From the Streets to the Sheets (3 page)

“Ain’t gone be no fuckin’ Baltimore, you stupid-ass bitch,” Pluto growled as he picked up his plastic shopping bag and headed toward the door again.

“Not for me or for you.”

                  •                  •                  •

My fuckin’ face!

Monique snatched off her hot earring and jumped to her feet as soon as the door slammed. She kicked off her shoes and hobbled over to the freezer and took out a frozen can of grape juice. She held it to the right side of her face, then ran in the bathroom to check out the damage Pluto had done.

Aside from being really red and tender, her cheek didn’t have any burn marks or blisters yet, but the ends of her weave had fried and so had some of the fine hair around the edges of her face. Her ear was straight burnt, and it hurt like hell as she splashed cold water all over her face, then caked a mixture of melted butter and Vaseline on her earlobe, and then spread it around on her cheek and eyebrow.

Monique didn’t know what the fuck was going on that had set Pluto off bad enough for him to burn her, but she’d heard one thing loud and clear: no B-More. Whatever it was that not only had Pluto crying but had changed all their plans was too big for her to imagine. But she knew one thing. There was no way in hell she was just gonna sit up in that apartment and wait for him to come back and deep-fry the other half of her face. She was gonna get out there on the streets of Harlem and find her some fuckin’ answers.

She changed into a pair of pants and a thick sweater, then grabbed her coat and her keys, and with Vaseline still caked up on half of her face, she jetted from the apartment and jumped in her whip.

Monique drove in the snow straight past the G-Spot and parked two blocks over. She’d gotten a pretty good look at the windows on her way past, and even though Pluto claimed they were having a private baller party, the Spot looked dark and deserted and there wasn’t a single hustler or pimped-out ride to be seen sitting outside.

Monique got out of her car and trudged through the snow back toward the Spot, hugging the buildings and staying in the shadows. She turned left at the corner, then ran across the street and slipped down the alley behind the Spot where she saw G’s Benz parked and waiting.

It was cold as shit outside, and steam was coming from the tailpipe as the car idled. She walked in the tire tracks, then ducked behind a small garbage Dumpster when she saw Pluto, Moonie, Cooter, and Ace come out the side door, carrying something big that was wrapped up in plastic.

“What the fuck!” Monique muttered under her breath as she watched them dump whatever it was in the back of the Benz, then fling a small plastic garbage bag in there along with it. Moonie slammed the trunk and all four of them went back inside the Spot, leaving the car running. Monique waited a few minutes then crept out of the shadows of the Dumpster, and keeping her feet in the tire tracks, inched her way over to the car. Whatever the fuck was in all that plastic had looked soft and heavy, and curiosity gnawed at her as she imagined what it could be.

She was halfway between the Dumpster and the car when the door popped open again. Monique scuttled back to the Dumpster saying fuck the tire tracks, and dove behind it just as the four gangstas appeared once again.

This time they were carrying something else. Something wrapped in a red sheet from one of the fuck rooms, and when Moonie yanked the trunk open and then slid the bundle halfway in, Monique gasped out loud at what she saw under the trunk lights.

A hand and foot were sticking out. The hand hung from an opening in the sheet and something glinted in the darkness that Monique had seen a million times before. Gold and onyx. A special-order twenty-thousand-dollar ring. G used to twirl that shit constantly, like a bad habit. Especially when he was mad. Monique noticed that the foot hanging out was wearing a fly leather shoe. Italian leather, probably. The kind of shoes that paid niggahs like G had imported from overseas.

Monique sat down on her ass in all that ice and snow. Her heart wanted to stop beating and she could barely believe what the fuck her eyes were telling her.

Her dreams were dead.

Pluto was right. Wasn’t gonna be no fuckin’ Baltimore for neither one of them. She was ass-fucked. Just out there. She’d already told her super and her landlord that they could go eat each other. She’d run up all kinds of bills in Pluto’s name in stores all over Harlem that she hadn’t planned to pay, and she’d double-crossed folks and burned bridges like a motherfucker too. Skipping out of Harlem hadn’t been just a wish, it was a fuckin’ requirement, and now somehow all of that shit had been canceled. Monique didn’t know what the fuck had gone down, but if G was bodied then the future she had planned for herself was bodied too.

Monique hid, pressing herself deep into the shadows of the Dumpster as the Benz backed outta the alley. Moonie, Pluto, and Ace were in the whip and Cooter had gone back inside the Spot. She was dying to know who or what had been in that first package they put in the trunk. G was in that second package. She knew that shit for a fact ’cause she’d seen it with her own eyes. And she knew something else too. Whatever the fuck had gone down that ended up ripping all of her dreams apart, she was willing to bet her sexiest fuckin’ thong that it had something to do with that raggedy bitch who was chained to a bed downstairs in the Dungeon. That bitch Juicy.

                  •                  •                  •

Monique sat in her car watching the front door and the alley of the G-Spot. She had moved to a better parking space after the Benz rolled out, and she kept her engine running, even though her lights and heat were off.

It was cold as shit outside and in the car, but it didn’t bother her at all. In fact, her right ear was now cooling to a dull throb, and the icy air felt damn good on her burnt skin. Every now and then she peered into the overhead mirror and stared at the welp-like blisters that were beginning to rise on her cheek and shuddered inside, even though her face was now the last damn thing she was worried about.

Monique sat there running details through her mind, wondering who had merked G and why the fuck Cooter was still inside the Spot instead of rolling out with Pluto and them.

Monique waited, and about fifteen minutes passed before Cooter came back out. He walked out the front door of the G-Spot like everything was everything, and put his hands in his pockets and strolled calmly through the snow toward the bright lights up ahead on the avenue.

Monique just didn’t understand that shit but before she could figure it out, the front door opened again and a girl ran outside.

“No this bitch ain’t butt-ass naked!” Monique screamed out loud when she saw who it was. “No her stank ass ain’t wrapped up in no motherfuckin’ sheet!”

She watched with her mouth hanging open as Juicy ran barefoot through the ice and snow with a sheet around her waist, then staggered over to the curb and flagged down a bootleg taxi and disappeared into the night. Monique cut her lights on, then pulled out into traffic and headed in the same direction. She knew exactly where that skank bitch was probably going. Straight to that Puerto Rican bitch Rita. The same bitch who had threatened to get one of Monique’s brothers locked up over her hot-in-the-ass little sister last summer. She followed the cab down the slippery streets and a few minutes later Monique sat boiling outside of Rita’s house. She sucked on her burnt thumb and watched as Rita opened her front door and Juicy jumped outta the cab and ran her ass inside the apartment.
That bitch is gonna get hers,
Monique promised. She didn’t need to know all the little details in order to know what time it was. G was gone and so was all of Pluto’s front money, his muscle, and his pull. Every ounce of their bad fortune was tied to that bitch Juicy, and that burned Monique up worse than the hot stove.

If it’s the last fuckin’ thing I do in this world,
Monique swore to herself again,
I’m gonna get her ass back.
And if Rita and her ho-ass fuckin’ little sisters wasn’t careful, they could end up getting some too.

                  •                  •                  •

Shit was hot all over Harlem for weeks.

The po-po was outta control, and hustlers was getting knocked every day. As soon as word hit the streets that G had got took down, Harlem was on fire with chaos and turmoil. Moonie did the fuckin’ bird and nobody knew where he had gone. Some young hustler named Flex called himself taking over G’s project operation and got popped with a quickness.

Ace and Pluto both got bum-rushed by the police.

They caught Ace coming outta his grandmother’s crib and when he pulled out his tool and started firing, they shot out every window in the joint, catching Grandma with a bullet through her forehead as she sat in her rocker.

They got Pluto about four o’clock one morning when they kicked the door down and maced him and Monique right in their bed. About twenty cops rushed in and beat the hell outta Pluto, cracking him down to the floor with their nightsticks and digging their boot heels all up in his soft stomach.

Then them motherfuckers stood around laughing as they made Monique lean up against a wall ass-naked as they admired her from behind. They took turns patting her down even though she was all skin, like she mighta had a gun stuck up in her pussy or under her firm coconut titties. One of the white cops jammed two fingers up in her pussy and inserted his thumb in her ass, but Monique took that shit with her mouth closed. All of the others got them some too, squeezing and rubbing, digging in her hole. One of the young heads pressed his dick against her ass and moaned and yummied against her neck. He pumped against her softness, breathing hard, then grabbed her breasts and squeezed them gently, fingering her nipples until he shuddered, wetting up his drawers. Before he left, he bent down and bit her softly on the meatiest part of her ass cheek and thanked her for her civic cooperation.

They could only keep Pluto and Ace down for thirty days, but that was long enough to do even more damage to Monique’s situation. By the time her man was free, Monique had gotten put out on the streets and was sleeping on a love seat in Honey Dew’s apartment.

Of course, Pluto had some bank stashed away, but when Monique finally got hold of his cash and tried to pay the landlord the back rent and the current rent all at once, he just laughed and threw her money back in her face and told her he already had the necessary paperwork required to put them and all of their shit out in the street, and that’s exactly what the fuckin’ po-po did that next morning.

“You wouldn’t be trying this shit if my man was here!” Monique screamed as they tossed all of her shit on the sidewalk. She grabbed some plastic bags and started pushing her clothes inside them, and Honey Dew rushed over to help her.

“Well that motherfucker
ain’t
here,” the landlord said, “and I hope they keep him locked up forever and throw away the fuckin’ key. That way, I’ll never have to see neither one of y’all trifling asses again!”

Monique was happy when they released Pluto. They didn’t have enough shit on him to keep him, and as soon as he got out he swung by Honey Dew’s apartment and picked her up and took her to get her hair and nails done, then they hit the stores and shopped for all new shit.

“Fuck all that stuff,” Pluto said when Monique told him Honey Dew had had to help her put the contents of their apartment in storage. She was glad she’d held on to his money, though. Too much had gone on for her to even think about crossing Pluto, especially since she knew he wasn’t gonna be locked down forever.

“We’ll get new shit, girl. G is gone, but we gone start this shit all over again.”

That night they checked into a phat hotel in midtown Manhattan and fucked like rabbits, then ordered room service and filled each other in on the details that had caused their world to go dark.

“It was Jimmy,” Pluto told her. “That niggah capped G, then did himself. Fucked my head up. That fool little niggah popped himself.”

Monique lay there crying quietly inside. Not for Jimmy, and not for G’s ass neither! She was crying for her damn self, and for what Juicy and Jimmy, that retarded-ass sister-and-brother team, had cost her.

“G didn’t deserve that shit,” Pluto went on, and Monique could hear the pain that was still in his voice. “He was my niggah, straight up. A real motherfucker who was out there handlin’ a real fuckin’ world. None of us saw that shit coming. All of us slept that night and it cost us our boss. And that’s fucked up.”

Monique sat up and rubbed Pluto’s fat stomach. The funk coming off him told her he probably hadn’t washed his ass the whole time he was on Rikers. But so what. She let her hand wander down between his legs and started to jack his gummy dick anyway.

“Yeah,” Pluto repeated sadly, ignoring her fingers. “That shit was fucked up.”

No,
Monique thought.
What was fucked up was the fact that Juicy got away.
That bitch had dipped outta New York with that niggah Gino and all of G’s money too. Ace said he had gone by G’s crib to get a key outta the safe, only to discover the key was gone and so was all the bank in G’s crib and in all his other stashes too.

“What’s fucked up, baby,” Monique went ahead and spoke her thoughts out loud, “is how that bitch Juicy got away. We got left hanging while she got to roll outta here with her life intact and all of G’s money too. That trick shoulda got popped for real. Right along with her brother in the G-Spot.”

Pluto nodded, and Monique could tell he was thinking real deep because his dick wouldn’t even get hard.

“Don’t worry. I got this. Me and Ace gonna find that bitch and get her back to New York. And when we do, she ain’t never gonna leave again.”

“Yeah,” Monique said, excitement surging through her at the thought of getting her some revenge on the bitch she hated the most. “I know just how to make that happen too, Papa. Remember, she’s real tight with that trick named Rita who tried to get my brother Maurice locked up. We can use that bitch and her little sisters as bait. Get next to them, and we can get next to Juicy. I guarantee it.”