Boogie Down Bronx, page 10
By now everybody in the entire backyard had stopped and turned their attention to the argument that was going down. Before Frita could intervene Cucci did the worst thing you could do to anybody, let alone to a member of your own family.
She opened her mouth and let a big fat glob of saliva fly right in Honore’s face.
In a blur Honore began digging into her cousin’s ass with a combination of punches that would have impressed Mike Tyson. In mere seconds Honore had Cucci’s big-mouth self down on the ground pounding her into the dirt.
“Bitch you spit on me? I’ma beat the shit outta you out here!” Honore shrieked. She was scratching and mauling Cucci like a wild animal in the woods.
“Let her go, Honore!” Frita and a bunch of her girlfriends jumped in and were trying to pull Honore up off of Cucci but it wasn’t working. “Turn her loose, goddammit!”
The two cousins were scratching and thumping. Cucci was wind-milling her arms from the ground and throwing haymakers. Honore was fist-gripping Cucci’s weave and slanging her head violently from side to side.
“You jealous fuckin hoe!” She pounded Cucci in the face. “You could never fuck with me! You just a can’t-get-right type a’ smut! I bet I’ll be the last bitch you spit on in ya whole miserable fuckin life!
Finally Frita and her girls unbent Honore’s clenching fingers and pried her off of Cucci, but not before Honore landed a solid kick square in Cucci’s mouth. The force busted her lip instantly and blood squirted in the air then dribbled down her chin and splattered her dress.
Cucci shrieked in pain and rage. She tore off after Honore and grabbed her by the hair and started swinging killer blows, popping her hard in the nose. The backyard was in total chaos as the partygoers grabbed Honore and broke shit up again.
“Y’all dirty hoes was holding me back!” Honore accused, glaring around at her cousins and aunts. “Why the fuck was y’all holding me back but y’all let this bitch keep on swinging?”
“Y’all two stop it!” Frita pleaded ready to whip both of their asses. “Cut this shit out! Showing your tails out here in the street like this! Both of y’all was raised better than that! You was raised up together like sisters!”
“She ain’t my fuckin sister!” Cucci screamed.
“You ain’t my damn sister neither!” Honore hollered back, and then she turned her lips down at her aunt and said, “And you wasn’t no kinda sister to my mother neither!”
“Stop it,” Frita panted, pressing her hand to her heart. “Y’all just stop it. We family, y’all. We are family!”
Cucci sucked her teeth. “That shady fuckin hater ain’t shit to me!”
Honore clutched her nose as a stream of blood dripped from her left nostril. “You ain’t shit to me neither, bitch!” she snapped as she bent over and snatched up her bag. She came up staring at her aunt Frita and spit real nasty outta her mouth, “Like I said, don’t neither one of y’all tricks know how to be a sister!”
That was it for Frita.
“Look at you!” the older woman sneered as she glared at her niece with blazing Bacardi eyes. “You just like your ungrateful ass mama! That fuckin dick-rider always did think she was cute! All the time violating some damn body! And you take right after her too!”
“Well she musta been riding it way better than you,” Honore snapped. “’Cause she took your fuckin man, now didn’t she?”
“What?” It was Frita’s turn to break as her elderly homegirls rushed to hold her back. “That hoe ain’t take shit from me!” she screamed, wind-milling her arms as she tried to break free of the hands holding her back.
“You got it backwards, baby!” Frita screamed. “I’m the one who took his ass from her! And now her cute ass is dead and gone, and me and my man are still right here together! That means while she’s riding a tombstone I’m riding that nigga’s dick anytime I want it! I tell you what though, you lil ungrateful bitch! After everything I done for you, you got the nerve to talk that kinda way to me? I ain’t Cucci Momma, baby! I’ll knock you into next week and slap the mothafuckin taste right outta—”
“Happy birthday, Auntie!” Honore barked as she stomped past her aunts and cousins. She turned around and gave Frita the stank face. “You and Cucci might not be two peas in the pod, but y’all are damn sure two crackheads on the corner!”
“Bitch!” Frita and Cucci screamed at the same time.
“Bitch, hell. Fuck all y’all fake-ass family members!” Honore spit bitterly as she sashayed out the gate waving her middle finger high in the air and poking her bouncy ass way out like they could all kiss it. “Don’t try to come for me unless I send for you! I’m gone!”
CHAPTER 10
Unforgiving
It was getting dark outside when Slick got off the number 4 train. He walked through the concrete jungle with his hands buried deep in his pockets and his mind spinning in thought.
He had called Jewelz a little while earlier and lied about being in her neighborhood and asked her if he could swing by and chill for a little while.
Seeing her all up under Handgun Goody at Chainsaw’s funeral, holding that nigga’s hand and wiping away his fuckin tears, had messed his head up. Especially since he had peeped Goody’s moms there too, alive and kicking.
Jewelz lived in a real nice apartment building in an upscale hood, but there were two low-budget Section 8 tenements just a few blocks away.
Slick approached the six-story buildings with his eyes on scan and his hoody covering his head. An intense argument was going on between two cats who were standing outside the lobby of the first building. A short Puerto Rican cat seemed to be getting hostile and aggressive with a taller darker-skinned black dude.
“W’sup, puta! I told you if I ever saw yo bitch ass over here again I was gonna off you didn’t I?” the short stocky ’Rican roared.
“Mchhh,” the skinny brother let out a sound of disrespect. “Nigga this my hood! I stomp where the fuck I wanna stomp. Fuck is you talking about?”
Slick slowed his pace and studied the body language and movements of both men as they argued back and forth about who the hood belonged to.
The black kid is shitting bricks although he’s putting up a good front. The ’Rican dude is posturing. He’s putting on a show because he likes the attention. The ’Rican looks like he can take the Black guy, but he’s talking too fuckin much. He shoulda popped smooth the fuck off right after he said what he had to say. That’s gonna be his downfall.
Between his knowledge of the streets and the training he had received in the military, Slick could calculate a certain outcome of a situation in just a matter of seconds. This type of battle intuition is what had saved his life plenty of times on the job, and it made him a highly efficient killing machine.
Shoot and move, my nigga, Slick urged the Hispanic cat. Shoot and fuckin move!
Suddenly in the mix of the argument the dark-skinned cat turned slightly to his right then made a slick move. In the blink of an eye he spit a razor blade into his palm then swung hard and slashed the ’Rican’s neck while he was in mid-sentence.
They started fighting like bulls and Slick peeped the ’Rican trying to reach for the gat that was stuffed down in his waistband. The Black kid was all over him though, slicing viciously and carving him up so fast that bloody gashes seem to magically open up all over his face and neck and even the backs of his hands.
Screams and curses of alarm were coming from the spectators but no one dared to interfere. The Puerto Rican kid was losing a lot of blood and could no longer withstand the razor-sharp flurries as he dropped to his knees.
A deep cut from his forehead to his chin opened up in a gruesome display of white meat and blood. He was trying desperately to hold his collapsing face together while he continued to take a massive beating.
The black guy stood over him swinging his blade with a complete look of insanity in his eyes as he ripped up the cat’s face and neck until dude fell over and was no longer moving.
Women in the crowd screamed from horror and disgust. A fat nigga shouted loudly for somebody to call 911. Slick gazed at the bloody mess and proceeded to move on. His prediction had been right on the money. The Puerto Rican kid was laid out on the concrete shredded up like spaghetti and mozzarella cheese and inches away from death. And his gun was still on his fuckin hip.
You was doing too much talkin and not enough movin, B, Slick thought coldly. A scared man is a dangerous one. His only mistake was leaving you alive.
The black guy whirled around and ran off down the block while the group of bystanders inched up closer and gawked over the wounded man who was barely breathing.
Slick walked past dude’s shredded mug without even looking down at him. This was New York. The Empire State. Careless niggas got ripped out here every single day.
$$$$$
Jewelz’s upscale apartment building was several blocks away. She buzzed him in, and the moment he walked through her door Slick was bombarded by the strong odor of some good-ass trees.
“Sup?” He reached out to give her a hug and took a good look at the telltale redness in her eyes.
Jewelz half-hugged him and she patted him a couple of times on his back, but she kept the eye contact real brief as she quickly turned away and walked down the hall.
Slick followed her with his eyes. She was dressed in a wife-beater with no bra on underneath, and a pair of red and white candy-striped boy shorts that were hugging a lot looser on her curves than he remembered. She had a bright red scarf tied around her head too, and when it flapped up and down in the back Slick saw straight through to her naked skull.
Da fuck?
Slick frowned deeply as Jewelz switched her diminished ass towards the kitchen.
This crazy-ass girl done gone and cut-off all her fuckin hair or nah?
He was burning with the need to ask her what was up, but lately she had been on some other shit. He didn’t want no repeat of that crazy scene she had caused in the soul food restaurant, but he just had to know.
“Ay, what the hell happened to all your hair?”
Jewelz kept her back to him as she shrugged and replied, “Charity. I shaved it off. I donated it to sick kids who need hair, and as soon as mine grows back in a little more I’m getting me a sew-on weave. No biggie.”
Slick kept his thoughts to himself as he joined her in the kitchen.
“Yo, I wanna let you know we got suspended,” Slick said quietly. “The crew ain’t just on a break, Jewelz. The BBU said we missed two hits in a row and they suspended us.”
Jewelz shrugged. “Well, them bitches must can’t count because we know that’s a lie.”
“Right,” Slick agreed. “We missed the Queen of Diamonds, but we got the monkey with the red briefcase. The old man we left rocked on the floor was proof of that.”
Jewelz shrugged again. “Whatever. I’m cool with it. I ain’t got the energy to be out there blasting on niggas no way. You hungry?” she asked over her shoulder as she picked up a tightly rolled spliff from an ashtray and sparked it up. She took a few pulls and held them in for a few, then she slowly exhaled and let the smoke out. “I cooked a pot of ox tails and potatoes this morning. You want some?”
Slick nodded as he watched her closely. “Yeah, you can fix me a plate. Thanks. I ain’t ate much of nothing all day.”
“Me neither,” she said as she picked up a big spoon and started digging into the pot. “I gotta get nice and buzzed just to work up a little bit of an appetite these days.”
“Why? What’s up with that?” Slick asked with a look of concern in his eyes. “For real, you don’t look too good, J. You been smoking that sticky all day?”
Jewelz set his plate down hard on the counter.
“Fuck you! Don’t walk up in here tryna come for me! You don’t look too hot your damn self, nigga! Are you doing okay?” she shot back angrily. “I been out here making mad power plays for you. The last thing you need to be worrying about is how much weed I smoke!”
Slick held his hands up in surrender. “My bad, lovely. I didn’t mean no harm and I didn’t come over here to argue with you neither,” he said calmly.
He got a fork from the silverware drawer and moved over to the table with his steaming hot plate of stew.
“So gimme a quick update,” he said, changing the subject as he dug into the grub. “I peeped you at Chainsaw’s funeral the other day. What’s the buzz on Goody and his crew? That nigga still walking around town crying like a lil bitch?”
Jewelz stared him down as she stood leaning on the counter puffing her sticky and tapping her foot like she was pissed the hell off.
“Goody is doing just fine,” she snapped. “He’s probably just a little stressed out, that’s all. Matter fact, he asked me to go on a trip to Jamaica with him just to get away from all this bullshit for a while. On the real, I’m thinking about packing my shit and hopping on that flight.”
Slick raised his eyebrow and paused with the fork halfway to his mouth.
“What the hell you talking about, Jewelz?” he spit, looking at her real crazy. “You talking about traveling somewhere alone with that nigga? For real? You sound like you feelin him or something!”
“What the hell do you care about who I’m feeling?” Jewelz snapped again. “Goody ain’t the monster you think he is anyway. That dude stays splurging on me, showing me crazy love. Don’t worry about me, okay? Worry about that little fake-ass jump-off you be running around with.”
“Yo, goddammit!” Slick pushed his plate back so hard it skidded to the other side of the table. “The fuck is wrong with you girl? Did you forget this is a fuckin job? You done let that nigga get up in ya head like that? Do you remember what the fuck he did to us? How he stole my entire fucking family?”
“Our family! He stole our family! Big Slick and Miss Kea were all I had in this whole world too!”
“A’ight, then! Our family! So how the fuck could you be thinking about going across the water somewhere with that grime ball then?”
“People change!” Jewelz shrieked. “All that shit happened twenty fuckin years ago! Goody ain’t the same dude who did those terrible things. He was just young and dumb back then, Slick! A fuckin teenager! He was just doing what Haz made him do! Haz woulda killed him too if Goody didn’t get down with him and you know that!”
Slick stood up trembling with rage. “Yo,” he said slowly shaking his head. “You wild delusional with ya shit, girl. You straight up fuckin buggin, ma.”
“Why I gotta be buggin?” Jewelz demanded, shifting her hips and crossing her arms over her breasts. “You the one who keeps telling me to forget the past! You said to stop living in what it used to be and start living in what it is right now! Well, this is what it is right now for me! Right now is all I got! So you can just come down off ya high-horse, homeboy. You got you somebody, and now I got me somebody too! I ain’t saying I’m not gonna kill Goody. I can still rock him just like we planned it. But…not now,” she lowered her eyes and stared down at the floor. “Not yet…”
Slick whirled around furiously and put his fist straight through the front of her china cabinet. Shattered slivers flew everywhere and when he drew his hand back a long shard of glass was stuck down between his first two knuckles.
“Stupid ass!” he hissed on her, ignoring the blood that dripped down his fingers and splattered to the floor.
“What the fuck do you think that nigga’s gonna do when he finds out who you really are? Huh? You think he’s just gonna say ‘my bad’ and let you walk ya ass up outta there? I told you that nigga was gonna lull you to sleep then bite you! He’s gonna kill you, Jewelz! He’ll cut you the fuck up for real this time!”
“Nah.” Jewelz shook her head. “Goody wouldn’t do nothing to hurt me. He ain’t that scared young fiend no more. He’s a grown man now and he loves me, Slick. He wants to protect me. He wants to make sure I’m straight.”
Goddammit, I love you! I wanna protect you! I wanna make sure you stay straight! were the words that blasted through Slick’s mind.
But instead of saying them he just shook his head, furious at her blindness. “You must be fuckin tweakin, Jewelz! If I’da known you was this fuckin stupid I woulda never put you on this job!”
Slick grabbed a dishcloth and pulled the shard of glass from his flesh. His wound was deep, but the only pain he felt was from the realization that once again he had failed to protect Jewelz. From the realization that he had fucked around and let her walk straight into a danger zone. He couldn’t believe he was hearing this blasphemous shit coming outta her mouth. He had just lost Noodles and he wasn’t about to lose her too. Not when he was just starting to realize how much he really lo—
“I’m pulling you off this jawn,” Slick spit as he wrapped the dishtowel around his throbbing fist. “You can just clock out and cut off the lights right now baby girl, because it’s over. This job is officially fuckin cancelled! I want you to fall your ass back from Goody and his gang and forget that nigga ever existed, you hear me?”
Jewelz broke. “I’m a grown-ass woman, Slick! I play my own fuckin cards! You don’t come up in here telling me when to pluck and when to fold! I takes care of myself, muthafucka! Don’t you or no other nigga get to tell me how to make my moves!”
“How long you been fuckin that nigga?” Slick asked quietly, his murderous brown eyes boring a hole in hers. “How long?”
Jewelz threw her hands in the air and turned her back on him.
“So that’s what this is all about?” she demanded, cutting her eyes over her shoulder. “Nigga you just jealous! You don’t want me, but you don’t want no other man to have me neither! Don’t worry about who been smashin this pussy!” she said, whirling around with her hands on her hips. “How long have you been fuckin Honore?”
For the longest time Slick just stood there looking at her. His eyes cut like razors as he pinned her in his glare. When he finally spoke his voice was lowered to a bone-chilling whisper.
