Chaser Read online

  I nodded. “That’s cool.”

  I started to walk out of my dad’s office, and he stopped me.

  “Nas.”

  I turned around. “Hah?”

  “This decision better not come back to bite me in the ass.”

  I shook my head and said, “Naw. It won’t.”

  I left the shop, got in my black Dodge Viper pickup truck—one of four that my dad bought for all his chasers to chase out of—and on my way to post up at Fifty-second and Spruce I called Kenny.

  “Tell Leah she can start Monday,” I said.

  “That’s what’s up, homie. You always come through.”

  “Let’s just make sure history don’t repeat itself,” I added.

  “Oh naw, nigga. I ain’t got eyes in the back of my head. I ain’t worried about the past.”

  “Cool.”

  “All right.”

  “’Bye.”

  Leah

  I loaded up the dishwasher with the dirty dishes Kenny managed to fill up the sink with while I was in jail, folded the last load of clothes, swept and mopped the floors, dusted off everything, and lit a few candles. I live in a multimillion-dollar home and don’t have a housekeeper, I thought. That’s some ghetto shit. The last thing on my list was ordering Cajun Chicken Chesapeake for six from Bourbon Blue. Kenny would pick it up on his way in.

  I was finished with everything by seven, giving me just enough time to shower and change out of my tights and oversized T-shirt and into a pair of sweats before Kenny’s company arrived at eight. He was having a meeting with his accountant and his top workers to discuss his finances and opportunities for him to merge out of the drug game and into legit business.

  Usually when Kenny had meetings at the house, I would find something to do to occupy my time, which often was shopping or going to visit my mom. But this time I felt obligated to sit in on the meeting. As much as I was having second thoughts about it, I had a deal with the police, and my freedom from both jail and Kenny depended on my keeping it. So I needed to start gathering information, and what better time than at the meeting.

  I heard Kenny pull up in the garage, and I greeted him at the door.

  “You smell good,” he said as I hugged him.

  “Thank you. So does that food,” I said, relieving Kenny of one of the bags.

  I immediately started taking the containers of food out of the bags and placing everything on one big tray on the counter. I took out my Wedgwood china and the Waterford glasses. I laid out jeweled wood place mats and started setting the dining room table—half of it anyway. We didn’t need twelve settings, and to make it appear more intimate, I removed the six additional chairs we would not be using. I lifted the heavy custom wooden chairs and placed them in the adjacent study. Then I rearranged the remaining six chairs, putting three on each side of the table. That way no one person would be too far away from anyone else and there was plenty of elbow room for everyone to eat comfortably.

  In the meantime Kenny freshened up. The doorbell rang just as Kenny was coming back downstairs. The guests arrived all at once, having riden together in one car, except Sammy, Kenny’s accountant, who had driven himself.

  “Hey, Sammy.” I greeted him with a hug as he came in. We exchanged kisses on the cheek, and I took his tan trench coat and plaid scarf and hung them in the coat closet in the foyer.

  Behind Sammy was Sky, Kenny’s transporter. Basically, he was responsible for taking drugs down South and returning with money. I greeted him the same way—a hug, a kiss—and I took his coat. Next was Raj, Kenny’s best friend and right-hand man. He pretty much helped Kenny manage all his street hustlers or corner boys. Last in was Tim, Kenny’s older brother and his muscle. As a result of his frequent stints in the penitentiary, he was real buff, so his appearance alone was threatening. And he had a reputation for being ruthless and for torturing niggas. I wasn’t as enthusiastic when I greeted him as I was when I greeted the others. I never had good vibes about Tim. He rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe it was his cold, standoffish demeanor. I didn’t know. But I felt extremely intimidated by him.

  Everybody sat at the table, and I served them dinner while they began their meeting. I must say I was being extra hospitable. I didn’t know if it was my nerves or what.

  “All right, I’m goin’ get straight to the point, Sammy. Where the fuck is all my money goin’?” Kenny started.

  “It’s all documented,” Sammy said, punching keys on his laptop. “Well, with you refinancing everybody’s houses recently your mortgage payments have gone up—”

  “How much?” Kenny asked.

  I tuned in myself to hear the answer. I never knew how much Kenny was paying for everybody’s mortgage. Quite frankly, I didn’t think he should have been paying anybody’s mortgage but ours. Every nigga sittin’ at this table made enough money to pay his own.

  “Let’s see,” Sammy said, calling up more information on his computer. “Yours is now eighteen thousand six hundred sixty-nine dollars a month; your brother’s is now nine thousand three hundred and thirty-four a month; Roger’s and Sky’s are each seven thousand two hundred and twenty-three.”

  “Shit, nigga, you pay more in mortgages than what my pop make in a year,” Raj said, seemingly proud. “How many niggas you know that’s under age thirty that can do that shit. We up, niggas!”

  “You all are doing well, yes, but I don’t know if I would celebrate right now,” Sammy said. “You see, Kenny, your monthly bills are at seventy-three thousand. And for the last six months you’ve only been bringin’ in on average fifty to sixty thousand. In addition, there’s been a lot of sporadic spending over that time period, causing you to fall behind.”

  “That’s fuckin’ ridiculous, though, Sammy. Why wouldn’t you give me the heads-up that I’m headin’ for broke before I actually get there? I mean, ain’t that what I pay you for?” Kenny addressed Sammy as he chomped on a forkful of pasta.

  Fumbling to adjust his glasses on his face, Sammy answered, “Well, you’re not broke at all. You’re just digging into your reserves at this point. And I actually called this meeting tonight to give you the heads-up on things.”

  “Okay, so what do I have in reserve?”

  “You haaaave…” Sammy stretched his words as he punched more keys on his laptop. “You have two point seven million as of right now. That’s down from three point one six months ago.”

  Kenny mumbled some figures and calculations then said, “So you sayin’ I spent four hundred grand in six months, in addition to my monthly bills?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  The looks on a few of Kenny’s partners’ faces told me that I wasn’t the only one shocked by the accountant’s report of Kenny’s outlandish spending. I started adding stuff up in my head, trying to figure out what he had spent so much money on. Okay, granted, he treated himself to the Maserati for his twenty-fifth birthday a few months ago. That was a hundred thousand. Then there was the forty days we spent at our marina house in the Turks and Caicos for the holidays. That was probably about a hundred and fifty grand, most of which went to the yacht he chartered. Okay, so that was a little more than half the money, but the other portion I couldn’t account for, and I couldn’t help but wonder how much of it went to other girls.

  “Somethin’ gotta give, man. I can’t keep blowin’ money like this,” Kenny stated.

  The mood in the room grew somber. Niggas was probably scared that Kenny was goin’ to announce that he was goin’ to have to put the brakes on payin’ all their mortgages.

  But offering hope, Sammy put his finger up and said, “That’s another reason why I called this meeting tonight. I wanted to propose something to you all.”

  Everybody turned to look at Sammy.

  “I think you all need to consider investing, particularly in real estate. With the housing market in the sewer, it’s a good time to buy rental properties. People are losing their homes and can’t afford mortgages, but still they need a place to live. And I was j
ust introduced to an amazing opportunity that I want to bring to you all. One of my business partner’s golf buddies is liquidating a lot of his income-producing properties. He has a package of mobile-home parks for sale…”

  I looked at everybody’s reactions to Sammy’s proposal that they buy trailer parks, and, as I expected, none of them seemed interested, except for Kenny. Kenny showed interest in any ideas that led to making money—big or small.

  “I know it doesn’t sound as glamorous as, say, an apartment building or condo conversions, but when you do the math, it has the potential to make more money than any of that other stuff that’s on the market right now. He has five mobile parks that he’s getting rid of for a good price, and they bring in substantial monthly income already, but that’s with the tenants occupying them at beneath-market rates. So if you put a little bit of money into them, update them some, you could raise rents and just about triple the net worth.”

  A few eyebrows raised. I imagined there were dollar signs floating around in everybody’s heads.

  Sammy went on, “The bottom line is, you all need to start making your money make money. And I know it’s hard because you do what you do and are trying to stay undetected as far as your assets go, but there are ways to have paper trails that are perfectly legal.”

  “You talkin’ washin’ the money?” Tim asked.

  Sammy nodded. “Yeah, basically.”

  “Money launderin’,” Kenny mumbled, wiping his mouth with a folded napkin.

  “I don’t know about that,” Raj spoke up.

  “Yeah, I know, ’cause that shit can catch you up, too. Look at what happened with Irv Gotti and them,” Sky said.

  Then Sammy interjected, “It’s definitely not a hundred percent foolproof. Consider it like a condom. It’s ninety-nine percent effective. The thing is, you can’t put your money behind mega superstars or big businesses that are already on the radar. You have to put it behind small ventures, low-key things that won’t raise any eyebrows or attract a lot of attention, and with the economy being in shambles right now, there are plenty small businesses that would be willing to launder your money in exchange for financial support.”

  Kenny glanced over at me. “That’s why all them niggas be buyin’ their girls’ hair salons and shit. Leah, you want a hair salon?”

  Hell, yeah, I thought. Anything to put me in position to make my own money, but before I could say anything Sammy butted in, “No, that’s not smart either. Not right now. You don’t wanna put your money into something that you’re attached to. Then the question of where the money generated from still gets asked. You have to find a business that already exists and make a deal with the owner. And, of course, make sure it’s somebody you can trust.”

  “And somebody you can get at easily, in case for some reason he end up being untrustworthy,” Sky added.

  “The point is, once you find the business you feel comfortable with, make the owner put you on the payroll. They will start issuing you checks; you’ll really be being paid out of your own money, but it will look like it’s coming out of their business account instead of from the streets.”

  Kenny nodded and seemed to be in deep thought.

  “This way, you all can start using the so-called money you make from your employer”—Sammy made quotation marks with his fingers—“to put in banks and build capital, and then you can start funneling it into other things like the real estate deal I’m proposing…”

  Kenny sipped his water and asked, “But will homie be willing to hold off selling the package until I clean up enough money to get them? That might take a minute.”

  “Well, right now he’s willing to do owner financing, which means he will keep the properties in his name and set it up with you so you will give him a monthly payment based on the amount you would finance to buy the properties.”

  “You lost me,” Kenny said.

  “It would be as if he was the bank giving you the loan,” I jumped in to clarify it for Kenny.

  “Exactly,” Sammy said. “He’s willing to do that for a year, which is plenty of time to clean up enough cash.”

  Kenny nodded and said, “I like that idea. I think I can make that happen.”

  Then the other guys nodded in agreement. I swore they were a bunch of yes sirs. If Kenny liked it, they loved it. But who was I to talk? I was in the same boat as them. I needed Kenny financially like they did, maybe even more. So just like them, I tended to go along with whatever he said.

  “That could work,” I volunteered my opinion as I looked at Kenny.

  “That’s the only way you’re gonna see real growth, when your money is moving around. When it stays still in a safe or under a mattress, it starts to deplete. And if you put it in the bank, it can get frozen the minute you become the target of an investigation.”

  “Speakin’ of which,” Raj said, looking at Kenny, “what the hell happened? Fuck they lock you up on?”

  Aww shit, I thought. Why did this conversation have to come up? The last thing I needed was for the question to arise about how we all got out without penalty. I didn’t know if my nerves could handle lying to all of them, especially that damn Tim. He was good at reading people, and I didn’t want him to get any ideas about me. He was the type of person who would dig and dig and dig until he found a loophole in a nigga’s story. I felt myself tensing up.

  “Aww, man,” Kenny began, “I was buggin’ out for a minute, feelin’ like I was losing everything. Wound up stagin’ a accident to hustle up a couple dollars, and the corner I did it on was being surveilled by the mothafuckin’ police,” Kenny explained, almost as if he was bragging.

  Everybody laughed except Tim, who maintained a serious expression. I myself chuckled. Then I stood and started gathering dishes and eating utensils to remove them from the table. I figured my action would give the hint that the meeting was over.

  “This nigga got over two million in the stash, and he chasin’ car insurance claims for a few thousand dollars,” Tim commented.

  “It’s easy money, nigga, and it’s quick. And I know that shit like the back of my hand, plus I got people who can help me pull it off, so that’s why I dibble in it ever so often.” Kenny paused and looked up at me as I gathered dishes. I felt him looking at me, and I shot him a quick smile. “But not no more. I’m cool on all that now. I ain’t tryna put my girl in a position like that again. Plus, the money ain’t worth the headache.”

  “I don’t see why you thought it was worth it to begin with, brah. If you needed a few thousand, what was wrong with diggin’ in ya stash?”

  Kenny jumped to his own defense, “Naw see, I got a system. I give Sammy money every month, and he go ’head and pay all my bills. If it’s ever short, he got permission to take it out of my reserves. Then I keep a stash for myself, for my pocket. And I started noticin’ my pocket money dwindling. And I don’t wanna stop givin’ Sammy what I’m givin’ him for my bills, ’cause then he goin’ dig more and more into my reserves, and once that’s gone, I’m cracked, havin’ to start over from the bottom. So whenever I see my pocket money gettin’ low, that’s when I start scramblin’ around tryin’ to hustle some money up real quick,” Kenny explained.

  “Well, if that’s ya system, you need a new one. We built up too much to let it all crumble over small change. You should be tryin’ to stay as far away from the precinct as possible. All it take is for you to get locked up with the wrong mafucka. They get to talkin’, and ya ass is done.”

  Tim’s words sent chills through me.

  “That’s true.” Raj sighed.

  “Well, that’s one thing I ain’t gotta worry about. I keep thorough niggas around me, and I only do dirt with niggas who I can trust, like my baby,” Kenny said, grabbing hold of my waist as I stood beside his chair with dishes in my hands. “She took the charge for me,” Kenny lied.

  For once, I was relieved that he didn’t tell the truth. I mean, I didn’t expect him to tell his group of criminal friends that his girl made a deal wi
th the cops and became a snitch to get us all off. But then again, you never knew with Kenny. He liked to brag so much that sometimes he bragged about the wrong things to the wrong people. I was glad that this wasn’t one of those times. I could imagine Tim interrogating me about it and then puttin’ it in Kenny’s head to watch out for me. I could imagine him saying something like, If she’ll rat on one nigga, she’ll rat on them all.

  “Word?” Raj questioned, seemingly impressed.

  “Wow,” Sammy uttered.

  They all looked at me, including Tim. What were they expecting my reaction to be? I wondered. Was I supposed to be upset or content? Well, from how Kenny put it out there, like it was a good thing, I decided to give a half grin.

  “And I owe her big-time for it, too. You can’t get most niggas to do no shit like that for you these days.”

  “Fuck no,” Sky said.

  “Naw, you can’t,” Tim added. “You got you somethin’ special.” He sized me up as he picked his teeth with a toothpick he’d apparently brought with him to the dinner meeting.

  “Plus,” Kenny continued, “if mafuckas know one thing, they know not to turn on me. I’d like to think that I put in enough work on the streets to make that clear by now, kna mean?”

  “You never know, though,” Tim persisted. “Just chill on the extra shit, that’s all.”

  “I am. I ain’t tryna keep duckin’ the law,” Kenny said. “That’s why my man Sammy is here tonight. He goin’ help me put my money in the right place so I can walk away from the game before my time run out.”

  “So does that mean it’s a yes? You want to move forward on the mobile-park deal?” Sammy took the opportunity to get back on topic. And I was so grateful he did. I didn’t know how much more my nerves could take talking about our arrest.

  “Yeah, let’s do it,” Kenny concluded.

  “Great. I’ll call you in the morning to get started on some paperwork.”

  At that, Sammy closed up his laptop and put it in its bag. He excused himself from the meeting. I walked him to the door, retrieved his coat and scarf, and saw him out.