“Don’t worry about that,” D said calmly, defusing the situation. “Anyway, I have something for you to do for me tonight. Most of the STP crew is in custody. We picked up I-Rod today. But Areea, as you might imagine, has been hard to catch. I expect her to show up tonight. You have my cell. If you see her in the crowd, call me.”
“Shit,” Coo said. “He got you snitching again? You see what that got you, Ray Ray?”
“Don’t worry, D. I’ll look out.”
The three young men walked toward the Beacon’s main entrance, and D headed up toward 75th Street. At the corner, barricades had been set up and the street had been blocked off between Broadway and Amsterdam, to accommodate TV production vans, tour buses, and limousines. A white tent surrounded the entrance where D Security personnel supported Source staffers and publicists distributing VIP tags and press credentials. Standing just inside the tent, dressed immaculately in a brown Gucci suit, was Rodney Hampton.
Rodney said, “Congratulations. I heard about how you saved Bridgette and figured out who the kidnappers were.” He seemed genuinely happy for him. “No matter what went down the other night, I respect you, D, and what you’ve done.”
“I believe you,” D replied. He was relieved that there were no hard feelings and that Rodney was back to his crisp, smooth self. “But this thing isn’t over, and you can help me.”
“Any way I can,” Rodney said.
“Just one question: who told you all that stuff about Ivy and Rowena Dukes? Was it Jen?”
Reluctantly Rodney answered, “Yes. She started telling me stuff when we were discussing managing Bridgette.”
“The managing was her idea?”
“Yeah. I mean I was open to it, but she planted the seed. She had all this dirt on Ivy. It’s what made her wanna make the change.”
A very attractive honey-colored woman in slacks, boots, and a sexy short beige leather jacket came up and took Rodney by the arm. “D,” he said with a big smile, “this is my wife Merry.” She was not only a beauty but had a playfulness that lit up her eyes. D thought he needed to spend some more time in Cali.
“It’s my pleasure,” he said.
“No, D, the pleasure is mine. My husband’s told me all about you. Plus, I read People magazine.”
“I don’t read magazines,” D replied, trying to keep his face pleasant.
“Don’t worry, D. It’s not damaging,” Rodney said.
“Perhaps,” Merry added, “you need to hire us. I’m leaving my job to help Rodney grow his business.”
“Wow,” D said, and then caught himself. Didn’t want to sound so surprised. Wasn’t sure how much of Rodney’s misstep he was supposed to know. He exchanged business cards with Merry and headed inside the Beacon, a little jealous that there was no one who had his back like that. Despite Rodney’s misstep, Merry was hanging in with him. They were looking to build a serious future. D knew he wasn’t as fortunate and wasn’t sure how to fix that.
As soon as he took three steps inside the old vaudeville house, all thoughts of the future receded. There was only now. These few hours. His headpiece buzzed with reports. “50 Cents’s SUV is being searched by police on the corner of 76th and Columbus,” Jeff Fuchs reported. “Diddy just walked in six members of his street team with no VIP passes,” Mercedez announced. “There’s a posse of Bloods harassing girls in the balcony,” said Clarence.
There was a security command center set up in a dressing room near the back door. D entered and sat in front of a bank of monitors. Some were from cameras around the Beacon; others had live feeds from the various TV cameras. There was a seating chart of the Beacon on one wall and a bank of walkie-talkie rechargers on the floor. There was an hour till showtime and all kinds of people with all kinds of passes rolled past the door. Voices filled his earpiece. His cell rang. His two-way buzzed. D listened closely, gave orders swiftly, and worried about Areea. He didn’t know where that woman was, but he was keeping constant tabs on Bridgette Haze’s whereabouts.
The singer was in a limo winding its way up Broadway with a police escort. After that afternoon’s run-through, she’d been driven down to the Rihga Royal Hotel on 54th Street (official hotel of the Source Awards) and situated in the presidential suite until near showtime. Jen was riding up with her sister. It would be D’s first encounter with both sisters since Montauk. He hoped to get a few quiet moments with them.
* * *
“Yo! Yo! Yo! What’s up, Beacon Theatre!” There were cheers as Funkmaster Flex, the onstage DJ and Source Awards’ official announcer, warmed up the crowd. “Welcome to the Source Music Awards!” Then he dropped the beat from the latest Neptunes production and the energy in the old theater rose like yeast in Grandma’s oven. The TV lights came on bright, the music continued full blast, and Flex began running down the list of stars appearing: “Amari! Ludacris! Ja Rule! Eve!” As Flex rambled on, Bridgette Haze stood in the wings trying to hold back tears. It had been a difficult last few minutes for the Source Awards’ cohost.
Her arrival at the venue had been smooth and militaristic. Police escort, lights flashing, the whole nine. Backstage had been fun at first. Lots of fans, plenty of friends, and the many lips poked out to kiss her famous white ass. In the dressing room she’d met with the producers and the writers, going over the script and making changes where she saw fit. Ivy sat through some of this and Jen, perched on a chair next to her, stayed with Bridgette the whole time, just as she had ever since her little sister had become a star.
And then D entered the room—her protector, her hero, her lover for now (and maybe later too). They hugged deeply and then he asked for a moment alone with her before the show. And he wanted Jen to stay as well.
Bridgette stood in the wings and gazed out at the Beacon. There was an orchestra, a mezzanine, and a steep balcony, all filled to the brim with young faces, all of them waiting to see if she could hold her own before a crowd of hip hop heads. Yet the anxiety that filled her had nothing to do with this performance.
“So this is what I know,” D began. “Your sister got a deal booking hotel rooms for a motorcycle tournament at Virginia Beach. Crews from up and down the Eastern Seaboard attended, including several from New York. Jen even went to hang out herself. Isn’t that right?”
“I was visiting friends in the area that weekend,” Jen said without a trace of fear. “The promoter was grateful for my help and gave me some comp tickets.”
“You met Areea Lucas there.”
“I met a lot of people that weekend.”
D smiled. “For your information, Bridgette, Areea Lucas is the lady who shot me in the hip the other night. When she’s not shooting bodyguards, Areea runs a motorcycle dealership in Hempstead and a motorcycle crew called STP, the Speed Tribe Posse, many of whose members are now in police custody for kidnapping Night and attempting to snatch you.”
“D,” Bridgette said, irritated and alarmed, “stop being cute and tell me what you’re getting at.”
“I’m saying that your sister knows more about all this than she’s telling and that if she admits that right now I can go to the police and cut a deal. Otherwise she’s going to be charged by the NYPD as an accessory to kidnapping, assault, and lots of other embarrassing things.”
Bridgette’s fear bubbled up, and she asked Jen, “Is any of this true?”
“Please,” Jen responded from behind a very unconvincing poker face. “Your boyfriend is crazy.”
The stage manager came over to Bridgette. He was a balding black man in his thirties named Jimi, who hadn’t quite committed to a bald head. “One minute to tape time, Ms. Haze. I’ll signal when it reaches thirty and then count you down from ten.” Bridgette nodded, flashed her professional smile, and then returned to her thoughts.
“Jen,” D continued, back in the prosecutor mode that he fell so naturally into, “I know you attended Night’s concert in DC and hung out with him at his hotel, knowing when he’d return to New York. I know you paid my employee Mercedez Cruz sever
al thousand dollars and promised more if she kept you abreast of my investigation of Night’s kidnapping. I know that you knew Roderick Dukes, who was raised as Adrian Dukes’s son but is more likely the son of Ivy Greenwich, and have met with him several times since you and your sister arrived in New York. I know—”
“Stop!” Bridgette stood up and walked to the center of the room. “This is crazy, D. You have strung a lot of items together, but that doesn’t mean my sister is behind all this.”
D, calm and reasonable, replied, “I think it does.”
They both looked over at Jen, who gazed at D with a kind of fuzzy bewilderment.
“Jen has no reason to do this,” Bridgette said, defending her sister against her own suspicion. “She has a good life.”
Ignoring Jen, D stepped closer to Bridgette. He could see she was weakening. If he pushed hard enough, he knew both sisters would fall. “It’s about having a better one, Bridgette. At least that’s what I suspect. That’s what messing with Rodney was all about too. I think, in her mind, she was gonna chase Ivy away, end up managing you, and take her pleasure in both milking you for cash and making you miserable. I think your sister hates you the way only a family member can hate another family member. That’s a deep hate. It can make you do some terrible shit.”
Jen, who knew intellectually that keeping quiet was her best defense, couldn’t take any more of D’s made-up-on-the-spot psychology. “I’ve had enough of you both. He’s full of shit and you’re dick-whipped enough to let him talk about me this way. You let him say this outside this room and your career is over, Bridgette. This will be exploited by every tabloid in the world. You better put a leash on your big dog here.”
D was afraid that Jen was going to stand pat. If she just denied everything and Bridgette sided with her, it could get ugly. He’d made his play hoping that Bridgette would get Jen to admit her guilt and, maybe, tell him where Areea was before anyone else got hurt. He was now feeling as if he’d revealed his hand too soon and had no more cards left. But he wasn’t taking into account how well the sisters could read each other. What looked like a strong front to D looked shaky to Bridgette. When Bridgette said to Jen, “Fuck! You did this, didn’t you?” D was the one who was most surprised.
Jimi said, “Thirty seconds, Ms. Haze.” She nodded and peered over the orchestra to the area in the back where the cue cards were situated. Across the stage Treach blew her a kiss. Her cohost was already in Mack Daddy mode and the cameras weren’t even on yet. Bridgette’s body was almost onstage, but her mind was still way backstage.
“I don’t know what to tell you, Bridgette.”
“Jen, I love you, but what D says has some truth to it. I can feel it. I trust him with my life. I’ve seen him risk his for mine. So just tell me which parts are true and which aren’t.”
Jimi said, “Ten seconds.”
“Yeah, well, it wasn’t my idea,” Jen said. “I knew a lot about it. I guess I helped them a bit.”
“Why, Jen?”
Jimi said, “Eight.”
“Money.”
“Money. I would have given you anything you wanted.”
Jimi said, “Six.”
“Give me? Why should my little sister give me anything when I could take it?”
Jimi said, “Four.”
“Didn’t you think at all about what Mom and Dad would say?”
“They don’t care what I do. It’s all about you. It’s all about the meal ticket.”
Jimi said, “Three.”
Bridgette lunged for Jen, but D intercepted her. When Jen tried to escape the room, D stuck out his right foot, slamming his heel into the woman’s thigh, which dropped her like a shot.
Jimi said, “Two.”
D stood over the woman and shouted, “Where is Areea Lucas?”
“Same place you are. The Beacon Theatre.”
Jimi said, “One,” and pointed with his finger out toward the stage. Bridgette walked into the spotlight, into the cheering, barking voices, into the sight lines of several thousand people, into the bull’s-eye of an angry woman determined to do her harm.
“What’s up, New York!” Bridgette shouted and raised both hands above her head. “The Source Awards is on tonight! What do you say, Treach?”
“I say no doubt, especially with you here, Moms! Ain’t this a dime piece or what?” The MC looked down lustfully at her derriere, and Bridgette responded with her enamel whites, her glossy red lips, and her big saucer eyes, projecting good cheer that was as fake as a four-dollar bill.
“Now let’s set this off right,” Bridgette said in the shouting-talking voice that was a prerequisite of all hip hop announcing.
“Show our first act some love—Harlem’s own Cam’Ron!”
* * *
“It’s impossible to know how many backstage passes have been given out.” D was in the security room with Detective Williams, whom D had awakened from a sound sleep and cajoled into coming down with the promise of Areea’s arrest. “Apparently someone at The Source made a bootleg set. So she could be standing outside this office as easily as my security team.”
“There’s a metal detector at the stage door, right?”
“Yes, but it would be easy to slip a gat in through a garment bag or in some DJ equipment. We wanted to search it all but the Source people thought it would send a negative message to the hip hop community.” They both laughed sourly at that and looked at the stage monitor.
The broadcast was two-thirds over and had run smoothly. No one in the audience or on the stage had been disrespectful to anyone else, and to Bridgette’s delight, no one had yet shouted anything nasty her way. Currently presenting onstage were model/actress Joy Bryant and singer Night. “In the category of best solo rap female, the nominees are Eve, Queen Latifah, MC Lyte, and Da Brat,” Night said smoothly. Then Bryant ripped open the envelope and shouted, “And the winner is—!” Standing stage right, Bridgette was oblivious to the cheers for Eve. She was wondering what to tell her parents about Jen and whether, somehow, it was all her fault.
* * *
In a stall in the women’s restroom in the Beacon’s basement, Areea plucked a piece of plastic out of her shiny pulled-back black hair. From inside each high black boot she removed more pieces of plastic and, on top of the toilet dispenser, began assembling a weapon. It had cost a pretty penny and was a bitch to construct. She’d seen a version of it in the movie In the Line of Fire and had looked through a bunch of gun guides to find it. But this was actually less challenging than maintaining a high-performance motorcycle engine, so, as the sound from the stage rumbled through the walls, Areea put together a plastic gun. The bullets were the tricky part. She’d had to buy tickets to the black ghetto musical To Love a Black Man’s Sole (the story of a lonely African American shoe salesman) that had been at the Beacon earlier in the week.
Earlier in the week. The phrase made her face tighten and her body clench. Earlier in the week was before the star-crossed train ride to Montauk, before her lover was broken into pieces, before the police busted into the warehouse she’d leased and rousted her riders. It was before her very controlled fantasy world of speed and money fell apart. She pulled the tape off the back of the toilet and let two bullets fall into her hand. She only had two shots. Had to get close. Shoot into the gut, so you didn’t miss. Had to do it for I-Rod. To honor his love and anger.
It’s amazing how much stuff a woman can store between her legs, particularly if the skirt is long enough. Strapped to one leg was a blond Afro wig, a halter top, and some stockings. With the wig in place she changed her makeup, discarded her long dress for the shorter one underneath, and replaced her blouse with a tube top. Areea was a new woman when she exited the stall, looking like an eager chickenhead, a woman who’d attract attention but no suspicion. Only one item left. She slipped the All Access pass around her neck, then moved out of the restroom and toward her destiny.
Best hip hop group. Best hip hop solo male. Best hip hop video. Best hip hop/
R&B collaboration. The awards were celebrated with shouts, representin’-for, I-got-love-for, and thank-yous to God, Jehovah, Allah, and Moms alive and dead. Despite the tight knot inside her belly, Bridgette had handled her business. There was a moment or two when she’d tried too hard to be down. Treach had cut her a look once when she’d hit a slang phrase too hard. Still, she hadn’t made a fool of herself. A couple of the female rappers had actually hugged her, which was nice, since most of the female R&B singers had been chilly, obviously thinking she had taken a spot they deserved. She wasn’t part of the culture like Eminem, but she wasn’t whack like Vanilla Ice. For now Bridgette Haze was as cool as Gwen Stefani, which was a triumph for her. Backstage, Rodney and Merry Hampton were already plotting how to exploit her enhanced street cred.
D stood stage left, ready to whisk Bridgette from the podium through the backstage area to the limo. He knew it wouldn’t be easy. In the hip hop world, walking past another celebrity without an acknowledgment was tantamount to spitting in their face. The problem was that everyone thought they were a celebrity—from the MC’s road manager to the guy who carries the DAT. Once he got Bridgette in that car he could do a Toni Braxton and breathe again. He’d been waiting to exhale for nearly three hours.
The big closing number was Bridgette singing her collaboration with DJ Power, which was to be augmented by a medley of rap stars from the East, West, dirty South, and hip hop territories yet to be designated. Between their posses, security guards, and hangers-on, there would be a lot of folks gathered around Bridgette. Happily, from D’s perspective, most of them would be men.
Onstage, DJ Power’s beat kicked in and Bridgette went into the intro. Power started flowing into the first six bars of the rhyme and was followed by cohost Treach.
D’s cell phone buzzed inside his inner breast pocket. He pulled it out and listened to it the old-fashioned way since his head was already thick with earphones.
“I think I saw her!” Ray Ray reported.
“Where?”
“There was this girl with a blond Afro wig walking up the steps from the restrooms.”
The Accidental Hunter Page 22
