by K'wan
* * *
Valerie jumped when she heard the gunshots. The retort was too loud to be coming from outside, so it had to be coming from somewhere in the building. Instinctively, she grabbed the phone to call the police, but when her hand touched the receiver, she paused. Though it pained her to do so, she sat back on her bed and did nothing. There would be no police or ambulance called to try and save Ralph, which she doubted was possible at that point anyhow. Though she loved him, Ralph was a rat and got dealt with accordingly. She would mourn her man, but for as much as she loved him, she knew he had brought the terrible fate on himself.
31
“Mar!” Paul called out, bursting through the front door. “Where are you, baby?” Not getting an answer, he proceeded to search the house for her. P.J. was sound asleep in the guest bedroom, with the Cartoon Network still playing on the twenty-inch television set. Watching P.J. sleep reminded Paul of a happier time in his life, a carefree time when he didn’t feel the weight of the world on his shoulders. Stroking the sleeping child’s face, Paul vowed that he would never have to suffer. Clicking off the television, he kissed his son on the forehead and left the room.
Paul searched the kitchen, bathroom, and master bedroom, but there was still no sign of Marlene. He knew she had to be there somewhere because she would never leave P.J. in the house alone. That was the kind of move Rhonda pulled. He was just about to call her cell phone when he heard voices coming from the downstairs studio. Careful to make as little noise a possible, Paul crept down the stairs. He could hear Marlene whispering on the phone, but couldn’t make out what she was saying. When he reached the bottom of the stairs, she was standing off to the side with her back to him.
“Marlene?” he called.
Marlene spun around with a fright. The movement was so sudden that she almost dropped her phone. “Hey, baby,” she said, trying not to look like she got caught with her hand in the cookie jar. “Audrey, I’ll call you back,” she said, ending the call before getting a response.
“What’re you doing down here using the phone?” Paul asked suspiciously.
“Oh, I didn’t want to wake P.J.,” she said.
“Then why not just go in the bedroom?”
“Baby, you know how loud Audrey and I can be when we’re on the phone.” She kissed him on the lips. “I didn’t expect you back this early.”
“I told you I’d be right back.”
“Yeah, but your ‘right backs’ can sometimes last until damn near the next day.”
“Whatever, Mar. Do you wanna hear what he wanted or not?”
“Of course I do.” She grabbed him by the hand. “You can tell me all about it upstairs,” she said, leading him back to the main level of the house. “So,” she began, entering the kitchen, “what did Larry’s fat ass want?”
“Marlene, don’t talk about my friends,” Paul told her.
“I was only kidding, Paul. You know Larry is one of the few who I can tolerate. So what hair-brained scheme has he cooked up now?”
“Nah, baby, this ain’t no scheme. Larry has set something up that may be just what we needed.”
“And what might this be?” she asked suspiciously.
“An art exhibit.” Paul went on to tell Marlene of Larry’s under-the-table deal with the security guards at Silver Cup and how he planned to help Paul host an art show on one of their sets. Marlene listened, emotionless, until Paul was finished. “So what do you think?”
Marlene thought on it for a minute and said, “I think the both of you are crazy.”
“What?” he asked, not believing she couldn’t dig the idea.
“Paul, how do you and Larry plan to hijack a film set in order to host an art exhibit?”
“We’re not hijacking it, Mar. Seth is gonna fix it so we use the set on a night when there’s no one filming at Silver Cup. We’ll be in and out before anyone even knows we were there. What could go wrong?”
“Well, for starters, someone could find out about your little bootleg exhibit and call the police. Trespassing is still a crime in this state.”
“Marlene, why do you always have to punch holes in shit?” he asked heatedly.
“I’m not punching holes in anything, Paul. I’m just trying to make sure you don’t get yourself into trouble messing with Larry and his little plan.”
Paul gripped the sides of his head. “Goddammit, Marlene, this isn’t some little plan. My best friend has busted his ass to try and help me out and all you can do is find flaws in it. What the fuck is your problem?”
“Well, since you asked, I’ll tell you. I’m tired, Paul. Tired of waiting for you to wise up and get a regular job. Tired of your sickeningass baby’s mother and tired of wondering if I’m gonna wind up an old maid. Baby, you know I’m totally supportive of you and your dreams of becoming an accomplished painter, but we have to be realistic about this. You can’t keep living day to day waiting for your big break. We can’t live on hope.”
“You know what, I ain’t even trying to hear this shit.” Paul turned to walk away.
“Don’t walk away from me when I’m talking to you!” she shouted, roughly grabbing his shirt. To her surprise, Paul spun around with a maddened look in his eyes. A snarl emitted from somewhere deep in his gut as he lashed out. Marlene braced herself, waiting for the blow to land on her chin, but instead Paul put his fist through the cabinet door.
“Keep your fucking hands to yourself!” he snapped. “You don’t have to believe in my plan, Marlene. Hell, you don’t even have to be supportive of it, but for the love of God, don’t tear it down. I’m sleeping downstairs tonight.” Paul stormed down to the basement, slamming the door behind him.
Marlene stood in the middle of the kitchen trembling. For a minute she actually thought he was going to knock her out. She had known that kind of man in the past, but had never seen Paul’s dark side before. Now that she had, she wanted no part of it.
* * *
Yoshi sat on one of the long benches in the dressing room, counting her take. She had made just six hundred dollars for the evening. Not bad for a few hours of work. Changing from her costume to her street clothes, she repacked her rolling case and prepared to leave for the night.
“Yoshi, you need a ride home?” Cat asked, slinging her bag over her shoulder.
“Nah, I’m straight. I’m gonna walk to Forty-second and grab something to eat. I’ll take a cab from there.”
“A’ight, baby girl. It’s late, so you be careful out there,” Cat warned.
“Please, with all the police running around Times Square, I’ll be safer out there than I will be in the car with you,” Yoshi joked.
“This is true.” Cat winked. “See you later, boo.”
After securing her case, Yoshi made her way to the street. The walk to Times Square was a brief one, allowing Yoshi to check her voicemail. One was from Rhonda saying something about Reese sleeping with some dude, and the other was from Jah. She swooned when she heard his voice, remembering the night they had shared together. He was so cute trying to be cool, but tripping over his words. She had given quite a bit of thought to the whole situation and wondered what was stopping them from taking a chance. She was feeling the young boy and it was obvious that he was digging her. She decided that she wouldn’t call him back that night, but the following day she planned to confront him.
* * *
Pain was so twisted that he knocked over several bar stools on his way out of Shooter’s. He and his crew had had a blast with the two hustlers from uptown. And to make it sweeter, they were scheduled to get a piece of that fine light-skinned bitch who had been onstage. At first he thought Rel was full of shit and wouldn’t be able to pull it off, but he had sat there and supposedly watched the young man make the call.
“I don’t believe I’m going through all this for a piece of pussy,” Lex said from the passenger seat of the truck.
“I told you, man, shorty likes to role-play. When I spoke to her on the jack she said she was gonna give
all of us the time of our lives,” Rel said from the backseat.
“Yeah, I’m dying to get a piece of that fine pussy, too, but this is some weird shit,” Jay admitted, snorting a line of cocaine out of a dollar bill and handing the tray to Pain.
“Hey, man, if you don’t want none of this trim, you can take the faggot way out like ya man,” Rel told him, referring to Lah, who had opted to pass on the pussy and go home.
“Watch ya mouth, duke. You don’t know me well enough to be calling me out my name,” Jay warned.
“Both of y’all niggaz shut the fuck up. I’m trying to bust ass and head back to the hood,” Pain growled.
The men in the car went back and forth for the entire ride uptown. Groovy stayed silent. Every now and again he would shoot Rel a dirty look, which Rel pretended not to see. He wanted to fuck Yoshi, too, but didn’t particularly agree with the way his man was going about it. Though he had gotten in the car with them, he wasn’t sure if he was ready to take the ride.
* * *
By the time Yoshi stepped out of the cab in front of her building, she was dead tired. After shaking her ass for the majority of the night, all her strength seemed to have fled her body. She wasn’t even sure if she would stay awake long enough to eat her food.
Thankfully, there was no one in front of her building when she got there. She didn’t knock the young dudes who hustled on her block, but sometimes they made her uneasy. She was standing on her stoop, fumbling for the lobby key, when she felt a presence behind her. She spun around to find herself staring into the drunken eyes of Rel. He was flanked by three other men and they didn’t look like they had come to pay a social visit.
“What’s popping, bitch?” He grinned.
That was the last thing Yoshi heard before pain exploded in her cheek and everything went black.
32
Billy was roused from her slumber by the sound of her cell phone’s message alert. Cracking one eye, she looked at the screen and saw she had five missed calls. Figuring they could wait, she tossed the phone to the foot of the king-size bed and rolled over. It was at that moment that she remembered she didn’t have a king-size bed.
Billy leapt up so fast that she was almost airborne. Her eyes frantically looked around the room, trying to figure out where the hell she was. The room was decorated with an expensive bedroom set and plush carpet, but Billy didn’t recognize it. Tossing the covers back, she was relieved to see that she was still fully dressed, with the exception of her boots.
“Don’t worry, your virtue is still intact,” Marcus said, leaning against the bedroom door. He was dressed in a pair of gray sweats and a tank top, showing off his tattooed arms.
“How did I get here?” she asked in a raspy voice.
“On the wings of gossamer,” he said, sitting on the edge of the bed. “No, but seriously, you fell asleep last night during the movie.”
Billy shook the fog from her brain and recalled the events that led to her winding up in Marcus’s bed. After dinner they had gone out for drinks at a lounge uptown, where they danced the night away. Afterward, Marcus had invited her back to his place to watch Imitation of Life. Normally, she wouldn’t have gone back to a guy’s house on the first date, but she felt safe with Marcus. Besides, she had called Jean and given her his license plate number before they’d left the restaurant. Marcus had gone out of his way to make sure she had a good time and she was greatly appreciative of that. It had been quite some time since she had gone out and had a genuinely good time, especially with a man. He scored big points in her book.
“You better not have been in here trying to grope me in my sleep,” she said as she stretched.
“Wouldn’t dream of it. When I grope you, I want you to be wide awake,” he teased her. “By the way, someone has been blowing your phone up all night. I hope you don’t have a crazy boyfriend that’s gonna try to run up in here and pop off.”
“Knock if off,” she said, picking up her phone. The calls were from 212 numbers. Each number had the same prefix, but the last four digits were different. They looked familiar, but she couldn’t place them.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
“I hope not,” she said, dialing her voicemail box. Billy listened as the first message played.
“Hello, this message is for Willamina Jefferson. This is Nurse Donna Reid at Harlem Hospital, calling in reference to your sister Yoshibelle Johnson. Please give me a call back at.…”
“You cool?” Marcus asked.
“I don’t know,” she said nervously. “It was someone from Harlem Hospital calling about Yoshi.”
“Is she okay?”
“I’m about to find out,” she said, dialing the number Nurse Reid had left on the message. After telling the operator who she was trying to reach, Billy was put through. “Hi, this is Willamina Jefferson, you called about my sister?” she asked, praying nothing had happened.
“Ms. Jefferson, I’m a nurse at the rape center at Harlem Hospital,” Nurse Reid informed her.
“Oh my God, rape center? What’s happened to Yoshi?” Billy asked frantically.
“Ms. Jefferson, your sister was brought in this morning. She was found raped and beaten outside her apartment building.”
“God, please don’t let this be happening. How? Who?”
“Ms. Jefferson, we really don’t know much right now. The police came to question her, but she was still too shaken up to be much help. She just requested that we contact you.”
“I’m coming over there right now,” Billy said, ending the call.
“Billy, what’s wrong?” Marcus asked.
“Yoshi was raped last night,” she said, searching for her other boot. “I don’t know much yet, but I’m on my way over to the hospital to find out. Can you call me a cab?”
“Fuck a cab, I’m driving you,” he said, grabbing a hoodie and his car keys. She opened her mouth to protest, but he waved her silent. It was obvious she wouldn’t be rid of him that easy. The two of them made a mad dash out of the apartment and headed into Harlem to find out what the hell had happened.
* * *
Slick sat on his bed with his mouth hanging open. On his lap was a copy of the Sunday paper, with an article telling of a young man murdered not even three buildings away from him. They found Ralph slumped in the hallway of his girlfriend’s apartment building, shot multiple times. The police said that when they questioned his girlfriend she simply said, “He went out to get a pack of cigarettes and never came back.” Though Valerie wasn’t yet a suspect, the police didn’t quite believe her story. It seemed odd that Ralph would’ve been “just going to the store” carrying all his worldly possessions. Not needing to read any more, Slick tossed the paper into the corner.
The police deduced that Ralph had been murdered over a drug beef, but they were only partially right. The way Slick figured it, Ralph had gotten spooked by the botched hit and tried to hightail it out of town. Apparently, Jah had caught him before he was able to make his escape. It was just as he’d told his boys, never underestimate your enemy.
Grabbing his P89 from the dresser drawer, Slick walked to the window and scanned the projects. Ralph’s murder had changed the rules of the game considerably. If Jah had gone out of his way to murder Ralph, he would surely be coming for Slick somewhere down the line. When that time came, he would be prepared.
* * *
“Damn, I’m starving!” Pain said, taking another forkful of his scrambled eggs. “Wrecking a bitch’s pussy takes a lot out of you.” After their romp with Yoshi, him, Jay, and Lex had gone to the diner to grab some breakfast.
“Yo, shorty had some good pussy,” Jay added. “Lex, you missed out, kid.”
Lex took a sip of his orange juice. “Man, that shit was too intense for me. First Rel clocks the bitch on some wild-man shit, then he’s fucking her like she kicked his dog. Y’all say what you want, but I don’t think she was having as much fun as the rest of y’all.”
“She was loving that shit, nig
ga. You hear the way the bitch was moaning,” Pain said. “You and that nigga Groovy stayed outside like some little faggots.”
In the beginning, Lex was just as down to run a train on Yoshi as the rest of them, but something about it didn’t feel right. The story Rel fed them about her liking to role-play and reenact rapes was a weird request, but Pain knew some chicks who were like that. He used to fuck with this Jamaican chick who would demand that he slap her face until she bled during sex. In this day and age, all kinds of new fads were popping up. He had expected Rel to shove her around or shake her up as part of the game, but he was totally thrown off when he hit her. Shorty looked scared shitless, but Pain and Jay were so coked up that neither of them seemed to notice. The men took turns fucking the girl in her ass and pussy while ravaging her breasts. When Lex saw blood, he excused himself from the scene.
“Son, I was gonna try and crack for some head, but this stupid-ass nigga kept that fucking T-shirt wrapped around her mouth,” Pain said, snorting from the leftover coke that was dripping in the back of his throat. “I need another shot of that freak bitch.”
Lex became very serious. “Let me tell you something, my man, ain’t none of us ever going near that freak bitch again. Y’all can believe that bullshit Rel put in your heads about role-playing if you want, but that shit was straight-up rape.”
“Man, we ain’t no fucking rapists. She wanted it,” Pain tried to convince him.
“My dude, you can’t be that fucking stupid.” Lex shook his head.
“Fuck that rape shit y’all niggaz is talking. We caked up out this bitch!” Jay declared. “If shorty tries to get on some funny shit, we’ll just pay her off.”
