Lifestyles of the Rich and Shameless

by Noire

  “I am always loyal to you, Eric. You took care of me when they tossed me out. I am down with you until the end,” I said robotically. The truth was, I was deathly afraid of him now. I saw firsthand just what he had been capable of. I was telling him what he wanted to hear. The truth was if I could get out of his sight I would’ve run straight to the cops and given us all up.

  After my father’s beating, of course, Eric gave me some shit to get me high. I had shot up a half a bag of meth before Eric announced that it was time for us to leave for the exchange. My mother had called back. I was high so I was more at ease than I thought I would be. That is, until I saw my father. “Oh God,” I moaned when I looked at his battered face and body. He could hardly stand up as they led him outside. My father shuffled his feet like maybe his legs were fractured on top of the broken ribs. Everything on his body was grossly swollen. Finally he succumbed to the pain of his injuries and he fell.

  “Get up, old man. You only got a few more minutes with us. We get our money and you get to a hospital,” Eric said to him. I was silently praying that my father just kept his mouth shut and didn’t get smart. If Eric had hit him again, I’m sure he would’ve died.

  “Megan ... p-p-please. I need a doctor,” my father whispered.

  “Daddy, this is almost over. As soon as we get the money, you can go to a doctor,” I said in a soft tone. That garnered an evil look from Eric. I didn’t much give a fuck at that point.

  We all started out of the warehouse and that’s when all this shit came to an abrupt end. I can’t say that when I heard the shouts I wasn’t kind of relieved. I really was glad it was all over.

  “Put your fucking hands in the air!” I heard a loud booming voice call out.

  I whirled around, but it was too late for me to even scream or react. I was thrown down to the ground with a force that had knocked the wind out of me. I could hear the battering of feet around my head. The police were running in every direction. They were screaming out commands and telling people to put their hands up, drop weapons. It was truly like a scene out of television. There were guns drawn and when I looked up, I saw that they had Eric on the ground as well. He looked helpless and stupid all at the same time. A real strong sense of hatred flitted through me. Hatred for myself was probably stronger than anything I felt.

  “Eric Chambers and Megan Rich, you are under arrest for the kidnapping of Gavin Rich and the murder of Yvette Everett,” one of the heavily armed police officers said calmly. I knew my punishment for this crime wouldn’t be light.

  When I was hoisted up off the floor I noticed a big SWAT truck, FBI vehicles, and a ton of other law enforcement vehicles. We were in that fucking warehouse and never knew they were closing in on us. We were so fucking stupid and now we were caught.

  “Don’t hurt my daughter,” I heard my father say as they dragged me into a paddy wagon. He was on a stretcher getting ready to be loaded into a waiting ambulance. I couldn’t even say a word to him. I couldn’t even continue to look at him. I was too ashamed about what I had done to him. I knew I deserved nothing less than the whole book of the law to be thrown at my ass. I was never going to be the same shamelessly rich girl. All of the things I took for granted had flashed before my young eyes.

  “This is all your fault, Megan! You fuckin’ bitch! You set me up! I can’t go back to prison! I won’t go back to prison!” Eric was screaming.

  I just shook my head as a female officer pushed the top of my head down and loaded me into the back of the paddy wagon. Eric was screaming like a lunatic, sounding so stupid. One of the cops told him to shut the fuck up and when Eric got smart, the cop hit his ass with his baton. I kind of smiled at that. Anything that would cause Eric Chambers pain, I was all for it. It served him right. If he had just stuck to the original plan none of this shit would’ve happened.

  I learned while preparing for my trial that all of the mistakes Eric and I had made during the botched ransom kidnapping had backfired. First of all, Eric making those fucking calls from a landline so he could use that stupid voice machine allowed the police, who my mother had contacted right away, to trace the calls back to the warehouse. Then, Eric’s little goons thought they had taken the video from the only surveillance camera in my father’s office, but they hadn’t. There was a digital video recorder out back, so when the police investigated Ms. Everett’s murder, they were also able to see us all clearly on the video. They had the entire kidnapping on tape, with me standing there doing absolutely nothing about it.

  When the jury came back within two hours with a guilty verdict, I wasn’t surprised. Still, it hurt. Then to top it all off, I found out that Eric had struck a deal with the prosecution and pinned the entire incident on me. He had made up some story about me convincing him to kidnap my father so I could get insurance money. Eric got a lighter sentence for his cooperation. Me, the shameless rich girl who would’ve done anything for a man ... Well, I got just what I deserved.

  Life in prison without the possibility of parole.

  So as I sit here in my cell penning this story about one of the most shameless acts in history, I will send this message. Rich does not equal happy.

  Puttin’ Shame in the Game

  Noire

  1

  Like everybody else, Noble Browne had his shortcomings, but baggin-and-taggin the honeys wasn’t one of them. You see, Noble was a fifteen-second man. The kind of cat who could spot a chick, lay it down, and get the bizz over and done with in fifteen seconds or less.

  Nah, Noble wasn’t no Johnny-quick in the sheets, like you might be thinking. He was a traffic cop. One of them red-light, green-light dudes you see standing in the middle of a busy street. Arms all waving, whistles be blowing. You know, they be holding it down and making sure shit flows righteously and everybody stays in their lane.

  Noble had joined the police force straight out of college, and he was one of those super rookies you hear about every once in a while. It had only taken him two short years to slide into a spot on the narcotics squad, and when the lead detective came looking for a volunteer to go undercover, Noble knew he was the right man for the job.

  For five years Noble wallowed in the trenches pulling off crazy covert capers. He’d worked on some of the most dangerous undercover drug stings in Brooklyn, and the streets fit him like a hand in a glove. Noble looked like the streets, he spoke with the tongue of the streets, and he had the mad gorilla swagger of the streets too. In fact, he’d become a master at worming his way into airtight drug cells, gaining a criminal trust, and getting solid with the capos.

  As an undercover agent Noble jetted from territory to territory, dipping in on the sly—just long enough to get the goods on kingpins and connects—and then setting up the house of cards so it could get knocked all the way down.

  But out of nowhere a string of bad luck had choked Noble’s shit up, and his entire career changed. And when the smoke finally cleared, Noble found himself ass-out, forced off the narcotics squad. Dude ended up directing vehicular traffic in the city, which for a dedicated street cop like Noble was just half a step up from donut-eating desk duty.

  Now, check it. Being reassigned to traffic enforcement woulda prolly cold-crushed a lesser man’s ego. After all, helping blind old ladies cross the street was nowhere near as gully as the rush Noble had enjoyed when he was out there pitting wits against violent criminals in Brooklyn.

  But Noble wasn’t your ordinary type of guy, and none of that loss-of-status bullshit came close to fuckin’ with his self-image. Why should it? No matter how many grimy little shit balls life threw at him, Noble was an on-point nig who manned up and played the hand that was dealt him. In fact, he was an opportunist of sorts. He lived his life with his nose wide open, sniffing out the sweet opportunities that were buried deep in the shittiest of situations.

  So, instead of tossin’ tan goods to trap boys and checkin’ for the stick-up kids in the cut, these days Noble was all about making friends out of everyday New Yorkers who walked the
streets of midtown Manhattan.

  And with his hard-body thuggish good looks on a six-foot-six-inch, muscled up frame, Noble made a lot of friends.

  Especially with the women.

  Noble admired women. All women. He found something beautiful to behold about each and every one of them, and whenever he laid his sexy gaze on a lady he made damn sure she saw her worth reflected in his eyes.

  Noble liked to throw his rap down on the job, but he was also dedicated to his duties, because directing traffic was some serious shit. His area of responsibility was the busy intersection at Fifty-ninth Street and Madison Avenue in midtown Manhattan. It was a bustling commercial spot overflowing with educated chicks who had corporate jobs and ghetto needs.

  Noble became a student when he stepped into his grid box. He studied the pedestrians who scurried past him every day, and after just six months of chewing on a whistle he had seen it all.

  Dig, a real man could tell a lot about a woman just by the way she walked. Couldn’t no chick slang it like a New York City chick could, and watching the babes take on the borough, Noble sure liked what the fuck he saw!

  There were all types of honeys walking the streets too. Like the high-heeled, dainty ass-strutters, with legs and breasts galore. Noble had ’em pegged as coffee runners and paper shredders. Straight outta the corporate office pool. These were the cold-sexy speculators who kept their shit tight from head to toe ’cause they never knew when some banked-out CEO was gonna step off on his wife and come running to the office pool for a younger, finer replacement.

  And then there were those type A chicks. The corporate ladder climbers. Smart, driven, and determined to elbow their way into a world where dicks and nuts ruled. These women were real easy for Noble to spot. They wore their navy blue skirt suits and ankle-high tube socks folded down over their No nonsense panty hose. With Nikes and Reeboks laced tight on their feet, they dashed down the sidewalks of New York with powerful strides, always early, yet still in a damn rush.

  Noble respected these women, he just didn’t holler at ’em. There was never a chance to. They moved like men. Like they were dashing off to a big-ball-pissin’ contest or something. Shit, even with his college degree from Morehouse, a blue-collar brothah like Noble would have to chase one of them chicks like a cracked-out purse snatcher if he wanted to get his fifteen seconds of rap in.

  And then there were those women who were somewhere in the middle. These were the kind Noble liked best. They weren’t butter soft, but they weren’t man-hard, neither. They were just women. Some pretty, some just a’ight, a few were happy, a couple were sad, but almost all of them—the single ones anyway—had something in common.

  They were looking for a good man.

  More specifically, they were looking for a man who was holding it down in 3-D: a decent job, a nice big dick, and some damn good dental benefits.

  A man like Noble Browne.

  2

  The streets of Manhattan were live and poppin’ in the springtime, but Noble was a Crooklyn boy at heart. Brooklyn was his borough, his home. Noble had come up in East New York, the only son of a pawnshop owner. His mother had been a schoolteacher back in the day, but she’d been killed while working with her sister in Guatemala when Noble was just three. The two women had been out for an early morning jog when they were struck by a hit-and-run driver and left on the side of the road to die.

  Noble’s father had been a neighborhood fence with a smoove legitimate front, and as a tyke Noble had spent countless hours marveling at the treasures that desperate people hocked in exchange for the cool green cash his father never seemed to run out of.

  Bam Browne had been a man about his bizz, and he’d taught his only son the value of money—and its potential for growth—at a very early age. As a result, Noble had developed a jones for precious metals back in the eighties, and he hadn’t stopped investing in them yet.

  “This is for you,” Bam had told seven-year-old Noble one day as he handed the boy a heavy box with a burgundy crushed-velvet top. Ever since he was five Noble had helped inventory and chronicle the shop’s merchandise, and he was always fascinated by the guns, jewelry, and other valuable items that people traded for pennies on the dollar each day.

  Young Noble’s eyes had lit up as whatever was inside the box clanged and jangled beneath the lid. He’d been all smiles when he flipped the top open and found a huge jumble of forks, knives, and spoons that someone had pawned for a fraction of their worth, then failed to come buy back within the allotted time.

  Staring into the box full of silverware that had probably belonged to some dope fiend’s great-grandmother, Noble listened closely as his father explained that he could either keep the property as a souvenir, or sell it and put the money into his savings account.

  “I wanna sell it,” Noble had declared the moment his father finished talking. “I wanna sell it, but I don’t wanna put the money in my savings account, Daddy.”

  At first Bam had balked. “I thought I taught you better than that. You got a chance to get your hands on some real money and right off you wanna run out and spend it?”

  Noble had shaken his head quickly.

  “I don’t wanna spend it, Daddy,” he had assured Bam. “I wanna invest it.”

  “Invest it in what?” Bam had asked. And Noble, with his eyes glinting as he stared down into the crushed velvet box that held the keys to his future, said simply, “Gold, Daddy. I wanna buy me some gold.”

  Over the years Bam had taken great pleasure in passing his son various items of forfeited property and watching what the boy did with them. He was proud of the way Noble studied the pawned goods that were brought into his shop, assessing their value with a young, critical eye. Bam began learning about the financial markets just so he could explain the world’s monetary system to young Noble, and it made him grin when, instead of buying a bike or some new sneakers with the money he earned, his son jumped on lucrative investment opportunities, usually in precious metals like silver and gold.

  By the time Noble was fifteen he had a gold bar stash that was more valuable than most of the houses in their neighborhood, which to Bam’s dismay was going downhill fast. Crack was king on the streets of Brooklyn, and even the police were scared to go head-up against the violent drug gangs that the gutters were breeding everywhere.

  Bam no longer trusted the security of the large safe that was installed at his shop, so he recruited two of his homeboys to strap up and accompany him and Noble as they transported the boy’s precious metals to a local bank where he opened Noble’s very first safety deposit box.

  As the years passed Noble had opened up many other boxes at many other banks. He was caked up, and not just in metals that the government couldn’t trace, but in corporate stocks and bonds too.

  The next move on his chessboard was to find himself a good ruby. A woman who was special enough to bear the Browne seed and carry his name. Bam was sick, and he wasn’t getting any better. Noble wanted to give his father a grandchild while he could still enjoy one.

  He figured he was ready to settle down and get wifed up. He was planning to whip out a ring and propose to a special somebody on his thirtieth birthday, but the woman he chose was gonna have to be more than fine. She was gonna have to be worthy. A chick who wanted him not for the stash he had amassed, but strictly for his love. So, outta all the chicks he’d stripped and dipped over the years, Noble had finally narrowed it down to three girls in particular.

  Zsa Zsa, Kiki, and Malisha. Each of these women had something about them that kept Noble’s nose open, but the problem was it was way too hard to choose. All three of the honeys were neck-and-neck in the runnings. Beauty and booty wasn’t an issue. These girls had it straight locked on the outside, but figuring out the truth about their insides was gonna take some time and some skill.

  Noble felt like the chosen niggah on a game show. It was daytime TV drama up in his camp, and his mission was to solve the puzzle, spin the wheel, or roll the fuckin’ dice. Th
ere was no way around it. If he wanted to find a quality jewel, he was gonna have to dig deep in the dirt. Noble was gonna have to pull back the curtains on his triangle of honeys. He was gonna have to take a nice long peep behind door number one, door number two, and door number three.

  3

  “Good morning, Officer Noble ...” The cute little gap-legged chick giggled a merry tune as her body flowed across Noble’s intersection like warm molasses. It was a bright Monday morning and her name was Glorious. She had beautiful brown eyes and gorgeous dark-chocolate skin. She wore a white tank top and a pair of red crotch-choker jeans that accentuated her curvy waist and magnificently shaped ass. She grinned and tossed her long mane of curly hair, then winked and gave Noble a hungry, mischievous look.

  “S’up, baby,” Noble said, and with his whistle clenched between his teeth, he grinned right back. And grinning was all he did too. He knew this girl well. He had banged her a few times before he settled on the three honeys he was currently seeing, and as fine as this chick was, Noble was glad he had left her ass alone.

  Glorious was a freak. In more ways than one. She’d put marks on Noble’s body that he would take to his grave. Glorious worked the counter at a designer perfume store right up the street, and she had a body so spectacular that the first time Noble saw her he had blown his whistle, held his hand high in the air, and stopped traffic in both directions just so he could watch her cross the street without slowing her stroll.

  Of course he hit her with his smoove shit. Noble always timed his game by the blinking numbers that counted down the “walk” signal mounted on the traffic pole. In the fifteen seconds it had taken for Glorious’s pink-painted toe to leave the sidewalk, until she stepped her sweet ball of cocoa-colored curves up on the curb at the other side of the street, Noble had stopped traffic, gotten her name, her digits, and found out which borough she lived in.