CHAPTER 14
It was early morning on another hot summer day. Apple had fallen asleep for a few short hours on the living room couch still wearing the same clothes from the night before. A good night’s sleep was becoming a distant memory for her. She couldn’t think clearly, and sometimes she couldn’t sleep at all. If she wasn’t up all night worrying about her little sister, she was wandering out into the streets, hoping to find some information.
Now day three of Nichols’ disappearance, it seemed the police weren’t making the missing person case their priority. And Kola hadn’t made any progress at all. So the family’s hope of finding Nichols alive was fading, leaving everyone distraught.
Apple woke to police sirens blaring outside the window. She got up from the couch and looked around. The apartment was quiet and empty. After walking from room to room, she saw her mother passed out naked on her bed with an empty bottle of vodka on the nightstand. Drinking herself to death was Denise’s way of coping with the situation.
Apple sighed and closed the bedroom door. She went into the kitchen. It was messy as usual, with dishes piled up and roaches scampering around. She wiped the few tears from her eyes, thinking about how Nichols was the one always cleaning up and cooking. She realized that her family took Nichols for granted, and now with her gone, it was hurting Apple deeply.
When Apple heard more police sirens outside, she knew something had happened. She peered out the window and could see the strong police activity by the dumpster, located a few feet from where Cross and his crew hung out. She noticed they were sealing off the area with yellow tape. Her first thought was homicide—something common in her hood.
Apple watched the police in action. When they shut down the block, she knew it was something serious. She observed two detectives walking to the scene, and a small crowd began gathering behind the yellow tape and whispering among themselves.
Suddenly, Apple felt a sickness in the pit of her stomach, unexpectedly roused by a troubling thought. It was obvious they had found a body. She thought the worst, yet prayed that it wasn’t Nichols. Rushing from the window, she ran into her room to slip into something decent.
The crime scene on 132nd Street, across the street from the projects, was disturbing for most of the officers. They’d found the naked, battered body of a young teenage girl stuffed in a trash dumpster in a small lot with two gunshot wounds to her head. The detectives knew straightaway that she was raped. Beaten almost beyond recognition, her face was contorted, and her fingers and ribs were broken.
Uniformed officers and CSI flooded the area, causing bystanders to become curious as to who had been murdered. Word had gotten out that it was a young girl in her teens, but they didn’t know her name or exact age yet. However, some of the neighbors speculated but weren’t saying anything until the victim’s identity was confirmed.
The morning was overcome with death and the anguish on the detectives’ faces as they held their breaths, knowing it wouldn’t be easy relaying the news to the victim’s family. The area was dusted for fingerprints, and then the body was processed, which included taking photos, before being carefully removed from the dumpster a few hours after it was found by a group of young kids while playing.
A few bystanders cried out when word started getting around that it was Nichols’ body in the dumpster.
“Oh my God! Are you kidding me?” a young woman in her housecoat and slippers exclaimed when the news reached her. Her eyes welled up with tears. She had known little Nichols since she was in diapers.
Others were heartbroken about the news, stating she was a sweet, young girl, unlike her sisters, especially Kola. They all knew the family would be devastated, that there would be trouble in the hood when Kola found out about her sister’s murder. The crowd of onlookers suddenly noticed Apple rushing from her building.
Clad in a pair of white-and-blue pajama pants, flip-flops, and a T-shirt, with her hair wrapped tightly underneath a multi-colored scarf, Apple ran to the location with a sense of urgency, her eyes on the crime scene, where she noticed a body covered by a white sheet and surrounded by detectives and crime scene investigators.
The closer she got, the faster her heart beat, and the more she felt her chest tightening up. She had a gut feeling that something was wrong. Her eyes watered, but she wasn’t into full-blown tears yet. Not knowing the identity of the victim was eating her up inside. She needed to know who they’d found in the dumpster.
Apple was ready to rip through the crime scene tape and rush past the lone officer assigned to guard the scene, but he held her back.
“Miss, you can’t pass.”
She struggled with the officer, shouting, “Get off me! Get the f-uck off me! Yo, who they find? Who is that? Is that my sister? Is that fuckin’ her?”
Apple struggled with the officer, who realized that, from her strong outburst, she had to be close to the victim. Still, he had a responsibility to the victim and the crime scene. He strengthened his hold on Apple. Other officers came to aid him, but they stood around and watched Apple cry out hysterically, all sympathetic to her.
“Is it her? Just fuckin’ tell me! Is it Nichols? Is it my little sister?” she ranted.
Two well-dressed detectives walked up to Apple and allowed her to pass through to where they stood near the covered body. From the missing person’s report and picture given to them, they knew it was Nichols.
One quickly consoled Apple and said, “I’m sorry. It’s her.”
Apple let out a piercing scream that echoed throughout the projects and made the hair on everyone’s skin rise. She collapsed into the detective’s arms, hysterical with grief, and then dropped to her knees while still in his hold.
The detective held her for a short moment and then nodded to a uniformed officer for his help. “Take care of her,” he said to the cop.
The cop nodded and took Apple into his grasp, relieving Detective Johnson of the grieving young woman. The onlookers stood close by and watched everything unfold. A few were teary-eyed, while others were outraged by the murder, but most were just lost and couldn’t understand it. What kind of monster could do such a thing?
It was a long while before Apple stopped crying. Then the detectives decided to tell her mother the disturbing news that her youngest daughter was dead.
When the detectives came to her apartment door, Denise was awakened from her sleep by the loud knocking. She woke up with an empty vodka bottle lying next to her and a troubling attitude. She answered the door scantily clad in a long, soiled house robe that was untied and open, exposing her nakedness to the two men. Her bushy pu-ssy hairs and perky tits were in full view, stunning the two detectives.
“Ma’am, do you mind putting some clothes on?” Detective Rice said politely.
“What the f-uck ya’ll want?”
“Can we come in?” Detective Johnson asked.
Denise stepped back from the doorway and allowed the two men inside. They walked into the cluttered room, where they stood in the center with a casual attitude. They knew the news of her daughter’s death would be hard on her.
Denise walked into the room, tying her robe to satisfy the detectives, and waited to hear what they had to say.
Detective Rice looked her square in her eyes. There was never any easy way to relay the news to someone that a loved one was brutally murdered. “I’m sorry to say, but we found your daughter this morning. She was murdered. I know it’s hard, but we will find the people that did this,” he told her.
Denise just stood in the center of the room and didn’t react to the news right away. Surprisingly, she chuckled, and the two detectives looked at her with confusion. But then, right after, the tears followed, and next came the violent outburst. Denise screamed out with such intensity, she almost startled the detectives. She then quickly trashed a few things in the living room and fell out into the tattered couch headfirst, where she coiled up—the news of her daughter’s murder finally sinking in.
Detective Johnson went over to her and tried to calm her down a bit. He then gave her his card and told her to call his number if she needed him.
There wasn’t anything more the two men could do. They let the mother grieve on her own and nonchalantly walked out of the apartment. When the door shut, they could still hear Denise sobbing loudly.
*****
The news of Nichols’ murder hit Kola like a ton of bricks. She raced home to where the chaos was happening and couldn’t believe it was true.
From the passenger seat of a Chevy Tahoe, she told the driver, “Hurry the f-uck up!”
The Tahoe raced north up the FDR Drive, swerving in and out of traffic like it was the police.
Kola had tried to fight back the tears when a close friend made the phone call about Nichols earlier that morning. She didn’t want to believe it, but more calls came, and all of them were telling her the same thing: “Yo, someone murdered Nichols.”
Kola wanted to get her crew together and turn Harlem out. She was ready to shoot her gun off and kill everyone responsible for her sister’s death. The first person she called was Mike-Mike. She hit his phone and stated that she needed him, and Mike-Mike told her that he was on his way.
Kola felt a tightening in her chest, and her eyes were red and teary behind the dark shades she wore. She couldn’t believe Nichols was dead. She couldn’t believe someone had the audacity to disrespect her like that. She wanted to wake up from the nightmare, but she knew it was all too real. She stared out the passenger window, watching the cars pass by in a blur. She tried to hide her pain from the driver, Danny, who happened to be Mike-Mike’s cousin. They had just come from Brooklyn, where she had stayed the night with a stripper.
Kola couldn’t help but think that she should have done more once Apple told her that she’d borrowed money from Supreme. She and Mike-Mike tore Harlem upside down for two days looking for Supreme, but no one had seen him. He was ghost. What else could I have done? Kola temporarily shrugged off her feelings of guilt. If anyone was to blame, it was Apple.
*****
It was late morning when Kola woke up with the young blonde-haired stripper in her arms. Both of them were naked and entwined under wrinkled white sheets, the four walls in the room being the only witness to their sin. Kola was still doing her business, in and out of different strip clubs every night, and linking up with the freakiest, sexiest chicks to get her parties popping before summer’s end.
Kola had the gift of gab, and within a few short weeks, she had a nice-size stable of the baddest chicks to join her business. She talked about money, prosperity, and good dick to the young girls, who were willing to try whatever to come up.
She had met Jessica, aka the Bunny Rabbit, in a downtown Brooklyn strip club, and after convincing her to spend the night with her, the two left in a gypsy cab early in the morning, just before dawn.
The driver dropped the two young girls off at a brownstone in Fort Greene, where Bunny Rabbit rented a single bedroom weekly on the third floor.
The two didn’t waste time once the bedroom door was shut. Kola moved her hands up Bunny Rabbit’s skirt and removed her panties. She loved Bunny Rabbit’s curves and the way her balloon-size tits jiggled up and down when she moved.
The girls changed positions as often as a racecar driver switches gears in a race. Their tryst continued until dawn broke through the windows of the bedroom.
Later that day, in the early afternoon, Kola was awakened by the ringing of her cell phone, but she ignored it.
Bunny Rabbit slowly turned to face Kola with a nice smile. “Good morning,” Bunny Rabbit greeted.
“Let’s make it a great morning.” Kola cupped Bunny’s breast and continued to kiss on her neck.
They were about to start another round of pleasing, when Kola’s phone went off again. Annoyed, Kola looked at the caller ID and noticed it was Danny calling. Thinking it was probably about some business she needed to deal with, she decided to take the call. When she answered, Danny instantly hit her with the grim news about Nichols. She stood up and reacted with a quick tantrum, which startled Bunny Rabbit.
“Baby, is everything OK?” Bunny Rabbit asked with a nervous stare.
Kola ignored the innocent question. In full tears after she hung up, she quickly got dressed. Danny had mentioned that he would pick her up, and fifteen minutes after the phone call, he was outside the brownstone. Kola got into the Tahoe and wanted to hurry back into Harlem.
*****
Kola arrived in Harlem an hour after her sister’s body was placed into a body bag and taken to the city morgue, getting there just in time to see the end result of the police investigation.
A small crowd was still gathered around the crime scene, and the whispers and speculation continued among the locals. Police tried to gather as much evidence and statements from those around, but many didn’t know anything, and those who did, refused to cooperate.
Kola rushed from the truck and ran to the roped-off crime scene. Stunned with grief, she was unable to fight back the tears that trickled underneath her dark shades. The big bad wild side of her was quickly replaced with a crying teenager who didn’t understand why her sister was dead. She stood in the middle of the street looking like a lost little girl, her eyes stuck on where they had found the body in the trash.
Kola had a fierce reputation in the hood, ran with a dangerous drug crew, but still someone had the balls to murder Nichols. She felt helpless that she wasn’t able to protect her little sister from being tossed in the trash like garbage.
Danny stood next to the inconsolable Kola. He put his arm around her and vowed, “Yo, we gonna find out who did this. You know that, right? We gonna kill whoever was behind this.”
Kola didn’t answer him. She just continued to stare where her sister had fallen. One particular name wouldn’t leave her mind—Supreme.
“Supreme did this! That muthafucka gotta die!”
Danny wanted to ask particulars, but thought against it for now. He didn’t need to know the why’s and how’s. Not right now. Not while she was grieving. Instead, he replied, “I got your back, Kola.”
She looked around for one of his associates but didn’t see anyone. She went up to the local residents still lingering around the crime scene, and with weight in her tone, she asked, “Yo, any of y’all seen my sister Apple?”
The few men and women shook their head and replied with a no. But a thirteen-year-old girl said to Kola, “They took her down to the precinct.”
Kola didn’t even thank the young girl for the information. She just stormed away and headed to the apartment to see her mother. Danny followed behind her, trying to keep up.
Kola rushed up the stairway, stormed through the front door, and shouted out for her mother. But she didn’t get an answer.
Danny entered seconds later and observed Kola moving down the hallway hastily.
She pushed open her mother’s bedroom door and found her curled up in the corner between the unmade bed and weathered dresser, butt naked and holding a bottle of Johnny Walker in her hand.
Kola snatched the bottle out of her mother’s grip and smashed it against the wall, staining the walls with its contents. “What the f-uck is you doin’?” she yelled. “Your daughter’s dead, and you up here gettin’ fuckin’ drunk!”
Denise looked up at her daughter with cold eyes and replied, “Get the f-uck out my room, Kola!”
“Fuck, no! Look at you! You’re fuckin’ pathetic, Ma. Nichols is dead, and you wanna sit here and drink yourself to death. You want me to feel sorry for you? Well, I fuckin’ don’t. You a dumb bitch.”
Danny entered the bedroom to find Kola standing over her naked mother and raining down a barrage of insults at the woman. He stood near the doorway and minded his business. It was a family affair that he didn’t want to get involved with. He figured Kola was grieving over the death, and he believed her way with dealing with the pain was through anger and violence.
Denise slowly stood to her feet, her face twisted in anguish, and her speech back to her daughter was slurred.
Kola glared at her mother with contempt and was ready to knock her back down where she stood.
But it was Apple who Kola had the actual problem with. Her mother was just the scapegoat, until she confronted her sister. Kola felt it was Apple’s fault that their sister was dead. Apple was the one who got into debt with Supreme and didn’t pay back what she owed. She hated her sister and had the urge to brutally beat her down once they were face to face.
Kola was so enraged, she didn’t notice her right hand was bleeding. She had cut it when she’d snatched away the bottle and tossed it into the wall. The small cut on the inside of her palm turned her hand red, but she didn’t fuss about it. She exited the bedroom and went into the bathroom.
“Kola, you a’ight?” Danny asked.
“I’m fuckin’ fine,” she responded heatedly. She turned on the faucet and ran cold water over her cut.
With the shades off and the water running, she looked at herself in the mirror. Her eyes quickly became flooded with tears, and her breathing shallow. Her hands quivered as she gripped the sink. It felt like she was having a panic attack.
The death of her little sister once again overcame her, and she broke down with grief and remorse. The thought of her failing to protect Nichols was too much for her to handle. She surrendered to the weakness grief was bringing her body.
She suddenly fell to her knees and continued to sob, her wail echoing in the hallway.
No one bothered to disturb her from sobbing. Danny felt she needed to get it out of her system. With a straight-faced look, he lightly gripped the butt of the 9mm tucked in his jeans as he stood outside the bathroom door.