Working Girls

by Treasure Hernandez

  Malek looked out the window and saw Halleigh hop into the passenger’s side of Tasha’s car. He had to admit, he did love her. He felt like a traitor for associating with people who had harmed her. But now wasn’t the time for him to stand there and beat himself up. He had a vendetta to take care of.

  When Jamaica Joe saw Malek heading back their way, he stood and threw a fifty dollar bill on the table. He then walked over to Malek. “Everything’s good?” Joe asked, noticing the distressed look on his face.

  Malek nodded. He wasn’t sure if he should tell Joe about the situation. He knew that Tariq was Joe’s man way before he’d entered the picture, so he wasn’t trying to create bad business by spitting venom on Joe’s right-hand man. I’ma handle that nigga myself when the time is right, Malek assured himself and then turned to Joe and said, “Yeah, man, everything is good.”

  “Good, then let’s get out of here. Time is money and—” Before Joe could finish his sentence, the sound of his car alarm going off caught his attention. “Fuck is going on?” he asked as he hurried outside.

  Malek ran out behind him and exchanged cold stares with Tariq as he passed.

  “ ’ Sup, dude?” Tariq asked him aggressively, peeping out how Malek had just mean-mugged him like he had a problem with him or something.

  Malek stopped in his tracks as Joe kept moving. Joe wasn’t concerned about what was happening between his two soldiers. He was only concerned about his car, or better yet, the goods he had inside his car.

  Malek stepped into Tariq’s space. “What, mu’fucka?” he said, blatantly showing him disrespect as he stared down at him. “You got a problem?”

  Before the confrontation could escalate, gunshots rang out in the air.

  “Oh shit! Joe!” Malek pushed past Tariq and ran outside, his pistol drawn.

  Tariq ran out after him, and they both started busting, no questions asked, at Jamaica Joe’s truck, his Viper car alarm blaring loudly as bullets whizzed through the air.

  The back of Jamaica Joe’s truck was open, and by the time they made their way over to the truck, blasting the entire way, Malek immediately peeped that the duffel bag full of bricks was missing. The gunfire was so hectic that everybody had to take cover. Joe, Tariq, and Malek were tucked behind a car in the parking lot, while Sweets, Manolo, and the Shottah Boyz ducked behind Joe’s truck.

  “Fuck! They got the joints,” Joe stated in a frustrated tone. He pulled a full clip out of his pants pocket and loaded it into his gun. “I’m tired of playing around with this gay mu’fucka!”

  Boom! Boom!

  Bullets crashed the windows of the car they were crouched behind, sending glass flying everywhere.

  Boom! Boom! Boom!

  Malek shot back. He saw Manolo peek from behind Joe’s truck and shot relentlessly at him.

  Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

  Jamaica Joe looked at Tariq, who was crouched low, hiding from the bullets, while Malek was a true soldier, standing his own against the hit squad. “Nigga, fuck you doing?” he yelled to Tariq. “Go get my bricks!” Joe reached over the car hood and fired a shot.

  By now Joe’s truck looked like Swiss cheese, but that was the last thing on his mind. He couldn’t afford to take this loss. He had to get his dope back.

  Tariq stood up and pulled out his gun. He shot in Sweets’ direction, making sure not to hit any of his crew, firing shots indirectly.

  Malek was a madman, taking out all of his anger on Sweets and his crew. What he really wanted to do was blast on Tariq’s ass, but that opportunity would have to present itself at a later date. Right now his target was Manolo. He’d hurt Halleigh too. And from this point on, Malek was getting ready to get at any nigga who had even looked at her wrong in the past.

  His gun spat, Boom! Boom! Boom!

  All of a sudden, Tariq stepped into Malek’s line of view. Malek’s gun was already aimed to hit him. All he had to do was pull the trigger. This nigga raped my girl, he thought as his finger twitched violently. This nigga took what should’ve been mine.

  Malek had never killed a man, but he was tempted to let Tariq have his whole clip. He froze and stared at Tariq, his gun pointed at his back. Tariq had no idea that Malek was behind him with deadly intentions.

  Jamaica Joe heard the sirens of the approaching police cars. They sounded as if they were right around the corner. He peered from behind the car, and his eyes bucked when he saw Malek aiming his pistol at the back of Tariq’s head. Fuck is he doing? Joe thought.

  Malek closed his eyes and pulled the trigger.

  CLICK! The sound of the empty clip rang out, but Tariq didn’t hear it.

  Sweets ran and jumped back into his truck when he heard the police sirens, and was pulling wildly out of the parking lot as Tariq feigned to bust wildly at him.

  Tears filled Malek’s eyes. He regretted wasting his bullets on Sweets. CLICK! CLICK! He continued to squeeze the trigger anyway, even though he knew he had no ammunition.

  Jamaica Joe ran up and put his hand on Malek’s shoulder. “Whoa,” he stated in Malek’s ear as he took the gun from his hand. He didn’t ask any questions, but he definitely wanted to know what was going on between Tariq and Malek. “Jacob!” he shouted, signaling to Tariq that the police were on their way.

  Since their truck was all shot up, tires and all, Tariq busted out a window to another car in the restaurant parking lot. He quickly hot-wired the car and pulled off with Jamaica Joe in the front seat and Malek in the back.

  Riding shotgun as Tariq maneuvered away from the shootout scene, Jamaica Joe turned around and eyed Malek suspiciously. “You a’ight, partna?”

  Malek leaned across the back seat and nodded his head, murderous thoughts racing through his mind as he sat behind Tariq. “Don’t like to leave business unfinished, that’s all.”

  “Oh, we gon’ finish that shit,” Tariq stated, referring to the beef with the South Side. He tossed his pistol in the back seat and threw his head back in relief. He took a deep breath, knowing he had just sparked some deep shit. “This shit ain’t over,” he added, pretending he was ready to retaliate.

  “No doubt,” Malek responded, referring to his unresolved beef with Tariq. Malek’s blood was boiling. He couldn’t control himself anymore. He slowly picked up Tariq’s banger and put it in his lap.

  Tupac’s song, “Hail Mary,” was in the CD player, and Malek asked Tariq to turn it up a notch, but it wasn’t because he wanted to hear the song. Once the music was up loud enough to conceal the sound, Malek cocked the pistol and pointed it to the back of Tariq’s dome.

  THE END

  (of FLINT book 2)

  . . . but the saga continues in FLINT book 3.

  Turn the page for a sneak peek at

  Teasure Hernandez’s

  Flint Book #3

  Coming soon . . .

  Chapter One

  Halleigh looked in the mirror and saw a person who bore no resemblance to the young woman she used to be. It seemed like just yesterday she was an excelling senior in high school dating the most popular boy at school, who just happened to be the biggest up and coming basketball star since LeBron James. The two of them shared champagne dreams of him signing a lucrative NBA contract and then moving the two of them as far away from the city of Flint as possible. But now, more than a year later, she was a high school dropout, trickin’ with johns for a living.

  “What happened to me?” It was the question Halleigh asked herself as she recalled what once was. Before her recent days of whorin’ and druggin’, her life had been all planned out, and not one of her plans consisted of being pimped out to the highest bidder. She was supposed to marry Malek—her rising superstar athlete, her savior—and live happily ever after. She had wanted it all: everything that being on the arm of an NBA star offered. She had been ready to accept her position as Malek’s wifey.

  Unfortunately, Halleigh’s real life didn’t live up to her fairy tale fantasy. Her life had gone from Heaven to Hell in the blink of an eye, a
nd she’d had enough. Halleigh watched the tears flow down her face as she stood in front of the mirror. They weren’t tears of force that came from heaving and overreacting. They were true tears of a broken, hopeless spirit, and they stained her face as she looked down at the gun in her hand.

  The day Halleigh copped the gun, she had actually intended to ask her get-high buddy, Scratch, to cop her some heroin instead. But then, on her way to meet Scratch at their spot in the alley—where they had initially met when he tried to rob her with a stick concealed to look like a gun—she noticed how people were looking at her now. Having been nothing short of a dime-piece, Halleigh was used to turning heads. She was used to the gawking of men and the envious glares of women. But this time, the attention was different. They were stares of disgust and pity.

  As Halleigh walked by a used appliance store, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the window. She stopped in her tracks and gasped at the frail sight before her. Slowly, her hands began to roam her face, just to confirm that the reflection was actually hers. Were those really her eyes she was looking into? Once upon a time those eyes had been full of life and energy, no matter how much negativity they had witnessed.

  Halleigh allowed her hands to roam down her body. Wearing tight-fitting jeans with knee-high stiletto boots and a sequined top, she thought she looked just fine, but underneath her hands she could feel almost every bone in her body. Taking a long, hard look at herself, Halleigh, too, was disgusted by what she saw.

  The store owner interrupted her when he came out of the store and asked if he could help her with anything. Without saying a word, she walked off crying. As far as Halleigh was concerned, what she had just seen wasn’t her, but a disintegrating corpse of her former self. She was as good as dead. She felt like death. That was the moment she decided she was better off dead than living the way she had been.

  When she asked Scratch to help her cop a gun, he wasn’t for it at first. He was trying to get high with Halleigh’s money, not waste it on a cold piece of metal. But after realizing that he could cop a gun and still have money left for a hit, he obliged her plea. She hadn’t told him what she intended to do with the weapon. Now, Halleigh stood with the gun to her temple. The cold steel was pressed against her clammy skin, and her body reacted by breaking into a cold, nervous sweat.

  Moments from her life flashed before her eyes—all the heartache and tragedy she’d experienced—and she had a drastic decision to make. To live or to die? To fight or to retreat ? To win or to lose? She was tired of struggling to survive in a city that had no love for her. She was choosing death, and there was no turning back. Halleigh put her finger just above the trigger . . .

  “Hal, what are you doing in there? Open the door!” Mimi’s voice came from the other side of the bathroom door, where Halleigh had been locked in for the past half-hour.

  Halleigh didn’t respond.

  “Halleigh?” Mimi called again. “Open the door. Why you locking doors around this mu’fucka? You know Manolo will have a fit.”

  Halleigh’s arm shook uncontrollably as Mimi continued knocking. “Just pull the trigger,” Halleigh whispered to herself. “All of the pain will go away. Just end it.” A small cry escaped her lips and she lowered the gun.

  “Halleigh? Are you all right? You crying? Open the door,” Mimi said, her tone now filled with concern. When Halleigh failed to respond, Mimi sensed that something was terribly wrong.

  “Tasha!” she turned around and yelled. “There’s something wrong with Halleigh!”

  Tasha’s head appeared from behind her bedroom door. She wore only a bra and panties. “What do you mean something’s wrong with her?” she asked.

  “I mean she’s in this mu’fucka with the door locked and she’s crying.” Mimi then began to whisper. “I don’t want the bitch to do nothing crazy. You know she just been through all that shit with Malek.”

  “Fuck you whispering for, like she can’t hear you?” Tasha asked as she walked up to the door and put her ear against it. She, too, could hear Halleigh whimpering.

  “Hal, open up the door so we can talk,” Tasha urged, now somewhat concerned herself. She picked up where Mimi left off knocking on the door. “Halleigh, listen. Just open up the door,” Tasha pleaded then turned around and stared at Mimi, her eyes wide with fright.

  “I told you,” Mimi said knowingly. After all the drama and heartache that Halleigh had experienced, Mimi wasn’t surprised that she was flipping out.

  Halleigh could hear them calling for her, but ignored it. She knew what she had to do, and she wasn’t going to let anything distract her from doing it. She lifted the gun to her head again and cocked the semi-automatic.

  Click, click.

  “Was that a gun?” Mimi asked, but before Tasha could reply, they heard a loud sound coming from the bathroom.

  Bam! Bam! Bam!

  Tasha pounded her open hand frantically against the door. “Halleigh, open the damn door!” Tasha screamed desperately.

  “Oh my God! She killed herself! She shot herself,” Mimi shouted in a panic. “Tasha, do something!”

  Tasha felt helpless. As the madam of the house, Tasha was supposed to keep all of the Manolo Mamis in line. This was why Manolo had appointed her to the job. But as a woman, Tasha also felt like she was supposed to protect them. She hated the fact that she might not have been able to protect one of the girls from her own self.

  Tasha mustered up all her strength and threw her body against the bathroom door. When she finally broke it off its hinges, she raced into the bathroom to find Halleigh laid out on the floor.

  The sound of the gunshot had been deafening as it ricocheted off the bathroom walls. The force had been so great that it knocked Halleigh off of her feet and onto the floor, where she lay, uninjured.

  “Fuck is you doing?” Tasha screamed as she rushed over to Halleigh’s side. Her shoulder throbbed from the impact of breaking into the bathroom door, but she disregarded the pain as she picked the gun up from the floor and handed it over her shoulder to Mimi.

  “Hey, watch how you handling that thing,” Mimi said, carefully taking it from Tasha’s hand.

  Tasha focused her attention on Halleigh, who was shaking like a leaf before her. Her cries built up in her throat as she struggled to contain her emotions. “Shhh, come here,” Tasha comforted her. “It’s okay, Hal. Everything is gon’ be all right. I’ve told you that everything is going to be all right. You just gotta hold on, ma,” she assured as she put her arms around her friend and rocked her slowly.

  Mimi appeared back at the doorway after burying the gun in a drawer full of lingerie. She looked down at a visibly shaken Halleigh. “Is she all right?” she asked Tasha.

  “Yeah, she’s okay. She’s gon’ be fine,” Tasha replied, still holding Halleigh tightly.

  Mimi had never been one to get emotional. The only thing that made her cry was missing out on money, so when Tasha looked up and noticed that Mimi’s eyes were full of tears, she outstretched her other arm to invite Mimi into the embrace. Mimi quickly filled in the circle and hugged Halleigh as well.

  “It’s time for this to stop,” Tasha stated, her voice cracking. “We can’t do this to ourselves anymore. Manolo is the only person getting something out of all this. He’s beaten Hal down to the point where she feels she needs to take her own life. This is bullshit. Nobody should have that much power over us. Nobody!” Tasha had to fight back her own tears. “You and me, Mimi, we’re a different breed. We’re strong. We can handle this life better than Halleigh. But look at her. . . . Look what this is doing to her.”

  Mimi nodded, but said no words as Tasha continued. “First it was the drugs, and now this.” Tasha shook her head.

  Halleigh was too distraught to reply. She had just attempted to take her own life—and she might have succeeded if not for the fact that her heroin-wasted muscles couldn’t even hold the weight of the gun to aim properly. Otherwise, her two friends would be weeping over a dead and bleeding corpse. But that�
��s what Halleigh felt like, anyway : dead, and bleeding on the inside.

  “Ain’t no way we leaving Manolo and living to tell about it,” Mimi stated. “You already know how he is, Tasha. So you tell me how we’re supposed to get out of this situation. And if we do, how we gon’ survive? All we used to is selling pussy. So what’s the difference whether we’re selling it for ourselves or Manolo? Selling pussy is selling pussy.”

  Tasha knew that Mimi’s words were true. They couldn’t just walk away from Manolo. He was Daddy, and would kill them before he let them leave. And even if she did find a way to pull the girls out from under Manolo’s clutches, what would be their means of survival? She was stuck between a rock and a hard place. But that didn’t deter her from wanting to escape from Manolo’s iron-fisted rule.

  “What are we gon’ do?” Mimi asked again.

  “Let me think. Damn!” Tasha replied, aggravated that she didn’t have the answers to Mimi’s queries on the top of her head. “For right now, just shut up and help me get Halleigh up from the floor.”

  Mimi gave her a questioning look, still wanting answers.

  “Look, all I know is that I’m gonna have us out of here by the end of the week,” Tasha stated.

  Halleigh looked at Tasha, and an emotion finally registered on her face. It was a look of surprise, laced with disbelief. “I promise, Hal,” Tasha reaffirmed. She didn’t know how she was going to pull it off, but she knew she had to at least try . . . for the sake of all of them.

  Chapter Two

  Tasha pulled down the visor to check her makeup in the mirror before she exited the car. As she walked into the Flint Police Department, a look of contempt crossed her face. She hated the police and everything associated with them, but desperate times called for desperate measures. Heads turned as the police officers admired her shapely legs, which stretched out beneath the red shirt-like dress she had ordered from a Fredrick’s of Hollywood catalog. It fit just tight enough to reveal the outline of her round behind.