Boss Divas (15 page)

I
miss Essence. The whole family does. The once loud and rowdy house is now a permanent wake. Everyone's faces stretch while their accusatory gazes ping-pong. I don't look any further than my reflection in the mirror. It's my fault that Essence is dead. The blame is on me. I knew that when Kookie and Pit Bull stepped to Essence in Fabdivas Hair Salon to do LeShelle's bidding that shit was going to go south and what did I do? I let it happen anyway.

Being the older sister, I always gave Essence grief, but I loved her. I hope she knew that. I love my family. We're a tight unit—something rare out here in these streets. I've seen too many sisters and brothers turn on one another to know that what we have, despite playful banter, is unique. My only hope is that this tragedy won't tear us apart.

LeShelle led everyone to believe that Lucifer was somehow behind Essence's murder, and I ranted and raved that I'd get that bitch back for that shit. But then my path crossed with the infamous Vice Lord in the middle of a cemetery. The chick snuck up on me while I was at Essence's grave. By the time I heard and thought to go for my weapon, Lucifer made it clear that such a move was suicide. I've been out here a long time and I've never come across anyone like Lucifer.

Powerful. Graceful. Even while I was standing there, hating her, I couldn't help but admire as well. She wears her danger and power well. It rolls off of her like heat waves. She's the last bitch that anyone wants to tangle with. At the same time she was dropping information bombs around me that completely rocked my world. She said unequivocally that she'd had nothing to do with Essence's death and I read nothing but truth in her dark eyes. She had no reason to lie. I hardly posed a threat to her that night. But LeShelle? Everybody knows that there isn't an honest bone in the bitch's body.

The dilemma now is whether to tell the rest of my family. My brothers, Kobe and Freddy, will wild the fuck out. But our allegiance to the Gangster Disciples and the Queen Gs will put the whole family in between a rock and a hard place. We'd all buck and that shit might get our asses slaughtered.

So do I tell or not tell?

Hell, I'd hoped that when I dropped dime to Lucifer that LeShelle and Python were about to get hitched, and even gave her the address, that the problem would've been handled. But bullets don't seem to have an effect on that bitch and her man.

I could take the bitch out myself—but how? I'm no fuckin' killer. Never have been. The most I've ever done is pull bullshit robberies and burglaries in my teen years. I've never been about that life. The other Queen Gs can have all that shit. Selling pussy or slinging dope ain't for me. I have bigger dreams.

Music is supposed to be my ticket out of the streets. All my life, people have told me that I am talented and that I'm going places. I'm supposed to be the lethal combination of Whitney Houston, Mary J. Blige, and Rihanna. But I get that mostly from niggas tryna gas me up and use me.

The bathroom doorknob rattles. “OCCUPIED!”

“Well, goddamn. Did you fall into the toilet? You've been in there for over twenty minutes,” Percy, one of the Studio B audio engineers and an all-around pain in the ass, pounds on the door.

“I'll be out in a minute,” I bark, wanting to take his head off, but holding back. Lately, that's about par for the course. I go from wanting to fight every damn body who crosses my path to flipping the script and curling up in bed and crying all day. I'm an emotional wreck because I want my sister back.

In the midst of that shit, I got my fiancé, Kalief, buzzing in my ear about how this is the perfect time for us to roll up in the studio and record tracks. He insists that all the famous recording artists produced their best shit when they were at their lowest. If that's true, my ass is going straight to the top of the chart.

Kalief and I go all the way back to high school. He was
that
nigga. He was fine and knew how to stack his paper, and we shared a love for music. We spent hours at his crib, listening to the oldie but goodies: Billie Holiday, Etta James, Sarah Vaughan, all the Motown greats, and then there was Aretha Franklin, Tina Turner—the list went on and on.

Those were some good times.

If I can't do nothing else in this world, I know that my ass can sing. When I was a kid, my grandma would always gather her girls together and I would put on my best dress and perform in the center of the living room. My brothers and sister would ham up, but in the end, I know they have all been rooting for me. Kalief has always held me down and believed in my talent. In the beginning, it was easy to love him. He was kind, warm, and funny. He could even hold a note or two if I got the right ratio of weed and liquor in him. After high school, Kalief proposed
and
pressed me to make him my manager. My singing was supposed to save him from the streets too.

I said yes to both.

Big mistake.

Six years later, Kalief and I are exactly where we started: still engaged and still hustling in this fucked-up industry. Only now he has a coke problem, a drinking problem, a gambling problem, a lying problem, and a cheating problem.

But I
still
fuckin' love him: hood girl problems.

I hang my head as another wave of tears threaten to fuck up my makeup. I gotta pull it together. This studio is costing me money and since I'm the only one locking down three jobs to pay the bills, I need to get out there and lay these damn tracks or . . . I toss in the towel. Black female singers who can blow are a dime a dozen. What the industry wants are white girls who
sound
black. And the few black girls who get through . . . they have to be the right shade to upgrade.

I'm a tall, chocolate sister with a nice frame. The minute I walk into a room full of executives, their eyes glaze over. In their view, I'm another ghetto black girl who belongs in front of her local church choir instead of selling out at Madison Square Garden.

No matter how many failures or setbacks, Kalief never loses faith. My big break is around the corner, he always says.
Hang in there, baby. Trust me, baby.
Lately, he wants this shit more than I do. For now, we're independent, throwing up music on iTunes and YouTube and praying that God still performs miracles. In other words, we're going nowhere fast.

The bathroom door rattles again. “Damn, girl. Pinch that shit off and call it a day. Damn!”

Heated, I swipe away my tears and jerk away from the mirror. Ready to give Percy a piece of my mind, I snatch open the door. “Nigga—”

Percy grabs my hand, jerks me out of the small bathroom, races inside, and slams the door in my face.

“Damn, Percy! I . . . uuuugh.” I twist up my face and cover my nose. Bubble-guts sounds seep through the door.

“Aaaaahhhh,” Percy moans.

“Damn, Percy. Your ass is nasty!” I turn and head back into the booth. I need to concentrate. All day I've been missing notes and sounding like I smoked a carton of cigarettes and downed a bottle of Jack Daniels before rolling up in there.

“You good, ma?” Joe, the senior audio engineer, asks.

Sighing, I put on a brave face and give him thumbs-up.

He shakes his head at my pathetic acting performance. We've worked together long enough for him to know what time it is.

Kalief leans forward in his producer chair to grin at me. “Shake all the bullshit off, baby. You can do this.” Big thumbs-up and a wink.

I smile, but it doesn't reach my eyes.

“All right. Let's take it where we left off.” He punches a button and the riffs of Billie Holiday's remix of “Gloomy Sunday
”
pour into my headphones. The slow, haunting melody is fucking with my heartstrings before I even open my mouth.

My voice croaks as an image of Essence floats to mind and Joe has to kill the music . . . again. “Sorry. I can't.” I drop my head into my hand as another wave of tears crests my eyes.

Joe sighs. “Maybe you're not up for this today,” he concludes, taking pity on me.

“Nah. Nah. She's all right,” Kalief interjects, bolting up from his producer chair, sniffing. “Aren't you, baby girl?”

I roll my eyes. I don't need a cheerleader right now. I want to go home.

Kalief rushes into the booth with me. “C'mon. C'mon, baby girl. You gotta pull it together. You can do this. I
know
that you can do this.”

The fact that he's talking a mile a minute tells me that he's coked up again. “I'm not feeling it, baby. I'm tired.”

“Tired? You don't get to be tired. Do you know how much this studio time is costing us right now?”

“Of course I know how much it's costing. I'm the one that's paying for it,” I remind him. “Hell, I'm the one that pays for
everything
.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” His jovial mood evaporates. “Are you tryna say that I'm not pulling my weight? Is that it? It's not enough that I wake up every day and bust my ass tryna make
you
a star? I make the moves, I make the connects—
I
make shit happen. That shit means nothing now?”

He's so close that he's spitting in my face. Instinctively, my hands ball at my sides while my back teeth grind together. I weigh whether I want us to have an Ike and Anna Mae moment in the middle of the studio. It's dangerously close to happening, but I'll be damned if I'll be Anna Mae. He realizes it, too, and takes a step back with his smile returning bigger and brighter than before.

“All right. You're right,” he says. “You're too tired to do this right now. So let's call it a day and you go on home and get some rest. We got that audition at Club Diesel coming up.” He sniffs and rubs at his red nose.

I'm shaking my head the whole time he's talking. “I don't know if I'm going to be up to that. I need time off.”

Kalief grabs my shoulders and shakes me one good time. “What the fuck? Do you know what I had to do to get this dude to come and hear you sing? He's up here from Atlanta and the nigga knows
all
the right people. He can put you
on.
I'm telling you.
This
is it. This is your time. If you don't do another muthafuckin' thing for me, you gotta to do this.”

I stare into his wide eyes and feel myself giving into his ass once again. Sighing, I remove his hands from my shoulders. “Fine, Kalief. I'll do it.”

“That's my girl.” After a quick peck on the cheek, he turns to leave.

I remove my headphones, but I have one last question for him. “So who is this big shot from Atlanta?”

Kalief stops before slipping out of the booth. “The new top dog in Memphis, Diesel Carver.”

R
uby Cove.

Rolling through Vice Lords' hostile territory, I'm still prepared for anything to go left. Acting on the Gibsons' tip, I don't know what to make of their suspicions of Tyneshia's girlfriends—especially since when we first interviewed them a few days ago, they swore that their daughter wasn't part of a gang and that she didn't have any enemies. Now, apparently, they've had a come-to-Jesus moment and forced themselves to face a few facts about their daughter. For example, that she had been having problems at school and had been hanging out with a set of friends that her mother referred to as “tramps
.
” None of Tyneshia's new friends bothered to call or show up to their daughter's funeral yesterday.

After a little digging, I discovered that whenever Tyneshia was arrested, the same three girls the Gibsons named were hauled off to jail with her: Adaryl Grant, Shamara “Li'l Bit” Moore and Qiana Barrett. Lieutenant Fowler and I visit Adaryl Grant's place first, but despite a car being in the driveway, no one bothers to open the door. Next stop: Shamara Moore. Here, her grandmother opens the door and says she has no idea where her grandchild is and then grills us for twenty minutes about what the child has done now.

“We just want to talk to her.”

The old lady doesn't buy it.

I hope we have more luck with Qiana Barrett.

When we park in front of the Barretts' address, I'm convinced that we must've tripped an invisible alarm wire because large crowds of people spill out of their houses to peep us out.

“This should be fun,” Lieutenant John Fowler says, removing his mirrored shades and shoving them in his front pocket.

“I don't know about you, but I live for excitement.” I sweep my gaze around our growing crowd. If they're trying to intimidate, they got me confused. I grew up in the streets and I can get gutter with the best of them.

“Then you're certainly in the right place.” He opens his car door and climbs out.

Laughing, I follow his lead, snapping open my holster for easy access.

When we reach the front door, I knock and then we wait.

The seconds tick by like hours while the number of bodies surrounding us increases.

Fowler leans over my shoulder. “I'm not too sure that we won't have to shoot our way out of here.”

“Chill,” I hiss, certain that did nothing to alleviate his anxiety.

The curtains on the side window shift, but when I look over, they drop back into place. However, the door doesn't open.

“C'mon,” I mutter, irritated. “Open the damn door.”

“Y'all pigs need to get the fuck on,” an angry male voice yells behind us. “Y'all are stinking up the whole damn street!”

Laughter spreads among the crowd. Fowler casts me a look that tells me he'd rather be playing Russian roulette in his momma's basement right now.

“I think you're mistaking us for your bottom lip.” I level him with my best Dirty Harry look.

The young gangster looks me up and down, trying to decide how much he wants to show off in front of his friends.

“Hey, ain't you the new captain of police?” a female asks. “Yeah. Yeah. I seen you all over the news.”

That got everyone's attention. They look me over again and then back the hell up.

Fowler chuckles. “Damn. I need to carry you around in my back pocket. Maybe I'll finally get some respect.”

A female voice shouts, “Who is it?”

“Police! We'd like to ask a few questions.”

Silence. And the door remains closed.

“If you like, I can call in for a warrant.”

A series of locks disengages. I pass another look to Fowler. The door creeps open enough and a young lady with two large flesh-colored bandages on her face appears.

“Yeah. What do you want?” she demands.

“Hello. I'm Captain Hydeya Hawkins.” I flash my badge. “And this is Lieutenant Fowler. We need to talk to Qiana Barrett. Is that you?”

“You know I am,” she sasses back.

She's right. I do. I have a copy of her last mug shot in my file. “May we come in?”

The girl looks to the crowd a few feet away. Every single one of them is trying to ear hustle in on our conversation. “What do y'all want?”

“We want to ask you a few questions about your friend Tyneshia Gibson. In case you've been under a rock, her body was discovered off Peebles Road in south Memphis. Mind if we come in?”

She hesitates and I can tell that she wants to tell our ass to go to hell, but I'm sure she knows that's not a smart idea. “Two minutes,” she says and then steps back from the door so we can enter.

Lieutenant Fowler and I exchange here-we-go looks before entering. Out of habit, I look around, taking in as much as I can. The house isn't a pigsty, but it isn't going to win any housekeeping awards either. The dining room and living room are filled with oversized and mismatched furniture.

“All right. What do you want?” she asks, settling her hands on her hips.

“Don't you want to know the details of your friend's death?”

“I already know. It's been all over the news.” Qiana switches her weight from one leg to the other.

“And you don't know anything other than what's been reported?”

“Should I?”

I shrug and play dumb, too. “You tell me.”

We engage in a staring contest.

“Why didn't you attend Tyneshia's funeral yesterday?”

She shrugs. “I didn't want to see her like that.”

“There wasn't much to see,” Fowlers says. “The animals did quite a number on her body.” He heads down the hallway.

“Hey! Where are you going?”

“Are you here alone?” he asks while continuing his walk-through.

“I don't see how that's any of your business.” She chases after him, looking like an angry tornado.

Fowler opens one door, peeks inside, and then moves to another.

“Hey, muthafuckas, you can't do that! I know my rights!”

“What's the problem?” I ask, pretending to be mystified by her indignation.

“Y'all pig-muthafuckas ain't got no warrant. Y'all can't just barge through my house like you're paying the fuckin' bills up in this bitch.”

Yeah. I have no problem picturing this Tasmanian devil slicing one chick and blowing a hole in another's skull. Her face is purple with rage. However, Fowler continues searching.

“Ms. Barrett, you did invite us in—and I could've sworn that I heard you say that we could search the house. Didn't you, Lieutenant Fowler?”

“That's what I heard.”

“Nah. Y'all dirty fuckers got to get out of my house!”

“We'll leave as soon as you answer our questions,” I tell her, while I wait for Fowler to find something 'cause I'm getting one of my vibes about this chick.

“What damn questions? What the fuck you wanna know?”

“For starters,” Fowler says after checking the last door, “what took you so long to answer the door? We were out there what—five minutes?”

“At least,” I agree.

“Shit. I don't know you muthafuckas. I don't answer the door for any damn body. Shit. This ain't the damn suburbs.”

“The place is clear,” Fowler says.

“Great. Now that y'all are finished illegally searching my shit—y'all can get the fuck out.”

We ignore her. “Did you know Yolanda Terry?”

“Who?”

“The pregnant woman that was found with Tyneshia—only she was missing a baby,” I add. “What do you know about that?”

“Nothing,” she says. “Why in the hell would I?”

Bullshit.
“Now why don't I believe that?”

“I don't give a fuck what you believe.”

Calmly, I meet the girl's eyes. “That would be a mistake. You don't want to be on my shit list. I'll make your life a living hell just for shits and giggles.”

Qiana clamps her mouth shut and glares at me.

“You don't have to like me, but you will answer my questions—either here or down at the station. Your choice.”

“Whatever. I still don't know anything.”

Fowler jumps back into the mix. “When was the last time you saw Tyneshia?”

She shrugs. “Don't remember.”

I step forward. “Days? Weeks? Months?”

“Months,” I suppose.”

“And you never wondered where she was?”

“No. I'm not nosey like that. If people want me to know their business they'll tell me. If not . . .” She shrugs.

“So you have no idea why a Vice Lord Flower and a Gangster Disciple Queen G were just hanging out, huh?”

“Not a clue. Maybe they were secret lovers or something,” she suggests.

“Humph. We were told that you, Adaryl, Shamara, and Tyneshia were as thick as thieves.”

“Who told you that?”

“We're the ones asking the questions, Ms. Barrett. And I have to tell you that I find your behavior right now highly irregular—suspicious even. One of your best friends was murdered and you're not even mildly curious to what had happened to her.”

“She wasn't my best friend.”

“Did you two fall out or something?”

The girl wants to fire off another sharp reply when she clearly realizes that she needs to watch her mouth. “No. I'm just saying we weren't best friends. We just hung out every now and then. That's all.”

“Hung out every now and again, huh? Not enough times for you to give a damn about what happened to her?”

Exasperated, Qiana tosses up her hands. “Look. What do you want from me?”

“The truth might be nice,” I say.

“At the very least, refreshing,” Fowler agrees.

“I told you the truth. Now, y'all can stand here and harass me or drag my ass down to the station. I don't give a fuck. My statement is going to stay the same. I don't know shit, I didn't hear shit, and I certainly didn't see shit.”

“What about the baby?”

Qiana's face drains of color. “What baby?”

“The baby James and Theresa Gibson say that you've been keeping here.”

She forces out a hard laugh. “Do you see a baby around here?”

Fowler and I laugh.

“Whatever. Muthafuckas around here—”

The door bolts open and a tall brick building of a man storms in and growls menacingly at us, “What the fuck is going on in here?”

“And you are?” I ask.

“I ain't gotta tell you shit! You're standing in my house. Where y'all's warrant?”

“We don't have a warrant, we just—”

“Then y'all need to bounce! Qiana is underage anyhow. You guys aren't supposed to be up in here asking her about shit without parental permission.” He opens the door. “Have a nice a day.”

“We'll be back,” Fowler says, removing his shades from his shirt pocket and slipping them over his eyes.

Qiana's champion smiles. “Make sure that you bring that warrant when you do.”

I offer them my business card. “If you hear or think of anything that might help solve your friend's murder, give us a call.”

Qiana takes the card, holds it up, and then rips it in two. “Leave.”

“Sure thing.” I swing my gaze between Qiana and her angry giant one last time before making my exit.

The door slams behind me.

“That went well,” Fowler says as we march back to our patrol car.

“Swimmingly.” I glance over at the driveway and then whip out my notepad.

“What?”

“Two SUVs. We should get the VIN numbers and license plates.Who knows? Maybe we'll get lucky.”