Charm City

by Mason Dixon

  “It’s off, okay?”

  “Good. Now give it here.”

  “Why?”

  “You don’t want to take a chance on it going off during the meeting, do you? Don’t worry. You’ll get it back afterward.”

  “I’ll make sure it’s on silent.”

  “Not good enough. We’re about to go to war. We need to stay focused. Our people don’t have time to be beefing with their baby mamas or having phone sex with their girlfriends. That includes you.”

  Dez held out his hand and beckoned for the phone. After Bathsheba handed it over, Dez tossed it in the glove compartment and slammed the door shut. She noticed he didn’t reach for his own phone or ask Rico and Bigfoot to give up theirs.

  Bathsheba’s unease gave way to a darker emotion. She felt fear—real fear—for the first time since she had climbed into the car.

  “What’s really going on?”

  Dez pulled off his sunglasses so she could see his eyes.

  “I don’t know, cop. Why don’t you tell me?”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Raq was halfway to Ice’s apartment when she received a text asking her to meet him at the storage unit. She was hoping she wouldn’t have to set foot in that place for a while. Now she was heading there for the second time in less than a week.

  She pulled the string above her head to let the bus driver know she wanted to get off. She caught another bus heading the opposite direction of her original destination and disembarked a few blocks from the storage unit. She hoofed it the rest of the way.

  She expected the lot to be teeming with activity since it was still relatively early in the day, but the place was practically deserted. The only cars in the lot belonged to Ice, Dez, and several members of Ice’s crew.

  In his text, Ice had said they needed to talk about the moves King was making. If she had known he planned to invite so many people to hear what she had to say, she would have taken time to prepare.

  She used the walk across the lot to organize her thoughts. To get the nightmarish images of Half Pint’s murder out of her head so she could concentrate on business. She went over everything King and The Heat had said so she would be sure not to leave anything out. She wanted Ice to have all the ammunition he needed to come out on top. In the coming turf war between Ice and King, she planned to be on Ice’s side. He had his issues—and she had her issues with him—but better the devil you knew than the one you didn’t.

  She didn’t know how much longer she planned on doing what she did for a living, but with Bathsheba’s help, she wouldn’t have to keep doing it forever. Together, they could find a way out. A place just for them. She had been on her own for nearly half her life. She had drifted from one temporary family to another. Now she had the chance to build something permanent. Something real. And to think she had almost thrown it away.

  She had never met a woman she trusted enough to give her heart to. Then she met Bathsheba. She’d had her doubts about her, too, but those doubts were gone now. She couldn’t wait to get this meeting over with so she and Bathsheba could get back to what they had been doing all morning. What Raq hoped they’d be doing for years to come.

  She hadn’t realized having someone to go home to could feel this good. Just thinking about Bathsheba put a smile on her face. As she walked through the lot, she was cheesing harder than a kid who’d just had her braces removed after spending five years with metal mouth.

  “Whatever you’re on, I want some,” Hercules said when he saw her coming.

  “Nah, man. I don’t feel like sharing.” She gave him a pound. “Am I the last one?”

  “Yeah. Everyone else is waiting for you inside.”

  “Let’s get to it then.”

  Hercules opened the door and they ducked underneath. He let the door fall when they were safely on the other side.

  The unit was big, but it was almost too small to hold all the people crammed into it. Folks were packed so tight Raq had a good idea how sardines felt on their way out of the factory.

  Everyone was standing in a circle like they were the Knights of the Round Table. Ice, of course, was King Arthur. The circle broke when Raq and Hercules entered the room. All the talking stopped and everyone turned to look at them.

  “The guest of honor has finally arrived,” Ice said from the top of what was left of the circle.

  He beckoned her forward, but Raq hung back, trying to figure out why the situation didn’t feel right. Then Ice stepped aside and she saw Bathsheba on her knees with her hands tied behind her back and a gag in her mouth.

  Raq’s first instinct was to run to her, but her feet wouldn’t move. Hercules helped her out with a hard shove to the small of her back. She stumbled and nearly went down as the circle closed around her.

  Bathsheba looked up at her, her eyes pleading for help, mercy, or both.

  “What’s this about?” Raq asked as the sea of angry faces drew closer. “I thought we were here to talk about King. I thought Bathsheba was your girl.”

  “King can wait. And I thought you were my girl.” Ice put his arm around her neck, his grip so tight she could barely breathe. “I trusted you, Raq. I brought you into my organization and treated you like family. This is how you repay me, by bringing an undercover cop into our ranks?”

  “A what?”

  Nothing Ice was saying made sense. The words wouldn’t register. Bathsheba was a cop? Raq’s instincts about her had been right all along?

  “She’s a what?”

  Ice drew back in genuine surprise. He examined her face to see if she was lying. “You didn’t know.” He laughed bitterly. “Seems like I’m not the only one she lied to.”

  He snapped his fingers and Dez slipped a small cloth pouch into his hand. The pouch reminded Raq of the Crown Royal bag her mother used to use as a makeshift piggy bank back in the day, but she had a feeling this bag didn’t contain anything she wanted to beg, borrow, or steal.

  “I have a way for you to make it better. For you and for her,” Ice said, loosening the pouch’s strings. “Don’t give me that innocent look. You’re lucky your ass isn’t on the floor with her. When were you going to tell me about your little meeting with King? When you showed up to give me your two weeks’ notice?”

  She didn’t ask him how he knew about King’s job offer because she knew what his answer would be: he knew everything. She didn’t know why she had thought she could keep something from him. It had been foolish to even try. Now she was about to pay the price. Her and Bathsheba both.

  “This is my world, Raq. No one comes in or out of it unless I say so.” He pulled a gun out of the bag and handed it to her, butt-end first. “I want this bitch dealt with and I want you to do it for me.”

  Raq didn’t take the gun.

  “No.”

  “Excuse me?” Ice held a finger to his ear. “I don’t hear so well on this side. What did you say?”

  Raq squared her shoulders. “I said no.”

  Ice scowled. “Do you remember what I said the last time I asked you to take care of someone for me and you refused? The only correct response to the request I just made is ‘Yes, boss.’”

  Dez, Winky, and Bigfoot drew their guns.

  “Do her or my boys do you.”

  “I’m not going to shoot her,” Raq said, desperately trying to find a way out of this mess that would allow her to live with herself in the morning. If, that was, she was still breathing by then. She didn’t know who to believe, Bathsheba or Ice. She needed to hear Bathsheba’s side of the story—to get her version of the truth—but, thanks to the gag in her mouth, Bathsheba wasn’t talking. So Raq did the only thing she could do. She stalled for time until she could figure out her next move. “Shooting her would end things too quickly. Don’t you want her to suffer first?”

  “You bet your ass, I do.”

  Raq clenched and unclenched her fists to hide the fact that her hands were shaking. This was her crew. They were her people. Her fam. She had sweated with them. She had b
led with them. They were supposed to have her back. They were supposed to make her feel safe. But she couldn’t remember the last time she had felt so scared.

  “I can give you what you want.”

  Ice looked intrigued. “What do you have in mind?”

  “Let’s settle this where I settle everything else: in the ring.”

  “Fine,” Ice said, “but let me make something clear right now. Two of you are going into the ring, but only one of you is coming out of it. For your sake, you’d better hope it’s you.”

  “Don’t worry. It will be.”

  For years, boxing had been Raq’s salvation. Today, it would either cost her her life or save it once and for all.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Bathsheba had always wondered if she could beat Raq in a fair fight, but this match-up was anything but fair. The “ring” didn’t consist of a canvas-covered platform surrounded by parallel lines of rope but a cadre of snarling, angry men who thought they were part of the action. Every time she drifted too close to them, she caught a blow from behind.

  She had taken so many kidney punches she was going to be pissing blood for a week. If, that was, she somehow made it out of the room alive. Even if she managed to defeat Raq, she knew there was no way Ice would let her live.

  This was it.

  But she couldn’t curl into in a ball and give up. She had to keep fighting. Keep thinking there was a chance—slim as it might be—she could find a way out.

  Raq was unquestionably stronger, but Bathsheba was quicker and had more endurance. If she could keep avoiding Raq’s punches, perhaps she could buy enough time to land one of her own. If she timed it just right, one would be all she needed.

  Employing the defensive skills Zeke had taught her, she used constant movement to make herself an elusive target. Bobbing, weaving, and circling from one side of the ring to the other. The crowd booed at the lack of action, but she wasn’t trying to earn brownie points from them or actual ones from the nonexistent judges. She was trying to stay alive.

  “Fight me, you coward,” Raq said through clenched teeth.

  Bathsheba could sense Raq’s growing frustration as she continued to stalk an opponent who refused to be caught. Just the breeze from one of Raq’s many swings and misses was almost enough to knock her out. She didn’t want to feel the kind of damage the punches could inflict if they actually connected.

  “We don’t have to do this,” she said, warding off more cheap shots from the interfering crowd.

  She kicked out blindly behind her. The stacked heel of her boot connected with someone’s shin. Her attacker yelped in pain. She’d aim higher next time. A shot to the balls might be enough to get the bloodthirsty horde to back off. No, she knew that was wishful thinking. The men in this room wouldn’t be satisfied until Raq served up her head on a silver platter.

  She had never pictured herself as John the Baptist or Raq as Salome, but there they were filling the roles.

  “You lied to me.”

  Raq rushed at her, but Bathsheba managed to pin her arms at her sides and get her in a clinch.

  “Not about everything,” she whispered as Raq furiously tried to break the hold she had on her. “Not about the way I feel for you.”

  “Did you really mean all those things you said or was it all a part of your cover?”

  Raq jerked free and dug a right hand into Bathsheba’s ribs that made her knees buckle. Bathsheba pushed Raq away to put some distance between them.

  She couldn’t reconcile herself to the fact that the hands that had brought her so much pleasure a few hours before were now trying to cause her nearly as much pain. She wasn’t surprised. Just disappointed they had gone from such an incredible high to such a crushing low so quickly.

  Why, exactly? Because she had underestimated her opponent.

  After Dez had dragged her out of his car at gunpoint and forced her into the storage unit, Ice had let her know he hadn’t taken her actions in New York as definitive proof she could be trusted. He had directed his people to keep digging into her cover story until one of them—a computer geek living in the basement of his parents’ house—found a photo of her online. A photo of her in uniform.

  Ice had thrown the photo in her face as proof of his superiority over her. Then he had waved it in Raq’s face like a red flag in front of an enraged bull. The damned article Bathsheba had thought no one in Ice’s crew would ever see had turned out to be her undoing.

  “Sometimes,” Ice had said as he placed a filthy gag in her mouth, “the bad guys win.”

  They were certainly winning now.

  Bathsheba defended herself from Raq’s onslaught as best she could, but she didn’t throw any punches of her own. She simply couldn’t bring herself to lash out at the woman she loved. Raq, however, didn’t share her dilemma. Because Raq’s love had apparently turned to hate.

  When Raq feinted to her right, Bathsheba instinctively moved in the opposite direction and ran straight into a left hook to her midsection that doubled her over.

  “Oh, that one hurt,” someone in the crowd yelled as the onlookers screamed for more.

  Throwing a heavy barrage of punches, Raq moved in for the kill while Bathsheba tried to keep her at bay long enough to catch her breath and recover from the blow. She held her hands in front of her face and moved her body left and right, absorbing the brunt of the assault with her shoulders and forearms.

  “You got her in trouble now, Raq,” someone else said. “Take her head off.”

  Bathsheba peeked through her defenses. What she saw surprised her. Raq’s eyes were filled not with malice but regret. Bathsheba tried to reach her before Raq allowed her own defensive shields to slide back into place.

  “I love you, Raq. Do you think I would lie about that? We can get through this, but you have to trust me. Do you trust me?”

  Raq dropped her hands, giving Bathsheba the opening she needed. She quickly tapped her fists and drew back to throw a right, but Raq sidestepped and threw a right cross Bathsheba couldn’t avoid, even though she saw it coming. The punch landed flush on her jaw. She saw an explosion of light, then nothing as she crumpled unconscious to the floor.

  “Trust is for suckers.”

  Raq raised her arms in triumph as she stood over the body of yet another vanquished opponent. She felt no pleasure in this victory, however. Only remorse for what could have been. For what she was about to do. Her life was composed of a series of tough choices. And now she was faced with the toughest choice of all. A choice that was becoming harder and harder to make. The choice between loyalty and love.

  Ice nudged Bathsheba’s leg with the toe of his polished wingtip to make sure she was really down for the count.

  “Damn, girl. You nearly knocked her into next week.”

  Finally realizing where her true loyalties lay, Raq steeled herself for the challenge looming before her. “That’s what you pay me for, isn’t it?”

  Ice raised an eyebrow. “I thought King was your boss now.”

  “You’re my dog. You know that. Now give me that piece so I can end this in style.”

  Ice’s eyebrow crept even closer to his hairline as he handed her the gun she had repeatedly refused to take.

  The gun felt heavier than Raq had expected it to. How could something so small carry so much weight? She racked the slide the way she had seen so many of her friends and enemies do in the past.

  “She really put a hurting on you, huh?” Ice asked.

  “Not half as bad as the one I’m going to put on you.”

  She put her finger on the trigger and pointed the gun in Ice’s direction. His eyes bulged as he took a halting step backward, his hands raised in surrender.

  “Do you honestly think you can shoot your way past every motherfucker in here?”

  Dez, Bigfoot, and Winky already had their guns drawn. The rest were reaching for theirs.

  “I’m not planning on shooting them. Just you. And even if they tag me, I’m taking you with me before
I go.”

  Ice’s eyes grew wild with fear. He was finally getting a taste of what he had put countless other people through over the years. She didn’t plan to stop until he was full.

  “Drop your toolies. Now, goddammit!” Ice frantically waved for Dez and the others to lower their guns. Amid much grumbling, they complied with his request.

  Raq kept a close eye on Ice as she knelt next to Bathsheba’s limp body. She gripped Bathsheba’s shoulder with her free hand and gave her a rough shake. Bathsheba moaned but didn’t open her eyes.

  “Wake up. I didn’t hit you that hard.” She gave Bathsheba another shake. “Come on, B. I need you. I can’t do this by myself.”

  Bathsheba’s eyes slowly fluttered open. She looked around in confusion, then scrambled to her feet.

  “Are you carrying?” Raq asked.

  Bathsheba nodded, then grimaced as if the movement hurt. Raq’s heart sank. A dark purple bruise had already started to form along the line of Bathsheba’s jaw. She must have hit her harder than she thought.

  Bathsheba reached for the .38 strapped to her ankle.

  “A throwdown,” Raq said. “Bigfoot always misses those when he does a pat down.”

  “I noticed,” Bathsheba said, training her gun at Ice’s head. She gave Raq an appreciative look out of the corner of her eyes. “Since you’re running this show, what’s the plan?”

  “Ice is going to give us an escort out of here.” Raq grabbed him by his collar and pointed him toward the door. “Nice and slow,” she said as she held the gun against his back.

  He offered some token resistance but quickly quieted down when she pressed the barrel of the gun into his kidney. “Even if I walk you out of here, you’ll both be dead before night falls. I may even pull the trigger myself.”

  Bathsheba walked behind them, covering their rear. “That’s going to be hard for you to do from behind bars. I plan on putting you there personally.”

  He laughed bitterly. “You and what army?”

  Raq motioned for Hercules to lift the storage unit door. More squad cars than she had ever seen in her life had the place surrounded.