I knew where this was going. So I told Ashleigh that me and Kirbie would talk about the details of the mixtape between ourselves, alone, and I'd let her know the plan later. She made a fuss about it, mainly because she didn't want me and Kirbie leaving the hotel room alone, so I told her we were just stepping outside onto the balcony.
As soon as we got out there, I felt an icy chill in the wind and saw Kirbie rubbing her arms to keep warm. I wanted to put my arms around her but ...
"I just wanna fight Ashleigh one good time," Kirbie said. "I don't wanna kill her, just fuck her up real good." She rested her elbows on the railing, looking up at the night sky. Very little stars out tonight, just a cold breeze. She rubbed her arms again, so I leaned on the railing next to her to block some of the wind. "Now Monifa on the other hand ... what her brother did to Gee ... I know I'ma end up killing her one day."
"No you ain't," I said.
"Why ain't I?"
"Because I won't let you."
"Why are you still protecting Monifa?"
"I'm not. I'm protecting you and yo career. Stop thinking like a gangster. Start thinking like a superstar."
"Okay, I'ma hire somebody to do it."
I laughed.
Then the sliding glass door came open behind us, and both me and Kirbie turned to look. Ashleigh was standing in the doorway.
"I'm about to get in the shower," she said to me.
"Okay," I replied flatly.
"Are yall gon' be out here long?"
"Probably."
She gave me a look, as if she wanted to say something about how buddy-buddy close I had leaned toward Kirbie. But for some reason she didn't. Then she slid the glass door closed again. But when me and Kirbie turned back toward the sky, I was almost certain I heard the door click.
Kirbie heard it too. "Did that bitch just lock us out here?"
"I think so."
"Does she really think we would try to sneak out of the hotel room while she's in the shower?"
"She's been acting out of character lately."
"Leave her," Kirbie said, as if it was that simple.
"Leave her for who?" I said back.
Kirbie didn't reply, because she knew I was flirting.
I changed the subject. "How'd you convince La'Renz to let me back on the mixtape?"
"I told him I quit if you can't be on there."
"You didn't."
"I did. I'm not turning my back on you and Gee."
"Kirbie, you can't do that shit here. La'Renz will really let you go. Don't blow it. You might not get another chance."
"I'm not gonna let him walk all over me. My name is gonna be on this mixtape. I deserve some say-so."
I nodded, smiling inside, then said, "Thank you for standing up for yourself and putting me on there.”
"You're welcome. I know you'd do the same for me."
She looked across the street at the Mount Eliyah ENT building and I stared with her, in silence, loving this time out of town with the woman I loved. Then for no reason at all she leaned over the railing dangerously, the top bar pushing into her stomach now, and I tensed up, knowing she was safe but ready to grab her if the metal gave out.
"How far down do you think this is?" she asked me.
"This railing wasn't built to be leaned on, Kirbie. Cut it out."
"How far?"
"This is the eighth floor. Eight stories."
"How many feet is in a story?"
"I don't know. Ten, fifteen."
She planted her feet and leaned back up. Thank God. Staring across the street again, she said, "The news people said Jazzmine Short fell from a height about ten times as high as this. That's a fucked up way to go."
"Not necessarily. I'm sure she died on impact, pain-free."
"But look how long it took for her to hit the ground. What was going through her head as she was falling? That had to be horrible."
I shrugged one shoulder, uninterested. I didn't care about Jazzmine Short. I cared about Kirbie Amor. I still had her scent on my fingertips. Like an addict, I kept rubbing my nose to get a whiff (however faint), torturing myself. To make matters worse, I imagined her bent over the railing again, me slowly easing in behind her. A shudder went through me just thinking about it.
"Cold?" Kirbie asked me.
"Nah ... uh, yeah, a little bit. You?"
"It doesn't even matter. We can't get in until yo girlfriend open the door."
I looked back. I could see the bathroom door was still closed, steam vapors pumping through the cracks, and I figured that Ashleigh was still bathing in another one of her long showers. As I turned back toward the street below, I stole a peek at Kirbie's irresistible booty filling out her stretch denim. It was unreal how defined she was.
Damn Kirbie why do you have to be so fucking flawless, so sexy without trying?
My dick was pulsing painfully.
"Do you think he did it?" Kirbie asked me.
"Who did what?"
"La'Renz. Do you think he killed Jazzmine Short? Or do you think Eliyah did it and set La'Renz up?"
"If La'Renz did kill her, I think it was an accident. Maybe they were arguing and they got into a little shoving match and she went up and over."
"An accident? I don't think so."
"Did you ask La'Renz if he killed her?"
Her mouth hung open, as if my question was completely ridiculous. I could see all the way down her throat now, the wet moisture in and around her tongue glistening. Primal, erotic thoughts of fellatio took control of my mind.
As if my dick wasn't already hard enough ...
"I'd never ask him that," she said.
"Do you think he did it?"
She got quiet, then said, "I think he could have done it. Since I've been around him, I've seen what kind of temper he can have. I've seen exactly why they call him Buddy Rough. One minute I feel like he’s like a brother I never had, the next minute I don't trust him."
"Do you trust me?" I asked.
She stared in my unblinking eyes quizzically, unsure of what I was getting at. But when I glanced in the room—two quick glances to prompt her to look with me—she followed my eyes and saw that I was telling her that Ashleigh was still showering, that we shouldn't let this moment go to waste.
She took a step back, away from me. "No, Coras. Not here. She can come out any min—"
I gathered her in my arms and pulled her to the only side of the balcony that was concealed by the sliding door's thermal black curtains. I could hear in her breathing that she wanted me, but her body was pulling away.
"Coras, I can't," she said. "I have a fiancé."
"We don't have time for excuses," I said in frustration, as I held her snug to my chest. It was criminal of me to be holding her this tight, against her will, but I didn't give a fuck. "You already let me play wit' that pussy and leaked on my fingers. It's too late. You already signed up for this."
I lowered my mouth to hers and kissed her. She let out a submissive breath of air and let me suck her wet tongue. The blood in my heart was pounding; hers too, I could feel it. She groaned softly in my mouth, then suddenly her hand was cupping my testicles, groping the length of me, which was full and primed.
She's sex-starved, I realized.
And I knew here and now that she and Archie would never share a passion as strong as ours. I knew before, but now it was written.
I took her lips more aggressively, knowing we didn't have much more time. My mating instincts ached badly. Unsafely. If Ashleigh hadn't been nearby, if I didn't need that bitch financially or legally, I would have long-dicked Kirbie until every deep place in her body came completely undone.
I heard a tiny cry escape her lips when I pulled away. And I couldn't pull away very far because she had my shirt wrapped in her fist.
"That's all I wanted," I said to her. "We’ll continue this another time, okay? Let my shirt go, fam."
Chapter 12
Sammy "The Hitman" Russtrip
Manhatt
an, New York
I had been gazing across the street at an aged man playing a soft tune on his acoustic guitar outside a storefront, his brown felt hat laying beside him upturned. You could see the tail of a lonely dollar bill or two flapping inside.
There were a few telltale signs that told me this man wasn't an ordinary sidewalk beggar, but rather a musician whose artistry hadn't been commercialized. One sign was the condition of his guitar—it was boldly new-looking with a shiny wood finish. Another sign was the way in which he strummed the strings; he was carefree and graceful in the downstroke of his thumb, producing a mellowing sound that had passersby smiling on.
"Oh, that's a fucking letdown if I ever saw one," said my son Jarvis, who was looking through the eyecups of my high-resolution binoculars. "Fucking scaredy cats had time to make it happen. Dammit ... just when the stakeout was getting good ..."
I turned quick, snatching the binoculars from him. It wasn't often I got distracted away from a target, and it really had me angry. Discipline in this line of work was life or death.
It was my own fault. Tighten up, Sammy, I told myself.
Through the binocular lenses I saw Kirbie Amor standing a foot or two away from a male I didn't recognize. I adjusted the binocular’s center focus wheel, enhancing the clarity, and witnessed a knot of anguish appear on Kirbie's face.
"What did I miss?" I asked, as I observed every action the two were making on the balcony.
"Kirbie was about to get fucked on the eighth floor," Jarvis said.
"We need to find out who that black male is and document it."
"I already know who that is. It's Coras Bane."
I lowered the binoculars and frowned at my son. "How do you know?"
"The Site." He wiggled his smartphone at me. "They're social media friends, but from what happened up there, we know they're more than that. And it's so scandalous because Kirbie is engaged to a nigga named Archie Waters in Kansas City. But Coras is a Kansas City rapper who used to record with Kirbie. Coras is Kirbie's side nigga, apparently. I would've never guessed that Kirbie was a ho."
"You know all this through The Site?"
"Yes, Sammy!"
He said my name with sarcasm, because he'd rather be calling me "daddy." But I loathed the word daddy, especially while out in the field. "Father" was less bitchy, but it was still inappropriate.
"That's why I'm always on my phone. I'm putting pieces together," he said. "I can find out more in thirty seconds than you can in thirty days. There's another girl in the hotel room, her name is Ashleigh Hedgman. She's Coras's manager and also his girlfriend. That's why Coras and Kirbie hurried up and stopped kissing. They didn't want to get caught. There's a big triangle—or rectangle—of sexual deceit going on."
"Don't get thrown off track. The main target is La'Renz."
"I know. But look how much I found out. That's why you shouldn't be so against the internet. Now is it okay if I look at my phone from time to time?"
"No."
I lifted the binoculars and found Kirbie again. It startled me—because she was looking directly at me, or my car. It was dumb of me though to have even been jumpy; Kirbie couldn't make me out from this far away, and it was impossible for her to see through the tints.
I continued to spy, until the balcony's sliding door opened up and a light-complexioned woman appeared in a bath robe, her hair long and water-wet. I assumed this was the Ashleigh Hedgman female that my son just spoke of. I handed him the binoculars to confirm, and he did, then handed them back. Ashleigh was a beautiful woman too. Her eyes were narrow and fierce, and her demeanor seemed to command respect. She was the type of woman I had always favored, back when I used to let the evils of love rule my life.
When Ashleigh, Coras, and Kirbie disappeared inside, I scanned the facade of the hotel until I got to La’Renz's balcony. His curtains were closed, lights off. Normally at this time he would be staring across the street at the Mount Eliyah headquarters.
"Did you see La'Renz turn in?" I asked.
"Yeah, he went to sleep."
"You sure?"
"Positive."
My phone rang. I handed the binoculars back to my son and fished my cell out of my pocket.
"This is Sammy," I answered.
"I need you to pull out of there and head to Sundi's house," said Rose, who was an old Spanish woman that worked more in Eliyah’s mansion than in the field.
"I'm at the hotel watching La'Renz,” I told her. “He's first priority."
"Well I'm telling you to go watch Sundi. We need to see every action she takes while she's still under the impression that she's getting her job back."
"Did Eliyah authorize this?"
"Yes! I wouldn't be telling you to do it if he didn't!"
I steeled myself against calling Rose out of her name. She assumed because she was pushing sixty and was one of the first female Hispanic military pilots in the Air Force, she had the right to talk to a third generation investigator any kind of way. But how much experience did she have in murder and not just flying planes? Her daily activity consisted of strutting around Eliyah's Brooklyn mansion in tasteless track suits barking orders at me. Seven years ago when I worked for La'Renz, I dealt with La'Renz directly. There was no senior citizen as the middleman.
Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin, I mused, reciting Mother Teresa silently.
Then I hung up on Rose without the courtesy of a goodbye.
Chapter 13
Milo Chavis
Los Angeles, California
I was standing in an alley blindfolded. This was something I never thought I would've done voluntarily but ... here I was, somewhere in Los Angeles, California, blind, nervous, and waiting for instructions. My righthand man Oyeah Mason was here with me—or so I thought. I hadn't heard him speak since Mark Beltrán, who was my OG Tahoe connection, picked us up from the airport and brought us here and tied a rag over our eyes for "security reasons."
This is bullshit, I thought.
"Oyeah, when's the last time you been blindfolded?" I asked just to make sure he was still here with me.
Oyeah chuckled. "Grade school. Field Day."
"Sssh," said Mark, hushing us. "Here they come."
I heard a screen door open and a man's voice, in Spanish, ask some kind of question to Mark, who answered back in the same dialect. Then, in English, Mark told us that he'd be waiting outside for us after our meeting was over.
This is bullshit.
I felt hands grab onto me and usher me inside a building that was unmistakably in the business of serving food. I could smell seasoning in the air, hear a gas burner igniting (we were in a kitchen), before I was eventually brought to a room where I was seated at a table and left there.
I was startled when I felt a hand touch my thigh under the table. I swatted it away immediately.
"Just making sure you're still there," Oyeah said. "Making sure they didn't separate us."
"Keep your fucking hands away from me, nigga," I said with humor in my voice, but overwhelmingly relieved that he was still near.
This meeting wasn't necessarily by choice. For the most part I was forced to come to California. Since Coras stopped buying OG Tahoe from me, things had went bad. Coras had been my biggest serve, roughly 75 percent of my gross profit, and when he refused to cop from me after the shooting incident at the Sprint Center, I could no longer afford to purchase my normal bundle. And there was no "buy less product" option, Mark informed me. It was either I afford the normal amount, or I got nothing at all. It wasn't Mark's rules. It was the familia's. And in order for me to be an exception to the rule, I had to meet with the head of the family in person and explain my situation. In simple terms, I needed time to build up my clientele to replace what I lost in Coras.
I was in the hot seat right now. And this was a foreign thing to me, because I was usually the one putting niggas in the hot seat for fucking up my money.
Then my phone vibrate
d in my pocket and startled me.
Mark had told me and Oyeah to turn our phones completely off before we came inside but I opted for mute mode. I knew it was my sister Monifa calling again with the same questions—Are you okay? Have you made up with Coras yet? Have you talked to him? Can you tell Coras I'm sorry when you hear from him? I blamed Monifa for me even being here, that bitch. The actual person who shot Coras's partner, a guy that worked for me named Mario Powell, was just supposed to film a routine beat down, not attempt to kill. Last I heard he was hiding out, from Coras and me.
My phone kept buzzing. And I figured I had a minute or two before the meeting started so I eased it out of my pocket, resting it on my lap clandestinely. I wanted to text Monifa and let her know what city I was in just in case something went wrong, but when I used my finger to lift the blindfold a smidge, I got the shock of my life.
There were already several mean-looking Mexicans sitting at the table with us!
I thought I could put the blindfold back down and everything would be alright but before I could fully cover my eyes I saw two or three of the bigger Mexicans get excited, in a bad way. Loud Spanish was thrown around, I heard someone's chair screech back, and then I felt Oyeah's hand on my thigh again, a gesture that said, What's going on? I put my hand on top of his in reply. Whatever happens let's stick together.
Then a punch came from left field.
Bam!
It rocked me so hard the two left legs of my chair came off the ground and I smacked the floor sideways. I heard Oyeah cursing, and then his voice was muffled after someone put something over his mouth. A chaotic argument ensued amongst the Mexicans in Spanish, everyone trying to outtalk each other, and for a split second I thought I might've been able to escape. But I didn't even have a chance to get up, as someone dragged me across the floor and slung me against a wall. Hard. The back of my head had to be bleeding, I wasn't sure. My blindfold was still intact, and I was too scared to remove it. And then a sack swooped down over my head, darkening my world from a permeable black to an abysmal black robbed of all hope. The sack's drawstring yanked tight and threatened to suffocate me. But there was a mouth hole. I could breathe.
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