FIVE
Iso
A month or so later
I left Liora in my bed this morning, her ass knocked out to the world. Usually, she got up and left early, sometimes earlier than me, but this morning was different, especially since I’d threatened her ass last night. I didn’t know what was going on in that thick ass head of hers, but she had gone from telling me she was on her way to maybe another time.
Fuck another time. I wanted her here with me, even if she had her own mental shit to work through that she wasn’t ready to talk about.
I talked through all of my shit with this woman, from openness to death and fear of life. She’d better get with the program. Because whatever this was with us was cemented without a title.She was the one who said we were friends.
I sat in the car watching my son play with the other kid in my mother’s yard. He was suited and booted in his Sunday best, nine times out of ten having just come from church. It wasn’t Sunday, but Mama was good for dressing a nigga in khakis and a polo to go to bible study on a Friday. He looked so happy and soloved, unaware of the operant abandonment from his father and death of his mother.
My eyes then landed on my mother. She sat on the porch reading. It was her favorite pastime and essentially what helped her through her day. When I was a kid, we used to live right down the street from the local library. She would take me at least once a week and we'd get about five books. Two of them were for her and the other three for me. Every night she read me to sleep, even if I slept in the bed with her. Then I’d peek in the middle of the night and she’d be sitting up reading her book. Before everything happened, she had me put together a bookshelf in the living room. She liked to collect books now instead of borrowing them from the library.
The heavy hum from my phone interrupted my flashback and had me glaring at the middle console screen to see who was calling. I didn’t know why because it could be only one person calling.Liora.
“Yeah, Killa,” I answered, eyes resting on my son.
“Why didn’t you wake me before you left?”
“’Cause you were tired as fuck. You're straight, get some rest.”
“You tryna’ tell me what to do, Iso?”
A grin tugged at my lips. “Nah, not at all, but if what you wanna do doesn’t align with what I’m thinking, then maybe.”
She cackled into the phone. “Boy, bye. I’m about to leave.”
“Bet. Don’t try to give me no excuse tonight either.”
“I wasn’t giving you an excuse last night.”
“Shidd, that’s cool too, Killa. How about don’t try to give me whatever spiel you attempted last night. I got some quick shit to handle, but I should be back soon. You could stay there in bed if you want.”
“I bet you’d like that. But no, I need to get back to the city for a little while.”
I nodded as though she could see me. “Aight. No bullshit.”
“No bullshit,” she repeated before hanging up. Her repeating what I said threw me off at first, but then I realized it was her defiant way of agreeing without agreeing.
When she and I hung up, I gave my son and mother one more look before I pulled off. At Liora’s insistence, I allowed the mess with Bo and his brother to die down and play out before I made any more moves. Per her, I needed to see which direction the investigation flowed. It didn’t matter to me seeing as how I was dead anyways according to Briar South PD.
My next move was to finally have a sit down with the man I believed started this, but that was close to impossible seeing as how he was behind bars and I was dead. It wasn’t as simple as getting on a list and going to see him. I physically couldn’t or I’d have a lot of fucking explaining to do. The thing was, I also knew a man like Rich Jordan wasn’t sitting in a cell without a means to talk to the outside world. Regardless of what was going on now, he was still who he was, backstabbed by his son and all. I just had to find out who would still be in contact with him enough to have that number.
After a fifteen-minute drive, I pulled up in front of the oldest strip joint in Briar. It belonged to the oldest pimp this city had seen. Shit, he was probably around when Briar was established, that’s how old this nigga was in my eyes. But the way I saw it, nobody did anything illegal in this city without him knowing. He was connected in ways young niggas dreamed and nobody really knew how. When Wiley said his name, it got me thinking. Pete had been around for many tide changes and always seemed to come out on top. He also didn’t trust wannabees; so he would have never partnered with or bowed down to Junior, not even with a pistol to his head.
The problem was, I couldn’t go in there without tipping my hand. Too many people frequented Old Mary’s for me to just walk in.
I picked my phone up from the console and found her contact immediately. All I had to do was go into the recent calls. I clicked it and put the phone on speaker, holding it close to my lips.
“I said no bullshit. What’s wrong now, handsome?” she asked, answering the phone immediately.
“I need your help.”
“Okay, where are you?”
“Deep Watertown. Old Mary’s.”
