Dirty Rotten Liar (3 page)

T
here were plenty of “Bad News LaRues” stirring shit up on the streets of Harlem, but only a handful of the half-hungover ones had come out to the Three Brothers Funeral Home to see my mama put in the ground.

I was sitting in the front pew between Granny and one of my half-blind uncles, and the skinny black preacher who had come with the one-price-fits-all funeral package was standing up front talking about Mama like they went way back and had been tight runnin' buddies from the cradle.

“Jude Jackson was a
saintly
woman . . .” He stood up there and lied like a muthafucka as everybody looked around to make sure they was at the right funeral. “A woman who lived her life like she knew
God
!”

I ignored all that bullshit yang coming outta his mouth as I sat there staring at my mama's stiff-looking body while some spooky-ass organ music played over the speakers. The lil chapel where they had laid Mama out was so empty it felt like the chill coming off of her body was keeping the whole room cool.

Even though only a few people were sitting around slumped in the pews today, almost the whole damn family had shown up last night when Granny threw a card party and big-ass fish fry and called it a wake for Mama.

Granny had charged five dollars a head for a plate of fried porgies and a scoop of potato salad, and she tacked on three dollars if you wanted a shot of cheap liquor to go along with it. All the money she raked in was supposed to come to me so I could finish paying the funeral home and square up with the car service for the limousine I had rented for the close family. Aunt Bibby had passed around her pimped-out Kangol and told everybody to dig deep down in their bras, socks, and drawers and be sure to come out with a couple of dollars to help me send my mama off right.

Sheeeiit
. That sweaty-ass hat had gone around the room about three damn times, and I coulda sworn I saw mad slick-fisted LaRues drop a dollar bill in and then skim out a couple of fives. By the time Aunt Bibby's Kangol got back across the room where I was sitting there wasn't but sixteen one-dollar bills left in that sucker and three gooey, stuck-together pennies.

I still had me a little pocket change because Uncle Suge had torn me off ten g's before I left Texas, but it cost a real big gwap to bury somebody in New York! You had to pay for the grave, pay them to dig the damn thing open, and then pay them to throw that same damn dirt back down once they dropped the coffin in the hole too. You had to pay the funeral home
and
the mortician, and I won't even talk about how much them lil cheap-ass cardboard caskets cost!

The whole setup was a racket for real, and by the time the Three Brothers Funeral Home finished gankin' me for every dime they could squeeze me for and call it a one-price-fits-all deal, I barely had five grand left in my pocket.

I looked toward the front of the room at Mama's body again. Even dead and stiff, Jude Jackson still looked damn good. The funeral parlor had a beautician named Mrs. Freeman, and she had whipped up Mama's hair so tight it laid down on her shoulders like a silky Asian weave. Mama's makeup had been done up perfectly too, and some Chinese chick had given her a killer manicure.

Laying up there in that pretty blue box my mama was the flyest dead person I had ever seen, but as I stared at her from across the room, a big part of me felt like I was looking at a stranger.

There was so much stuff about Mama that I just hadn't known and would never know. So much shit about her life that she had hidden from me, so many lies that she had told me, so many doubts that she had left me with, and now that she was gone, all the skeleton bones rattling around in her closet were about to bust right out through the goddamn door.

Mr. Hired Preacher was still up there talking about Mama like he had dunked his cookies in her milk way back in kindergarten. The old lady who was playing the organ and singing at the top of her lungs had tears running down her face like Mama was her favorite dead daughter laying up there in that box.

As I sat there choking on the big ball of grief that was clogging up my throat, tears fell from my eyes and I had to admit that Peaches had been right about at least one thing: No matter
what
the hell Jude Jackson had done, or why the hell she had did it, she was still my
mama
!

 

I don't know how I made it through Mama's home-going service, and if it wasn't for Peaches and Bunni half-carrying me outta that funeral parlor I woulda crawled out on my hands and knees.

I was still crying and sniffling as they led me over to the black limo that was waiting outside at the curb. A tall driver dressed in a dark shirt and a pair of dark pants was standing there holding the door open for us. Peaches fell back to let me go in front of him, and I had just leaned forward and stepped one foot inside the whip when all holy hell broke loose on the sidewalk behind me.

“
Yayyy
!!! She's dead! She's dead! That fuckin' bitch Jude is finally
dead
!”

Halfway in the limo, I paused in the middle of a sniffle.

Then I turned around and peeped some old crazy chick in high heels and a bright red dress. That fool was screaming and hollering at the top of her lungs as she waved her arms over her head and hauled ass straight toward us. Grinning real big, she darted over to the back of the hearse where they had just swung the door closed on Mama's casket and started banging on that shit like she had lost her damn mind.

“Open this shit up and lemme see her dead ass for myself!” she screamed, jumping up and down as she slapped her hands all over the glass window. “Open it up! Lemme see that bitch! Lemme see Jude's old dead funky ass one more time!”

I pulled my shades off so I could get a good look at the chick who was calling my dead mama a bitch and then—

“Get ya ass in there!” the limo driver barked as he clamped one thick hand around the back of my neck and thrust his other hand up my skirt and between my legs. That nigga lifted me in the air by my neck and my crotch, and chucked me face-first down on the floor of that limo and slammed the door shut!

I hit the floor hard and bit down on a mouthful of carpet, and by the time I scrambled up on my knees and started beating on the window, all I saw was a cold, deadly gat gripped in the driver's hand and a look of shock and fear on Bunni's face that told me my shit was a wrap.

“Help!” I screamed as that fool jumped in the front seat and slammed the door. I grabbed at the door handle and tried to twist it but that shit was locked up tight, and the last thing I saw before his tires screeched and he jetted out into traffic was Peaches and Bunni and them Bad News LaRues, standing on the curb with their mouths wide open as they watched us speed away.

 

“Yo what the fuck is you
doing
?” I screamed as that big fool unlocked the limo door and came around back to drag me outta the whip. He had driven me all the way downtown. We were somewhere in the Garment District, and it was practically deserted at this time on a Sunday morning.

I was balled up in the corner so tight that dude had to dig up in the backseat to get my ass outta there. I screeched and went up on my tippy-toes as he yanked me outta the ride, then he twisted my wrist real hard and jerked my hand up behind my back.

“
Owww! You got the wrong chick!” I hollered as he manhandledme down a narrow
, dirty alley and pushed me through the rickety doorway of some abandoned-looking warehouse. “I didn't do nothin', nigga! You got it all wrong! You got the
wrong
chick!”

I stumbled into the darkness with my heart beating on a thousand. I couldn't think. My whole body was covered in sweat, and my ankles kept wobbling left and right in the six-inch heels that I had boosted from Neiman Marcus.

“Where the fuck is you takin' me?” I whined and bitched as he muscled me through a big room with twined bundles of old fabric and moldy-looking clothes stacked everywhere. “What the fuck is you doin'?”

Dude wasn't in the question-answering bizz because he didn't answer a single one of minez! But a few seconds later, after he opened a set of double doors and chucked me down on the cold floor inside a small damp room that smelled like gasoline and firecrackers, all my questions got answered at one time.

“Well, well, well. It's con-mami Mink LaRue.”

I fell sideways into the small room and tripped over my own feet. I reached out to catch myself on the edge of a metal desk, but I missed and I felt my lil funeral dress split up the back as I landed hard on my ass.

I looked up at the muscle-bound beast who had just spit my name off his tongue, and my mouth dried up as a cold chill trickled all the way down my spine.

He sat behind the desk looking fine as hell. Long dreads, boulder shoulders, cold eyes, and a devious, killer smile.

I stared into them jailhouse eyes and I knew my shit was done for. I could hear every last one of my chickens just a' clucking as they came home to roost. And since I knew there wasn't a damn thing I could do to save my ass, I just sat there with my dress hiked up and my legs all crooked, looking stupid as hell as I coughed and said, “Gutta!”

His name came rollin' outta my mouth sounding just like a frog croak, and then I swallowed extra-hard and cooed up at him and smiled. “Hey there, boo! I missed the shit outta you, boo! When you hit the bricks, Papi? How long you been back home?”

“G
ood evening, Mrs. Dominion. What are you wearing for Daddy tonight?”

Selah Dominion blushed as she lay spread-eagle on her chaise lounge wearing nothing but a sex jones and a midnight-colored thong.

“Black,” she whispered breathlessly. “I'm wearing black.”

Ruddman might have been a round-belly toad of a man, but with all his money, power, and status, he had confidence, swagger, and sex appeal oozing out of his pores. It had taken quite a few late-night erotic phone calls and endless promises to return her ultra-expensive diamond engagement ring, but right now he had Selah melting like butter in a hot frying pan.

He had taken that little public slap she had laid on him like a soldier. Instead of fighting back, he had gotten even by seducing her with constant late-night phone calls and endless little love notes that kept her on a string until he got her right where he wanted her.

In his bed.

It had been eighteen years since Ruddman had pounded his foot-long love muscle up in Viceroy Dominion's wife, and he had never gotten as much satisfaction from fucking an enemy since. Using her engagement ring as a pawn, he had lured Selah back to his penthouse suite and stripped her naked in his outdoor Jacuzzi and then fucked her so good that she broke down and cried.

And even though Selah was well aware of where her dangerous indiscretions could lead her, she had willingly followed Ruddman down a road of sexual sport that had her squirming in her master suite, stretched out on her sofa with her door tightly locked and her desperate fingers greedily massaging that hot spot between her legs.

Selah may have looked real sweet and innocent on the outside, but her woman jones ran high and she had always been a firecracker between the sheets. The truth be told, she had been in a sexual slump for years, even before Viceroy had his oil-rig accident. Her husband's little “problem” had started twenty years ago, and it had robbed them of a normal marriage and led to both of them doing things they would never want to admit.

But right now, with Rodney talking that nasty talk in her ear, Selah didn't give a damn about any of that. It had been a long, long time since her body had been sexed so sweetly, and she had to admit that no man, not even Viceroy in his
best
damn days, had ever come close to knocking her back out the way froggish little Rodney Ruddman did.

Twenty years of missing out on the good wood. Twenty fuckin' years! And where the hell had all those years gone? What had started out as a giving up a little revenge pussy to pay Viceroy back for screwing her sister had turned into a sexual addiction that Selah had been jonesing like crazy for and wished she could forget. But no matter how hard she'd tried, she had
never
gotten the taste of Rodney out of her mouth, and she had never forgotten the way he had worn her out in his bed.

Sure, she had forgiven Viceroy for causing her so much pain, and over the years they had moved on to a comfortable place in their marriage. His little “problem” came and went without rhyme or reason, and even though Selah had been able to get pregnant with Jock and Fallon, sometimes they had dry, no-nookie spells that lasted for months. Over time they had learned to sexually satisfy each other in different ways, but there was only so much pleasuring that a fist full of fingers or a dildo could do.

And now, not long after hauling off and slapping the shit out of Rodney Ruddman in broad daylight, excitement crawled down Selah's spine as they played his favorite game of phone sex. She was scheduled to hook up with him the next morning for a brunch-time quickie in his penthouse suite, but Rodney couldn't wait and he had called her so they could get started on a little sexual foreplay.

“Tell me where you want me to touch you, Mrs.
Dominion
,” he demanded. Ruddman hardly ever called her by her first name. Instead he got a perverse shot of power and pleasure every time he reminded himself that he was fucking the wife of the great Viceroy Dominion.

“Everywhere,” Selah panted as her hands kneaded the flesh on her smooth, supple body. “I want you to touch me everywhere.”

Ruddman let out a low, wicked laugh.

“Tell me exactly where,” he urged. “Tell me exactly how.”

The sound of Selah sucking in her breath, then licking her lips came through the phone.

“I want you to spank my nipples,” she whispered, squinching her eyes closed tight as her hands moved feverishly.

“Spank your nipples?” he taunted.

Selah nodded and then breathed, “Yes. With your . . . dick.”

“What was that, Mrs. Dominion? You want me to spank your nipples with my hard dick?”

“Yes,” Selah panted as she pinched her two rigid peaks until waves of electricity shot through her body. Ruddman had awakened the sleeping freak in her. Truth be told, Selah wanted her nipples
and
her ass-cheeks spanked. She wanted her hair pulled and her tongue sucked. She wanted a hard dick to fuck her in every hole on her body. And she wanted it now!

Ruddman growled a string of sexual obscenities in her ear as he described exactly how he was going to dig her out. With just the excitement in his voice and the threat of his words, Selah climbed a sexual cliff and free-fell over the side as her pelvis pulsed and she shot sweet cum into her own palm.

Viceroy had never made her feel like this. Even before the mysterious breakdown between them that made him become impotent. Not a single doctor could find anything physically wrong with him either. There was absolutely no medical reason why he couldn't get it up and be a real man for his wife, but no matter how sexy she dressed, or how much foreplay they shared, Viceroy just couldn't get an erection for his wife.

Her husband was a proud man, but he had submitted to his doctors and exhausted every sexual enhancement drug on the market. He had popped the purple pills, the yellow ones, and the blue ones too. He'd smoked weed, dipped his rod in liquid cocaine, and even tried ancient Chinese acupuncture.

Viceroy's inability to get his dick hard for Selah had taken a toll on both of them. He was still young and in his prime, and as bad as he wanted to fuck his wife he just couldn't make a muscle for her. It was like his manhood had decided to take a really long nap, and Selah wasn't woman enough to wake it up.

Selah was a highly sexual woman, so early on she had been frustrated and crushed. But she had been proud of herself, though. As much as she loved sex, and as frustrating as their lives had become, she had never once considered stepping outside of her marriage or cheating on her man.

Until that fateful afternoon in New York City when she walked into her husband's office to find him gripping a rock-hard dick that looked like it had been packed with cement as he pushed it down her baby sister's throat!

That trifling little bitch! Selah thought. But guess who was being trifling now?

With her legs gapped open wide, she was wheezing from the effects of her third over-the-phone orgasm, and she almost jumped through the roof when somebody banged hard on her door.

“Who's there?” she called out with the phone still cradled between her shoulder and her ear.

“It's Dy-Nasty, Mama Selah! I came to watch one of your shows and I brought us a lil snacky-snack too!”

“I gotta go,” Selah whispered into the phone.

“Wait,” Rodney panted. He was about a mile behind her and Selah could hear him still stroking and beating his meat. “I didn't get it yet, baby. Wait.”

“I can't!” she whispered, cupping her hand around her mouth. “My daughter is at the door! I'll make it up to you tomorrow. I really have to go now.”

Ruddman sighed heavily. “It's always about you,” he growled, but Selah didn't hear him.

She'd already hung up the phone so she could pull herself together and open the door for Dy-Nasty.