by Nikki Turner
36
The past ten hours of questions, answers, and soul searching amazingly created an odd closeness between Calliope and Bambi with Lynx being the common denominator in the duplicitous equation.
Ruby made breakfast: bacon, eggs, and hash browns. Seemingly oblivious to the gravity of the situation, Lynx Junior (looking just like his no-good daddy) was the only person in the house who got a wink of sleep. When he woke, he ate a few eggs and asked if he could play with Bambi’s black cat Lucky. That was pretty much the only thing that could occupy him. Everything else was made for a princess—there were no monster trucks, trains, or planes around.
Burdened with her own problems, Bambi’s first instinct was to tell this husband-stealing bitch to get the fuck out of her house. But after hearing Calliope’s story, Bambi saw her in a different light. They both had been played—Bambi and Calliope—and since confronting Lynx on the phone, he showed just how much of a snake and coward he was by refusing to answer another one of their calls after he hung up. They tried everything they could to get his cheating, bitch-ass on the phone—different numbers and text messages. But Lynx had gone completely off the grid. His actions stated the obvious: Fuck Nya! Fuck Calliope! Fuck Lynx Junior! And Fuck her!
After getting the e-mail asking for the money in return for Nya, Bambi had checked the balance of their joint savings account, a goose egg. The little more than a hundred grand that should’ve been there was gone. No doubt another casualty of Lynx’s gambling. Who was this dude? Besides one hella an actor, Bambi thought, while pushing the bacon around on her plate.
Basically a one-night stand. That was how Calliope described the genesis of their deceptive relationship. She’d been emotionally frazzled by her brother’s death and hell-bent on making someone pay for it. That was the reason she was in Magic City Casino that day looking for Jiggilo.
Then Lynx came along talking about how she’d been his good-luck charm, and how he needed to return the favor to keep all things right with nature and the gambling gods. In other words, Lynx put the moves on her, taking straight advantage of Calliope’s vulnerable condition.
“The shopping spree and dinner,” he’d offered. “You look like you could use a bit of cheering up.” She couldn’t hide the distress she was feeling, the hurt, the loss. The brief interruption by Lynx had allowed her a moment to rethink what she’d been planning to do. How smart would it be to shoot a man in the middle of a crowded casino? And how would going to jail for the rest of her life help Compton? It wouldn’t. Therefore, she needed to be wiser. A better time would present a better opportunity.
To Lynx, she’d said, “I’ll take you up on that offer.” Lynx did everything he said he would do and more. The night ended up with what was supposed to have been one night of sensual sin, except the condom broke and she got pregnant.
Hearing Calliope talk about how she met Lynx dredged up a lot of old memories for Bambi. Bambi would never admit it, but in a weird way, she felt a tinge of jealousy toward Calliope. Calliope had something from Lynx that she didn’t and could never have. Because Bambi couldn’t conceive children, Nya had been adopted, something almost no one besides close family knew about. Yet Bambi could not have loved Nya any more if she had come out of her own womb. She thought Lynx felt the same way. Now she wasn’t sure.
To no one in particular, Bambi blurted out, “Fuck Lynx! I have to come up with that five hundred thousand, no ifs, ands, or buts about it.” The people who had taken Nya were serious. What if the reason they tried to snatch Calliope’s son was because they somehow figured out that Nya wasn’t Lynx’s child by blood? And now she is no good to them? What if they didn’t think it was worth the trouble keeping Nya alive?
Ruby cleared the table. No one was eating anyway.
“I’ll try to help any way I can.” Calliope’s phone rang just when she was about to clarify that she was talking about helping with the money, not the dishes. “I think I should take this,” she said.
Bambi couldn’t help but wonder who the call was from.
“Hello?”
Calliope hadn’t spoken to the other person on the other end of the phone in a while. “Where are you?” Jean asked.
“None of your business” is what she wanted to say. Instead she asked, “Why?”
“Because you may be in serious trouble.”
“This isn’t a good time for riddles, Jean. If you have something to tell me, tell me.”
Bambi had thought that maybe it was Lynx on the other end of the phone! But that notion had been nixed when Calliope used the name Jean. To Calliope, Jean sounded both sincere and contrite when he said, “I never meant you any harm. However”—Jean changed the subject before it really began—“I didn’t call to regurgitate our past.”
But the past always somehow has a hand in the present. And this time was no different, Calliope would soon find out.
Jean continued, “That cat you moved out of town to Virginia with—Lynx, right? People are looking for him.”
Strange, Calliope thought. She’d never told Jean that she was leaving Miami or with Lynx. When she found out she was pregnant, she told Lynx and he convinced her to leave. She needed a fresh start. Once she got the wrongful-death-lawsuit money from the city, she just up and left.
“How do you know I moved away with Lynx?”
“You should know—knowing things keep me ahead of the game. To be aware is to be alive,” Jean philosophically quoted. “I think I should’ve been that boy’s daddy,” he reminded her, and then changed the subject. “Anyway, dude is in bad graces with some even badder people.”
Tell me something I don’t know.
Jean went on to inform Calliope that Lynx owed a lot of bread to a ruthless clique of people. The type of folks that had no compunctions with kidnapping kids and using them as collateral. The lion’s share of what Jean had told her, Calliope had already figured out, but not all of it. Jean said, “He owe the money to a band of crazy-ass Russians.”
The past always somehow has a hand in the present.
“Not just any crazy Russians,” Jean said. “These are the same guys that almost killed you back in the day.”
What the fuck …
“The ones that had killed the cop, like he was nothing, in cold blood,” Calliope remembered. How could she forget?
“You mean Mikile?”
This was bizarre for Calliope to wrap her mind around. “Mikile and the man in the closet is trying to take my baby? And have already taken Bambi’s little girl?”
“Whoa! I’m just telling you what the streets are telling me. And I don’t even know anyone named Bambi. I just wanted you to know what the score was. The game can be tricky.”
Jean didn’t have any more to tell her, nor did he offer any solutions; so Calliope ended the conversation there.
“No hard feelings,” Jean had said before she killed the line.
Bambi, stricken with grief, said, “What were you saying about some Russian that may have taken Nya?” Her eyes were red and puffy.
The quick version was all Calliope managed to explain before she felt compelled to hug Lynx Junior. She jumped from the kitchen table and headed to the screened-in porch, where he was playing with Bambi’s cat. But when she got there she didn’t see him. Smeared on the floor was something that looked like blood.
Calliope screamed as loud as she had ever screamed in her life, “Noooo!”
Bambi and Ruby came to see what had rattled her.
The blood Calliope had seen had belonged to the cat. Lucky was dead. Someone had chopped the poor feline’s head off. Lucky was the first present that Lynx had ever given to Bambi. She had loved him like a member of the family. It seemed symbolic of her and Lynx’s relationship being dead as well.
And to make matters worse, Lynx, Jr. was gone.
Vanished.
Knowing what Calliope was feeling firsthand, Bambi put her arms around her. Calliope went limp and wouldn’t or couldn’t stop balling with tears. It took all
of Bambi’s strength to keep Calliope from collapsing to the ground, trying to control her. Bambi said, “We are gonna get through this.” But it didn’t do much good. Her own heart was too weak to strengthen another’s. Ruby joined them.
They all in some form or another shared the same single thought: Why was this happening?
Two minutes passed … another three minutes, tops, before they pulled it together.
“Okay,” Bambi said, pulling away from the group hug. “This isn’t going to get Nya or Lynx Junior back.” The name Lynx Junior felt alien rolling off of her tongue. “This isn’t the time to be crying like little bitches. We need to tighten up and figure out a plan of action.” Bambi placed her hand on Calliope’s shoulders. “Okay?”
Calliope sniffled and nodded. “I know one person that may be able to help.”
The words came out muffled.
“That’s what I’m talking about. Any action beats no action.”
“It’s my Big Spender. He was one of my old customers from when I was dancing. He holds a lot of power and has unlimited bank.”
Funny, Bambi thought. Calliope didn’t think about Mr. Money Bags until her child got taken.
As she could read Bambi’s mind, Calliope said, “I was gonna reach out to him for you before I got the call from Jean.”
Bambi felt a pea of guilt. Calliope had mentioned helping to get the money before her phone rang. “Then let’s not waste any more time. What’s this dude’s name?”
No way could Bambi have been prepared for all of this. She and Calliope’ worlds would be even more intertwined.
“His name is Lou, short for Lootchee.”
Bambi used to date a guy name Lootchee back before she met Lynx. He was caked up and from Texas. What were the odds of there being two Lootchees in the world. Bambi and her Lootchee had split on bad terms. When she found out that dude had been transporting drugs through the mail using her name—lots of drugs—Bambi turned the tables on who was gaming who. She took all of Lootchee’s stash and made him think that all the drugs were confiscated by the Feds. With wind that the Feds were on his trail, Lootchee wasted no time relocating to Mexico. While down there he met a chick name Unique that was selling pussy for a Mexican pimp. Unique’s boyfriend—on some get-back shit—had sold her to the pimp for a kilo of coke, a chicken, and donkey, leaving Unique to work the debt off to pay for her freedom.
Lootchee fell in love with Unique and her state-of-the-art blow-job talents, and he was willing to spend the rest of his life in Mexico with her until he seen Bambi on BET promoting a million-dollar party-planning business. That’s when he knew he had been tricked and vowed to make Bambi pay and this was the man that Calliope now wanted to call for help! The past always somehow has its hands in the present, Bambi thought.
“If you think he can help … call him,” Bambi said with her heart in her stomach. She knew that she’d have to pay the price for double-crossing Lootchee, but if he was willing to get their kids back, then she’d sacrifice herself.
Calliope dialed the number. Someone answered. “Hello, Lou.”
It was him.
“This is Calliope.… Lootchee, I need your help.”
37
Mikile stood across the street from Bambi’s house leaning on a late-model 750 BMW. Calliope made her way across the street, as Ruby watched at the door with pistol cocked. “Long time no see. You’ve grown to be a beautiful lady. I thought you were pretty back then, but,” he whistled and nodded as he looked her over. “You have turned into quite a knockout.”
She couldn’t even make herself say thank you. She wanted to pull out the hunter’s knife in her pocket so badly and stab him or cut his throat. But she didn’t, because he had her baby. But what she did do was cut right through the small talk, “What is it that you want? And why the fuck would you take my baby?”
“It’s simple, baby. It’s collateral.”
“You are going to get your money, one way or the other,” she bluntly told him as convincingly as she knew how.
“No, it’s more to it than the money.”
“What do you mean?”
“You owe me.”
“I owe you?” she questioned.
“Yes, because I liked you, I spared you many years ago.” He threw his hands up. “Now you owe me for giving you life, and not taking it.”
“You getting the money. Or is it your people aren’t going to break you off?”
He ignored her question, and got straight to the point. “The same way Rusty used you. I need you to provide that same service to me.”
She was surprised. “What? I don’t do that anymore.”
“You want to see your son alive again, don’t you? And especially if you want him to be Junior and not Genie, then you will make your services available to me.”
“What?” She sucked her teeth and said in the nastiest disposition she could without offending him.
“You will bring your baby father out of hiding and then we will take care of him.”
“Hell, if I knew where he was at—”
He cut her off with a chuckle. “You are one crafty bitch. But you will do what you have to do to take care of that boy of yours … the same way you did to take care of your brother. Right?”
The mere mention of Compton by Mikile pissed her off. But she nodded and tried to stay focused on the only thing that really mattered, the kids.
“What about the little girl?”
Mikile looked confused. “Little girl?” he questioned. “We don’t have no girl, only da boy.”
Where the hell was Nya? Who in the hell had her? And what the hell were they going to do to get up the cash they needed? How in the hell would she get Lynx out of hiding? Shit just got so real in the realest way! The one thing they knew was to never underestimate a mother’s love, a woman’s scorn, and three bad bitches and Girl Power!
Also by Nikki Turner
Project Chick II: What’s Done in the Dark
Available as an E-Book
Unique
Unique II: Betrayal
Unique III: Revenge
About the Author
NIKKI TURNER is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Black Widow and Heartbreak of a Hustler’s Wife, the USA Today bestseller Forever a Hustler’s Wife, and the Essence bestsellers A Hustler’s Wife, The Glamorous Life, and Riding Dirty on I-95.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE GLAMOROUS LIFE 2: ALL THAT GLITTERS ISN’T GOLD. Copyright © 2013 by Nikki Turner. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
Cover design by Ervin Serrano
Cover photographs: woman © by Howard Huang; cityscape by Shutterstock.com
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Turner, Nikki.
The glamorous life 2: all that glitters isn’t gold / Nikki Turner.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-250-00144-3 (pbk.)
ISBN 978-1-250-03885-2 (e-book)
1. African American women—Fiction. 2. Businesswomen—Fiction. 3. Rich people—Fiction. 4. City and town life—Fiction. I. Title. II. Title: Glamorous life two.
PS3620.U7659G573 2013
813'.6—dc23
2013032949
e-ISBN 9781250038852
First Edition: November 2013
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