Girls From da Hood 7 Read online

  “Huh, Mama?” RayRay said.

  “Did you put your clothes in your bag?” Candy brushed past him and searched the top of her dresser for something to hold her hair back out of her face. She took a black ponytail holder off the dresser and walked into the bathroom, with her son on her heels.

  “I can’t pack my own bag,” RayRay said as he reached for the lid to the toilet. “I’m only five.” The lid met the cushioned toilet seat with a thump. RayRay sat on top of the lid and looked up at his mother.

  Candy knelt before her son. “I know how old you are.” She tickled him on his stomach and under his arms.

  “Awwwww, Mommy! I gotta pee! I gotta pee!” RayRay laughed.

  “I put your clothes on your bed last night. All you had to do was put ’em in your bag.”

  “But, Mama, I don’t wanna leave you. I wanna stay.” RayRay leaned forward and wrapped his arms around his mother’s neck. “I don’t like going to Grandma’s house. She make me eat vegetables.”

  Candy laughed. “Okay, I’ll tell Grandma no more vegetables for my little man.”

  RayRay’s frown turned into a big smile. He hopped off the toilet, watched his mother as she stood in the mirror brushing her hair, and said, “I’m gonna put my Power Ranger pajamas in the bag too. Pow! Pow! Pow!” RayRay punched Kermit the Frog in the face while imitating the Power Rangers.

  “Put those clothes on your bed in the bag too.” Candy watched her son beat his stuffed animal to a pulp. Shaking her head, she said, “Put your other sock on. Grandma should be here soon.”

  Candy walked out of the bathroom and stood in front of the dresser. She glanced around the room in thought. She realized that she had not seen her pink Adidas sweat suit since the last time she wore it.

  Candy searched through the dresser drawers for the Adidas suit. She moved to the walk-in closet and stood in front of her side of the closet. She first scanned the clothes for the sweat suit. She then slid the clothes on the hangers from left to right. Where did I put that sweat suit? she wondered.

  On a whim, Candy searched through her husband’s clothes. She dropped her shoulders when she spotted her sweat suit hanging between his favorite midnight-blue two-piece Bottega Veneta suit, and his two-piece Jay Kos suit.

  Candy stuck her right hand into the wrist of the Bottega Veneta blazer. She missed her husband, and was eager to put in the work that would get him out of jail.

  “The best false witness is a dead false witness,” she whispered to herself with Feo and his boys in mind. The doorbell rang, snapping Candy out of her thoughts. Candy hurried out of her robe. She snatched the Adidas sweat suit off the hanger and slipped into it. She then walked into the closet and dragged her feet into her pink and white Adidas tennis shoes. She walked on the backs of the tennis shoes as she made her way out of her bedroom and down the spiral staircase to the front door.

  RayRay ran down the stairs and pulled on the back of his mother’s sweats. “Mommy, it’s Grandma at the door,” he said in excitement. “Can I open it?”

  Candy spun around and bent forward into her son’s face. “What I tell you about asking me that? Don’t ever answer the door, or anybody else’s door for that matter. Do you understand me?” Candy straightened her back and turned to the door. She looked through the peephole. She smiled at her mother-in-law smiling from ear to ear.

  “Where my grandbaby at?” Raynail’s mother asked through the door.

  Like any child, RayRay had forgotten all about his mother’s scorn. He jumped up and down at the sound of his grandmother’s voice. He fanned himself with his hands, and continued to beat the floor with his feet, as he anxiously waited for his mother to open the door.

  “Back up so I can open the door,” Candy said with anger in her words.

  RayRay lowered his head and walked away from the door with his lips poked out. Candy unlocked a row of five locks. She removed the chain and opened the door. RayRay ran past his mother and wrapped his arms around his grandmother’s legs.

  “Hello, Carolyn, how are you?” Her mother-in-law smiled. With RayRay clinging to her legs, she struggled to walk over to her daughter-in-law to give her a hug.

  Laughing, Candy rolled her eyes at her son, and shook her head. She met her mother-in-law midway, and gave her a warm hug.

  “I noticed the FOR SALE sign in the front yard. Did you plan on telling me you were moving?”

  “Yeah, I just hadn’t gotten around to it,” Candy said, closing the door. “I think it’s best that I move before Raynail gets out. As you know, the guys who set him up live in this neighborhood.” But they won’t be living for long. “I’m looking for a fresh start when Raynail gets out.”

  “Good idea.” Her mother-in-law looked down at RayRay and laughed. He had wrapped his legs around her ankles, and was sitting on her joined feet.

  Candy looked down at him and playfully grabbed his arm. “All of a sudden you happy to see Grandma, huh?” She laughed, smacking her lips. “What was all that stuff you was crying about a few minutes ago?” Candy met her mother-in-law’s smile. “He said he didn’t wanna go to your house because you make him eat vegetables.”

  RayRay’s grandmother pried his arms from around her legs. She picked him up into her arms and walked over to the couch. She then sat down on the couch and cradled him on her lap.

  “Your clothes packed?” RayRay’s grandmother asked him.

  RayRay pointed to a Spider-Man backpack that was lying at the foot of the staircase.

  His grandmother slid him off her lap onto the couch and walked over to the backpack. She picked up the backpack and started over to the couch, when a pair of shorts, a shirt, and two rolled-up pairs of socks dropped out of the open backpack.

  Aloud scream of laughter erupted from Candy’s soul. She was bent forward, and laughing so hard that one would have sworn she was being tickled. Her mother-in-law looked at her out of the corner of her eyes, while her son joined in on the laughter. But just as quick as her laughs had cut through the air, so did her tears.

  Candy’s eyes were as shiny as glass when she looked up from her laughs into her mother-in-law’s eyes. Tears rolled from her eyes, down the sides of her nose. Her tears were just as uncontrollable as her laughs.

  RayRay and his grandmother reminded Candy so much of Raynail. Not only was RayRay named after him, but he looked just like him. RayRay was dark with full lips. His eyebrows connected just like his father’s. Raynail hated that his eyebrows connected, and would tag along with Candy to the nail shop to get the connecting hair waxed.

  Candy cried for her husband’s life. He was facing the death penalty for crimes that he didn’t commit.

  Candy could tolerate anything but betrayal. She believed betrayal warranted death, while thievery received mutilation. Forgiveness was not in her vocabulary, especially if the guilty deprived her son of his parents. It took years for Candy to learn how to love, and she was not about to let the system rob her husband of his soul.

  Her mother-in-law picked up the clothes from the floor and shoved them inside of the backpack. She walked over to Candy, who was now sitting on the couch next to her son, and gave her a hug.

  “I’ll tell you what, Carolyn. I’m gonna take my grandbaby off your hands for a while. Just until all this stuff with my son blows over.”

  “But RayRay not gonna want to be away from me that long. They already took his daddy.” Candy wept.

  “But my son is coming home. He ain’t killed nobody.”

  Candy stared at her son. It’s gonna be okay; it’s only for a little while, she convinced herself. Raynail’s fate was in her hands. She would have to become the old Candy, and she did not want to take it out on her son.

  Candy and Raynail had written their own wedding vows. Her vow to be a “ride or die bitch for life” was now being tested.

  Candy wiped tears from her eyes and switched into bitch mode. “Do unto others as you would have done to you,” was the belief that she had always stood by and taken very serious
ly, even before killing her family.

  Candy jumped up from the couch, scaring her son and his grandmother. “Okay, I think you should keep him for a while. Can you keep him until I call you to bring him home?” Before her mother-in-law could answer her request, Candy ran back up the stairs to her son’s bedroom. She stumbled down the stairs, carrying a handful of his clothes and dragging a suitcase behind her. She dumped the clothes on the couch and ran back upstairs for more clothes.

  “Hold on, Carolyn, don’t get no more clothes.” Her mother-in-law walked into the kitchen to the sink. She opened the cabinet door beneath the sink and pulled out a trash bag. “He got clothes at my house.”

  Out of breath, Candy walked down the stairs, carrying her husband’s gym bag filled with her son’s clothes. She dropped the gym bag on the floor. “Okay, that’s all,” she said as she struggled to catch her breath.

  Her mother-in-law looked down at the bag and then at Candy. “You look like you sending him to live with me forever.” She laughed.

  “No, it’s not that. I just wanna make sure he has everything he needs.” She opened a closet door next to the front door, and pulled her son’s North Face Denali jacket from a hanger. “Come here, RayRay, and put this on.”

  RayRay jumped off the couch and ran to his mother. He took the jacket from her hands and put it on.

  “Go to your room and get your shoes,” his grandmother told him.

  RayRay ran upstairs to his room and came down carrying a pair of Nike tennis shoes.

  Candy helped her mother-in-law carry the bags to her car. They loaded the bags into the trunk of the car. And as her mother-in-law walked around to the driver’s door, Candy opened the back passenger door and strapped her son down in his car seat. She kissed his forehead.

  “You be good, you hear me?” Candy told her son. “If Grandma calls me about anything you’ve done, Mama is going to spank you, okay?”

  RayRay nodded.

  Candy closed the door and walked around the car to the driver’s door. She motioned, by pointing downward, for her mother-in-law to roll down the window.

  Her mother-in-law started the car and rolled down the window. “Do something constructive to get your mind off of things,” she said, reading the sorrow in Candy’s eyes.

  “I will, thank you.” Candy leaned into the window and kissed her cheek. “I’ll call you from day to day to let you know how I’m holding up.” She walked around the car and onto the sidewalk. She crossed her arms and watched her mother-in-law pull off.

  Candy noticed RayRay pushing himself up in his seat, waving at her. She smiled and waved back. But, after seeing Feo and his friends standing next to his Impala waving at her son and laughing, her smile was quickly replaced with the look that she gave her psychiatrist eight years earlier before she killed her.

  Candy and Feo locked eyes. She showed Feo her pearly white teeth, through a fake smile. She then turned and walked up the walkway to the three steps leading to her front door. She opened the door and stood watching Feo and his friends pass a blunt. Them bitches are dead. She walked into the house and slammed the door behind her.

  Chapter 4

  Candy sat in her car in front of her new Rockingham estate, going over the list of names that Raynail had given her. Selling her old house for less than it was worth, just to get out of the neighborhood, she bought a house in Beverly Hills, high in the mountains away from the city.

  After asking around on the streets, Candy was able to get the addresses of all five guys on the list. She already knew where Feo stayed and decided to save the best for last. Her first victim lived in Wilmington off of PCH and Imperial, which was an hour drive from her estate. With Raynail’s court date drawing near, Candy didn’t have a lot of time to case each house like she normally would.

  To make each death go as smoothly as possible, she figured the best time to go after them without getting caught would be at night. Once the sun set she would start her deadly reign.

  Since it was only four in the afternoon, she decided to pay her runners a visit. Pulling off, she headed to one of her blocks.

  Candy drove down Eighth Avenue in her 2012 Jaguar XK in search of Truth and Real. As she cruised down the street, she noticed that everybody who was outside either walked off their porches, or stood on the curb watching her. The limousine tint did nothing to elude the onlookers. Everyone recognized the XK as belonging to Candy.

  Candy was disgusted by the site of the neighborhood. “I pay these bums to keep this shit clean and this is how they do me? Giving them my money in vain? This shit is more fucked up than it was before I put them on my payroll!”

  The neighborhood was run-down, with graffiti decorating the walls and the ground. Couches and old chairs sat at the curb with children running around them playing tag. A group of girls stood in the middle of the street playing Double Dutch and, noticing Candy’s car, stopped jumping and moved to the side of the street to let her through. Two dudes dressed in all red from head to toe sat on the porch of an apartment building, drinking something from a brown paper bag and passing a blunt.

  Candy set her eyes on the roofs of the tallest buildings that lined both sides of the street. She smiled at the blue rags that hung from the right corner of each roof. The blue rags let the gangstas in the neighborhood know that they were under twenty-four-hour surveillance by Candy’s soldiers, and that only Candy and Raynail’s drugs were welcomed on the street.

  The soldiers had been personally trained by one of Raynail’s homies, who worked for Westwood Police Department’s SWAT Team. The soldiers were trained to shoot to kill without leaving a mess.

  Dressed in camouflage and equipped with binoculars and assault rifles, the soldiers were posted on the roofs of nearly every building in the neighborhoods that Candy and Raynail had on lockdown.

  Candy pulled up to a curb and called the soldier who was working the roof of the building that she was parked in front of.

  The solider picked up on the first ring. “What’s good, Candy?”

  “You seen Truth and Real?” she asked him.

  “Yeah, they inside the store on the corner,” the solider replied. “They just walked in.”

  Candy drove to the corner and parked in front of the store. “So, how you holdin’?” Candy asked the soldier.

  “Lovely,” he replied through a smile. “But ... um, when you turned on to the street back there, them two guys at that apartment building in back of you dressed in all red? They was straight scoping you out.”

  Candy pulled down her sun visor. She looked in the mirror at the two guys her runner was referring to. “Tell one of yo’ partners to cover you. I want you to slip down there and listen to what they saying.”

  “I’m on it.” The solider crawled away from the edge of the building on his stomach and motioned for the solider sitting behind him to take his spot. He slipped down a hole in the roof, which led into the attic of one of the empty apartment units. Too tall for the attic, he was forced to bend forward to keep from walking into loose boards above his head. He continued to the attic’s opening and pushed a flat, rectangular piece of wood to the side. He then jumped down into what appeared to be a child’s bedroom closet, and walked out of the closet and into the bedroom.

  Broken toys lay scattered around the floor. A small pink shirt with mildew spots on the front of it hung on the doorknob of the closet. A pair of red and white kid’s tennis shoes lay on the floor next to a broken Mickey Mouse watch, and the room reeked of urine.

  The soldier covered his nose with his right sleeve and walked out of the bedroom and out of the apartment into the hallway.

  The hallway was just as bad as the unit. The stench from a combination of urine and beer toyed with his sinuses. He tiptoed to a flight of stairs. He looked down the stairs at two bums who were camped out in front of the door that led outside.

  The soldier crept down the stairs. He glanced down at the sleeping beauties. He then stood off to the right side of the door in front of a bro
ken window and called Candy.

  Expecting his call, Candy answered on the first ring. “What’s up?”

  “I’ma put my cell on speaker so you can hear what they saying,” the soldier whispered.

  “Muting my phone,” Candy replied. Candy pushed mute. She put the phone to her ear when she noticed Truth and Real walking out of the store, engaged in conversation.

  Candy blew her horn to get Truth’s and Real’s attention. She watched them look around before noticing her car. Truth and Real walked to Candy’s car. Truth opened the back passenger door and climbed inside. Real walked around the front of the car to the back driver’s side door. He opened the door and got in.

  Truth leaned forward and slipped the top half of his body between the space that separated the driver’s and passenger’s seats. “Yo, Can—”

  “Hold up, Truth.” Candy held up a finger and silenced him, after hearing Raynail’s name mentioned by one of the guys she and her soldier were eavesdropping on.

  “Ol’ boy facing the death penalty,” she overheard one of the guys say. “Since he got knocked, his bitch been running things around here.”

  “I’m already knowing,” said the other guy, who had a Spanish accent. “So killing the bitch and takin’ her shit is gonna be easy.”

  Candy laughed at the guy’s ignorance. “These muthafuckas don’t know who they fuckin’ wit’. Gotta be some some new cats, ’cause the old heads know what’s up.” She turned to Real and Truth and said, “Listen to these soon-to-be-dead niggas talk.” She pushed speaker so that the runners could hear what the guys were saying.

  “I wonder how much she holdin’. I say we follow her ass and take the shit right now,” one of them suggested.

  Candy pushed mute again. “Yo, Real, they wanna know what I’m holding.” She laughed. “Let’s see, I got a TEC-9 on my waist, a .22 in the glove compartment and one strapped to my ankle. Oh, and a Glock in the trunk.”

  “I don’t think he talkin’ ’bout no guns,” Truth said, laughing.