Lust (12 page)

My old friend with the burnt up face took a real deep breath and stared me straight in the eye. “I think it was Gino’s boy,” she said quietly. “That greasy asshole who was always hungry and always scheming. I think it was Slick Sallie.”

$$$$$

There was a time when I would have brushed off anything Quese said about Slick Sallie as pure bullshit, but after the ruthless shit he had just pulled with my money I didn’t put anything past him anymore.

“I tried to tell you them Italians was shiesty,” DarQuese insisted, “and you ran me some mess about them just being good businessmen and all that. But I told you I peeped Sallie from the gate. That cracker stayed up on the track creeping chicks out. He didn’t want nothing to do with the Latino hoes or the Asian prostitutes. He went strictly after the black sistahs, and every last one of them came back with a wild story about some sick, twisted drama he had put them through.”

DarQuese smirked and shook her head. “I never trusted his ass. He was all the time begging to lick my pussy. The way he stayed strapped up and brandishing his tool is what made me start watching his ass. You shoulda been watching him too.”

“Sallie was Gino’s friend, not mine. I didn’t have no reason to watch him.”

“Well them mafia fuckers didn’t have no reason to do me and Pit the way they did us neither, Juicy! They came after us hard. They tore up Pit’s shop and destroyed my salon too. Yeah, I ended up losing every damn thing I had worked for, but Pit got it worse ’cause they tracked him down like a dog. And when they sniffed him out they tortured him. They smiley-faced him and cut off his hand for some reason, and then those animals hung him up to bleed to death in his own shower so his mother could find his body.”

I shuddered and crossed my arms. “They cut off his hand because whoever shot me also stole my wedding ring while I was laying there bleeding on the floor. At least that’s what Renata told me.”

“Well it wasn’t Pit because he never got anywhere near downstairs where y’all were at! I swear I wanted to come tell you all this while you was in the hospital, Juicy, but I was running for my life. I got outta town as fast as I could too. Pit was dead, and the Italians had caught two of his boys out there and served them too. It was just a matter of time before they came looking to X my ass out, so I came back home. I figured it was better to take my chances here in Brooklyn with my crazy ex-boyfriend than to sit around like a duck waiting for the mob to make me disappear. It was really a no-brainer.”

I shook my head. “None of it makes sense,” I said, but in the back of my mind I was thinking how out of everybody me and Gino knew, Slick Sallie had known where our money was stashed, so he had the biggest reason to want the two of us dead. Hell, he’d had over half a million dollars worth of reasons to get rid of our asses.

I didn’t wanna believe what Quese was telling me. I swear to God, I didn’t. I’d spent a lot of time hating her and Pit. When I found out that the Italians had fucked Pit up I was happy that the animal who had killed Gino and caused me so much grief was dead. But if Quese was telling the truth and Pit wasn’t the one who had fired that gun, where did that leave me? Who the hell was I supposed to hate now? Sallie?

“Juicy, just think about it,” DarQuese continued to plead her case. “Why would I wanna set you up anyway? For what? I got crazy love for you! Do you really think I could hurt you or your
baby
, Juicy? I was gonna be lil man’s
godmother!
”

Egypt shot me a curious glance when DarQuese mentioned my baby and I started crying. She reached out and put her arm around me and whispered that it was okay. I hadn’t gotten around to telling her about that part of my life yet and if we hadn’t ran into DarQuese, I probably wouldn’t have ever told her.

“Why, Juicy? Why?” DarQuese asked again, demanding that I respond. “Why would I do something like that to you?”

“I don’t know fuckin’
why!
” I spit as a river of tears fell from my eyes. “All I know is somebody in that church
shot
me! They shot me
and
Gino. My man and my baby
died,
DarQuese! They died and now I don’t have nobody. That’s all I fuckin’ know!”

CHAPTER 14

Less than an hour after being escorted inside Harlem’s 28th Precinct, Trey Jackson walked back out the front door on his own accord.

“I know what kind of cat you are,” said the burly lead detective who was investigating the death of J-Ugly, the young drug dealer who had been thrown off the roof of a well-known crack den. “You got a lotta passion for the kids on these streets, Trey, but remember son, restraint beats overkill seven days of every week. I’m not saying I want you to stop all that good lookin’ out you be doing out on these streets, I just need you to ease up sometimes and let shit play out through the proper channels, okay?”

Trey stared at the older man whose salt-and-pepper hair he had neatly trimmed only a few days earlier. Not only was Detective Bobby Peterson one of Trey’s regular customers, he was also the cop who had arrested Trey after he pumped cold lead into two drug dealers in a dark, deserted parking lot what seemed like a lifetime ago.

“A’ight, Mr. P,” Trey said, dapping his friend and mentor out. The proper channels of conducting police business had very little to do with handing out street justice, and both of them knew that if the cops didn’t handle shit on their side of the law, then Trey and his men of the Talented Ten would take care of business in their lane.

Trey stood on the precinct steps shooting the shit with the detective while he waited for his manz Rain to pick him up. He grinned when a shiny new ride pulled in at the curb and a New York City probation officer got out.

“What it do, Dutchy?” he said, as he gave up a rare smile to a member of law enforcement. Dutchy was his sister Chiney’s long-time P.O. and their families had been tight back in the day. Trey nodded at his boy. “I ain’t seen you in a minute. What’s good in your world?”

Dutchy Gaines grinned and reached out for some dap. “I ain’t doing as good as you, Trey, but I’m handling mine. You know I got your sister Chiney on my roster again. She told me you still doing big things at The Crossover, man. That’s what’s up.”

“Yeah,” Trey said, stepping off as his boy Rain pulled up behind Dutchy’s whip. “We do what we can. I’ma need you to come lay some rap on the kids when we have career night, cool?”

Dutchy nodded. “Oh hell yeah. I’m definitely down for that. Whatever you and those kids need, I’m down for whatever.”

Trey climbed into the car with Rain and gave his boy some dap.

“I woulda got here sooner but shit got bad out at the cemetery,” Rain said. “Mr. Howell passed out, man. We had to call an ambulance to come get that old dude.”

“Muh’fuckas,” Trey muttered, shaking his head and referring to the cops who had picked him up. “I wanted to be out there for Mr. Howell. Instead them fools had me in the station wasting my time.”

“We got him through it,” Rain said with his jaw set in a serious line. “But we still got some shit to handle. That bitch Lil Lee is gonna be a problem. J-Ugly was her boy and that little drama she popped off today is only the beginning. Matter fact, all of those Divine Nine fools are starting to act a little bit ill. That niggah Flex been sticking his toe across a couple of lines just a’ probing and violating. He’s tryna expand his territory and get real swole.”

Trey frowned at the mention of Flex’s name. He thought about the cold look he’d seen in Maleek’s eyes during Princess’s funeral. Just the thought that Mayhem’s young brother was out there scrambling yay and everything else for Flex and his grimy crew was a painful blow to Trey’s gut.

“Yeah,” Trey grunted as he got out of Rain’s car in front of his crib. “That stunt Lil Lee pulled today was unpardonable. Somebody is gonna have to teach her ass a little lesson.”

CHAPTER 15

“All the goddamn toilets are backed up again,” Salida bitched at Ace as she came out of G’s bathroom drying her freshly manicured hands on a paper towel. “I already told you the building inspector is about to come through here. I thought your simple-ass partner said he unclogged all the pipes?”

Ace looked up from the plate of barbeque rib tips he was devouring and shrugged. He’d thought a whole lotta shit about Pluto his damn self, and he was starting to believe most of what he thought he knew about his boy was wrong.

The street grapevine had been whispering and tickling Ace’s ears. He’d heard all the low-cutting jokes from the hardcore Harlem hustlers who ran hole-in-the-wall clubs, pool halls, and number spots. Them cats had been making ha-ha’s and poppin’ live shit about Salida and the new direction that she had taken the G-Spot in. Ace didn’t like his woman being the butt of nobody’s fuckin’ jokes, and he couldn’t help thinking that his manz Pluto was behind some of that noise.

The tension between the two men had grown thick as shit, and it wasn’t that he had let a piece of pussy fuck up their partnership like Pluto claimed he did. Nah, it was about being a stand-up niggah and doing whatever it took to get what you needed out on these mean streets.

Not only had Salida launched a whole new flava and attracted new customers to the Spot, her club drug operation was booming like a muh’fucka and that shit she cooked upstairs was now being packaged for deep distribution all over Harlem.

Pluto swore Salida was just greedy and selfish, and he claimed she wasn’t doing a damn thing to put any extra dollars in his pockets.

“You let that chick take over everything, man,” he had complained one night. “You wanted me to go along with her shit and we was all supposed to benefit from it. As far as I can tell ain’t nobody collected a dime off of nothing she got going except her.”

“But that’s the thing,” Ace had countered, rushing to Salida’s defense. “Just because her shit is jumping off don’t mean me and you can just sit back and play with our nuts, son. We had a mission and we fucked it up and that’s why me and you is broke. Haters gone hate, but who you think paid the back rent up in here? How is the damn cops getting their cut every week, and how you think we got squared up with the back utility bills and the liquor license too? All that shit got taken care of outta the doe Salida brought in. Me and you still gots to get our own.”

It was this kinda talk that pissed Pluto off. Salida was all the time yakking about how bad him and Ace had fucked up their opportunity to get their hands on some big cash. She was still mad as fuck that Juicy had slipped through their fingers, and he figured she was withholding her cash from them as some type of punishment or some shit.

Pluto had smirked and waved his boy off. “Both of y’all can kill all that whining about G’s missing doe, yo. That shit is gone somewhere out in Cali and what’s done is done. Don’t nobody know where that bitch Juicy is at, and don’t nobody know where the money is neither.”

“But see, that’s where your thinking is all fucked up,” Ace insisted. “We can’t forget about that shit, man. We gotta keep pushin’. We gotta be diligent. We gotta go back in, ak. And we gotta go back in hard.”

“That shit is dead, man. It’s dead.”

That’s the same thing Ace had tried to tell Salida, but she had snapped on him with a quickness, telling him, “Dead my ass. I know damn well y’all ain’t gonna just give up on that kinda goddamn money! I ain’t the only one still scheming and dreaming up in here, am I? ’Cause if I am, what the hell do I need with you two broke-ass clowns?”

“Look, P,” Ace had pleaded with his partner. Yeah, he had sent Izzy and Zero out on a death-mission over that doe, but what the fuck. His cousin Rabbit wasn’t even speakin’ to him no more. He told him he didn’t give a fuck how much money Juicy mighta been hiding out in Cali. He had lost two good killers when that car bomb went off and Ace could kiss his black ass. “Pluto, that money is still out there somewhere, man. It didn’t disappear. It’s up to us to use everything we got to find it and get it back.”