Kismet 3. Raynesha Pittman

in. I was ready for the states of Washington and Tennessee to get their shit together so I could be transported back to Nashville. I was ready to get my time and to start serving it. I had a game plan, and I was ready to execute it. All I needed to know was how much time they were going to give me for my violation. I knew I was facing a violation for leaving the state, and if Peaches didn’t come up with some other shit to get me more time, that’s all I’d be facing. I wasn’t tripping about serving time for violating my probation. I wasn’t supposed to leave the city, but chasing after Savannah’s ass had me in Nevada, California, and Washington. I fucked up. That’s my fault.

      When it came time for me to face the judge, I wouldn’t tell him, “Look, Your Honor, I was chasing after a bitch, and that’s why I violated.” I’d stretch the truth a little bit and make him believe my sole purpose was finding my daughter and building a relationship with her. With the right lawyer pleading my case, I might get off with six months or less. I couldn’t walk in with a court-appointed public defender. They don’t care about you or your case. They’re just there for the money. But the real reason I couldn’t walk in with one was because of my background. That’s what really worried me about having a public defender. I didn’t need the judge looking at my record and wanting to investigate how a felon like me keeps getting off with slaps on the wrist. I didn’t need to be in the judicial system’s spotlight. My goal was to stay low.

      Two...

      There isn’t a sugarcoated way to say that my background was fucked in every way possible. With all the inside help I was getting, I could call my background cloudy, but with each arrest, those clouds were starting to disappear. The state of Tennessee knew about my degrees and the short time I spent on Nashville’s police force. But for how much longer would I be able to keep that as all the information they knew? A lot of strings had been pulled to make my career look as if it had ended due to the highly publicized I-Team investigation of 2006. I couldn’t let my mistakes uncover the truth.

      The I-Team’s investigation had uncovered more than 100 cases of people with criminal records becoming police officers in the state of Tennessee. I was supposedly one of those 100 with an illegal drug possession conviction before joining the force. It was made to look like I was fired at my two-year mark instead of being promoted to bigger and better things. The plan worked like we all assumed it would, and even my mama was convinced that her baby boy was kicked off the force over some bullshit. I’m glad that wasn’t the truth because if it were, I would have never met Ryan. The truth was I had been scouted for an undercover position on the TBI’s, that is, Tennessee Bureau of Investigation’s drug task force. The bureau had traced me back to my father and knew I had ties to Nashville’s drug trade. They were excited to know that I had ceased following in my father’s footsteps and did the exact opposite of him by joining the police force. I had undergone months of extensive training in multiple areas from the best trainers Tennessee could offer. I even got flown around the country, all expenses paid, for some off-site specialty training. When I proved I was ready to take on my duties, they threw me back into the streets to hustle like I used to. The only difference was the TBI now supplied my supply and re-up money as bait.

      They sent a shark to catch the sharks, and once I proved I could, they sent me after the whale. I had cracked a few midlevel drug dealers before, but none of my assignments compared to this one. I was ordered to go undercover to aid in the bust of the biggest drug trafficker in Tennessee’s history. This was the same nigga that had my pops sitting behind federal bars for the rest of his life. My pops wasn’t a snitch, and I guess he assumed that Big David wasn’t either, but that wasn’t the case. While Pops wasn’t talking, Big David was in there singing. He turned on my pops, and since Pops still didn’t snitch when he found out, I turned on him. I was six or seven at the time, and the way I saw it was my pops was more loyal to Big David than to his own wife and kid. I haven’t talked to my pops ever since, but my mama does.

      “Mr. Burns, are you’re refusing your meal again?” the question came through the speaker.

      When I was first assigned the case, vengeance consumed me. I was all for catching the fool who had broken up my household and left my mother brokenhearted. What I hadn’t planned on or prepared myself for was being around money so large that I could retire before my twenty-sixth birthday. My team wasn’t ready for it either. All it took was one year of making runs back and forth from Texas to Tennessee for Big David for me to learn all the details of his operation. I shared the information with my team and reported all my findings to my superiors. I used recordings, tapes, and hidden video to get the approval for the raid. Then came the day I would get to send Big David away to spend the rest of his life with my father in prison. Not only was I able to lock him up and throw away the key, but I also managed to stash 35 percent of the money we were supposed to be confiscating. I didn’t plan on robbing him, but when they sent me in there to get the evidence with no eyes or ears, the temptation was too strong not to.

      “I asked you a question, Mr. Burns.”

      It took a few months before the rumors started spreading about there being more money involved than we had confiscated. Big David had befriended a prison guard and told him he had stashed at least $2 million more than what had been documented, and he was sure the TBI agents who arrested him had kept it for themselves. Our superiors didn’t take his words lightly, and they conducted an in-house investigation. Nothing had turned up because I wasn’t stupid enough to start flashing the money around, nor did I tell anyone on my team I had stolen it. That came two years later. I worked another six months, then planned my escape route to get out of it all. I knew the TBI was still keeping a close eye on me, so I gave them a reason to kick me out. I let them catch me selling small amounts of weed that I had bought from dealers we were investigating. I only bought a pound of weed at a time, which was $700 each time. I made sure to take the money out of my paychecks to buy it just in case they decided to track the funds. I knew they were watching me, but I also knew having a key witness to the crimes I was committing would seal the deal. So, I set up my baby mama to be just that. I let Tasha in on what I was doing and let her get some of my smaller sales. She didn’t know anything about selling drugs, and I knew this. It was her test. I wanted to see if she would snitch if she got caught, or if she would ride for her man and take the blame.

      “Please believe me, this ain’t my weed,” Tasha pleaded as the cuffs tightened around her wrists.

      “Funny that you say that because you’re selling it like it’s yours.” The narcotics officer looked at his partner and nodded. They both knew the ten-dollar value of the sack they were arresting her for wasn’t worth the paperwork, but scaring her into believing it would, would be priceless if they could make it work.