The Great Heist

Chapter Fifteen

Forty-five minutes after the call and a rather steaming hot shower.

The tall, trim black man, now prettied up in a smoky black three-piece suit climbed into the backseat of a New York's hallmark yellow hybrid taxicab he had flagged down on 21st Street.

"Brooklyn Heights," he said to the squash-faced Caucasian driver the minute he was fully settled in, catching the subtle nod of acknowledgment from him.

Dropping the brown leathered briefcase he carried on his person beside him on the seat, he brought his hand up to his neck in a vertical motion. To carefully loosen his knotted striped necktie for comfort at the same time the cab pulled gently away from the curb into the busy streets of Queens, New York.

Done with that now, he sagged into the seat. His left and right arms sprawled gingerly over its top in a striking regal-like pose.

Now seated in this manner, he caught the smug look on his reflection in the car's rear-view mirror. At that, he managed an inconsequential smile, then looked away quickly.

The smugness and sudden change in his comportment, he realized in an afterwit was owing to nothing other than the phone call from earlier.

Of course, it was the call! He saliently agreed with himself then and there. What else would it have been?

It had been a huge catalyst; changing the course of everything. From the anxiousness he had felt before now, to the jitteriness he had tried so much to keep under control, but failed terribly at. Even the palpitations of his heart, which he had attempted to ease earlier with sessions of exercises, Meditation, and Yoga.

That one call had been responsible for taking it all away.

It hadn't ended there alone. The call had also brought him huge relief. One that comes with the knowledge cum staggering fact that-the hardest part of the heist has been done!

Feeling as calm and relaxed as he possibly could now, he let his mind wander slightly back to when everything had begun. To the time before his mind had first brightened with the idea of the heist-odd and preposterous as it may have seemed at the time. The time before he had turned into this person and chosen to walk down this path.

He could remember the bits and pieces of the story. Picture in his mind every single detail. Now that the memories trickle in... in flux.

He could recall starting humbly at first. Graduating as a valedictorian at Yale University... Getting his first employment as a legal adviser two years after graduating from a law school in New York City... Earning a fat but honest pay, and getting married to Megan-his British-American heartthrob back from his collegial days at Yale University at age twenty-five... Giving birth to his first child: His son, whom he named-Olufela-after the Afrobeats legend Fela Anikulapo Kuti from his native country, Nigeria-barely two years later.

A good-paying job. A family. A hefty bank account. An insurance scheme that covers his house, some investments in real estate, and cars. He had been lucky to have all that at just twenty-seven.

To put it more bluntly, he was indeed luckier than most people.

Thankfully, he was aware of this at the time. Not for any other reason than, that was way more than most people-irrespective of skin color-ever get here in life even after living up to their seventies.

But who could blame a guy being smiled on by fortune?

The streak of luck and good fortune had continued for even much longer. Lasting until the birth of his daughter-Sade-exactly three years later. Just like her brother, Sade had also earned her name from the British-Nigerian 'pop star'-Sade Adu-who happened to be his favorite musician.