The Stolen Journal

I ran, clenching the small black journal so tight in my hand the pressure was almost painful to my trembling fingers. I snarled at the cold wind now gripping my body, my feet crunching hard against light snow covering the last bits of open pavement on the street and the crack of rifles firing behind me in the black of night. With every step, I plunged deeper into a wall of winter wind, everything hurt, but I couldn’t stop. My only thought being I wouldn’t let myself end in a moment I never should have even been in.

A black bag left alone on the dingy, weather-abused steps of the Westside C apartment complex, appearing almost new, with light signs of mishandling according to its beaten sides and straps. It had been left or thrown away and, to my 18-year old mind, walking along the rundown projects of West Savannah, freshly off the factory job I hated and as irritated as one could be in cheap clothes in the cold of January, it was mine.

Arriving home after a day of unforgiving, unrelenting factory work was like leaving the minimum wage frying pan and reasserting yourself in the nearest possible forest fire.

“Jamie, it’s about time you showed up!” Screamed Mom, yelling across our small, laundry filled apartment living room. The entire building could undoubtedly feel her deep southern accent, followed by the cries of my 4 month old baby sister, escape into the hall as I opened our front door. “Get these clothes up,” she continued, “I need you to take these payments to the bank and check in with Mal. He’s been in the room since he got home from school.”

I angrily entered my cluttered, poorly lit bedroom with a loud, “Yo, mom wants to make sure you’re still breathing,” addressing my younger, self-proclaimed “entrepreneur out of the streets” brother, who loved locking himself in our shared room to figure out new ways to make money, drop out of school and move out.

“I’m telling you, give me a few years,” Mal replied, showing off a few twenty’s in his hands. “I've been selling games, boards, boxes; anything I can to these folks around here. Working as hard as you, I’m Gary V with it, and when’d you get a new bag?” He asked, showing a suspicious yet smiling gaze towards me.

I laughed, “Look bro, i’m not saying you can’t do it but it’s going to take more than a few cans and video games to move.” Then, taking a seat on my creaking mattress and patting my new bag I added,

“And as for this baby, it Isn’t so much as My new bag as it is A new bag I found outside.”

Finally taking the time to examine my find, I analyzed it as a JSports brand bag with 3 multi-sized compartments. Within the first was a small sleek black book with the name “Azul Cortez” scrawled along its cover. I heard that name somewhere, maybe school or work, but couldn’t put my finger on it. The second compartment contained a few papers and a business card within, I pulled them out and, seeing Mal now staring in my direction, surely curious as to what my finds could be, read aloud the top heading.

“Confidential America One Bank Documents: A. Cortez Williams” The paper read, it seemed like important accountant work, I scanned the rest of the page and noticed several blacked out phrases along with surprisingly visible bank account numbers. I then held up the card for both of us to inspect, only seeing a website name on one side, and what seemed like a 4 digit password on the other.

I reached in the final compartment, a look of adventurous determination on my face, slowly felt the contents and stopped. My eyes grew wide, I pulled my hand out and reached in again.

“Well?” Mal asked with inquiry in his eyes. “Is it guns, or scorpions or something?”

“No,” I replied, slowly pulling out a folded wad I knew was too good to be true, “It’s money.”

After we cleaned, we counted the money and read the journal again and again, discovering $20,000 and a list of names and locations from around the city. The bag had to belong to someone or something possibly illegal, of course, neither of us could place the name to anyone we knew and honestly didn’t care. It was twenty thousand dollars just sitting there and we couldn’t believe it.

Debating what to do first, we agreed to check the website on the card. Using our only home computer, we waited for the page to load and, for a second the screen went black, before bringing up a blank page with a search bar at the top.

“Try the numbers on the back of the card” Mal suggested. I typed them in and, as soon as I hit enter, a list of clickable bank accounts streamed along the screen. Shocked eyes and a smile grew across Mal’s face.

“We just need the cash,” I stated firmly, the guilt of the entire situation creeping through the back of my mind. “Let’s see what we can get with the cash, they can’t trace it. everything else you never know who’s watching.” With an agreeing nod we said goodnight. Mal wasn’t going to school and I wasn’t going to work tomorrow.

Speeding around the city in your own used 2015 Nissan Sentra may not seem like the greatest experience known to man, but it was the best three hours of our lives. We had taken the bag to the nearest atm, poured the money into my account, and had the shopping experience of a lifetime. Mal continued to dissect the names in the journal and eventually threw it in the backseat just happy to be in the surreal situation. The winter breeze felt warmer than usual, the afternoon sun rose just above the clouds and bounced off the few west side kids playing along the street.

We arrived home as the sun fell below the city, I parked in the lot across from our complex. We sat, exhilarated for a few minutes and I told Mal with a smile, “You take the bag and go ahead in, I’ll be there in a sec.”

“You sure,” he asked.

I nodded and watched as he comedically skipped across the street to the doors of our home, holding the bag that had changed so much so soon.

Eventually, I stepped out of the car and took a long stretch, pondering the blissful events of the day until the sound of sudden incoming footsteps broke my train of thought. Before I could address it, a blunt swing of something metal connected with the back of my skull. I lost all feeling in my body. Everything went black.

“Wake up.”

The harshness of this voice awoke me faster than the pain emanating through my head or the words themselves. I opened my eyes slowly realizing I was in the backseat of a moving car. It was an SUV and there were three men. A driver, a man in the passenger seat, and one next to me.

“You have the bag, don’t you,” The man said, in more of an intense statement than question. He was buff, well dressed in a suit and what looked like skull tattoos running down his barely visible neck. In broken english and with a weighted accent that sounded foreign, he spoke again, “We have the journal. Where is everything else.”

I was terrified. The truth seemed like the worst thing possible to announce but lying might not be the best option. The man next to me could see the desperate puppy fear in my eyes and maybe that was enough to lighten his intensity.

He chuckled loudly saying, “Look, you have good life ahead of you, don’t f*** up. I don’t care about the cash, that is easy to obtain, even easier to spend. I need the papers. Where is bag?”

He said this in a playfully chucky tone but the obvious battle ready, unwavering look in his eye told me, even if I gave him the bag on a silver platter, I wasn’t getting home alive.

“I left it in a factory locker room. I work close by,” I answered as the first place I could think of far away from our apartment. I knew there was a police station on the road leading to the factory and prayed, we would run into someone by then.

“Tell us the shortest way,” he said, clearly amused by the situation. “That wasn’t too hard, maybe now you think twice before taking someone else’s belongings. They could belong to powerful people who can track anything” They all echoed in laughter.

We were 5 min away from the factory by the time I realized we were coming down a dark, forest covered road in the opposite direction of the police station towards my workplace.

However, on the final turn before reaching the facility, I noticed the sweet royal blue lights of metropolitan police emanating behind us. A shout of frustration escaped the drivers lips as he pulled over on the two lane road in the dead of night.

“You speak, you die.” The man said while fixing himself, ready for confrontation.

The police officer approached.

“How we doing tonight,” The officer said completely unaware of the situation he gracefully fell upon.

“All good here,” the driver said, as confident as he could, clearly not fluent in english.

“Great. Well, it’s late, your plates aren’t registered and that’s no good,” the officer said with a slightly confident smirk. “How about I see your license and registration and we go from there.”

The silence that passed in the next few moments was so intense I could hear the rustling of almost every tree outside and the crack of knuckles ahead of me. The man to my left was staring hard at the 20 something deputy slowly retrieving a pistol from underneath his seat.

I took the moment to check the door and assess any possible way to escape. Then, I saw it. They hadn’t removed the locks from my door. Knowing they would notice me unlock it and thinking fast for a situation like this, I screamed. As loud as an 18 year old from the west side could. It shocked everybody, and the officer stumbled back to remove his weapon. The man in the driver seat ducked as both the passenger seat man and the one next to me pointed their guns at the officer. I could feel the man next to me reaching for my arm but he was too late. I snatched the small journal back and was already out of the now swung open car door.

Each crack of their weapons added to the pool of fear swirling in my heart. I felt sorry for the officer, but as the sound of the SUV now starting up rang out down the street, I ducked through the forest and kept moving. I was alive.

The rest of the night was a blur. I made it home with several bruises, a light concussion, and fear well lingering in my mind, but I made it. Mom and Mal were frantic, having called the police as soon as I hadn’t appeared back at the apartment. Mal and I confessed everything and, although they took the bag and its contents as evidence, let us keep the $10,000 and car. Detectives explained that the men were most likely from regional Crip gangs and one of their members had stolen the money and recorded the names of leaders, as well as locations of hideouts in the book.

Mom was understandably angry, asking more questions than the detectives but overall just happy we survived, as she welcomed me with my now awake, smiling baby sister.