Die Later Read online

  “You know what a hotel around here costs. Besides why should I trust you?”

  “Because right now, you need me. I could be yelling for that officer right there and I am not. I did not tell you which hotel to go to because I don’t care. All I want is to shoot something your way tomorrow. It’s a grand opportunity.”

  “Man, I’m good.”

  “Look, you have my cell. I will call it tomorrow to confirm at 11:30 a.m. Is that cool?” Kareem asked very nicely.

  Antoine thought a second and then said, “Call and I will let you know. But I swear, if you’re setting me up and tracking this phone,you will die and it will be painful!” He picked up his bag and then slowly disappeared down the spiral staircase that led to the subway system.

  CHAPTER 3

  The Special Housing Unit (SHU) at the Philadelphia Federal Detention Center was quiet for the evening and things had run smoothly for a Saturday. Just before 11 o’clock, Officer Johnson made her last minute round to assure that all inmates were alive and hadn’t escaped. She had an all-star cast of Philadelphia celebrities up there for their protection, albeit none of them wanted it. Prison officials didn’t see it that way.

  Johnson made her way down the wing with her keys jingling to identify her presence. She said good night to each inmate as she flashed her flashlight into every cell. She stepped in front of 812S and said, “Good night, Mr. Bezel,” just as she did everyone else, just before looking inside. He was shirtless and she admired his physique a tad more than an officer should, but she was a woman and he was a fine specimen of a man. News accounts had made her fully aware of Andre Bezel and she was undoubtedly attracted to him. Dre had grown to an even six feet of chocolate. He maintained wavy hair by sleeping with a cut up sheet shaped like and tied like a doo rag on his head. Officer Johnson looked deeply into his dark brown eyes and smiled at his sly grin. She was in heaven on the grounds of a prison and was lusting over an inmate. A double whammy, but hey, she was a woman and quick to become emotionally attracted to a fine specimen, and Andre was one fine specimen.

  Andre flashed a sexy smile and put up one finger indicating for her to stand there and she did. He stood on the stool and gave her a full frontal view of him. He was erect and his penis swung in the air. He stroked it with one hand and had his other hand behind his back. She was impressed and bound by his secret. To avoid suspicion, she tapped on his door and said, “Mr. Bezel, are you alive under that sheet.” She then put her face closer to the window. He was stroking himself and she was into it. He pulled his hand from behind his back and hurled feces at the window with the force of Philadelphia Phillies Cliff Lee pitching to a New York Yankee.

  Officer Johnson jumped back and dropped her flashlight. It rolled down the corridor as she snatched her walkie-talkie from her hip and radioed for her SHU Lieutenant to switch to a secure line.

  “Lieutenant Freeman, go.”

  “LT, Andre Bezel just threw feces at his cell window as I was making my last round. From what I can see he’s nude, and...”

  Andre cut her off, and yelled, “Shut the fuck up, butch!” He heard the other officers running down the corridor and watched them gather around his cell. He smiled as he pressed the button on the metal sink and let water run into his hand. He poured it out and then threw sprinkles onto the window. He quickly dried his hand and then unrolled two strips of toilet paper from the roll. “Look at me now, chumps,” he said, and put the tissue over the feces on the window and covered it. The water helped the tissue stick there.

  Officer Connelly banged on the cell window. “Uncover this window, Bezel. What are you doing, man?”

  “You come do it, pussy!” Andre yelled and slid a piece of paper under the door with shit on it. Urine then began to come out of the door. “Get off my fucking porch, faggots!”

  “You see this shit. Five minutes before shift change,” Officer Brown said to his colleagues. “This is bullshit.”

  Lt. Freeman walked up to his subordinates and they didn’t have to explain much. It was obvious. Lt. Freeman was a tall, obscure looking man with a unifocal on his hip. He was an interesting man into sciences, but he had a peculiar way of handling inmates.

  “Yo, Dre,” another inmate yelled out. “Yoooooo, Freeman is out there.”

  “Connelly and Brown, cover the windows on this wing,” Lt. Freeman said and they moved. They went to retrieve black magnets shaped to perfectly cover the windows of inmates to prevent them from witnessing what was going to go down. To Andre the lieutenant said, “You know how this is going to end, Bezel. You’ve been up here a year and you’ve seen it all. Now uncover the window. I’mma get you some cleaning supplies to get that shit up off your window and then we can talk about what caused this action.”

  “Get your 3-D glasses ‘cause I am coming straight at you, LT. Trust me, I have thought long and hard about this. I’m like expensive art work. Not to be touched.”

  “Let’s talk about that, because if you think you’re dealing with Inmate McKenzey on the north side, I assure you that you’re in for the ride of your life, especially if we have to suit up and extract you. Now what’s the problem?”

  “Your wife is the problem. She lied to me.”

  “Ok, let’s talk about that. What’s the problem, Bezel? This is shocking to me coming from you.”

  “Don’t let him sweet talk you like some negotiator, Dre!” an inmate yelled out.

  “Who was that?” Lt. Freeman whispered to Officer Johnson.

  “That was Cordona. Cell 803S,” Officer Johnson said.

  “Shut his water off!” Lt. Freeman told her, and then to Andre he said, “What has Counselor Freeman told you, Bezel?”

  “Was that a rhetorical question?” Andre yelled out.

  Officer Brown and Connelly had returned to the front of the cell and Lt. Freeman ordered Connelly to get the camcorder because he was fully aware of Andre Bezel and his conniving ways. Staff had been briefed on his manipulative and malicious ways, and were warned to proceed with caution. He had a way with words and could be sinister.

  “See that’s what I mean, Bezel. You’re a smart kid. So what’s the problem?”

  “Fuck them, Dre! Don’t talk to him,” another inmate yelled and kicked his cell door five times with enough force to have the staff question if the doors could be kicked off the hinges.

  “Where the fuck is my lawyer?” Dre asked. He pulled one of the strips of tissue back and looked at the lieutenant. “I wanna see you tell me a lie. Man to man.”

  “You know we have no control over that.”

  “Lying to me will force me to turn this up, LT. Please don’t prey on my intelligence, sir.”

  “Look...”

  “Uh...uh...uhn. Don’t start any statement off as if you’re chastising me. I assure you that you’re not in charge. Have one of your flunky’s look out of the window on Arch Street.”

  “I’ll do that. But you take the other strip of tissue down,” Lt. Brown said and stared sternly at Officer Connelly, who walked off. And clean that shit off my glass.”

  “Your glass. News flash, this is every American citizen’s glass. They pay the taxes to keep these kennels operating. What’s the matter? You don’t like the stench of shit with all of the bullshit that spills out of the mouths of all of you on team grey? It’s about time the boys in green and orange do some winning around here. What ya think?”

  “We can debate this at some other time. In the meantime, take the tissue down.”

  “What the fuck are you going to do if I don’t?”

  “Have my guys suit up in their turtle suits.”

  “Suit ya self. Be sure they’re wearing 3-D glasses,” Dre said and covered his window again.

  Officer Connelly returned as Lt. Freeman asked Andre, “And why is that?”

  “I am coming straight at whoever enters this cell!”

  “That’s your best bet,” Lt. Freeman said and walked off. He asked Connelly, “What’s going on out Arch?”

  Connell
y held his head low, and said, “It looks like the entire tri-state area media has converged on the prison. There’s enough antennae on top of trucks out there to communicate with aliens.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Justin Ashburn had searched all of the self-publishing print-on-demand companies. He had settled on lulu.com. They were less intrusive than the others and didn’t require an ISBN or copyright to publish. All you had to do was upload a WORD doc and print. He could type whatever he wanted between the sheets, slap a template cover design on the material and have them print it up into a perfect bound book.

  Justin was from Mecklenburg, North Carolina and had the IQ of God. He was in a dank room in South Philadelphia that he had rented from an old Italian woman. She welcomed his four months’ rent, which he paid in cash. He had been there two months and had been plotting the escape of his pal since he had word that he as arrested. That was what Iraqi vets did for one another. Before he could act, though, he had to develop a bona fide method to get word to DEA Agent Lucas McKenzey, who was housed in protective custody at the Philadelphia FDC.

  Justin had surmised that Agent McKenzey was housed in PC to protect the malign, corrupt agent from killing someone in the general population, whether it was staff or an inmate. Justin did not like that and was coming to the agent’s rescue. This would not be a forceful escape plan involving blazing guns. This plan was sophisticated and tight, and what better place to put it than in a book? Certainly, the mail room would not read an entire book shipped from a publisher, titled Crying to Pretend I’m Not Laughing.

  After uploading the interior document, Justin worked on the cover. He uploaded a smile and then positioned a tear drop to hang from the corner of the lips. Now it was time to type in the title and the author: Kareem Bezel. He smiled at the joke, and thought, laugh now.

  CHAPTER 5

  Amir Bezel sat in front of the family room TV on the floor playing with a Tonka truck. He had a bowl of ice cream on a fold-up table that was being ignored in favor of playing. It was 10 p.m. and for a three-year-old, bedtime was approaching fast. He wanted to have as much fun as possible before his day ended.

  “Andre Bezel has held himself hostage in his prison cell,” a newscaster said. That caught Amir’s attention.His face lit up like fireworks and he yelled, “Mommie.”

  Tasha poked her head through the kitchen door and looked at her son pointing wildly at the televison. She donned an apron over boy shorts and a tank top and yellow cleaning gloves covered her hands. “Amir, what did you say? I am trying to clean the stove, baby,” she said to her boy. He was a bright toddler and worked overtime to garner attention, despite the overwhelming amount that she had been giving him.

  “What did you say, honey?” she asked and stared at him from the kitchen doorway. She then heard the distinct sound of a newscaster as she approached the family room. She wore a worried mug and hoped that her son was not exposed to another media storm about his father. She had worked double-time to protect him from the foolishness that was aired in the news. She sat on a lovely crocodile sofa that she had imported from Spain and curled her feet up under her. Tasha had prepared herself for the late-night movie tentatively titled, “Hanging Andre Out to Dry.”

  In a box above the newscaster’s head was her fiancé in a mug shot taken two years earlier. In her entire life, and all of the times that she had reinvented it, she had never been so confused. She had endured weekly searches as she visited the Philadelphia Federal Detention Center with her son. She had no desire for her boy to lose sight of who his father was. She was in the world alone with a baby to protect from news reporters looking to badger her with questions about her man, but she had nothing to say. She lived in a clandestine home in Upper Merion, just a few blocks from Andre’s high school. She really wanted to Tivo the broadcast or catch it later on the station’s website, but she knew that she was in for a rude awakening if she tried to change that channel. Amir would have showed his ass, and there would not have been much that she could have done about it. Oh, my fucking God, why is this happening? I have enough to deal with, hiding from federal agents and news reporters looking to badger me without regard to my son and family. Shameful, and now this she said and listened intently to the reporter on the TV screen.

  Newscaster Jason Martin was on the pavement in front of the African American Museum with a silver microphone in his hand. He was directly across the street from the Philadelphia Federal Detention Center, and Tasha saw several other news vans. Everyone was vying to get the latest gossip about the Bezel Brothers out to the jury voir dire. She never understood why they placed a federal jail across the street from a museum with such a rich root in history. On the other corner was a Federal Reserve Bank. There was something symbolic about the prison’s location, she thought.

  “It was a rare state of panic today at the Federal Detention Center. There were smoke bombs let out in the Special Housing Unit after inmate Andre Bezel tossed feces at his cell window and encouraged fellow inmates to flood their toilets and caused the entire unit to be filled with water. This flooding has extended beyond the SHU, also known as the hole.” The reporter paused and showed still photos of the SHU. “In these prison photos, you can see that the wing is shaped like a narrow triangle and none of the inmates can see what’s going on more than six feet from their cells; hence, this was a very coordinated prison riot and it comes as no surprise that Andre Bezel is the ring leader. He is scheduled to begin trial this Monday for crimes ranging from drug trafficking to murder. The United States Attorney’s Office has estimated that the Bezel trial may last two months and court records indicate that in excess of 30 people are scheduled to testify for the prosecution.”

  “At this point, the U.S. Marshal’s Office has deployed agents to the prison to generate order. The entire prison is locked down. Apparently, inmates have an in-house communication system unlike the old fashion passing of kites that they use. Because they are locked on their respective floors and are only allowed to leave for personal/legal visits and trips to medical triage, they push the water out of their toilets and use rolled newspapers to yell through the system from floor to floor. It seems that that has happened here, as each floor including the women’s floor has refused to lockdown and has flooded their units. Each unit is staffed with one officer who has either made it off their assigned units, or are locked in the staff office for their protection. There is not enough staff to go and lock down each unit at once, so it’s assumed that the marshal’s have arrived to help the prison staff go unit by unit and lock the prison down.”

  Prison officials have not communicated with the media to make a public statement, but we will bring any statements to you live when they happen.”

  Tasha panicked and immediately picked up Amir. “Come here, baby,” she said and held him tightly.

  Two years ago, Andre was arrested and in an effort to have easier access to him, she left their home in New York. She wanted no parts of the inner city, nor did she want to expose Amit to it, so she lived in Upper Merion, a middle class enclave 15-miles from Philadelphia. Her home had four bedrooms, a 50-foot driveway that led to a three car garage and a pool shaped like a tear drop.

  “Mommie sad?” Amir asked. He had a loving tone designed to comfort his mother, and wished that he could comfort her further. He had no idea what bothered her, but he knew his mother well enough to know when she was upset. Her mood had shifted downward, and he did not like that. He would console her the best he knew how and when things were too much too bear, he would cry, which was the only mechanism that he had mastered. He realized that when he cried, his mother became stronger. What he did not know was that she had to be stronger for him and that she would deal with her pain internally to care for him.

  “Go to your room and get your emergency bag, Amir. You can bring some toys too,” she said when they reached the top of the stairs. She looked over the banister into the living and through the window out into the dark night.

  “Why mom? Call cops,” he sa
id in his toddler drawl and pulled her toward her bedroom. “Come on mom. ”

  “No, son. It’s not that sort of emergency. Daddy needs us. He’s in trouble at the jail. So, we’re going to Grandmom Jean-Mary’s, ok? That’s why we have our emergency bags, so that we can leave quickly, if we have too, ok?”

  “Yes, mommy,” Amir said and raced off to his room.

  Tasha grabbed a checkered Louis Vuitton duffle bag and her cell phone off the night stand. She picked up her phone and pressed speed-dial number 2.

  Into her phone she said, “Kareem there is a problem at the jail with Dre.”

  “I know,” Kareem was calm.

  “I am worried, so I am headed to Mama’s house right now. Can you meet me there?”

  “Sure.”

  “Do you know what this is about?”

  “No, but I am on the line with Ravonne trying to get an understanding of this. What is going on with this man throwing shit at the fucking cell window and barricading himself inside two days before he’s scheduled to start trial? This is a goddamn shame and I’m irked.”

  “Ok, I have no idea what is going on. None. I just saw him on Friday and he did not mention this stunt.”

  “And a stunt it is. I know him. He has some reasoning for this, but how the hell he managed to get the media outside the prison at the precise time that he was going to do this is confusing me.” I am so going to hell for this butchered acting job, but there was no way that I would let her in on my brother’s and my vision. We had it all figured out.

  “Me too, but I will see you at Mama’s. I am leaving now.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Life for Jean-Mary Bezel had been going along swimmingly since she had been returned to the Bezel Brothers after being kidnapped. Although Agent McKenzey did not torture her, the fact that he took her from her home and ransacked it was enough. The agent had lured her into his vehicle after he had convinced her that he was an agent—well he was—and had to take her in for her protection. Agent McKenzey had explained that a corrupt agent was out to kill her grandchildren, when all the while, he was the agent.