is crazy. He looks so straightlaced and clean-cut,” I replied, my mouth still hanging open a little bit as I watched the smooth detective chop it up with a few uniform cops before heading to his car.
“Appearances can be deceiving, for sure. He’s the only person with his hands a little dirty that our friend will take visits from. He’s the insider/outsider, if that makes sense. Barker is smart. He tries to keep his hands clean, even though him and his clients run all this shit around here. Every single nickel and dime sold in Norfolk, Barker gets a cut. He’s like the Pablo Escobar of this city,” Kyle explained.
I was struck silent as I listened and watched the clean-cut and dapper detective get into a darkly tinted black car.
“So, how can I get something newsworthy if we can’t get next to Barker?” I asked, still a bit shocked at what Kyle was really telling me.
“We going to follow him right now, but we got to be careful. You know he’s police, so his countersurveillance skills is top-notch,” Kyle explained as he cranked up the car. As soon as the engine started, so did my nerves. I had to bite down hard to keep my teeth from chattering. Biting my nails was the next best thing, so that’s what I did.
“This is the time of day he makes some stops at the secret stash spots to pay for the re-ups and collect money sometimes. I heard from one of my street connections that they about to blow the lid on a dude they suspect of turning on one of Barker’s biggest clients’ spots. Which, in turn, means, it fucks with Barker’s cut and all the dudes on payroll cuts. My connect said he knows once the detective finds out dude was being a traitor, he is going to take care of the situation right then and there, since the possible future mayor and his clients only trust him to deal with it,” Kyle told me.
Kyle slowly and carefully pulled out behind the black car. My heart throttled up in my chest, because everything Kyle was saying sounded extremely dangerous. But that news-desk job was still calling my name. I imagined the shocked look on Christian’s face when I got this whole story solid, and that was enough to keep me moving closer toward danger. I told myself to sit back and go along for the ride, because everyone knew that in the journalism business, there was never any reward without a little risk.
* * *
It seemed like we had driven forever when Kyle finally stopped the car. I moved my head around, peering out of all of the car windows trying to figure out just where the hell we were at. No lie, it looked like we were transported in time and place. We were in some backwoods part of Virginia, and the property that sat in front of us looked like an old abandoned farm or plantation. There was a big, dilapidated, and haunted-looking plantation-style house to the left, and almost in the way back of the property was an old shack. It looked like if one bad wind came through, it would collapse.
“What the hell?” I said, mouth hanging open a little bit.
“I told you, these dudes are very careful with their shit. Barker actually purchased this old plantation so that he could have a place for his most dangerous clients to conduct their business. We are not dealing with dummies here, twin. Everything they all do is well planned and thought out,” Kyle said. As he spoke, I took in eyefuls of the area. We were so far from any civilization that if anyone screamed out, there was not a soul in the world that would hear him. That thought gave me a bit of pause too. If we needed help out here, not a soul in the world would hear us either.
We couldn’t pull the car right up to the secret property that the detective had driven to, so we stopped down a road, where Kyle parked between some trees. It had taken a little maneuvering to get the car situated where no one could see it. Just the thought of what we were doing made adrenaline pump through me.
“What now?” I asked. “We can’t see anything from way back here.”
“Relax,” Kyle replied, digging in his center console. He pulled out a damn blunt. I watched him like he was losing his mind as he prepared his lighter to spark up his blunt.
“I’ma smoke this, calm my nerves, and then we going to get out and sneak around back, once the outside coast is clear,” he told me.
“Really, Kyle!” I shouted a little too loudly. He fumbled with his blunt and lighter, and every little movement he made was on my nerves. I rolled my eyes at him in disgust. “Do you really think it’s a good idea to be getting high right now? Don’t you think doing something as dangerous as this takes a clear mind?” I asked, seriously disturbed. It always annoyed me to see him smoke weed or drink until he was drunk. At a time like this, when I felt like he needed to be fully sober just in case anything went left, I was especially upset.
“Listen, twin, if you want me to get you these exclusive pieces to build your story . . . you going to have to shut up and let me work. Go with the flow. There is always a method to my madness, and if anyone ain’t going to steer you wrong, it’s me,” Kyle chided, then lifted his blunt and took a long drag off of it. He inhaled deeply and blew the smoke in my direction.
I fanned the air with my hand and crinkled up my face. Shit, maybe Kyle is right. I was feeling so wrecked in the nerves that for a second I felt like I needed to smoke some weed. That thought quickly faded, though. I had never taken a drug in my life. I hadn’t even experimented with any because of the devastation drugs had done to my family. My father had gotten killed over selling drugs; and after seeing my mother addicted to heroin and crack and battle her way back from the edge of death, I felt there was no way I would ever do drugs. I sometimes wondered why Kyle even smoked or sold drugs. Like, what in his consciousness could allow him to even want to be within an inch of any type of drug was beyond me. He had been right there when everything happened to us. Just like me, Kyle had lived through the worst of times due to drugs. I turned my head and stared out of the side window, waiting on him, and that was a mistake. The sight of my mother overdosing flooded back into my mind, fast and furious, like the rushing waters of the Louisiana levees breaking during Hurricane Katrina. There was no stopping that memory. I closed my eyes . . .
* * *
I’d been hiding by the wall in our new apartment and watched yet another dude that my mother had brought home coax her into taking something.
“Listen, I ain’t never sent you wrong before. Live a little. I don’t have to bend your arm to make you feel good. You know you want to get high like before. You been chasing this shit since the very first time . . . You know what it is,” the dude said to my mother, and then grabbed her arm and pulled her to our table.
I came around the wall a little bit so I could see better. My little heart was pumping hard, and I remember curling my hands into fists as I watched.
The man watched my mother. His eyes were wide, and he was breathing hard, like watching my mother readying herself to take the drugs had excited him. Who got that excited over drugs? For a quick moment I wondered if my mother would finally get some sense and refuse the man’s peer pressure.
“Linda, baby . . . go ahead. I promise, you going to feel good as hell after this hit,” the man had urged, grinning slyly. From where I stood, I could see sweat beads on his forehead; every time he moved, they made him look shiny and evil. My mother had crinkled her face as if she wasn’t sure. I had watched her try to be happy after my father’s murder and she’d had a lot of seedy friends come through our place at the time, but I could tell in that moment she wasn’t sure that being with this man was worth trying something that might get her addicted. As young as I was, I could see the strain of apprehension in my mother’s face.
“This is some new shit. Trust me, it’s the A-grade shit that you’ll love. I got it from my boy Drago. He always got that good shit. I’ll always be able to get my hands on this shit after today. Wait until you get a taste,” the man had said, urging my mother on and on.
I bit down into my jaw and swayed a bit on my little legs. I weighed my options in that moment: If I rushed out and screamed, my mother wouldn’t take the drugs, but she also might be very upset and beat my ass. She had become really unpredictable at the time. Some days she was our loving mother that we recognized, and other days not so much. My mother was getting into drugs heavy. It had gone beyond her just smoking