Trickery (14 page)

Outta him and his manz, when the dirty deal was all said and done, only one of them was gonna be left standing. Standing and breathing. And Ace was gonna make damn sure of that.  

$$$$$

Hours later Slick Sallie had drank so much of Monique’s honey that his cup was damn near full. Not only had they engaged in the kind of hot, nasty sex that blew his freakiest fantasies out the water, they had also lay around in the fuck room talking and laughing in between their sheet-drenching bouts of animal-like bed play.

Monique, Sallie discovered, was very smart and she had a sharp wit about her too. Of all the hookers he had picked up off the streets and tied to bedposts over the years, Sallie couldn’t ever remember having a real conversation with a Black chick. Up until now, he’d never thought he had much in common with them, but after just a few hours with Monique he was beginning to realize that he’d been dead wrong because him and Mo-Mo really vibed together. They grooved. They
clicked.
She was digging his drift, and he was damn sure digging hers too.

Monique told him she had lived in Harlem all her life, but that she’d always dreamed of escaping the city and going somewhere far.

“What would you do when you got there?” Sallie asked her.

He was stretched out on his back with a sore dick, and Monique was laying on her stomach, resting her head on his shoulder as she played with the soft blond hairs on his chest.

“I don’t know,” she said with a sigh. “I’d probably open up a real classy club somewhere in Baltimore and be a sexy hostess every night. You know, the kind of club the G-Spot used to be, but better.”

Sallie nodded. He had never been inside the G-Spot before, but he’d heard all about its iconic rise and the legend of G McKay.

“So why don’t you just do all of that right here?” he asked.

Monique’s eyes narrowed. The answer was, because slimy-ass Salida had practically fucked her out of her First Lady status, leaving Monique to play second fiddle way back on the sidelines. Matter fact, that bitch had played every last one of them like boo-boo fools, but she’d gotten up in Ace’s head the worst. Monique thought it was real slick the way him and Pluto went at it these days. They had actually let a bitch throw salt in their partnership and run it into a ditch.

“There’s only room for one First Lady up in here,” Monique finally answered truthfully. She had never been one to shy away from competition, but it was hard to go head-up with a twisted chick like Salida who had lost most of her marbles.

“Besides,” she told Sallie as her fingers twirled in his hair, “I wanna start my own place. The kind of joint where millionaires roll up in limos and you gotta have velvet ropes and security guards outside to keep the paparazzi back.”

Monique closed her eyes and grinned as she imagined herself strutting through a high-class club styling labels out the ass. If she could, she’d step out on some fine niggah’s arm every night wearing a dress that cost at least five g’s and a pair of matching designer shoes that cost even more.

“I just wanna run my own show, you know? I wanna have total say-so over everything from the way the place is decorated to what kind of liquor is stocked. I would do all the hiring and firing too, “she said, indulging herself in her fantasy. “You saw what kind of talent I got on the stage, right? Well, if I had my own place I’d choreograph all the strip routines. Wouldn’t be no stiff-ass chicks up on my stage doing the same old two bends and a wiggle all night long! I would teach them some of my signature moves, and if they did them the right way, hundred dollar bills would come raining down on their heads. So, basically,” she said simply, “I would build me a social club from the ground up and run it exactly the way I wanted to.”

“Wow,” Sallie said. This girl had talent and dreams, and he was definitely impressed. He ran his hand across the smooth, ebony skin on her back. It felt like fine satin.

“I agree. You are very talented, Monique. So what’s stopping you from doing all those things you wanna do?”

She lifted her head and gave him a smirk.

“Money! What’s stopping everybody in the world from doing all the shit they wanna do? It’s always money!”

“Not for everybody,” Sallie contradicted her. He thought about all the crisp bills he had amassed back in Chinatown stuffed up Buddha’s ass. “Money isn’t stopping me from doing anything. I pretty much do whatever I want.”

Monique stared at him for a long moment.

Was my dumb-ass just now dreaming about stepping out every night on some fine niggah’s arm?
Scratch that, she corrected herself. A fine white boy would do just fine.

Sallie touched her hair as her lips curled into a bright smile.

“Are you serious? You can do whatever you wanna do and not have to worry about no money?” she asked.

Sallie’s mouth watered as he eyed her breathtaking body again. “Yeah,” he said. “Pretty much.”

Monique giggled. “Cool!” She slid down until her head was resting on his stomach. Sallie’s aching dick shot up in the air at the sight of her delicious Hershey’s flesh pressed up against his.

“Well then you came to the right room tonight, baby boy,” she said sexily. “Didn’t nobody tell me I was partying with a VIP!”

Monique bent her head and inserted his dick inside her hot wet mouth. She slid her lips down his shaft so deeply that it felt like the mushroom crown kicked in a back door that was hidden in her throat.

Sallie could only take so much of the sweet hurting she was putting on him before he became desperate to get what he needed. Monique was sucking the white boy off like a mothafucka and she was surprised when he extracted his dick from her mouth and flipped her over onto her back.

Sallie lowered his face to her groin and delved into her pussy with wild abandon, licking and sucking and sniffing like it was the last piece of chocolate punanee in the world. And even though they’d been going at it hard and strong for hours, hands down, Monique’s pussy was the best he had ever tasted in his life.

An hour or so later Sallie made his way out of the G-Spot. His chips had run out long ago, but Monique had insisted the overtime was on the house. He stepped out into the crisp morning air and turned his eyes eastward toward the new sun. Thoughts of beautiful Monique were heavy on his mind, and her sweet taste still lingered deliciously on his lips.

Sallie was amazed as he walked toward his car. This was the very first time that he had eaten a piece of chocolate that didn’t make his mouth itch. He ran his tongue over his teeth and swallowed the last bits of her sugary residue, and instead of making him nauseous it made his tummy feel nice and warm inside.

Sitting behind the wheel of his car, Sallie thought about the two complex business transactions he was about to conduct. Thanks to Gino and Juicy he had plenty of cash, but hey, a man with his appetites could always use more. Besides, Monique had shared her dreams with him, and with the right kind of bank he might just be able to make some of them come true. She’d said she wanted to open up her own nightclub down in Baltimore, and Sallie could definitely go for a change in scenery.

He pondered on the upcoming matter he had going on with the young drug dealer from Harlem, and the large cache of clean arms that he was gonna sell the dude. Sallie was due to collect a whole lot of cash at the completion of that deal, but now he wondered if there was any way he could pull a little switcheroo trickery on the young cat who lived in a funeral home, and perhaps scam him out of a few bucks.

He figured if he dipped in on the shipment he got from his supplier, and then discreetly shifted a few pieces around, he might be able to hide a number of dirty gats at the bottom of the crate and resell the clean ones and make himself a nice little extra profit.

Sallie mused on this as he opened his glove box and pulled out a large pack of cinnamon gum. An early-morning wino was bobbing and weaving against a light pole on the corner, and Sallie rolled down his window and tossed the pack of gum in the bum’s direction.

Let the poor fellow have it,
Sallie chuckled with thoughts of sexy Monique on his mind, because after the kind of sweetness he’d had on his tongue tonight, he sure as hell wouldn’t be needing it anymore.

CHAPTER 15

While Flex was in the early stages of being double-crossed by Slick Sallie, he had just about perfected his method of beating Salida at her own game.

“This shit better be right,” he told Freeze Dodson as he sifted through their latest batch of crystal ice. Flex had bum-rushed Freeze’s precious Gramma again and turned Salida’s number-one street pharmacist into an undercover double-agent.

Flipping Freeze had been a matter of operational necessity. For the longest time Flex and his crew had tried to cook their own meth using the crazy list of ingredients they had stolen from Salida, but every batch of shit they turned out had ended up a useless, gooey mess. Finally Flex had decided he needed to go straight to the source, and his boyz had rolled on Freeze’s fam and put him in charge of mixing their brew and stirring their pots.

“Make sure you put just enough rat poison in that shit to get them feens real sick,” Flex directed him, leaning over his shoulder. “Don’t put enough in there to kill ’em, but make sure once they smoke this shit they ain’t gonna be in a hurry to come back and smoke no fuckin’ more.”

Flex thought his plan was some real genius shit, and he figured while he had Freeze under his thumb he could use his weak ass to help him kill a few other birds that were lurking in the bush too.

“Yo, Freeze,” Flex said casually as he thought about how he was gonna get his guns and ammunition where he needed them to be when the time was right. “I bet you know the G-Spot like the back of your hand, don’t you niggah?”

Freeze shrugged, and Flex could see this fool’s brain working overtime as he tried to figure out what kinda hammer was gonna fall on his head next.

“Yeah, I guess. I know it pretty good.”

“Fuck pretty good, ak. I bet you know every corner of that bitch. Every closet and every little cubbyhole too. You could prolly hide all kinds of shit up in there if you needed to. Tell me something. They got a back door on that place, don’t they?”

Freeze nodded.

Flex grinned. “Something tells me that if somebody needed to sneak something in that back door and hide it, you’d be just the muthafucka to pull some shit like that off.”

“What you talkin’ about man?” Freeze looked scared and confused at the same time. “What you tryna say?”

Flex shrugged. “Nothing, man. I ain’t tryna say a goddamn thing. At least not yet.”

$$$$$

I was pissed off and I wanted Trey to know it. As soon as I hung up from that call to Pluto I had begged Trey to tell me where Moonie was so I could get those fools to let Nooni out of the G-Spot.

“I can’t do that,” Trey had told me shaking his head. “That niggah Moonie is done. It’s over for him. He gave all this up and he’s living another kind of life. If Moonie wanted to be ass-deep in the G-Spot’s bullshit he woulda never left Harlem.”

“Let Moonie tell me that!” I had insisted. “All I’m asking you to do is hook me up with him. Give me his phone number. Tell me where he lives. Let me ask him to help me, and if he don’t wanna do it then let him be the one to tell me no!”

Trey gave me a look that had ice in it. We were back at the crib and sitting in his bedroom, and if I wasn’t so mad I would have appreciated being in his intimate zone. Trey was a real man. Everything in his area told you he was the king of his castle, a dude in control of his space, and even though I was concerned about Nooni, I wasn’t immune to the way being close to this man made me feel.

“Be for real, Juicy. You think this lil shit we got going on here is important enough for Moonie to risk his life over? My manz got all kinds of cops and crews gunnin’ for his throat out here on these streets. You think he’s gonna roll up and cooperate with Pluto just because he’s holding some girl down at the Spot?”

“You trying to say Nooni ain’t that important? What? I’m just supposed to let her rot down in there in that damn Dungeon?”

“I’m saying we got time to handle Nooni! We know where she is, and we know who’s got her. Pluto ain’t stupid, baby. He ain’t gonna let nothing happen to that girl. If he fucks with her then he loses all his leverage, and even his dumb ass is smarter than that. Nooni is gonna be chill for a minute, Juicy. I’ma help you, and I’ma help her too. But right now I gotta handle Maleek.”

I stared into his strong brown eyes and saw the truth of his promise looking back at me. A picture of Taleah’s battered little face flooded my mind and my whole body went soft. I knew how bad Trey felt for that poor child, and how hurt he was that Maleek was the one who had fucked her up and put her in that hospital bed in the first place.

“Okay,” I said quietly with my shoulders slumped. “Okay.”

$$$$$

Trey Jackson was putting in some mean work.

For the past ten minutes he had been on a staircase in Manhattanville Projects slapping Maleek around. Fury bubbled in him as he dragged the tall, slim youth up the pissy stairs leading from the sixth floor to the seventh, tagging his ass with killer blows with every step.

Trey had been stalking the boy for hours. Maleek had peeped him coming out of the lobby of a project building in his drug sector and tried to fly up the stairs and get away, but Trey had been on that ass like a track star. He’d caught Maleek by the back of his jacket on the third floor landing, and had beaten and dragged him up further and further from there. 

“Fuck is
wrong
with you?” Trey exploded as he gave the tall, skinny kid a man-sized beat-down. “You out here tryna kill
little girls
now, niggah? Huh? Is that the kinda grime you into man?”

“Yo, get the fuck offa me!” Maleek yelled as he flailed his arms and kicked out at Trey. “You don’t know me, niggah! You don’t
know
me!”

Trey doubled down on the ass-kicking. He was way bigger and stronger than Maleek, and he was way madder too. He was in a fist-flying frenzy, blinded by his rage, but there was some guilt flowing through his fists as he beat up on Maleek as well. The boy cowered on the dirty concrete. His lip was busted and one of his eyelids was swollen damn near closed. Blood dripped from his nose, but nothing but anger and stark defiance shone in his dark eyes.