Candy Licker (11 page)

For tax purposes and to maintain his sense of individuality, Knowledge also kept a nice loft apartment downtown on Seventy-ninth and Broadway. Thanks to his healthy investments, his paycheck was fat enough to afford him that private escape and the midnight-black Benz that he pushed to work most days. And it still left him a whole lot left over.

The only thing missing from Knowledge's well-ordered life was a good woman. Sure, there were wall-to-wall females at the House day and night, but he had never been attracted to loud, flashy women. His mother had been sweet and naïve but too swayed by criminal-minded men for her own good.

As a kid, Knowledge had never had adequate clothing. He'd worn the same pair of shoes from the sixth grade through the eighth, which is why as an adult he favored expensive leather shoes and a wide variety of designer suits.

Occasionally he broke down and got with a woman. Usually an old acquaintance from law school or some other professional, educated woman he'd met outside of the music industry. He never made any promises, but he always treated them right. He did all the expected things like taking them out to dinner and buying them gifts. He paid attention to their desires and actually listened to their conversations. Knowledge looked good and treated them generously. He was a gentleman
and a hot, unselfish lover. He just wasn't ready to commit himself to any woman. Or maybe he just hadn't found the right one yet.

Whatever it was, Knowledge was on a mission, but he'd been content with his life since coming to the House of Homicide. Not happy, but content. Until that sexy little honey-skinned redhead had come to audition for Hurricane and damn near blasted the walls down with her sensual, powerful voice. Knowledge had seen a lot of hopeful singers over the last few years, but hands down, this one was the best.

Something about her had stayed with him, and since he wasn't the kind of brother who preferred women of other races, it wasn't her red hair or her blue eyes. It wasn't those sexy-ass white shorts that had fit her like a bikini bottom either. He'd seen right past all that, and yet something about her still intrigued him.

Knowledge looked down at himself and grinned at what was rising in his lap. Shifting his dick in his pants, he opened the ledgers and began his examination. There were plenty of computer programs that would do this ten times faster than his pencil and his brain, but he was much too smart for that. Relying on machinery was the lazy man's way of making money— and the fastest way to get caught stashing it.

He touched his dick again, then put that hot little redhead out of his mind and got down to business.

I
don't even remember dialing 911. Just that the cops were suddenly there, and then the ambulance was too, covering my mother's face with a white sheet and taking my sister away on a stretcher. I was hysterical, but not blind enough where I couldn't see that Nicky was a man of his word. His hand had been all over this and I was scared out of my mind.

The LAPD was sorry as hell. They kept on restating what was totally fucking obvious. The murders looked like a professional hit. Of course they wanted to know who did it, and they put me in a little room and tried like hell to drag some names out of me, but I stuck hard to my lie. I just kept crying and telling them over and over again that all I did was come back from a studio audition in New York and walked into my mother's house to find three bloody bodies.

Was your mother hustling drugs? they demanded. Was she a thief? Is that why her fingers were cut off? Who were her enemies? Who were her close friends? Does your sister associate
with any known gang members? What do you know about the man, Darren Kendall, who was also found murdered?

I answered their questions the same way each time they asked. I didn't know who shot my sister and killed my mother. I came from good people and I had no idea who would have wanted them dead. No, Mama didn't steal and Caramel wasn't banging, but maybe it was that dude Greasy or Darren Kendall or whoever he was that the killers were really after and my mother and sister just happened to be in the way.

Caramel was in intensive care with an armed guard posted at her bed. The doctors said she was lucky. She'd gotten shot in the head but it was only a skim. The bullet went in above her ear at a downward angle and came out behind her ear on the same side. They couldn't tell if there would be any long-term effects on her faculties yet, but it was standard procedure to put all gunshot victims in intensive care.

It took me almost a week, but somehow I managed to plan a funeral for Mama without collapsing in a heap of grief. I was getting shit done through a thick fog, and it took everything I had in me to have her body moved from the morgue to the funeral home and prepared for cremation, but I did it.

All I could see in my mind was those hacked-off fingers and all that blood. Throats cut, bodies mutilated, Caramel with a hole in her head. I didn't have time to think about my situation or to dwell on the fact that me and Caramel were two broke-ass females all alone in the world. I sure wasn't gonna let myself acknowledge that the people who had brutally shot my sister and killed my mother were probably looking to do me too and that it was probably just a matter of time.

Vonnie and Dominica arrived by my side while I was at the
funeral home. Caramel had gotten out of ICU by then and was now in a regular room, but she still had a twenty-four-hour guard at her side. I was busy making arrangements for Mama to be cremated when my girls showed up. I was so grateful that they'd come, and so glad I wouldn't have to stand there and put my mama away all by myself, that I broke down so bad they ended up taking me outside the funeral home and splashing water all over my face.

I had barely eaten two spoonfuls of anything in almost a week because every time I even thought about touching some food the smell from Mama's place crept up in my nose and throat and made me sick. Dom and Vonnie were hungry though, so they took me to get a burger, which I picked over for about an hour before throwing it in the trash. I knew they had a lot of questions they wanted to ask, but after the grilling I'd gotten from the cops I was in no condition to go through all that again. Instead, we went to visit Caramel, who was sleeping when we got there. I talked to her nurse and she told me my sister was doing damn good for somebody who had got shot in the head. She was opening her eyes and talking and going through a bunch of tests to find out if she had lost any memory or normal functioning.

Later that night I got real tired so the three of us went back to my place and climbed in my bed together and cried. Dominica had seemed kinda uneasy all throughout the day, but as usual, Vonnie was the one to keep it real.

“Candy,” she sniffed, wiping away her tears. Even at a time like this Vonzelle was pressed out and her hair was hooked. “Girl, I know I called you a dumb bitch when you left the other day and shit, and I'm sorry. You know I didn't mean it. I just
wanted us to get with Hurricane so bad.” Then she sat up in the bed and unsnapped the back of her lacy push-up bra and threw it on the floor. Her titties were full and perfectly round, and her brown nipples pointed straight toward the ceiling when she laid back down. “But for real though”—she wiped her eyes again—“we need to get our asses back to New York with a quickness. If them motherfuckers could bust up in your mama's place without a problem, what's to stop them from coming up in here right now and rolling us out too?”

I'd been thinking those same kinda thoughts but I owed it to Mama to see that she got put away right, and I owed it to Caramel to make sure she was going to be okay. I refused to let myself dwell on my fear. I'd been scared in some kinda way or form for most of my life, and I wasn't stupid enough to think that fear could get me away from a family like the Gabrianos. If they wanted my black ass, they would come for it. Whether I stayed in L.A., jetted to New York, or caught the next shuttle to the moon. There was no place I could hide, and I told my girls that.

The next morning we held the service in a small parlor of the funeral home. The casket was kept closed and the cremation was scheduled to take place immediately afterward. As fly and pretty and outgoing as Mama had been, I felt bad that there were less than ten people there to see her off, but I couldn't afford to fly her body back to Harlem where all her running partners still lived. The manager at Mama's old job had showed up, and so had my girl Lulu from computer school along with her mother. Lulu had gotten her shit out of my apartment and ran straight home after the murders. She saw what Greasy had gotten for hanging with Mama, and she was
scared the same thing might happen to her if she stayed too close to me.

A few of Caramel's friends from high school came out too. They had been visiting Caramel in the hospital pretty often, and now they sat sniffling in the back row by themselves. Caramel's music teacher had really liked Mama. She thought Mama had the most amazing voice, and looking at Mama's casket she cried so hard she got hysterical. “What a damn shame,” she kept moaning over and over again. “Such an amazing waste of talent. That lady had promise! She could have been somebody! She could have been somebody….”

The funeral director held her in his arms and led her out the room, but aside from Vonnie and Dom, there was no one in the world to hold me, and my tears just wouldn't stop falling as I realized that the last physical reminder of my mother was laying there in that cheap wooden box.

I was crying even harder on the inside than on the outside because I felt guilty and I shoulda known better. Instead of chasing some damn recording contract I should have been out there on my business. Nicky had been right. I'd put Mama in a situation that she couldn't handle, knowing full well how weak she was when it came to drugs and quick money. Mama's past behavior should have been a clue that she couldn't resist that much cash, especially when she had a niggah talking in her ear. And Caramel. My baby sister. She'd been right there to see it all, and there was no doubt that she would keep seeing it in her mind for the rest of her life. I'd done a bad job on my own family, and the fact that I'd thrown everybody's life away for a chance to sing in front of Hurricane Jackson messed me up most of all.

Dominica and Vonnie helped me get through the funeral
and were down for me 100 percent. They were flying back to New York later in the afternoon, but they had begged me to go back with them.

“Candy” Dominica said when we were back at my apartment and she was packing her bag. “Girl, I got a funny feeling in my nose. Why'ont you grab your gear and hop on this bird with us. C'mon. Caramel got a guard, but you ain't got shit. I ain't trying to leave you sitting like a duck in no death trap all by yourself. ”

I shook my head.

“Well what in the fuck is keeping you here?” Vonnie wanted to know.

I shook my head again. Vonnie couldn't help it. She just didn't understand what it was like to love somebody more than you loved yourself. She didn't know shit about how I loved my sister. She hadn't seen or heard from her little brother since her mother OD'd and they got sent to foster care, but Mama hadn't raised me and Caramel like that. I'd die before I left Caramel stranded in some hospital way out in L.A. by herself. That shit just wasn't happening. “My sister is keeping me here, Vonnie,” I said. “My baby sister.”

“Well,” Vonnie said, styling her hair in the mirror. She turned around and peered at her plump ass to make sure it still looked good. “Before we left New York I got with Hurricane and put him down on what happened to you. He's got mad connections out here in L.A. and said if you needed anything to just call.”

Yeah. Okay. Picture that shit.

That night after Dom and Vonnie had gone, I laid on the floor by my bed staring at a small snapshot of me, Mama, and
Caramel and wondering how the fuck my life had ended up so empty and what I could do to get it back on track. I could see Mama smoking a blunt and yelling, “Damn my doll baby can sang! Work that stage, Candy Raye! Work that whole mutha-fuckin’ stage!”

Fuck singing
, I thought. I didn't care if I never sang again.

And then I thought about the message Hurricane had sent by Vonzelle.
If you need anything, just call.
That niggah would be the last person I called. But I did need something, I admitted as I rolled onto my side just as another wave of tears hit me.

I needed my mama.

H
ours later I opened my eyes in the darkness and my whole heart started pounding up in my throat. The last thing I remembered was crying myself to sleep on the floor, and now I was wide awake, listening. I'd heard footsteps. Somebody was in my kitchen and moving toward my bedroom.

I didn't even think about it. I scooted my ass under the bed like a crab, bumping into shoe boxes and stacks of computer repair manuals and magazines and praying like a motherfucker.

There were two of them. I could see their shoes coming down the short hall, and I held my breath hoping they wouldn't hear me. They were white men, I could tell by the sneakers. Some off-brand tennis shoes they probably only wore when they were out on jobs like this.