Casanegra

by Blair Underwood

  Needless to say, she was drawing a crowd. A growing huddle of men trailed after her, hooting and pointing.

  “Hey, sweet stuff, you wanna take a ride?” One dude hanging out of the driver’s-side window of his black Lexus ran the light, nearly broadsiding a yellow Hummer. Two cops near the club’s door were already peering in her direction, ready to investigate the commotion. Honey’s pace slowed, uncertain. The crowd began to close around her, penning her in.

  “Honey!” Ten feet behind her, I called her name like I was her daddy. Hell, I could have been; she didn’t look a day over nineteen. She froze in midstep, pivoting around to look at me. Yep, she was the one.

  It was a good thing Mother hired Honey a bodyguard. This sister needed one.

  “I’m Ten.” I whipped off my black leather jacket, flung it across her shoulders, and pulled it closed across her bosom in a single motion, hiding her tantalizing banks of skin. The crowd groaned and cussed, but I had gotten to her in time. The cops were pushing their way past the gawkers, but for once, there was nothing to see. Just a man with his arm around a girl in a black jacket and heels. No flesh, no blood. The cops hardly gave us a glance, their hands relaxing away from their holsters.

  Honey had the nerve to poke out her lip at me. “Who the hell do you—”

  I spoke close to her ear. “Sister, if you want to see the inside of anything except a police station tonight, you best learn you can’t let all your shit hang out on the street, even in L.A.”

  Her head bobbed, making the bullets tinkle. “For your information, I’m not—”

  “All I’m saying is, a lady’s got to leave something for the imagination.” To try to placate her before she was in full cuss-out mode, a beacon for the cops again, I extended a chivalrous arm toward the velvet rope. “Now, shall we?”

  The gesture seemed to work. That, and she got a better look at my face under the streetlamp. Her lower lip retreated like a snail into its shell. “Mother sent you?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Where’s your ID? And it had better say you’re twenty-one.”

  A conspiratorial twinkle. “Oh, mine says I’m twenty-three.”

  I hate lines, so I wasn’t about to fool with the crush of radio listeners waving passes to get in the front door. I spotted the VIP entrance on the side, with the inevitable caravan of stretch limos depositing people trying to look important. I kept my eyes on the people who climbed out, watching for M.C. Glazer. But I knew Glazer wouldn’t show up in a stretch. The biggest ones like their own cars, their own drivers. More likely, he’d show up in an Escalade or a Lexus SUV.

  The bouncer at the door could have passed for Ving Rhames, except a head taller, with arms the size of my legs. I hoped we wouldn’t get on each other’s bad side. “Name?” he said, challenging me. No one who wasn’t on his list—or whose face he didn’t recognize on sight—was going to get by his solid three-hundred-pound frame.

  “I’m with her.” I showed him Honey’s ID. The brother was sharp, looking from her face to the license and then back again. In his head, the math wasn’t adding up. “She’s part of the label’s entertainment, brother,” I said, and jostled my coat to open it. Honey’s costume came into full view, his private peep show.

  The brother grinned like he knew her. “Oh, a’ight, then.Love the bullets, girl.”

  “Glaze here yet?” I asked casually as he thrust out a meaty arm behind him to make a path for us into the cavernous, throbbing club. Club Magique was already knotted with people crowded near the door.

  “Naw, bruh. You know Glaze ain’t showin’ up nowhere till after midnight.”

  I glanced at my watch. Only eleven.

  “He wants her in the booth,” I said. Every club has a VIP area where patrons like M.C. Glazer can chill with their friends, ring up a bar tab, and play with a few select honeys without having to fight off fans. Club Magique’s VIP booth was enclosed in glass, on the second level overlooking the dance floor. I knew it well.

  “Ain’t she a little long in the tooth for Glaze?” the bouncer said with an ironic chuckle. “Tell ’em Manny said ya’ll can hang out up there.”

  Manny. Jackpot. I would be throwing that name around all night.

  As we walked inside, M.C. Glazer’s latest dance-floor anthem, “Ain’t This Where the Party At?” roared from the sound system, its college-marching-band-style percussion booming in my ears. A dozen huge silkscreen replicas of Glazer’s CD cover forPlugged billowed from the ceiling, with Glaze’s eyes glowering from on high. Once we were indoors, Honey shrugged her shoulders to shed my coat like it was itching. It almost fell to the beer-sticky floor before I caught it. A four-hundred-dollar Kenneth Cole. Lambskin. But I bit my tongue. The girl was just foolish.Easy, Ten. You need her.

  I’ll say this for Honey: She knew how to do her job. Trailing behind Honey was the best camouflage imaginable. Everyone was looking in our direction, but no one noticed me. If I’d worn clown makeup, no one would have noticed my red nose. She worked that room like royalty, her head held high, proud chest in full strut. As she walked, the bullets tinkled and swayed with choreographed thrusts of her hips. A chorus ofOh, shit! andDamn, girl! greeted Honey like rose petals strewn in her path. I gave her space to work, walking a foot behind her. Anyone who got too close, or came up on her too fast with his hands in the wrong position, found me in his path, polite but firm, my body language suggesting that he find somewhere else to play.

  The bodyguard game isn’t about violence; it’s about awareness, and presence. The guys who think the primary qualification is the willingness to break heads don’t last very long. From time to time, yes, a bodyguard has to employ physical force, but in our litigious society force needs to be a last resort. “Looking comes free,” I told Honey’s admirers. “Touching will cost you.”

  A more daring brother sidled up to her and whispered in her ear—not too close, hands behind his back—and Honey made her deal with a discreet nod of her head and a whispered word. Honey was an earner.Mother should list this girl on the New York Stock Exchange, I thought.

  Meanwhile, I scoped the place out. The bartenders were wispy and androgynous, nothing to worry about. I counted five bouncers inside, all huge and easy to spot in skintight black T-shirts. With three or four outside, that was about ten people who might stand in my way. And that wasn’t counting Glaze’s people, another matter entirely. I would have to play this one smart, or it would be a short interview. I slowed my breathing. The adrenaline was flowing, and if I didn’t calm myself, my hands would start to shake. It had been a long time since I walked toward trouble with my eyes open.

  I checked my watch. Eleven-thirty. From my headache, it could be dawn. The club’s music crashed over my ears, and I felt like I was drowning in it. For all I knew, these hundreds of revelers were dancing on my grave.

  “You ready to meet M.C. Glazer?” I said to Honey.

  “Mother said to work the floor.”

  “You don’t look like the type of girl who always does what Mother says. Big money’s in the booth, darlin’.”

  “I’m thirsty,” she pouted.

  I sighed. It would be a long night if Honey was in a bad mood. I steered her to the corner of the closest bar counter, where I signaled a Latino bartender who couldn’t have been less interested in Honey, but who was entranced by me. I winked at him, smiling. “Manny said to set the lady up with whatever she wants.”

  “What can I do foryou ?” he said once he’d fixed Honey’s apple martini.

  “Not a thing, friend. I’ll come holla next time through.”

  “Promise,papi ?”

  The road not taken. Not negotiable. With Mother, male escorts willing to service male clients were set up for life. The business was ten to one, easy. Call it a blessing or a curse, but I can’t even think on the downlow. No reason to be rude about it, though. Anyone who appreciates you is offering you a gift.

  The VIP booth was large, but not empty. Spread out among the plush sofas and pillows were a couple of lo
w-level rappers and a TV actor who had been famous in the eighties, all of whom I assumed were friends of Glaze’s. With Manny’s name to get us past the bouncer in the doorway and Honey’s bullets to keep everyone smiling, we had no problem. Honey’s apple martini improved her mood, so she began spontaneously swinging her hips and shimmying her shoulders when Glaze’s war-cry hit “You Better Duck, Fool” boomed from the mounted speakers. Nobody in the room was mad at that, so I kept her drinks coming. Courtesy of Manny, of course.

  Before I knew it, it was twelve-fifteen.

  Right on time, M.C. Glazer was in the house.

  Perched on the cushions at the edge of the glass booth, I had a perfect view of the club, so when Glaze and his posse arrived and made their way through the pulsing dance floor, it was the parting of the Red Sea. The throng melted, leaving a clear path down the center of the club. M.C. Glazer himself wasn’t much to notice from above; just an average-sized man in a white skullcap, baggy jeans, and a bulletproof vest that covered his upper torso. Four hard dudes, three black and one white, walked in formation on either side of M.C. Glazer, all of them in red T-shirts with the CopKilla bullet insignia. Glazer’s posse wasn’t steroid-bulked like the club’s bouncers, but they were far more dangerous. From the haircuts and the slants of their baseball caps, I guessed that each and every one of them was a cop.

  When the door of the VIP lounge opened, only three of the guards I’d seen escorted M.C. Glazer inside. The fourth, I guessed, was keeping a watchful eye on the club below. I know people never look quite the way you expect up close, but I was still surprised that Glazer was only about five-eight, smaller than me despite his thick upper arms. A girl trailing behind him was dressed up for her years; despite her expert makeup and hair worn up to give an impression of age and height, I could see the lie in a glance. If Honey was nineteen, this girl couldn’t have been more then eighteen. If that. But when you walk in on M.C. Glazer’s arm, security tends to look the other way.

  M.C. Glazer greeted his friends, but his eyes still scanned the room. And me. I never knew whether Glaze gestured somehow, but within a blink of his eye contact, one of his bodyguards stood between us.

  “Who the fuck are you?” He reminded me of a black Telly Savalas, bald head and almost Arab nose with Ethiopian skin. He talked like a man carrying a gun who was accustomed to rapid answers.

  I held his eyes and matched the pace of my breathing to his to create an emotional link. It makes people feel like they know you, without ever understanding why. “Hey, man. I’m working, just like you. I’m with Honey.”

  “Naw, man, he’s a’ight,” said the television actor. “He’s with Honey.”

  “Who the fuck is Honey?”

  That broke the ice. A room full of brothers cracked up because this bodyguard was so on point that he hadn’t noticed the near-naked woman standing in front of him. I smiled, too, inviting the bodyguard to join the joke. He glanced at Honey, and he didn’t smile. He didn’t step completely out of the way, but slid to the side a bit, to see if Glazer wanted to engage with me, but Glazer was checking out Honey, too. I nodded a humble thanks to the guard. It’s useful for your enemies to underestimate you.

  “Oh, shit—it’s allbullets,” Glazer said, walking closer to Honey. She came to life under Glazer’s eyes, straightening her spine, shifting her hips from one side to the other in a slow, entrancing rumba. Glaze grinned. “That’stight. Come here, girl. Hey, Renzo, take a picture of me and these bullets. Don’t she look like a CD cover?”

  Instinct made me want to shadow Honey’s every step, but I was glad to get my mind back to the reason I was there. Honey would occupy the room’s attention for a while. The girl who had come in with Glazer sat at the edge of the sofa, staring at Honey with equal parts envy and loathing. That girl was cute, with playful spiral ringlets of dark brown hair nestling her neckline and café con leche skin that reminded me of Little Havana, but she didn’t have Honey’s plastic surgeon. Her chest was nearly flat. She would have looked like a boy next to Honey, and she knew it.

  While Glazer and his friends took turns posing with Honey(“Hey, man, email this one to me…This is my phone’s new screensaver…”) —I studied the two other bodyguards. One was at the door, and the other was at an angle from me, similarly perched at the window for a view of the club. The one at the window was a white guy, about thirty, with a face that had seen a few beat-downs. I nodded at him, and he nodded back.

  The white guard was studying the dance floor, but the brother at the door was scrutinizing only me. I never saw him blink. He was closer to my age, about thirty-five. His hair was short, Marine-style, and he wore round gold-rimmed glasses that were out of style. Something told me he wasn’t having a good day. His shoulders were squared. He looked locked down.

  “Real shame about Afrodite,” I said, out of the blue. I spoke directly to the brother staring me down, although it was loud enough for everyone to hear.

  I think what happened next is what people mean when they sayTime stood still. To me, it sounded like there was a thunderclap, but it was only a percussion crescendo from the club’s massive speakers. The camera’s flash went off in a near-dark room, so I was momentarily blinded. When my sight cleared, the first thing I saw was this brother’s eyes on me, still not blinking. But his eyes had changed, so subtle I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t been looking for it. I was willing to bet my life on it. It’s almost as if I saw his pupils narrow from across the room.

  For a time, no one said anything. I’d brought the party down.

  The second girl wailed. “Ilovvvved Afrodite.”

  “Shame when a hot piece of ass like that gets killed,” the white guard said, his eyes still scanning the floor below. “What a waste.”

  “Fuck Afrodite,” said the gravelly voice that could only belong to M.C. Glazer. He stood with his arm hooked around Honey’s shoulder. His face froze in a smile, and the camera flashed again. “Someone should have put that bitch down a long time ago.”

  This time, I saw spots. They might have been from anger. The thundering bass no longer seemed so bone-rattling, almost far away. Maybe the deejay had decided to be merciful, or maybe it was something else; maybe my focus had telescoped because rational thought was giving way to raw emotion.Not good.

  “What you mean, man?” I said, trying to sound casual.

  “I’ve told you about this shit, Glaze,” said Kojak, who was taking the photos.

  The flash ignited again.

  “What? A nigga gotta pretend we was tight just ’cause that ho’s goin’ in the ground? Shit—Jenk knows. She was a straight-up ho. Forreal. They was gonna put aho in a movie with Robin Williams. That shit was too funny.”

  “You cold, man. You cold,” said one of the rappers in the corner. He was a little guy in a USC jacket fringed with rolling-paper logos.

  No one else spoke. Hardly breathed.

  “That’s what y’all niggas will never understand about me,” M.C. Glazer said, as if he were at a podium. “I’m a poet. I ain’t careless with my words. So if I stand here and tell you Afrodite was a ten-dollar ho, I ain’t playin’. OK, she’s dead, so I won’t speak ill. Rest in peace, whatever. But you know you was a ho.”

  “M.C. Glazer ain’t no ladykilla…”the USC rapper in the corner said, the words from Afrodite’s song, and his actor friend laughed, joining in:“Might penetrate, but he’ll never fill ya…” they whooped, teasing Glaze like schoolboys.

  Glaze laughed, too. “Oops, aw shit, that bitch isgone,” Glaze began, his voice a chilling sing-song. “But Glazer’s here to carryonnn . Fuck ya’ll, then.”

  The man at the door wasn’t smiling.Jenk. Short for Jenkins?

  His eyes were still on me. “You a friend of Afrodite’s?” Jenk said. I could barely hear him over the laughter, but I didn’t need to. We could have been the only two men there. We were the only ones who understood what the conversation was really about.

  “Yes,” I said. “Serena was a friend.”

/>   When I called herSerena, his eyes changed again. Just for a second.

  Gentle as my voice had been, my words brought another hush, the laughter dying. Energy crackled from one person to the next. Smart idea or not, I was inviting M.C. Glazer to fuck with me. I felt something going hot inside me, and the music faded almost completely. Blood surged to the thick muscles banding my chest. I had to fight to keep from balling my hands into fists. There was still a chance—just a chance—that this would end peacefully. Hope springs eternal.

  “I never caught your name, bruh,” said the guard beside me, one of those white boys who must have grown up near Crenshaw.

  Slowly—very slowly—I turned my hip to the side and pulled open my wallet. Every motion I made captivated the room. No one was taking pictures anymore. I found my business cards. “Tennyson Hardwick.”

  The brother who’d been staring me down walked over to get a card, too. He studied it. “An actor? You worked with Serena?”

  “A long time ago.”

  “What was shelike ?” said the too-young girl on the sofa.

  M.C. Glazer didn’t give me the chance to answer his plaything. He stepped toward me, his head cocked attentively. He played with the peach fuzz above his upper lip. “Lemme ask you something, man…”

  “What’s that?”

  “How much does it cost these days to bury a ho? Y’all need some help with that? Because I believe in contributing to worthy causes.”

  Catcalls and laughter.You’re cold, man, one of them said. With casual precision, Kojak and the white boy were on either side of me, as if they expected me to spring. They were used to subduing people after Glazer pissed them off.

  A cool smile crawled across my lips, but my arms were trembling. I wanted to hurt that sonofabitch. I wanted him to know the pain I’d been feeling since I heard Serena was dead. Wanted it so much that my throat burned.