Greed (5 page)

Salida smirked as she waited for Monique to make a move. She nodded when she saw the survival senses creep into Monique’s eyes as the girl sat her ass back down in the chair.

Things had just changed drastically between the two women and both of them knew it. Salida knew she still needed Monique to do some things, and Monique damn sure needed her. But a mush wasn’t something most Harlem girls could brush off and forget about. Salida had disrespected Monique in a major way, and she was gonna have to play her extra close from now on. But she was good with that. There was more than one way to cook a bitch’s coochie, and later, when the time was exactly right, Salida was gonna burn Monique’s ass like a cat on a hot tin roof.

CHAPTER 6

“This shit is all fucked up,” Ace muttered under his breath as he sat tossin’ ‘em back at the bar Saturday afternoon. It was a good thing he hadn’t put Pluto down on the little side deal he had cut with his cousin Rabbit. Not only had his plan gone bad, but Juicy had gotten knocked before Salida’s plan could work too, and now they were ass-out all the way around.

Ace shook his head and tossed back another shot of Hen-dawg straight-up. He had hesitated in going behind Pluto’s back and cutting the outside deal, but his son was on some other shit these days and they just didn’t see eye-to-eye the way they used to. Salida had convinced him their situation was too critical to wait around for a buster to see the light, and Ace had agreed. He’d kept his manz in the dark, and that had ended up being a good thing because his Cali niggahs had messed shit up again.

“This shit is all fucked up,” Ace muttered again. And he meant that shit.

$$$$$

“Oh, so you mean between the two of y’all smart mouth bitches y’all couldn’t come up with one solid plan?”

If Monique thought she had been hot when Ace and Pluto came up short when they went out to Cali, that was nothing compared to the way Pluto clowned now that the shoe was on the other foot.

They were driving through Harlem and all Monique could do was stare out the window as her man beefed so hard spit flew outta his mouth with each word. She hadn’t even told him that she had gotten her forehead mushed, or about the gat Salida had pulled on her either. She was saving that bomb so she could drop it during another battle.

“It was your nephew’s fault,” Monique lied. “He got too damn hyped and he didn’t follow the plan.”

“Truth is a tyke!” Pluto came at her. “You gonna send a young’un like him to put in a man’s work?”

Monique shrugged. “Salida told me to send him.”

“I don’t know why you listened to Salida’s psycho ass anyway!” Pluto fumed. “You thought getting that money was gonna be easy didn’t you? What? You thought you and Salida was gonna do something me and Ace couldn’t do?”

Monique watched the urban scenery flash by as the big fella pushed the whip down the avenue at top speed.

“I bet that greedy bitch sent your dumb ass inside to make the pick-up too, didn’t she? That way, if somebody got caught holding all that dirty loot it wouldn’t be her!”

The same thought had crossed Monique’s mind too, but it was a risk she had been willing to take. She’d reasoned that it was better to make the run herself and get the money in her hands, than it was to trust Salida to bring the money back and dish her off a fair share.

“That bitch got you and Ace both eating out ya own asses! I keep telling y’all G stuck her ass up on a high shelf for a reason! The bitch is throwed-off! 7:30! Straight-up crazy!”

Pluto jerked the steering wheel and took a corner so hasty it felt like the car was careening on two tires. Monique reached up and held on to the overhead handle and prayed he didn’t clip no old-ass lady tryna cross the street and bounce her off his bumper.

“I’m telling you, Miss Dumbness,” he warned, spinning the steering wheel with one hand so he could shake his fat finger in her face with the other one. “You better stop following behind Salida’s ass, ya heard? She’s gon’ fuck you up, Mo! Word. That bitch don’t even like you. I see the way she be grilling you when you ain’t looking. It’s ill, man. You keep running your mouth to her and doing whatever she says. She’s gonna walk your clueless ass right off a cliff!”

Monique knew better than to challenge Pluto’s theory. He would open the car door and toss her ass out so fast she’d be eating concrete for dinner. Instead, she tried to soothe him the best way she knew how. She catered to his ego and most of all to his stomach.

“Yep, you been telling me,” she said in an agreeable tone. “And I been listening, Daddy. I know you’re way smarter than Mizz Salida is. And I’ma be real careful around that bitch from now on,” she said. And she was dead serious about that shit too.

Monique had seen the future when Salida got her up in the cut room and bitched her out for messing everything up. Monique wasn’t the type who could take a whole lotta down-talking from no female, and she hadn’t liked the way Salida had flashed that tool on her not one bit either.

That bitch was deranged, and she was getting stranger every day. Monique had figured since their plan was shot she could send Nooni back home, but that nut had damn near cracked open at the suggestion of cutting the young girl loose.

“Hell no! Nooni ass ain’t going nowhere! She still has work to do. Home, hell. If she goes anywhere it’ll be right downstairs on that mattress in the Dungeon!”

Monique couldn’t tell if Salida was serious about doing Nooni like that or not, but she didn’t put it past her. 

Pluto sped up through an intersection and ran a red light. Tires squealed loudly as a transit bus hit its brakes as it tried not to crash into them.

“How about this,” Monique suggested, giving Pluto a big smile. He was still furious and breathing hard. “I’ma run you a nice hot bath later on tonight when we get home, and while you in there having fun with your bubbles I’ma make you some fried potatoes with onions, and some of them real spicy shicken wings you like so much.”

Pluto poked his bottom lip out and frowned. “You gone put some honey on them shicken wings?”

“Uh-huh,” Monique giggled and nodded. “I’ma put some honey on them, some Lawry’s, a little garlic salt, and some Texas Pete’s too. You gonna love ’em.”

Pluto cracked a small grin.

“Yummy,” he said in a little boy’s voice. “I love your shicken wings, but I don’t think I can wait until tonight, though. I’m hungry right now. You hungry, Mo-Mo? You feel like eating you some shicken sausage?”

Monique knew the drill.

“I’m starving, Daddy,” she said sweetly. She reached over and felt around under his massive stomach until she found his belt buckle. Expertly, she got it loose and Pluto jumped in quickly to help unbutton his pants.

Monique reached into his drawers and extracted his sticky dick. It was already wet at the top, and it felt like a hot pickle in her hand.

“Eat it,” Pluto urged as he stepped on the gas and the whip lurched forward even faster.

Monique knew she had a dilemma. The last thing she wanted was for this fool to lose his top and go crashing into a damn building. But she was worried about something else, too. There was only about two inches between Pluto’s bulging stomach and the steering wheel. Where the fuck was she supposed to put her head while she sucked his stank dick?

Make do, Monique, she told herself. She was a real creative bitch at heart. Just make do.

Taking a deep breath she jacked Pluto’s dick to the side, then stuck her head down into funky land and got to grindin’ his nasty sausage.

CHAPTER 7

Jail was a grimy, cold place to be.

I didn’t care how they tried to dress the joint up with a mildewed mop or a fresh coat of paint. It was nasty. The food was shitty, the showers were dirty…the whole scene was a lesson on how to live like a dog.

I had grown up in Harlem so I was used to junkies, hoes, and thieves, but nothing in my life had prepared me for the hopelessness that hung thick in the air at Rikers.

Being G’s woman had made me soft. He had gotten me used to sleeping on plush mattresses and bathing in deep tubs filled with hot, bubbly water. Coming up in here was like being dropped onto another planet. I felt like an alien who didn’t understand the language, the reasoning, or the rules.

Right away I noticed that the guards did a whole lot of barking. Most of them were just regular dudes and chicks who had probably grown up in the projects too, but right now they were roaming around and flossing large and in charge, and they looked down on the inmates like we were some gutter scum that had come up out of a clogged toilet.

My face burned with embarrassment as they fingerprinted me and made me strip naked and squat down to the floor. The humiliation alone was enough to make me break down and cry, but I knew I had to be strong. Predatory bitches were probably already scouting me for signs of weakness, and I forced myself not to show them none.

One thing I knew for sure I wasn’t gonna do was be nobody’s damn jailhouse wifey. I wasn’t a fighter, and I had never started trouble in my life, but when this grimy-looking trick with buck teeth and bumpy skin rubbed up against me as we waited on line I told her I would beat the brakes off her ass if she touched me again, and I meant that shit too.

Almost everybody around me seemed real comfortable and familiar with the procedures. Like they had been here before and none of it was that big of a deal. Some of them went through the line doing what they needed to do without even being told. I didn’t wanna ask any stupid questions and let everybody know it was my first time being locked up so I just followed directions and kept my mouth closed.

I did my best to stay to myself but you know how it is. People don’t never wanna just let you be. I had so many hood chicks coming at me asking who I was, what I was in for, did I have a man, did I have a bitch, did I have any money, was I looking for a good lawyer, did I know a good lawyer…that shit was exhausting.

They put me in a cell that was so little I could almost stretch my arms out and touch both walls. It had a thin, plastic-covered mattress on an iron rack, a small closet, a desk, a tiny sink, and a dirty white toilet with half a roll of tissue sitting on the floor next to it.

I sat down on the hard mattress and looked around. The floors were nasty, the walls were grimy, and all I wanted to do was go home. I closed my eyes and started praying for help. Why, I don’t know, because it seemed like God had forsaken me a long time ago.  

“I need to talk to somebody,” I told a Puerto Rican CO later that night when it was time for us to take a shower. “I didn’t get my mandatory phone call when I came in here.” 

He grinned like I was a real comedian.

“Yeah, okay,” he said, ushering me along with a bitch-be-for-real smirk on his face. “I’ll make sure I tell somebody about that.”

The showers were the free-for-all type, where everybody and their mama could peep your naked ass. I ran through that water like hot lightening. I barely stopped to rub the rough bar of soap under my arms and between my legs, and I know for damn sure I didn’t get a good rinse off.

That first night of being locked up in a small, musty cell damn near killed me. I was too freaked out to lay down and sleep, and I couldn’t keep still neither. That locked door was fucking with me. What if there was a fire and nobody let me out?

I was so scared. I dropped down to the floor by the door and started crying. My tears just fell. I balled up in a knot and thought about Gino. I was so ashamed of myself, and I was glad he couldn’t see me like this. Me and him should have been buying baby clothes and cribs and all that type of stuff together, instead he was in the ground and I was sitting up in jail.