Diesel smiles. “Still. I wish you guys’d clued me in on what was up. I could’ve helped out, you know?”
King Isaac doesn’t seem too charmed by his nephew by marriage. “We didn’t need your help.”
The growing tension makes it difficult to breathe.
“Is there a problem here that I’m not aware of?” Diesel asks, cocking his head and then swinging his gaze back and forth between Python and Isaac.
There’s definitely a power play going on.
“There’s no problem that I’m aware of,” Isaac says. “Should there be a problem?”
Diesel’s green eyes cool to an artic blue.
“Let’s get something straight here, Diesel,” Isaac says, chuckling and shaking his head. “Your . . . help has been much appreciated. But I don’t have to run shit by no muthafuckin’ body, especially an opportunist from Atlanta, looking to expand his territory.”
Damn.
“An opportunist?” Diesel glances around, uncomfortable having this conversation in front of so many foot soldiers. “You got a few things twisted, Uncle Isaac. I didn’t just pop up. I was called here—as a favor for a family member.” He stabs Python with a look. “I didn’t push for cuz here to pack his shit up and run to Mexico. That shit was his fucking plan—at least until shit died down, is what he told me. I came through. And I continued to come through even when Python changed his mind and decided to ride this heat out. So don’t come at me like you’re doing and think I’m going to stand for it. You got a nigga twisted if you think that’s how this shit is going to play out.”
King Isaac steps forward.
Diesel matches his step and lifts his chin, even though he’s a good three inches taller than his uncle.
I don’t know what to do or prepare for. Surely, Diesel understands math and knows that his ass is outnumbered.
Python speaks up. “C’mon, you two. This is not the time or the place for this shit. We’re family. Squash this shit now!”
King Isaac and Diesel stare each other down. I know that I’m not the only one wondering what’s going to happen if they decide to ignore Python.
“You’re right, Terrell,” Isaac says, pulling back. “This is not the time or place for family disagreements.”
Python nods, satisfied. “Good. It’s time to celebrate. Seven-four!”
The soldiers shout back, “Till the world blow!”
* * *
Hours later, I arrive home. “Kobe!” I’m shocked to find him home, chillin’ in his favorite spot on the couch with his friends, playing video games.
“Yeah?”
“You’re here,” I say, sounding crazy even to my own ears.
Kobe chuckles without pulling his eyes up from the screen. “Where else would I be?”
“Oh. I don’t know. Maybe riding shotgun with King Isaac and Python while they lay siege on Ruby Cove?”
He pauses the game and he and his excited friends hop up. “You heard about that? That shit was tight, wasn’t it? King Isaac ain’t playing. He’s here to change the game.”
“So you were there?”
Kobe leans forward to look down the hallway toward Grandma’s closed bedroom door. “Cleo, that shit was fuckin’ major! You don’t even know.” He hops up and acts out the night’s adventure. “You should have seen it. We mowed those roaches down like the shit was nothing.”
I rush over and smack him on the back of his head. “Are you crazy?” I glance around and his friends drop their heads. “You could have been killed. And for what?”
“For what?” he echoes. “For standing up for our turf. Those slob niggas came at us first. We can’t just let them keep disrespecting us. We’ve been standing on the sidelines with our dicks in our hands for far too long. It’s time to check niggas and let them know what time it is.”
“What the fuck is all this we shit? Since when are you a banger, huh?”
Kobe laughs and puffs out his chest. “Chill, Cleo. You don’t need to be all up in my business. I don’t tell you everything I do. I’m grown.”
“Oh? You’re grown, huh? So Granny knows that you were part of that mess while she was blowing up my phone stressing about where the hell you were?”
Kobe’s grown butt takes another quick glance down the hall and he lowers his voice.
“No. And she doesn’t need to know. I handle my business. That’s all that matters.” He pauses and looks me up and down. “Where the hell have you been? That shit went down hours ago.”
“Out looking for your big knucklehead.” I smack him again, but not as hard.
He smiles. “With King Isaac back, things are changing around here, Cleo. Watch and see.”
Grief
21
Mack
The worst part about getting arrested in the middle of the weekend is that you have to wait until Monday morning for your arraignment. The fight between the Vice Lords and the police department ended up having those who hadn’t been gunned down during the massacre packed into paddy wagons, and now we’re jammed into these holding cells like a bunch of sardines. It’s been almost twenty-four hours in this bitch, more than a handful of us need some soap and water to hit our asses. As usual, my aunt Lizzie gives me nothing but lip when I call her to come bail me out.
When am I going to grow up? When am I going to get my ass up out of these damn streets? On and on it goes before she promises me that she’ll call Henry, the bail bondsman.
Though the men and women are housed in different cells, we do have a pretty good view of all the things that are going on with the brawling Vice Lord soldiers across the hall. The men have pretty much given our chief and Profit a pretty broad space to pace out their frustrations and anxieties.
The two Gangster Disciples who had the misfortune to be locked up in the cell with them on this night, were fucked up on sight. Cops raced in and stopped a double homicide in progress. The bleeding Gangster Disciples were transported to the nearest hospital. More charges will be added to our soldiers who participated in the brawl, which was captured on surveillance cameras.
Fat Ace and Profit didn’t look the least bit interested in those skinny niggas. Their minds are wrapped up on the other thing. One would have to be stupid as shit not to know who it involves.
“You think Ta’Shara is gonna pull through?” Romil asks.
“She’s a tough girl,” I tell her, not blowing smoke up her ass. “I’m sure that she’s gonna be all right.”
Romil glances across the way to the men’s cell, and I can guess what’s she’s thinking. Profit doesn’t look like he has too much faith about his girl pulling through, but then again, he could be thinking about the status of their relationship. After all, Ta’Shara called because she was ready to leave his ass again.
Mack, keep your nose out of other people’s business. I bob my head at my own advice. Shit. It doesn’t make any sense for me to be so concerned about other bitches’ men when I don’t even have one my damn self. All I can do is hope for the best for my girl Ta’Shara, and then keep it pushing.
“Mason Lewis.” The bailiff shouts Fat Ace’s government name.
Fat Ace shoots him an angry look.
“We need to ask you a few questions,” the bailiff tells him, twisting his jangling keys in the lock.
Fat Ace remains rooted on the metal bench. His irritation at this disrespectful jailor is written on his face.
Both jail cells fall silent as we wait and watch to see what he’s going to do. The bailiff’s frustration matches our brooding chief’s. “Look. You can either come along nice and easy or I can get a couple of fellows and we can drag you out.”
The gauntlet has been tossed down.
Fat Ace allows several beats of silence to pass, as if waiting for the cop to go and gather the appropriate number of homies he’ll need to take his ass down. But the city’s new captain of police sashays her thick ass back here to give Fat Ace the news he’s been waiting for.
“We’ve found Willow Washington.
Come along.”
Fat Ace stands, but his mask of worry remains.
“Is she . . . ?”
The captain takes pity on him. “She’s alive.”
The two large public cells erupt into spontaneous cheers. Myself included.
Lucifer is a bad bitch and her reputation will now, no doubt, be cemented in Memphis’s mean streets.
Fat Ace’s bruised, battered, and burned face manages to reflect his relief. And as a reward to the captain for this news, he strolls out from behind the iron bars without so much as acknowledging the still heated face of the bailiff.
The Vice Lords’ celebration continues after the cops lock up and disappear.
My nosy ass may be grinning, but I wonder how the cops found Lucifer. Does that mean she killed her kidnappers to get away? Did the police save her? Have the Gangster Disciples suffered a major blow? What?
While the questions loop inside of my mind, my gaze falls back on Profit’s glum expression. For him, the torture of not knowing continues.
22
Hydeya
That Jack Daniel’s I guzzled down less than twenty-four hours ago seems more like some distant dream. The lack of food in my system is the number-one contributing factor to the pounding migraine that’s threatening to push my left eyeball out of its socket. Add to that there is an ungodly amount of caffeine also pumping through my system.
For the last hour, I have been ignoring the weird sounds emitting from my stomach. Instead, I march one foot in front of the other. I find myself taking special note of the familiar lines and contours of Mason’s body. He has Isaac’s dark complexion—and even his high cheekbones, but that’s about all. If I was to guess, I would say that he was a solid inch to an inch-and-a-half taller, but given the extensive burns, bruises, and tattoos, I can’t make out any other similarities . . . except Isaac and Mason have the same walk. I watch his slow swag as he moves toward the interrogation room and I wonder if my mind is playing tricks on me—or maybe I’m forcing myself to see things that aren’t really there. Could Momma Peaches have been wrong? I remember her letter that’s still jammed in my pocket. Her claim that this man is my brother is fucking with me more than it should.
When Mason arrives at the interrogation room I nearly crash into his back and have to mumble a quick apology before reaching out and unlocking the door. “Go in. Have a seat.” From my right pocket, I remove the key to his handcuffs. He stands patiently as I unlock one hand and then cuff the free bracelet into a hook on the table. “Have a seat,” I tell him again.
After staring at his cuffed wrist and then at me, Mason folds his large frame and settles into the metal chair next to the table. After that, he stares up at me, wary and grim faced.
My throat squeezes tight, making it difficult to push words out. “Can I get you anything to drink? Water or a soda?”
He ignores the question to ask two of his own. “How is Willow? How’s my kid?”
I cough to clear my throat, but it doesn’t work. My answers come out sounding like a hoarse bullfrog. “We . . . were able to locate her. She’d been in a car accident with her kidnappers. Somehow she managed to get out of the car and seek shelter in the surrounding woods. When we found her, she was in early labor. We did manage to get her to the hospital in time to deliver the baby.”
Mason exhales a long breath, allowing his large shoulders to droop a few inches.
“How about some coffee?” I offer, not ready to delve into the bad news.
“I’d rather have a beer,” he says.
I chuckle. “Sorry. We’re fresh out.”
“Then I’ll take a bottled water.”
“You got it.” I turn and exit out of the room, perhaps too fast because by the time I pull the door closed behind me I’m light-headed and out of breath.
“Are you all right, Captain?”
I look up into Officer Hendrix’s concerned face.
“Yeah. I’m good.”
She glances around and then strolls over to me as if she doesn’t want to take my word for it. “Are you sure? You look . . .” She struggles for the right word.
“I’m fine. I’m fine,” I insist. My dizzy spell is over and I push away from the door. “Excuse me.” I move past Officer Hendrix and head to the break room to get that bottled water.
“Looks like you reeled in the big fish,” Lieutenant Fowler says, wrangling my attention.
“What?”
Fowler scoops coffee into a filter at the counter. “Fat Ace,” he says, smacking the brew button. “I saw you taking him into one of the interrogation rooms.”
“Oh. Yeah.” I open the refrigerator and grab a bottled water.
“So. What’s his story?”
“Nothing. We haven’t started talking yet.” Silence and then, “Thank you.”
“For what?”
I shrug. “I guess for being incompetent. Thanks to you, my administrative leave will go down in the department’s history as the shortest one on record.”
He laughs, but anger flushes his face. “Incompetence? You’re putting it on a bit thick, aren’t you?”
“Hmm, no. Not really. I mean, c’mon. You turned off your phone?”
“I lost my phone,” he clarifies.
“Yeah. That sounds worse.” The tension jacks the temperature in the room.
“You’re still angry with me.”
“You’ve been plotting to steal my job.”
“I never plotted to steal your job.”
“Right.” I roll my eyes. “But for the record, I’m not angry. I’m pissed.”
Fowler sighs.
“Going forward, let’s keep it simple. We’re not friends, buddies, or pals. We’re colleagues. You play on your side of the fence and I’ll play on mine.”
“I’m not the enemy,” he says.
I push my eyebrows up high at that bullshit. “If you’re not for me, then you’re against me.”
“Who says that I’m not for you? Why are you the only one allowed to have any ambition in this relationship? In order for us to be friends—you have to be the boss?”
“Get the fuck on with that shit. You’re not going to flip the script on me. What you did was wrong and it was dirty. End of story. You pretended to have my back while the whole time scheming to steal my promotion.”
“It wasn’t anything like that.”
“Uh, huh.” I exit out of the break room.
“Hydeya. Hydeya, wait!”
I ignore his ass and march back to the interrogation room. “One bottled water,” I announce and then set it in front of Mason.
“Did you have to go to Alabama to get it?” he asks, snatching it up and twisting off the cap.
“Almost.”
He grins, or at least I think he does. His features are hard to read without getting distracted by not only his burns and scars, but also by his eye patch. He chugs down the water without thanking me or even appearing grateful.
I pull out my own chair. The metal legs screech before I settle into my seat and meet his singular black gaze. I regret not grabbing a bottled water for myself.
Tired of waiting, Mason launches the interrogation. “How is she?”
“How is who? Oh.” I shake my head for my forgetfulness and then brace to lay out the bad news. “Your girlfriend, Willow. . . I’m sorry . . . but soon after she delivered her baby, she suffered . . . a brain aneurysm.”
“What?”
“For the moment, she’s stable. The doctors did have to place her into a medically induced coma and are actively trying to reduce the swelling.”
Silence.
“I’m sorry,” I add.
“Willow is in a coma?” he asks as the words sink in.
“Yes.”
“And the baby?”
“He is . . . quite small—but he’s in the neonatal intensive care unit at Baptist Memorial. My understanding is that his lungs are underdeveloped, but the doctors believe that he’ll pull through.”
Mason’s angui
sh seizes his face, and he pounds a fist down onto the table. It and myself jump. “Those dirty muthafuckas!” He tugs in a breath, but it fails to calm him down. He hammers his fist on the table again, while his nostrils flare.
His emotional reaction is hard to watch. Isaac did this . . . to his own son. I shake my head, not sure how to fix this, if it can be fixed. After a full minute, I push a stupid question out of my mouth. “Are you going to be all right?”
He glares at me. “What the fuck do you think?”
“I think that . . . you and your girlfriend . . . and your son will pull through this. But you’ll have to remain strong.”
Mason unclenches his fists and eases back in his chair. “So . . . you’re the new captain of police as well as the new Dr. Phil now?”
“No. I’m encouraging you. I don’t have to tell you that things could have gone in a different direction. Right now, I need for you to calm down and answer some questions.”
“Calm down? How the fuck does someone calm down from this shit? How the fuck would you react if this was happening to your family?”
“It is happening to my family,” I say before thinking. Drake’s lifeless body flashes before my eyes and I drop my gaze before a rush of tears embarrasses my ass.
Mason twists up his face.
“My husband was killed the other day while we attended Momma Peaches’s funeral. A smaller massacre, but people are saying that you and your Vice Lords are responsible for that.”
“That’s bullshit. We didn’t have shit to do with that hit.”
“I was there.”
“I don’t give a fuck. I’m telling you what’s real. It wasn’t me or my people.”
Dubious, I shake my head.
“Look. I heard the rumors, but somebody tryna set us up—make it look like it was us—but it wasn’t us.”
Queen Divas Page 11
