PRESENT DAY
Thomas “Tembo” Gardner was living his best life, laying with three girls he’d had the pleasure of taking down the night before.
He wasn’t really into orgies, but this was different. He’d lost a bet to an old apprentice of his, Seth Goosman, and his punishment was to sleep with three girls in the same night without being the first to tap out. He felt quite confident that he’d win the bet, but he lost. So, here he was in a hotel with three girls who were still snoring from all the activity from last night.
Thomas got up to go order some room service when his phone rang. It was way too early to be talking to anyone at all, but it could be an old client looking for a referral.
He picked up the phone and was terribly unprepared for the blitz that came from the other side.
“Tembo, how did this happen?! You were supposed to have taken care of this ten years ago!”
It was Carol Swanson, now Carol Benton, the woman who had made him rich enough to retire from his life of thuggery.
“Good day to you too, Carol. I’m well. Retirement’s treating me awesome. How have you been, woman?”
“You choose now to be dramatic, you asshat? Haven’t you seen the news?”
Thomas lazily walked over to the TV and turned it on. His cocky demeanor quickly gave way to a look of pure shock and despair. This was bad. This could put an end to his peachy retirement from the game and put him in jail. There were a lot of guys he’d crossed who were there, waiting on his ass to mess up and join them.
“I knew I should’ve put his slippery behind in a barrel of acid. Do you still have people in the police force?”
“Yeah, but none of them will touch this. It’s too hot and too heavy; the whole country’s looking. One mistake and it could be their careers on the line. You need to finish the job, Tembo!”
“Woman, what the hell am I meant to do, re-kill him? I’m retired. You need to get one of your boys with the force to take care of it.”
“Tembo, you may be enjoying retirement, but if I end up having to deal with this myself, I’ll use you as the fall guy. Don’t test me.”
Now Thomas was just mad. He hated getting threats, especially from a woman. How dare the weaker species threaten his very dominant male self! Except, she’d threatened him before and made good on it, so he didn’t want to cross her.
“Fine. There’s no need to panic for now; everything I used to off him is destroyed. All they have now is the body of Kane Glazer, but they have nothing that leads them to his dispatcher. So, I’ll just keep tabs on it until there’s something to worry about.”
“You better, cos I’m not going down for this!”
Rude bitch hung up on him, goddamn.
Thomas stared at the innocent-looking picture of Kane on the TV, the “Marcus Glazer” side on full display with the caption “BODY OF MISSING GHANAIAN BILLIONAIRE PHILANTHROPIST FOUND.”
“Oh Kane, you motherfucker! Why’d you have to be a son of a bitch yet again?”
*****
Carol screamed in frustration.
Goddamn it! Everything was going great and then this fool had to come and threaten it. Bloody son of a bitch still affected her life even in his death.
She sat down in her kitchen, staring at a vase Tembo bought her as thanks for the payday. Cheap man, buying a vase for someone after they’d just made you a millionaire. Silly her too for accepting it, even going as far as putting flowers in it for her kitchen counter.
She knew him when he was Kane’s fixer, and he’d tried to ‘take care of her’ one time when Kane thought she’d fallen for a client. She had, but she wasn’t about to lose the good life this line of work afforded her. Of course, she turned the tables on him and got him fired, but why she retained affection for his two-timing ass, she didn’t even know. “Must be the biceps,” she murmured.
She thought of the many different ways she could break that vase with his face if she ever saw him, but her thoughts were interrupted by a call.
“Yes? … Oh, hello Inspector Kpodo. How are you today, sir? … Very well, thank you. … Yes, I just saw it on the news. … Yes, we worked together, but I didn’t see him for a while before the…incident. … You want me to come down to the station? … Sure, I’ll be there later this week. … Yes sir. Thank you. See you soon.”
Not even a day had passed, and they were already calling her for questioning. Fuck!
*****
Seth Goosman had two main fetishes.
The first one was guns. Being the son of a legendary policeman who also happened to collect guns, Seth had spent basically all of his life near or around different kinds of muskets, assault rifles, handguns, custom sniper rifles, and just about every other gun there was. He had a warehouse filled with every gun his late father had collected and one of every gun that had been manufactured since. Seth could supply a small infantry with enough weaponry and ammunition to wipe out three small villages, but he had a code: none of these guns would ever see action out of respect for his father and the good he tried to do.
Seth would have become a policeman too, if not for the betrayal he witnessed his father go through at the hands of his closest colleagues. The speed with which his mother left on account of his father’s ensuing depression didn’t exactly help to nudge him towards the path of righteousness, and he understood that the crooked ones always lived better.
Seth’s second fetish was extremely puzzling for a man in his line of work. Seth had an insatiable foot fetish, and it made for some really creepy interactions with the women he went out with. There was a well-known story of how Seth’s fetish had cost him 10k in dollars, but any retelling of that story was a one-way ticket to a brawl. Seth’s current girl was into hand and foot modeling, so her line of work fell right into his zone, and she never denied any request he made, no matter how depraved it was.
Seth was nursing his drink in peace at the Aloe Juice Bar with his girl when a large guy came and settled right beside her, placing a handgun on the table. A mildly annoyed Seth looked up at the person and was just about to curse them out when he saw who it was: Tembo.
Seth already understood that this was not meant to be a social interaction. “Baby, why don’t you go check out the new shoe store that opened up just around the corner?”
“Babe, you know I don’t do window shopping.”
“Ei, fine girl, high-maintenance model! Here, take my wallet. Go buy whatever.”
“Babe! Aww, thank you so much!” She gave him a look that spelled the good kind of trouble as she said, “Tonight, get your gun ready, cos my feet are ready for some target practice!”
She happily ran off as Seth allowed the thought to play out in his head a little bit, just to give himself something to look forward to beyond what he knew was about to be a testy interaction.
“Does she mean what I think she means?” Tembo asked, almost instantly regretting that he’d asked at all.
“Like you won’t believe. It’s gonna be a good night for sure.”
Tembo cringed as he looked at Seth in disgust, and then looked away.
Seth sat quietly, waiting for whatever Tembo was going to inevitably say. He’d seen Tembo in a lot of different moods over the 18 years they’d been friends and partners, but this was a new one. Tembo wasn’t usually given to somber or pensive moods, but he currently had some combo of them on his face.
Seth looked at the gun on the counter, then asked, “Is there a job which needs that gun? Cos that’s a little too old for this day and age, man.”
Tembo finally turned, ready to engage. “Look at it closely. Where was the last time you saw it?”
“I’ve used it before?”
“Yes, motherfucker. Think carefully.”
Seth picked it up and examined it. He knew what it was as soon as he saw it, but the feel appealed to him. It was a beautiful old model .69 caliber Smith and Wesson. It would be considered antique in a year or two, and the leather holster was faded.
Tembo saw that it was still not registering, so he changed tact. He took his phone and showed Seth the video of Kane’s found body. Seth’s shock would have been containable if Tembo hadn’t then said, “Now, take a look at this gun again. Recognize it?”
Seth was in full panic mode now. He knew that this was it; his chickens had finally come home to roost. If only he’d kept more of the money he’d made and not spent it on gorgeous guns and feet, he’d already have been on some island, far far away from this shit…
“I can explain. Tembo, adey beg you waa. Please, let me explain! Abeg you, bro. Abeg you.”
“Oh, so there is something to explain? Well, get to it then, boy. Because I won’t hesitate to remind you of how you were meant to do the job you clearly failed to do if you don’t explain well. And before you think you’re safe here because it’s a public place, you might want to look around again.”
Seth looked and was now fully terrified; everyone at the juice bar had left! Tembo may have raised him in the game and helped him cut his teeth in their first gang, but Tembo would sooner sacrifice him if he didn’t start talking.
“Yeah, ain’t no help in this mug for you, partner. Start explaining how you failed the mission, and then lied to me about it.”
Seth tried to compose himself, but that video replayed on the phone and the disbelief only grew. “Bro, if that is not photoshop, then prepare for the worst. Panic season is upon us.”
It’s slowly but surely unraveling, isn’t it? Let’s continue to follow as this mystery unfolds…
