Durty South Grind

by L. E. Newell

  Not fazed whatsoever, he looked at her from head to toe. “Let’s put it down to ya’ll like this here: I don’t be mixing business with pleasure; that is, on a regular basis.” He took the time to cram a rock into his shooter and put it to blaze before he continued, “And even if I did, you probably wouldn’t be able to recognize the difference anyway. Of course unless that someone happened to be you.” He smiled to himself as he watched her try to hide the blush that rose to her cheeks behind her hand. Oh yeah, he mentally patted himself on the back as he chalked her up as future prey.

  Sherry decided to kill the silly noise as she piped in from the backseat, “This next girl”—she took the time to clear her throat—“at the Holiday Inn has got a lot of dude in her.” She squinted her eyes, checking out his reaction.

  He took a long toke of the coke and hunched his shoulders as if to say “so.”

  Disregarding his so-called tough attitude, she snorted. “Just thought I’d let you know ahead of time; that’s all. Anyway, they call her Sissy and believe me when I tell you that she is a handful.” She shivered to emphasis her point.

  Was that supposed to bother me? I think not, he thought. “Sweetie, I don’t give a fuck if she thinks she’s Mrs. King Kong, as long as she keeps the ends straight, we gonna be cool.” He looked back and forth between the wannabe divas. “Do ya’ll feel me on this? Well, do you?” He put in a little extra growl to let them know that there wasn’t nothing soft about him if need be. From the way their eyes started shifting around, he knew they had caught the message loud and clear.

  They rode in silence, cruising down the Wesley Chapel exit ramp. It gave him the chance to get mentally ready to deal with the so-called dreaded man-woman Sissy, with whom the twins seemed to be in such awe. But to his surprise, when the light turned green, they streaked straight across the street. He arched his brow across the seat at Cherry. “What’s the deal, yo? The Holiday Inn is over that way,” he said, nodding to the other side of the highway.

  She purposely ignored him until she had veered around the Stop’n’Go gas station and started down the narrow thoroughfare leading to the Motel 6 before she gave him a sideways glance and smiled. “Figured we’d introduce you to a real sweetie before you tackle the monster lady.”

  Sparkle brushed away the smile they shared in the mirror, as he was about to get out of the car. He stepped out to check out the surroundings and heard them whispering. Damn girls always got some sneaky shit going on, he thought as he stretched his arms and found himself stifling a yawn.

  He’d gotten only a few hours’ sleep in the past couple of days. It definitely had to be the cocaine that had kept him going. He’d run through these two spots and get them to drop him off at Debra’s to get some much needed rest. If not, he’d fall out on his feet before long and that wouldn’t do at all.

  The gleaming twins jumped out of the car and nearly skipped-to-the-loo across the parking lot and practically ran up the stairs. He couldn’t help wondering why they’d gotten so hyped up all of a sudden. By the time he made it to the balcony walkway, they were ducking into a room four doors down. Harrumphing, he wiped a hand down his face before he proceeded to the room. He entered and took a step back because the room was full of geekers sitting and standing around with anxious looks on their faces.

  Godayum, all these folk this early in the morning, he thought. Carla, a jet-black sister with almond-shaped eyes, whose skin was so smooth and clear that it appeared to glow, nodded for him to come inside. She batted her long lashes up and down his frame. “Whatcha gonna do, playa; stand there all day? Get your fine ass on in here,” she said in a honey-coated voice.

  His cheeks rose in a smile as he looked down at her stunning, barely five-foot frame before he crossed the sill. He immediately felt uncomfortable with all the unfamiliar eyes on him and barely felt the soft hand she pressed into his shoulder. His eyes traveled slowly to her tiny multi-jeweled hand adorned with rings on every finger and bracelets of multiple designs and colors jangling along her narrow wrist. She daintily grasped his elbow and led him through the throng of staring geekers into the bathroom.

  She slowly closed the door, dashing the room into total darkness before she flicked the lights. He blinked a couple of times, adjusting to the sudden glare. He flinched slightly when she reached into her flowery silk blouse into a creamy pair of forty-something, deep chocolate whammies and extracted a wad of dollar bills. She batted those long lashes at him again and gave him a pearly white smile as she handed him the money and purred, “JJ and P hollered at me a little while ago and told me that you’d be on your way over here.”

  She caught the trail of his eyes and jerked her head back slightly. With a short snort she looked down at her chest and back up at him before she cocked her head to the side and smiled. “Damn, you gonna take the money or what?” She braced her hands on her hips. When his eyes didn’t divert from her breasts, she gave him one of those snake rolls.

  He zoomed in on the money and then into her face, doing his best not to look into those hypnotizing jet-black eyes. “Excuse me, shortie, but I really wasn’t expecting,” he paused and stuck his head around the corner of the door before going on, “Uh, all those folk I ain’t ever seen before sorta makes me feel a little uneasy; know what I’m saying?”

  She ran her eyes up and down his body, with her mouth twisted up in a slight smirk. “Hmmm, don’t get your drawers all up in a knot there, playa.” She flipped her wrist daintily and added, “It ain’t always like this early in the morning. It’s just that we got a red dog alert an hour ago, and I called most of my regular folk over so that it won’t be all that foot traffic roaming outside.”

  With obvious concern, he mouthed, “A red what?” He was confused.

  She cocked her head to the side and narrowed her eyes. “Aw damn, you must’ve just got around this way or something, but don’t worry you’ll definitely hear about them soon enough. Here, man, take this money, for god’s sake, and give me some stuff to keep these geeking muthafuckas from looking all crazy and shit. They been here for a minute, waiting for something to come through. Oh yeah, and make that four lots because with that alert, they gonna be hanging around for a while.”

  “Four lots, oh, aaah okay,” he said quietly as he took the bills while reaching into his jacket and placed the dope in her outstretched hand.

  To his surprise, she immediately took out one of the Ziplocs, magically produced a glass smoker’s bowl and lit up. She inhaled deeply on the rock before handing the bowl to him, which he politely refused with a wave of the hand. In a nonchalant manner, she hunched her shoulders, took a longer drag and said between gulps of breath, “You gonna count that, ain’tcha?”

  Snapping out of his mini daze, he said, “Oh yeah,” and started rifling through the bills.

  “It’s all there,” she said, smiling shyly up at him.

  He leaned away from her. “Girlie, I’m just—”

  She didn’t even let him finish and gently touched his elbow. “I was just testing you, playa; it’s always all there.”

  He pinched his nose and stared at her feeling sorta stupid, not knowing quite how to respond.

  Sliding her hand slowly down his arm to rub his hand, she smiled demurely and said, “Playa, don’t worry about it, you’ll get to know me in a little bit, and I know ya got to be stepping fast right now, so we’ll get a chance to kick it later on, aight?”

  He’d barely nodded okay before she was guiding him out of the bathroom and toward the twins, who were standing at the door ready to go.

  With her hand in the middle of his back, she nodded and winked at the twins. She let out a short laugh and reached around him to open the door. “I’ll be seeing you soon, playa. Hey, how ya’ll girls doing?”

  Ignoring whatever response the twins might have made, she turned back to the people in the room and said in a hard, all-business-like tone, “Okay, ya’ll muthafuckas line ya’ll asses up and let’s do this.”

  Turning to them, she
said, “I’ll see ya’ll folks later. As you can see the herd be waiting on a bitch and I got to get to serving them before they start to getting rowdy up in here.” She winked and smiled before she turned back into the room and closed the door.

  As he followed the twins down the stairs, it dawned on him that he hadn’t seen either of them use the phone while they were on the highway.

  As if she were reading his mind, Cherry smiled, raised the hem on her blouse and patted the cell phone hooked to the side of her skirt. “It ain’t magic, playa. She texted while we were on the exit ramp. Come on; it’s time to meet Miss Sissy.” The smirk she’d had earlier had returned. Feeling a little dumb, he jacked up his jeans and quietly followed them to the car.

  At that same moment, on the other side of town, the clicking from the soles of the shiny, wing-tipped tan gators dominated the sound in the room on the tiled floor in the dimly lit room as the lanky veteran street player paced back and forth. A mist of aromatic smoke swirled in a steady stream from the thick Cuban cigar clenched in the corner of his mouth, emanating from the shadowy figure sitting behind the large oval desk. Long manicured fingers, bejeweled with several expensive rings, tapped a slow beat on the highly glossed mahogany top. The soulful flow of Young Jeezy’s “I Luv It, ” was booming, adding sparks to the tension-filled room. The seriousness of the situation was proving to be a necessary evil but his thoughts were on the lovely sexpot, who was at that very moment cuddled up in his bed in the next room. It only added to his desire to get this talk over.

  “My man, why are you acting so nervous and shit?” his baritone voice boomed at the stalking figure pacing, as swirls of smoke turned into halos that rose from the shadows to evaporate into a cloudy mist that rose to the ceiling.

  The intensity in his voice caused the man to slow down his pace. “Yo, you haven’t known these dudes as long as I have, so you wouldn’t understand.”

  “What’s that got to do with us allowing these muthafuckas to disrupt our coin counting, unless of course you’ll turn heartless on me or something?” The mere thought of that got the man more pissed. Suddenly, he slapped down on the table so hard that sparks shot from the cigar cornered tightly in his mouth.

  He stretched his six-foot-five frame. “You ain’t telling me I’ve got to start worrying if you can handle your end of things?”

  The stalker blinked several times before he spoke. “Man, these dudes ain’t nothing to play with. Either one of them would blow your brains out at the drop of a hat with the same expression as if they had spit in your face or shook your hand.”

  His grit was solid stone. “You telling me that I can’t handle them niggas? Muthafucka, get a grip. This is my turf and ain’t no nigga gonna do what the fuck he wants to on it. Fuck them, shit, fuck them straight up. You with me or what? Let me know right muthafucking now.” Unknown to the stalker, an itchy finger tightened around the trigger of the nine-milli that was aimed straight at his stomach.

  The stalker nodded two, three times and pushed the black fedora back on his head. One thing was for certain, taking over the hustling lanes from this particular crew wasn’t going to be easy.

  As the insane eyes in the devilish face leaned out of the shadows, he began to wonder which side of the fence was safer. Even though he was nodding in agreement, in his heart he knew that neither side was.

  Beverly pondered over the information one of her prize detectives had just revealed to her. She was faced with an unusual dilemma, with being the top cop to protect and serve the people of her beloved hometown. As a friend and a woman reared in the ghetto, she owed an enduring loyalty to her closest childhood buddies. To help send either one or all three back to prison would be a stressful task she couldn’t possibly enjoy; she didn’t really think she could do it. As she absorbed the information in one ear and the humming of the police ticker in the other, she started daydreaming.

  She smiled at the heartwarming memories of three snotty-nosed, nappy-headed ruffians mercilessly picking at her in the sandbox at the kindergarten on Candler Road in Decatur. They were the exact same trio that used to yank her plaits and snatch her dessert off her tray in elementary school, laughing the whole time at her protest. The same trio that used to raid her nana’s grapevine and peach trees. Oooh, how hair-pulling mad she’d get at them for all of those childhood antics.

  She became overflowed with warmth, when she recalled that same terrible trio that used to beat up anybody that even thought about bothering her. Any one of them would rush to mow the grass, rake the leaves or carry the grocery bags from the store. At least one was always there for her during the dramas of her teenage adolescence. She could still feel the ache in her jaws from smiling so hard when she was the only girl at her senior prom with three handsomely clad tuxedoed escorts. And of course the overwhelming joy from when they paid for her college tuition every year at Georgia State University.

  Her private reverie was abruptly snapped when the deputy chief entered her shade-drawn door unannounced. She made a mental note to discipline him the next time they were alone, but at the moment her mind was too occupied and she certainly wasn’t going to discuss those affairs with him. There were too many others within earshot and she had a self-control policy not to try to embarrass her subordinates out in the open; especially those that had a lot of clout on Capitol Hill. And this certain deputy had plenty of that.

  She started feeling like she was stuck between rocks when she saw that stern look on his face. Even though she was well familiar with their street names that were tossed around the precinct, she was just as aware that she was probably the only one there who knew about her connection to them. Talking about skeletons in the closet, whew.

  She loved all three of them dearly, especially Sparkle, who happened to be the playground, elementary and high school sweetheart, as well as the high school sports star turned hoodlum, or vice versa. He was the curly-haired mutt who had gotten her cherry. She blushed whenever she thought of that wonderful night so long ago. The fast lane reps of her three amigos had grown right along with her rise in the law enforcement ranks.

  She’d lost count of how many times she’d put her career on the line alerting the two Johnnies about raids on their drug and pimping turfs. How she had managed to keep their closeness a secret for all of these years was still a mystery to her.

  That loyalty was in contrast to her belief in keeping the streets of Atlanta crime free; still it had remained strong her entire career. For years she’d maintained a private scrabble telephone that only those knuckleheads had access to with the main criteria being that there be no conversations about their criminal activities.

  As she listened to the deputy chief and other detectives discussing strategies for dealing with the recent Jamaican drug invasion, she really felt the weight of maintaining that loyalty. As the horror stories of the drug wars continued to trickle in, she really didn’t know if she could do it any longer.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Getting to Know the Crew

  When Sparkle and the girls pulled around to the backside of the Holiday Inn, the side facing the express-way, there was a short stocky girl leaning on the ice machine with her arms folded, staring off into space.

  Her expression hardened when they stepped out of the car. Sparkle stepped behind the girls studying shawtie as they approached. She was dressed in a faded blue jean outfit with a Braves baseball cap turned backward on a head of close-cropped hair. Even though she had a real baby face, her mannerism was straight-up dude.

  She pushed off the machine and started walking with a bow-legged strut in the opposite direction, ending at the last room on the row. She didn’t wait for them but she did leave the door open when she went into the room. They walked directly in behind her.

  “Yo, J and P called over an hour ago about ya’ll being on the way, so what the fuck took ya so long?” She spit in a husky voice that didn’t come close to matching her barely five-foot frame. Matter of fact the way she was packed in that little body, i
t would be very easy to envision her as a midget.

  She was leaning against the sink like she consumed the whole room. Feeling the twins’ scary vibes hitting him from both sides, he gave them a short-gritted snort and stepped in first.

  He lifted his head in greeting as he walked directly toward her. She certainly didn’t appreciate anyone approaching her like they were disrespecting her gangster, so she hung her arms along her side like she was ready to go to war. Her defensive posture made him pause for a brief moment, but he shrugged it off and reached into his jacket to take out the package.

  As she reached for it, he saw out of the corner of his eye a tall shape emerge out of the bathroom. His eyes got a lot bigger when he saw that the figure was that of a true Amazon. A six-three Diana Ross was the only way he could describe her with those big eyes smiling at him.

  When she spoke, it came out just the opposite of Sissy’s, squeaky and sweet, as she looked him up and down. “Mmm, how ya doing there, handsome?”

  He was so stunned by the contrast of the two women that he barely noticed when Sissy slapped a wad of bills in his hand at the same time that she extracted the dope out of his grip.

  While he examined the wad of wrinkled bills, Sissy turned to the basin and took two bundles out of the package.

  Long’n’Lovely massaged his shoulder ever so gently. “So you’re Sparkle, huh? I done heard some good things about you, sweetie.”

  Sparkle admired her long frame for a moment before breaking out in a smile as he replied, “Oh yeah, that’s nice to hear. So what’s your name, princess?” His eyes started to glitter at her vision.

  She held a blush and glided her long curly nails under her chin and slowly rolled her eyes away from his lustful stare to look over Sissy’s shoulder. She squinted at the rocks Sissy had spread on the basin and turned back to him purring, “Oh, I’m sorry; my name’s Lisa, at your beck and call,” with a beautiful smile and graceful curtsy.