of the Audi. Blac had never seen him look so frazzled.
He had his Cobi costume on—suit and tie—and would meet the blackmailer in his car, give him the briefcase of money that was sitting in the backseat, get the pictures and memory card in exchange, and that was to be it. Obviously, the money wouldn’t actually be given to the man. Eric would threaten him into giving over the pictures because he would be afraid of what Eric would do to him. If that didn’t work, then Eric would simply beat him until he handed the stuff over. At least that’s the way Eric explained it to Blac. It was a brutal plan, but in cases like this, sometimes brutality was the only answer.
But for some reason, Eric didn’t seem like he was up to the task, Blac thought, as he watched the clock on the dash hit 7:58.
The meeting was to take place in the rear parking lot of an abandoned grocery store. Eric and Blac were parked in front and down the street a half block from that store.
Eric told Blac the man would be in a dark blue Ford Fusion. The man wanted Cobi to come alone and bring the money. Eric was to park next to the man’s car and climb into the passenger seat to make the exchange.
“You all right, Eric?” Blac said. “It’s almost that time for you to be doin’ this.”
“Yeah, yeah, okay,” Eric said, wiping a palm full of sweat from his brow. “I guess you gonna have to get out the car now, so I can drive around.”
Blac looked at Eric. If he didn’t want to admit it to himself that was okay, but Blac couldn’t ignore what was obvious. “You can’t do this, man.”
“What you talkin’ about?” Eric asked, offended.
“Dude, you look scared as shit. You can’t do it.”
Eric reached up, wrenched the rearview mirror around to take a look at himself. “Yeah, I don’t know what’s happenin’, man, but I need to get it under control,” Eric said, reaching to the backseat for the briefcase.
Blac reached back, grabbed the handle of the briefcase before Eric. “Let me do it.”
“What? I can’t—”
“Afford to let somethin’ go wrong, because now you got somethin’ to lose.”
“I don’t know what you talking about.”
“You got a reason to stay out of prison now, dude. You got a brother, you got money, a job, you got a future. I ain’t saying somethin’ gonna go wrong, but if it does, you don’t want to have your ass back behind bars.”
“And you do?”
“No. But I ain’t givin’ up as much as you if I go back. I told her I love her last night, but Theresa ain’t goin’ nowhere. And I ain’t planning on fucking this up,” Blac said, giving the briefcase a tug. “Just let me go, get it over with, and we can talk more about it later.”
Eric barely resisted as Blac pulled the case from his hand.
“Don’t worry about drivin’ around,” Blac said, pushing open his door. “I’ll just walk.”
A fearful look on his face, Eric said, “You know the car to look for? You gonna be okay doing this, right?”
“I’m cool,” Blac said, already outside of the car, slamming the door.
Eric watched Blac trot off, carrying the briefcase down the street and around the building.
After he was out of sight, Eric slumped back in the seat of the car. He slapped a hand to his forehead. “What the fuck did I just do?” he said. He grabbed the car door handle, pulled it, opened the door slightly, thought of getting out and stopping Blac, then hesitated. He closed the door and fell back into the seat.
Blac was already out of sight. He fucked up. Plain and simple.
When Cobi needed help, Eric played the hardened criminal, took on the obligation, like doing deals like this was what he did every day before lunch. But what did he ultimately do? He punked out and had to hand the job over to Blac.
Eric thought about what Blac had said, and he realized he was right. Eric did have something to lose now. A brother, a place to stay, a gig he liked, and a woman that he was really starting to feel something for. Eric didn’t think there was a lot of danger in what he had planned to do for Cobi. There surely wasn’t as much danger as some of the things he’d done in the past for himself, but for some reason, he wasn’t able to go through with it.
Eric leaned up in his seat, looked out the window in the direction Blac went. He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and thought of texting Blac to see how things were going, but how stupid was that, he thought. Eric had turned his phone off in preparation for the encounter with the man, so when he looked down at the screen, he was surprised to see that he had more than half a dozen missed calls from Cobi.
Eric thought about retrieving one of the voicemails but decided against it. Whatever Cobi had to tell him, it was too late now. Eric had to deal with what was happening that moment, so he stuffed the phone back in his pocket.
Settling back into the seat again, Eric closed his eyes and knew all he could do now was pray that everything turned out all right.
Moments later, the car door opened and slammed shut. When Eric opened his eyes, Blac was sitting in the passenger seat, laughing, breathing heavily, a huge grin on his face.
“Come on. Let’s get the fuck out of here.” The briefcase was on his lap, and he was pulling out a small envelope from the back pocket of his jeans and passing it to Eric.
“What happened?”
“It went down like it was supposed to. Met the motherfucker, told him I wasn’t givin’ him the money, and told him to hand over the pictures. He said no, so I whupped his ass till he coughed them up, then I broke the fuck out.”
Eric glanced at what was in the envelope, then closed it when he saw bare brown flesh and the tiny memory card. “How you know this all of them? He could have copies, and now he’s probably more pissed and—”
“And he ain’t gonna do shit,” Blac said, fishing something else out of his front pocket and handing it to Eric.
It was the man’s driver’s license. A tubby, middle-aged, eyeglass-wearing man named Steven Ballard stared back at Eric from the ID card.
“Motherfucker was wearing a wedding ring. I told that fool if Mr. Winslow is ever threatened by him, or anybody else with some damn pictures, I was going to come to his house one night when he was out of town and have a slumber party with his wife, and if he had kids, I was gonna include them, too.”
Eric didn’t like the thought of that, didn’t like the thought that Blac was capable of thinking that. That must’ve shown on his face, because Blac said, “I was just joking, man. But he don’t know that, so we got the pictures, and your brother keeps his money. Now start the car so we can get the fuck out of here.”