of both sides of his mouth.
“Yes, I … I believe you,” Jesse Ray stuttered.
“And by the way, this juicy butt, big-legged woman of yours looks mighty delicious to me … yum-yum. If there’s a bitch better than this one sitting in front of me now, God kept her for himself. I will do my best and try to be a good boy. Uh, I’ll try to keep my hands to myself, but I am a man.”
“Shit! Don’t you touch my wife!” Jesse Ray shouted.
“Then you better get me my money on time before I lose control. And I know, you know what I mean.”
“Don’t hurt my wife …. Please don’t hurt my wife,” Jesse Ray said, this time in a weak, pleading voice.
“That’s up to you. You do what I tell you to do, and everything will be all right.”
“What do you want?” Jesse Ray asked, his voice trembling. “I’m not a rich man ….”
“Bullshit! And Santa Claus ain’t got nothing to do with Christmas,” Wade said, then laughed. “Brother, you rich enough for me! I got friends in all the right places, so I know just as much about your business as you do. I know what your black ass is worth!”
“How … much do you want?” my husband asked.
“Do you love your wife, my man?”
Jesse Ray hesitated before he answered. And that gave me something else to worry about. “Yes. I love my wife very much,” he said finally. “I have always loved my wife, and I always will. She means the world to me.” I breathed a sigh of relief.
“Then you’d be willing to pay to get her back.” I couldn’t tell if the sentence was a statement or a question, because Wade winked at me when he said it.
“I just told you, I am not a rich man. I don’t care what you heard about me. I’m a working man,” Jesse Ray said, raising his voice again. “I don’t know why you decided to grab my wife of all people. Especially since the Bay Area is full of men with a lot more money than I’ll ever have—and the women they love. Sean Penn’s wife, Mick Jagger’s daughter. Why my woman?”
“Well, I know about all them rich folks, but I ain’t that greedy,” Wade said, with a sinister chuckle. “And I don’t want to put myself in no position that might attract a lot of attention. I ain’t fool enough to snatch no famous person’s woman.”
“But you are fool enough to snatch mine?”
“Don’t you get cute with me, motherfucker! I’m the one in charge here! And I just told you, I know what you worth. I done my homework. You want your wife back. I want my money. It’s as simple as that. Do you understand me, motherfucker?”
“I understand,” Jesse Ray mumbled.
“Good! Now just to show you that I ain’t one of them greedy bastards you read about in the newspaper, all I want is half a million dollars.” Wade was as cool as a block of ice. He could not have sounded more casual if he’d been ordering a glass of wine.
Jesse Ray gasped and started coughing. It took him almost a minute to compose himself. “A half a million dollars? Mister, you must be out of your goddamn mind! Who the hell do you think you are?”
“I’m the man with the gun and your wife. You’ll get me my money, or you won’t never see your wife alive again.”
“I don’t know who the fuck this is, but whoever you are, you are talking like you’re crazy as hell!”
“No, brother. You are the one talking crazy.”
“Look, be reasonable. This is not P. Diddy or Donald Trump or Bill Gates you’re talking to!” Jesse Ray shouted. “I told you, I am just a working man. I live from payday to payday. I buy my suits from Penney’s. I buy just about everything else from Wal-Mart. I don’t have the kind of money you’re talking about!”
I gasped myself because I knew Jesse Ray was lying! We had over two million dollars in the bank. Or I should say, Jesse Ray had over two million dollars in the bank. And that was just the money that I knew about. For a man who worshipped money the way he did, there was no doubt in my mind that he had another fortune stashed away somewhere. For one thing, he had made more than one mysterious trip to the Cayman Islands in the last couple of years. I knew that a lot of Americans hid money from Uncle Sam in island banks.
But I honestly didn’t know what my husband was worth. In addition to the money that the video stores brought in, he had invested wisely over the years. He owned an apartment building in San Francisco, and he had made a lot of wise investments in the stock market over the years. These were just the things that I knew about. I was surprised and hurt that Jesse Ray would deny his wealth, knowing now that I was in such an ominous position.
“Well, if you ain’t got it, you better get it. If you want to see your wife again. And just to show you I ain’t all bad, I will give you till Friday to get me my money. Today is Monday, so you got enough time to do your thing. I will check in with you on … say, tomorrow morning, this same time, this same number. Don’t you do nothing stupid, like call the cops. Or tell that big-mouthed sister of yours. What’s her name? Yeah, Adele. She got a couple of cute kids, so we just might snatch one of them next if we have to.”
“Don’t you go near my family!” Jesse Ray shouted.
“Then you better do what I say,” Wade warned, snorting like a bull. “Don’t get your phone tapped, and don’t have nobody up in that damn shop with you when I call you tomorrow. You can afford to close up shop for an hour or two. You understand me, motherfucker?”
The silence on Jesse Ray’s end was disturbing. It was so complete, it seemed like he had left the telephone. I held my breath until he responded, which was a few more seconds later.
“I … I understand,” Jesse Ray stammered.
“Like I said, if you call the cops, your bitch is dead. And … so is your mama. Bye.” Wade unplugged the telephone and looked at his watch. “I can’t believe it took all this time to get that stingy motherfucker you married to take me serious. I don’t know what this world is coming to!” Wade said, with an incredulous look on his face. “You sure know how to pick ’em!”
“You didn’t have to say that about his mama,” I said, folding my arms. “Miss Rosetta is the sweetest woman I know. You didn’t even have to drag her into this mess. You got me, and that ought to be enough,” I insisted.
“Baby, I want this thing to work, don’t you? If we want to make sure it works, we got to use every trick in the book.”
“I hope it does work,” I admitted. I moved the telephone from the wobbly chair, and then I flopped down into it. “I don’t know what else to do.”
“Look, there ain’t nothing else for us to do! If he don’t pay, you can’t go back to him and pick up where you left off. You’d be a fool to go back to that stingy punk. Bottom line is, he’d better come through. You and me both are fucked in the asshole if he don’t.”
“But what if he doesn’t?” I asked, wringing my hands, rotating my wedding ring.
“Then we go to Plan B,” Wade said, with a heavy sigh. “I go on back to L.A., and you go with me, if you want to. Somehow we’ll make it,” he said, with a shrug and a tired look. “Being broke ain’t the worst thing in the world.”
“Oh,” I muttered, looking around the cluttered room. “Wade, do you really love me? Do you love me enough to take me back to L.A. with you and take care of me?”
The tired look immediately disappeared from his face, and he replaced it with a smile, his tongue licking his lips. It was hard to believe that he was the same man who had looked and sounded so mean and angry a few moments ago. “Why don’t we trot back upstairs to my bedroom and let me show you.”
CHAPTER 4