Queen Diamonds

by Noire

  He glanced at his hittas and grinned.

  “Grab ya bird and send them bastards a message that ya crew wants triple the loot this time! Since they wanna send us in blind as bats we wanna be compensated for that shit. Y’all feel me on that?”

  Whitey was dressed in a pizza delivery man’s uniform and standing on Slick’s right. He locked eyes with Slick real quick and then he chimed in with his usual level-headed common sense.

  “I feel where you’re coming from, Wild Man,” he said calmly. “But double the pay for a one-target hit isn’t too bad. I mean, we ain’t the only team out here trying to get on with jobs, you know. If we fool around and get too greedy they’ll just cross us off the roster and go with a cheaper crew. I’d be willing to do it for just the regular fee, so I’m good with double pay all day long.”

  Slick shook his head. “Nah, man. I’ma have to roll with Wild Man on this one, homey. These muthafuckas can’t keep feeding us half-assed information and expect us to stay on our toes. If they wanna pass over us and hire somebody else, then let ’em. Fuck it. This ain’t no video game we playing. If one of us drops we’re maggot food,” he continued. “There ain’t no magical re-set button that’ll bring us back to life so we can get up and try this shit again. I wanna take the job, but I say they gotta triple our payment this time too.”

  All eyes were now on Jewelz, who stood deep in thought with her arms folded over her chest and her foot tapping a hole in the ground.

  Finally she shrugged. “Look, if they wanna give us these big boy hits then we need that big boy paper! Tell them rich bitches to cough that bread up! If they can offer us double then they can damn sure afford triple.”

  It was all on Noodles, who had turned his back on the group and was looking up at the sky in thought. He had a woman and three kids at home depending on him and they had shit they needed. Without turning around he pulled his tablet from his pocket then scribbled something on the screen with his finger. He passed it over his shoulder to Jewelz.

  “I’m cool with whatever y’all wanna do,” Jewelz read his words out loud. “If y’all wanna pop some Queen then that bitch is a done bun. Let’s get it for triple.”

  Slick looked around at his posse one final time and then nodded.

  “A’ight. Then that’s it. I’ll send the bird out with a message requesting our new price,” he said firmly. “If our request comes back approved then we get to work. If it don’t, then fuck it. Just keep in mind that if we end up doing this shit I’ma need everybody to be sharp and on point. We don’t know what to expect so we got zero room for slip ups. We squeeze first and ask questions next year. Got it?”

  The entire crew nodded in agreement and then they dispersed for the night to wait for further instructions.

  CHAPTER 2

  Only in New York

  At exactly 8:12am the next morning the No. 4 train was barreling along the tracks as it headed uptown toward Grand Central Station in Manhattan.

  Hundreds of passengers were crammed in shoulder-to-shoulder on the bench seats while even more riders were standing up holding onto the shiny silver poles and overhead bars.

  The crowd was a mixed one. Young, old, and everything in between. The busy morning commute seemed the same as it did every other day. Passengers were either catching some quick zzz’s, reading on electronic devices, or fiddling with their cell phones. It was a regular train ride, on a regular morning, with regular New York people.

  Right up until the shit hit the fan and all hell broke loose.

  The uptown express had just pulled out of the 36th Street station and entered the dark tunnel when a loud commotion broke out near the end of the subway car.

  A heavyset white man was leaning against the conductor’s door when suddenly he reached out and snatched a little boy right out of his mother’s grasp.

  The woman’s shocked scream nearly got lost in the roar of the train, but the terror in her eyes as she lunged for her child was clear as day.

  “Get your fuckin hands off my son!” the young sista screeched as she lunged forward and fought her way past the other passengers.

  She had been holding onto a pole and minding her own business when the crazy-looking white man just upped and snatched her child. Terrified, she knocked a little old man outta her way and clawed toward her baby. But she stopped cold dead in her tracks when she saw what the deranged stranger was doing to her four-year-old little boy.

  Dude had her baby yoked up in a chokehold. The kid’s fragile neck was tightly compressed between the man’s forearm and his jiggly body, and the tip of a glittering silver pistol was jammed down into the child’s ear.

  “Stay back!” the pyscho-looking white man yelled as he pressed back against the door that led to the next train car. He was short and flabby and he looked like he was in his late-twenties or early thirties. His hair was wild and greasy and he had on a pair of raggedy blue jeans and a grimy white t-shirt.

  “Stay back or I’ll blow his fuckin brains out!” he shrieked. “I’ll kill this lil fucker! I swear I will!”

  A nutcase brandishing a loaded gun was never a good thing on a crowded subway, and the good people of New York City started ducking and diving as they peeped what was going down.

  “A gun! Run! He’s got a goddamn gun!” Desperate screams of sheer panic rose in the air as the passengers stampeded together and sought to find cover and concealment. But trapped on the train in the middle of the underground subway system, there was no place to run.

  Two teenage boys fought their way toward the opposite end of the train-car so they could escape into the next compartment, but the door was locked. Trapped, they banged their fists on the glass and tried to get the attention of the oblivious riders on the other side of the partition.

  The rest of the passengers pressed backwards and fought to get out of bullet range. Two elderly Asian men sitting in the double-seater jumped up and tried to push their way into the middle of the panicked crowd, but the crowd spit their asses right back out again.

  The young mother stood there in shock. In a jam-packed train-car she found herself facing a crazed gunman all alone. She was just a teenager and all she was trying to do was get to 42nd Street so she could go on a job-training interview. She had brought her little boy with her because her mother was sick and she couldn’t find nobody else to watch him.

  “Mister gimme my son back!” she screamed as she pleaded with the insanity in the gunman’s eyes. Her mama would just kill her if she let something happen to her precious grandchild!

  “Jamel, don’t cry,” the young mother called out helplessly to her son. “Mommy’s right here, baby,” she reached her arms out and tried to soothe him. “Everything is gonna be okay. Baby, don’t cry. Somebody help me! Please, somebody help!”

  But every last one of her fellow passengers was crouched into a frightened huddle and they had all abandoned her. Every last one of them except for a sucka-looking white guy in a Brooks Brothers suit. He sat there holding a bag and watching the action as he lounged calmly in the two-seater directly to her right.

  Tearing her eyes off her son, the girl glanced into the crowd panting desperately. “Why is y’all just standing there?” she shrieked. “Please! He’s got my baby, yo! Somebody please do something!”

  Still, nobody moved.

  “Does anyone have a signal down here?” a white woman hollered from her ducked-down position in the middle of the pack. “Dial 9-11! Someone should try to dial 9-11!”

  “I’m gonna kill him!” the psychopath hollered as the train roared down the tracks. His beady eyes were wild and full of rage. “This little fucker’s gonna die!”

  “Noooo!” the young mother pleaded as she desperately reached for her son again. Her baby’s eyes were bulging outta his head and a trail of saliva slid out the corner of his mouth. The look on his face sent a spear piercing into her heart, and she was just about to go for broke and bum rush his ass, but the sight of the gun’s barrel pressed down in her baby’s ear che
cked her feet right in place.

  “Mister what do you want?” she shrieked as she held her hands up in surrender. “We don’t even know your crazy ass! Why are you doing this to us? Why?”

  “Because I’m Jesus!!!” the deluded man gave her a sickening smile. “I’m the holy fuckin spirit and I’m gonna nail this lil black bastard to a cross and drink his fuckin blood!”

  “Noooo!” the terrified young girl stomped her feet and wailed. “Please gimme back my baby!”

  “He’s got twenty seconds,” the psycho said quietly. The deranged smile fell from his face and he squeezed his arm tighter around the boy’s neck, lifting the gasping kid off his feet.

  “I’m counting to twenty,” he said as the little boy kicked and wheezed in his arms. “And then I’m gonna blow this lil sinner’s brains out!”

  “Noooo!” the young mother shrieked again. She looked into the crowd one more time.

  “Can y’all help me?” she begged desperately. “Can anybody help me?”

  Her question was met with fear, horror, and even compassion in the eyes of her fellow passengers. But none of them, not even the buff-ass men, were willing to risk taking a bullet to help save a small child.

  The crazy man began to count out loud.

  “One, two, three, four . . .”

  “C’mon, Mister!” The young girl snapped. “Stop fuckin playin! That’s my baby, man . . . we didn’t even do nothin to you . . .”

  “…five, six, seven . . .”

  The young mother turned her back on her child one last time as she searched the crowd for a savior. She begged God to bring forth just one brave soul who had the courage to rescue her little man. Just one!

  “…eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve . . .”

  “Mister can you help us?” she took a step forward and pleaded with a tall brother who had neat dreadlocks hanging around his shoulders. Dude’s chest swelled as he inhaled a deep breath and made a move like he was getting his courage up. But a quick glance down the barrel of the psycho’s gun checked him where he stood and he dropped his eyes in shame and looked away.

  “Can you?” The girl implored the biggest dude she saw. He was a muscled-up Hispanic guy dressed in sweatpants and a Brooklyn Nets t-shirt. “Please, Mister. Can you help me get this crazy maniac offa my son?”

  Behind her, dude’s voice was steady as he counted out clear and loud. “…thirteen, fourteen . . .”

  The train was slowing down now as it pulled into the next stop.

  “Forty-Second Street,” the conductor’s voice crackled over the loudspeaker. “Grand Central Station.”

  “…fifteen, sixteen . . .”

  The young mother turned back around, completely defeated. “Jamel,” she moaned about to pee on herself from fear. “Oooh, baby!”

  She reached toward her son and braced herself for a real-life nightmare.

  “Mommy loves you, baby. Mommy loves you!”

  The train was grinding to a stop and frantic passengers started waving their arms and screaming out to the people who were waiting on the platform.

  “Call the cops!” several people shouted and banged on the windows. “He snatched a kid! He’s got a gun! Call the cops!”

  Dude’s voice grew even louder. “…seventeen, eighteen. . .”

  The little boy’s body went stiff and his eyes rolled back.

  The train was at a complete stop now and the hydraulics hissed loudly as the doors got ready to open.

  “Nineteen—”

  Suddenly the white businessman sitting in the two-seater stood up and charged toward the exit doors. Carrying his bag, he reached in the pocket of his Brooks Brothers pants and withdrew a chrome object and—

  Boom!

  The gun blast sent glass flying and terrified passengers diving for cover as they dropped to the floor and held purses and briefcases over their heads like they were Teflon shields.

  “Jamel!” the young mother screamed as she lunged for her child.

  The body of the hostage-taker slid slowly to the glass-strewn floor. A single bullet had pierced his Adam’s apple and torn out his larynx. He slumped down on his ass and made frantic whistling noises as he gasped for breath through the bright-red hole in his throat.

  The train doors slid open and the waiting crowd spilled inside. Their eyes were on scan mode as they looked for vacant seats. But the moment they peeped the bloody carnage they immediately pressed backwards, shrieking in surprise as the frightened passengers on the train rushed the doors and tried to push their way out.

  And in the midst of all the hysteria, while the young mother fell to her knees and clutched her precious little man-man in her grateful arms, not one person focused on the well-dressed gunslinger as he walked off the train.

  Broken glass crunched beneath the soles of his two-thousand dollar shoes as he stepped lively through the station, moving like he was late for an important business meeting.

  Moments later, without taking a single glance toward the life he had just taken, or the one he had just saved, the handsome gunslinger stashed his .38 Ruger in the pocket of his Brooks Brothers suit, then he blended into the crowded sea of other white businessmen and quickly disappeared.

  CHAPTER 3

  Cookies and Coke

  Middle School 23 was located in the heart of Jamaica, in the quintessential town of Queens. It had a large minority population and quite a few of its students came from broken homes that fell well below the poverty line. A good number of their fathers were serving time in New York’s penal system, and many young mothers were living for the city and just trying to get by.

  Which is why when Fat Donnie Hassell, the warden of St. John’s Home for Boys, was invited to D.A.R.E. Day to speak about the pitfalls of drugs and crime, he had jumped on the invitation.

  Fat Donnie had stayed up late the night before writing his speech. He wrote all kinds of motivating shit and made sure to hit key points about how pursuing a life of crime could land you in a juvenile detention facility such as the one he ran for criminal-minded young boys.

  Fat Donnie knew all about criminal-minded boys because he had been one himself. He’d been born and raised in the belly of Brooklyn, and he’d done a whole lotta wild, scandalous shit in his youth. He had an appetite for young, tender meat and it was only through sheer luck that he had been able to turn his life around, although truth be told, Fat Donnie was still a criminal at heart.

  He arrived at the middle school bright and early and was escorted to the principal’s office by a shriveled-up white woman in a pale pink dress.

  He was ushered into a small reception room right outside the auditorium along with all the other program participants. There were at least six speakers scheduled to go onstage. Donnie was planning to dip out and take care of a little business before returning to work, so he needed folks to keep their bullshit speeches short and sweet.

  Trays of freshly baked cookies and warm brownies had been set out by the D.A.R.E. organizers and a heavenly aroma was in the air. Never one to miss out on anything free and sweet, Fat Donnie headed straight for the cookies. He scooped up a napkin and palmed six giant chocolate-chip cookies in his paws, then he grabbed a paper cup of Coke and let his eyes scan the room.

  There were several men and women standing around chatting in tight groups. Donnie recognized a few faces from local law enforcement and social service agencies but nobody acknowledged him or invited him to join them.

  Donnie said fuck it as he stood on the edges of the crowd gobbling cookies and brownies and slurping down cup after cup of Coke. With his jaws steady moving, he let his mind wander to the real reason that he had agreed to come to Jamaica, Queens early this morning.

  It was said that you could take the boy outta the hood, but you couldn’t take the hood outta the boy, and Donnie knew that shit to be true. After years of living the grime-ball life he had moved on to bigger and better things, but he had never been fully rehabilitated or taken his fingers out of certain sweet, tight little p
ies. Matter fact, it was almost laughable that he had ended up in charge of a facility full of hardheaded young crooks and thieves when he was the biggest criminal of them all.

  Donnie’s plan for today was to get up on that microphone and spit some nonsense at these little convicts-in-the-making who would probably end up under the jail no matter what the hell he hollered at them.

  And when he was done, Donnie planned to head over to a local family-owned pie shop where he would conduct a little give-and-take transaction in a parking stall behind the store. He would give the owner a couple of crisp greenbacks to get him to send his pretty teenaged niece outside, and then Donnie would take as many licks as he wanted from her sweet young pie.

  Donnie grinned as he scooped up another handful of cookies and two more brownies. Peddling teenaged pussy from sleazy motel rooms was way in his past, but getting up in some tight young cat was still something he did as often as possible.

  He was raising his cup of Coke to his lips when a stylish young black woman staggered away from a nearby group and started coughing violently.

  She had on a tight black skirt and shiny red high heels, and Donnie stood frozen as she stumbled backward, pounding on her chest and making horrible choking noises like all the air was being squeezed from her body.

  Concerned murmurs of, “Oh my God! Are you okay?” went up in the air, and the woman, who Donnie couldn’t help noticing had the prettiest legs and the fattest ass he had seen in a good long while, bent over in her black skirt clutching her throat and coughing like crazy.

  “Somebody do the Heimlich!” an old white lady screamed. Three men moved toward the coughing chick, but before they could reach her she lunged at Donnie and snatched his cup of Coke right outta his hand. Desperately, she slurped from it in several long swallows.

  “S-s-sorry,” she said, handing the cup back to him with tears streaming from her beautiful eyes. Donnie stood there with his mouth full of half-chewed brownies looking dumb as fuck as he eyed her shapely hips in that lil tight skirt.