YNs

2011

“All you have to do is seal to make sure it’s real! The vacuum will do the rest of the work. So, those seasonal clothes and outfits remain free from mold and mildew and will be as fresh as the day you packaged them!” The commercial announcer sounded like he had been sipping about five cups of coffee. He was so excited about it. Marsden Catter, 23, and Tipley “Tip Toe” Dewars, 24, looked at the stack of money and the dozens of plastic bags they would need to fill up for the queenpin Bunella “Lil’ Busy” Rogerson, 29.

“Why are we doing this anyway?” Tip Toe asked. He got his nickname by being an assassin and walking up to his prey the greatest of ease and eliminating them with deadly silence.

“Boss lady said we have to bury this money.”

“But it’s wet!” Catter pointed out.

“We’re going to wait until it dries and then pack it and take it out back and bury it. Simple as that.”

They worked in a basement on the West Side of Wilmington, Delaware. The place had enough lighting to host a photo shoot.

“So we have to literally launder this money?” Catter asked.

“That’s the goal.”

They had bought industrial sized washing machines and dryers under the house. They already rinsed the colored money. Purple $5 bills, peach $20 bills, pink $50 bills, and blue $100 bills now loaded into the dryer.

“We just have to wait and see about the various time frames in which to set it and the temperature so they don’t get ruined,” Dewars remarked. Catter withdrew a cigarette from his pocket and prepared to light it. Dewars smacked it out of his hand with authority.

“You can’t smoke down here!”

“Why not?”

“There’s enough chemicals down here to make Waco look like Disneyland.”

“Alright, but don’t hit stuff out of my hands.”

“I’m just doing what’s right for us both. The boss lady said she wanted to have all this done by the end of the weekend. I think we can do it today.”

“Man, whatever. Just as long as I get my pay,” Catter chattered.

“Don’t worry about that. We get the money for it.”

“Why do you think she’s so hard on us?”

“She’s been a millionaire for as long as we’ve been adults. She’s got the whole city sewed up, really,” Dewars explained. A trickle of sweat coursed down his cheek.

“What we need to do is start our own operation,” Catter suggested. The hum of the dryer seemed mesmerizing. The monotonous sound reverberated through the basement floor. A vacuum cleaner and a stack of plastic bags built up like a pyramid aided the men in their quest for a bonus. No longer standing on corners selling product, they had elevated to being Lil’ Busy’s muscle and also pocketed a percentage of the sales she moved over the land.

The operation stretched all the way down to Lewes, Delaware. For them to be assets in the whole scheme of what she had planned puffed out their chests and made them feel accounted for in this game. Even if Catter sometimes had his reservations.

“Yes, we’re going to get our own outfit. We’re going to have sales all night through the day. It’s going to be like the movies,” Catter broadcast to his partner.

“That’s great, but we’ve gotta work on this project first. Getting these bills in here is important.”

“Why?”

“This is collateral. It will depreciate in value in a few years, but as for now, it will be a way for her to have money stashed away.”

“I mean why do we have to wash and dry it? And then seal it in plastic?” Catter queried.

“We need to make sure there are no impurities or bacteria. Then, when we seal it, we have to ensure there’s no air inside or else, like the sponsor said, there will be mold and mildew,” Dewars outlined.

“Damn. That’s a whole lot to do just for two and a half million.”

“It’s her money. We’re just stowing it,” Dewars reminded. He picked up a plastic bag and threw it down in front of him. The way he flattened it out seemed to be a spark of care. Each side he uncrumpled and prepared for the money to go inside of it.

“I’m going to have fifty runners and a whole team running for us. We’re going to understand what it’s like to be bosses,” Dewars dreamed. The drone of the machine remained a fantastic vehicle to drive the mind to be more productive. Its hum presented sonics that delivered on the promise they would do right by their boss.

“Yeah, you keep conjuring those thoughts. I’m already a boss.”

Dewars face wrinkled. “How are you a boss? Lil’ Busy is the one that is the boss. She’s been running this whole thing since her Daddy died. He handed over the keys to the business and she’s been making it ever since. We can think we’re the boss, but she calls the shots.”

“Damn all that. I’m a king now, where's my crown?”

Dewars let out a chuckle. It held within it no derision but just a passing amusement of what his counterpart just uttered.

Catter looked around the space. “At least she has enough sense to know to keep this stashhouse on the other side of town.”

“Yeah, she’s got it together. As long as nobody snitches on her, we’ll be set for charting our own course,” Dewars mentioned.

“If we go down though, I’m ratting on all of y’all.” He grinned but there seemed to be a seriousness enveloped in his words.

‘You tell on me and I’ll kill you, bring you back to life and kill you again,” Dewars asserted. He seemed severe. The subject shifted quickly.

“Okay, okay. Let’s not talk about that. I wanted this when I was in the Army.”

“What’s that?” Dewars asked. “The freedom. As strict and rigid as it is. We’ve got the world now by the short ones and I locked and stepped just to experience financial freedom.”

“I bet they wanted you to be a grocery boy at the local Shop-Rite,” Dewars declared.

“That’s right. I did that job for a while but then I got sick and tired of it. The pay was pennies. Long hours, no breaks, gotta pay taxes. I was like, ‘get me the hell outta here!” Chatter mentioned. “I found out about this lady who was running a beauty salon and barber shop and that I could make ten dollars more an hour with benefits. That’s Lil’ Busy. She came into my line at the store. We exchanged information and when she called me, I knew I had risen up in the world.”

“I was doing construction. I had my own set of men. I didn’t have a white hat, that was for the execs. I had a yellow hat but I still felt proud to have men under me. To know that I could manage and hopefully one day be my own boss, too.”

“What happened?” Chatter asked.

“Lil’ Busy. She walked onto a construction site and came directly to me, seeing that I was telling other men what to do.”

“We talked and said I could make money at her checking and loans spot as a manager. I was ecstatic. I damn near threw down that yellow hat on the spot. I handed in my notice the day after and didn’t even wait two weeks. I was gone!”

“I know that’s right. If she had any schooling if she went to Wharton or Harvard Business, she’d be a billionaire. Hell, we’d all be in that kind of money. But she chose to stick to the streets. I don’t know if it’s the allure, the rush you get from the life. I just know that we all could be making some serious moves.”

The dryer continued to hum as the money spun.

“I just want to be set straight like a perm,” Chatter ventured. “I learned that from guys in the service. They had dreams of coming out of Iraq and some came back in a box. It’s funny how the world works. You can be focused on having a dream job when you get out and then you get smoked….”

“That’s the harsh reality of all of this. Living in this world really makes you consider what’s important and not. I have a daughter. I’m doing this to feed her and put her on a college plan.”

Chatter just nodded his head. “I’m just trying to find an exit from the business. You know? Go straight. I’m not bagging groceries again, though. I’m talking about sitting in an office and having a secretary.”

“Really?”

“Hell, yeah!”

The alarm signalling the dryer finished the cycle. Both men hustled to the giant machine. As they extracted the notes, they stuffed them into a large laundry bin and carted it next to the plastic storage bags.

Dewars plugged in the vacuum and wheeled it to the bin and bags.

“We’ve gotta make sure no moisture gets into the bags or the whole thing will be for naught.” They worked on stuffing the bags full of cash. They made tight piles of the different denominations and stacked them neatly. Once they had filled them, Dewars cut on the vacuum cleaner and the suction sound permeated the basement. He attached it to the designated nozzle entry point and began pulling out the air from the bags. After each one had been processed, Chatter stacked them back in the laundry bin and out the back door.

The sky looked like it was melting into twilight, so Dewars turned on a spotlight. Both of the men had already dug a ditch in the earth to hold the money. They made a two-man team of placing the money in the pit. They had the opportunity to line the fenced in yard with even more cash. As they worked into the night, they both took a break. Dewars journeyed into the house and retrieved ice cold beer.

“You know Lil’ Busy will have to pay us extra….” Chatting pronounced.

“Oh, yeah? Why is that?”

“Think about it…we ensured that the appliances would be here, that the cart would be there, the bags, everything. That came out of our pocket. It’s just like the Army. They always say if the Army had wanted you to have something, they would’ve issued it to you. Not the case. I’ve still got tactical gear worth thousands that I paid for on my own.”

“Yeah, okay. Good luck explaining that to the boss lady. She’s not going to care about how much we dole out anyway. She just wants to make sure her money is secure.”

Some rustling arose. The two men looked at each other. The light extinguished. The sound of a low growl and footsteps resounded around them. Then, Two large orange men appeared. One of them grabbed Chatting while the other snatched Dewars. Adrenaline coursed through their veins as they hyperventilated.Blood trickled from the claws of the giant men. When the light reflected, it showed Chatting being torn apart by the force of the behemoth’s forcefulness. Dewars didn’t fare any better. His arms snapped off like twigs from a tree.

During this whole time, Lil’ Busy called their phones.

She looked down and asked, “Where are these two stooges?”

In the backyard, the giants standing at ten or twelve feet stomped in the backyard without raising suspicion of the surrounding neighbors. The orange men devoured both Chatter and Dewars, finally. The man-beasts fled from the backyard just as surreptitiously as they had come. The crickets croaked their song in abundance. Blood smeared the grass which began to soak it all up during this night of carnage. Lil’ Busy hopped in her S- Class Mercedes-Benz. She traveled from the East Side to the West Side. She opened the door to the residence. She didn’t call out their names but proceeded down to the basement. The backdoor remained open. She stepped through the threshold and saw her money and then the blood stains. Not too, alarmed she called for her clean up man to assess the premises. She put her hands on her hips and shook her head.