Harlem Girl Lost (20 page)

Silver quickly pleaded with him. “Mister, please, I can do it—I can do it.” She tried to placate him and give him what he wanted. “Oh, please, mister, help … don't hurt me!”

He eyed her suspiciously, arms folded, and smugly said, “I don't believe you. You're nothing but a whore like the rest of them. And since you are a whore, I'm going to treat you like one and fuck you in the ass.”

Fear deflated her as she once again tried the door. He yanked her back. One hand wrapped tightly around her neck, instantly cutting off her air, while the other ripped off her blouse and pants. He literally began chewing on her neck, breasts, and nipples. Nauseous fear overwhelmed her as she felt his teeth gnaw painfully into her flesh. Unable to match his brute-like strength, and no longer able to breathe, she grew light-headed. Just as she was about to pass out, she saw a flash
of movement behind the Reverend, and then his head hit the roof of the car as he was snatched out like a rag doll. Relief instantly flooded through her as air once again filled her lungs.

Gasping for air, she leaped from the vehicle and saw her molester being brutally beaten by a single individual. Silver wasn't taking any chances to wait for the outcome. Grabbing her clothes, she covered her exposed, bleeding breasts, and ran for dear life, tripping and falling as she tried to get away. It was then she heard the Reverend beg for mercy.

“Chance! Please, Chance, don't kill me! Don't do it, man!”

His words reverberated through her like a bombshell. She turned in time to witness the orange and white flash of gunfire that ended the struggle. Scared and confused, Silver walked like a sleepwalker toward the still standing man, unsure what to expect. “Chance?”

He slowly turned around and looked toward her, and for the first time in over five years, she gazed into Chance's beautiful eyes again. Without a word, she moved close and placed her head against his chest, and they cradled each other tightly.

THE REUNION

S
ilver stared at Chance as he navigated his Jeep under a highway overpass and into traffic. She spoke first. “It was you I saw that day in the car.”

Chance continued driving, not looking at or answering her.

“That was you, right?” He stopped for a light in front of the McDonald s on 125th and Old Broadway and looked at her.

“Are you hungry?”

“A little. How did you know?”

He gave her a smile. “Either that or we have a growling lion in here with us.”

He pulled into the drive-through, where they ordered food, opting to eat in the parking lot and talk. Chance smiled as he watched her wolf down her Big Mac, supersized fries, and a soft drink. Catching his eye, she realized just how she must've looked, and she apologized with her mouth full. Sarcastically, Chance put his hand to his ears.

“Excuse me. I don't understand you with a mouth full of food.”

Silver chuckled, remembering that this was exactly how they had met in the cafeteria all those years earlier.

“Um, Silver … I ask but one thing, and that is for you to look at me when I am talking to you.” The comment made them both laugh.

After they ate, Silver told Chance everything that had happened over the years since they had last seen each other. Time flew by, and they didn't notice the sun was starting to rise. They seemed to realize it at the same time, and both of them looked toward the radiant amber and orange hues of dawn that engulfed the horizon. Enthralled, she turned to look into Chance's eyes, and slowly edged closer to him.

A harsh knocking on the car window startled her. It came from the manager of the McDonald's.

“Excuse me, we have a two-hour parking limit,” he said, pointing to his watch.

“Okay, man,” Chance said, and turned on the ignition. “Damn, we was talking for nearly five hours.”

She smiled, but an awkward, uncomfortable silence followed.

“Silver, I don't know how you feel about this, but you can stay with me if you want.”

Silver looked at Chance. “I don't know. You look like you might get in trouble with your girlfriends if I stay with you.”

Chance smiled at the comment but assured her that he had no girlfriend. “It's just one thing …”

She smiled. “What, I have to put out?”

“No, Silver,” he said seriously. “I would never do nothing like that to you.” He looked down. “I don't have much at my place, you know. It's just me.”

“Is that all?”

He nodded. “That's it.”

Chance lived a
good distance away from where he'd set up shop in Harlem. He owned a one bedroom co-op in the Fordham section of the Bronx. His mentor, A.O., had hipped him to the game of not shittin’ where you eat, and investing your money in real estate. So Chance had paid a lady from the neighborhood $5,000 to purchase the place for him when he was sixteen years old. He slipped the doorman a hundred dollars a month to keep his mouth shut and to give him a heads-up on any questioning outsiders. This would be the first time he'd ever had a guest in his apartment.

Chance actually owned two brownstones in Harlem that were worth almost fifty times the amount he'd paid A.O. for them. A.O. owned so much property in Harlem that he'd simply sold the two properties to Chance for the same amount that he had paid for them thirty years earlier.

Chance had listened to everything A.O. had told him over the years, and it all proved to be invaluable. Over his lifetime, A.O. had recruited and trained a number of great hustlers and killers into the underworld. Most of them were mere boys, usually in their early teens when he recruited them. Two of them had been Hollis and Chance. He had taken them under his wing and saved them from the streets or jail. He had taken a special interest in Chance because he had known his mother and father over good and bad years. He had seen how Chance, after his mother started spazzing on alcohol, had tried to hold it together for himself and his little sister. On the other hand, he had first seen Hollis when two local boys teased and harassed him because he was homeless, with dirt caked all over
his skin. Hollis’ hair had been so coarse and dirty that parasites lived in it, causing blistered patches on his head. The two boys relentlessly harassed Hollis until one day one of the boys made the mistake of pulling a knife on him. Hollis pulled out a knife of his own, only bigger, and cut one of them with it. From then on, nobody bothered the homeless boy.

Both boys were loyal to A.O. until he died a natural death, which was a major feat being who he was and the things he'd been through. A.O. was a throwback gangster who was part of Bumpy Johnson's era. When he was ten years old, he and his older brother had been employed by Bumpy as spotters or point boys, someone who keeps an eye out for police or other gangsters plotting a hit or something. Bumpy had the bootleg whiskey game down to a science during Prohibition. When alcohol became legal again, he just switched to the numbers racket, which he co-owned throughout Harlem with a powerful member of the Mafia. Though the brothers never mentioned it, they were also the silent and most powerful partners of Nicky Barnes. A.O. would smile every time he heard someone mention that Nicky Barnes was the kingpin of Harlem.

While Nicky had met his demise in the game, A.O. remained untouched simply because he was untouchable, because he was smart. He stayed clean no matter what. Sure, the FBI knew his name, but they didn't know his face. No one even knew what the initials A.O. stood for, nor would he tell them. It was as if he didn't exist, because he didn't have a birth document or social security number. A.O. was less than five feet three inches tall and weighed about 125 pounds, but he was a person that gangsters throughout Harlem mortally feared— not because of what he could do to them, but what he would
do to others, and that's what gave him the advantage. A.O. was the type of man who had a prerequisite before you worked for him or did business with him—he demanded the names and addresses of your entire family, including any who lived down south and even the school your kids went to. See, if you fucked over A.O., he would murder your entire family and let you live, which was worse than a thousand deaths. He mastered the art of psychological warfare and used it to his advantage.

The reason A.O. had remained on top all those years was because no one else had the heart or will that it took to do what he was willing to do. He learned this art from an old associate of his from Sicily, who proved to be an invaluable tool to offset traitors and snitches. It was said that A.O. was the only Negro ever allowed to sit in with all of the five families of New York. A.O. did it all, saw it all, and outlived them all.

A.O. supplied the entire heroin trade in black and Spanish Harlem, and distributed to major players in certain areas of the Bronx and Brooklyn. The way the operation worked was that they had designated pickup and dropoff points for drugs and money. The dropoff for the money would always be the same, inside a rented apartment in a tenement building that only he had a key to. But the pickup point would be a different place every time. At the drop-off apartment, a dealer would leave the money and take the envelope with the location of the shipment sealed inside. That was it—nice, safe, and clean. Which is why A.O. survived so long in that business, because he never made contact with the other party.

He trusted Chance enough to make him the pickup and dropoff man, trusting him with millions of dollars. When A.O. died, Chance thought that the life and operation that he had
come to know so well would end, but it didn't, and Chance assumed sole responsibility. Chance had money, but you would never know it by the way he lived so modestly. He never propagandized his wealth. That was just one of the many pieces of advice A.O. passed down to Chance. It wasn't that A.O. didn't trust Hollis; it was that Hollis didn't have that measure of intelligence that Chance had, which was imperative in this trade. However, A.O. was impressed with Hollis’ primary skill— murder. He told Chance once that never in his sixty years in the business had he seen a person with Hollis’ ruthless passion for death and carnage. He was a born killer, and that was why A.O. had allowed him to form a contract-killing ring that Hollis had run since the tender age of sixteen.

Inside his building
, Chance stood at his door with Silver, about to enter his apartment. He took a deep breath and opened the door. “Well, this is it.”

Silver walked in, looked around the large, unfurnished apartment, and smiled. “How long did you say you've been living here?”

He shrugged. “About three years.”

The living room was as empty as the day he'd moved in, with not so much a chair or table.

“Oh, I didn't have a chance to furnish the place yet.” He smiled sheepishly. “I just ain't have a need to. The bedroom is hooked up, though.”

He showed her to the bedroom, which was nearly as big as the living room. It contained a bed, a table with a lamp on it, and a dresser topped with a dusty nineteen-inch color television
set that looked like it hadn't been used in years. The room was also filled with books, stacks and stacks of them. On the walls Silver saw dozens of drawn images that looked like her. She turned to Chance. “Chance, is that … ?” He looked at the drawings and nodded. “Yeah.” Silver was dumbfounded that Chance still felt the same way about her as she did about him, even after all those years.

“Silver, I never forgot you. I thought about you every single day.”

She looked up at him. “I thought about you every day, too, Chance. I prayed that this day would come.” They gazed into each other's eyes and kissed as if they would never see each other again.

Settled in Chance's apartment
, Silver felt safe and secure for the first time in months. Chance was a real gentleman, too, and had the entire apartment remodeled. In addition to living room and bedroom sets, he ordered cable, a VCR, and two sixty-inch television sets to keep Silver from being bored. Silver said he shouldn't have done it, but he just said he had ordered them before she arrived. The once empty kitchen and refrigerator were now filled to the max. Chance took care of his business by day and came home by night. Silver would surprise him with a home-cooked meal, and then they would spend the entire night talking. Chance, whose favorite pastime was reading famous American writers such as Baldwin, Faulkner, and Angelou, kept Silver up late at night reading to her. Silver was mesmerized and enthralled by his powerful readings and vast knowledge of subjects. Though Silver's grades had been in the
ninetieth percentile in the city, she knew that she was not even close to Chance's league. He had extensive knowledge in astronomical science, philosophy, literature, world history, and economics. She was baffled, but then, she always had been when it came to Chance.

Silver and Missy hooked back up, and Silver updated her friend on the new developments. When Missy finally saw Chance face-to-face again, she couldn't believe her eyes. She joked that Silver had better give his fine ass some pussy before she let him get away, but as usual, Silver told her to mind her business. Silver had already thought this through in her mind, and didn't want to lose Chance ever again. With Missy's freak ass pushing her every day to do it, it became hard for her to resist.