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BOOK: Natural Born Liar: The Misadventures of Mink LaRue
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CHAPTER 8
 
I
crashed real hard after that sex action Borne put on me, and we spent the rest of the day in the basement watching old movies. The next thing I knew Monday morning rolled in and it was time to head to court. Bunni met me at Borne’s crib, and all three of us took the train downtown to the business district.
Borne mighta busted my coochie out in his cramped lil basement, but being seen with him on the streets in broad daylight was straight up embarrassing. His skinny legs looked real funny in his little post office shorts, and one of his black socks was always too short and forever sliding down in his shoe.
“Yo, Mink,” he yapped as we walked from the train station to the courthouse. Last night was over, and I didn’t like the way he was clocking me today. He had tried to hold my hand when we got on the train, and when he put his arm around my waist I bumped his skinny ass off with my hip.
“I don’t want you worrying about nuthin’ baby, okay? Remember, I got you in my pocket, girl. Plus, I got a feeling something dope is gonna go down today. Nah’m sayin’? Last night I dreamt the fuckin’ judge tossed all your shit out! He just went ahead and cancelled
everything
, ma! And you walked up outta there, girl! That’s word, your fine ass just
walked
!”
Bunni shot me a crazy look, and I just shook my head. Borne was too damn hyped and he was playing me too damn close. The only reason I had let him come with me was because of that new credit card that he couldn’t stop bragging about. It had a one-thousand-dollar limit, and he told me he was willing to roll the whole grand on my court fees because I was just that fine.
I was no stranger to the Manhattan Criminal Court. Matter fact, 100 Centre Street shoulda been my forwarding address as many times as I had pushed through those revolving doors. The inscription on the outside of the building read,
Only the Just Man Enjoys Peace of Mind,
but there was absolutely no peace in my mind as we walked inside and took the elevator upstairs.
It was only nine o’clock and the courtroom was already packed out. All kinds of criminal-minded folks was in the house. Me, Bunni, and Borne sat in the second row right behind my slick-lipped public defender, and about ten crusty-lookin’ dudes in orange jumpsuits were chained together on a holding bench on the far side of the wall.
In my latest brush with the law I had gotten busted in a check-cashing scheme that almost landed my ass in jail. My lawyer had pretty-pleased the judge into putting me on probation, and instead of serving time I was ordered to pay a restitution fee of five hundred dollars a month and to stay outta any kind of trouble.
In almost a year I had only made one payment, and that was the one I needed to make before they would let my ass outta jail. My lawyer had warned me that the judge could remand me to the court, and that meant instead of catching the subway back to Harlem in my Prada pin-striped pantsuit and matching black-and-white wing-tip pumps, I would be styling a cotton jumpsuit and going back to lockup in Rosie.
We waited for damn-near two hours as case after case was called. There was the low-level drug slanga who told the judge he was scared to go to jail because he was a pretty boy and light in the ass, a mother-daughter booster team who had run through a bunch of stores in Midtown and wracked up mad charges, a young chick who had gone up to her son’s school and stomped out his teacher, and a skinny white boy who had gotten busted for dog fighting and who was about to get a beat-down from the bailiffs ’cause he couldn’t keep his hands outta his pockets like he was told.
Finally, it was my turn to stand in the hot spot.
“Your Honor,” my court-appointed attorney addressed the fat white judge, “my client had every intention of fulfilling the terms of our previous agreement. Right after your sentencing she found a job and was about to begin making her payments as ordered. However, she became a victim of identity theft, and her mother had a tragic car accident where she nearly drowned. My client’s mother sustained significant brain damage in the accident and she was placed in a nursing home. She was recently transferred to a facility outside of the city, and my client was forced to choose between paying her court costs or providing for her mother. And only a heartless person would neglect their own mother under those conditions.”
I stood up there listening to my lawyer with my eyes closed real tight. I squeezed out tear after tear after tear, and I didn’t bother to wipe none of them shits as they ran down my face and fucked up my makeup. That old lawyer-man was laying it on the judge like a real pro. He was saying everything I had told him to say, and he wasn’t really lying neither. My mother
did
have an accident, and yeah, she
was
in a nursing home.
But all that had happened the summer I turned thirteen. She had gotten up one morning and decided to drive her car into the Hudson River, and if two joggers hadn’t jumped in and pulled her out she woulda drowned right there where she sat. Even still, by the time the ambulance got there she had been under all that water for too long and she ended up with some brain damage. I went to see her in the nursing home as much as I could, and most of the time all she did was cry.
“Miss LaRue,” the judge fussed at me, “this is your third time coming in front of me, and despite your mother’s horrible situation I’m not feeling sympathetic toward you at all. Looking at your record I can see you are a habitual criminal. A petty criminal, but still a criminal. I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to give you thirty days to come current with your restitution payments, do you understand? That means, not only must you make your next payment on time, but your account must also be brought current with the courts too.”
He shuffled through a folder full of papers in front of him.
“Right now you’re almost a year delinquent in your payments. That means you now owe nine thousand dollars, plus fees, to this court. I’m putting you on my calendar in forty-five days. At that time I want to see a receipt from the court clerk verifying that you have made your monthly payments and paid your lump sum back payment as well, or a warrant
will
be issued for your arrest. Do you understand?”
“Yes sir,” I said softly and squeezed out another tear.
Ya fat-ass bastard!
I wanted to scream. This fool knew damn well I didn’t have no nine thousand dollars to be donating to the city of fuckin’ New York! I wanted to tell his old bald-headed ass something real slick, but I wanted to walk up outta that building a free woman too. So I bowed my head humbly and said, “Thank you, Your Honor. God bless you, sir. Thank you.”
 
I was mad as hell as I stomped out of the building and walked toward the train station with Bunni walking right beside me. Borne had headed across town so he could go to work, and me and Bunni were headed back to Harlem.
“You gonna put that thousand down for me?” I had asked Borne when we walked outta the courtroom. That little nigga had slid his hand in his pocket where his credit card was and shook his head. “Don’t make no sense to do that, baby. You owe them people over nine grand. My little one grand ain’t even gonna be no help.”
Bunni was just as pressed out behind all this mess as I was.
“That judge was a muthafucka!” she said as we walked down the crowded city streets turning heads left and right. Me and Bunni always attracted mad attention when we were out together, and in a city full of hot chicks like New York, that wasn’t easy to do.
“This city is full of madness!” Bunni complained real loud. “What the fuck? If you was paid like that you wouldn’ta been out there cashing other people’s checks in the first place! And then they got the nerve to tack on all them damn administration fees and shit! That’s prolly gonna be a whole ’nother grand. The court system got hustlers out here gankin’ each other just to stay outta jail. What kinda gangsta government lick is that?”
“I know,” I said, agreeing with her. “But I’da been straight if my ass hadn’t lost that twenty grand to Daddy Long Stroke. I guess I’ma have to rob a damn bank now.”
We ran down the stairs to the train station, and after scanning the area for cops, both of us ducked and went under the turnstile.
“Yo, I’m telling you this is a sign,” Bunni said as we waited on the platform for the train to come.
“A sign like what?”
“You know, a signal-sign.”
“Here we go again.” I rolled my eyes. Bunni swore she was a psychic. “You and your damn paranormal signals. I know, I know ... your left titty is itchin’, right?”
She bust out laughing. “Damn right it is.”
“Okay, twist your nipple and find out what the hell I’m supposed to do then, goddammit! I got that fool Punchie lurkin’ on the staircase tryna pop me at your crib, Borne’s mama wants him to toss my ass outta his raggedy basement, the judge is about to slap me with a W and throw me in the bing, and Gutta is gonna hit the bricks in a minute and come gunnin’ for his goddamn money. What is your left nipple sayin’ Bunni?” I laughed. “Should I go rob a bank, or do I get strapped and go stick up a liquor store?”
“Nah,” Bunni giggled as she gripped her titty and shook it at me. “My nipple ain’t even feeling New York, honey. It’s pointing straight toward the south. I’m telling you, Mink. You need to flam that inheritance shit! My nipple is sayin’ you need to take your ass on down to Texas and hook up with your rich-ass mama so you can get paid!”
I stopped laughing and looked at her. Shit, after what the judge had just said I couldn’t help but be interested. Desperate times called for grimy capers. “You really think we could pull some shit like that off?”
“You can do it, girl.” Bunni nodded with confidence. “Hell, fuckin’ yeah! You can do it!”
“I said
we,
goddammit! You slippin’ hard, girl. Somebody’s gotta get that twenty-five-grand reward money. Don’t you want it to be you? Do you think
we
can do it?”
Bunni locked in on the words
reward money
, and her eyes got big. “You
damn
right we can do it!” she hollered as the roaring train pulled into the station.
“We can do it, Mink. Yes! We! Can!”
CHAPTER 9
 
“H
old up. I don’t get it,” I told Bunni. We were eyeball-deep in mad Internet articles and finding out more and more about the Dominion family of Dallas, Texas. They were way richer than I had thought, and the father was so cold he even had his own Wiki page.
“Sable ain’t even their real daughter, though,” I said as I read Viceroy Dominion’s bio. “It says right here that they have three adopted kids and two real kids. Barron, Dane, Sable, Grayson and Fallon. Sable is the oldest girl, and they adopted her right after she was born. Why the hell are they breakin’ their necks to find her and give her a slice of their pie when she ain’t even their real child?”
“Maybe they loved her,” Bunni said. “It don’t have to be your real kid for you to love it, you know.”
“Adopted kids
are
real kids.” Peaches sniffed like he had raised a bunch of babies of his own. “Look at Angelina Jolie and all her chirren. She ain’t giving the crusty ends of the bread to the kids she adopted and saving the soft slices in the middle for the ones she pushed out. All them lil bad-ass kids probably came into millions as soon as they learned how to piss in the potty.”
I half-listened to them as I kept reading Viceroy Dominion’s Wiki page. I stared at his picture. He was dark-skinned and fine as a muh’fucka. Dude was living larger than any brother I had ever seen before. I clicked on a link and saw there was a whole section on him in Who’s Who of Texas Businessmen that talked about how he had stacked his loot in a shady stock deal and shrewdly built his oil company into a multimillion-dollar business. I was impressed. Papa seemed like he had some street hustle in his flow.
“Look at these damn pictures!” I told Bunni after I clicked on another link. “This one here is from their last Fourth of July barbeque. It says here they have houses all over Texas, but every year they throw a big ’que at their family mansion outside of Dallas.”
“The Fourth is coming up,” Bunni said as she reached past me and swiped her finger on the laptop’s keypad. She scrolled through the photos that were posted on some local Texas celebrity sites. “Their shit is sick,” Bunni muttered and stared at a shot of their multi-wing mansion that had been taken from up in the air. “Just fuckin’ sick!”
I peered at that shit and my nose got open too. The picture showed mad cars and pools and tennis courts, and there was even some kinda jet parked off to one side of the house and covered by an awning. I had never seen nothing like this at no black person’s crib before, and I couldn’t even imagine what kinda cash flow it took for them to stunt like that every day.
I clicked on another tab and Sable’s age-progressed picture came back up on the screen. I dragged the corners and made it real big, then I stared at it from all angles and went over every little feature that me and her had alike.
Almost all of them.
I pulled up the Web site where Selah Dominion had pleaded with the public to help find her daughter. I watched the entire video clip again, and when she was finished talking I stared at the telephone number that flashed on the screen.
“Are you finally thinking what my ass
been
thinking?” Bunni said from over my shoulder.
“I don’t know,” I clowned. “What you been thinking?”
“My ass been thinking you need to let me make that call and tell them people I found the daughter they lost!” She snatched up the piece of paper that I had scribbled the telephone number on two days ago. “Gimme the phone, Mink. So I can call that goddamn number!”
 
Bunni shoulda got an award for the performance she threw down on the phone. Instead of reaching Selah Dominion like we thought she would, she got connected to a private investigator.
“Hi, my name is Bunita Baines and I have some information I think you might be interested in.”
I couldn’t hear what old boy was saying on his end, but if he was grillin’ Bunni she was damn sure grillin’ him right back.
“So how much is that reward again? Uh-huh. Twenty-five thousand? And I get it laid on me just for hooking you up with the girl I think is Sable, right? Oh, hold up. I only get paid if the girl can
prove
she’s Sable, huh? Right, I gotcha. A’ight, well I got that information for you, then. Oh, hell yeah it’s her. I
know
it’s her. Matter fact, she’s sitting here right now. You wanna talk to her?”
She passed me the phone.
“Hello?”
The private investigator introduced himself as Sam somebody and then he gave my ass the third degree. He wanted to know when I was born, where I was born, who my mama and daddy was, if I had ever been locked up or arrested, did I have any kids, did I know I was adopted, and if I had any drug addictions or weird habits.
He hit me with mad questions and I hit him back even harder with my clever, skillful answers. He tried to rattle me, but I hung with his ass for the whole ride, going toe-to-toe and using my gift of the gab to the fullest. It took me a whole lotta lying and convincing, but it was all good because after all, those were the things I did best.
Sam took my phone number and told me he would pass my information on to a representative of the Dominion family. He said if they were interested in pursuing the matter any further they would give me a call.
Less than thirty minutes later my cell phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number on my caller ID, but Peaches and Bunni were jumping up and down screaming, “Answer that shit! Answer that shit!”
So I did.
“Hello?”
“Good afternoon. My name is Selah Ducane Dominion. I understand you contacted Mr. Samuel George and asked to speak to me?”
I coughed real loud to hide the sound of me putting her on speakerphone. I knew these rich people wasn’t gonna want no hood-rat for a long-lost daughter, so I called forth my best hootie tootie black bougie voice and put my smooth tongue to work.
“Excuse me! Hi, yes. My name is Mink LaRue and I’m from New York. I saw your press conference on a Web site and I think”—I paused like I had to gather my emotions and said tearfully—“I think I might be Sable. Your daughter.”
Selah’s voice was cool as crushed ice. “Is that right? What makes you think so?”
“Well,” I said keeping my voice soft and innocent, “for one thing, I was born on July fifteenth, 1991, just like your daughter was, and when I saw that little girl’s picture on the back of a milk carton I knew it was me right off the bat.”
“Oh, did you now?” Mami sounded kinda New York-salty, like she had some snap about herself. “So who are your parents? Who raised you?”
“My mother’s name was Jude Jackson,” I said, which was the truth. “She raised me by herself. She was a single parent.” That part was mostly true.
“Well, did you think Ms. Jackson was really your birth mother? Or did she tell you that you were adopted?”
I swallowed hard again and sighed. “My mother had a really hard time admitting that I’d been adopted,” I lied, “but when I was about to graduate from high school she couldn’t come up with my birth certificate. I thought that was kinda suspicious, and it made me wonder if there was more to my story. I finally got her to admit that I wasn’t her biological child and I started searching for my birth family. After seeing my picture on the milk carton, I searched the Internet and found you.”
“Yes,” she said dryly. “I’m sure you did.”
I could tell I was losing her. Hell, if I had been expecting Mama Dominion to start jumping up and down and wiring me some of that cool Dominion cash, I was shit outta luck.
“It was good of you to call... What did you say your name was again?”
“Mink. Mink LaRue.”
“Mink, huh? Cute,” she said, and gave me one of those yeah-right-bitch chuckles. “Well Mink, I’m sure you know we get lots of calls like this from young ladies who claim to be our daughter Sable. I must say that one or two were quite convincing. But our daughter’s DNA is on file, and to this day nobody we tested has ever proven to be a match.”
DNA? I pumped my brakes.
They actually checked for that shit? How the hell was I gonna pass a goddamn DNA test?
“Oh, I’d be more than willing to take a DNA test,” I said eagerly. “I can—”
She cut me off. “Oh, that’s probably not necessary. There are other less complicated methods we use for screening these types of calls. You see our daughter has the sickle cell trait—”
“I have the sickle cell trait!” I damn-near shouted. I had forgotten all about it, but I definitely had it.
“Yes, but our daughter also had six toes.”
“
I
had six toes!” I shouted for real. “On both my feet! They chopped off the little nubs when I was a baby, but I can still see the scars from where they used to be!”
“That’s great, but like I said, before we can talk any further you’ll be required to take a DNA test.”
“That’s not a problem,” I assured her. “I live real close to Harlem Hospital. I’m sure they can do a test.”
“Sorry.” She dropped a bomb on me. “We’d need to have that test run by our own lab. It’s called Exclusively DNA, and it’s right here in Dallas.”
How the hell was I supposed to get around
that
?
Craziness rolled outta my mouth before I could stop myself. “I understand, Mrs. Dominion. I think I can come to your lab and have the test done. That won’t be a problem either.”
“At what age did you say you were you adopted?” she sounded a little bit more interested now.
“I guess I was about three,” I said quickly. “But all my life I knew I was different.”
“Hmm, different? How so?”
I got to spinning the wacky tale that me, Bunnie, and Peaches had come up with, and less than two minutes after I started talking I knew Selah Dominion was sitting in the palm of my hand. I had Mama’s ass! I had her good!
 
My little conversation with Selah Dominion had gone down exactly the way I wanted it to. The only thing I was stuck on was how to get around that damn DNA test, but then Bunni looked up the lab on the Internet and came up with a hustle of her own.
“All we gotta do is get on the inside,” she said. “Labs fuck shit up all the time, Mink. People get false results on all kinds of tests. Why can’t you get one?”
“Why can’t I get one what?”
“A fake test result, dummy! Yo.” Bunni slid the laptop closer to her and brought up Google. “Girl, don’t you watch
CSI
? What lab did the mother tell you to go to again?”
I looked down at all the notes I had scribbled. “Exclusively DNA. It’s in Dallas.”
“Cool.” Bunni tapped on the keyboard and brought up the lab’s Web site.
“Check this out. They offer immigration DNA, paternity DNA, and siblingship DNA.” I looked over her shoulder as she clicked on a tab that brought up another page. “They got four people working for them and thank God one of them is a dude.”
“Why?” I asked as we both stared at the smiling pictures of the lab’s staff members. There were three white chicks and one black man. The man’s name was Kelvin Merchant and he was light-skinned and big as hell.
“Because, stupid,” Bunni said with a real slick grin, “the dude is the one I’m gonna go after.”
BOOK: Natural Born Liar: The Misadventures of Mink LaRue
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