CHAPTER 15
NO MORE SLIP-UPS
The plan that Ava and I had laid out didn’t go so well back at the stash house. I couldn’t believe that she almost fucked the whole incident up. While I was unscrewing the silencer I had to pick Ava’s brain to find out what happened. “You all right?” I started off.
“Yeah, I’m good,” she said as she made her way out of the Ocean View area of Norfolk.
“What fuck happened back there? You completely forgot what you were supposed to do.”
“Aiden, I don’t know what happened. I mean, I was rehearsing what I was going to say over and over while I was walking to the house, but as soon as Nu-Nu’s brother opened the door my mind went blank. I tried thinking really hard but that shit wouldn’t come to my mind at all.”
“Is that why you took his damn cell phone?”
“No. I took his fucking cell phone because he was getting ready to call his brother Nu-Nu. I couldn’t let that happen. If Trey would’ve been able to make that call to Nu-Nu, we would’ve been fucked!”
“Yeah, we would’ve. That’s why I was about two seconds from running up on the porch,” I replied.
“I’m glad I reacted the way I did because who knows what would’ve happened if you ran on the porch and shot Trey but Al got away? It also could’ve been another guy in the house, too.”
“Yeah, I thought about that, too,” I told her. This murder-for-hire gig Ava and I did tonight was going to have to run smoother than this the next time. I mean, she could’ve gotten hurt or, worse, shot. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if something had happened to her on my watch. Like I said, the next time we went out and made our rounds, we were going to have to be on point.
* * *
When Ava got us back to the apartment I retreated to the couch and turned on the television to see if the news media had gotten wind of what happened. I mean, it was highly likely that they wouldn’t, considering I had just smoked those niggas. But in the world of social media, half the time you just don’t know.
Ava went into the bedroom and closed the door. My first thought was that she was going to try to get that nigga Nashad on the phone. So I got up and walked to the bedroom door to see if I could hear anything. But when I heard the shower water running I felt relieved, and that’s when I walked away from the bedroom door.
I returned to the living room and sat down on the couch. I sat there for at least thirty minutes, and nothing came on television. No breaking news. Nothing. But then I heard a cell phone ringing. I jumped to my feet and raced down the hallway. I tried to open the bedroom door, but it was locked. That bothered me. It actually infuriated me. So I started knocking on the door. “What is it?” Ava yelled through the door.
“Open the door,” I demanded.
“For what? I just got out of the shower,” she replied.
“I heard your cell phone ringing,” I roared.
“That wasn’t my phone Aiden. It’s the cell phone I took from Nu-Nu’s brother, Trey,” she said.
“Open the door,” I instructed her once again, because I didn’t believe what she was telling me.
“Give me a second,” she said, and then I didn’t hear anything. All the movement in the bedroom went silent. I started knocking on the door.
“Why is it taking you so long to open the door?” I questioned her.
After waiting for what seemed like forever, Ava finally unlocked the bedroom door. When she opened it, it was just slightly ajar. “Here, see it for yourself,” she told me and handed me the cell phone she had taken from that guy. Immediately after I took the phone from her she closed the bedroom door.
I turned around and headed back into the living room. I sat back on the couch for the third time and threw all of my focus to the cell phone in my hand. I looked at the call log and realized that Ava hadn’t been lying. The ringing I had heard did come from this phone. When I looked closely, I noticed the call had come from Nu-Nu. I wanted to call back and tell that weak-ass nigga that his brother was dead, but I knew it wouldn’t be a good idea to do so. I was being paid a hefty amount of money to get rid of the whole crew; I’d be a fool to fuck that up. So, instead of calling that nigga back, I looked through the entire call list and saw phone numbers for all the niggas I was supposed to kill. Ava’s picking this up was the best thing she could’ve ever done. If I planned the rest of these jobs just right, I’d be able to kill every one of these niggas and do it quickly.
As I continued to look through this phone I read a lot of the text messages he had sent and received from different chicks. This guy was definitely a lady’s man. Lucky for them, none of them were at the stash house when he got murked, because I would’ve had to put a bullet in their asses, too. Since they dodged my bullet, I wondered how many of them were going to show up at his funeral. Judging from the number of chicks in his DM, they were going to come in droves.