Heartbreak of a Hustler's Wife: A Novel

by Nikki Turner

  She gave him a hug and uttered the two words she had longed to say to her real father her entire life, “Thanks, Dad.” Then added, “You won’t be sorry, I promise!”

  He smiled. “No, but cut me a piece of that chocolate cake.” He pointed to the cake that was in the clear stand displayed on the counter.

  “A’ight, no problem.” She grabbed a small plate to put it on.

  As she was cutting the cake the memory of something that had been gnawing at her for a few days saddened her mood. At first she thought telling Des would make him look at her like a child with an overactive imagination. But she couldn’t shake the feeling.

  “Dad,” she said—each time the endearments rolled off her tongue it felt more natural—“I don’t know if this means anything, but I don’t like that dude Cook’em-up.”

  Des was puzzled. “What type of dealings you had with him that it concerns your personal feelings,” he asked.

  “I met him one day at Rocko’s house. Ever since we resolved our situation we got into, we been spending lots of time together.” She put the cake on the plate.

  This was the first time that Desember had mentioned Rocko’s name around Des. Yarni had filled him in on the ordeal, but father and daughter hadn’t talked about it. There had been a lot going on for everyone.

  Turning up his face, Des questioned, “How close?”

  He can’t be thinking what I think he thinking, she thought. “Uggh! Not that close, Dad.” Now her face twisted. “I got good taste when it comes to guys.”

  “That’s a relief,” Des said, trying not to get worked up at the thought that his daughter was entertaining the offspring of his enemy.

  “We are mad cool—brother/sister type of cool.”

  Des made it clear: “Well, he ain’t yo’ brother.”

  “You know what I mean; how about like cousins, then?” she asked.

  Before Des could answer, they heard a car in the driveway slam on its breaks, probably making skid marks on the pavement.

  A moment later Yarni put her key in the door.

  “Baby luv?” Des called out to her. “We in here.” Then he focused his attention back on Desember. “Now, what about you? Trying to sleep with the enemy.”

  “It ain’t nothing like that, when I went to meet up with Rocko about some business, we ran into Cook’em-up. I know he’s supposed to be Aunt Bambi’s husband’s friend, but something isn’t right about that dude.”

  Des remained quiet. Listening closely.

  “Something about him gave me the creeps. I could feel it deep in my gut; I don’t think he likes you either,” Desember came right out and said. “When he found out I was your daughter, he gave me a vile look. He tried to hide it fast but his eyes kept giving it away.”

  Yarni chimed in. “She’s right, Des.”

  With every syllable Yarni used to describe the surreal encounter she had had with Cook-’em-up while at work, Des’s blood ascended to a torrid pitch.

  He wasn’t sure if Cook’em-up had a death wish, but whether he did or not, Des was sure that by the morning Cook’em-up would wish he was never born.

  Papa Was a Rolling Stone

  The minute Yarni was done filling Des in, her “Papa Was a Rolling Stone” ringtone went off. Lloyd let it be known that he was on his way over with valuable information and instructed them to stay put.

  When he arrived, he got right to the point. “Look, man, you hotter than fish grease at a New Orleans cookout. You gotta fall back and let the old-timers handle this.”

  “Man, you ain’t no killer, you a bank robber.” Des wasn’t trying to hear this. “No disrespect, Lloyd, but you got your rep taking money, not lives.”

  Lloyd held his ground. “We do this my way, and if anything goes wrong I’ll take the rap. The son of a bitch threatened my daughter and granddaughter. Let me do this for you. You’ll be doing me a favor letting me handle it—my plan, my score to settle, my soldiers.”

  Des wanted to remind him that it was his wife and daughters; his beef, but this wasn’t the time for a family argument. Lloyd was not only stuck in the seventies, he was stuck in his ways.

  Instead, Des spoke strategy. “If he went to see Yarni today, you know he’s calculated this. He won’t be out in the street waiting to be knocked off. He’s dumb,” Des said, “but not that dumb.”

  “He expects for us to run out like madmen searching the streets,” Lloyd agreed. “My plan is to make him come to me.”

  Easier said than done, Des thought.

  He studied his father-in-law’s eyes. They were devoid of emotion. “And how do you propose to execute this plan of yours?” Des wanted to know.

  Smiling, Lloyd picked an apple from the fruit bowl on the kitchen island and wiped it off with a paper towel. “I know where his grandmother lives. I plan on him being a good grandson.”

  Des didn’t like it. Sounded too familiar.

  “It’s too close to the stunt he tried to pull when he sent the kid to my mother’s house. Too predictable,” Des surmised.

  “That’s exactly the reason why I think it’ll work,” Lloyd said, then paused.

  Des waited for Lloyd to finish.

  “What makes it unpredictable,” Lloyd said, “is that he will never expect you to perpetrate a move he’s already made. It’s the last thing he’d think to see from you.”

  For the first time in a while, Des cracked a smile. More like a half smirk.

  Sometimes simplicity was best. And this simple plan was lucid enough to work.

  Live by the Sword

  Bernice Weathers soundly slept in her pink sponge rollers and light green nightgown, unaware of the masked men creeping into her house at three o’clock in the morning. The men were heavily armed and quietly searched the small home to be sure that she was the only person there before waking her up gently, by tapping her shoulder with a gun.

  Bernice awakened and although her sight wasn’t what it used to be, she couldn’t miss the giant gun barrel that sat on the edge of her nose. The woman damn near had a heart attack once she realized it wasn’t a dream but a real gun in her face.

  “Oh Lord, please Lord! Help! Don’t take me now. Don’t take me like this!”

  “He ain’t the one you need to call, Ms. Weathers,” Lloyd said from behind his ski mask. “If you don’t want to die, you need to call your grandson and get him here.”

  “I don’t have anything to do with that good-for-nothing scoundrel.” Bernice guessed what these men had planned for her grandson and she probably should feel sorry for him, but she didn’t. Chris “Cook’em-up” Weathers had never been a good person. He was a jealous-hearted, selfish child who grew into an even meaner teenager. By the time he was seventeen he was a full-blown monster who didn’t give a damn about anybody but himself. He killed for money, and God only knew what else.

  Bernice recited a silent prayer before saying, “I need my glasses to get his number out of my phone book.”

  Lloyd handed the lady her glasses from the night table. With her bifocals in place her vision cleared and she saw three more men in her bedroom, also holding big guns. “Do you mind passing me my housecoat because I don’t want to let it all hang out and alarm anybody.”

  Lloyd did as the old lady asked. After putting on her robe she located Cook’em-up’s phone number and dialed the digits on her old-fashioned rotary phone.

  Des stood in the shadows by the door. The lady was living in a time capsule, he thought to himself. There was an old television set with rabbit ears attached, outdated appliances in the kitchen, and old furniture that should have been thrown out twenty years ago. It was obvious that the lady was living on a fixed income and hadn’t benefited from any of the luxuries that Cook’em-up could have afforded his own grandmother.

  Bernice’s hands were shaking so hard it was difficult for her to dial. It seemed like it took forever. Lloyd reminded her, “It is not our intention to hurt you, ma’am.”

  “Don’t worry; I won’t give you a reason t
o. I’m going to do as you ask of me,” she said, finally able to complete dialing. Bernice looked up at him with humility in her face as if she could see through the mask. “It’s ringing,” she said with hope in her voice. Then after a few moments, she sighed and hung up the phone. “He didn’t answer.”

  Bernice was terrified of what might happen next, being that she couldn’t contact that fool of a grandson of hers.

  Lloyd tried to calm her down some. “Don’t panic. We’ll just sit here for a few and then you can try him again,” he said. “We’re not in a hurry.”

  Two minutes later, to everyone’s surprise, the old phone rang. It sounded like a school fire alarm. “Hello? I’m doing just awful,” she faked a cough. “I need you to get my prescription filled for me at the twenty-four-hour CVS. I need it tonight! If I don’t get ’em you may be burying me in the morning,” she exaggerated. “I feel just horrible.” She sounded convincing. “I need my medications right now.”

  “Damn, Grandma, can’t it wait until in the morning?” the dirty bastard on the other end of the phone asked.

  “I’m an eighty-five-year-old woman, and you’re leaving me to die,” Bernice protested.

  Des was on the phone in the living room, listening to the conversation to make sure she wasn’t sending Cook’em-up any coded messages, and as far as he could tell, she wasn’t.

  The guilt trip worked.

  “I’m on my way, Grandma.” Bernice heard her grandson swear under his breath before hanging up.

  Lloyd instructed her to get dressed. She modestly pulled a sweat suit over her nightgown before sitting down to wait, praying her grandson wouldn’t let her down.

  Cook’em-up must’ve not been into anything too serious, because twenty minutes later he was putting a key in his grandmother’s front door lock, letting himself in. Before he knew what hit him, he was snatched up and cracked across the back of his skull with a heavy pistol before his foot could touch the thirty-year-old threadbare carpet covering his grandmother’s floor.

  “Oh shit!” He grunted both from the shock of the situation he was in and the pain from the head blow. “What the fuck is going on?”

  His grandmother refused to let her last words to him be a lie. “You disgust me,” she said, “and this world would probably be a better place without you. You live by the sword, you die by the sword.”

  Des took Bernice out of the house, put her into a car and drove her to a hotel. “I apologize, ma’am, for interrupting your beauty rest.” He gave her ten one-hundred-dollar bills, then hoping that she had insurance on the boy but figuring she probably didn’t, he dug in his pocket and gave her everything he had. “Don’t waste one penny burying that fool. Treat yourself to whatever it is that your heart desires,” he instructed her.

  She nodded and asked, “Can I go now?”

  “Yes, you can—and remember, we ’re still going to be watching you, so leave the police out of this.”

  Des pulled away and took off the mask. He was calling it a night, heading home to be with his wife and daughters.

  Rock Hard

  At a construction site on the outskirts of town, Lloyd and the old-timers were having a little fun. At first they used torture tactics on Cook’em-up that would have been frowned upon if done to the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Cook’em-up was praying that they would hurry and kill him.

  A funnel was stuffed into his mouth and cement was poured slowly down his throat a little at a time. As Cook’em-up was forced to drink the concrete, Lloyd smoked a cigarette and watched with a smile. “So it wasn’t enough that you had gotten away with what I’m guessing—with all the players you had in place—was close to or more than half a million dollars from whatever role you played in the robbery of the church?” Lloyd took another pull of the Newport. “That just wasn’t enough, huh? You should have packed a bag and left the city, at least that’s what any smart man with as much blood as you have on your hands would have done.”

  “He ain’t smart,” Johnny, the stocky old head holding the funnel said. He and Lloyd’s friendship started over forty years ago in a juvenile dormitory.

  “Yeah, then you go fuck with my daughter. You ain’t seriously thinking there wasn’t going to be any repercussions, were you?” Lloyd looked at Cook’em-up’s face, which wore a look of terror.

  Cook’em-up wanted to beg the man to shoot him, to get it over with, but the cement was beginning to clog his vocal cords. Lloyd read the utter despair in Cook’em-up’s eyes and felt no pity.

  “Ain’t no need to beg, nigga. None at all.

  “You not only went to my daughter’s office and fucked up her workday, but you had to shoot threats at my granddaughter too. What happened to a man’s woman and children being off-limits?” With a slight chuckle, he shook his head. “You got shit really fucked-up.”

  Lloyd eyeballed Cook’em-up and saw the look of death.

  A broken, desperate man was always a pitiful sight, and Cook’em-up was no different.

  “None of this was my idea,” he croaked to Lloyd and whoever else would listen. “I was just a pawn. Everything was so obvious, but Des couldn’t figure it all out. If I tell you who was really after him, will you promise to kill me quickly?”

  “You ain’t in no position to make no deals, but I guess it depends on the song you sing.”

  Cook-’em-up had no illusions about living, no matter what he told them, but he couldn’t think of anything worse than being buried alive, encased in rock, so he sung like the choir at the Good Life Ministry.

  Even Lloyd was surprised when Cook’em-up spilled the beans, and hated that he had to break the news that one of Des’s trusty sixpack was in on it.

  Lloyd took one last long pull of his cigarette and blew the smoke in Cook’em-up’s face. “You ready to get this shit over with, man?”

  With tears in his eyes, Cook’em-up nodded. Lloyd put the cigarette out in his face. “A’ight, y’all,” he said to his partners in crime.

  The old heads walked Cook’em-up over to what looked like a predug ditch in the middle of what would later be the parking lot of the new superstore in the process of being built. They threw him in like he was a rag doll. Cook’em-up was so worn down that he could barely try to escape, even when Johnny hit the button for the concrete to pour on him. When Johnny stopped it, it was only up to Cook’em-up’s knees. Though it was hopeless, the hit man scrummed for about two hours.

  The fellas laughed at him and cracked jokes as if he was their form of entertainment. Johnny hit it again and brought the concrete up to Cook’em-up’s neck. That sat for another two hours and Cook’em-up was delirious by then, and that’s when Lloyd said, “Since this is the last thing you will ever hear in this lifetime, I hope in the next one, you will remember never to fuck with a real gangsta’s family.” Lloyd spit on him. “We done wasted enough of our golfing time on this sack of shit! Put the motherfucker out of his misery.”

  Breaking the Cycle

  Now the cat was out of the bag that Chip—one of their oldest and once dearly trusted friends, and treasurer for the church—was one of the masterminds behind the robbery of the Good Life Ministry. Though the jury was still out on who the other one was, for now Chip would have to take responsibility for Tony’s death during the heist. There was no doubt that Black Bob wanted to make good on his word and was planning to get the name of his partner while at it. And Des and Slim swore on the graves of their loved ones to take care of Chip’s unknown partner if it was the last thing they did.

  While Des was with Slim and Black Bob having a drink now that things were finally coming together, the three girls were homebound.

  Desember had been keeping Desi busy while Yarni was trying to get some work done. She decided to take a break and go downstairs for a snack, but as she reached the family room, she listened to Desember playing with Desi. The short time that her stepdaughter had been with them, Yarni had gotten used to her being there. Though Desember had her moments, she was really good with Desi.
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  “I want to be just like you when I grow up,” Desi said to her big sister.

  Yarni cringed. Desember had grown on her and she was confident that with the right guidance the girl would go on to do some great things, but where Desember was at that very moment in her life wasn’t what Yarni had in mind for her daughter, she thought as she continued to observe her daughter looking up at Desember.

  “No.” Desember shook her head. “You don’t want to be like me; you have to be better than me.”

  “But we are sisters and we’re supposed to be alike,” Desi said.

  Yarni smiled and thought how blessed the girls were, especially Desi—she had two parents that loved her and an adoring big sister.

  Then she noticed that Desi had gotten quiet as if she was thinking something. Apparently Desember noticed it too. “What’s on your mind, small puffs?” she asked.

  “My friend Morgan, who’s in my class. She has three big sisters, and if somebody messes with her, she always brags and says her sisters are going to come to our school and beat them up. Is it true that big sisters can come to school and beat people up their little sisters hate?”

  “You betta believe it,” Desember said, picking up Desi. “Tell me who’s messing with my baby sister.” She leaned down and started tying Desi’s shoes. “I’ll go up there and stomp,” she stomped the floor with her foot, “them like they’re a roach.”

  Desi smiled, obviously happy that her sister had her back, then told Desember her problem. “Well, this boy named Chauncey said that my momma and daddy are gangsters and so I’m going to grow up to be one.”

  Yarni damn near choked as she listened to her daughter worry about growing up to be a gangster. “When I asked my teacher what a gangster was, she said bad people. So I hate Chauncey and I put paint on his favorite chair when nobody was looking, so when movie time came, he sat in it. And everybody was laughing but nobody saw me doing it because it was dark,” Desi said matter-of-factly.