Is the Bitch Dead, Or What? (22 page)

The garage door opened and Jacob ducked into the brush. A Jeep came out of one of the spaces; he could see a beautiful shiny Aston Martin parked in the garage, too. He squinted to get a glimpse of the person driving the Jeep. It was a woman. And she looked familiar. Jacob expected someone to be staying with Ritz. He actually expected there to be surveillance of her home by police. Maybe there was. He wasn't going to the front of the property; it was too risky. Whatever he did, it had to be from the back.

He noticed that the garage door took about a minute to close completely; perhaps he could slide under the next time
it opened. Just then he spotted a window on the second floor. Maybe it was open. He would climb up the side of the house and try it. Before he was able to do it, another Jeep pulled into the driveway. It parked just outside the garage door. Jacob would have to wait to make his move.

Detective Pelov left his car in the parking area at the tennis courts near the front of the gate. It was dark and the gas lighting provided little illumination.

It must be nice living in such a great neighborhood that you don't have to worry about lighting and crime
, he thought. Detective Pelov rarely found himself in these quaint little hamlets with their gaslights and no sidewalks. Very few crimes happened in places like this. He hoped that there would no crime tonight, either. But his senses were telling him that there was going to be a problem.

He walked for what seemed like forever to Ritz's house. There didn't seem to be much activity, which he was relieved about. As he was approaching the front, headlights headed up the driveway. He ducked behind some evergreens in the
front of her home. It was a Jeep. He jotted down the license plate number to check later.

After the Jeep pulled out, he thought he heard some rustling around the back of the house.

Pelov unhooked the snap on his holster and removed the safety on his Glock. He tiptoed down the driveway, staying close to the house. Ritz had that dumb gas lighting around her home. She wanted to keep with the theme of the neighborhood, but Pelov could barely see anything in the dim, worse-than-candlelight glow.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of a figure. It was a man, attempting to scale the side of Ritz's house, climbing a trellis.

“Freeze!” Pelov said, grabbing his Glock with both hands. “Police!”

Jacob lost his footing as he reached for his own gun. As he fumbled for it, Detective Pelov didn't wait. He released three shots, center mass. Jacob hit the ground, headfirst with a sickening thud. If the bullets didn't kill him— and they certainly did— the fall would have.

Detetive Pelov took out his cell and called the front gate, requesting the office to come to the crime scene. He also called headquarters.

“I think we got our killer,” he told his captain. “This case is finally over.”

Hardcore sat in one of the plush leather recliners in his theater room in the dark. His home was the only thing left from his failed career; he'd paid for it in cash. But with twenty-one thousand in taxes due each year (and rising), he would have to hustle to cover it. He dreamed of a comeback, but nobody wanted a hardcore gangster rapper who was rumored to be gay.

In rap, particularly the brand of rap that Hardcore did, which was the 50 Cent, Shyne, C-Murder kind of rap, you couldn't even have a hint of gayness. Not only was it not accepted, it could get you hurt. It was right up there with being a gay reggae star (even though there were one or two who definitely were).

You could be a drug dealer, you could be a wife beater, you could be a rapist, you could even be a murderer and have a
successful rap career. But gay? That was a kiss of death. And while there were a few rappers who were rumored to have been gay— they were softcore rappers who had pop, crossover hits and did family-friendly movies. And those were whispers. What Ritz Harper did to Hardcore was put him on blast.

“That fucking bitch!”

Ever since the day that Ritz Harper outed him on her nationally syndicated talk show, his life had not been the same. He had been dropped from his record label. That part he actually could have overcome. It was his real life— his childhood friends, who were distancing themselves; his mother, who had to face her church friends— that really hurt him. While his mom never said a word, Hardcore could see the pain and disappointment in her face.

His mother had to endure a lot of disappointment at the hands of Hardcore— whose real name was Fred Samuels. He had been shot twice. He dropped out of high school when he was sixteen. He never went to class anyway. All he kept in his school notebooks were rhymes— pages and pages of rhymes. Hardcore didn't understand how a high school diploma was going to make him a millionaire. He wasn't working in a fast-food joint like some of the nerds in his neighborhood— mostly immigrants. Black kids didn't work at fast-food joints in Bed-Stuy. They made fast money on the streets.

Hardcore loved the danger of selling weed and cocaine. He loved the nightlife and the camaraderie of his boys sharing their dreams and hustling until the wee hours of the
morning. That also broke his mother's heart. But he didn't care then. He thought, At least I've never been locked up.

And to his credit, Hardcore was never arrested, while most of his street hustling buddies were snatched up one by one. He considered himself smarter than they were. He always knew when Five-O was about to come and he managed to stash his stuff and never get caught.

For some, going to jail was a badge of honor. Hardcore saw it only as being dumb and sloppy. And he was proud that he was able to avoid that hassle. He was also proud that he saved his money. He didn't buy a whip and put expensive rims on it. He didn't buy platinum and diamonds. He didn't go out and get grills or a whole lot of clothes. He saved his money.

So when his break finally came, he wasn't impressed with the three-hundred-thousand-dollar contract. He didn't feel the need to blow it all on dumb stuff, because he had already disciplined himself to not want those things.

Hardcore's break came when he was able to corner Charles Suitt, who was a vice president of A&R at the time at Universal Records. Charles was at a club scouting new artists, and Hardcore got him in the doorway as he was leaving. He spit a few bars of a rap he had created after the first time he was shot. Charles was impressed. He invited Hardcore up to perform for the bosses and he was signed on the spot.

The head of urban music, Jean Briggs, pushed Hardcore's music until it was number one in the country, which was a lot for a gangster rapper. In the music business, success can come if you're talented. But more often than not, it comes because
there is someone very powerful behind an artist pushing their music. And at the time, there was no more powerful person in music than Jean Briggs. She made it happen, and Hardcore was experiencing success he never imagined. He had enough money to buy a Mercedes and a mini mansion in a nice neighborhood in Bergen County, New Jersey. He had an indoor pool, a game room, and a theater room. He paid for it all with the millions he made off the sale of his first CD. He paid cash just in case.

He made a nice friend, too, in Tracee, who was a record label executive. She was Jean's number two and became Hardcore's mentor. She helped school him on the game. But none of them imagined that it could all be taken down by the careless, insidious actions of one woman— Ritz Harper. In one afternoon, everything Hardcore had built was thrown into the abyss.

Hardcore was obsessed with Ritz Harper. He had dreams about killing her, choking her, and laughing as she gasped for air. He had daydreams about pulling her down a long flight of concrete stairs by her feet as her head hit each and every step. He never considered himself a violent man, but there was something about the way Ritz Harper delighted in telling the world that he was the gay rapper she was talking about that made him furious.

The worst part was that it wasn't true. Hardcore had befriended a young artist and invited him to stay with him. He took him under his wing and wanted to give him a chance to not make the same mistakes he made. Their friendship was
close enough to be misconstrued. There were very few people Hardcore could trust. He couldn't hang with his boys from the old neighborhood anymore. He had outgrown them. He didn't care. But he never expected something so innocent to cost him his career. And for his feelings to be gutted and splayed for the world to see.

Hardcore was furious at Ritz. And it wasn't just about him. He remembered how hard Tracee took it. Ritz was supposed to be her friend. But Ritz didn't even give Tracee a heads-up.

“What kind of person is she?” Hardcore asked Tracee. “Does she have a soul? How can she not care about people?”

“Yes, baby boy. She's just a little lost” was all Tracee would say. She was definitely disappointed in her friend. Then, when her bosses decided to drop Hardcore over it, it was the last straw for Tracee. She couldn't stay in an industry that didn't stick behind good people. And Hardcore was good people. Was.

His thoughts of revenge consumed him. He wanted to get Ritz Harper. He wanted to shut her up for good. He reached out to a studio groupie, who he knew was desperate and would do just about anything to get near the recording industry. Hardcore promised Jacob a shot at producing, and he told him he would pay him a lot of money to take care of his Ritz Harper problem.

When Jacob screwed up and didn't complete the job the first time, Hardcore was beside himself.

“Either that bitch is a cat with nine lives or that mother-
fucker I hired is retarded,” Hardcore said to himself. He told Jacob he better finish the job this time, or else.

When Hardcore found out that not only did Jacob not finish the job, but he somehow managed to get himself killed, he was beside himself. Now what? Was there anything out there that could connect him to Jacob? Would someone be looking for a connection?

Jamie, who had been officially hired by the station and given a decent salary, was preparing her next move. After the drama died down over who shot Ritz Harper and after being held hostage twenty-four/seven under Ritz's rule where she daydreamed of doing violent Kill Bill types of things to Ritz, Jamie was ready for a change of scenery.

It was time to move on.

Jamie had learned a lot from Ritz while being tortured, and she even grew to respect Ritz's work ethic and accomplishments (which might have changed to out-and-out hate if she knew the truth about Ritz and Derek). Jamie learned that while she desired a higher salary, it was never going to be the amount of money she made that gave her the comfortable life she wanted, it would be the saving and investing of that
money. Jamie started a “Kiss My Ass Fund,” something Ritz often said every woman should have.

When Ritz finally stopped hounding and riding Jamie every evening at around eleven when there seemed to be no time for her to do anything for herself, Jaime would retreat to her room and read one of the many financial books that Ritz kept in her home office. For a little more than three weeks, Jaime was stuck reading books by David Bach, Jonathan Pond, Suze Orman, and Robert Kiyosaki. At first it was all she found to read, then it was the only thing she wanted to read. She would find herself reading the books into the early morning. It was like a light went on inside.

She managed to put every bit of advice that the books had to offer to use. She opened an online bank account that paid a high APY. She called the human resources department at the radio station and enrolled in the company's 401(k). She opened a savings bonds account at treasury
direct.com
, and for the first time in her life she bought stock. She bought stock with a discount online broker, Share-builders.

For some reason, the comments that Ritz spewed at her had less of an impact on her psyche. Jamie would smile because she was accomplishing her goal. She could endure anything because the bigger picture was right in front of her. She knew that Ritz didn't control her destiny, she did.

With the confidence Jamie had built, she applied for a position that even she thought might be out of her league. But she thought, What do I have to lose? She had a degree in
marketing, only to be bitten by the entertainment bug in her senior year. The job was an associate marketing analyst for Smith Barney, one of the largest investment houses in New York City. More than a month after she applied, she was called in for an interview, which she aced. After dealing with Ritz, there was no person on earth that could rattle her. Jamie had learned to multitask at the highest level. She had also learned all of the nasty, cutthroat moves she needed to not only survive but excel in the corporate world. Jamie held the offer package in her hand and thought to herself how the bane of her existence had given her priceless life lessons without knowing it. Jaime stuffed the envelope in her bag, took a deep breath, put a smile on her face, and pushed through the studio doors.

She was buying her freedom. She was leaving the Ritz Harper Excursion for good. Jamie was starting a brand-new life.