"I hit the gas, they kept shooting, and I remember trying to lose 'em. After that..." He frowned, with frustration all over his face. "Everything start getting blurry. I remember getting hit. I remember the steering wheel damn near slipping out my hand, and I remember crashing that muhfucka. Everything after that feel like pieces instead of one whole memory."
Nobody spoke, instead we let him think. I could tell he was fighting to remember every little detail, but brain trauma didn't work like that. The harder you forced it, the further that shit seemed to run and that accident did a number on him.
"You recognize the car?" Mike finally asked from the corner.
Marv slowly shook his head. "Nah."
"The plates?"
"Nah."
"The shooters?"
He closed his eyes again. "I swear I keep seeing one face." He rubbed his forehead. "But every time I think I got it, it disappear."
I leaned back in my chair, studying him for another second. "So this wasn't no robbery."
"Nah." He answered without hesitation. "They came to kill me."
"Over what?"
"I don't know."
"You got beef you ain't tell nobody about?"
He looked offended. "When the hell I ever kept street shit from y'all?"
He had a point because Marv talked too damn much to keep something like that to himself.
Kev scratched the side of his beard before speaking up. "Could be some old shit."
"Could be," Marv admitted. "But if it is, I can't think of who."
The room got quiet again, but this time it wasn't because nobody had anything to say. We were all thinking the same thing. Somebody wanted Marv dead, but the question was who? Or maybe this was something deeper.
Marv suddenly looked over at me like he had just remembered something. "Aye Lev…"
"What?"
"The fifty."
I frowned. "Man, right now ain’t the time to talk in codes. What fifty?"
"The fifty you fronted me."
My expression changed. "What about it?"
He let out a deep breath before looking down at the blanket covering his legs. "That shit gone."
Nobody in the room moved after he said that. Kev stopped tapping his foot and Mike unfolded his arms from across his chest.
I just looked at him. "What you mean it's gone?"
Marv never answered me right away. Instead, he ran his hand over his face before letting it fall back onto the bed. His jaws were grinding back and forth like he was chewing on something as the monitor beside him continued its steady beeping while he stared down at the blanket covering his legs.
"I mean what I’m saying." He finally looked back up at me, “that shit gone."
I frowned, leaning back in the chair while studying his face, he wasn't bullshitting. I knew my cousin too well for that. Whatever was bothering him had been eating at him since he woke up.
