Dirty Rotten Liar (15 page)

“Why in the world would
I
tell somebody?” Pilar screamed on her. “I'm the one who tried to hook you up in the first place!”

“Stop trippin'! We can still gank they asses just as long as we can show them a copy of them pictures. You printed them shits out, didn't you?”

Pilar took a real deep breath. “No. I didn't print the damn things out. Did you?”

Dy-Nasty clutched her chest. “How the hell was I supposed to print 'em out? Do you see me walking around here with a printer and a goddamn computer?”

Pilar folded her arms over her breasts and peered at Dy-Nasty suspiciously. “Are you sure you didn't tell anyone about this other than Uncle Suge?”

“Hell yeah, I'm sure,” Dy-Nasty lied as she thought about the convo she'd had with her mother. Technically she had told
two
people, but Pat didn't really count. “I did just like you told me to do! I got with Suge and squeezed his nuts. And that's the
only
person I told!”

Pilar looked Dy-Nasty up and down and then slapped her own forehead and snorted in pure disgust.

“I don't know what the
hell
made me trust you to do even the simplest thing right. What in the world was I thinking?”

“I don't know why I trusted your fake ass neither!” Dy-Nasty shot back. “You ain't do nothin' but waste my time!”

“Well somebody else must have found out about it,” Pilar said, unlocking the bathroom door and reaching for the knob. “Because the pictures are gone. But that's cool, I'll just have to find another way to stick it to Barron because I'm out of it now. I have a feeling this shit is about to get way too messy for me.”

“Oh, so now you just gonna be out and forget all about me? Well what about my damn money?”

Pilar looked down her nose at the grimy hood chick with the tatted up tits and the terrible weave and said, “I don't know, what about it?”

Dy-Nasty's eyes got real small.

“You stuck up bitch, you! I oughta wipe this whole damn bathroom up with you! I oughta stomp a mud-hole in your boojie ass and give you a head swirly right here in this goddamn toilet bowl!”

“Oh yeah?” Pilar said, turning around to face the tough Philly street chick head-up. “Go 'head and try it, bitch. You put one goddamn finger on me and what you
oughta
do is get ready to take your raggedy ass to
jail
!”

V
iceroy looked pretty damn decent for an oil blast victim, and the fact that he had come up out of his coma was cool and all, but Digger Ducane didn't drive all the way to Austin because he gave a hot goddamn about his brother-in-law. Hell no. He had come down to Austin to try to save his own ass.

He had called his sister Selah to see if she was still mad about him crossing enemy lines to work for Rodney Ruddman, and as soon as she answered the phone he could tell right off the bat that, yep, she was still pissed.

“Hey sis.” He'd started out trying to smooth talk her like everything was everything and they were still all the way cool. “I heard Viceroy is out of his coma! God is good all the time, ain't he?”

“What do you want, Duncan?”

Oh, hell yeah. She was pissed all right. Selah hadn't called him Duncan since he was twelve damn years old!

“Pilar told me about the barbeque,” he'd said, throwing his daughter's name in the mix because he knew his sister was a sucker for her niece. “I was just wondering if I could bum a ride down to Austin with the rest of the family.”

Digger made sure he put a lotta weight behind that last word.
Family
. Him and Selah were family and she needed to remember that shit. They had the exact same blood running through their veins, and no matter what went down between them, blood was always gonna be thicker than mud.

“Sorry,” Selah had said coldly. “The business jet is full. If you want to come to Austin you're going to have to drive down.”

That was some bullshit and Digger knew it, but he had waited for Pilar to get ready, then stuffed his fat gut behind the wheel of his Caddy and driven the two hours south anyway.

Viceroy was a big willie in the great state of Texas, and a lakeside 'que thrown in his honor had pulled a helluva turnout. Sitting under an umbrella table and sipping from an icy glass of vodka and orange juice, Digger looked around at the huge crowd of drinking and picnicking folks and felt a little lonely.

He had put in close to thirty years with Dominion Oil, and almost everybody out there had either ran the streets with him in the past or had been his close business associate or friend.

But all that shit had changed in a hurry when he defected from Dominion Oil and jumped in bed with their main competitor, Ruddman Energy. Yeah, Digger knew it took some real big Brooklyn balls for him to show his face in this crowd today, but he wasn't no grimier than those Dominions were. Besides, according to Pilar, Viceroy had woken up with a couple of screws loose. Hell, his marbles were bouncing around in his damn head so bad that they hadn't even told him about Digger leaving the company yet.

Digger sighed and swigged a mouthful of liquor. Viceroy used to be his main man and he felt real low for betraying him, but who the hell knew he was gonna wake up?

Digger watched as his old friend sat next to Selah and talked shit and cut up with all his old business partners. He missed being a part of that set. Yeah, the pay was definitely steady over at Ruddman Energy, but when it came to doing business Rodney Ruddman was one greasy-ass fuck! On the real, Digger doubted if he would even have a damn job when he got back to Dallas.

He thought about the call he'd gotten on Friday afternoon. It was from a secretary in human resources instructing him to be in Rodney's office with his logbooks and his company keys the first thing Monday morning at seven sharp.

Digger knew damn well that old fool wasn't calling him on the carpet because he wanted to go hit a few holes of golf. Nah, that little ruthless bastard was about to fire him, and Digger knew it. He had a feeling Ruddman wanted to stick it to him personally instead of letting human resources shut him down because that little bastard wanted to humiliate him first.

Digger knew he had it coming, but still, his pockets couldn't stand it. The thought of being broke and out of a job made him drain his shot glass and signal to a passing waiter to bring him a refill. He glanced toward the lake and spotted his daughter stretched out on a floater and his stomach clenched. The only way for him to dodge the unemployment bullet was to convince his sister to forget what he had done and let him come back and pick up his old contracting spot at Dominion Oil.

The problem was, Selah had already told him it would be a cold day in hell before she fucked with him again, and since the weather was a sticky eighty-something degrees and rising in the heart of central Texas, Digger knew his sister probably wouldn't be fucking with him today.

 

I had been watching Viceroy on the sly ever since he had rolled up at the party, and I still got the same creepy-ass feeling about him that I had gotten when he was laid up in his hospital bed.

Dude was a gamer, I could tell.

He had the look of a natural grifter about him. Like he had hustled up on some serious squares in his day. A working person could usually peep another working person right off the bat, and that's the shit that had me worried when Selah motioned me over and said she wanted to introduce me and Dy-Nasty to Viceroy.

“C'mon over here, Mink.” Selah smiled and reached out to me as Dy-Nasty hung off her other arm like a stank lil rag. “It's time for the two of you to get to know Viceroy. I've told him a little bit about you ladies, and he's been looking forward to meeting you.”

Bullshit,
I thought as I busted the chilly look in his predatory eyes when he peeped the three of us coming his way. I couldn't speak for Dy-Nasty, but this cat was definitely not feeling
me
, and his animal instincts showed on his dark, handsome face.

“Viceroy,” Selah called to him. Barron jumped up outta his chair and offered it to his mother but she waved him right off. “Listen, dear. I need to go inside and freshen up for a while, but before I leave I'd like you to meet Dy-Nasty and Mink.”

What the fuck?
I felt myself getting swole inside as Selah walked away and left us standing in front of her man like two greedy idiots. Why in the hell did she say Dy-Nasty's name before she said mine, when I was the one who got to the mansion first?

I stood there and tried to look all innocent as Viceroy's eyes rode rough over us like a scratchy black blanket. That ol' right eye of his wasn't swelled up like a hard-boiled egg no more but it was still scary as hell.

“Dy-Nasty and Mink,” he growled with his top lip turned up like he smelled something stank. I just knew he was looking at us all funky 'cause of them nasty lil purple coochie-cutters Dy-Nasty had on, but then I realized he wasn't even paying her no attention and all that funktified eye-grillin' was aimed dead at
me
!

“Nice to meet you,” I said, pulling my little hoity-toity white girl voice outta my trick bag as I got ready to perform my ass off. “I'm so happy you're out of your coma. God bless, Mr. Viceroy! God bless you!”

“Really, Mink?” Dy-Nasty turned around and busted on me like,
Bitch, come up offa that bullshit!
“Really?”

She rolled her ugly eyes at me and then she reached out to pound Viceroy out like she was a dude giving up the dap.

“Hey, how you feeling, Pops?”

“Pretty good for an old fella,” Viceroy said, and I almost shit when he dropped his frown a lil bit. “I'm hanging. I'm hanging.”

Dy-Nasty bent over in her ass-almighty shorts and dug her hand way down in the bottom of the huge cooler that sat by his chair. She came up holding two ice-cold beers. She paused to lick the icy liquid off the bottom of both cans before holding one out to our play-daddy, and then she popped the tab on the other one and tipped that baby up and let it flow.

“Damn, Dy-Nasty!” Barron spit, eyeballing her stank cutoff shorts that were unbuttoned all the way down to the crotch and showing off her hot-pink bikini thong underneath. “You must have come down here with the cleaning crew because don't no lady suck on a can like that.”

“Who said I was a lady?” Dy-Nasty belched and shot back at him. She glanced down at her plump cleavage and let her fingers skim over her thick thighs. “I'm a woman, though.”

Viceroy laughed and passed the beer back to her, and I could tell that scandalous troll was appealing to the hood nigga in him. “Well have at it then, lil mama! You can kill this one too if you can handle it.”

Dy-Nasty snatched the beer outta his hand and grinned as she plopped down in the chair on the other side of him. She leaned all up in his face and said, “Oh, I can handle it, Pops. I can damn sure handle it!”

She popped the tab on the second beer and grinned. “Now that you back it looks like we gonna have some fun around here! You just don't
know,
Papa Viceroy! I been on my
knees
praying for you to wake up, man.” She leaned forward and busted a quick peek at Barron and grinned. “Day and night! I'm serious. I was on my knees!”

Viceroy looked interested as he kinda shifted his weight a lil bit so he was leaning in her direction. “Oh yeah, is that right?”

“Umm-hmm,” she said, nodding. “See, what had happened was, I had found a little surprise present I wanted to give you, ya dig? Some real nice pictures that I just
knew
you would wanna see.”

She took her eyes off Viceroy and smirked at Barron again.

“But some kinda way them damn pictures just went
poof!
and disappeared. I can't find them bad boys nowhere no more!” She grinned slickly. “But don't worry, Pops. I'ma keep on lookin' because I got a feeling them pictures woulda
blown your mind
.”

I busted a look at Barron. He had stretched his long legs out and was leaning back in his chair looking as chill as could be. Like a cat who had licked him some real sweet cream. I shook my head. Rich muthafuckas got on my nerves. If there was one damn thing money could buy that you damn sure couldn't get when your ass was broke, it was peace of mind.

Dy-Nasty cupped her hand around her mouth and started whispering something secret all down in Viceroy's ear, and I was about to say something slick so I could break that shit up, but then I thought twice about it.

Let that skag tell Viceroy any damn thing she wanted to tell him. Barron was getting exactly what the hell he deserved, and good for his ass too! He shoulda never brought that horse-tail heffa down to Texas tryna get at me in the first place, and whatever she put on his ass was exactly what he had coming!

 

The barbeque was bangin' and the music was loud and the liquor was flowing like a river. Barron had just watched Mink slink toward the side of the pool house with Suge hot on her ass, and that clown Dy-Nasty had killed her beer and her shiesty conversation with his pops and was now running up the back steps and about to disappear through the mansion's doors.

Barron smirked at the back view of her scandalous hips. He had almost laughed his ass off when that Philly stripper called herself busting him out in front of his pops. He had sat there in total confidence, silently daring that bitch to go ahead and get slick with it.

And he could afford to be confident too because he didn't have a damn thing to worry about. The dude his uncle had hired to erase those grimy pictures from the Internet was a top professional in his field. Not a single footprint of those pictures had been left anywhere on the Web. And as a precaution and a little punishment too, the server and the computer at the IP address where the pictures had been uploaded had been infected with a real nasty virus that it was
never
gonna recover from!

But still. Just the thought of what
could
have happened if Dy-Nasty had been able to show Viceroy those pictures sent a zing of fear shooting through Barron's nuts. He had wanted to reach across his father and choke the shit outta that two-dollar club slut and he couldn't wait until Suge worked his cold plan and that grimy bitch finally got what was coming to her!

Barron walked over to the edge of the dock and watched as a large group of people swam, splashed, and relaxed in the warm lake water. He spotted his cousin Pilar chilling on a yellow float about twenty feet away, and even though he still had stitches in his head, Barron couldn't stop his dick from stretching out and yawning as he eyed her firm, stunning body.

His eyes swept over the crowded lake and then zeroed right back in on Pilar. She was laid out on her back in a spicy-hot red bikini, and a pair of bright red sunglasses was covering her eyes. Her hair was pulled back from her pretty, caramel-colored face, and her lightly oiled body looked like it should have been the centerfold in
Beat Dick
magazine.

As much as this girl wanted to be his, and as hot as that sex thang between them was, Barron knew he had done the right thing by cutting her loose and giving all that shit up. With Viceroy out of his coma and getting back on top of the family's affairs, there was no way in fuck him and Pilar could've kept sneaking around bangin' each other like rabbits without getting busted. His father had been a real pussy hound back in the day, and there was no doubt in Barron's mind that it would've taken Viceroy about half a second to catch a whiff of Pilar's gushy on his dick.

And the last thing his father would have tolerated was Barron and Pilar causing a scandal that might put Dominion Oil in a negative light, and as much as he loved getting up in his cousin's guts and digging her out on a daily, Barron just couldn't afford to attract any more heat.

He must have been staring at her pretty damn hard because out of nowhere Pilar lifted her shades from her face and busted him watching her. Her eyes got real narrow and she shot him a look that was so damn evil that Barron almost stumbled backward.