“TINA!” I said, crying.
“What the hell is wrong?”
“O!”
“Celess, calm the fuck down and tell me what is going on,” Tina demanded.
I tried to stop crying and held back my tears.
“They kidnapped O,” I explained.
“Who? When? What happened?”
“I went to Delaware ’cause I ain’t hear from him in a minute, and when I was ringing his bell the young bull that always used to be with him came up to me and told me he was missing,” I quickly said in one breath.
“Well, when did this happen? I mean, do they know anything about who did it?” Tina sounded concerned.
“Whoever did it was close to him and been planning it for a while, ’cause they snatched him up on 95. He was making a major run to D.C.”
“How the hell they get ’im on 95?”
“He must have stopped at a rest stop, ’cause that’s where they found his car,” I explained. “All of the seats were cut open.”
“Yeah, they knew ’im and they knew exactly what it was hittin’ for. Anytime they know where his stash was,” Tina concluded.
“I know,” I said, sniffling. “And they got about forty thousand pounds and three hundred thou in cash.”
“Them pussies made sure they wouldn’t need ransom,” Tina said, as if she was in thought.
I started crying again. “That’s how I know they killed him.”
I guess it wasn’t “fuck O” after all, because I really got depressed after I found out about his kidnapping. It was weird that out of all the dudes I fucked with, I felt for O the most even though he was the one who brought me so much drama and treated me like shit sometimes. I didn’t realize how much I felt for him until that shit happened.
Tina arrived at my house on a Friday afternoon. She had come to offer moral support. I was still in my pajamas in the bed. I hadn’t been dressed since I last spoke to her on the phone five days before. I spent my days crying and thinking and crying some more. I couldn’t help but think about all the brutal and crazy things they might have done to O or where he could be or if he was alive somewhere hanging on to his life. The thoughts I was getting were driving me crazy. I wished I could have done something. I just kept imagining him somewhere getting tortured or somewhere dead. I couldn’t stop thinking or crying.
“You have to snap out of this, Celess,” Tina insisted. “Celess!” Tina sang as she waved her hand in front of my face. “You need to get in the shower, sweetie, and do something with yourself.”
She sat down on the couch next to me.
“You need to find a way to get in his house,” she continued. “He gotta have a stash at his crib. And find out where to send your car payments to before they come and repo that shit. You can get that new dude you got to pay the note. I don’t know who gonna pay the insurance.”
I just glanced up at her in disgust in between zoning out. Sometimes I wondered if she had a heart, or at least a conscience.
“Yup, I’m tellin’ you, you should go back down to Delaware and see if somebody has a key. Oooh, no, call up a locksmith and tell them you locked yourself out. They’ll make the key on the spot. You go in, find his stash, and roll out,” she explained.
“Tina, please just be quiet,” I finally said.
“Shit, it’s just a matter of time before one of his fake-ass friends think to do it,” she said, trying to justify herself.
“Maybe that’s true, but O is out there somewhere probably getting fucked up or shot up or just lying somewhere dead, and you…” I burst into tears again.
“Celess, I know you hurt and everything, but that’s the game. Shit, I saw my whole family murdered behind that shit,” Tina said with attitude. “After a while you just learn to suck shit up.”
Tina could play tough all she wanted, but I knew walking in and seeing her mom, dad, and older brother dead in pools of blood cut her deep. She was only ten. Can you imagine seeing something like that at ten? She swears it had no lasting impact on her, but I’m not sure. The fact that she pretends like she doesn’t care about anything or anybody is the result of seeing her murdered family’s bodies at ten years old, among other things.
“Tina, it’s easier said than done,” I said, ignoring her façade.
“Well, be like Nike and just do it, hah!” she said, giggling, with a huge smile on her face. She slapped my leg in a joking, playful way.
“What DVDs you got?”
I just gave Tina a blank look and felt sorry for her.
Tina’s visit ended as awkward as it began. I was still depressed, and she gave up trying to make me feel better.
It was a rainy Monday. I had been sitting in the house all morning contemplating what I was going to do about my car. I had the registration. It was in somebody named Carolyn Rodriguez’s name. It had her address, so I decided to go to her house.
A short, chubby Puerto Rican girl came to the door. “Who you?”
“I’m Celess, Omar’s friend,” I said, trying not to offend anybody.
“Mommy! Una muchacha a la puerta. Una amiga de Omar,” the girl yelled.
I waited at the door while a heavyset older-looking woman slowly walked down the stairs. She had long dark hair and a chubby face. She was wearing an oversized T-shirt that came past her knees and a pair of slippers.
“Come in, sit down,” Carolyn said with a heavy Puerto Rican accent.
I walked into the small row house. “Hi, I’m Celess, a friend of Omar’s,” I introduced myself as I took a seat on the black leather couch beside Carolyn.
“Yeah, I know who you are,” Carolyn said, looking me over. “Omar told me about ju. You one of the girls from Philly, right?”
“Yes,” I replied.
“Which car you have?” she asked while motioning for her daughter to give her some papers from off the sixty-inch television in their tiny living room. “The Range Rover, the Escalade, or the Lexus?” she continued as she rummaged through the papers.
I was confused but I told her, “The Range Rover.”
“Right, right.”
“Here is all the papers for the Range Rover, where you can make you payments to and everything, okay?”
I took the pile of papers from Carolyn, but I stayed put on the sofa. I wanted to know more. It didn’t make sense for me to take a half-hour trip in the rain and go back with no information.
“Did they ever find O?” I asked carefully.
Carolyn looked at me, baffled. “Ju didn’t hear?”
“No, not really,” I answered.
“Marisol, espera en la cocina,” Carolyn said to her daughter.
The girl left the room and headed for the kitchen.
“The police came by here like a week ago because they found his car and it’s registered to my address.”
Tears started to gather in Carolyn’s eyes. She continued, “It was a robbery, they say, all of his seats was slashed and his trunk was open. They got his drugs and his money,” she whispered. “But they couldn’t find him.
“Then I got a call from a detective and he asked me all these questions about all the cars in my name. I told him Omar was my nephew. I raised him like my own, and when he asked me to put a car in my name as long as it’s not illegal, I say yes,” she spilled.
“Then like a day or two later the detective called back,” Carolyn began, with tears forming again. “And they told me his body was found on the side of the highway. They say a wild dog brought it up from the woods. A highway patrolman saw his remains hanging from the dog’s mouth.”
Carolyn started to cry a little.
“They put the gun in his mouth and blew the back of his brains out, then they dumped his body in the woods off the highway. The police say if they would have found his body a minute later the animals probably would have eaten it.”
“Did he have a funeral?” I asked.
Carolyn wiped her eyes and yelled, “Marisol! Da me el papel de el frigorífico.”
The girl brought her mother an obituary and returned to the kitchen.
“This is from the funeral. It was Saturday. They cremated him. His wife held a small memorial in Claymont,” she informed me.
“Wife?” I blurted.
Carolyn schooled me. “Ju know what Omar was into, right? Ju know how he lived. He had lots of girls. You think you were the only one, you crazy. That’s why he bought so many cars and nice things, to keep all of you quiet, ju know that.”
I just listened. She was right. I did know what O was into, just not as much as I thought I knew. I could have never guessed he was married.
“What about his house, can anyone get inside?” I asked, thinking about Tina’s advice.
“Which one?”
“The one near here,” I said.
“Oh, no, the police went there already and cleaned it out. It’s boarded up now. He didn’t have a stash there anyways,” she said, hipped to my thoughts.
“No, he kept his stash in a safety box in one of them banks downtown. Only his wife has access to that. And he only stashed money here for me and my daughter, nothing for his girlfriends,” she concluded.
“I been getting calls from his udder girlfriends in Philly, but they not nice like you. They curse me out for telling them this stuff, for telling them the truth. But they need to hear it. They need to know that he’s gone and he’s not coming back and they need to find somebody else to take care of them.”
I listened to everything Carolyn said. I took heed too. I had gotten closure, and now it was time for me to move on.
“Thank you so much,” I said as I was walking out of the door.
“Ju welcome,” Carolyn said. “Oh, here, ju can have this.” She handed me Omar’s obituary.
I took it and thanked her again. I got into my truck and drove off. I didn’t cry. I actually felt better. At least I knew O had had a funeral and he was at peace.