Nothing Will Come Between Us

Chapter 1-3

I walked over to my refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of grape juice. After guzzling it down to half a bottle in a mere four gulps, I reconsidered saving the rest of the juice for later. “f**k it,” I blurted out to myself. “I didn’t come this far to quit.” I took a deep breath and then finished the entire bottle before throwing the empty vessel into the trash bin. The empty bottle was useless to me now. Like my past, all its beautifully created contents were forever gone, so it had no further purpose for me.

In a spare bedroom, my gear bag was hidden away in the back of a small closet. After looking down at my watch I knew it was time to prepare myself for tonight’s mission. I picked up a barstool and walked into the spare bedroom. It took several minutes of digging around before I found my gear bag buried underneath several cardboard boxes of old college textbooks and my handwritten copies of old sermons. With one powerful jerk, I pulled the bag out of its discrete space and placed it next to the stool. After emptying the bag of its contents, I arranged my gear around the stool. My guns, bullets, knives, gloves, a prepaid cellphone, and a laptop all neatly compiled on the carpet underneath me. They were beautiful. As a hitman, these were my tools of warfare now. Gone were the days when I would preach about the importance of voting, while imploring the virtues of turning the other cheek to a deadly adversary. I had learned the hard way that the childish hope of bringing morality to the immoral was a scam doomed for failure. If the struggles of Black Americans were to one day end, we would have to exercise our faith. We could no longer pretend with our words. Our faith needed to be put into deadly action.

I picked up a knife and a blade sharpener. The silver metal blade reflected a mirror-like image of me as I began to sharpen its edge. I could clearly see the image of my freshly shaven face and focused brown eyes staring back at me. I had to get myself mentally ready for the realities of this part of the mission. In silence, I closed my eyes for a moment and offered a silent prayer to the Lord, asking Him for strength to face all these challenges.

It was only a matter of time before Kevin Longstreet would call me begging for a hookup. He would no doubt invoke some fake ideal of black male brotherhood between us to score cheap drugs from me. It was my job to play along with his crooked scheme, so I always knew I had to ignore his disingenuous intentions. I had worked hard to make Kevin comfortable with me in this whole process. For me, investigating Kevin was akin to fishing. All I needed to do was wiggle the bait and like clockwork, he would most certainly come calling. The man is a weak ass coward. Weak ass cowards like Kevin did not deserve to live among decent black people, especially when black people are in a war for their future. Kevin is dead weight that the black community desperately needs to throw overboard. Today, his burdensome weight would sink to the bottom of the ocean.

Almost on cue, I felt my prepaid cellphone vibrate on the floor. I put down the knife and grabbed the vibrating phone from the carpet. When I saw the number, it was just as I had assumed. Kevin had just sent me a text, so I opened it and read the content of his message.

“WAT UP NIGGA! IT’S THA DAY AGAIN”. I carefully typed a coded reply and pushed down on the green send button.

“U Already know bruh. We good,” was the content of my reply. After two minutes, my phone buzzed again.

“COME f**k WITH YA BOI THAN,” he replied.

“Fa sho. I will get at u. I gotcha,” I quickly replied.

Kevin wanted to buy some drugs from me, and I knew it was time to end our conversation. There was no way I would allow him to specifically discuss drug transactions with me on a cellphone. He was the kind of person that might have the wrong people around listening to whatever we say. I turned the prepaid cellphone off and connected it to its charger. It had been just over a year since I first started spying on Kevin. He was a remorseless drug addict with a sick penchant for misusing single mothers and sexually abusing their young daughters. No one with any street morals in the hood associated with him or even sold him dope. Only desperate low-level dealers would do business with such a person, which is why I had to pose as one. During my investigation, I found that Kevin was not only an NOPD informant, but also an informant for the DEA. I grew to personally despised this treasonous bastard. Instinctively, I knew I had to move carefully when I was around this black traitor. Time after time, I watched as Kevin ratted out each of his previous drug suppliers. He would cleverly set up black men for a fall, thereby landing each of them in prison.

The decision to start selling drugs to Kevin was a calculated risk. Mr. Darryl and I had discussed it at length before he finally relented to my request and blessed my idea. I always felt a bit of uneasiness churning inside me every time I sold drugs to Kevin. There was nothing this turncoat wouldn’t do to avoid the prison time he so richly deserved. Unlike Jessica Baker, there was no doubt in my mind that Kevin had helped FOWL set up Eric Davis. In fact, Kevin was just as bad as those bastards in many ways. He walked among the black community, yet deep inside, he was a cannibalistic monster that fed off of the plight of the black community.

Unlike Mr. Darryl, I did not have a drop of self-condemnation for wanting to kill this black tool. Although he was black like me, I didn’t see him as one. Jessica Baker, on the other hand, confused me. I wasn’t quite sure where she fell in all this mess, but deep inside, I held on to the belief that she wasn’t the monster Kevin Longstreet was.

Lifting the screen on my Laptop computer, I pressed the power button and logged in. Within seconds, my computer linked up with the camera I had planted inside the storage garage. The video feed from inside the bastard’s storage unit displayed nothing but a pitch-black image. Kevin hadn’t arrived at the storage unit yet, but I was certain he would show up. Plus, there was no use in arranging a drug deal with Kevin until I was sure that broke loser would be with money.

I walked to the closet and carefully picked out the best clothes to wear for tonight’s operation. After considerable deliberation, I decided it was best to wear a thin sports hoody and a pair of dark blue jeans for tonight’s duties. I took the clothes and threw them into the washing machine with bleach and water. After pouring the bleach into the washing machine, an ingenious idea popped into my head. I walked into the kitchen and retrieved the empty juice bottle from the trash bin. After washing and cleaning out the bottle, I poured bleach into it and screwed on the top.

Suddenly, I heard a loud beeping noise from the spare bedroom. Racing back to the room to ascertain what the problem was, I quickly noticed that the video of the inside of the storage unit had changed. I sat on the stool and put the computer on my lap and began to watch the clear images, studying them for potential clues. The storage space became filled with light as a shadowy figure slowly rose the garage door. The figure walked into the storage unit and turned towards the wall. Suddenly, an explosion of light ensued as the lights inside the space were turned on. At this point, I recognized the shadowy figure as Kevin Longstreet. Kevin lowered the garage door behind him and began to look around inside. He jolted from box to box, opening their tops and peering down inside. Finally, he opened a box and reached in to pull out a handful of jewelry before stuffing the loot away in his pants pocket. He then reached into the box a second time, pulling out a large fur coat and a brown Chanel purse before opening a trash bag and dumping the items inside. He walked towards the garage door and opened it before tossing the trash bag outside of the storage unit and turning off the lights. Seconds later, Kevin walked out of the storage unit and closed the garage door. Within minutes after Kevin’s arrival, my camera feed once again returned to its original state of pitch blackness.

I had seen this before, and I knew the score. This n***o was going behind his partner’s back to steal from them. There was absolutely no honor amongst this evil den of thieves. It only showcased the typical low life of criminals and how they operated. You could never trust them under any circumstances. They would always find a way to try and screw each other over. Yet, my investigation owed a lot to Kevin’s reckless actions. Without him being a complete i***t, it would have taken me forever to locate this storage unit filled with loot. Not long after I began to follow Kevin, I noticed he would frequently come to the storage unit before buying drugs or embarking upon a weekend of partying. So, I decided I needed to find a way into the storage unit to look around for myself. With a little help from a strategically placed friend, I was able to find a key that would let me in. What I found inside the storage unit amazed me. It held hundreds of thousands of dollars; worth of stolen furniture, clothes, electronics, and jewelry. All of which was hidden away inside this inconspicuous storage garage tucked away in the redneck haven of Harvey, Louisiana.

After planting my motion-activated camera in the ceiling, I had a video of the whole gang of bastards visiting the storage unit each month. Each one of them would take old items out and replace those old items with goods they had recently stolen. Seeing all of that convinced me that I needed to get closer to Kevin. Kevin was the bastard’s eyes and ears on the streets. He gave FOWL information they needed to rob black people, hold them to ransom, or set them up for a fall. The act of selling Kevin dope was risky, but it was a risk we needed to take to send the right message to our adversaries. Kevin was the key to this whole effort to free Eric Davis. He was FOWL’s main source for street intel and there means of operating in the black enclaves of New Orleans. If we eliminate him, we will surely hinder their ability to operate as freely as they had been.

It wouldn’t take Kevin long to hit up his favorite pawn shop and cash in his stolen goods. Once he had his money, he would most certainly reach out to me for drugs. My prices were dirt cheap and my product was strong as hell. Kevin had no idea what was awaiting him today, but it would soon be revealed to him. I turned off the laptop and reached down to the floor. My hands found an extra-large pair of latex gloves and I put them on. Walking back to the closet, I opened a secret compartment and pulled out several Ziploc baggies of dope. After examining the product, I placed the small baggies next to my sharpened blade. Suddenly, the sound of a ringtone exploded from my nearly empty living room. My personal cellphone was ringing, and the ringtone was Jessica Baker’s.