Trust in No Man

by Cash

  Like I said, it was mad dime pieces at The Ball, many had the ups on Inez and had come unescorted. I had no doubt King could’ve had his pick of any one of them, yet, he was glued to my bitch.

  What the arrogant nigga was doing was trying to flex his weight, letting me know that I was such a minor figure in his eyes that he could pull my shawdy right off of my arm. It had to be that because I didn’t see him disrespecting none of the other hustlers by shootin’ game at the bitches on their arm.

  King might not have considered me a major nigga, but he definitely knew I was a killer. So, he had to be bored with life.

  While King was all up in Inez’ ear, I was content to sit back and just take in the whole scenery. This wasn’t really my kind of set, but I reminded myself I was there on business. The music stopped and an emcee grabbed the mic and announced it was time to present the yearly hustling awards.

  Pimp of the Year went to some perm-wearing fool named Diamond Rick. The award for Player of the Year went to a dude whose name I couldn’t recall. Hannibal won Hustler of the Year, which seemed appropriate to his rep on the streets. Rich Kid was runner-up.

  “The final award for tonight,” the emcee announced. “The prestigious award for the city’s most Up-and-Coming Hustler goes to Little Gotti!”

  A round of applause filled the ballroom and I watched the dude Blondie was with go up onstage and accept the award.

  Okay, I said to myself, now I would have to take the threat of him finding out my identity seriously.

  Still, since he was showcasing a trick bitch like Blondie on his arm, I had to question Little Gotti’s wisdom in the game. Any bitch that was for sale could always be bought. Meaning, for the right price, Blondie would sell Little Gotti out.

  I was ready to dip, come back in a bucket and try to follow King and his crew to wherever they were laying their heads in the city. Rich Kid had bounced soon after receiving his award. I hadn’t seen him and King ‘verse with one another at all. So apparently, King knew beef existed between them. I did see King talking to Blondie for a minute, but they hadn’t seemed to be paying any attention to me. Or maybe she was asking him about me, on the sly.

  I excused myself from Inez and went to the men’s room again.

  Coming back to the booth, I caught a glimpse of Inez and King exchanging something, probably phone numbers. Cool. I pretended I hadn’t seen a thing. King and Inez pretended they hadn’t done a thing.

  A short while later, Inez and me dipped and went back to her crib.

  I didn’t return to The Player’s Ball to get a drop on King that night because I had another idea of how I’d get to touch him. Me and Inez just went back to her crib and got our freak on. Shawdy was on some real passionate shit, giving a nigga wet, sloppy head and a private strip tease. I couldn’t help but to taste her. I licked her from head to toe. I had her body shaking like electro-shock, begging for the dick.

  CHAPTER 28

  A couple of weeks after wetting Toi’s nigga up, I finally returned my sister’s call.

  “What’s up?” I said, as if everything was good.

  “Don’t play dumb, Terrence. You know what I’m calling about.” Her voice reflected a tone of tiredness, as if she had no will to argue.

  I told Toi I had no beef with her other than her being stupid and still trying to defend that nigga of hers.

  “Well, if you care ‘bout me you’ll give Glen his stuff back,” my sister said. “You know he thinks I helped you plan this.”

  “No, he don’t. The nigga just using that as leverage to get you to do everything you can to get his shit back.” I don’t know why she couldn’t see through Glen’s bullshit, it wasn’t like Toi grew up in the ‘burbs.

  All around her, growing up in the hood, niggaz had mad game. I guess females let emotions overrule common sense and wisdom ‘cause Toi definitely should’ve been able to peep Glen’s rap.

  Whatever. It didn’t change my intentions and I let Toi know that there was no way I was returning the money or the guns.

  “Tell your nigga he gotta charge it to the game. Shit, he’s lucky I’m givin’ him the coke back. Really, I should’ve domed his bitch ass!”

  I told Toi the situation wasn’t negotiable. I wasn’t returning nothing but the yayo and if her nigga wasn’t satisfied with that, he might not get nothing back. Toi started crying.

  “Terrence, you’re going to get me killed.”

  “I wish that fuck nigga would put his mafuckin’ hands on you again! You tell dat nigga he’s not getting shit back until we meet face-to-face! Holla at me when he gets out the hospital and can meet with me, face-to-face. I love you. Bye.” I hung up, vexed that Glen was still trying to run that shit on my sister.

  I knew I’d be hearing from Glen soon. Even though I wouldn’t relinquish the loot and guns, he’d definitely want his dope back. And if Glen never called to get his shit back, then I’d fo’ sho’ have to dome him. ‘Cause a nigga would have to either be straight pussy or planning my death to let it ride like that. I was gonna stay on my Ps and Qs until Glen showed his hand.

  Meanwhile, Rich Kid was pressing me to bag King. It seemed that King’s appearance at The Player’s Ball had only infuriated Rich Kid more than before.

  Street niggaz and all the bitches were talkin’ about how King had come to The Player’s Ball dressed to the nines, surrounded by fatigue-clad soldiers. Rumor had it that he’d been surrounded by one hundred SKS-packing soldiers, which wasn’t true. I’d been at The Player’s Ball and had peeped King and his entourage up close, but I didn’t try to set the record straight. In the hood, just like in the pen, rumors were stronger than fact.

  Most niggaz had no idea I’d even gone to The Ball. Like I said, it was invitation only, and Rich Kid was the only hustler from our block who had enough juice to get invited.

  However, my block bred dimes like none other. So, a few females from around my way had been at The Ball and had spread the word of my presence. Now, mafuckaz were thinking I had mad clout in the game but I was playing my hand close to the vest trying to keep muthafuckaz out of my business.

  No matter how hard I denied pushing weight, niggaz kept asking me to put them on. And the few fly bitches from my hood who’d been selecselective enough with which playa they’d give the pussy to, now considered prize hos, were all on my dick. Normally them bitches wouldna given me the time of day.

  Some trick dope boys had moved them out the hood and went to prison trying to keep them bitches in luxury. Now those hos were either looking for a nigga with a cape to save ‘em, or they’d gotten desperate and put on a G-string and went to work at a strip club, where tricks are in abundance.

  One or two had their gold-digging eyes on me, falsely believing the rumors that I was large in the game. I didn’t tell them yay or nay, I just capitalized on the hype.

  I was whippin’ through the hood, on my way to see what Murder Mike was up to. The Lex truck was sparkling, bumpin’ mad sound out of the system.

  As soon as I pulled to the curb, where Murder Mike was sitting on the hood of his Navigator talking to a couple of his workers, a purple Viper whipped up next to me.

  Damn! Who in da hood whippin’ like dat?

  A quick look over my left shoulder and down rerevealed a head of long blond weave. I hopped down from my whip and saw that it was this bitch named Juanita pushing the Viper. Shawdy was a few years older than me, but I knew her and her story well.

  Juanita grew up a block from where we were now parked. Her Ma Dukes was Miss Pearl, a nice woman who was rarely seen completely sober.

  I could tell Miss Pearl had been a dime in her day, now she was barely a penny.

  Her oldest son was killed while I was in juvenile. Another son was serving life-and thirty for dome calling a fool during a botched robbery. A third son, two years older than Juanita was in the Army, escaping family tragedy and hood pains. Juanita had an older sister who’d been missing for years, assumed dead. Their family album was mostly tragic, but not so
unlike many from the hood.

  Juanita was the baby of the family, pretty and fine like Miss Pearl must’ve been in her youth. Juanita had been a quiet and book loving girl in school, never hanging out with the fast crowd or dating dudes from around our way.

  Every hood had seen the type females who didn’t just wanna rise above poverty, they acted like they were too good for niggaz on the block. They either married a white boy or some nigga who impersonated one. Which was where Juanita’s story differed, yet remained typical. She didn’t marry a white boy or some fake brother from the ‘burbs, nor did academics release her from the ghetto’s grip.

  Though Juanita’s early teenaged years promised a different script than the norm, hood niggaz came in so many sizes, shapes and colors and with so much game, it was damn near pre-destined that Juanita would fall into one hustler’s grip. Better than being snagged by a lazy nigga, with boss game, who’d tie her down with baby after baby. But really, Juanita had found no reprieve, at all.

  Juanita’s first taste of ghetto fame came at the age of sixteen when she got snagged by the super, supreme hustler in the city, a nigga known as Godd.

  I was in and out of YDC back then, but like I said, word from the streets traveled into the pen, and vice versa. None of us in juvenile lockup knew Godd personally, but we all knew his rep. He was large back then, bigger than life now. In fact, I had never seen playa.

  Anyway, about eight years ago, Godd had plucked Juanita right out of the ghetto and high school classrooms. They say the nigga was whippin’ double R’s back then. So how could high school allure compete with a skilled playa pushin’ a Rolls Royce to a green shawdy from the hood? It couldn’t.

  Like poof! Juanita was living in a plushed-out crib, pushing fly whips and rockin’ the ultimate fly girl gear. It was escape from the hood nine thousand! It might not have followed her blueprint, but like all things, the end justifies the means.

  Only, Juanita couldn’t handle the fame, or probably she wasn’t prepared for the other things that come with being a big-time dopeboy’s bitch: the other women, the loneliness and isolation from family and friends, the trips out of town dropping off dope and the beatdowns to keep her in line, intimidated. The same shit I suspected Toi was experiencing.

  Juanita was young and emotional when Godd had introduced her to the highs and lows of that lifestyle, and she hadn’t been able to handle the lows, mostly the other women. Godd hadn’t tried to break Juanita’s will and force her to remain on his team, instead, he returned her to the hood, back to grim reality.

  But Juanita didn’t just return to the hood empty handed. She still had the shine and gear Godd had given her in exchange for her teenage dreams. But more importantly, she still had the attitude of class she’d enhanced while being in his company.

  In no time, she snagged a Big Willie from Miami who was doing his thing in Atlanta.

  Like most niggaz I knew from The Bottom, Miami dude was a resthaven for a broad. He kept Juanita laced and fly, rocked her grill and had her believing her pussy was one of a kind.

  Life was bliss for Juanita for a handful of years, until last year when the feds sntached away her meal ticket. They hit Miami dude with the RICO Act and sent him away for 360 months, thirty years!

  So now, word in the hood was, Juanita was shake-dancing to maintain a life of luxury she’d gotten too used to to surrender.

  “Hey, Terrence,” she spoke out the driver’s window.

  “Whud up, ma?” I said, going up to her whip. “You ain’t been gone from the hood too long to know they don’t call me Terrence no more.”

  “Excuse me?” Juanita said, feigning apology. “What do they call you now?”

  “Youngblood.”

  She smiled. “Yeah, I knew that.”

  “How did you know that?” I flirted.

  “Word gets around.”

  We bullshitted each other back and forth, Juanita claiming to have heard I was ruling the streets.

  Yeah, right.

  I told her the real word was that she was a star in the strip clubs and had all the major niggaz feindin’ for her.

  “Nah, it’s not like that,” Juanita said with pride, nevertheless. “I don’t even date men I meet at work. Matter-of-fact, I haven’t dated anyone in months. Really, other than work, I’m a homebody.”

  Whatever.

  “Why didn’t you speak to me at The Player’s Ball? I saw you there with Inez; I know you saw me.”

  “Naw, I didn’t see you,” I lied. Let her swallow that and, for once, not take it for granted that every nigga had to notice her.

  I didn’t really dig Juanita’s kind, hos who chose a nigga according to the depths of the nigga’s pockets and rarely even spoke to a nigga who didn’t have major juice. She was just like the chickens I’d usually see in the whip with Rich Kid, acting like they owned the world just because their looks had snagged a Big Willie.

  Most people from our hood disliked Juanita, especially the females who were probably a bit jealous of her. Juanita acted like hood mafuckaz were beneath her. Plus, she did nothing, any of us could see, for Miss Pearl.

  “So, Inez is your girl?” she asked.

  “I be holding her down,” was all the info I allowed.

  “In other words, she ain’t got no papers on you?” Juanita asked for clarification.

  “I ain’t a slave, ma. Don’t nobody got papers on me. In other words,” I added before she took my words out of context, “It’s cool for us to hook up if you get too lonely.”

  “Oh, is that the only way we can hook up? ‘Cause I don’t do the booty call thing,” Her Highness stated.

  “Sex has never been a priority to an ambitious man. You’ve been with a few boss hustlers, you ought to know that,” I checked the bitch.

  Her response was, “I just want you to know I’m not anyone’s booty call.”

  Yeah, right. We’d see.

  I watched her write down my pager number with delicate hands, Gucci nails and blinding bling on her fingers and wrists. Then she went in her Gucci purse and produced a business card with her digits imprinted on it. The card claimed Goldie, Juanita, was a model/private dancer. Her pager and cell phone number was inscribed across the bottom of the card. Juanita wrote her home number on the back of the card and told me to call anytime after 9 p.m. because she worked the 12 to 8 p.m. shift at the strip club.

  “Goldie, huh?”

  “My stage name,” she said. “You can call me Juanita.” Of course I’d call her Juanita, that’s what her mother named her.

  She whipped off, leaving the scent of Obsession for Women in my nostrils and her business card in my clutch. She hadn’t as much as nodded hello to Murder Mike, proving that rumor was stronger than fact. The gold digging bitch was all in my grill because she’d seen me at The Player’s Ball and had assumed I was major in the game unless I wouldn’t have been invited. Which was way off.

  I stuffed Juanita’s card in the back pocket of my Phat Farm khakis and pushed her to the back of my mental. Murder Mike kidded me about being the ladies’ choice these days and asked me to toss Juanita his way whenever I was finished with her.

  Just then, Cita whipped up in a drop Mazda, looking like a cheaper version of Juanita.

  “You can’t afford Cita and Juanita, playboy.” I said it playfully so Murder Mike wouldn’t feel like I was trying to disrespect.

  I liked Murder Mike, though I didn’t like his free-heartedness with Cita. But it wasn’t my place to tell playa how to spend his loot, though.

  I watched through narrow eyes, like slits, as Murder Mike handed Cita a roll of money and she drove off. I guessed Murder must’ve read my expression.

  “It ain’t like dat, dawg. She’s about to go pay for some new rims I’m copping for one of my other whips,” he explained defensively.

  I told him it was his hand, he didn’t owe me an explanation on how he chose to play it.

  “True dat,” he said, and we let it ride at that.

  I whippe
d over to Shan’s crib just in time to catch Lil’ T walking home from school. He was now in the second grade. He dropped his book bag and ran and jumped in my arms like he hadn’t seen me in years. Of course I’d just seen him a week ago, but his excitement still made a nigga proud.

  I asked him a few questions about school, but he was too hyper to answer coherently. He was more interested in getting me to take him to McDonald’s, as we stood on Shan’s front steps.

  “Hi, Lil’ Terrence,” some fine shawdy waved from across the street. He waved back to her.

  “Who is that?” I asked my son.

  “My girlfriend,” he answered, blushing. Okay, now I’d finally seen the mysterious girlfriend, shawdy who had my son love-struck.

  “Penny?” I called out to her, remembering the name Lil’ Terrence had mentioned many months ago.

  She came over to where we stood outside Shan’s unit.

  “You must be Big Terrence?”

  “Yeah. But call me Youngblood.”

  The bitch was showing all thirty-two of her teeth, giving off mad sexual vibes. Of course, I wasn’t responding to that because, as far as I was concerned, Penny was my son’s bitch, even if it was just in his fantasy. No matter, I wouldn’t fuck my son’s girl. Besides, Shan came outside cockblocking and frontin’ like she was still on my team.

  I stiff-armed Shan, said goodbye to Penny, and took my lil’ man to McDonald’s.

  Later, I was at Inez’ crib chilling when she got a phone call from that nigga, King. I know because I was listening on the extension in her bedroom while she was on the one in the living room.

  King started off by telling Inez he would only be in Atlanta another day or two, and he hoped they could hookup before he had to return to Kentucky and Check his traps, he boasted.

  Inez responded by reminding him that she was involved with me and I might not approve of her hooking up with him.

  “Afterall, why would I mess up my thing here in Atlanta for a man who’ll soon return to Kentucky and who knows who?” she wisely questioned King.

  He came back with, “I feel where you’re coming from, but it’s not like I can’t send for you to come up to Kentucky. Anyway, you’re wasting your time with that loser you were with at The Ball.” Inez didn’t swallow that salt, she half-assed defended me, leaving herself enough wiggle room not to turn-off King.