PLAYIN FOR KEEPS
Chapter Two
“Here he comes,” Loon whispered as he gripped his .45 handgun and pressed his back against the wall.
“Shut the fuck up!” Zion whispered back. He pulled the ski mask over his face.
They had been waiting in Mookie’s house for over two hours, anticipating his return.
Zion had discovered where Mookie lived a few weeks back and had been plotting on the right time to catch him slipping. This was that moment. He held his double-barrel shotgun and pointed it toward the door as he casually stood in front of Mookie’s fluffy sofa.
Mookie walked through the door. He had another man with him. He turned on the light switch and found himself looking down the barrel of a shotgun.
“Welcome home.” Zion walked toward the men.
Mookie’s henchman didn’t even see Loon as he crept up behind him and put a pistol to his neck.
“Fuck!” Mookie put his hands behind his head. He already knew the drill. “You can take off that mask, nigga. It ain’t a secret who you are.” He kept shaking his head, regretting not being more cautious. He couldn’t see himself paying a man to take him off his “to rob” list, but now he was suffering the consequences.
“You right.” Zion snatched his mask off and looked into Mookie’s eyes.
Zion was known for sticking drug dealers. Zion had the whole city on lock. He only sold drugs in the Terrace projects, but everywhere else was fair game for robbery. Drug dealers actually paid him to not stick them up. He ran with Loon, and everyone knew that Loon didn’t have it all and would kill on demand for Zion.
Mookie and Zion stared at each other intensely in a brief moment of silence.
“You playin’ fo’ keeps, huh, playboy?”
“You know it, baby. But fuck the small talk. Take me to the stash.” Zion pressed the barrel to Mookie’s chest.
“I don’t keep the money here.” Mookie shrugged his shoulders. “There’s nothing in the house.”
Zion smiled and looked at Loon, who had his gun on the other man. Zion gave Loon a nod, and the sound of a .45 blast erupted. Loon shot the man in the back of the head, causing his noodles to fly all in Mookie’s face.
“What the fuck!” Mookie yelled in shock as he watched his man fall dead right beside him.
“Don’t lie to me, man,” Zion said in a calm voice. “We have been tailing you for weeks now. You got two days of your trap in here somewhere. Now I’ma ask you one more time, and if you lie, I’ma let Loon do his thing. Feel me?”
Mookie glanced at Loon, who had an insane glare in his eye, and he knew that look only too well. Loon’s trigger finger was itching, and he was ready to pop off. “Damn!” Mookie yelled. He regretted not visiting the safe deposit box that week. “It’s underneath my bed in a safe.”
Zion laughed and nodded at Loon again.
Loon aimed his gun at Mookie’s leg and let off another round, instantly dropping him to his knees.
Zion bent to one knee, so he would be face to face with the whimpering Mookie, who was gripping his wounded leg. “Why are you playing with your life, son? We already checked in that safe under yo’ bed. That’s where you keep this, right?” Zion pulled out a black 9 mm from his back pocket. “What you thought? We were rookies? You watch too many movies, nigga. You thought you were going to go to the box and start blasting, huh? That ain’t how shit go in real life. I’ma ask you one more time—Where’s the dough?”
“Man, it’s in the freezer in the basement.”
“In the freezer? I would have never thought of that.” Zion smiled, knowing that he was about to hit a lick. He quickly rushed down the stairs and headed for the deep freezer.
Once Zion was in the basement, he cracked open the freezer, moved around some of the frozen vegetables, and just as Mookie promised, there were Ziploc bags with neatly stacked hundred-dollar bills in them. He rubbed his hands together. “That’s what I’m talking about!”
Zion quickly ran back upstairs to grab a garbage bag and tell Loon that the money was where Mookie said it would be. He nodded at Loon, signaling to him that the money was downstairs, and almost instantly, Loon put a bullet in the back of Mookie’s head, rocking him to sleep permanently.
Mookie grunted just before he fell face down on the carpet, where a small puddle of blood began to spread, turning the beige carpet maroon. The air quickly began to stink of human waste. Mookie had eased his bowels on himself, because of his relaxed muscles.
Loon smiled as he stared at the body. The stink had become so familiar, it didn’t even bother him anymore. He stepped over Mookie’s dead body, like it was litter on a city street, and followed Zion down the stairs, where they both began to pull the money out of the freezer like madmen and tossed it into a heavy-duty garbage bag.
Nautica, wearing a thong-and-bra set and a gold see-through wrap tied around her waist, oiled her butt cheeks in circular motions as she looked at her profile in the full-length mirror. The bass from the speakers on the main stage shook the floor in the back dressing room, where the scent of musk mixed in with various female body odors drifted around the room. She shook her head. She hated the fact that she degraded herself for money, but she did her best with the hand she was dealt. “I got to get out this mu’fuckin’ strip club, straight up!” she mumbled to herself as she pulled her garter belt up to her thigh. She’d been working in Magic City for six months and always told herself that she would make five thousand dollars and quit, but that day was yet to come.
Her mind began to drift as she thought about Zion and the incredible night they’d shared the night before. She smiled as she thought about their bonding so quickly and naturally. She felt her love button pulsate just at the thought. She also had flashbacks about the way he put it down in the bed. And she loved that they talked for hours after they’d had sex, great sex at that, and it was never a dull moment. Nautica didn’t know if it was because she hadn’t had sex in a while, or because he had the stroke of a genius. Either way, she loved it.
I can’t believe I slept with him on the first night, though.
Something overcame her the night before, and she found herself being more freaky than ever.
Nautica was definitely planning on seeing Zion again. In fact, they’d made plans to have breakfast the next day. Mentioning that she was a stripper always worried her when she talked to a guy, and with Zion it was no different.
I’ll wait until he gets to know me
, she thought. Her eyes shot to the dressing room entrance when she heard the distinctive loud voice of her cousin Khia coming from the main floor and into the dressing room.
Khia wore a full-body fishnet suit that hugged her body tight and left nothing to the imagination, which was just the way she liked it, raw and uncensored. She sashayed in slowly in her six-inch stilettos, shifting her hips as she walked, making her plump ass cheeks sway back and forth. On the small of her back, a tattooed
Q
inside a black rose displayed her loyalty to her man, Quaye.
“Hey, girl, you up next!”
Nautica looked at Khia and instantly knew that she was “rolling”—a term Khia used to describe being high on ecstasy pills. “I know. I’m on my way out right now,” Nautica said as she hurried out to make her grand entrance.
“Oh, yeah! Fellas, I got something fo’ y’all tonight. Coming to the stage, put yo’ hands together for Naughty!” the DJ yelled into the microphone as the sounds of Young Jeezy began to rock the house.
Zion and Loon walked into the club iced-out, both of them wearing all black and shades. Zion slipped the bouncer at the door two hundred dollars to let them slide in with their guns, always a necessity for their line of work. They bounced their head to the rhythm of the music as they made their way to the back of the club to get a table. Zion usually sat in the VIP section, but on that night he wanted to just relax and not draw attention to himself. They maneuvered through the crowd and found a seat at a back table. Zion waved over a waitress just before he sat down.
“Yo’, life is good right now,” Zion said, nodding his head to the music.
“That’s for damn sure.” Loon thought about the twenty-eight grand they’d just taken from Mookie.
As they got settled in, Zion took a closer look at the stripper on the stage that swung on the pole. Normally he wouldn’t remember a face, but the performance that she’d put on the night before had her etched into his mind. It was Nautica. Zion smiled as he watched her do her thing, bouncing her assets on stage like a seasoned veteran.
Loon noticed that Zion’s eyes was stuck on the dancer. “Yo’, ain’t that shorty you scooped up yesterday?”
Zion answered, “Yeah. I didn’t know she was a stripper though.”
When the waitress came over, Zion ordered a bottle of Rémy Martin and two shot glasses. He then slipped her a hundred-dollar bill to tell Nautica to come see him when her performance was over. Zion licked his lips and rubbed his hands together, knowing that it was a must to see Nautica again. The day before, he’d made it appear to her that he was a hustler, but that wasn’t how he got down. Only a select few knew he was a thief, but he knew that profession was less appealing to the women, so he let Nautica come up with her own assumptions.
Nautica finished off her set with a grand finale by slowly sliding down the pole and landing in a split and making her butt cheeks jump up and down, one then the other. The crown erupted with cheer as she got up and began to pick up the dollar bills scattered all over the stage. Nautica hurried off stage as she stuffed the crumbled bills into her bra. She wiped the sweat from her forehead and chest, as she made her way to the back room to freshen up before she walked the floor for lap dances.
Just as she stepped off stage, Angie came over to her. She said excitedly, “Yo’, you have a request in the corner.” She threw her head in the direction of Zion. “He’s spending big money too!”
Nautica looked over and squinted her eyes to get a better view, and after a brief second of staring she noticed him
. Damn, what the hell! I didn’t want the nigga to find out like this. Fuck it, he was eventually going to discover it anyway
. She walked to the back to freshen up, switching hard just in case he was looking.
Ten minutes later Nautica strutted out of the back wearing a different two-piece than she had on before. She headed over to Zion’s table, where she saw Loon and him taking shots. “Hey, Zion,” she said smiling as she stood before him.
“Hey,
Naughty
,” he said sarcastically. He smiled at her and scooted over in the booth, so she could have a seat next to him.
“Shut up.” Nautica playfully hit him. “This isn’t how I wanted to tell you about my night job, but I guess it’s not secret now, huh?”
“Nah, but it’s cool though, ma. I see you about your paper. I understand.” Zion poured himself another shot and looked at Nautica’s body up and down. “I had a great time with you, though. Shit was crazy, right?”
“Yeah, I have never been like that before. Something came over me.”
Zion smiled but remained silent. He knew why she was so “sexually free” on that night. He had slipped some ecstasy into her drink and gave her a little help with her confidence by doing so. It was something that Zion did often to females just to ensure that he would have fun. “So what up, ma? When can I see you again?”
“I get off in a couple of hours . . . if you want to wait.” “Sound like a plan,” Zion said, hoping he had more ecstasy pills left in the car.
Next Morning
Nautica walked into her apartment that she shared with Khia. She was trying to shake the headache that she had from the night before. She and Zion had been up all night sexing, rolling on ecstasy pills. When Zion first showed her the pills, she refused, but he was very persuasive and got her to pop one. After she experienced the way it made her feel, she popped them all night without a care in the world. She dropped her gym bag at the door and plopped on the couch. The smell of bacon and eggs filled the air, and she heard someone in the kitchen moving around.
Moments later Khia joined her in the living room and sat on the couch next to her. “I thought I heard you come in.” Khia began to eat her breakfast. “How did it go?”
“It was okay. We stayed up all night rolling. He did his thing last night,” Nautica said, referring to Zion’s sex game. She got up and walked into the kitchen to grab a fork.
“I can tell he did. You walking like you got a stick up yo’ butt.”
Nautica yelled, “I did have one up there!” and disappeared into the kitchen.
Both girls burst into laughter.
When Nautica returned, she sat on the couch next to Khia and began to eat breakfast off her plate.
Khia got up to turn on the television. “So, you feeling that nigga Zion, huh?”
“Yeah, he’s cool.”
“I heard he getting that paper too. That’s always a plus.”
“You got that right. Shit, I’m trying to come up.” Nautica looked around the small two-bedroom apartment.
“Oh yeah, I wanted to talk you about something,” Khia said as she sat back on the sofa, “but you left the club so quick.”