Boogie Down Bronx, page 13
“I’m dead-ass serious though,” Slick said, even though his resolve was weakening with every whiff of her perfume. “My life is too real to be wasting time. I ain’t saying we was supposed to plan a future together, but that hot and cold shit got in the way.”
“You right, Daddy,” Honore said as she got up from her seat and straddled his lap and wrapped her legs around his waist. She slipped her tongue deeply inside his mouth as Slick’s dick bricked up and he held her in his arms.
“Let’s start all over, okay?” she asked softly. “As of today, no more on-and-off shit between us, no more hot and cold. Let’s be for real. I ain’t never felt for no other man the way I feel for you, Slick. I swear to God. Never. I love you, boo. I really do.”
“A’ight,” Slick said as he stood up and gripped her hips until she was firmly back on her feet. “You said ya piece, now I’ma turn up on you in this bowling shit.”
Honore laughed, even though she had expected to hear ‘I love you too’ roll outta his mouth. She didn’t sweat it though. She had wronged him and she had to let him show his pride.
“You can’t handle me, boo,” she said with a big smile. “I was taking it easy on you. Now you gotta go.”
Honore wound up winning the first game and Slick won the next three. Slick bought her a grape soda to make her feel better about the losses, and also because he loved their little playful competition.
He had to admit that Honore was beautiful and it was real cool being with her and all, but still. He wasn’t impressed no more. Yeah, that ass was lumped up and them titties were sweet, but whatever. There was no doubt in Slick’s mind that their lil sex thang was dead. Because the whole time he was busy checking for Honore, he couldn’t stop thinking about Jewelz.
$$$$$
Two whole days had passed since Slick had ditched out on their lunch date, and as Jewelz left the pharmacy and walked back to her apartment she was looking and feeling more tired than ever before in her life.
She had cried her eyes out over him for a whole day and an entire night, and the stress of it all had caused her health to take a serious nosedive.
Slick had been blowing her phone up non-stop, and he had even popped up banging on her door twice the night before. Jewelz had ignored him as she wrapped herself up in a thick blanket and lay there shivering with a bone-chilling fever.
She had woken up this morning dry-heaving her guts out. She’d laid in bed and smoked a joint hoping it would mellow her out and make her feel better, but an hour later she was shaking so bad she’d broken down and called the hospital. The nurse had been sympathetic and the doctor had prescribed her a painkiller and some medication to help calm her stomach.
Right now Jewelz looked a wrung-out mess as she headed back to her crib after picking up the medicine from the pharmacy a few blocks away. She was dragging herself home slowly, clutching her bottle of pills tightly in her hand and trying her best to put one foot in front of the other when somebody called her name.
“Jewelz!”
She turned around slowly with her tired eyes searching.
“Uh-uh, bitch!” a heavyset light-skinned chick with a ratchet mint-green weave and a ton of makeup threw her hand in the air and twisted her lips. “Oh, so you just gonna walk past and act like you don’t know me, huh?”
It took a moment for recognition to set in, but when it hit her, it hit her hard. As bad as Jewelz was feeling a huge smile spread over her face.
“Trina…” she grinned, holding her arms out to embrace her old friend as a million painful memories flooded her heart. The chick grabbed Jewelz in a bear hug and held her tight.
“Trina, Trina, Trina…” Jewelz whispered as she pressed her face into the girl’s bosom and her eyes filled with tears.
“Jewelz…it’s so good to see you. I thought you was lost forever…” Trina’s lip quivered as a flood of tears ran down her jiggly cheeks. “Girl, I didn’t know what them muthafuckas had did with you.”
Trina sniffed and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “I mean, one day you was chained up right there next to me, and the next day you was gone. I thought them niggas dead-ass killed you,” she whispered. “I thought you was in a Dumpster somewhere and wouldn’t nobody never see you again.”
A long-buried ache filled Jewelz’s chest. Her and Trina went way back. They had been held captive as teenaged sex slaves together and they’d suffered horrible years of sexual exploitation as victims of Chimp Charlie’s pimp reign.
“I ran away when Chimp Charlie took me to dance at a strip joint,” Jewelz said slowly, taking her old friend’s hand and leading her over to lean against a parked car.
“The cops ran down and raided the joint and I broke the hell out. I didn’t stop running until I was damn near on the other side of the city.”
Trina sniffled and wiped at her eyes again. “I felt so lost and alone when you left. I mean, I’m glad you got out and all, but I hated not having nobody to talk to and to watch my back. They moved us to a new location that same night. Fat Donnie said since you was gone I had to work overtime. They ran tricks through our room day and night to make up for all the bank you used to bring in.”
“I’m sorry I left you,” Jewelz said, patting Trina’s hand and leaning her head on her shoulder. “I just couldn’t take that shit no more, Trina. If I hadn’t got out then I woulda died up in that bitch. I swear to God, I woulda died.”
Trina nodded. “I feel you girl. I wasn’t mad at you. I just missed you, that’s all.” She frowned. “All them years those niggas had us locked up and selling pussy for them. We wasn’t nothing but babies. Them fuckin predators did us so damn filthy!”
Jewelz nodded as old feelings of rage and helplessness sparked up in her too. “I know. I hated them old nasty fuckers. Both of them.”
“They probably still got some young girls out there tricking for them right now,” Trina said sadly. “They probably never even stopped.”
“Uh-uh,” Jewelz shook her head quickly. “Fat Donnie ain’t trickin nobody! His greasy ass is dead so the only thing he’s trickin on is a pitchfork down in hell!”
“But what about Chimp Charlie, that ape-looking muthafucka?”
Jewelz frowned then shrugged. “He’s still around. For now.”
Trina nodded, then smiled and looked Jewelz up and down. “So what you doing now a’ days? You dressed real decent so I know you ain’t in the life no more.”
Jewelz shook her head. “Nah, I been left that kinda thing alone. I’m doing okay, though. I got me a little freelance job that I work here and there, part-time. I live right here in Manhattan now, though. You still in Brooklyn?”
Trina shook her head quickly. “Hell, nah. I got the fuck outta there. I moved up to the Bronx a while back with this dude who got me strung out. I had three kids back to back before my nigga got locked up. But my family stayed in Brooklyn, though. My pops kept the house there and he had custody of all my kids until he got shot in a jewelry store robbery down on Fulton Street a little bit ago.”
Jewelz’s pulse jumped and she froze.
“Your father got shot?” she yelped. “Are you serious?”
Trina nodded. “Yep, girl. In a fuckin jewelry store. Some wanna be crook-ass niggas busted up at his job and shot him in the face. It was terrible, honey. My mother almost lost her mind. Matter fact, I’m about to move back to Brooklyn so I can help her take care of my kids.”
“Trina….Oh my God,” Jewelz moaned, covering her mouth with her hand.
“I know,” Trina nodded. “My father had just went back to school tryna graduate and shit, and the college had set him up with a job at the jewelry store. The owners made him work late one night and they ended up getting robbed. Poppa Duke got killed, and since my mother’s still so tore up I’m tryna get my custody back so the state don’t put my kids in foster care.”
Jewelz slumped against the car in a daze. If she thought she had felt sick earlier she was really, really sick now. She had spent countless hours locked up in motel rooms with Trina and she had heard a million tales about the humor and goodness of her father, Papa Duke. Jewelz’s hands shook and she felt faint as she gave Trina her number and told her she had to run. The good-bye hug she gave her friend was extra-long because it was filled with so much guilt and unspeakable pain.
“If you or your kids ever need anything,” Jewelz said, sniffing back her shame-faced tears,” call me, okay? If there’s anything I can ever do for you or your family, I swear I will.”
Jewelz walked home with her head in a spin cycle. She kept hearing Trina’s words in her ears, and replaying the night of that Fulton Street hit over and over in her mind. And each time she came up with a scenario that was so slick and grimy it was damn near incomprehensible.
“It just can’t be,” she muttered to herself as she rushed into her apartment and headed straight for her iPad. Her fingers felt like ice as she typed a few search words into the Google bar and stared at what came up.
According to the online news reports Trina’s father had been a seventy-two year old college intern at the time of his murder. He had been studying to complete an associate’s degree in liberal arts so he could get a promotion at his job.
Jewelz’s eyes grew big as shit as she read. Her heart pounded heavily in her chest. It was all right there. Right there in black and white.
The Zip ’em up Crew had fucked up big time. They had gotten the whole thing wrong. The old man they had gunned down hadn’t done a damn thing except step into their line of fire holding the wrong damn thing in his hand. He had been minding his business and trying to make a better life for his family when the crew walked in the door and cut him all the way down.
Jewelz felt terrible. She had helped kill the father of one of her closest friends and she would never ever forgive herself for that!
For the very first time she regretted ever jumping on with the Zip ’em up Crew. They were supposed to be a professional hit team, but professionals didn’t take out the wrong fucking targets!
Jewelz’s first instinct had been to grab her phone so she could call and tell Slick, but then she chilled as she remembered how he had left her hanging out to dry in his grandmother’s building. Fuck him! That nigga could get whatever was coming to him because she wasn’t telling him shit!
But still, Jewelz just didn’t understand it. There were only two people in the jewelry joint when they busted in the door that night. Their assignment had been to hit the monkey carrying a red briefcase, and the old black man was the one who had it in his hand!
But, Jewelz asked herself, if Poppa Duke was the college intern who was studying for a biology test, then who the fuck was Honore?
CHAPTER 16
Show Up and Show Out
Wearing the shit outta a money-green designer romper and a pair of stylish pencil-heeled gold stilettos, Cucci Momma looked like a million fat ones. She was chillin out in Crooklyn, and she sat sipping champagne in her man Ice Pick Goody’s living room as she waited for him to come home from putting in work on the streets.
She crossed her sleek, perfumed legs and brushed her silky bangs back from her face as she lounged on a butter-soft sofa and gave herself a great big pat on the back.
This was the first time that Ice Pick had left her in his crib alone, and she had gotten down on her hands and knees and gone over the joint with a pair of white gloves, snooping and stealing and scheming her ass off as she ran her greedy eyeballs twelve inches deep inside every nook and cranny up in the bitch.
And now, after pocketing five G’s she’d found in a shoebox and about ten grams of coke that she’d discovered taped to the back of Ice Pick’s headboard, she was busy flipping through the pages of a trendy magazine while scheming up a plan that would knock her grimy cousin Honore right off her high horse.
As the leader of the Crushed Ice Clique, Honore had been the shot-caller for everything that went down with the all-female crew. But now it was time for Cucci to step up and take what she felt like was owed to her.
Her best shot at grabbing the top spot had been that sweet tip-off that she had given to the Feds so they could lock Honore up, but them bumbling-ass numbskulls had fucked around and blown the whole damn plan up.
Cucci had actually been tasting the sweetness of that hundred grand reward money all on her tongue. She had given them assholes very specific details and lined the whole scene up lovely as hell, and it wasn’t her goddamn fault that those idiots couldn’t close the damn deal!
Every time she thought about the way those federal suits had fucked up the mission she got pissed off all over again. She just couldn’t understand how Honore had escaped that hail of bullets with nothing more than a hunk of meat gouged outta the fat of her ass!
Everything in Cucci had wanted to see her favorite cousin get handcuffed and picked up off the street like a mangy dog. But since the first plan got busted she had been forced to come up with a back-up strategy. And that’s where her nigga Ice Pick Goody and his gully brother Handgun were gonna come in.
She was sipping pretty on her second glass of bubbly when she heard keys turning in the door lock. Seconds later, in walked Ice Pick and his fine-ass older brother.
Cucci sighed. Handgun Goody was fly as shit from head to toe, and he looked way longer and stronger than her man Ice Pick did. She was getting moist just looking at that beefy-necked nigga, but she only glanced at him for a few quick seconds because she didn’t wanna get caught out there staring at his crotch with her tongue hanging out.
“Yo, w’sup witchu, bae,” Ice Pick said as he walked over to the couch and gave her a stank and sloppy kiss that tasted like Newports and ’Ronas. “What the fuck you been doing while I was gone?”
“Nothing much,” Cucci batted her fake eyelashes and cooed in the sexy kitten voice that he loved. “I took a bath and cleaned up around here a little bit, then I just been waiting on you to get home, Daddy.”
“Well I’m home now. We need to holla at Handgun and put him up on that lil bizzness me and you was kicking back and forth before.”
“Hi, Handgun,” Cucci cooed shyly, batting her fake eyelashes. “Its good to see you again witcha fine lookin self.”
“Yo, bruh,” Ice Pick said glancing at her coldly, “my bitch here got some info on a lil mission I think you might be interested in.”
“A’ight, then,” Handgun said as he took off his Tom Ford jacket and his muscles bulged underneath. He pulled a .45 pistol outta his waistband and set it on the table across from the sofa that Cucci was sitting on.
“Have ya bitch go pour us a drink,” he directed Ice Pick, and then let’s get down to business.”
Cucci got up and hopped right to it, and when she came back with the liquor she sat down on the couch next to Ice Pick and crossed her legs sexily at the knee.
“Now tell my brother what you told me,” Ice Pick said, passing Goody a tall glass of peach Ciroc.
“Which part?” Cucci asked.
“The part about the diamond and that nigga they call Slick.”
Cucci shrugged. “Oh, Slick? He’s just some thieving nigga who came up outta the woodwork. My cousin Honore fucks with him. She said he’s a stick-up kid. She met him one night when we was clockin this jewelry store on Fulton Street. He kidnapped Honore and jacked her for a diamond. That shady bitch tried to play me like that shit was only worth pennies but I found out later that it was really worth five mill.”
Handgun glanced at his brother and then stared across the table at Cucci closely. “This dude Slick. I used to know a dopeman with that name from back in the day. Is he from Brooklyn?”
She nodded. “Yeah. He’s from right here. At least that’s what Honore told me. She said Slick is a project nigga but he got another crib somewhere in the city too.”
“You know where?”
“Nah, but I just found out that Honore is tryna rip for this other diamond that’s worth a lot of fucking Benjamins. Way more than five million this time.”
Forgetting his interest in Slick, Goody’s eyebrow shot up. “More than five million? Is that right?”
Cucci nodded. She had studied the Pink Lady diamond like she was taking a test and she knew everything there was to know about that bitch.
“The diamond is called the Pink Lady and it’ll bring in enough cash for all of us to get a cut and get the fuck outta the hustle game for life.”
Handgun frowned. “I don’t know too much about diamonds except the ones in my watch and my chain,” he said. “How much money are we talking about?”
“Somewhere in the forty to fifty million range,” Cucci said with dollar signs dancing in her eyes. “But first we gotta jack it.”
Handgun looked at his brother Ice Pick with raised interest, shocked at the price value.
“See, muh’fucka?” Ice Pick grinned at Handgun as he picked up his glass and took a swallow of his drank. “I told you this shit would be worth listening to, bro.”
“For forty to fitty mill I’ll sit here and listen to this bitch move her lips all night,” Handgun said enthusiastically as he turned back to Cucci. “But if we jack the diamond then how the fuck do we sell it once we get a hold of it? Rolling up on that kinda doe sounds real good, but at the same time that shit could get us locked down for forever and day.”
“So can all this other extra shit we doing right now!” Ice Pick barked. “But in this case the reward is even higher than the risk, yo.”
“Very true, little bruh,” Handgun nodded agreeing wholeheartedly.
“And that’s where I come in,” Cucci spoke up with authority so she could let these niggas know she had already formulated the master plan.
“I was in the diamond bizz way before Honore came along. Our old boss introduced me to a lotta peeps who work underground. I got the connections and the clientele who can handle a transaction for us overseas. All I need y’all to do is get the diamond for me and knock Honore off her square in the process.”
