Hell's Diva

by Anna J.

  Ruby sighed as she parked on a side street in Midtown Manhattan reading the file. Before continuing to read, she took a sip of a Sprite she bought from a corner bodega. She turned to another page that had a picture of Dawn. Ruby spilled the Sprite on the car floor from the shock of what was written over Dawn’s name. In bold, black print it said, “G.I. NUMBER 1.”

  Blinded to what was going on in the street outside of the car, Ruby put the file on the passenger seat and reached down to get the soda can. The Spanish guy who drove the Accord exited his vehicle and sped toward her car. Ruby opened up the door and got out to wipe the car floor with a rag she took out of the glove compartment. The busy Manhattan day was buzzing with the sounds of loud talking, car horns, and trucks.

  The Spanish guy approached from behind, but before he could raise his gun, Ruby spun around and pulled the trigger of her nickel-plated .45 that sent three bullets into the Spanish guy’s face. The loud boom of the gun sent people on the streets running for cover. There were screams.

  A police officer walking the beat saw Ruby standing over the Spanish guy, pumping three more bullets into his chest. Ducking down, she ripped the Spanish guy’s pocket in his jogging suit and took a wad of bills. She picked up his gun and put it in her dark blue Fila velour pants and started walking back to her car.

  “Lady, don’t move! Drop the weapon and put your hands up!”

  Ruby hesitated. She thought about Mecca. Her mind flashed back to when she was first born, when her sister had to get a C-section at Kings County Hospital. What would Mecca do without me? she thought. She had to tell Mecca about Dawn. She had to live. Ruby did as the cop ordered and dropped her weapon. Tears rolled down her face. She couldn’t remember the last time she cried.

  “Drop to your knees!” the cop yelled.

  A crowd gathered around, looking at the dead Spanish guy with his blood flowing into the gutter. Cars stopped, blocking traffic, to see the bloody scene. The world seemed as if it were spinning to her. The cop’s voice echoed in her ears.

  “Put your hands above your head!”

  Ruby put her hands behind her head and put her head down. She knew this was the end of her life of crime…at least on the streets.

  “The Feds gave your aunt four life sentences and almost three hundred years and you still didn’t get the message!” Lou barked at Mecca.

  Mecca unfolded her arms and tried to turn her back on him, but everywhere she turned, Lou’s image was in front of her.

  “You didn’t have to remind me,” Mecca replied gravely. For the first time in her life Mecca felt like maybe she should have gotten out of the game earlier. Dawn had suggested it years ago, but now Mecca felt like she was a snake, too, and anyone she loved couldn’t be trusted. Mecca was confused, and was trying to make sense of her life…the only life she knew how to live.

  “Wow! Then your so-called best friend informed on her. Y’all call it snitching these days, ratting, whatever term y’all use. But you best friend? How much betrayal and loss of lives you’ve witnessed and experienced and you’re not convinced that the life you were in wasn’t worth all you went through?” Lou grinned as he spoke. Suddenly, he looked off to nowhere and spoke as if someone else was there with him and Mecca.

  “I told you they would prove me right, Your Majesty,” Lou yelled. Mecca looked around to see if she could see whom Lou was talking to, but saw nothing. “Why did I have to belittle myself for these beings who caused so much bloodshed and havoc among themselves? I deserve better,” he screamed. Mecca had to hold her ears. In a split second Lou became calm again and turned back to her.

  “Why did you have to kill Dawn? She didn’t inform on you. She did what she did to save your life. To save you from the destructive life that your aunt, your own flesh and blood, led you to?”

  “She did it to save her own ass.”

  “I beg to differ,” Lou replied, snapping his fingers.

  The snap made Mecca close her eyes and rub her temples as if she were suffering a migraine headache. An image appeared in her head. It was after Mecca received Dawn’s photo with “G.I. Number 1” on it in the mail from Ruby.

  Mecca, dressed in a blue Polo sweat suit and blue Reeboks, with her head wrapped in a blue bandanna scarf, held the papers in her hand as she and Dawn (dressed in a pair of hip-hugging, black Levi jeans, white Reeboks, and a white-button down Tommy Hilfiger shirt) sat on a bench in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park on a late night.

  Mecca waited almost a month after Ruby’s letter, which simply said, “If you don’t get rid of her, she will be your downfall. Remember, I told you before, don’t let nothing slide.” When Mecca gave Dawn the paper, Dawn reacted with shock and disbelief on her face.

  “This ain’t true, Mecca! I swear, I…” she cried. “You were at your aunt’s hearing! I didn’t testify against her at the hearing when the grand jury indicted her!”

  Mecca thought, this bitch must think I’m dumb. They don’t need her testimony at the grand jury! As Dawn spoke, Mecca looked around the park. It was dark except for the few streetlights that lined the walkways and streets that went through the park. Mecca chose a spot behind the trees and brush, blocking them from the view of people outside the park.

  “Why would my aunt make this up? Why would she choose you to make this up on?” Mecca asked, beginning to feel the tears form in her eyes. She was in pain, hurt from the betrayal at the hands of her best friend, the only person she trusted besides her aunt. Dawn was like her sister and she had betrayed that trust. Mecca hated the position that she was in. The position the game forced her in. She couldn’t walk away from this now. She had to hold it down for Ruby.

  “Even if I did, Mecca, I would have done it for you. For you to get out of this game! But I didn’t do—”

  Before Dawn could finish her sentence, Mecca let off three shots to the chest, silencing her forever. It hurt because they had been through so much together, but then Mecca remembered that you couldn’t trust anyone in the street. Especially someone that who supposed to be your family.

  “You were a monster, Mecca!” Lou yelled as Mecca snapped out of the vision of shooting Dawn in the chest with a black .22 revolver, and afterward running out of the park, where Tah picked her up in his Porsche. Lou laughed. “I love it!”

  Mecca looked at him confused. “Why is it so funny? I thought you didn’t like what I was doing.” Mecca said.

  “I never said I liked it or didn’t. I just find it hysterical and rather strange that”—Lou held his hands making quotation signs “God would create you human beings and allow you all to do these things to one another.”

  Mecca looked confused and finally asked, “Where am I? How long is this going to last?”

  Lou grinned from ear to ear before giving an answer. Mecca had a dreaded feeling of what he was going to say, though she would have used a different term for “Eternity.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Everybody was making a lot of money. Within that year, Mecca’s stash reached six kilos a week. Tah traded his ’87 Porsche for the up-to-date one. Mecca copped the 1991 SL500, forest green with chrome Antera rims. Li’l Shamel copped a gold Land Cruiser and leased an apartment in the Sheeps Head Bay section of Brooklyn.

  Before Mecca made her move, she knew she had to get another connect once Ruby’s connect was properly disposed of. Li’l Shamel was instrumental in providing Mecca with another connect. He introduced her to a Cuban cat he met on Rikers Island where he had been laid up for a few months for a gun charge before going “up north” to do a two-year sentence.

  “This Cuban nigga got some shit, Mecca. He lives in Queens. They got that raw shit out there.”

  Mecca began to re-up from the Cuban who called himself “Heck,” short for Hector. She wanted to establish a good rapport with Hector to be sure that she could trust him, because at the end of the day she didn’t want to be totally assed out on a supplier. Tah, in the meantime, helped Mecca with her situation with the connect they would no longer be using.
He had worked with him in the past, and knew this connect was always hungry for money.

  “Papi, I need eight of them,” Tah said on a pay phone in Brownsville Houses. Ruby’s connect smiled on the other end of the phone as he stood on the corner of 156th and Amsterdam Avenue.

  “Listen, Papi, I’m not trying to come uptown for it. It’s been crazy hot up there lately. We can meet in Brooklyn; it ain’t that hot out here like it is up there,” Tah continued.

  If it were someone else, Papi would have found the request truly out of line. Brooklyn wasn’t the place a nigga in his right mind would bring three kilos of cocaine to sell to some nigga from out there. However, Papi trusted Tah because Tah made him a lot of money. He even gave Tah consignment and Tah brought him his money with no shorts. Tah even offered for Papi to come into business with him in Brooklyn. Papi thanked him for the offer, but he wanted no business dealings in the borough of crooks and killers. Papi asked Tah where he wanted to meet him after he agreed to coming to Brooklyn.

  “Under the Brooklyn Bridge.”

  Papi showed up under the Brooklyn Bridge in a gold Lincoln Town Car, which was a cab driven by an old, fat, gray-haired Dominican man. To the surprise of everyone who lay in wait, Papi showed up by himself with no backup. He really trusted Tah. Niggas who ran with Tah didn’t trust him, but Papi didn’t know that Tah was from Brownsville, and was one of the neighborhood’s most notorious stick up kids.

  Not wanting to look suspicious, Papi wore a Yankee pinstriped jersey, tight blue jeans, and a pair of white Nike Air Max sneakers. Tah showed up in a Black Chevy Caprice with no hubcaps on the wheels; the crew’s hooptie. The same one they used to go on missions with. He wore a sky blue Nautica sweat suit with a pair of white and sky blue canvas Air Force Ones.

  Tah got out of the car with a black duffel bag. Papi carried a large brown paper bag that had the words in big print on it, “BIG BROWN BAG.” He walked over to the Lincoln town car that parked behind the Caprice under the Bridge. The streets were empty on the cloudy day. The smell of garbage and human waste was strong here.

  When he reached the destination he placed the duffel bag on the trunk of the town car. Tah and Papi turned quickly, hearing footsteps and the sound of metal smacking into metal. They saw a homeless man pushing a shopping cart filled with soda cans. The homeless man had a long, beige, filthy trench coat, and a dirty, red, yellow, and green wool Jamaican hat. He walked with his head down.

  He picked up a can on the ground and threw it in the shopping cart, taking a short glance at Tah and Papi. Tah waived off the homeless man, and Papi turned back to him and put the brown paper bag on the trunk. Tah looked in and saw the eight kilos of cocaine tightly wrapped with duct tape.

  Tah and Papi heard the footsteps of the homeless man stop behind them. When they turned to look, the homeless man was picking up a small brown paper bag that had something in it. The homeless man looked in the bag curiously. They turned their attention away from the bum again and didn’t see him pull a .25-caliber automatic out of the bag.

  The old man in the Lincoln looked at the homeless man and his eyes widened in shock when he saw the gun. “Mira Carlos!” the driver yelled, trying to warn them that the man had a gun.

  The homeless man put two bullets in the back of Papi’s head. Tah reached in his pocket, pulled out his .380 automatic, ran to the driver’s side of the Lincoln, and pumped five bullets into the old cab driver’s head and neck.

  Tah and the homeless man jumped in Tah’s Caprice and sped off. Two members of Tah’s crew parked down the block in a blue Acura Integra saw Tah pull out from under the bridge, and they pulled out after Tah and the homeless man drove by them.

  “You can take the hat and that nasty-ass coat off. That shit stinks.” Tah snorted. When the homeless man took the hat and coat off, Tah smiled at the person who wasn’t a man, but his pretty girlfriend, Mecca.

  Tah stopped the car in front of an apartment building that had a green dumpster in the alley. He grabbed Mecca’s homeless costume and the duffel bag filled with newspaper and tossed it in the dumpster. He jumped back in the car and with the tires screeching, he sped off.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Lust not after her beauty in thine heart, neither let her take thee with her eyelids.

  Proverbs 6:2

  Li’l Shamel, actually Shamel Jacobs, was twenty-one years old in 1995 like Mecca. He got his name from Ruby. No one called him that except her. He never knew why Ruby called him that, but he always thought it was a joke because for his age he was built like a thirty-year-old running back.

  During his time in juvenile and adult prisons throughout New York, Shamel did nothing but read books and work out. He had been in and out of group homes and jails all of his life. The coppertoned, wavy-haired, hazel-eyed Shamel was born and raised in the East New York section of Brooklyn. His mother and father were alcoholics who lived in Cypress projects. He grew tired of their alcohol-induced abuse on him physically, as well as watching his father beat on his mother, so he chose to stay with his grandmother in Sutter Gardens.

  Sutter Gardens was a two-story housing complex that was a little cleaner and less dangerous than Cypress projects where Shamel had lived with his parents. But Sutter Gardens was far from safe. Already trained and equipped to brawl, Shamel had to prove himself the same way he did in Cypress, and he did. Shamel never lost a fight in Sutter Gardens and he gained the respect from the neighborhood tough guys by beating all of them one by one. Shamel always said he was no “stranger to danger,” and adjusted well to the change that took place in the streets once crack hit the hood. That danger was guns.

  Shamel got his first gun when he was fourteen years old. It was a .38 Special he found in a vacant lot where he and a few guys from the hood stashed their packages of crack. The first time he used it was when he was fifteen. He went to Empire Roller Skating Rink in Crown Heights strapped with his .38. When he and a friend got to the rink there was a group of guys from the Heights Ebbets Field projects in the front and they didn’t look like they just came to skate and have a good time. They looked like trouble.

  Shamel wore a black Woolrich coat, and a black Champion hooded sweater with a pair of black Girbaud jeans and a white and gray pair of New Balance sneakers. He had a gold nugget watch on his wrist and the watch caught the attention of the Ebbets Field crew. Shamel’s friend held the .38 in his beige Woolrich. There was a crowd of mostly females waiting to get in the roller rink and cars blasting music were pulling up in front trying to find parking. The music blasted from the inside of the rink so it was hard for Shamel and his friend to hear one of the guys say for him to give up his jewelry.

  “Yo, money, run that watch!” Shamel and his friend kept walking and that angered the Ebbets Field guys.

  “Yo, duke! You ain’t hear me? Run that watch!” one of the guys ran up and yelled in front of Shamel and his friend. Shamel looked the guy up and down, noticing he didn’t have a weapon in his hand. Shamel turned to look at the other guys and none of them had any weapons.

  “What you say?” he asked.

  “Nigga, run that watch,” the guy yelled again, this time getting more pissed off.

  Shamel looked at his friend who gave Shamel the “What you wanna do?” look. Shamel smiled at his friends who were still looking at the dude.

  “I’ma give duke the watch, so we can bounce!” Shamel took the watch off and handed it to the guy who was smiling at his crew behind Shamel.

  “Y’all good?” Shamel asked. “We ain’t got no money,” Shamel lied, tapping his pocket.

  “Get the fuck outta here, pussy,” the guy with the watch said while putting it on his wrist. Shamel and his friend took a couple of steps past the guy who was admiring the Rolex with his crew standing around him.

  “Pass me the biscuit, son,” Shamel whispered to his friend. His friend slowly pulled it out of his jacket and handed it to Shamel.

  The Ebbets Field crew had their backs to Shamel. Shamel turned around and walked
up behind the guy with the watch. The music blocked them from hearing his approach. It was dark outside except for the light around the skating rink.

  Shamel placed the gun to the neck of the guy with the watch and squeezed the trigger. The loud boom and seeing their partner fall face-forward made the Ebbets Field crew take off like a flock of pigeons flying off when someone approaches. Being that Empire Roller Rink was down the block from where Shamel shot the guy, the line of people in front of Empire did not hear or see him shoot, then take his watch off of the now dead guy’s wrist. Still standing over the guy, Shamel put his watch back on after tucking the gun in his coat pocket. He walked over to his friend and with no show of emotion they kept on with their night as planned.

  “There’s mad bitches in that joint. Let’s go.”

  His friend shook his head. “You crazy, son.”

  From that point on, Shamel did not hesitate to pull the trigger on anybody who even slightly disrespected him or any of his friends. He caught his first body when he went to Cypress to visit his mother. The Ebbets Field guy didn’t die; he was paralyzed from the neck down. When he got to his mother’s apartment, he heard her screams from the hallway.

  “Stop, Brian, you’re hurting me!”

  When he entered the apartment, his mother’s face and naked body had blood and bruises, old and new, all over them. Shamel’s father was standing over his mother (who was curled up on the couch covered with a dirty fitted sheet stained with alcohol and piss) with a two-by-four of plywood in his hand. Shamel immediately reached for the .38 he had on his waist and without saying a word he emptied all six shots into his father’s head and body. When his father slumped to the dirty, brown carpet, his mother jumped off the couch on top of her husband and cried.