“You already know how I feel.”
“Yeah, I do! You little bitch!” I jokingly said, elbowing him in the ribs.
“What was that for?”
“For your comment from two days ago when you said I was in your top three of all time sex partners.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Helloooo, I should be number one, not just in the top three. Punk ass!”
Stephon chuckled.“See, if I told you that you were number one and that your pussy was the best I ever had, then you wouldn’t stay on top of your game. Competition brings out the best in everybody.”
“Competition? Nigga, I’ll cut your dick off if you fuckin’ somebody else.” I grabbed him by his balls.
“Ahh shit! Chill, chill. That’s not what I was trying to say.” Stephon laughed and grimaced at the same time as he tried to explain himself.“See, your pussy is the best, but I have to tell you that it’s in the top three because, if I said it was the best, you wouldn’t have no motivation to do all them little pussy-tightening tricks that you do when we’re fucking.”
I looked at Stephon with playful suspicion. “Um, hmmm.”
At that moment my phone started to ring. I looked at the caller ID and realized that it was my dad. I already knew what he wanted, so I was hesitant to pick up the phone. Not to mention, speaking to my dad was totally going to fuck up the lovey-dovey mood that me and Stephon was enjoying.
Eventually I answered and had to listen to my father’s slick talk. I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about his insisting that he fly out West. He and I hadn’t been on the best terms since my mother took her own life. At first I’d blamed everyone. Now I only blamed one.
“Your old man don’t have nowhere else to go, Honey. And I’m not taking no for an answer. I’m your father. I brought you in this world, and I can take you out!”
My father was always using those old-school terms that, as a child, intimidated me. As an adult, they were very comical.
“Daddy, I wasn’t saying no. I was saying not right now.”
“Those word games don’t work on your old man. I put you through the school of manipulation. Now I need to be on the next thing smoking.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m at your Aunt Betty’s house. I swear, between her funky-ass feet and her loud cackling, I’m one day away from putting my foot up her ass!”
“How you gonna threaten your sister and you’re living under her roof?”
“Her roof? This your roof. And every other taxpayer who’s footing the bill. I swear, if I was in office, I’d do away with all that welfare, Section 8, unemployment, disability bullshit! It would all have to go. All it does and has done is handicap a whole race. Just genocide to keep them trapped in a labyrinth of poverty, drugs, and black-on-black crime.”
I listened to my father’s hypocrisy. He was a sketchy man with shifty eyes. Back in his day he terrorized a whole neighborhood.
“Well, you’ve had your hand in black-on-black crime, and let’s not go there about taxpayers’ dollars, when you never worked an honest job in your life.”
“See? There you go. I paid my debt to society. Besides, this isn’t about me.”
“It never is.”
“I know I don’t hear any sarcasm coming out your mouth.”
I wasn’t about to be baited into an argument. “I’ll have a ticket waiting for you at JFK Airport on Sunday. I’ll call you and give you the details.”
“So I guess there wasn’t any sarcasm?”
We both laughed.
“You always have to have the last word,” I said, matter-of-factly.
“That’s what bosses do.”
We hung up, and I redirected my attention back to Stephon.
“So, you’re making arrangements for your father to come?”
I rolled my eyes. “If you couldn’t tell, he forced his way here.”
“He shouldn’t have to force himself on his daughter.”
“I hope you’re not judging me.” I sat up straight in bed, no longer wanting to cuddle. “You don’t know my family like I do.”
“But I want to get to know them, Honey.” Stephon rubbed my cheek with his hand gently. “They’re an extension of you, and I want to know everything about you.”
“Babe, I swear I don’t know if you’re ready for this level of dysfunction.”
“Actually, I love family dysfunction. My family was so straight-laced and boring, it’s like a breath of fresh air,” Stephon replied.
“Yeah, you say that now, but you haven’t met my gangster-ass father and ghetto-ass brother yet.”
“So they still coming out here?”
“Unfortunately, yes, they are.”
Stephon had no idea why my brother was coming out to Vegas to see me, and he also had no idea about the get-money plot I was planning on pulling off.
***
See, truth be told, Stephon was the last type of dude I thought I would end up with. That was because he and I came from two completely different worlds. Stephon was from a two-parent household and had grown up in the Las Vegas suburbs with all kinds of stability and shielding from the horrors of life. What he experienced was the exact and complete opposite of what I had experienced.
Where I grew up sort of shaped the type of dudes I was attracted to. Even though I had been with Dré from my teenage years, I had always been attracted to the rough, bad-boy, hustler type dudes. I think it was because, to me, those type of dudes represented strength, protection, and a form of financial stability, all of which made me feel secure in a womanly kind of way.
Stephon was as attractive as they come. He was light-skinned, with perfect waves, and he had a nice body with the six-pack to match. Everything about Stephon screamed pretty boy. Nothing about him screamed hustler or roughneck, and that was the only thing about him that had turned me off in the beginning when I first met him.
Fortunately for me, I had decided to give Stephon a play, and I gave him my number even though his rap was real weak in my opinion. I still laughed to myself at times when I thought back to when and how I’d first met him. I was heading in to work at the Bellagio when I saw a stretch Hummer limo parked in front of the hotel, which was a pretty common sight in Vegas. Only, this time the driver was trying to holler at me.
“Excuse me, can I talk to you for a moment?” Stephon had said to me as I walked briskly past him. He was dressed in a single-breasted black suit with a white shirt and skinny black necktie, looking like the epitome of lame.
“I’m sorry, but I’m really in a hurry,” I said courteously.
“Two minutes, that’s all I want,” Stephon said, holding up two fingers and giving me a look like a child begging for a Happy Meal or something.
I shook my head, and I blew some air from my lungs as I stopped in my tracks.
Stephon smiled and approached me.“I guess I made myself look pretty obvious.”
I was totally confused, and my face showed it. I asked him, “What are you talking about?”
“The way I be staring at you when I always see you,” he replied.
“Me?”
Stephon nodded his head.
“Really? Well, actually, I never seen you before in my life, but like I was saying, I really have to go, and your two minutes are up.”
Stephon knew that he was cute and with his pretty-boy look he was coming across as if he was God’s gift to women. I knew I had deflated his ego, but that wasn’t what I was even trying to do. All I was doing was being honest. And the truth was, he may have noticed me in the past, but I really didn’t remember ever seeing him at all.
Stephon asked the obvious after looking at my name tag and uniform. “So, Honey, you work for the Bellagio?”
“Yes, I do. Listen, can we cut to the chas
e. I don’t give out my number, but give me yours, and I’ll call you in a couple of days. But I really have to bounce, or I’m gonna be late.”
Stephon nodded his head. He reached into his pocket for a business card and handed it to me.
“OK, Stephon?” I asked after reading his card.
“Yes, you pronounced it correct. I own the company, so you can call me at anytime.”
I nodded my head as I looked at Stephon. I could tell that he expected me to just be so blown away and impressed by the fact that he owned a limo company, but I wasn’t.
There was about fifteen seconds of awkward silence, and then I stuck out my hand and told him that it was nice to meet him, that I would call him, and I walked off.
***
“Ha ha ha ha ha!” I got up from the bed and prepared to go into the kitchen to cook some food.
Stephon asked me, “What’s so funny?”
“I was just thinking about how weak your game was when we first met and how corny you were,” I said in a non-hurtful way.
“Yeah, but fast-forward six weeks after that and I was tapping that ass.”
“Fuck you.” I smiled and walked out of the room.
“I make you rain, baby. Admit it. Let me hear you admit that shit,” Stephon jokingly yelled from the room.
The truth was, he definitely did know how to fuck me the way I liked to be fucked. But aside from the sex, it was so hard for me to explain how I ended up falling for him the way I did. Stephon’s parents were Haitian, so I always teased him, telling him that he must have put a spell of Haitian voodoo on me or something.
As it turned out, I did like the fact that Stephon was an entrepreneur. Although he only had one limo in his company, he did have the drive and ambition to make it. I knew that eventually he was going to build his company to the point where he had a huge fleet of limos and drivers.
And if things were to work out the way I hoped, Stephon didn’t know it, but I was planning on hitting him off with the money he needed to purchase the fleet of limos he needed to take him to the next level.
My baby worked way too hard and worked all kinds of crazy hours trying to make it, so I was definitely going to get him up from under that daily grind as soon as I pulled off the crime of the century.
***
The hot Nevada sun beat down on my back. The spaghetti strap T-shirt was an open invitation to sunburn. I was pacing back and forth on the sidewalk of McCarran International Airport waiting for my father’s flight to arrive. I had mixed emotions about his arrival. I was smack-dab in the middle of negotiating and masterminding the biggest heist in the history of Las Vegas. And although I knew my dad would be down for whatever, I also didn’t need any distractions. My father had high highs and low lows, not to mention an addiction.
“Little Bit!”
I immediately spun around. Any icicles I had around my heart immediately melted. I hadn’t heard that nickname in years.
“Come give your old man a hug.”
With arms gaping, I enveloped myself into his warm embrace and was accosted by Rémy Martin.
He was all juiced up and obviously feeling good. “So what’s really good out here?”
“Whatever your pleasure. Most people get caught up in the casinos either because they’re amateur or professional gamblers, or they work the casino like I do. I’m a blackjack dealer.”
“Come off it, Honey. You think I had you fly me halfway around the world to hear you talk about blackjack?”
We walked toward my parked car and got in. “Dad, you flew five hours. Why do you always have to exaggerate?”
“You know what I mean. I keep telling you to stop being so literal. I have to always exaggerate and also think outside the box. It keeps you one step ahead of the game. Had you listened to your old man’s advice, it would not have gone down the way it did with the ATF.”
That acronym still had the power to make me cringe.
“Let’s not go there, OK.”
“Still salty?”
“Wouldn’t you be?”
“Fuck it. It’s the past. You can’t rewrite history, but you can write your future. You wrote the blueprint to how it went down when you opened the floodgates of your big mouth. Had you not confided in that dude about me and your brother, he would not have had the ammunition needed to fuck you over. And I’m not talkin’ about the attempted sexual assault. Didn’t I always tell you real bosses move in silence?”
“I don’t know what got into me. He had just made me feel comfortable enough to open up.”
“Honey, everyone has a predatory muscle, as everyone has a weakness. Your weakness exposed his predatory muscle.”
I shifted in my seat, still seething from not exacting revenge. Because I lost my job, I could no longer pay for my mother’s medical. The insurance company dropped me, and I was no longer able to pay for her to get the treatment she needed. It didn’t take long for her to go off her meds, slit her wrist, and take a permanent nap. The depression coupled with psychosis was too much for anyone to handle alone.
“But it’s not all bad though,” I exclaimed. “I actually learned so much from not only that incident but also from my training at the ATF. Invaluable information that one day I will put to good use.”
“Now we’ve come full circle.”
“We have?”
“Why the fuck did you send for your brother? Whatever you two got planned, I want in.”
Chapter 3
Chief sat in his sister’s apartment with his feet perched on her coffee table. His dirty Tims had seen better days. He was sporting a pair of oversized Sean John jeans and no shirt. His hairy chest, tattered with bulletholes wasn’t an appealing sight. There was a half-pound of weed on a plate, not for resale but for his pleasure. Two spliffs were cut and ready to be filled to the brim with purple haze and a bottle of Hennessy barely had a swallow left. Pumpkin, some random chick he picked up at the Wynn Hotel and Casino, was buttnaked. She had fucked him all morning and was patiently waiting to get paid. Sundays were usually slow, so she didn’t mind allowing the clock to tick on just one john.
Chief had moves to make and needed a quick come-up, so when his sister called, he didn’t think twice about leaving New York. Honey couldn’t really talk over the telephone, but he knew that she’d better make his dropping everything to come to Vegas worth it. She’d sent him the cash to take a flight via Western Union, but his goon squad—Big Meech and Delano—had to take the Greyhound bus out West. They were pissed, but Chief explained they had to charge that to the game.
“Yo, what time you getting up outta here?” Chief asked, suddenly bored with the country chick.
Pumpkin was trying to throw in another blowjob or a quickie to increase her fee. Although she never got attached to a trick, he did have some good dick. “What’s the rush, baby?” she purred, reaching for his dick.
Chief smacked her hand away. “Stop! And get up and put some clothes on. It’s damn near three o’clock in the afternoon and you’re still up in here butt-ass naked.”
Pumpkin didn’t like the shift in his mood, but she was used to erratic behavior from her tricks.“I just want to know where you got to be that’s better than right here with me.”
Chief stood up and hovered over the petite, fragile Pumpkin.“Are you questioning me, bitch?”
“No, no, not at all, baby. I just wanted to make you feel good.”
“First off, I ain’t your baby. I’m a grown-ass man. Don’t be running that tramp talk like I’m some lame muthafucka who don’t get pussy.”
Pumpkin began biting her bottom lip. Her eyes cut to her Marc Jacobs bag, where she held her .380.
Chief walked toward her purse. “Oh, you want this?” It was heavy, and immediately he knew what was up. Inside he found her Smith & Wesson gun. Instantly he was
filled with rage. He quickly pulled out on her, and Pumpkin knew she was in deep shit.
“You were trying to set me up, bitch?”
“Set you up? What are you talkin—”
The backhand slap with the large ring on his finger silenced the stunned Pumpkin. Her hands immediately went up to shield herself from further blows. Thick blood oozed out of her wound, and she knew the injury would surely scar and leave a mark. She was pissed.
“Oh, you ain’t got shit to say now, right? Huh?” Chief towered over the trembling woman. “You think a nigga like me don’t got the baddest chicks waiting on me back home?”
Pumpkin took a deep breath and exhaled. She needed to regain control of the situation before it went too far. “I know you do, big daddy. That’s why I wanted to spend as much time with you as possible and didn’t want to share your good lovin’ with anyone else.”
Chief didn’t hesitate to smash his fist into her jaw. He punched on the woman like he was fighting a dude in the streets, her lean body taking blow after blow of his indescribable fury. Seconds felt like days to the helpless Pumpkin. All she could do was ball her body up into the fetal position and try her best to protect her head and face. Eventually the blows slowed down to a halt.
“Look what you made me do!” Chief barked. “Done fucked up my Tims and everything wit’ your blood. I should make you clean all this shit up!” He grabbed Pumpkin up by her arm like a rag doll and tossed her off the sofa. “Go in the kitchen and get something to clean up this mess!”
The still defiant Pumpkin wanted no parts in the cleanup.“Just give me my money, so I can leave. You done had your fun with me. Now playtime is over!” she said, her breasts heaving up and down from fear and anger.
Chief’s laughter was high-pitched and maniacal. “You thought I was gonna pay for your wack-ass pussy?” He emptied the contents of her purse onto the table and grabbed her wallet. “No, bitch. You’re gonna pay for this good dick. Isn’t that what you said? That I had some good lovin’. Well, let’s see, I charge”—He counted all her cash—“two hundred and forty-seven dollars for this good lovin’. And you’re lucky, because that’s my discounted rate.”
Dirty Money Honey Page 4
