Deliver Me From Evil. Mary Monroe

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СКАЧАТЬ put on that cap. Make sure to hide all your hair,” he told me, sliding his watch onto his wrist, muttering under his breath about how cheap the watch was and how he was going to get himself a Rolex with part of his ransom money.

      “Put on my sunglasses and one of my jackets,” he added. “A loose one so your titties won’t show. If we run into anybody I know, don’t you open your mouth unless you have to. If somebody tries to make you talk, act like you from Brazil or Nigeria or some other fucking foreign country and you don’t speak English. With the cap and them sunglasses, they might just think you just another dude. Or just some dowdy bitch that they don’t want to know, no way, no how.”

      Even though Wade was obviously impatient, I took my time getting dressed. He stuffed the two-hundred-dollar skirt and the ninety-dollar blouse that I’d worn to his house into a plastic grocery bag and took them out to the trash. By the time he returned, I had slid into a pair of his baggy, tacky jeans and a plaid flannel shirt with sleeves so long, I had to roll them up to my elbows. Both items still had the Goodwill price tags attached. It broke my heart to know that this was the best he could do. And, it also broke my heart to know that he was going to splurge on a Rolex when there were so many other things he needed. Like a decent wardrobe and a car. When I didn’t feel like driving us around in my Lexus and when his mama’s old jalopy wasn’t available, we traveled from one hotel to another in cabs and buses.

      I had the sunglasses in my hand, just staring at them. As the wife of a millionaire, it had been a long time since I’d worn something so cheap looking.

      “Woman, you better get a move on. Stop standing there looking at them shades like they’re something good to eat. We gotta get up out of here before my mama comes home!” Wade barked.

      My hands were shaking as I fumbled with the glasses. I dropped them twice before I got them to stay on my face. Wade slapped one of his baseball caps onto my head and pulled it down over my ears, hiding all of my hair. Just a few hours earlier, I’d spent over a hundred dollars on a press and curl at Thelma’s House of Beauty. If I had really thought everything through the way I should have, I would have brought a wig with me to hide my hair.

      But if I had thought everything through the way I should have, I wouldn’t have concocted such a clumsy and desperate plan in the first place. And that was what a little voice had been trying to tell me. But my head was too hard for me to let that little voice penetrate my brain.

      “You all right?” Wade asked, with a forced smile.

      “I’m fine,” I said, adjusting the cap and the glasses. I was still nervous and apprehensive about my role in this crime. But since I was the mastermind and the one who was going to profit the most, I had no intentions of turning back now.

      “Aw shit!” Wade hollered, clapping his hands together like a seal. There was a wild-eyed look on his face.

      Everything on my body froze except my eyes and mouth. I looked at him, with my eyes stretched open as wide as they could go. “What’s wrong?” I asked, with a gasp, looking toward the door, then each window.

      “Them shoes!” Wade yelled, pointing at my three-hundred-dollar Italian sandals. Before I could respond, he shot out of the room like a ball of fire. A few minutes later he returned with a pair of limp, brown moccasins. “Put these on. Mama don’t wear these no more,” he said, tossing the tacky shoes onto the mattress.

      Without hesitation, I eased down on the mattress and kicked off my sandals. “Next time you go to Goodwill, take those shoes,” I said, with a sigh, nodding toward my sandals. “I spent three hundred dollars on these puppies, and I’ve only worn them twice.” Wade’s eyes got as big as teacups.

      “Goodwill my ass. I can get a pretty penny for these bad boys at one of them consignment shops. I just wish you had told me how much you spend on your shit before I threw that skirt and blouse you had on in the trash. Now I got to dig that shit out and get—”

      Then something hit me like a thunderbolt. “Wade, I just thought of something! You can’t donate any of my stuff to Goodwill, and you can’t sell it,” I gasped. “That’s a chance we can’t take.”

      “Who is going to find out and how?”

      “I don’t know, but I don’t want to take that chance,” I said, shaking my head. “Detectives are way too smart these days. My DNA is all over my shit.” I frowned as I eased my feet into the moccasins.

      Wade gave me a thoughtful look; then he looked nervous again. It was ironic that two people who got as nervous as Wade and I did would even be involved in any type of crime together, especially a scheme as elaborate as kidnapping. “So you do think that your old man might go to the cops?”

      “I didn’t say that,” I wailed, rising from the mattress. The moccasins were so flimsy and thin, my feet felt like they were bare.

      “Then what the hell are you talking about detectives for? If you don’t think that your old man’s going to the cops, why would you be worried about detectives going to Goodwill and finding your shit?”

      “I just don’t want to take that chance. I know enough to know that a lot of people have been destroyed because of DNA. Not only is my DNA on my clothes and shoes, but yours is, too. If, and I do mean if, something happens and the cops do get involved, how would we explain both our DNA on my clothes? It could be that one slipup that ruins everything. The ransom money will be more than enough,” I said.

      Wade sighed and shrugged. Then he snatched another plastic grocery bag up off the floor and slid the sandals in it. I followed him outside to the backyard to make sure he put the shoes in the trash, where he’d already buried the rest of my things under a pile of filth in a can with two lids.

      “Happy?” he asked, marching me back into the house, goosing my ass all the way.

      “I just don’t want you to get greedy, Wade,” I said, turning to face him once we made it back to his bedroom.

      “Greedy? Girl, I ain’t half as greedy as some of the folks I know,” he told me, with a strange look on his face. That gave me something else to worry about because I didn’t know what it meant.

      CHAPTER 6

      Like most of the houses in this neighborhood in the southern part of Berkeley, the house that Wade shared with his mama was on a corner, across the street from a liquor store. Winos and stray dogs patrolled the area more than the cops. The outside of the old house was pretty grim. It hadn’t been painted in so long, it was hard to tell the original color. The wraparound porch in the front of the house looked like it was slowly sinking into the ground. With another strong earthquake, it would. Cheap plastic curtains covered the windows downstairs.

      But the motel that Wade took me to in his mama’s old car was even more depressing than the house we’d left behind. Fast-food containers, empty beer cans, whiskey bottles, used condoms, and women’s underwear practically covered the ground that surrounded the cheap motel.

      Jason Mack, one of Wade’s many shady friends who would do anything for money, was in the room, sitting on the squeaky bed, with a large pizza box on his lap. There was a battered shopping bag on the bed, next to him. His run-down shoes sat on the floor, next to his long, sour-smelling bare feet. “So did you make the call?” he asked, looking at Wade.

      Wade had added Jason to the mix without my knowledge or consent. I couldn’t do anything about that now. But just knowing that somebody other than Wade and me were in on this bogus СКАЧАТЬ