Diamonds and Pearl (18 page)

“Nah, it ain't that serious. That's just a strange name for a guy to have.”

“So I've been hearing all my life. See, when I was in my mama's stomach, the doctors told her that I would be a girl, so she decided to name me Diamonds, after my granny. Imagine her surprise when the little girl she had been preparing for all those months came out with a dick.” He chuckled. “She was already committed to the name, so she never changed it.”

“Now that's an interesting story.”

“My life is full of interesting stories. I'd love to tell you a few of them, if you'd but permit me the time.”

Just then the bartender came back over and placed two glasses in front of them: one was a Hennessy on the rocks, and the other was a rum and Coke. Diamonds tossed a hundred-dollar bill on the table and told the bartender to keep the change.

“What made you order me rum instead of Hennessy too?” Pearl asked, sipping the rum and Coke.

“Because I didn't want you mixing liquors. I smelled a tinge of rum on your breath when we were first talking, so I took a stab in the dark.” Diamonds winked.

Pearl covered her mouth in embarrassment, thinking her breath stunk.

“Easy, love.” He gently pulled her hand away. “Your breath is fine. My nose is just a little more sensitive than most.”

“You part bloodhound or something?”

Diamonds laughed. “No, I'm one hundred percent wolf,
amoure
.”

“What is that, French?” Pearl asked.

“Close—Creole. Where I come from, we speak just as much of it as we do English,” he told her.

“And where is that?”

“Da Boot, but you might know it as New Orleans. I grew up in a small parish just outside the city.”

“So what brings you to New York?” she asked.

“Same thing that brings everybody else this way. I'm looking for the pot of gold at the end of that concrete rainbow.”

“Good luck with that. New York can be a hard place to survive, especially for out-of-towners,” Pearl told him.

“So I keep hearing, but I've been getting along famously during my stay here. From what I can see, New York is just right for a sporting young man like me. I might even take up permanent residence so I can see more of you, Ms. Pearl … lots more.”

“Don't get your hopes up. This is just a drink—not a date,” Pearl said, checking him.

“But of course. Besides, when I take you on an official date, it won't be to no bar,” Diamonds said confidently.

Pearl raised an eyebrow. “Okay, Mr. Presumptuous. Hypothetically speaking, if we did go on an official date, where would you take me?”

Diamonds pulled her stool closer so that they were eye to eye. “Anywhere your heart desired.”

Pearl gazed into his inky-black pools and found her own reflection staring back. His gaze was almost hypnotic, and she found that she could look nowhere but at the beautiful creature sitting across from her. They say that the eyes are the windows to the soul, but Diamonds's were looking glasses, and Pearl was ready to play Alice and tumble as far down the rabbit hole as he was willing to pull her. Her mouth went dry to the point where she could feel her tongue thickening, and Diamonds's thick lips were the only things that could quench the all-consuming thirst that had just overcome her. She leaned in to sip from the well of Diamonds, but before she could take a sip, their connection was broken.

“Should've known all I had to do was look up a random skirt to find you.” A woman slithered up beside him. She was wearing a tight black-and-white-striped dress that frayed just above her knees. On her head she wore a black wig that had white highlights running through it. She ran her zebra-print acrylic nails down the back of Diamonds's neck while giving Pearl a challenging look. She was marking her territory.

“Quit cock-blocking, Vita.” A taller, slightly lighter-skinned version of Diamonds joined them. He was wearing baggy jeans and crisp Jordans, and at least five gold chains lay on the chest of his white T-shirt. Tied snugly around his neck was a black bandanna.

“You tend to your dick and I'll tend to
mine,
Goldie!” Vita hissed and then turned to Pearl to give her a dismissive look.

“You need to tuck them fangs and remember your place,” Diamonds told her. His voice remained even, but no one missed the threat in his words.

“And you need to tuck that wayward dick of yours and remember what we're here to do,” Vita spat. She made sure to shoot Pearl one last dirty look before storming off through the crowd.

“I'll go see about her,” Goldie offered, and went after the zebra.

“Sorry, didn't mean to cause any problems between you and your lady.” Pearl eased her stool back to put some distance between her and Diamonds.

Diamonds glanced back in the direction Vita had gone in and shrugged. “I got no more claim on Vita than a man hustling on the same corner every day. He's on that corner so often that he knows it better than anyone else, but he can't produce a deed to prove ownership.”

“Is that a nice way of saying you're just fuck buddies?” Pearl accused. “Look, I'm digging you and all that, but I don't do side-bitch drama.”

“Call it what you need to, Pearl. Me and Vita got history, but nobody got claim to this heart. I'm a free agent who does what he wants, and what I want is to get to know you.”

An older man wearing a sour scowl on his face slid up behind Diamonds, shadowed by a brute sporting a thick beard and a bald head. The brute eyeballed Pearl like he was praying rape was legal, while the older man whispered something into Diamonds's ear. Whatever he said seemed to darken Diamonds's mood.

“Pearl, as much as I would like to spend the rest of this night and the next convincing you that I'm a genuine soul, I got something I need to attend to. Before I go, let me leave you with this: I've never been good at games, so I don't play them. You can either come out with me and see for yourself how sincere I am about what I say, or you can write me off and I'll grow to be that old man who tells his grandkids stories of the one who got away.”

“I ain't no home-wrecker,” Pearl said seriously. Diamonds was talking a good game, but hers had to be better.

“And I ain't no fraud,” he shot back.

The older man cleared his throat, reminding Diamonds that they had something to do.

“Duty calls,” he continued, “but you go on and wrap your brain around what I said, and we'll take this conversation up at another time.”

“So is this the part where you ask me for my phone number?” Pearl asked, thinking she was two steps ahead of him.

Diamonds cracked a sly smile. “Pretty lady, there's a difference between being pressed and being sincere. I fall into the latter category. If it's meant to be, it'll be, and our paths will cross again soon,” he capped, and walked off.

Pearl stood there for a few minutes, trying to figure out exactly what had just happened. She had always considered herself a smart girl and able to run game with the best of them, but Diamonds had successfully screwed her head on backward. As she watched him strut cockily away, she couldn't decide if she wanted to run up on him and say all the things she would've had he not turned the tables, or take him into the bathroom and fuck him. He was cocky and borderline arrogant, but there was also a magnetic quality about him that drew her like a bee to honey. Had it not been for the bitter bitch Vita, there was no telling what would've gone down between them. He thought he was saying something slick when he spat his little game and pimped off with his boys, but what Diamonds didn't know about Pearl was that she always had the last word.

 

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“That's a dangerous game you're playing,” Hank told Diamonds as they moved through the club.

“What you mean?” Diamonds asked.

“Poking a hornet's nest with a stick. You know you ain't right for pressing up on that broad while Vita's in eyeball's distance.”

Diamonds waved him off. “I'm free to do me, and Vita's free to do her. I'm not her man and she ain't none of my girl.”

“Then maybe you should stop making her feel like she is,” Hank said slyly.

Diamonds stopped and turned to face Hank. “Since when did who I'm fucking become your business?”

“Since who you're fucking started affecting
our
business,” Hank shot back. “You been dicking that girl down since she was old enough to take a grown cock, so don't act like you don't see that same starry look in her eyes that everyone else does. The difference is, we also see the evil looks: that glint in her eyes that says that every time she catches you dirty, she inches just a wee bit closer to getting up the courage to kill you. Diamonds, you know I know how the game goes, but that's a young girl with a fragile heart. The last time she went off the rails over you fucking that girl in Dallas, her head was so scrambled that she almost blew the whole damn job!”

Diamonds cringed, thinking back on the incident. Vita had caught him fucking some broad he'd met in the club, and it ended up being a bad situation. She didn't say anything when she initially found out. She waited on it, and during a siege they were laying to a trap house in Dallas, she decided to take her revenge and try to blow Diamonds's head off in the middle of a job. Buda managed to wrestle the gun from her hand before she killed Diamonds, but her bullshit allowed the dudes they were moving against a chance to regroup, and they ran Diamonds and his crew off. That was one of only three jobs that had gone bad. It was Vita who blew it, but Diamonds who had pushed her to it. “I'll talk to her. Everything gonna be cool,” he promised.

“You'd better. The next time, she may slit your throat in your sleep instead of trying to shoot you while we're on a job. If you know like I know, you'll either stop parading your bullshit in front of Vita or let her go,” Hank warned.

Diamonds understood Hank's point of view, and the old-timer was right, but it was Diamonds's ego that wouldn't allow him to completely cut Vita loose. He had started quietly sleeping with Vita since right before she'd graduated high school, and by the time she'd blossomed into womanhood, he had molded her in his image. He was smart about it, never officially committing to her but constantly dangling the possibility. So long as she had hope, she would always be loyal.

“What's up with you and brown skin anyhow?” Hank nodded in the direction they'd just come from.

Diamonds looked over his shoulder at Pearl, who was just entering the VIP with her friend. He caught her looking back at him. “Her.” He smiled. “I don't know, but I got a serious hankering to find out. She feels special.”

Hank shook his head. “Man, you got a serious weakness for pretty bitches. It seems like you fall in love with a different one in every city we mob through.”

“Those other times weren't love, but a need to get my dick wet. This is a different kind of situation,” Diamonds told him. “I ain't gonna front like I wouldn't dick her down if I had the chance, but I wouldn't mind getting to know her either. She feels right.”

“You got all that from spending a few minutes with the broad?” Hank didn't believe it.

“Sometimes that's all it takes. You ain't never heard of love at first sight?” Diamonds questioned.

“Of course I have. How do you think I met my ex-wife?” Hank questioned. “I knew I loved her from the first time we said hello, which is why it hurt all that much more when I found out she was a scandalous bitch. I spent a whole week wallowing in my own piss and self-pity before I was able to crawl out of that funk, and trust me when I say, you don't want no part of that kind of heartache.”

“So you mean because of one bad experience, you've closed your heart to the possibility of love?” Diamonds asked.

“That's exactly what I mean,” Hank confirmed. “In this life we live, the only things we can afford to love are this paper and this power. Anybody who tries to stretch his heart beyond that is inviting disaster.”

“With that kind of attitude, you'll likely never know the endless possibilities of true love. What good is having the finer things if you don't have anyone to share them with? I know most of these broads ain't got nothing but larceny and ambition in their hearts, but that don't mean there aren't some good ones out there. Who's to say Pearl might not be the one for me?”

“Vita,” Hank replied. “Regardless of what you think you might be feeling toward this young chippie, Vita ain't gonna never sit idle and watch you give some random chick what she's been working to earn for all these years, especially some bitch who looks young enough for you to get locked up over.”

“Hank, you act like I'm a long time removed from high school just because I didn't graduate. I figure I probably got her by a few years, but how young can she be if she's up in a gangster bar, hanging out with gangsters? Big homie, I ain't saying I'm trying to jump her bones fresh out the gate, but that's somebody I think I need to know. When you get a minute, I want you to find out all you can about Ms. Pearl. Now, on to more pressing business. You have any luck getting us that meeting with the owner of this hole-in-the-wall?”

“I stepped to the manager twice, and he keeps saying he ain't in yet. Quiet as kept, me and Goldie spotted his car when we cased the block. I think they playing games.”

“I might hide too if I knew a king cobra had just slithered into my place,” Diamonds said. “We new faces, so I expected him to be suspicious, which is why I called TJ.”

Hank frowned. “What you call him down here for? His vote don't count in this collective.”

“No, it doesn't, at least until I say otherwise. TJ is local and familiar with the natives, so they might be less suspicious of him. Either way, this conversation is going to happen tonight.”