by Teri Woods
Rasun shrugged.
Detective Ellington slapped Rasun’s hat off his head. “Did he have some fucking paper or didn’t he?”
Rasun jumped and gave Detective Ellington a look that said he wanted to kill her.
“Did he?” Detective Ellington asked again.
“Yeah.” Rasun nodded and rubbed his head where she had struck him. “They say Qua was papered up.”
“Who is they?” Detective Davis asked.
Rasun shrugged. “Just people, the people on the streets. Qua was known to be papered up. It was just the word on the streets.”
“Do you know Gena Scott?” Detective Ellington asked.
Rasun nodded.
“How well do you know her?” Detective Davis asked.
Rasun nodded. “We all right. I talked to her girlfriend, Sahirah, for a minute and I used to see her around and shit.”
“Would you consider yourselves friends?” Detective Davis asked.
Rasun nodded. “We cool.”
“How well does she trust you?” Detective Davis asked.
Rasun shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Would she confide in you?” Detective Ellington asked.
Rasun shrugged. “She was closer to Rik than she was with anybody else. She would confide in him first.”
Detective Davis and Ellington shared a glance and made a mental note. She had, after all, just offered Tyrik two million dollars.
“When is the last time you saw her?” Detective Ellington asked.
“Not since Qua’s funeral,” Rasun told them.
“So, you don’t know how she’s doing now?” Detective Davis asked.
Rasun shook his head.
“What kind of girl is she?” Detective Davis asked. “I mean, how did she grow up? Was she rich, was she poor? Tell me about her.”
Rasun shrugged. “I don’t really know nothing about her. She was Qua’s girl. I think she grew up over in Richard Allen. I don’t think she was papered up or nothing.”
“What if I told you that she was rolling in a two-hundred- thousand-dollar Porsche?” Detective Ellington asked.
Rasun shrugged. “Then I would say she doing damn good. Better than I am.”
“She kept all of Quadir’s money?” Detective Davis asked, leaning in and whispering like he was asking a secret.
Rasun lifted an eyebrow. Damn, it was something that he hadn’t thought about. He thought that she was broke.
“You’re quiet all of a sudden,” Detective Ellington told him. “What’s the deal, Rasun? Does she have Quadir’s money?”
Rasun shook his head. “I don’t know. I mean, the last I heard, old girl was doing bad. Rik was helping her out and shit. Qua’s mom pulled a gangster move on her for the house and the cars and shit, booted old girl out on the street with nothing. Everybody thought that the mom and pop had Qua’s loochie.”
Again, the detectives exchanged glances. This was new information for them. They both tried desperately to make a mental note so that they could later write it all down.
“So, Quadir’s mother has his money?” Detective Davis asked.
Rasun nodded. “That’s what everybody always thought, because Gena went back to the projects, broke, sad, and all fucked up like the rest of us.”
Detective Davis rubbed the lower half of his face and turned away in shock. “So where would she be getting all of her dough from now?” Detective Davis asked.
Rasun shrugged. “Maybe another baller or something. I wouldn’t know. I ain’t heard nothing about her since after the funeral. Last I heard, she was doing bad, living back at home with her peeps up in the projects.”
Detective Ellington opened the door to the interrogation room and nodded for Detective Davis to step outside. Once her colleague joined her in the hall, she closed the door so that Rasun could not hear them talking.
“What the fuck is going on, Letoya?” Detective Davis asked.
“Sounds like we’ve been attacking this thing from the wrong angle,” Detective Ellington told him. “We need to be following the mother, Viola Richards, for that money, and we need to be following Ms. Scott so that we can open up an investigation on her new boyfriend. Sounds like Ms. Gena was accustomed to living a certain way, so she ran out and got her another baller.”
Detective Davis laughed. “I still say we see what kind of information he can get out of her. Maybe he can find out who she’s messing with, and we can get some good information by putting them two together.”
Letoya nodded. “Hell yeah, I still say we wire his ass up and set up a meeting between the two. See what we come up with.”
“You take care of the Gena angle, and once we get a name on the boyfriend, I’ll start watching him and seeing who he scores from and see if we can put together another major bust.”
Detective Ellington lifted her hand into the air, and Detective Davis slapped it.
“Lieutenants by next May!” she declared excitedly.
“Lieutenants by next May!” Detective Davis smiled.
“I’m going to get the paperwork done so that I can cut our bait loose,” Detective Ellington said.
“I’ll give him the good news and arrange for his transportation back to county in the meantime,” Detective Davis told her, while opening the door to the interrogation room.
“Rasun, I got some good news for you!” Detective Davis said excitedly. “You’ll be outta this place in a couple of hours, back on your block, hustling your rock just like the good ol’ days. Now for the bad news; we need to wire you up again.”
Rasun leaned over and began to vomit.
PAYBACK’S A BITCH
Champagne leaped out of her brand-new black S Class 600 wearing a matching black leather cat suit, with matching black leather knee-high boots. The suit looked as though it had been painted onto her body. It was backless, with only her long burnt-orange hair covering her milky yellow skin. She wore an oversized pair of dark Chanel sunglasses and walked as though she was gliding across a catwalk in Paris or Milan. Every man on the street within a two-block radius stopped and stared. Her body was the stuff of every man’s fantasy and she knew it; Buffy who?
Champagne peered in the direction of the street, and cars came to a screeching halt, with the mostly male drivers all wanting to let her pass so that they could garner a better look at her unrealistic-looking ass. It stuck out so far and was so round that it looked as though you could set a table on top of it. Jerrell sat on the park bench just shaking his head.
“So, this is what you call clandestine?” he asked. “And just in case you don’t know what that means, it means secret.”
“Fuck you, I know what it means, asshole,” Champagne told him.
“You’re looking mighty tasty today,” Jerrell told her.
Champagne placed her hand on her hip and shifted her weight to one side. “Don’t even think about it.”
Jerrell smiled. “Not even for old times’ sake?”
“Not for all the tea in China, dear heart.”
Jerrell pulled out a massive wad of money and tossed it to her. “How about for all of that? Can I hit it for all of that?”
Champagne examined the massive wad of hundreds. “How much is this?”
“See, look at your trick ass!” Jerrell teased. “A minute ago, a nigga couldn’t hit for all the tea in China. Now you see cash money and you open like a Chinese takeout spot in the middle of the night, huh?”
“Cream, baby. Gotta get it,” Champagne told him.
Jerrell shook his head and snatched his money out of her hand. “I wouldn’t stick my dick in you if you gave all this money to me. I might as well go over there and stick my dick in that trash can. It’d be a whole lot cleaner.”
Champagne turned and began to walk away. Jerrell leaped up from the bench and clasped her elbow.
“Champagne, wait.”
Champagne wiped the tears from her eyes. “What? Let go of me, you sorry son of a bitch!”
“I’m sorry,”
Jerrell told her.
“I know you sorry,” Champagne nodded. “You sorry as hell and I’m tired of your shit. You didn’t want me when you had me, so what the fuck you want me to do? Stop living?”
“Champagne, it’s just that I still have feelings for you,” Jerrell said softly. “And when you said that you wouldn’t sleep with me for all the tea in China . . .”
“You have a funny way of showing that you have feelings for someone,” she told him.
Jerrell removed her hands from her face and turned her around. “I do. When someone says something to hurt me, the only way I know how to protect myself is to hit back.”
Jerrell wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her close. “What did you find out for me?”
Champagne exhaled. “I found out a lot.”
“Oh, really?” Jerrell lifted an eyebrow. “And tell me what exactly ‘a lot’ is that you found out.”
“What do you want to know?” Champagne asked. She unwrapped his arms from around her waist and took a step back from him.
“Does she have a man?” Jerrell asked.
Champagne nodded. “Yeah, you.”
A slight smile made its way across Jerrell’s face. “Who was her man before me?”
“You mean who was she about to marry,” Champagne corrected. “Who was going to be her husband.”
“She was in a relationship like that?” Jerrell recoiled slightly from the information.
Champagne nodded. “She was two steps away from marrying Quadir Richards, aka Qua.”
“Get the fuck outta here!” he shouted. Jerrell was in shock. His archrival, the nigga whose ground he hated to see himself have to walk on. Get the fuck outta here. I got Quadir’s wife. See, nigga, that’s what you get for not getting down with the M. Damn. Irony was a motherfucker.
Champagne nodded. “Yeah, you fucking Quadir’s girl. Quadir, the nigga that you and your boys killed. Ain’t that nothing?” she asked, looking at him out of the corner of her eye like Terry McMillan as she used her fingernail to pick at her teeth.
Jerrell shifted his glance to Champagne. I can’t stand this crazy bitch. Now I know why we didn’t make it and why we never will. Say what you want, but Champagne was quick, and she knew way too much for her own good.
“Is she in the game?” Jerrell asked, getting frustrated.
Champagne shook her head. “The only game she’s in is the shopping game. That’s all this bitch does is shop and hang out.”
“Is she fucking with another baller?” Jerrell asked.
“Besides you?” Champagne asked, lifting an eyebrow. “No.”
“And her paper?”
“Where do you think it comes from?” Champagne asked rhetorically. “Umm, let’s see, her boyfriend was like one of the biggest dope boys in Philly. They say Quadir was sitting on millions. And that money disappeared the moment they lowered him into the ground. My guess would be it’s drug money Quadir left behind. Oops, right answer, Johnny, I win!”
Jerrell turned away from Champagne and thought about what he had just been told. That nigga Quadir had millions. Word on the street was that the nigga was something like twenty million strong. And if this bitch got his money . . .
“Goddammit!” Jerrell shouted. “How could I miss this shit? How could I be so stupid!”
“Wha?” Champagne joked, sounding like Amil. “You had a gold mine right beneath your nose all this time, huh? And to think you needed me to figure this shit out for you. I’m not surprised, though.”
Jerrell closed his eyes to gather his thoughts. Champagne knew him too well. That left him with one of two options. He could either kill the bitch, or make her his wife. And being that she was much more useful to him alive than dead, he certainly didn’t want to kill her. No, he would leave that fate for Ms. Gena. He needed to come up with a plan to get that money from her, and get the hell outta town. Maybe he and Champagne could take all of the money and relocate to the South. A nice crib in Atlanta or Charlotte or Miami sounded real nice right about now; yeah, Miami, or better yet, Palm Beach. He could fuck the shit outta Champagne all night and lay up on the beach all day sipping on exotic-ass drinks; a whole new life. Yeah, he needed new keys.
Jerrell turned toward Champagne. “Thanks for the info, sweetie. I might have an offer for you later.”
Champagne lifted an eyebrow. “Oh, really?”
Jerrell smiled and nodded. He leaned forward and kissed her on her cheek. “Yeah. But right now, I got a lot of planning to do.”
“I’ll bet you do.” Champagne smiled.
Jerrell and Champagne shared a knowing laugh. They both knew what he had on his mind. They both knew that he was about to go and sit down somewhere and make preparations to rob a bitch. Oh, what fate lay ahead was unknown, but one thing was for certain, ol’ Mr. Jerrell would be planning to come out on top.
Bria lifted Gah Git’s coffee cup off the table, walked to the coffee pot, and refilled it. “Gah Git, you want some milk in here?”
Gah Git nodded. “Yeah, baby. And put a little sugar in there for me too.”
Brianna walked through the kitchen with a load of laundry in her arms, heading for the utility room where the washing machine was kept.
Bria placed Gah Git’s coffee on the table and then grabbed the trash bag out of the garbage can and headed out the back door.
“Gena still ain’t called?”
“No, ma’am,” said Brianna.
“It’s been over a week, and she ain’t even called me.”
“She all right, Gah Git. My girlfriend’s sister works at the hairdresser and she was in there getting her hair done. Don’t worry, she just mad at us right now. She’ll be back.”
“I sure do hope she okay out there in them streets. Mad or not, she could call me and talk to me, let me know she’s okay.”
Just then they all three heard the sound of the doorbell, and seconds later as Bria opened the door, Gah Git and the twins heard Khaleer shouting. “It’s Uncle Michael. Uncle Michael’s here,” he said as he ran back into the kitchen to tell Gah Git.
Gah Git jumped up and almost pushed Bria down trying to get past her and get to the door.
“Michael,” she said, flinging the door back to see her baby boy standing there.
“Ma,” he said, before falling into her arms just like he used to do when he was a baby.
“Dag, Uncle Michael look good,” whispered Bria.
“He sure do. He lucky he’s our uncle,” agreed Brianna.
Gena rolled over and looked at the alarm clock on the nightstand on the other side of the bed where Jerrell was still sleeping. She rolled back over and lay in the bed thinking about the past couple of weeks. She had finally found an apartment, off City Line Avenue on the Philadelphia side. A nice apartment right in back of Friday’s restaurant. She had a security gate, so no one could just get into her complex, and she had an alarm system inside her apartment, so she felt safe there. She was assigned two parking spaces for her cars and she was allowed to have dogs and cats for an additional security deposit. The kitchen was small, but had an eat-in, a dining room, family room, master bed, master bath, and one half bath. It was honestly all she needed for herself. She had central air, wall-to-wall carpeting, washer, dryer, garbage disposal, white cabinets with green granite countertops, and she had the nerve to have imported tile set in the floors and half of the walls in the master bath. It was quite charming and affordable. Gena was scheduled to pick up the keys next week. She had been to every furniture store in the city from the ones up on the boulevard down to the ones in South Philly, and had furnishings paid for and ready to be delivered. She was excited, to say the least. This would really be her own apartment. The apartment that she once had was a three-story row house that her uncle Michael owned in West Philly on Chancellor Street next door to her girlfriend Markita. She thought the whole time she was there that he paid her rent, but the truth was there wasn’t any rent because he owned the building.
She looked over
at Jerrell sleeping. He had been really nice about letting her stay with him. She could tell that he didn’t really want to in the beginning and he certainly never gave her a key, so in her heart of hearts she knew her stay with him was temporary, but it was nice playing house the few weeks she was there. Jerrell, unbeknownst to her, was very domesticated, believe it or not. He cooked, he cleaned, he ironed, he pretty much did it all, even grocery shopped and seemed to know the grocery store like the back of his hand, locating everything from soap to paper towels with ease. He certainly didn’t need a woman to keep it together for him. He was meticulous, neat, and kept his apartment in tip-top shape. While he had a cleaning service once a week to come in to do the major cleaning, he did a fine job keeping his place tidy. Every morning when they got up, he’d cook breakfast, and sometimes even dinner. And he didn’t make simple dishes either, he made stuff that she didn’t know how to cook, like grilled salmon with curry mango chutney sauce, green beans with wild mushroom casserole. And one night he even had pot roast so tender the meat fell off the fork. She was quite impressed with him and had no idea he was so independent. But Jerrell had learned early in his life to never depend on a woman for anything, and that’s how he sustained himself so well, being single. All he pretty much needed a female for was pussy; other than that, he needed women for nothing at all.
Jerrell rolled over and saw Gena lying in the bed staring up at the ceiling.
“Whatcha doing?” he asked as he pulled her closer to him and snuggled with her.
“Nothing really, just thinking.”
“About what?”
“My new place.”
“Oh, you ready to roll out, huh?”
“Don’t even try it. You know you’re ready for me to go,” Gena said, tickling his underarm.
Naw, bitch, I don’t want you to go nowhere with all that paper you holding. You got this shit twisted. If you holdin’ like I think you are, you can stay here as long as you want.
“Man, you must be crazy. I don’t want to stop you from doing you, you know what I mean, but you more than welcome here, ma. Please believe it.”
“As good as you cook, it’s gonna be hard to go.”