“Yo, what the fuck this nigga doing here?” Stubby screamed, and tackled the guy who’d just entered the room.
Before the guy could speak, Stubby pulled out his gun and turned to the others in the room: “I just saw this muthafucker talking to Five-O down the block. I ain’t waiting for them to pounce on my ass. I’m outta here.”
Grabbing the money bag, I scooted out the door behind Stubby before they could collect themselves.
A year later Stubby was caught by the Feds taking bribes from Ice “Cash Money” Brixton, the biggest drug lord in Harlem.
Several times, through my network of informants, I was poised to bring Brixton down, only to have him slip through my fingers because, I discovered later, Stubby had been tipping him off. I had a personal dislike for Ice Brixton because one of his crew had passed my brother a batch of tainted cocaine that had left him in a coma for nine days.
Stubby Clapp cut a deal with the Feds and got off with probation. It didn’t sit well with me, especially after Cash Money skipped bail and was never seen again. One night I stopped two New Orleans Bloods with two kilos of heroin and a bunch of choppers in the back of their Bronco. I took the guns and the heroin and put the gangsters on a bus to New Orleans. That night I broke into Stubby’s car and planted the weapons and the drugs. Then I dropped a coin on his ass. The cops waited until he got into the car and arrested him.
The next day I bumped into Stubby as he was being transferred to Rikers. He was in handcuffs and spat at me. I slapped his face with the butt of my gun, breaking all of his front teeth.
Stubby got five years for the drugs; the weapons charge was thrown out. After serving three years he got probation.
It took me fifteen minutes to reach my destination on Hegeman Street in East New York, a neighborhood as different from the one I’d left in New Jersey as you could imagine.
I spotted Stubby’s burgundy Caddy outside the diner and parked a block away, opposite a Dominican One-Stop grocery. Lotto was $118 million, and the store was doing brisk business, with a line that snaked around the block.
You can tell a lot about the affluence of a neighborhood by the number of trees or parks it contains. Hegeman was a shoddy street in a shoddy neighborhood, a neighborhood with no parks and treeless streets. A pair of women’s undergarments lay on the sidewalk. I saw used condoms, used Pampers and hypodermic needles. The closest thing to an outdoor café in this neighborhood was eating fries in your car in the Burger King parking lot, and if you were looking for a bookstore you’d have to wait for the weekend sale at the East New York branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. It was a neighborhood of bars, liquor stores with bullet-proof shields, mom-and-pop stores manned by armed Dominicans, storefront churches sealed tight except for Sundays, and funeral parlors. A neighborhood of children, women and old men because most of the young men were in the armed forces or on lockdown.
The restaurant stood out against the grimy background. It had a shiny silver exterior, with a multitude of neon lights proclaiming its royal nature: Clapp’s Palace.
I waited for two elderly gentlemen to exit the restaurant before entering. Inside, I stood scanning the room quickly. The low-intensity blue fluorescent lights gave the place a cloudy haze, like the opening shot of a noir movie. The sharp smell of hot grease and burnt meat pricked my nose, and I was glad I hadn’t eaten my gumbo yet.
There were half a dozen customers in the place, each one sitting in a separate booth. I sat at the counter and ordered coffee. A plain-looking young girl with a face full of blackheads took my order with the indolence of someone who’d been on her feet all day and was beginning to cramp in the ankles. Her reserved smile showed off gold caps on her front teeth. She seemed to fit with the place: not too pretty, a little gaudy and overdone in some areas. I asked her if Stubby was around, and she pointed to his office in the back. Each finger on the hand she pointed was wrapped in gold. Just goes to show, you don’t have to work at Goldman Sachs to know how to invest. I got up and walked back in the direction she pointed.
Struggling with his zipper, a middle-aged man came out of the bathroom opposite the office, letting out a dank urine-laced smell. I waited until he’d closed the door to the john and passed me along the narrow corridor before I knocked on the door to Stubby’s office.
“Who the fuck is it?” Stubby’s voice bellowed from behind the door.
That was all I needed to hear. Taking a step back for leverage, I executed a quick, powerful kick with the heel of my boot, busting the flimsy plywood door open.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a squat man coming toward me moving crablike, low and sideways. I couldn’t tell what it was, but he had something dark in his hand, raised to attack. I blocked his thrust partially, the blow glancing off the side of my head, and snapped the sword of my elbow as hard as I could into his windpipe. Like a shot bird, he fell without a sound, crashing into the side of Stubby’s desk. When I looked up, Stubby was reaching for something inside his desk drawer.
I flew across the desk and drove my head into his stomach, piling him into the wall. I grabbed one of his trophies off the wall and blasted it over his head. The trophy snapped. He buckled and I brought my knee up as savagely as I could, connecting with his chin. Blood splattered as I felt his false teeth dislodge. He fell over onto his side, a gun and his teeth clattering to the floor. I picked up the gun and pressed cold steel to his face. Blood spewed from his lips as if it were a broken pipe. He was in such pain, his head kept rolling from side to side.
“Who killed Walter Lahore?”
“Fuck you, you half-white muthafucker!”
“Walter drops your name on my machine. Hours later he’s executed. Don’t you think that’s a little odd?”
He tilted his face, his eyes trying to focus on my face, but said nothing.
I dragged him by his lapels to a brown love seat against the wall. He wasn’t a tall man, about five-six, round as a rhino with a face to match. His head seemed too big for his body, sitting square on broad shoulders with barely enough neck to pivot. Doorknob eyes protruded from thick, meaty eyelids below his high, beveled forehead.
The room was quite small, a huge desk and a black leather chair taking up most of the space. The walls were filled with pictures of Stubby in Army battle gear.
The air was damp. The room was sweating the odor of stale fried egg. One shaded bulb in the ceiling offered a dull light.
Stubby struggled to get to a sitting position and mumbled through the blood, sending a geyser of spittle into the air. “I taught you everything you know, pussy.”
I stepped away from him. Snapping the clip out of the Glock, I tossed the gun onto his chest. “Not everything, partner. If I find out you had anything to do with Walter’s death, I’ma come back and make you eat those false teeth.”
The short man who’d attacked me was out cold. His flat face and pointy ears gave him the appearance of a gargoyle. I stepped over him and went through the door.
The restaurant was empty. The rumble in Stubby’s office had caused the patrons to leave their meatloaf and pork ribs on greasy plates and head for cover. The waitresses were bunched together on the sidewalk, I surmised waiting for the cops.
Mangy dogs prowled the debris in a lot across the street. As I walked to my car, the bark of sixteen-wheelers thundering along Linden Boulevard filled the night, and the smell of gasoline in the humid air made me think of exploding bombs.
13
THERE WAS PLENTY of parking on my block, and I found a spot opposite my building. As I squeezed out of my car I caught a shadow over my left shoulder. Instinctively, I swiveled on my heel, ready to strike.
“Blades, it’s me!”
“Precious! Shit, I almost clocked you.”
“I’ve been waiting for you.”
I leaned against the car. A numbing ache blighted the side of my face. My heart thumped heavily against my chest.
Precious stood in front of me, her face wrapped in a smile of such innocence, it m
ade my paranoia laughable. Dressed in a loose-fitting blue dress, she seemed to be waiting for me to say something.
“What’re you doing here?”
“You left me at the altar,” she said. “I came to give you a second chance.”
“I’m sorry. I left you a voice message.”
She touched the side of my head. “You’re bleeding.”
“It’s a scratch.”
She held my arm. “Come on, let me take a look at that.”
Like a dutiful son I let her lead me across the street. The night air, full of sweet flowery scents, rustled the leaves of the giant oak tree in front of my building. A ghetto bird circled overhead, shining bright light down on the projects not far away.
Upstairs, she set me down at the kitchen table. “Do you have any antibiotic ointment?”
“There’s something in the bathroom,” I mumbled.
“Where?”
“Straight down, to your right.”
She left and quickly returned with bacitracin, alcohol and cotton swabs.
“Take off your shirt.”
“It’s only a scratch, really. No need for all this fuss.”
“Take off the shirt, big baby.”
“I don’t let anybody call me baby unless they’re naked,” I said.
“Are you propositioning me, Mr. Overstreet?” she said, her voice layered with mock surprise.
“Yes,” I said, surprising myself.
She leaned forward to peer into my face. She looked tired. Yet, there was something in her eyes that held me transfixed, a remarkable steadiness like a deep flame.
She smiled. “Let’s take a look at that cut, bad boy.”
“A scratch is not a cut.”
“Come on. Off with it.”
I grabbed the tail of my polo shirt and yanked it over my head. Blood had trickled down my neck and chest.
She cleaned the blood, then applied ointment to the cut on my cheek. After depositing the soiled cotton in the garbage, she stood near the fridge, toying with the magnets, which kept an assortment of photographs, recipes and missed appointments in place on the fridge door.
“You have any coffee?” she said.
“Blue Mountain and some Brazilian.”
“What’s your favorite?”
I thought carefully. “Blue Mountain.”
“Good choice. I’ll make a pot.”
My kitchen was small, but cozy. It had been freshly painted just months before, and was bright and clean. Fresh thyme and rosemary lay in baskets hung from the ceiling. Curry, cayenne pepper, peppermint and other spices were lined off on the shelves. It had an aroma of tropical spices, which was what I used to love about my grandmother’s kitchen.
I sat watching her turn around in my kitchen with ease and precision, reminding me of my grandmother, who cooked these elaborate meals of spicy pork and chicken with rice and beans, and lots of pungent homemade drinks for her big family in Crown Heights. Even in the loose dress I could see the outline of Precious’ potent hips.
I drank my coffee in silence. She methodically added sugar to hers and stirred it over and over before taking a tentative sip. Slowly she licked her upper lip, precipitating a smile.
“Good coffee,” she said.
I smiled, feeling myself being drawn deeper into the dream of her presence.
“How was the audition?” I said.
“Oh, that. It got postponed.”
“Why? What happened?”
“The person I was supposed to read with got sick.”
“But you’re still gonna read?”
“Eventually.”
Her answers were snapped rather than spoken, and she seemed uneasy about answering questions about the audition. Perhaps, like some actors, she was superstitious about discussing roles she was interested in. Anais got like that sometimes.
“How’d you get that cut?” she said.
“Scratch.”
“Whatever.”
She was sitting across from me. A hushed sadness descended on her face. It was a rich face, finely tuned to the beat of her own inner energy and desire.
“Is your father still alive?” She smiled. And even with the sadness in her face, when she smiled her eyes opened wide as if to envelop the world.
“Yes,” I said, feeling a warmth that I hadn’t felt in a long time.
“Are you close?”
I hesitated. “I wouldn’t say so. I’d been mad at him for a long time.”
“Not any more?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why were you mad at him?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“He left you, didn’t he?”
“I said I don’t wanna talk about it.”
“Was that what you meant when you said we may have more in common than I think?”
I drew a deep breath and exhaled.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t mean to be so persistent. I feel things deeply, and I’m not afraid to express my feelings.”
“Are you suggesting that I am?”
“No. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I really like you. And I’m curious. I suppose I want to know more about you than you’re willing to share at this point.”
“Why didn’t you share with me the fact that Congresswoman Richardson was your aunt?”
“Who told you?”
“Was it supposed to be a secret?”
“No, not at all. It’s just that many people don’t know we’re related.”
“So why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t think it was relevant. She will only tell you what she told me. To get over it. To move on. Yada-yada-yada.”
“Do you think she knows who your father is?”
“She claims not.”
“Do you believe her?”
She leaned her face to the side and sighed. “I believe she knows.”
“Why wouldn’t she tell you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you prepared to move on if I fail?”
She walked up to me and began to stroke my chest. “Right now I’m prepared to take you up on that proposition,” she said. “Is it still on the bed?”
She slipped the dress straps off her shoulders and the garment fell to the floor. She was naked underneath. Other than a tiny scar above her navel, her skin was as even and shiny as marble. She turned and, without looking back, walked to the bedroom as I watched the weave and roll of the two perfect spheres of her ass.
I became one hungry puppy. All I could think of was lapping milk from the curve of her back. I wanted to nestle my head and go to sleep in the hearth between her legs. To feel the warm swell of her breasts, the wave and lash of her thighs around my waist.
I found her sitting cross-legged on the bed and fell into her outstretched arms. Gently, she pushed me onto the bed. She lay on her side next to me, caressing my chest for a while. I felt myself begin to relax, to smoothen out like a sheet in the wind, and closed my eyes. Immediately Anais’ face flipped onto the screen of my mind. I opened my eyes to block it out. There was Precious leaning over me, her eyes moist, her lips parted slightly, her breath sweet as a chocolate.
“I was told once that the most intense sex comes when you feel totally overwhelmed and helpless. That’s when you want to do the freakiest things. That’s how I feel. Like being freaky,” she said.
She unzipped my pants, then stood up and slid them down my legs. She nestled her face on my hip, and rolled her head over my groin with childlike exuberance. My dick was already a block of marble. Beginning with slow, soft kisses, she slurped along the surface of my skin, sending chills of pleasure to my brain. She slid up my body, biting, kissing the length of my torso until we were face to face. Hers was wrapped in a dreamy smile. I’m sure mine was too. I closed my eyes again. This time Anais didn’t appear.
Back and forth Precious brushed her cheeks against mine, as if trying to imbue me with her scent. Her skin was soft and amazingly cool.
It felt like I was being massaged by the wind. Silently, her tongue disappeared deep into my mouth. And like two sword fighters dissolving into darkness to outwit each other, our tongues locked in a fierce battle of passion.
We kissed for a long time, her body writhing on top of mine with mystical power and sensuality. My fingers fiddled with the curls of her pubic hair, then they honed in on the wet, pliant flesh beneath. First one finger. She moaned. Then two fingers. She wiggled around and bit my lip. The pain was brief and intensified my passion. I kissed her harder, my tongue becoming more insistent, wanting to expand in her mouth.
She slithered all the way up until her sex covered my mouth. With agonizing patience she teased my mouth with the meaty lips of her sex. Every time I reached for it with my tongue she’d take it away. Finally, I grabbed her hips and pulled her down to my face, darting my tongue inside.
“Lick me, baby,” she cooed. “Lick me like you own me.”
She made a strange sound, like a river deep in her throat was overflowing, and began to grind herself into my mouth. I held on to her ass as she rocked backward and forward, my tongue tapping out a gentle circular rhythm on her clit.
“Just like that, baby. Ooh, shit! Lick me!”
Her body stiffened for a moment, and she cried out as if she was about to come. But she rose up, slid down my body, and took me inside her. It felt like my dick was being swallowed in butter. She leaned over and her tongue vanished into my mouth again. I flipped her over so that I was now on top.
“Mash up the rasclot’ punany, bwoy,” she said, in a rich all-out Jamaican twang, reserved, it seemed, for lovemaking. “It’s all yours. Mash it up.”
Her skin was bright with a thin sheen of sweat as I slid into her again, finding myself inside a sheath of such heat, an inner space of such richness, that I no longer knew if what I was experiencing was real or a dream. She whipped her pussy up and around my dick, as I fought to stay in touch with her quick, powerful thrusts. I held on to her. She held on to me. We made love without inhibition, screaming and clawing at our demons, as if locked in a struggle to make sanity of our passion. We stayed locked all night and into the early morning hours.
Too Beautiful to Die Page 9