by MìChaune
“I didn’t tell her,” Tiana defended herself.
“Naw, she didn’t tell me but, bitch, that’s not the point. You know you’re the only one I fucks with. Look at all the bullshit we’ve been through. And we did it together,” Gogo pointed out.
“It’s hard,” Leshaun sobbed. “I’m trying so hard, but I keep falling flat on my face. I don’t have enough money to make this happen overnight. And you know these spiteful-ass muthafuckers in Asheville love to see a bitch fall. I’ll be all over Facebook over this shit.”
“See?” Tiana walked around turning items over. “Where are the drugs you’re on? Because this isn’t even like you to be thinking like this. Fuck these people in Asheville, real shit.”
“Look at me, Leshaun.” Gogo lifted her sister’s face and wiped her tears, returning a favor that had been given to her forever ago. “I care about you, and I don’t want to lose the only friend I have in this world. What if I was gonna kill myself? What would you do?” Gogo stared at Leshaun as she fought back her own tears.
“I would stop you,” Leshaun answered with her lips quivering.
“Oh, we gonna stop your ass. That’s for sure.” Tiana kept looking for drugs or whatever it was that she thought made Leshaun lose her mind.
“Then let me do the same for you.” Gogo held her hand out. “I’ll help you through this like I always do. You’re stronger than you think you are.”
Leshaun stared at the .22 through a haze of tears and wondered if Gogo’s words were true. “Something has to change,” she cried.
“It will!” Gogo replied. “But we have to fight this shit together.”
“Yeah.” Tiana gave up her search and took a seat next to Leshaun. “You know you’re bigger than this.”
Leshaun relaxed her grip on the .22 with a mixture of stressed emotions. “I can’t live like this no more.” Her breathing was still labored by her failed attempt to take her life.
“I have a plan to get us up out of here,” Gogo assured her as she held her hand out for the gun. Her heart beat fast because even though she had the belief she could talk Leshaun out of doing the unthinkable, she knew her sister made snap decisions. One wrong word, one wrong move, and Gogo would be mourning the woman she’d admired and loved since they met.
Leshaun turned the .22 backward and handed it to Gogo.
“C’mere.” Gogo slid the .22 behind her and gestured Leshaun and Tiana in for a hug. They sat and cried at the foot of the bed. Gogo didn’t even try to imagine how her life would be without Leshaun. In truth, their bond was thicker than blood. Life was simple back then, but the harsh lessons of life came too fast for them to learn.
As a team, as the best of friends, they went against the world after their parents put them out on their own. They stripped together, dated hustlers, tried to sell weed, stole clothes from the mall, and each time they were met with failure. At thirty-three, thirty, and twenty-nine years old, they shared a ton of unneeded stress. Sadly, Leshaun reached her breaking point first.
“Where did you get that gun?” Gogo asked minutes later in the living room.
Leshaun stared at the floor. “I stole it out of Kofi’s car last month.”
“He’s been looking for that gun.” Tiana chuckled.
“Girl, you’re crazy.” Gogo managed to smile.
Leshaun wiped her eyes and turned toward Gogo. “What’s this plan you spoke of awhile ago?”
“It’s a major lick to get some serious bread!” Gogo was excited.
“Whatever it is, I’m with it.” Tiana signed up, down for the team.
Leshaun crossed her arms. “I’m not robbing no more drug dealers. That shit is too fucking dangerous.”
“That ain’t it.” Gogo wanted Leshaun to guess.
“And I’m not stripping.” Leshaun hated the pole. Even though she loved being a big girl, she didn’t want to put in the work to stay fit and do the trips to get the bands to dance.
“Nope. That ain’t it either.” Gogo sounded like a little kid.
Bitch. Leshaun was tired of guessing. She cocked her head to the side, nonverbally coaxing Gogo to get to the point.
“We can rob some our rivals’ escorts and clients!” Gogo got crunk as she felt like she’d dropped the best news since Leshaun discovered she could balance her legal and illegal revenue streams comfortably.
Leshaun lifted an eyebrow. “Escorts and clients? What the fu—”
“Yes!” Tiana got excited. “It was probably one of your rivals who hit you up, so you get the sons and daughters you got loyal to you to do the same shit.”
“Really?” Leshaun thought the plan sounded too good to be true.
“Fuck yeah. Listen, we lie low for a minute. Pretend like everything is over, and then we come back and hit these bitches blind because they will never see us coming. That would be a major lick,” Gogo promised. “But, seriously, we can make a big come up with this plan I got.”
Leshaun sat back and pushed her fingers through her bone-straight, shoulder-length hair. This wouldn’t be the first time for Gogo to have a plan. “I doubt any escort or client who knows us is gonna take a robbery from us seriously,” Leshaun spoke her mind.
“I know that. But you got to trust me because I’ve done my research on this,” Gogo insisted.
“Research?” Leshaun frowned. “For this lick you talkin’ ’bout?”
“Yeah. We not gonna shit in our backyard. We going to Phoenix, Tuscon, Denver, Colorado Springs, Seattle: low-key West Coast cities.”
“Then what?” Leshaun interrupted.
“If you let me finish you’ll know how this will pop off.” Gogo cleared her throat. “Now, like I was saying. I checked out every operation running west of the Mississippi, and I got a list of all the major ones. Plus, I got a list of the major clients who use the call girls and boy toys regularly. They will be our target. All we gotta do is work what our mama gave us.”
Leshaun rolled her eyes. “You ain’t making a bit of sense, girl.”
“Let her finish.” Tiana jumped in.
“That’s because I haven’t told you everything. For instance, one of the big clients out there is Jackson Young. They just did a spread on him in USA Today last week, and he just signed on to do a movie based on Faith’s Church Whore books. He’s loaded, girl! On his Facebook he has a picture of his ride and guess what it is?” Gogo squirmed in her seat with excitement.
Leshaun shrugged, showing little interest.
“A muthfuckin’ Maserati sedan and I can’t even pronounce the name of it! Shit starts with a Q, and it’s fly as fuck! He got that paper, girl, and it’s legal.”
“True. But how do we get it?” Tiana asked.
“By scheming and working on his weakness.” Gogo’s answer was straight-forward.
Leshaun sighed and kicked her tennis shoes off. “It sounds wack.”
“It ain’t wack. FYI, it’s the best plan I ever had!” Gogo saw the dollar signs dance in her head.
“How do you plan to even get up with Jackson Young?” Leshaun was skeptical. Everything Gogo presented so far seemed too good to be true. And she was mad at Tiana for being so quick to jump on the opportunity.
Gogo smiled. “Remember that dude I was fucking who worked as a travel agent with AAA?”
Leshaun and Tiana nodded.
“Well, he was the one who told me about the major screening Jackson Young has in Seattle at the Big Picture. He was the one who booked the reservation. I have his whole itinerary. I know when he’s chilling at Starbucks, and which Adam’s Mark hotel he’s staying in. And he slid me that info.”
Leshaun shook her head. “We’d be like the only black folks in the crowd. How the hell can I even think of mingling with that crowd?”
“It will be easy because—”
Click.
“What the fuck!” Gogo jumped off the bed.
Leshaun closed her eyes to keep any new tears at bay.
“Girl!” Gogo looked at the .22 in Leshaun’s han
d. “This piece of shit don’t even got a firing pin!”
Leshaun took a close look at the .22. She shrugged as she flopped down on the floor.
“I’ma spend the night with you.”
“Yeah, me too,” Tiana added.
Gogo took the gun from Leshaun and made sure she had her mind right before she headed to the bathroom to take a shower. Leshaun waved her out of her face and told her to go and wash her stanking ass. They shared a laugh, but Leshaun did her best to cover her stress.
Left alone on the bed, she broke down in fresh tears. Leshaun hated her life. Hated the streets. Hated the trouble of finding a new property. Hated the backstabbing bitches and the stupid games they played! Life, her life, taught her that a pretty face and a phat ass didn’t mean shit when it came to paying the bills. Shit, there were plenty of dimes in the hood. Leshaun turned on her side and blinked her tears away. Gogo had her back, and that was something Leshaun wouldn’t doubt.
She thought of Gogo’s new lick. Robbing escorts and clients. It still didn’t make any sense, but it was a risk she had to take. Truth be told, Leshaun was down for anything. She wasn’t honest with herself, Tiana, or Gogo. Shit! I’d strip on Main Street and rob any dope boy right now! All she wanted and needed was enough money to be set for life.
Leshaun envisioned a future where she could sit back, relax, and enjoy the fruits of her labors. The problem was that she never set a goal for what would make her happy. Price Street Hotel grew in popularity as more visitors toured Asheville and took in the scenery. With the breweries came franchises of popular restaurants in other cities. Many home and tourist magazines ranked Asheville a “Number One Place to Live and See.” And Leshaun made good money. She rented the rooms in Price Street Hotel at $160 a night. With thirty rooms, she booked the twenty-four rooms that she’d made available to the public, every night from April fifteenth to the week before Christmas.
The club in Birmingham, Alabama, Dom’s Paradice, did well too. It was a revenue stream not many in Asheville knew about. Unlike the hotel, the club was a safe haven because it was close enough to fly to if she wanted to get away for the weekend, but far enough that she didn’t have to worry about the club and the hotel crowds comingling. She’d bought the club on a whim a few years ago after the former owner patronized her hotel and she observed the competent staff that ran the operations. Dom’s Paradice appealed to her because she could be part of the entertainment scene without having to invest a lot of money in grooming the talent. The management of the hotel worked with local radio stations and promoters to keep the club popping.
Prostitution, larceny, and murder didn’t mix well with her legal portfolio. But she remembered the days when she didn’t have a hotel. Prince worked two and three jobs at a time so that Leshaun could go to school and do the best for 9ine and Ten that she knew how. Prostitution put food on the table and larceny afforded her luxuries every now and then. The murders weren’t frequent but part of the game. And that’s what Leshaun liked: she wanted to stay in the game.
After being raped and impregnated by one her cousins, Leshaun saw pimping as a means to an end. Why couldn’t she be on both sides of the law? Men did it all the time; she should be able to do it too. Unlike most pimps, Leshaun treated her whores good. She allowed them to pick and choose who they worked with. Mindful that one of the whores was her son, she treated the rest as if they were her children. They were paid well, tested regularly, and they didn’t need anything because Leshaun paid for everything out of pocket. She even had them keep legitimate jobs at fast food restaurants, other hotels and, for the two who had education, in their respective professions. Which made the betrayal by Lysa and Janae more troubling. Leshaun never forced the two women to do anything they didn’t want to do. Everything a mother was supposed to provide—food, clothing, shelter, love—Leshaun did that. All the things a pimp was supposed to do—protect, keep them maintained, and give loyalty—Leshaun did that, too.
Maybe some things weren’t meant to be understood. Leshaun wanted to catch those two, chop them up, and feed them to the hogs and pigs in the pork farms in Michigan. Get her revenge and make them disappear. But she knew moving too fast would not produce the result she wanted.
Leshaun thought about what she was going to attempt to do a few minutes ago and how she missed the blessings in her life, and she cried again.
Chapter Seven
Lysa and Janae kept the textbooks they stole from one of the vacant classrooms close to the chest as the wandered the sidewalk outside of the Victoria building at A-B Tech. Since setting Leshaun’s property on fire, the two whores had been keeping a low profile. The best place to hide was around the 20,000 students who went to the community college to start or change careers.
“I’m so glad that bitch ain’t over my shoulder.” Janae spoke of Leshaun in disgust as she loudly smacked her watermelon-flavored Bubblicious gum.
“See, I knew you’d be happy if we made the move and rocked with Lloyd.” Lysa spotted a table and quickly threw her black and pink backpack across the metal grill-styled table, claiming her spot.
“Just because his dick big don’t make him good,” Janae warned. She took a seat across from Lysa. She wanted to roll her eyes, but her guard was up. In the back of her mind, she expected Leshaun to catch the two of them slipping and make both of them disappear. Guilt began to surface as she thought about how Leshaun and 9ine rescued her from an abusive foster home. But she’d paid her debt to them several times, bringing in money from her older tricks time to time, and aborting 9ine’s seed so Leshaun wouldn’t become a grandma before thirty. After seven years, Janae just wanted to be free. The plan wasn’t for her to be indebted to Leshaun and her “company” forever.
“Girl.” Lysa got excited. Janae hated that about her. Lysa always got excited every time she got a trick with a big dick or a well-built body. And she swore Lloyd had both. All Lysa could talk about was how fine and how sexy she thought Lloyd was and how she couldn’t wait to spend the day with him. “When we meet with him tonight at the Grove Park Inn, you’ll see.”
Janae was good on meeting Lloyd again. In her eyes, Lloyd wasn’t nothing special. Five foot eleven and 200 pounds, Lloyd often passed for white, thanks to his almond milk–colored skin. He was built like Josh Norman, a former cornerback for the Carolina Panthers. His dark chocolate eyes and full lips gave away his African heritage, but his thin European nose and thin jawbone always threw his ethnicity into question.
“He did deliver on the ten racks he promised us to burn down the Price Street Hotel,” Janae conceded, hoping Lysa would shut up. Janae knew Lysa was in love, and she didn’t want to hurt her feelings, but she was sick of hearing about Lysa and Lloyd. Janae wasn’t jealous because she didn’t have a man, but she got sick and tired of hearing the same things about the same person over and over again. Janae knew and accepted her lot in life. She was a whore and an occasional booster, and Janae planned on rocking that train until the wheels fell off.
Lysa’s phone rang and Janae shook her head when she caught Lysa in a lie about throwing away the Cricket phone Leshaun had given her last week. Lloyd again. She could tell that by the way Lysa giggled and let her hands roam her body freely as if she were at home and not in the middle of a college campus. “Lloyd called, and he wants to see us, but I don’t want to go by myself. Please come with me?” Lysa asked as she put her phone next to her bag.
Lysa has lost her damn mind, Janae thought, and she checked her LG smartphone she bought at Walmart. “What am I going to do, be the third wheel?”
“No, Janae,” Lysa cooed like a baby and giggled. “I’m going to introduce you to Bryson, his brother. He owns a small used car dealership that only sells Toyotas and Hondas.” Lysa moved her fingers fast on her phone. “I got us an Uber, and they’ll be here in two minutes.”
“Is the driver a woman?” Janae opened her bag and put her phone inside. “You know I’m not getting in a car with no male driver.”
“Girl, it�
�s two of us.” Lysa stood up and straightened out her loose-fitting dark blue T-shirt. “We can overpower any nigga if we work together.”
Lysa’s naïveté is going to be the death of me, Janae kept in the forefront of her mind. Janae was sensitive to the fact that Lysa was just nineteen and still learning about life. She thought her smooth skin, light brown eyes, and thick, five foot four frame would get her everything she wanted in life. Janae was twenty-five and knew better. Janae knew the end of life wasn’t supposed to be with her face down, ass up, being pounded by some unnamed john. She knew there was more to life than her looks, as they would fade; and, if she was lucky, her black wouldn’t crack.
Janae had them all. Big dicks, little dicks, black men, Latin men, Asians, fat, and fit. She admitted to herself that she had Leshaun and Gogo to thank for her street smarts and her burning quest for knowledge for her book sense. Janae still took care of her five foot six, 170-pound frame, but she had plans that did not involve her pussy getting her out of everything. Janae wanted to be a paralegal in three years, but she had yet to register for classes or make an effort to seriously pursue getting accepted into A-B Tech or any other school.
The Uber arrived, and Janae was relieved to see a dark-skinned sister with locks pushing the silver 2014 Hyundai Sonata on the pavement.
“I told you we got a woman,” Lysa stated as the Uber driver got out of the car and opened the door for them. Once Janae and Lysa got situated, Janae smiled at the driver.
“I’m Clairese, and I’ll be your driver for this ride,” the driver introduced herself. “I have an iPhone and an Android charger if you need one. Also, I have satellite radio, or I can pick up the music in your phone with my Bluetooth connection. And if you need water, I have some cold bottles in the trunk.”
“I like you,” Lysa complimented her. “See, Janae, this is why I always take an Uber.”
Janae smiled. She peeped the University of North Carolina Asheville lanyard hanging off the rearview mirror and the student parking decal at the bottom of the driver’s side of her windowpane. “What are you studying?” Janae wanted to hear something else other than Lloyd.