She finally answered his “friend zone” proposition. “A’ight. That’s fair.”
“I wanna see you again. Can I take you out?”
Apple was a woman, so she was entitled to change her mind. She no longer wanted to keep this platonic. “You can take me to your room.”
Touch nodded. They finished their drinks and walked silently to his room, exchanging flirty glances the whole way there.
As soon as they entered his suite, Touch couldn’t help but wonder how Apple would take being asked to leave his room in a few hours. He decided that he’d deal with it when that time came. Apple stood before him and began peeling off her clothes. He wanted to help, but she took a step back and continued to unbutton her blouse to reveal a lacy bra and a flat stomach. Her belly button was pierced, and an apple charm dangled seductively from it. Slowly, she unzipped her pencil skirt and stepped out of it and stood before him in her bra, thong panties, and heels. Her French-vanilla colored body was perfectly toned, curvy, and thick in all the right places.
Apple had turned him on with her striptease, and he wanted more. “Take off your bra and panties and leave your heels on,” he whispered.
She complied. Touch undressed quickly and tried to hide his penis with his hand, but it wasn’t easy to conceal. He expected a reaction from her like all the previous women about how large he was, but she said nothing. Instead, she crawled onto the bed and then flipped over to lie on her back.
Touch went down low, sucking on her pussy and gliding his tongue against her fat clit, enjoying the way she tasted.
Apple wrapped her curvy thighs around him and began to grind her hips, expressing her pleasure. “Ooooh, fuck,” she moaned, biting her bottom lip.
Touch’s tongue slid deep inside her, causing waves of pleasure to wash over her. She had made a wise choice. He licked and nibbled on her sensitive button and felt her body shudder, her moans turning him on. Touch slid his fingers inside her wet hole, causing her body to buck. He used his lips and tongue on her wet clit as her body moved to its own rhythm. Touch wanted her to explode in his mouth.
“Aaaaah, please, don’t stop. Ummm, hmmm . . . ooooh, don’t stop. Right there.” Apple grabbed his head and held it to her neatly waxed mound, not allowing him to move at all. Apple exploded, her wetness dripping on his tongue as he continued to taste her juices.
“You like that?” he asked, and Apple moaned her approval. Touch began moving north with soft, wet kisses on her stomach, making his way to her breasts. His tongue flicked on her dime sized nipples until they were both erect. Touch rose up and reached for a condom from off the nightstand. He rolled the Magnum back onto his massive length and girth and looked into Apple’s eyes to make sure she was okay with what he had to offer. She noticed that he had hesitated, so she opened her legs wider, giving him an invitation to fuck the shit out of her. Touch was ready to feel her, to enter her and see if they had a connection. He pushed the mushroom tip of his dick in her pussy, and they both cried out. Apple closed her eyes and began grinding her hips, and he slowly inched his way inside. Her pussy gripped his dick as her nails dug into his skin.
“Oh, shit,” she purred.
“You want more?” he whispered.
Apple nodded.
“Say it,” Touch coaxed. “Say you want more.”
“Fuck,” Apple murmured. “I want more . . .”
Touch got into a slow and steady rhythm, opening up her tight, deep cave with his girth.
With her eyes closed, Apple purred her approval, as her legs tightened around his waist. Apple knew he was holding back and whispered, “Now fuck me.”
Touch placed Apple’s legs up over his shoulders and began thrusting himself in between her open legs, allowing his full length to hit the back of her cervix over and over again. Touch could feel he was about to erupt. He opened his eyes and saw a glimpse of Apple’s pleasure faces and fell in love. With each deep penetration, Touch felt his orgasm bubbling up, ready to be released. Apple cooed beneath him, her pussy pulsing nonstop around his thick dick. She, too, felt her orgasm brewing.
They came simultaneously as Touch collapsed on top of Apple. He lay inside of her totally spent before finally pulling out. Both drifted off into a much-needed sleep. Touch woke a couple hours later, and Apple was gone, leaving her cell number on a napkin. Cute.
16
The potent Queen of New York heroin had spread like a virus in impoverished areas of the city but had mainly infiltrated the South Bronx community. The effects of those addicted had quadrupled in numbers seemingly overnight. Former recreational users were now full-blown dope fiends with a thirst that couldn’t be satiated from a bag or two. New users were holed up in their apartments for weeks, only coming out to make drug runs or commit crimes to pay for their habits. Corner stoops were littered with men and women engaging in the obligatory drug-fiend-lean, a slow head nod that took you from ninety to a forty-five-degree angle and back without ever toppling over. There were overdoses running rampant throughout the city; young or old, rich or poor, black or white, heroin wasn’t a selective drug when choosing its victims. Anyone with a pulse would do. The brown tar-like substance didn’t discriminate, but it did dominate.
The Range came to an abrupt stop in front of Blue’s West Indian restaurant on the lower east side. The driver and passenger doors opened, and two ominous looking men climbed out of the SUV. The rear door subsequently opened, and a third man exited the vehicle. He looked unimpressed by the other two niggas he was with. They escorted him into the restaurant, which was semi-crowded with customers. These three men moved through the eatery, snaked through the kitchen, and eventually ended up in Queenie’s office.
Queenie sat behind a modern, white lacquer desk with a tufted leather high-back office chair. Her sharp black fingernails briskly tapped the keyboard to her Mac desktop as she did her best impression of a legit corporate businesswoman. Stone sat in a chair off to the far right fumbling around with his new iPhone. Lord, Rehab, and Philly Jack folded into the small office and waited to be acknowledged.
Queenie glanced up and greeted Philly Jack with a cold, foreboding stare, but her fingers kept their rhythm as she took this opportunity to ignore the man she had summoned. Philly Jack leaned on the wall and propped his left foot against it for support. His wheat-colored Timberland boot would definitely leave an imprint on her clean, white wall, but he gave no fucks.
Two tense minutes went by as three sets of eyes focused intently on Queenie. A deep voice finally boomed through the tat-tat-tat-tat keyboard clacking as Philly Jack announced, “Yo, Queenie, I ain’t got all day. What’s this about?”
Queenie’s brown and blue eyes slowly scanned Philly Jack from his Timbs to his massive mane of dreads. He was arrogant like most hustlers getting money and answered to no one. His crew was expanding, and he was trained under one of the most lethal kingpins Philadelphia had even known, Haitian Fritz. When Fritz’s badly decomposing body was found with three gunshot wounds to his face, the streets called for mutiny. Fritz’s operation felt that only someone he trusted could have gotten close enough to murder him inside his home. A lot of names were tossed around before finally settling on Jack’s. The heat in his hometown had nearly scorched him, so Philly Jack made his way north. Queenie didn’t like him. He was a man who could never be number two.
“Philly, where you been, nigga?”
“I been doin’ me,” he said and rubbed his chin.
“So you out the game?” asked Queenie. “Is that why you stopped buying my product?”
“I came here out of respect, but I ain’t on your payroll nor are we partners! I stopped copping from you ’cause there’s a better product out on these streets that moves quicker. I’m a businessman, not your bitch. Don’t ever fuckin’ summon me again.”
Queenie would overlook his disrespect because he had the information she needed, also because Philly Jack was Crip
s and Bloods affiliated. He got mad love from both sides, so if he were murdered, there would be retribution.
Queenie wasn’t here for his slick mouth, though. She looked to Lord, and he subtly shook his head. Lord was always levelheaded when it came to putting his murder game down. He thought eight steps ahead of Queenie, as she was reactionary.
“Who’s your new distributor?”
“That high-yellow Harlem broad, Apple. She got that good shit those fiends going crazy over. Her shit 98% pure.” Greed danced in his eyes as his brain recalled how quickly the dope was moving. He needed to re-up every three days, which was the fastest turnaround he had ever known. “She don’t be stepping on her shit.”
Queenie’s heroin was 90% pure, but that was before she stepped on it a couple times being greedy. By the time her product made it to her customers, it was about 65%, if that.
“That stick-up bitch is selling heroin?”
“Queen of New York is her stamp. It’s red lettering with a crown over the city. These fuckin’ fiends can’t get enough of it. I’m surprised you haven’t heard about it. You got competition.”
“What the fuck are you talkin’ about, ‘Queen of New York’?” Queenie looked at Lord and asked, “Lord, what the fuck is he talkin’ about? Have you heard about this?”
He responded, “Nah, but makes sense. Apple was at Kiqué’s party. I told you to find out why she was there.”
Queenie frowned. “And mi told you to get that bitch thrown out,” she replied with conviction. “The next time mi ask you to do something, you fuckin’ do it!”
Lord didn’t respond. Sometimes he questioned Queenie’s rise to the top because she lacked restraint, forethought, and an ability to be calculating before delegating. She was deadly and odd—a woman who had killed her way to the top—but he knew that she wasn’t thinking about staying there. To Lord, Queenie was thinking small, like an amateur with no mind for expansion. He had tried to warn her to question Apple’s attendance at Kiqué’s birthday celebration. Lord assumed that her presence meant Apple had ties to the Bolivian cartel, but now it was clear that Kiqué was her connect and that was why the Helguero cartel refused to do business with the L.E.S. Crips and give Queenie the Manhattan and Bronx territories. Queenie’s connect was Diego Guzmàn, who ran a small fraction of the Los Zetas cartel. His heroin was good, but Queenie wanted the best; she wanted Kiqué.
Philly Jack didn’t know how a man with Lord’s pedigree would ever allow this weird little bitch to speak to him as she did. Philly Jack turned his fitted from the front to the back and got serious. He used his foot to push him off of the wall and took a couple steps forward while adjusting his jeans that hung dangerously low, exposing his Versace boxers. He said two words, “I’m out.”
All men exchanged daps as Philly Jack exited. He’d find his own way back home. Queenie and her henchmen obviously had pressing issues to sort through.
Queen of New York embodied the zeitgeist of the eighties era that addicts didn’t realize that they were nostalgic for until Apple brought it to their front door. This feat, although abhorrent, was something that Queenie hadn’t accomplished.
Queenie spoke, “I thought my business’s infrastructure was built on solid ground—that it was unfuckwitable, but now mi hear this? Are we not L.E.S. Crips?”
It was a rhetorical question, but one she needed to answer. For years, Queenie and her team went unchallenged. They had murdered many during her rise to the top, and then the violence greatly diminished. Those that were killed were usually drug mules or insignificant corner boys. Now she was going up against a boss, someone who had paved inroads into enemy territory and lived. Apple was flagrant and abrasive, but so was she. The audacity of Apple to put Queenie’s moniker on a new product and flood the streets spoke too loudly to her soul. It said, “I don’t fear you! You are nothing!” Queenie felt like this was a stickup, like she was being robbed in broad daylight, and the event was being streamed live on Facebook. She was humiliated but couldn’t show it. Queenie wanted bloodshed. She’d come too far for some clandestine organization to creep up from behind and try to take over what she put her blood, sweat, and tears into. Queenie put in work to ensure her reputation was solid—that she was feared. She was the Queen of New York—no one else.
Queenie needed to shake shit up, keep her men on their toes. Lord wasn’t earning his title as her right hand, neglecting all the requirements that title came with. She wasn’t selling hand-to-hand on corners or hugging the blocks. Queenie was running a multi-million-dollar drug operation with a few legal businesses she oversaw. Between that and always looking over her shoulder and trying to have a personal life, she knew she couldn’t do everything. What good was paying Lord to keep his ears to the streets if he didn’t? It was Queenie who recognized that her clientele had fallen back. Had she not requested today’s meeting, she would still be in the dark about Queen of New York. Lord’s insubordination was an executable offense.
Queenie began rapping “Notorious Thugs” lyrics about buying and cooking coke. The melody and beat were off, but they listened intently.
Lord and Rehab knew the lyrics to Notorious BIG’s hit song, but they were perplexed as to why Queenie was rapping in the middle of a meeting. It was random.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Lord asked.
“It means that if mi have to do everything to keep my business running—shit that you get paid for—then basically mi don’t need you, now do I? I should just pay myself to keep my ears to the streets, murder Apple, and also vet our buyers as to why our product isn’t selling. Isn’t that right, Lord? In between my meetings with connects, drug mules, kingpins, hustlers, and keeping our legitimate holdings above board, should Queenie also do Lord’s job?”
The fact that she spoke about herself in the third person and spoke as if he wasn’t in the room was quite disturbing. Lord said, “A’ight, I heard you. We can move on now. I said I’m on it.”
His tone triggered something insatiable inside her: her thirst to kill. Queenie stood up and walked around her desk; her heels click-clacked on the dull wood floors. She sat catty-corner on the edge of her desk and allowed one foot to dangle, and the other was planted firmly on the ground. One hand was placed on her thigh, and the other rested close to her waist where a .45 was snugly held.
Queenie’s goons recognized the murderous look in her eyes, a look that she had when she had earned her first tattooed teardrop at fourteen. Queenie had dropped several bodies since then, and she was wise enough to know that if she added a teardrop for each kill, then she would no longer have a recognizable face, and she was too pretty to be inked up to that degree.
Rehab took a couple steps toward his boss because he felt that at any second she would drop Lord where he stood, and he wanted no blood splatter to get on his new Yeezys. Lord drew in a sharp breath and recoiled. He removed the bass, sarcasm, and pure disdain from his voice. Rehab and Stone stood protectively near Queenie, their cold stares aimed at Lord. Their trigger hands rested near their waists too as body language shifted from friend to foe.
Lord was in survival mode when he said, “You got every right to feel that I fucked up. I should have known about Queen of New York, but I’ll shut it down. Kill all her runners, goons, Hood and IG, and I’ll personally bring her to your door alive so you can do you.”
Queenie was unimpressed. It was too little a little too late. However, she still needed him, so his life would be spared today.
“Rehab, you’re in charge. You’re my number-two. Get shit done.”
The demotion almost felt worse than what he expected a shot to his head would feel like. Lord gritted his teeth and looked firmly into Rehab’s eyes. He didn’t want it. He wasn’t ready. Lord steeled himself to accept the disrespect so he could live until he was willing to exact his revenge.
Queenie’s orders were unequivocal. “We gotta shut this shit down, cabrón.”
Her men nodded.
“But in the meantime, mi have a plan of my own.”
“I’m listening,” Rehab replied.
“I want our peoples to replicate the stamp of Queen of New York. Make our stamp blue and we flood the streets with our own product in their name. We’ll sell a good product at half the cost of the original stamp. Drive her sales down,” she remarked. “And don’t step on our product for now. Once her sales start dwindling with the Helguero cartel, they’ll go looking for a new distributor. Kiqué will come crawling to me to start moving his heroin, and we’ll be ready.”
Rehab smiled. Queenie was smart and ruthless, one of the many reasons she was respected, he killed for her, and he followed her lead.
17
The money was flooding in. It felt like the levees had broken in Louisiana and Apple’s Hurricane Katrina was named Queen of New York. The cocaine from the Mingo cartel was doing exceptionally well, as anticipated. But the heroin was doing numbers they hadn’t expected. Crackheads were morphing into dope heads, and the two-step crackhead dance was replaced with the obligatory dope-fiend-lean. Shit was crazy.
Hood came out of his project apartment with his Louis Vuitton knapsack stuffed with cash. He, IG, and Tokyo were about to ball out of control; make it rain down those hood trappings that every drug hustler chased. Hood had on a pair of army fatigue pants, Timbs, and a new I’m Allergic to Broke hoodie—no jacket. His .45 was tucked in his waist, and he walked like a new nigga with new money.
IG and Tokyo were in the lobby waiting on him with their own knapsacks.
“Damn, nigga, we been waiting down here for a minute,” IG complained. “Who you gettin’ pretty for?”
“You know I stay fresh.”
Everyone gave daps and loaded into his SUV. “So what’s our first stop?”
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