Natural Born Hustler (10 page)

Desember snapped the phone shut again. “Fame can be so damn stubborn sometime. Why won’t he just answer the phone?”

Desember was sitting in the front room of Kayla’s apartment, on the cream Italian leather love seat, which contrasted beautifully with the strawberry paint job. The interior décor made Kayla’s apartment by far the flyest in the project complex; it didn’t look like a project inside of her apartment.

Kayla was across from Desember, in a recliner, sitting with her baby girl in her arms, searching for the right words to say to her friend. “Ain’t that the pot calling the kettle black?” Kayla pointed out while she rocked little Kaylisa.

“Meaning?” Desember looked offended. Not because of the statement, but the person making the statement.

“Meaning, you are one of the most stubborn people I know,” said Kayla. “God only knows, girl, I fucks with you like grits and cheese but you can be a lot to handle sometimes.”

Desember gave her friend a look like she’d had one too many shots of liquor, but neither of them was drinking.

“And don’t give me that look, like you can’t believe I said it. You know it’s true.”

“It’s not,” protested Desember. “I’m almost always accommodating.”

“Yeah, for your clients, as long as it accommodates you or it guarantees that they coming back.” Kayla got up slowly, careful not to wake the baby. She padded barefoot across the pink carpet, which covered the entire apartment, and placed Kay lisa in her playpen, located in the center of the room.

It was out of character for Kayla to go against her, so Desember sat back and waited as Kayla voiced her thoughts.

“You’re my best friend since the sandbox in the yard at elementary and I love you like a sister, but let’s be honest.…”

Desember repositioned herself so that she was sitting at the
edge of the love seat. “Okay,” she agreed, “let’s be honest. I want to hear this.”

Kayla sat back down. “I’ve never met anyone,” she said, looking directly at her best friend in the world, “who wanted what she wants, when she wants and where she wants like you.”

Desember objected, “That’s not—”

“It is true,” Kayla cut her off. “But that doesn’t make you a bad person,” she said. “In fact, that’s what makes you who you are.”

Desember thought about what she had heard for a second. “So you saying I’m a spoiled-ass control freak?” she asked.

“No, I’m—Well, yes, I am, I guess. But it’s only because you know what you want,” she added. “I wish I was more like you sometimes. Who’d of thought you and Fame would ever in a million years get together in the first place, the way y’all used to fight like the Hatfields and McCoys?”

“We did use to go at it pretty hard, huh?” She thought back to her and Fame’s fights.

“Did y’all? If they were rocking dem reality shows like they do now, y’all two would be filthy rich. That shit was true drama at its finest, girl.”

“That ain’t no lie,” agreed Desember. “Now, we still argue from time to time. You know, just to let ’im know that I’m still that bitch.”

“And he must be that nigga,” Kayla reminded her. “Because don’t get it twisted, you always shined like the star you are, but since Fame made it official, the sun came in second to yo glow some days, girl.” Kayla got up again, this time heading to the kitchen. “You want one of these apple wine coolers, girl? My mouth is dry as shit and I need a buzz, I ain’t even gonna lie.”

“You know they my shit, bitch,” Desember accepted, turning in her seat. “Don’t act like you forgot who turned you on to them joints.”

Kayla grabbed two bottles out of the fridge, gave Desember one, then said, “I’ma put Kaylisa in the back so we can fi’e up a blunt to go with the coolers.”

“Yeah, that’s right. Her ass too young to be getting fucked up like her mother,” Desember joked, tired of being the one under the spotlight.

“Bitch, I barely smoke weed once a month,” Kayla shot back, “and when I do, it’s with yo ass.”

Desember raised an eyebrow in thought. “Okay, you got me there,” she said as she pulled a sandwich bag from her Gucci purse. “Hurry up, tho, ’cause dis shit here,” holding up the bag, studying it like there was something alive inside, “Fame said this shit right here is that flame, girl!”

“I might not be ready for that shit, then, girl,” Kayla said, half-joking, half-serious. “I ain’t graduated to the majors yet.”

“Me either,” Desember admitted. “I guess tonight is draft night, huh?”

Half a blunt and two wine coolers later, both girls were out cold on the sofa and love seat, the other half of the blunt resting in an ashtray on the table.

10.
Slipping

Cedar Woods was the most upscale apartment complex in the city. It had its own indoor swimming pool, clubhouse and 24-hour weight room, plus tennis, handball and basketball courts. Inside, the walls were thick enough to provide extra privacy from neighbors with sensitive hearing to other people’s business. The apartments came with every single amenity to make the home more pleasurable. Outside, everything was meticulously taken care of by a well-staffed maintenance crew.

At apartment number 1743-H, a worker tapped on the door. After about fifteen seconds, the man checked his clipboard, confirmed the address, then knocked again, this time a little harder. When he heard someone stir on the other side, he unconsciously wiped away some imaginary dirt from his crisp work uniform. He knew that bad appearances could cost a presenter their job, especially during a recession.

“Who is it?” a gruff voice barked from inside.

“Maintenance,” Fame answered, as if lying came naturally. When the door opened, “I’m checking the air-conditioning filters and the batteries in the smoke detectors, sir.” After the phone call with Desember, Fame set his mind to take care of some business, and get it off of her for a while.

The man who answered the door was in good shape, tall, dark-skinned, with a clean head and neat-cut goatee. He had a cell phone pressed against his ear and appeared irritated by the interuption to his conversation.

“Hold on a minute,” to the person on the phone. Then he asked Fame in a rude tone, “What did you say you wanted?”

“Air filters and smoke detector batteries, need to check them; it’ll only take a moment, sir.”

The man with the goatee gave him a once-over, then a small nod of acquiescence. “Make it quick,” he said, “I gotta few things to do, okay.” He was a man used to giving orders.

“Not a problem.” Fame slid by the dude and started flipping pages on his clipboard as if he were a coach going over his pregame plan.

In the streets, Goatee went by the name of Carson. If talk on the street was right, he’d been in the drug game for over two decades and had never seen the inside of a jail a day in his life or even a holding pen. Rumor had it that Carson had a family connect from St. Maarten, but Fame listened closely, and there was no trace of a foreign accent in his voice.
But that means nothing
, Fame thought to himself. If a Chinese baby grew up in France, among a French household, the child would speak perfect French. Humans mimic what they hear.

Cedar Woods was one of many places that Carson held down. He supposedly also had other houses in North Carolina, New
York, California and on some island. Perhaps St. Maarten—who knew? All Fame was sure of was that the nigga was strapped. Fame had gotten lucky obtaining the whereabouts to this one.

Fame’s homeboy Pockets, who worked at the car wash, was always on the lookout for somebody to hit up. He’d seen the address and registration to Carson’s Jaguar when he stopped to get it detailed at Carpool. Fame watched the apartment for two months before he finally spotted Carson, and could pin him down to somewhat of a pattern.

Now the man was watching Fame closely. “Look here, I’m going to have to call you back,” he said into the phone before ringing off and clipping it to the waist of his jeans.

Fame swapped the batteries in the alarm positioned in the ceiling of the hallway, and then he did the same thing to the one in the kitchen. Afterward, he took a look at the ventilation duct, the one that sucked the dirty air out, and checked the filter.

“Do you know the last time this was changed?” Fame asked.

Carson shook his head, not much of a talker apparently.

“I need to go to the truck and get one,” Fame explained. He walked back toward the front door to block any possible retreat from Carson, then Fame reached under his blue work pants and removed the people mover. “But first,” he said, “I’m gonna have to get a few things up off of you.”

The minute Carson spotted the Glock, his eyes sparked a look. “I should have known better. My wallet is in my back pocket.” He pulled it out and slowly handed it to Fame.

The billfold was crammed with big-faced Franklins. That would have been a decent score for a small-time dude, but Fame knew better. There were bigger fish to be had in these here waters. He tossed the wallet to the floor. “This ain’t no joke, nigga. I want the real money.”

Carson offered some unsolicited advice. “Your greed may be your undoing.”

Fame answered by cracking him upside the temple with the gun, drawing blood. “Let me worry about my undoing! You just do what the fuck you’re told,” he snarled.

Carson attempted to walk away. “What you think you’re doing?” Fame snapped.

“You come for da money, right? It’s in the back,” Carson replied, in a matter-of-fact kind of way.

Fame followed, with his gun pointed at Carson’s back, to the bedroom at the end of the hall. The furniture in the room was huge, a giant mahogany king-sized bed, matching dresser, with a huge mirror that took up an entire wall, a couple of night tables and a file cabinet that was the same finish as the furniture.

Carson went to the cabinet, twisted a small key into the slot on top and then opened the upper drawer. It contained at least fifty manila envelopes filled with stacked hundreds, ten thousand a stack, five in each envelope. The contents of one had spilled out when Carson tossed the packages on the bed.

Jackpot
. Fame was amazed at the good fortune he’d put himself in position to cake up off Carson.

But he could barely believe his eyes when Carson opened the second drawer and started tossing more stuffed manila envelopes on the bed, where he’d piled the others.

Fame was so busy calculating the numbers, with his back turned to the bedroom door, that he failed to register the mistake, or exactly how much danger he was in, until it was too late.

Out of nowhere he got bashed over the head from behind with a big-ass picture frame. He had seen it on the wall in the
hall earlier, a picture of Bob Marley with an oversized spliff hanging from his mouth.

Before Fame could regain his composure, Carson knocked the gun from his grip and had him in some type of choke hold.

Fame twisted, ducked and grabbed at Carson’s arm, but none of it worked. The grip was vise tight. If he didn’t get out of the hold quickly, he would lose consciousness. His gun was now on the other side of the room, out of reach. Carson was screaming in his ear, “Yo try to kill me, fuck boy, huh? Yo don’t know who yo fuck wit,” he angrily said, unmasking his native tongue.

Fame wasn’t sure where the person who had hit him with the picture had run off to, but he was thankful he wasn’t also whaling on him. Almost about to black out, he lurched as hard as he could, backward, knocking Carson into the dresser mirror. He cracked his head, glass shattered and a large jagged shard cut into the back of his neck.

Carson’s grip loosened.

Fame elbowed him with all his might; the solo flex. It didn’t take long before he broke free of the hold. With only a fraction of a second to make a quick choice: go for the gun on the opposite side of the room or the door, which was closer. The decision was hard for him, because he never left without what he came for—but Fame chose the door.

Carson must have gotten to the gun, because Fame heard erratic gunshots as he ran down the steps three at a time and fell into the passenger side of the waiting car. Pockets jammed the already running car into gear, stepped on the gas, and they bailed out.

“What the fuck happened?” Pockets asked once they were out of the immediate threat of danger. Fame hadn’t spoken
since he’d gotten in the car looking half dead, trying to catch his breath.

His neck was bruised, and his lungs were burning from lack of oxygen. “I need something to drink.” The words came out froggish. His eyes were rimmed with red. They finally pulled over at a gas station to get a bottle of water. It was the best water he had ever tasted in his entire young life.

Fame looked at Pockets and held up Carson’s billfold, which he had scooped up in mid-stride from the floor of the apartment while running for his life, and said, “Shit, my nigga, dinner on the rude boy?”

They shared a small chuckle after pulling safely into the lot of a familiar restaurant.

11.
The Showdown at Sunup

Fame had a box of Cap’n Crunch, a giant plastic Tupperware bowl and a half-gallon jug of milk sitting on the kitchen table as Desember quietly opened the door of the apartment.

“Where you been?” asked Fame between mouthfuls of his favorite cereal.

It was 8:23 and Desember had just came home, being the first of the two to break her own rule by letting the sun beat her in.

The potent bush that she and Kayla had smoked in conjunction with the wine coolers they had drunk had put both of them on their asses, out for the count. She woke up on Kayla’s couch at about 7:30
A.M.
with a dry mouth and a cramp in her neck.

“If you hada answered your phone,” she said dryly, “you woulda known where I was last night.” In her mind, he had no
right to question her; he was the one who’d been funky last night.

Fame dropped his spoon into the bowl, handle completely submerging into the milk. He looked like he was ready to blow up but amazingly he kept his composure when he said, “If you had been home where you belonged, there wouldna been no reason to use a phone.”

He scanned her body for the first time. Her clothes were wrinkled from sleeping in them and her hair was sort of jacked up because she hadn’t wrapped it.