Free Gone ’Til November by Wallace Stroby Page A

Might have got nervous, cash in the car, dealing with some niggas he didn’t know. But shoot it out with a cop? Nah. He ain’t got the stones.”
    “Maybe he got scared.”
    “Maybe he did. Maybe it happened exactly like they said. But ain’t nobody said shit about the money yet. And it was in all the papers down there. They impounded the car, probably ripped the thing apart. If they found the money, some motherfucker took it.”
    “Or they’re holding it and not telling anybody. Waiting to see who comes looking for it.”
    Mikey shook his head. “There ain’t no DEA, no FBI involved in this. If there was, I’d have heard. This is a bunch of redneck Confederate-flag-flying small-town motherfuckers. Whether it was one motherfucker or two, or the whole goddamn town, fact remains. Somebody stole my money.”
    “Hard to believe you sent that boy down there on his own like that.”
    “Best way to do it. Down there, two niggas in a car get pulled over for sure. Cash was in a panel under the trunk. All he had to do was leave the car where we told him, then rent another, drive back. Didn’t have to deal with them any more than that.”
    “So it went bad. Nothing you can do about it. Walk away.”
    “Can’t take that kind of loss. Not now. Too much shit going on. I need that money or I need that powder so I can sell it and make that money back. Now I ain’t getting any product out of those Haitians, because that money never got to them,and they not gonna believe me when I tell them what happened. Or care, even if they did. So I need that money.”
    Morgan got up. The Vicodin was kicking in, easing the tension in his stomach, taking the edge off the pain. He went to the window, bent the blinds, looked out. It was raining lightly, the parking lot shiny with it. The Suburban hadn’t moved.
    “If the cops do have that money,” he said, “they’re using it to build a case. No way you’re going to get it back. And if someone stole it, they stole it. Either way, it’s gone.”
    “If some nigga broke into my house and stole three hundred fifty K of my money, you think I’d let it go? Say, ‘what the fuck, it’s gone, forget about it’? Just because that shit happened in Florida doesn’t mean it’s any less fucked up. If I start letting people steal from me, I might as well pack this shit up right now. Or let some motherfucker put a bullet in my head, get it over with.”
    “I still say walk away.”
    “I can’t, dawg. I need that money. I need you to go get it for me.”
    Morgan looked at him, then at C-Love.
    “This shit can’t stand,” Mikey said. “I need that money. That’s
my
money and I’m going to get it back, whatever I need to do. I don’t have no choice.”
    “I do,” Morgan said.
    “You do. But you ain’t even asked me the terms yet.”
    “Terms?”
    “Three hundred and fifty K,” Mikey said. “No way whoever took it could have spent it yet. All the shit in the newsdown there, they’d be laying low. So somebody dug a hole and buried it till things calm down. You find it, keep a third. You find the whole three fifty, you keep an even hundred twenty. That fair?”
    A hundred and twenty thousand
, Morgan thought. Combined with what was in the safe deposit, it might be enough for the treatment, maybe enough to get him started in another town. More money than he’d ever had at one time before. Might ever have again.
    “Well?” Mikey said.
    “I don’t know anything about the South. D.C.’s the farthest I’ve ever been.”
    “You don’t need to know shit about the South. Like I said, that’s a backwater cracker town, man. They still burning crosses and fucking their sisters. I’ve already got someone looking into things down there.”
    “Who?”
    “Derek’s shorty. She went down there to bring the body back. She ain’t too happy with the way things played out, but there it is. He took the chances. She don’t want shit to do with me, but she’s looking into things, seeing