Candy Licker (17 page)

E
ven his office was different from the rest of the House. It was up a narrow staircase at the end of a hall and had big windows and a corner view. I liked the whole openness of it. The panoramic feel I got the moment I stepped inside. The blinds were pulled way up high, and there were no curtains on the windows at all. Colorful flowers sat on a ledge right outside. The immediate sense I got was one of a clear view, live from Harlem. The sights of urban people hurrying up and down the streets just doing their thing.

“Whassup, Candy,” Knowledge said, nodding for me to come all the way in. “That was quick, though.”

I shrugged, closing the door behind me. “I can leave and come back later if you want me to.”

“Nah, nah. Now is good for me. I accept assistance whenever I can get it.”

He got up from his desk and motioned for me to sit down. Just standing in the same room with him was giving me a charge. He wasn't as tall as Hurricane, but his shoulders and arms looked strong as hell and I found myself wondering if he could pick a sistah up and put her in the face-mask position so I could ride his tongue and scream all night long.

My coochie was thumping, but my eyes were supersonic. They crawled all over his desk looking for pictures, cards, anything that would give me a clue to the kind of man he was. “What was the last thing you did before it shut down?” I asked softly.

“Nothing out the usual,” he said, putting his hands in his pockets. I'd done a lot of shopping with Hurricane for awards dinners and other events, and the suit Mr. Knowledge was styling hadn't come off nobody's rack. It was custom-made from high-quality material, which fit right in with his image. “I did install some additional memory a few days ago, though, and come to think of it, it's been acting crazy ever since.”

I felt him looking dead at me as he spoke, but I was too hot to meet his eyes. Instead, I followed his power cord to the wall outlet and unplugged it.

I blurted, “You don't use a surge protector?”

I glanced up and caught his smile, and I swear one of his dimples stabbed me right in the coochie.

“What's that for?”

“It's to regulate the surge of electricity through the system. You know, so your computer doesn't get overloaded and short out or blow your modem out.”

“Nah, I don't know much about computer systems, that's why I called you.”

“Don't worry,” I said, heading toward the front of his desk and making sure he saw what I was packing in my tight jeans. “I'ma hook you up.”

I looked at him and saw something flash in his eyes. “You promise?” he said, standing there with his hands in his pockets and digging me with a sexy smile.

I laughed. “Yeah. I promise.”

P
leaches's fifteen-year-old daughter showed up at the mansion a few months after me and Caramel moved in. Her name was Asia, and she came from down South. I didn't even know Peaches had a child. She was a real cute little church girl too. Long straight hair, wide eyes, nice skin. A younger, even prettier picture of her crazy mother.

But Long Jon wasn't Asia's father.

When Peaches was thirteen she had kicked it with Tonk, the hard-hearted drug czar who distributed heroin and crack out of the projects for Hurricane. Asia told me that Tonk's grandmother had been raising her down in Mississippi and that the old lady had had a stroke and got put into a nursing home. Tonk's people had broken their necks to put Asia on a Greyhound to New York City. They gave her ten dollars and three chicken wings and told her not to get off the bus until she saw her mother.

I liked Asia. She was real country and real sweet. She was musically talented and had a decent singing voice too. She'd
been playing the church organ practically all her life, and she was shy and naïve, kinda like Caramel used to be before she took that bullet. I figured having her around would be good for Caramel. She needed to be around somebody who was closer to her age and who wasn't so damn hot in the ass, 'cause I was about to check Sissy and Fatima over the yang they'd been putting in my sister's head. Those bitches could see Caramel wasn't totally correct, but they kept her around as their private entertainment because she was so easy to influence.

Hurricane had said to put Asia in the same room with Caramel, which was cool with me, but not with my sister.

“I don't know that down-south trick!” Caramel stomped around her jacked-up room like a spoiled little kid. She had on a pair of tight yellow shorts that was so dirty they probably stank. Caramel had some big firm titties, just like me, and the tube top she was wearing was so flimsy and narrow it looked like a dingy little headband that covered just her nipples. “Why she can't stay in the room with her mother?”

“Because her mother stays in there with her man, that's why!”

Caramel shrugged and kicked a paper plate under the bed. “That ain't my fuckin’ problem. Let her sleep on the floor in there with them, then. I just don't want her in here.”

“Cool,” I said. “Tell Hurricane that.”

She smirked at me and grinned like she knew a secret that I didn't know. “No problem. I can tell Hurricane
anything.”

I didn't pay Caramel no mind. But I worried about that girl because she was acting like a real nut. I had gotten her back in school, but at least twice a week her teachers were blowing up my cell phone. She cursed the math teacher out, stole a sandwich
from the cafeteria, and when they sent her to the principal's office she jumped up on that mug's table and started dancing like she was on a stage with a pole.

To top it all off, I had a feeling she was out there boosting too.

Before Sissy got with Vince she used to be a professional thief. She had boosted high-priced merchandise from top department stores in every borough of New York City. But even though she was kept now and didn't need to steal no more, thievery was still in her blood, and I wondered if she'd been giving my sister private lessons.

Caramel didn't make no money, but every time I looked up she was laced up in something fresh. Most of her gear was cheap, but some of it sported labels from top designers, and there was no way my sister could afford to buy those kinds of rags. Hurricane was a tight-ass baller unless he was trying to impress somebody, and whatever little bit of money he tore me off I usually split with Caramel, so I knew how much change she was working with. Almost none. It damn sure wasn't enough where she could afford to shop the way she did. For all I knew Sissy was busy teaching my sister how to boost with the best of them, which straight pissed me off.

Regardless to all that complaining she had done, two weeks after Asia moved in her and Caramel were tied together like shoestrings. I hate to say it, but my sister was a real bad influence, because it wasn't long before you couldn't tell them apart. Asia was still cute and country, but everything else about her was changing. The way she walked, the clothes she wore. Her whole attitude was getting some snap on it. Caramel had found
herself a protégé, and Asia was now a certified hooch-in-training. Peaches woke up on that and tried to put a halt to her groove right quick.

“Don't be so fast, Asia,” Peaches warned, cutting her eyes at Caramel when her daughter walked in the kitchen wearing a pair of shorts that were cut so high her fat little butt cheeks were falling out the bottoms. I knew Peaches didn't want Asia picking up no bad habits from Caramel, and I couldn't front and say I blamed her. She turned Asia's ass around at the door and told her to go find the other half of her shorts. “You got too much going for you to walk around looking so stank, Queen Asia. There's plenty of time to be grown.”

Peaches was crazier than a pregnant roach, but I could tell she really loved her daughter. Let Fatima tell it, Peaches had been truly handling that motherhood thing until she hooked up with Long Jon and he started flying her head left and right. Asia's father, Tonk, had been busy selling dope in the projects, but he didn't want his baby being raised by no battered woman so he scooped Asia up and sent her down South to live with his people.

I tried to talk to Caramel a little bit. You know, Asia was only fifteen. I wanted Caramel to watch out for her like she was a little sister, not turn her out on all the ills Harlem had to offer.

“Candy, please,” Caramel tried to diss me when I told her how I felt. “For one thing, she ain't my little sister. For two, me and her ain't connected at the brain or at the ass. If she wanna get out there and get hers, I sure won't be the buster who tells her not to.” She rolled her eyes up in her head. “Humph. I ain't trying to regulate a damn thing.”

I stared at my sister. Where this little ghettofied, booty-licious heffah had come from was anybody's guess. I'd gotten so used to dealing with Mama and all her forty-nine cases of drama that I had never really noticed how much like her Caramel really was.

A couple of weeks later I had to reassess my tune.

Even though I didn't want Caramel hanging around at the House of Homicide and Peaches damn sure didn't want Asia there neither, both of them were drawn to it like kids to a playground. To make things worse, Long Jon and Hurricane acted like it was okay for their young asses to be there. They went as far as to send cars to the mansion to pick them up whenever they called, and one night I busted Caramel slow grinding with some rapper clown and drinking gin. That probably wasn't all she'd been doing either.

It was true that Caramel had been through the streets a lot growing up with Mama, but she had always been sweet and in check. I got to really wondering why these two youngsters were all of a sudden so hot in the ass, and when I looked at things closely, for some reason my eyes kept swinging over to Long Jon.

Every time I looked up Caramel was in his grill. Asia was too. And not like no father-daughter thang neither. Matter fact, the three of them was in the movie room real late one night watching porno flicks together. I heard Peaches hollering and thought she was wildin out because her teenage daughter was in there drooling over a bunch of hard black dicks, but when I got down there I saw that wasn't the case.

“Get your ass up off his
muthafuckin
lap, Queen Asia!”

Damn if he didn't have that girl sitting between his long-ass
legs. In a flash I wondered if he was fucking her. He laughed and pushed Asia to the side as Peaches screamed, “Long Jon ain't your goddamn daddy!”

I was mad too, because Caramel had been snuggling up under him like he was her man. They had a big old blanket covering the three of them up, and there wasn't no telling what had really been going on. When Caramel saw me standing there she stood up and posed, I guess to show me that all her clothes were on so nothing had been happening. I just looked at her. Then I looked at Long Jon with his slimy ass. He was
supposed
to be running security for the House and the mansion, but instead, he was up in here trying to mug the young poon-poon he got paid to look out for.

I started wondering if Long Jon and his boys were passing Caramel and Asia around. Snake, Grip, Das—I didn't trust none of those niggahs, and at one time or another I'd seen every last one of them acting a little bit too friendly with Asia and my sister.

I glanced at Long Jon and turned my lip down. That fool knew just what I was thinking. He mighta been the big bad man who ran the cameras and carried the Glocks, but I was the big bad sister who would be watching his ass.

F
ive months after we signed with Hurricane our self-titled album was released and all three of our lives took a sharp turn. Our first single was a sexually aggressive ballad called “Rett Ta Go” that debuted at number 15 on the Billboard 200 album chart and made a lot of impact on the streets. I sang the lead on the sexy little rhythm-and-blues/hip-hop cut that Hurricane had laced with catchy hooks and sassy funk, and suddenly things were happening for Scandalous! and we were in hot demand. All the radio stations in major cities like Detroit, L.A., New York, Chicago, and Atlanta were spinning our cut and trying to get us in their studios for interviews.

Six weeks later “Luver Boy” was released and we didn't know what hit us. The slinky cut was a straight club banger and an instant hit. We recorded our first music video, and MTV snatched it like a hot potato. We were invited to the Essence Music Festival in Nawlins, and we performed at the Soul Train Music Awards too. We were living large and loving it. There were makeup sessions out the ass, hairstylists were all in our
faces, tailors were throwing more clothes at us than we'd ever seen in our lives, and to top it all off, Hurricane chartered private jets to shuttle us back and forth between cities and events like they were yellow taxicabs.

The response we were getting was so crucial that all three of us got the big head and it took a black-hearted playa like Hurricane to put our asses back in check.

“Don't start acting major just 'cause they rotating your shit on the radio,” he warned Dominica when she challenged him over something minor like a stage costume she thought looked too hoochie on her. Hurricane and Jadeah controlled everything from what we said in an interview to what kind of outfits we wore on the stage, to how our hair was styled. “Bitch, I own your ass, and if you fuck with me you'll roll outta here wearing the same rags you rolled in with.” Then Hurricane said something that made all of our hearts pump apple juice. “But not until y'all jawns earn out all the funds I been fronting for ya. Don't act stupid. Y'all bitches is broke.”

We went on to perform at the Apollo Theater that night to a sold-out house, and while we gave 100 percent onstage, later as we rode in a limo back to the studio everybody was kinda quiet and I knew what my girls were thinking. If we were racking up the kind of quick sales everybody said we were, then when in the hell was we gonna get our hands on some of that money?

It was after 4:00
A.M.
, but the House of Homicide was just coming alive as we pulled up to the curb and climbed out the car. We were walking through the door when I went ahead and said what we all were thinking.