Lust (21 page)

Dropping her bra on the floor, Nooni ran over to the windows and pulled down the blinds and closed all the curtains. Her eyes darted toward the kitchen, and she skirted inside and pulled two butcher knives from the rack sitting on the counter before shrugging the shawl off her shoulders and glancing around uncontrollably.

“I’ll kill those mothafuckas!” she gripped the butcher knives and threatened, wild-eyed and wearing only a thong. “I’ll kill all of them!”

“It’s okay, Nooni,” Rita whispered, not wanting to alarm the three little girls who were playing in the back room. She grabbed Nooni’s wrists and gently urged her to put the knives down and then took her into her arms. “It’s okay,” she said, sinking down to the floor and holding the girl like she was a baby. “You’re safe now, chica. Nobody’s going to hurt you. You don’t need any knives. You’re safe.”

Nooni huddled in her big sister’s arms, weeping like the child she was. She had been so fast and grown and hot in the ass that she had never considered how cold the world could be beyond the safety of her family’s front door.

“I’m sorry.” Nooni clung to Rita and whispered through her tears. She was ashamed of all the foul, dirty shit she had participated in. From faking her own kidnapping to helping lure her sister and Juicy into a money trap. “I’m sorry for everything, Rita,” she moaned, meaning it from the bottom of her tender heart. “I swear I’m sorry.”

Rita consoled the girl the best she could. She was so happy to see her little sister alive that she didn’t even try to hold back her own tears. She just let them flow unchecked.

“It’s okay,” she whispered, rocking her little sister back and forth. “It’s over. You’re home now, and you’re safe.”

$$$$$

While Nooni was safe at home with her family, somebody else’s child was about to take a ride with a stranger.

Pooch Johnson hated kids. It was just after two p.m. when he drove his big yellow school bus out of the yard where the large fleet was parked. His suburban New York route was one of the most sought-after in the Mount Vernon school district, but dressing up in a blue uniform and driving a bunch of hyped-up preschool brats irked the shit out of him every day.

Pooch pushed his tiny speaker plugs deep in his ear canal so he could listen to some tracks on his way to pick up the kids. Listening to music while driving was against the bus driver safety rules, but fuck all that. If he didn’t have his sounds he wouldn’t make it two blocks without tossing some of them whining-ass kids out the window.

He scrolled through the songs on his iPod and turned the music up as loud as it would go as he pushed the school bus down the road and headed toward the preschool he was assigned to.

He had just made a right turn and was taking his usual short-cut through an abandoned industrial park when a man staggered out of the woods and ran directly in front of his bus.

Pooch slammed on the brakes and the tires squealed loudly as they fought to grip the pavement.

“Oh, shit!” Pooch put the bus in park and ripped his ear-plugs out and flung his iPod to the floor. He stood up and peered outta the window and over the nose of the bus. Dude musta been laying under the front end, even though Pooch coulda sworn he’d braked in time to miss hitting him.

“What the
fuck?
” he hollered as he released the hydraulic lever and opened the door. He went down the steps in one big leap and ran around the front of his bus with his heart beating like a hammer in his chest.

“Why the hell you run out in front of me, you fuckin’ fool?” he screamed on the downed man. He glanced around at the empty, deserted road. “And where the fuck did you come from?”

Pooch crouched down beside the still man and trembled. “Ah, shit!” Hitting a pedestrian would automatically get a niggah fired. What was wrong with this fool? Wasn’t even shit out here! No houses, no cars, no
nothing!

“Yo, you okay?” he asked, touching the man’s shoulder. Dude looked like he was in his late twenties, and he was dressed in sweat pants and a dark hoody.

“Yo, muh’fucka!” Pooch shook him a little bit more and frowned. “Wake ya stupid ass up! That’s what you get for running out in front of me! I couldn’ta hit you that bad anyway. I barely fuckin’ touched you!”

Pooch reached out to shake the man one more time, and that’s when dude got him.

“Be easy, muh’fucka,” the downed man said, yoking Pooch around his neck and pressing the cold barrel of a Glock under his chin at the same time. The so-called “hit” pedestrian flipped Pooch over on the ground, then stood up and put his foot on the school bus driver’s heaving chest as he held him at gunpoint.

Pooch lay flat on his back with his hands down by his sides. “W-w-what’s up, man?” he asked as he stared up in fear and surprise. “I don’t carry no money, niggah. So what the fuck you want?”

Dude’s demand was real calm and real simple. “I want your ride, man. Give up the keys.”

Even with a gat in his face Pooch couldn’t help but chuckle. “Fool, I
know
you ain’t jacking me for no fuckin’ yellow school bus!”

Ol’ boy nodded and looked Pooch up and down from head to toe. “Yeah I am. And for ya kicks and ya cool blue monkey suit too. Give ’em up, my niggah. Give ’em up.”

$$$$$

Out of all of Flex’s capos in the Divine Nine, Lil Lee was the most beautiful and the most dangerous too. Niggahs got caught sleepin’ on her all the time because from the outside she didn’t look a damn thing like who she actually was.

Unlike the foolhardy dudes in her click, Lil Lee had escaped the urban trappings and moved outta the hood. Yeah, she ran her set there and did her business there, but she didn’t live there, and there was definitely a good reason for that.

Lil Lee drove her nondescript black hatchback down the tree-lined streets of her suburban neighborhood. The houses were small, but the grass outside was green and the hedges and flowerbeds were neatly trimmed. She had come a long way from the projects of Harlem, and she had no problem making the commute back into the jungle early each morning because her sweet reward was always waiting for her when she returned in the afternoon.

But today was different. She noticed it as soon as she turned onto her quiet little street. Her daughter’s school bus was there, parked right outside her house, and since her block was the driver’s final stop she always made sure to leave the city in time to beat her little girl home by at least fifteen minutes.

The school bus was blocking her driveway, so Lil Lee pulled up behind it and jumped out as fast as she could. Her designer heels clacked on the sidewalk as the muscles in her toned legs flexed with each long, hurried stride.

She was almost up on her porch when she realized what time it was. The bus driver was sitting on her top step grinning with his little blue hat cocked to the side. Her four-year-old daughter, Yahyah, sat beside him holding a half-eaten McDonald’s chicken nugget and sipping from the blue-ice slushy that the bus driver carefully held to her lips. At their feet the remnants of Yahyah’s meal were laid out neatly on a napkin. An opened pack of ketchup, a few French fries, and half a chocolate chip cookie.

“That was good, Mister Keep Kids Safe!” Yahyah squealed, then tooted her blue lips up as the bus driver patted them carefully with his napkin.

“Come here, Yah,” Lil Lee said quietly. She walked up two steps as she fought to keep the rage and fear out of her voice. She held her hand out to her daughter. “Come over here to Mommy.”

The bus driver smiled at the little girl and nodded, then pat her back as she stood up and went to her mother. Lil Lee bent down and kissed the top of her head, and the little girl wrapped her arms around her mother’s knees.

“What the hell are you doing here, Trey? How the fuck did you get my daughter?”

Trey grinned and spun his bus driver hat around to the back. “Who, Yahyah? Oh, I got your little girl the same way you been out there getting other people’s little girls. I took her.”

Lil Lee’s lips twitched and her hand itched with the urge to grip her piece.

“This ain’t part of the game,” she growled between her teeth. “You made a big mistake going after my fuckin’ kid.”

“Ain’t no rules in this goddamn game,” Trey said coldly and stood up. He looked at Lil Lee’s daughter and then back at her with disgust. “You somebody’s mama and you out there spitting on dead kids and pushing poison in babies. What? You thought I forgot about that shit?”

He stepped down toward them and gave the little girl a small pat on the head before grilling her mother again. “You think just because you moved her outta Harlem your kid is gonna be safe while you line somebody else’s kid up in your grimy fuckin’ crosshairs?” He shook his head. “It don’t work like that, baby. Anybody can get picked up and picked off in this game.
Anybody
.”

Lil Lee pressed her daughter closer to her body and her eyes flashed with unbridled rage. “I ain’t gonna forget this shit, Trey,” she promised him. “I swear to God I ain’t never gonna forget it.”

Trey gave her a brief nod. “Good. I hope you don’t. But remember, I brought your daughter home to you in one piece. I fed her and protected her, and I kept her happy until you got here. But if one person’s kid ain’t safe on our streets, then ain’t
no
fuckin’ body’s kid safe. Not even yours. And that’s some shit you
better
not forget.”

CHAPTER 27

Once again, Ace and Pluto were going at it.

“This time we’re doing every fuckin’ thing
my
way,” Pluto declared as him and Ace passed a fat blunt back and forth between them and chugged back three straight shots of gin.

They had studied Flex’s text message and hit him back and exchanged a few comments, and once again they could see their way towards the possibility of bulking up their street business and putting some real ends in their pockets.

“Yo,” Pluto said, “I think Flex is on the up and up about hooking up with G’s distributer and us taking him down the middle, but before me and you jump off in any damn thing we gotta get some shit ironed out, ya dig?”

He stared at Ace, challenging his gangsta.

“You whipped niggah,” Pluto said. ”Your ass is whipped. You too fuckin’ blind to see that Salida’s doe is
Salida’s
fuckin’ doe. I don’t give a fuck how much bank she’s pulling in or how many light bills she’s been paying. She ain’t tearing me off and puffing up my pockets, so you can kill all that bullshit noise.”

Ace nodded. This was about business, and it wasn’t the time to dispute the truth.

“So if we get down like you wanna get down, then I say we do just like we been doing. We just do it with a different twist.”

“Different how?”

“If Flex is right and Trey and the Talented Ten got Juicy under their wings, then it would be stupid for us to just pop off buck-wild and rush in on them tryna get at her. Shit would get real bloody in Harlem, and real quick too. ”

Ace nodded again. His manz had that shit correct. Right now there were three main factions runnin’ shit. The G-Spot Crew, Flex and his Divine Nine, and Trey and his Talented Ten.

All three of them were hardbody and none of them would bend, and if shit ever got rowdy between them there would be some straight-up pandemonium, turmoil, and chaos, and there would damn sure be some bloody fuckin’ combat.

“So, let’s play this shit smart,” Pluto suggested. “Let’s keep right on squeezing Juicy. We might not be able to get G’s money outta her, but we can use her to get the name of G’s connect. And once we got that, we can get down with Flex.”

Ace shook his head. “I been witcha all the way, baby. But I gotta jump off the train right here. Juicy is the
last
person who would know that kinda info. G would never breathe a single word to a bitch like Juicy about his business.”