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BOOK: Natural Born Liar: The Misadventures of Mink LaRue
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“Yo, Big P,” Punchie moaned and rolled over with his hands up in surrender. “Yo, my nig, she was—”
“Shut the fuck up!” Peaches barked. The veins in his thick neck bulged and his broad chest strained against his tiny silk top.
“Get up, Madame Mink! Did this muthafucka touch you?”
“I didn’t touch—”
Peaches punted that nigga straight in the balls with his pointy-toed shoe.
“If you ain’t touch her then why the fuck is she bleeding, muthafucka? I done told you”—Peaches reached down and drilled Punchie in the nose with a solid left—“ ’bout putting ya hands on women!”
Blood sprayed outta Punchie’s nose and he tried to sit up. Peaches kneed him under the chin, and Punchie’s head snapped back and cracked against the concrete steps. “You wanna fight a bitch?” Peaches growled, popping his neck. “Then fight me!”
With his tool steady trained on Punchie’s grill, Peaches bent over in his high heels and grabbed that nigga’s gat and his foot too. With one powerful arm he dragged Punchie straight through that puddle of piss and into the hallway.
“I’m telling you, nigga,” Peaches warned. “You better not say a goddamn thing to Madame Mink no more, you hear me? ’Cause if you do, I’ma stick my big dick so far up your narrow ass you gonna think I busted a cap in your colon!”
Peaches stuck Punchie’s pistol down in the front of his short-shorts and grabbed my hand as we headed toward his apartment. Both of us knew better than to turn our backs on crazy Punchie Collins. That loony tune probably had another burner stuck down in his sock.
Keeping our eyes plastered on him, me and Peaches moon-walked backward until we reached the apartment door, then we turned around and switched our asses as we hurried the hell up inside.
 
Before I hooked up with Gutta I had been living with Peaches and Bunni off and on for years. Gutter came from a big family of Haitians, and he was a true gangsta in every sense of the word. Rolling with him had been like a dream come true. He ran a tight crew of hoodlums who moved weight on Lenox Ave, collected payoffs for the local kingpins, punished niggas when they got outta pocket, and generally rode rough through the streets of Harlem.
Gutta was one of those fearless hoods who would blast a cat in the blink of an eye, and even the hardest dudes running game out there gave him a lot of room to move. He had six scary-ass brothers, and all of them were in and out of jail at various times, and on various charges. Right now his two oldest brothers were upstate doing bids for murdering an entire set on the Lower East Side, and just like everybody else in Harlem, I hoped like hell they would never get out.
Before I met Gutta I had been tricking off a low-level guy who worked in the post office, but I hopped on Gutta’s team when one of his manz started scoping on me. Dude made a big mistake when he took me around his way to show me off to his street crew. Me and Gutta busted one look at each other, and whatever I had going with that other hustler was instantly a dead deal.
Standing close to six-four, not only was Gutta a biggun like I liked ’em, he had a ruthless swagger about him that reminded me a lot of my daddy, Big Moe LaRue. Gutta stayed strapped up with a heavy tool, but his rep was so cold, and he was so fuckin’ brutal and intimidating that he could shake a nigga off his spot with just a look.
Right after me and him met, I watched him bum-rush a prime corner from three rival hustlers who were known to be hardbody killers in our hood. My dude walked right up on that profitable piece of concrete and claimed that shit, and all three of those cocky niggas got to scattin’ with a quickness as they relinquished their territory and ran for their lives.
I was in awe of his ass after that. I went home with Gutta and dropped my drawers that same night, and after he slung that dick on me the same way he slung that dope on the streets, I got hooked on his game and moved into his crib just like that.
At first Gutta kept me outta his bizz and outta his heart. He told me if he so much as turned his head he didn’t trust no chicken to keep her mouth shut or her fingers outta his dough. But after I got picked up twice and the cops tried to squeeze on me to get next to him, I showed his ass how tight I rolled. I pretended I was one of them ’Licious Lovers. Those three Harlem rappers who were known for their closed lips. I got up in that precinct and bit the shit outta my tongue, and I was still chewing on it when they booked my ass and sent me for a ride to Rikers Island.
The cops were only gunning for Gutta, and they didn’t really have nothing they could put on me, so I only stayed locked down in Rosie for a few weeks. But that was long enough to show my boo that not only did I have his back, I had mad heart too, and from that day forward he knew I was his loyal ride or die.
Gutta was waiting at the gate when they let me out of Rosie, and he took me back to his crib and treated me like a queen. He ran me a hot bubble bath, brought me dinner in bed, and showed me just how much he had missed me for those two weeks I was gone.
And then, after we finished fuckin’ and we was laying up in each other’s funky, sweaty arms, Gutta reached under the pillow and came out with a box. He slipped a white-gold diamond ring on my finger and told me how special I was to him and how much he was feeling me.
Then he reached under his pillow again, but this time he came out with a blade. He held that shit up in the air and told me he woulda straight up cut my throat if I had so much as
squeaked
about him to those goddamn cops, and on the real tip, I believed him.
But still, knowing Gutta was a certified fool didn’t stop me from dipping my hand in his dough when he got knocked. At first it was only a couple of dollars at a time. A hundred here, a hundred there. Shit, it cost money to accept all those collect phone calls and to be taking that funky Prison Gap bus upstate! And since Gutta liked me to look good I always went shopping before a visit, and in addition to my designer wear, my wigs and shoes and jewelry and stuff was not cheap!
I used to send him packages and put money on his commissary and stuff like that too, but he told me to stop all that real quick.
“My boyz got me while I’m in here, Mink. Don’t be sending me no money orders or nothin’ ’cause they holding me down real righteous and I’m straight. All I want you to do is take out enough to pay my rent, and then your ass better stand guard over the rest of my cash, ya heard?”
Well what the hell am I supposed to live on?
I had thought to myself, and Gutta’s evil ass had straight-up read my mind.
“You still slick, right? And you’s a damn good liar, too. Do whatever you was doing before I met you, yo. Just don’t fuck over my dough ’cause that’s the closest thing to my heart, you feel me?”
That shoulda been enough of a warning to keep my fingers outta his stash, but it was in my nature to dip, and being Gutta’s chick had put me in a bind. The come-ups were biting at my ankles, but none of the major playas wanted to fuck with me. I mean, they all wanted to
fuck
me, but none of them wanted to
fuck with
me. Gutta was violent. He was a certified killer. They knew his ass wasn’t gonna be locked up for long, and the potential trouble I could cause them just wasn’t worth it.
That meant the only dudes I could hit were squares who were too low-level to be noticed, or dudes from other boroughs who came with their own ride or die bitches and their own set of problems.
True shit, I loved me some Gutta. I feened for his ass. Yeah, I was scared of him too, but that kind of danger just excited me even more. From his bed game to his head game, everything about that dude turned me on. We both had a thing for living on the edge, and I couldn’t wait for my boo to get back out on the streets so we could show the world what we was working with.
But first I had to replenish his stash. I had to get it up to where it was when he got knocked. There was no way around that shit neither. I mean, I knew my man really had feelings for me, but above all else Gutta was first and foremost a product of the streets. And now that I had lost his apartment and blew through his dough, whether I was his favorite boo or not, if he hit those bricks and his stash was short, the law of the streets dictated that he take his money straight outta my ass.
CHAPTER 5
 
W
hen I walked into Bunni’s kitchen she was standing by the table looking laced from head to toe. Bunni Baines looked just like a chocolate brownie with a cherry on top. A spiral of fire-red dreadlocks sprouted all over her head like a burning halo, and the silver earrings she had boosted from Nordstrom dangled sexily above her shoulders.
Me and Bunni was almost opposite in our looks, and even though our styles were nothing alike, when we worked the poles together dudes had a real hard time deciding which one of us they should throw their money on.
Bunni was about five-nine, and she looked a lot like Lauryn Hill in the face, although her hips and ass were way curvier. She had big eyes and extra-long fake eyelashes, and her pretty brown skin was smooth and clear.
We were both shopaholic label-whores and we loved looking good, but I liked the weird and the extreme, while Bunni went for the slutty and the sexy. Today she had on a pair of tight-fitting white Armani riding pants, a clingy red Donna Karan belly top that showed off her deep navel and flat abs, and a wide silver jockey belt that I had picked up for her at Neiman Marcus. She was perched in a pair of six-inch hot-red gladiator sandals, and there was enough room between her bowlegs to drive a freakin’ motorcycle through them without touching either one of her knees.
Bunni always kept her shit looking extra-stylish, but that wasn’t what kept men feening after her though. Nah, dudes chased Bunni because of her vicious hoe gap. Her super-fat camel toe. The thick hunk of her pussy lips that she accentuated with every outfit she wore. You would never catch Bunni wearing a skirt or a dress because that type of shit didn’t show off her glamorous Venus mound. Bunni’s chunky monkey was her very best asset, and she put that gushy on front-row display every chance she got.
I wasn’t even in the kitchen good when she got up in my face and looked at me real close. “Oh hell yeah, it’s you all right. You’s a missing child, Mink! Word! Your mug is on the back of every milk carton in Food Land. Trick, please! We been friends all these years and you ain’t never told me your ass was adopted!”
“Please,” I said and rolled my eyes. “Go ’head with that.” I kicked off my shoes and pulled off my wig. “I ain’t got nothing but LaRue blood running through my veins. Besides, when’s the last time you seen a kid on a damn milk carton anyway?”
“
Today
, dammit! They doing that shit again to help find kids who’ve been missing for a long time, and for real Mink. It’s you in that picture girl! I looked it up on the Web site, and there’s a rich family searching for you. I think you need to let ’em find your ass.”
“Your ass is
crazy
,” I said and walked past Bunni and went into her bedroom. The outside of the five-story tenement looked a mess, but inside the two-bedroom apartment that Bunni and Peaches shared was some of the finest shit that had ever fallen off the back of a truck.
Bunni’s room was painted fuck-me fuchsia and decorated with butterflies made from thick silver glitter. Her fluffy bed was covered in designer pillows that had ended up in Harlem by way of a hijacked delivery van from a downtown furniture store, and there was all kinds of other stolen shit scattered everywhere.
Me and Bunni went back for a good long minute. She had beat up three bully-ass girls for me when we were in the seventh grade, and she was the only real friend I ever had. I had slept on a fold-up cot in her bedroom from the time I was thirteen until I moved in with Gutta, and no matter what misadventures life took us through, me and Bunni were sistahs for life.
I stepped out of my dirty Fendi outfit and threw it in a pile of clothes that needed to go to the cleaners, then I dug down in a laundry basket full of clean clothes and pulled out one of Bunni’s raggedy bathrobes. I put it on, then peeled off my fishnet stockings and went back into the kitchen looking ratchet as hell.
I sat down at the cluttered table where Peaches was plucking his eyebrows.
“Good looking out, Peaches. That fool Punchie almost had my ass out there!”
He pursed his red-painted lips. “Errm-herrm ... ,” he said, sounding like Madeah. “You lucky I was lookin’ out the window and saw you come in the building, Madame Mink. It seemed like it was taking you forever to get up here so I came to see where you was.”
“Punchie caught me sleepin’.” I shook my head. “Crazy ass!”
“You better watch yourself, Mink. You fucked with that fool’s money and he ain’t going away, you know. I tried to tell you and Bunni that lil ‘catch-a-crackhead’ scam was way too risky, but y’all just didn’t wanna listen. And speaking of scams, where the hell was you all night long?”
I hated to tell them, but I knew I had to. “Y’all ain’t gonna believe this shit.” I leaned my elbows on the table and pushed a half-eaten bowl of Apple Jacks outta my way. “But I lost the damn money.”
Bunni bucked her eyes. “The money?
Girl
? What the hell you mean you lost the money?”
“Like I said, I lost the money!”
“You mean your ass stayed out all night and you didn’t go pick up that money?”
“Nah, I went and got it.” Hot shame had my cheeks burning red. “But then I lost it.”
“You lost the fuckin’
money
?” Bunni shrieked. With her hands on her hips she swayed back, posing with a bitch-no-you-didn’t look on her face. “How the hell did you do that shit, Mink? How much did you lose?”
I dropped my eyes. “The whole twenty large.”
“
Mink
!” Bunni shrieked again. “Gutta is gonna
kill
your ass!”
“
Our
asses!” I snapped. “Gutta’s gonna kill
our
asses, Bunni! We tricked that dough off
together
, baby, remember? Don’t go getting amnesia on me now. Just look at your damn shoes!”
Bunni glanced down at her feet.
“Them butter bitches cost damn-near half a grand! And your earrings!”
Her hands flew up to her earlobes.
“Those are Zintys, baby! That’s another two yards right there! I ain’t even gonna mention all the rest of the clothes, liquor, weed, and partying his dough been financing for the last five months!”
“But
Mink
... all you had to do was pick up the cash and dip,” Bunni wailed. “You was supposed to get the package and then jump in a cab and come straight back! Why you didn’t just stick to the damn plan?”
I swallowed hard. I was so humiliated.
“I tried.”
“You tried? And what the hell happened?”
I barely whispered, “I got ganked.”
“You got
ganked
?”
“Yeah. I was leaving the hotel when a mark stepped to me. I thought he was green, but he was out working too. He told me he was a balla from Philly and got me open. We slid into the VIP lounge for drinks, and the next thing I knew I was waking up in an empty fuckin’ hotel room! He musta seen me at the club and decided to roll me. He got me good too. My earrings, my bracelet . .. my thong . ..” I got mad just remembering how that cool breeze had felt on my coochie when I snuck on the train and squatted down under the turnstile with no drawers on.
My friends stared at me in shock. Bunni shook her head in disbelief. Peaches just sat there looking prissy and swinging that muscular leg he had crossed over his knee.
I put my forehead in my hands. “I don’t know how that shit happened, y’all. Dude’s name was Daddy Long Stroke and he caught me out there,” I added quickly. “I swear he looked like an easy mark. He was adorned in jewels out the ass, and the cologne coming off him cost six-fifty a bottle! It musta been the liquor. He hit me with some jiggle juice. He musta paid somebody at the bar to slip it in my drink.”
“Oh, he slipped sumpthin’ in your sumpthin’ all right.” Bunni side-eyed me with a disgusted smirk. “With all them hickeys on your neck I’ma hafta say he slipped his
dick
in your
twat
!”
“Madame Mink ... ,” Peaches admonished me calmly as he put down his tweezers and began fussing with his bob-cut weave. He was feminine and flamboyant. Fabulous and queer. There weren’t a whole lotta people in this world that I paid much attention to, but when Peaches had something to say I was usually all ears. After all, Peaches was a master of the con game and he had taught me everything I knew. He had shown me and Bunni how to do our makeup and style our hair, how to show off our bodies and how to hook a man. And when we were thirteen years old, it had been Peaches who taught us both how to use a tampon.
“So you think you got ganked, huh?” He chuckled dryly and picked up his tweezers again. “Oh, that wasn’t a gank, my darling. What you got caught in was a flimflam.”
I frowned. “A flimflam? You mean them fools trapped me in a cross-con? Are you serious?” I stared at him. “You think that old head principal set me up?”
“Errm-herrm.” Peaches bit his top lip as he plucked a real long hair outta his nose. “Damn right he did. We sent you to rip him off, and he sent Daddy Long Stroke to rip you off right back.” He shrugged and peered up his right nostril through the mirror. “It happens sometimes, but it’s usually hard to flam somebody like you who’s so gifted in the grift.”
I didn’t wanna believe it, but when I thought back carefully, everything Peaches was saying made perfect sense. That principal had read our asses like a coloring book. He was a slick muthafucka!
“Sorry, y’all. I fucked up. I know we all needed that money, but don’t worry. I’ll think of something else.”
Bunni sat down beside me. Her eyes looked all big in her crafty little face. “Well you ain’t gotta think too hard.” She reached for the carton of milk that was still sitting out on the table and spun it around so the back was facing us.
“Check her out. This you right here, Mink!” Bunni giggled. “Girl, this chick is so
you
!”
I stared at the two black-and-white photos that were printed on the carton of milk and my breath caught in my throat. The picture on the top was of a cute little girl with two long ponytails and a real big smile. She was pretty and looked like a regular little happy kid, but the picture on the bottom damn-near knocked me out. It had been aged progressed by about 18 years, and there was no doubt about it. Bunni had that shit right. Even in black-and-white it was easy to see that the chick looked just like me. We had almost the exact same face and big bright smile.
I shrugged. “Yeah, okay. We favor. So what? There’s a whole lotta ‘Bad News LaRues’ out there. Hell, there’s about a hundred of them right here in New York, and ninety-nine of their trifling asses look just me.”
“Uh-huh.” Bunni shoved the milk carton up closer to me. “But they wasn’t all born on the same damn day, was they? On your birthday?”
I read the words that were printed under the photo. Sho nuff, not only did the girl in the picture look just like me, but we had the same birthday too.
“That’s real tight.” I frowned. “Who is this chick?”
“Her name is Sable Dominion,” Bunni said. “She went missing in Midtown when she was only three years old. I Googled that ass, and lil mama got a rich-ass daddy!”
Peaches chuckled again. He was caking a tube of mascara on his short eyelashes.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Her name is Sable. Mink and Sable. You get it?”
I kinda got it, but I still couldn’t take my eyes off the picture. “Go get your laptop,” I told Bunni. “I wanna check her out real quick.”
Bunni ran in her bedroom and got her laptop, and a few minutes later me, her, and Peaches were all eyeball-deep on a Web site for missing and exploited children. Bunni typed in the name ‘Sable Dominion’ and the little girl’s picture popped right up.
“Damn. They lost her up in a Duane Reade’s,” I said as I skimmed the Web site.
Peaches tsked deep in his throat. “Please. How the hell do you lose a three-year-old?”
“Easy,” Bunni said. “Her ghetto-ass mama probably wasn’t payin’ her no attention.”
I shook my head. “Her mother ain’t even ghetto, Bunni. Her family is from Texas. It says so right here. They came to New York for a vacation and that’s when their daughter got snatched.”
“What? They ain’t got no ghettos in Texas?”
I slid the laptop away from Bunni and my fingers flew across the keyboard. I opened a new window and clicked on Google and punched in Sable’s name again.
“Yeah,” I said as my eyes flew across the screen and landed on a newspaper article that had a video next to it. “They got ghettos in Texas, Bunni.” I clicked on the page and read all the way down to the bottom and then added, “But you can bet your left titty that Sable’s paid-ass mama and daddy damn sure don’t live in one!”
BOOK: Natural Born Liar: The Misadventures of Mink LaRue
11.88Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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