by Glenn, Roy
“However you want to look at it, the problem is how do you kill a DEA agent without attracting attention.”
Martin looked at me. “I’ll just say some people have been very lucky in that regard and leave it at that.”
“Some people have all the luck.” From that, I knew he knew that I was responsible for the recent deaths of agents Masters and Harris.
Martin moved a little closer to me and spoke a little lower. “Here’s what I can give you. For some time now you’ve had a very talented hacker digging around in Vinnelli finances, but there is one piece that continues to elude them.”
“How do you know that, Martin?”
“Believe me, Mr. Black; I know a great deal about a great many things. Like I said, I’ve been expecting you, so I know what I need to know.”
“What’s that?”
“Eileen McManus.”
“Who is that?”
“She is everything you need, Mr. Black,” Martin said. “That should make us even,” he said and extended his hand. I accepted his hand. “When you’re finished with this matter we’ll talk again about what we can do for each other in the future.”
As I rode the elevator down with Martin, one thing hit me. This wasn’t the same Martin Marshall I’d dealt with years ago. I realized then that I was about to start playing in whole new world. In that world, Martin Marshall was already a player. I would have to be very careful in my dealings with him.
The fact that he was expecting me and knew exactly what I wanted didn’t bother me. He needs Vinnelli out of the way, but he doesn’t want to get his hands dirty with an election coming, so he serves him up to me. That’s fine. I was willing to be used if it got me Vinnelli. But what does bother me is what happens after that.
I’ve been expecting you.
That meant Martin had plans for me.
Chapter 26
Nick Simmons
I looked back at Miles and Lakeda and then followed Rain to the gambling room. She entered the combination to the door and we went down a long flight of stairs. “He’s with me,” she told the two men standing by the door. One got up to open it for her.
“You are so sweet.” Rain touched his face as she passed. I followed her into a large room with four tables in each corner of the room; one for poker and one for blackjack. There was one table where a lively crap game was goin’ on, and people held their breath for each turn of the roulette wheel. There in the middle of it all was Jeff Ritchie sitting in what I’m sure used to be JR’s spot.
If JR was involved in this and I had to kill him, Jeff Ritchie would have to die first. I looked around the room and tried to get a feel for what kind of muscle he had. My eyes met his and he glared at me. I could tell that he didn’t like me hangin’ around there. I’m sure he knows what I represent. I nodded my head to acknowledge him and smiled. “Yeah, mutha fucka, I’m gonna kill you and take over this spot,” I said to myself and waved to him as Rain slid in next to me and handed me another drink.
“What you think?”
“Impressive.”
“Wait here and I’ll see if I can’t get you a seat at the table,” Rain said and left me alone.
I wandered around the room looking over Jeff Ritchie’s men, wondering if one of them was Nice N. Slow or if it was Miles. He is married and the only computer in the building is in his office, so it does make him the logical choice. There was the possibility that somebody else, Jeff Ritchie maybe, could have a key to Miles’ office.
I stood and watched as Rain went straight to Jeff Ritchie to get me in the game. I knew from that that Rain carried no weight down here.
I walked around and stood by the poker table and thought back to Miles’ expression when I showed them Zakiya’s picture. He glanced at the picture quickly like he was trying not to look at it.
What was more interesting was when I looked back and saw the expression on Lakeda’s face. The way she was looking at Miles made me believe that he was Nice N. Slow and she knew, or at least suspected, he was cheating on her. I needed to get a picture of Miles and show it to Tasheka and Shameka at Paradise. And even if it is Miles, that didn’t mean that he killed her.
“We can buy in on the next hand,” Rain said, suddenly appearing next to me.
“We? You play?”
“I hold my own.”
After we played a few hands of poker we left the gambling room and went back upstairs. “Well, what you think?”
“Like I said, I’m impressed. Looks like y’all run a smooth little operation here.”
“But it’s nothin’ compared to y’all’s, right?”
“I don’t know. What else you got?”
“What you mean?”
“I mean is this all you got?”
“No, we got a few other spots that do pretty good for us.”
“But nothing like this, right? This is y’all’s big spot.”
Rain put her hands on her hips. “So what you sayin’? That this ain’t shit?”
“I ain’t sayin’ shit. You the one tryin’ to make the comparison.”
“Come on, nigga. Let me show you how we roll,” Rain said and grabbed me by the hand.
Thank you, I thought as we fought our way through the crowded club. I was starting to think she wasn’t gonna take the bait.
Rain led me to her car and we drove off. She took me to around to four of their spots and bragged about having five more. “But they too far and I don’t feel like ridin’ out there,” Rain told me and took me back to JR’s. I really was impressed with what I saw.
The reception Rain got at the spots we went to was different than it was at JR’s. Everywhere we went, it was obvious that she was the queen and everybody bowed down to her. More importantly, every place we went was makin’ money.
When we got back to JR’s, Rain led me back to the offices. “This is Pops’ office.”
“Where’s yours?”
“I don’t have one. Don’t need one.”
JR wasn’t there that night, but she had a key to his office. We went in the office and Rain picked up the remote for the flat screen. “Pops is rarely here at night these days, so when he’s not here this is my spot.” She dropped the remote and headed for the bar. “Johnnie Black, right?”
“Right,” I said and looked at the flat screen. Porn star Lola Lane appeared on the screen, ridin’ some guy’s dick, talkin’ ’bout, ‘Yeah, Lola likes that. Fuck Lola’s pussy.’
I looked at Rain, she looked at me. “Ooops,” she said and pushed a button on the bar and the image on the screen changed. Now the screen displayed images from around the club. “Sorry about that.”
I sat down on whatever seat was closest to me without commenting on Lola or Rain’s apology. I looked around the office and my eyes stopped on a picture of a much younger JR and a very pretty woman.
Rain handed me my drink and sat down. “Is that your mother in that picture,” I said and pointed to it.
“Yup, that’s my mom, Barbara Robinson.”
“She’s very pretty,” I said and thought that Miles looked a lot like her.
“She was beautiful. She died when I was a baby, so I never really knew her.”
“For some reason I thought you were older than Miles.”
“Most people think that. But he’s older by eleven months.”
“You and him must be close.”
“We used to be.”
“What changed that?”
“Why you wanna know?”
I laughed. “Why you gettin’ defensive?”
“I’m not. We just ain’t close like we used to be.”
“That got anything to do with your sister-in-law?”
“You ask a lot of fuckin’ questions,” Rain said and finished her drink.
“I just noticed that you two didn’t really speak to each other.”
Rain got up and headed toward the bar. “I don’t like the bitch. Never have. I haven’t spoken to her since I was in the seventh grade. There. You happy now?�
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“Why don’t you make me one too?” I said and finished my drink. “Why don’t you like her? She seems like a nice person.”
“Yeah, yeah, she’s real nice and whatever. I just don’t like her, and let’s leave it at that.” When Rain came back she had both bottles. Like she planned on us being there for a while. That was fine with me. I had a lot of questions for her; about her brother and their operation. Specifically; what else she had going on. If we do move on them, I wanted there to be as few surprises as possible.
She took my glass and poured me a drink. As soon as she poured herself a shot, I raised my glass.
“Didn’t mean to make you mad,” I said and drained my glass. Rain followed suit and drained hers.
I took the glass from her hand and poured her another and one for myself.
“I would rather drink to something else,” Rain said.
“What do you wanna drink to?”
Rain raised her glass. “Anything that don’t have nothin’ to do with Lakeda Johnson.” Rain turned up her glass. “Talk to me about something else.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know; anything.”
“I’d rather talk about you.”
“Why you wanna know about me?”
“You already know ’bout me. Only thing I know about you is that you’re twenty-two. I know you can handle a gun.”
Rain looked at me and smiled. I was starting to like the way she smiled. Rain had those pouty lips I seem to like so much. “My daddy taught me how to shoot.”
“You daddy’s little girl?”
“Yup. Everything I know that’s important I learned from him. He taught me a lot about dealin’ with people.”
“How to get them to do what you want them to do?”
“That too. But he taught me to look and listen. Said that’s why we got two eyes and two ears.”
“And only one mouth.”
“Exactly.” Rain poured herself another drink. “I remember once when I was in high school.”
“What school did you go to?”
“Immaculate Conception.”
“Catholic school girl.”
“And I ain’t even catholic. Pops sent me there after I got kicked out of public school.”
“What you get kicked out for?”
“Fightin’. Let this mouth get me into somethin’ I had to fight my way out of. That’s when he told me about lookin’ and listenin’ to mugs, see where they really coming from. But when I first got there these girls wanted to try me, you know, ’cause I’m new and shit. But I just got kicked out of school for fightin’, so I’m tryin’ to be cool. But these bitches won’t let up. So I tell Pops about it.”
“What he say?”
“He listened, and then he said, ‘I can’t tell you what to do. I could tell you what I would do if I was in your place.’ Then he said that I had to start makin’ my own decisions, and once I made those decisions that I had to be willing to stand up and be responsible for those decisions.”
“Good advice.”
“Yeah, I’ve lived by it since. But anyway, he said this is a matter of honor. You already know what the right thing to do is. The right thing is not to fight in school. So if it just a question of right and wrong, the choice was easy.”
“Don’t fight in school.”
“That was the right thing. He said what I have to decided is doin’ the right shit worth what I had to give up?”
“Your honor.”
“Pops told me once that all you really have at the end of the day is your honor. If you don’t have honor you don’t have shit. I know the right thing was to let them bitch-punk me everyday, tell a teacher or some shit. I tried all that, it didn’t work. I had to beat the bitch down, but it was a decision I had to make for myself.”
“What you do?”
“They would always come at me in the lunchroom. So, like, I’m in line, right, gettin’ my food and here they come.”
“How many?”
“Four. Soon as this bitch says something to me, I takes my tray and wheeled around on her ass. I caught her in the face with it and she starts cryin’ like a fuckin’ baby. After all that tough talk, this bitch is cryin’ like a baby. You believe that shit?”
“Sometimes bullies are all talk.”
“Yeah, no shit. I just kept hittin’ her with that tray until the teachers came and pulled me off her ass. The other kids was cheerin’ and shit, ‘get her, get her,’ ’cause this bitch used to fuck with everybody. Nobody liked her, but they was all afraid of her. I got a rush from beatin’ her ass. It was the best feelin’.”
“Did they kick you out?”
“Pops had paid for the year in advance and he spread some money around, so they just suspended me since everybody knew she had been fuckin’ with me since I got there.”
“I bet nobody fucked with you when you got back?”
“Nope. I was the queen fuckin’ bee after that.”
I raised my glass. “To the queen.”
Rain raised her glass and pointed at me. “Queen needs a king.”
For the next couple of hours I sat in the office drinking shots with Rain while she flirted with me and I asked her questions. The more Patron she drank, the easier it was to get answers. I needed to know about their gambling operations, and what exactly she was in to, but I worked it into conversation so it didn’t seem like I was interrogating her.
When Rain announced, “I’m fucked up in this bitch.” I finished my drink and stood up.
“Where you goin’?” Rain said and tried to get up, but couldn’t.
“I got something to do.”
“Why you gotta go?” she pouted. “Have another drink with me.”
“You don’t need no more to drink and besides, you haven’t even finished the one you got.”
“Oh yeah,” Rain said and looked at the glass in her hand. She put the glass down and tried again to get up. I held out my hand to help her up. “Thank you,” she said in a whisper. “You can’t go.”
“Yes, I can.”
Rain took a step closer. “So you think you can just come in here, get my ass drunk, ask me a bunch-of-fuckin’ questions, and then leave?”
“Yes, I do.”
“No, Nick. That’s not right. You can’t leave me like this.”
“This is your spot; you’ll be all right here.”
Rain took a step closer but she stumbled a little. I caught her before she fell. She pressed her body against mine and put her arms around me. “That ain’t what I mean. You can’t leave me like this. The least you could do is drive me home, strip me down and put my ass to bed so I can sleep this off, ’cause, I’m for real, I’m fucked up,” Rain laughed and so did I.
What was I supposed to do?
“Come on, Rain.” I stepped away and took her by the hand. “Can you walk?”
“Long as you don’t let me fall I can walk.”
Rain showed me the way out the back door. That’s when I saw it, another computer sitting on a desk where anybody and everybody could use it.
We made it to my car without her doin’ too much stumbling. I unlocked the door and helped her get in. When I started the car I turned to Rain. Her eyes were closed. “Where do you live?”
“Mount Vernon,” she said and repositioned herself.
“Where?” I asked and turned on the navigation system. Rain said the address and made herself comfortable.
Rain slept through the drive to her apartment. While she slept, I thought about what I was doing, and more importantly, what I was about to do. I mean its not like I don’t see where this was goin’.
Rain had been flirting with me all night and I went along with it because I wanted something. I could have shut it down anytime I wanted to, but I didn’t. I used it. Used her.
I had sized-up her father’s gambling operation and she told me everything I needed to know about her brother. But now I wasn’t so sure that it was Miles. Anybody could have sent those e-mails. I
was back to square one.
But either way, I got what I came for, so what was I still doing with her? Drunk or not, I could have left Rain right where she was, and she would be just fine.
I thought about Wanda. I loved her, but I had to admit that Rain moved me in ways Wanda doesn’t. They were exact opposites. Wanda’s a businesswoman and Rain’s a ride-or-die chick.
“Rain, Rain.” I nudged her. “We’re here.”
The ride seemed to have sobered Rain up enough that she got out of the car under her own power. “I’m okay, I can walk,” she slurred as she gathered herself together. I was thankful. Carrying her inside was the last thing I wanted to do.
Rain semi-staggered toward her door and fumbled for her keys. Once she unlocked the door I started to say goodnight. “I'll—”
She grabbed me by the arm. “Come in, I want to show you my place.”
“Just for a minute, I got someplace I need to be.”
“Have a seat,” she said, stepping out of her heels as soon as she walked through the door. I followed her in, looking around the apartment. “Very nice, Rain.”
“Thank you,” she said and started walking toward the back of the apartment.
I started to sit on the couch, but selected a lone chair instead. “You want a drink?” she said when she came back.
“What do you have?” From where I was seated it looked like she had taken off her bra.
“Patron okay? It’ll have to be, it’s all I have.”
“I guess it will have to be,” I stood up and walked toward the kitchen. Rain came out carrying the bottle and two glasses. She handed me a glass and then took a step closer. “What should we drink to?”
“I don’t know,” I replied, stepping toward Rain almost out of instinct.
“Let’s drink to tonight. I had a good time with you.”
“I enjoyed you too. We have to hangout again.”
“Do you mean that?” Rain said, almost in disbelief. “You wanna hangout with me?”
“Yeah.”
“I was startin’ to think you didn’t like me.”
“Why? Because I’m not all over you?”
“Yes. Most men can’t resist me, but you treat me like a little girl.”
We toasted our night and emptied our glasses. I leaned forward to put my glass on the bar just as Rain reached for the bottle to refill the glasses. Her breasts brushed softly against my chest, ending all speculation about the bra.
