Betrayal (16 page)

Rita stood there trembling and staring at the cell phone she gripped in her hand. Suddenly the reality of what was going down hit her, and it hit her real hard.

Two hundred grand…

In her head, she quickly calculated the worth of everything in her apartment, all her jewelry, and every dime in her savings account. The amount she came up with was laughable. It came out to way less than what she needed to get her sister back.

With the memory of Nooni’s terrified voice echoing in her ear, Rita jumped into action. Her hands were sweaty as she punched some numbers into her phone. The first person she called was Dutchy.

You got 24 hours to get it.

And when her man’s phone rang and rang until his voicemail finally picked up, Rita knew she had no other choice but to make another call.

She took a deep breath and dialed her girl.

She called Juicy.

$$$$$

Nooni was stretched out on Monique’s sofa holding a sock full of ice cubes high on her right cheek. Truth had knocked the piss outta her. For real. The first time he swung she’d screamed out in fear and surprise. The second time he’d dug his fist deep into her eye. His third blow had made her pee on herself as she cried out in pain for her sister, and she lost count of all the blows after that.

“You’re okay,” he told her as she lay there shivering and hiccupping. Her nose was red from crying and he bent down and kissed it on the tip. “I wasn’t tryna hurt you, baby, but we had to make it seem real, nah’mean?”

Her screams had sure as hell been real. Nooni closed her eyes behind the ice pack and forced herself to be chill. She was grateful for Truth’s affection and his small kiss, and she told herself that was more than Maleek would have given her after he kicked her ass.

Truth had practiced what he was gonna say to Rita about five times before he actually called her, and not one of those times had he told Nooni that he was gonna really smash her, or that the beat-down Monique had filmed with her cell phone so she could sent it to Rita was gonna be the real thing.

Nooni’s eyeball throbbed in her skull where he’d capped her, and she wondered if getting Juicy’s money was worth all this. She knew shit was crucial and they had to pay the back taxes on the G-Spot, and that was all good. But the only reason she had really agreed to go along with the plan is because Truth said he had a lot of expensive warrants that he needed to clear up. If he didn’t pay his fines he was gonna get locked up, and Nooni couldn’t bear to think about him going to jail and leaving her by herself.

“Lemme see it,” Monique said, taking a seat on the sofa beside Nooni. She pulled the sock gently away from the young girl’s face, then sucked her breath in real quick like the sight of Nooni’s bruised eye really hurt her.

“Oh, he straight fucked you up,” Monique moaned, hyping the situation up. “It’s already bloodshot and you gonna have a black eye too. Word.”

Nooni felt another wave of tears rising in her. She talked shit to the chicks she went to school with, and she rose up a lil bit on her sister every now and then, but she wasn’t no street fighter. She was delicate, built for loving, and she damn sure didn’t like getting boxed around by no man.

“Don’t worry,” Monique told her. “You can stay with us until the bruises go away. I’ll send a note to your teachers and shit. That way they won’t send no truant officers out looking for you.”

Monique made a sympathetic noise and pulled Nooni’s head to her breast as if to comfort her. “Don’t worry, baby girl. When your sister makes the drop on that money we’re gonna tear you off enough to make you forget all about them little love taps Truth gave you. For real,” she said, stroking Nooni’s soft cheek and loving how the girl felt snuggled all up in her arms. Lying and scheming made Monique horny, and right now her pussy was popping off like a whole packet of firecrackers.

“Yeah, don’t worry,” she told Nooni, steadily stroking the girl’s tender flesh. “Mo-Mo gonna make you forget all about Truth’s mean yellow ass.”

CHAPTER 17

I got up early in the morning to get ready for my overnight trip to New York. I won’t lie. I was scared shitless, and I knew I was taking a really big risk with what I was about to do. But Rita had called me in a panic. There was nobody else she could turn to for the kind of help she needed, so I had to go to her.

She had been totally hysterical last night when she told me Nooni had been kidnapped and some fools were holding her for two hundred grand.

“I feel like shit even calling you when you’ve already been through so much, Juicy, but I just don’t know what else to do!”

“Do you think somebody really has her,” I asked, “or is she just hanging out and scared she might get in trouble? Did it sound real?”

“Yes,” Rita had whimpered. “It sounded real as hell and they texted me a video of her too. Check your phone when we get off, I just sent it to you. Nooni was all busted up. She was screaming for me, Juicy! Somebody was beating the shit outta her! Oh, my God…two hundred grand? What the hell makes them think I have that kind of money? I just don’t know what to do!”

“Calm down,” I told her, and for once it was me doing the soothing instead of her. “Don’t worry about the money, I got that. We’re gonna get her back, Rita. Nooni’s gonna be okay because we’re gonna get her back.”

Rita told me the guy who called had warned her not to go to the cops, but that was a no-brainer because neither one of us trusted the police to look out for Nooni anyway. They would have labeled the situation a stupid teenage prank instead of a crisis, and that would have been the end of that.

But Rita had been convinced that Nooni was in real danger. We’d stayed on the phone for over three hours putting our heads together as we tried to figure out the best way to handle the situation. Giving Rita the money she needed wasn’t an issue for me, but how to get it to her was going to be tricky.

Sending it through Western Union was out because not only wouldn’t they accept or pay out such a large amount for a wire transfer, if we even tried to move anything over ten grand we’d be throwing up a red flag and leaving a paper trail that could get us busted for wire fraud and failure to report income to the IRS.

Mailing two hundred grand worth of cash in a box was a dumb idea for obvious reasons, and we nixed out sending it by carrier pigeon too. We were both getting exhausted, and Rita was at the end of her rope with fear. It took some trying, but I finally convinced her to do things my way.

“Uh-uh, Juicy,” Rita told me over and over again. “You can’t come back here!” she insisted. “It’s too much for you. You haven’t even healed up from your surgery yet. Besides, New York is way too dangerous. Niggahs got long memories on these streets. You know they’re still gunning for you, right? Please, let’s do this
my
way, okay? I’ll catch a quick flight out there and pick up the money, and then I’ll come right back and make the drop.”

What she was suggesting just didn’t make any sense to me. Rita had it backwards. I was the one who was all alone in the world with nothing and nobody to lose. If I got caught the Feds would automatically assume I was transporting drug money, and since every dime of the loot had come from G, most if it probably was. But still, if I got caught it would only be my ass on the line. Rita had two younger sisters to think about. If she got caught taking two-hundred-thousand dollars worth of dirty money across state lines then all three of them would be ass out.

“And what if the crew that snatched Nooni tries to call you back while you’re on the airplane? You still don’t know the drop spot,” I reminded her. “How are you gonna answer the phone to find out where it is if you’re up in the air? Besides, they said Nooni would be dead in 24 hours, didn’t they? That doesn’t even give you enough time to fly out here, pick up the money, and then catch a flight back. Nah,” I told her, shaking my head. “We have to do this my way, girl.”

When we finally hung up I watched the video clip that Rita had forwarded me, and my heart broke wide open for Nooni. She was getting pounded for real. It reminded me of all the beatings I had suffered through when G chained me to that pole down in his Dungeon. I was even more determined to help Rita save her sister after seeing all that.

I used my cell phone to make a quick airline reservation, then I climbed up on my dresser and removed the ceiling tiles to get to the safe that Gino had stashed up there. Using the combination that he had told me to memorize, I removed several bricks of hundred dollar bills and left the rest in there. It wasn’t a whole lot left, but it was enough.

I had fallen asleep thinking about the stacks of cash that Gino had locked away in another safe and left with Sallie. Shit, between that money and what I was holding there was more than enough to get Nooni back. Two hundred grand was just a drop in the bucket.

I’d gotten up so early that my stomach was too nervous to even think about eating breakfast, so I took a shower and dressed in loose clothing. In the safety of my bedroom, I re-counted the money out twice, and then I wrapped two thick towels around a hundred and fifty thousand of it and stuck it in my Gucci travel bag. I spent over an hour breaking the rest down into small stacks and taping them to my stomach, down the front and back of my legs, under my titties, and as far up my back as I could reach.

At eight o’clock I walked out the house and past Gino’s SUV, which was still parked in our driveway. I climbed into my BMW and drove to a nearby Walgreens where I did a little shopping. Twenty minutes later I was on my way to the airport. I parked in the long-term lot and then sat in the Green Gotcha and began putting on my disguise.

I was shitting bricks by the time I limped into the terminal to check-in for my flight. With a brace around my neck, another one on my leg, and my left arm in a sling, I looked like a straight-up car wreck victim. I got sympathetic glances from quite a few people, but I was still paranoid as hell. It seemed like random strangers were taking extra-long looks at me. I kept peeking around, swearing all out that somebody was following me. I finally hobbled into the bathroom to put some water on my face, and when I glanced in the mirror little Juicy-Mo from 136th Street looked scared as shit and guilty as hell.

But as bad as I was shaking, I walked through the metal detector and made it through the security screening with only one small problem. The body scanner beeped twice. It scared the shit out of me until I remembered that I had forgotten to remove my necklace before putting on the brace.

The TSA dude waved me over to the side, and since I could only use one arm he was nice enough to help me unsnap my neck brace and take off my gold chain. That was the only item he required me to remove, and when I walked back through the scanner again, I was good to go.

I had only checked in one small suitcase, and I kept my cash-heavy travel bag between my feet during the entire flight. The last time I had been on a plane was when G took me and Gino on a trip to Hawaii. I couldn’t help but remember how me and my man had made sweet love in paradise, and how he had given me my very first dick-induced orgasm. I also couldn’t help but remember how bad G had kicked my ass the next night, or how ashamed I had been when he made me dance butt naked on a coffee table right in front of Gino. I had been so humiliated!

I boarded the plane and sat next to a young black chick and her cute baby girl. I told her I had been in a car accident, and she told me her husband was serving in Iraq and she was flying to New York to meet him for his R&R.

Listening to the love in her voice as she talked about her man, and watching her take care of her daughter was so damn hard on me. It took everything I had not to sit there and cry my heart out. I thought about Gino and our unborn son, and I knew I would never have what this girl had. Never.

But as bad as I was hurting, I knew I was doing the right thing by helping Rita and Nooni. For the past few months my life had been all about grief and rage, and totally without purpose. By forcing myself to go out into the world, even though I was scared out of my mind, I was really helping myself too.

The flight was all good and we landed in New York right on time. I texted Rita and told her I was on my way to baggage claim, and after saying goodbye to the young mother and her baby girl, I played my role and rode one of those transport carts all the way to the luggage area.

Holding my carry-on bag tightly, I stood right at the front of the crowd and waited for my suitcase to come out. I was ready to get moving, but of course I wouldn’t be going anywhere near Harlem. The plan was for Rita to pick me up at baggage claim and help me out to the car with all my braces and bandages, and then she was gonna drive me to a hotel that was right next to the airport. Once we were securely behind a locked door I would hand over the money, and she would take it to Harlem so she could make the drop and try to get Nooni back.