by Noire
And Menace had some shit with him too. He’d been wrongly accused and he refused to take any heat from Pearl, so he bit back every single time she attacked.
Pearl mean mugged his ass. She knew he’d seen her standing there the whole time, but he’d igged her until he was done talking and had dismissed the young’uns for the day.
“’Sup, Pearl,” he finally responded. “I’m in here running shit. What it look like?”
His voice was deep and butter-smooth, and every time Pearl saw him she couldn’t help but notice how much he’d matured since the day her father took him in. Menace had graduated from Manhattan Community College and gone on to Columbia University, where he studied finance and economics. He’d gotten a prime job, then opened a financial consulting firm, all while still putting in work part-time at the center for Irish.
Being around the young’uns and staying close to the streets had kept Menace hard-nosed and hood certified, but he was also a thinking, well-educated black man, the kind of cat that Pearl and many other black women found intensely attractive.
But even with all his accomplishments, his rugged, handsome face, and that ferociously sexy body that could break concrete, Pearl couldn’t forgive him. She let that shit he was talking slide right off her then rolled her eyes and gave him the shitty face.
“How long you been back in Harlem?”
He shrugged. “A minute. I went to the cemetery on Tuesday, and I came by and opened up the center day before yesterday.”
Pearl swallowed a knot of sorrow, remembering the taste of grave dirt in her mouth. She wasn’t strong enough to go back to that cemetery yet. It was too soon. Not yet.
“Well, I remember telling Cole,” she said, shaking her sorrow off, “to make sure this place was locked up tight after the funerals. Who gave you permission to bust up in here and open it again?”
Menace stared at Pearl for a quick second, then shrugged again.
“I didn’t need no permission, Pearl. And I didn’t bust the place open neither. My name is on the lease and I got a key. Your pops made me a partner in the bizz years ago, but your selfish ass was prolly too wrapped up in your own dreams to notice.”
“I was busy in college, Menace.”
He shrugged. “I went to college too, yo. But I ain’t the type to stray too far from my fam. I got my degree and then stuck around out of gratitude for the man who raised me. That’s more than you can say.”
Pearl got heated. The only reason she had stayed away for so long was to better herself, and who the hell was this gaming niggah to cast judgment on her anyway?
“Look, I didn’t come by here to kick shit around with you—”
“So,” he cut her off with a hard glint in his eyes, “why your lips still flapping then?”
Pearl eyed him. His fine face was tight and he was giving her the killer glare.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” she said, squaring up to him. “Why you looking at me like you got some mafia in you? I’m the one who should be catching a damn fever! I’m the one who lost my whole fuckin’ family!”
Menace closed the gap between them in two strides. He got up in her face and Pearl got ready to fuck him up. This niggah mighta been a hand-to-hand martial arts champ in the tristate area, but he’d never seen Pearl get down.
But when he grasped her upper arms and pulled her close enough that she could smell the cologne coming all off his neck, fighting him was the last thing on Pearl’s mind.
“We lost our fuckin’ family, Pearl! We lost them! Irish was the only daddy I ever had. And Zeta was so good to me she woulda made my dead momma smile. You so fuckin’ selfish, you know that? It’s always about you. I lost just as much as you did in that fire, Pearl. Just as fuckin’ much!”
Even though her heart was bamming in her chest, Pearl forced herself to calm down. She knew all about the love that Irish and Menace had shared. Each of them had found something in the other that they’d been lacking, and even in her anger Pearl didn’t wanna shit on that. Their relationship had been too important to Irish for her to diss it, and Pearl knew her father would have been upset with her for that.
But it pissed her off that even after all this time she still had conflicting feelings about Menace. What they had shared in his rented room on a rainy night so long ago had been magical and special. There was no fuckin’ way he coulda been faking all that hot loving he had put on her, or lying when he whispered all those sexy words of love in her ear. No other man had ever made Pearl jump for the stars or kiss the sun the way Menace had, but the way he had dished her off afterward, and the shocking vision of him standing in her family’s bathroom humping with her naked twin sister chilled Pearl down in her soul. While her heart told her one thing, her logic told her something altogether different, and Pearl knew she was eventually gonna have to choose between the two.
“I know you loved my family, Menace. And I’m not trespassing on that.”
She swallowed hard and looked deep into his brown eyes. He was still gripping her arms. Their bodies were touching and she could feel the heat and electricity that flowed between them, even when they were mad.
“So let me go, Menace. I ain’t got no beef with you. I came back to see if I could find my sister and to settle some family business. That’s all. I didn’t come here looking for no fight. I came looking for Diamond.”
But Menace didn’t release her and he didn’t move away. He stood looking down at Pearl as their midsections kissed and her sweet lips almost grazed the hard muscles of his chest. As mad as he was, Pearl had him wide-open. He was bent on her, and it took a lot of effort and control for him to ease off when his dick was straining and his heart was thumping. All for her.
“Pearl,” he said, his voice soft and low. There was no anger left in his eyes. Only love and pain. “I don’t know how to say this in a way that ain’t gonna fuck you up … but its something I know I gotta say …”
Pearl stepped back, alarmed by what she saw on his face.
“Say what??”
“Diamond is gone, baby. She’s long gone. Her body was found at a dump site a couple of weeks ago and they’re holding it at the city morgue until a family member claims it.”
It took Pearl a second to understand exactly what he was saying, and when she did she broke all the way down.
“Diamond is dead? And you didn’t tell me?” she wailed, her heart shattering in pieces all over again. Grief slammed into her chest, and then extreme anger surged through her whole body and before Pearl knew it she had slapped the shit out of Menace and gut-punched him too.
“Pearl,” he whispered.
Her fingers were poised for a jab and moving toward his exposed throat when he caught her hand and stilled it in his big fist.
“I’m sorry, Pearl,” he whispered gently, pulling her close. There was nothing but love and compassion in his arms as he rested his chin on top of her head and rocked her. “I know it’s a shock, and I tried to tell you as soon as I found out … but ya man didn’t want you to know. He was blocking. He answered your phone and said finding out about Diamond would kill you ’cause you wasn’t strong enough to take it.”
Pearl allowed herself to melt into Menace’s chest.
“Nobody told me!” she wept pitifully. “Nobody told me a goddamn thing!” Diamond … Diamond … she had come in this world with her twin and Diamond had left it without her. “Oh my God … Diamond … where is my sister? I wanna see my goddamn sister!”
Menace shook his head. He knew that was impossible. Diamond had been found surrounded by tons of rotting trash. Her body had decomposed and been picked over by bugs and rodents.
“I can take you down to the morgue but there’s nothing to see, Pearl. Whoever killed Diamond tossed her in with the trash and sanitation took her to the city dump. Like I said, I wanted you to know. I tried to call you but ya man was blocking hard … he didn’t want you to know.”
Cole. A cold anger seeped into Pearl’s heart. That selfish mother fucker
. Carlita had called it right about him. She’d tried to warn Pearl about fucking with possessive-ass men like Cole.
“They eat your pussy real good one time and think they own you forever,” Carlita had joked, and in Cole’s case she was dead-on.
Pearl knew Cole had kept her away from her sister on purpose. He was small-minded and jealous of Menace, no matter how many times Pearl told him they hated each other. Cole just wanted her all to himself, no matter what it cost her.
But grief quickly overwhelmed her, blocking out her anger. Deep in her heart Pearl had known something bad had probably happened to Diamond. Her sister had her faults, but there was no way in fuck she would have missed that heartbreaking family funeral if she had been able to make it. With all the grieving Pearl was doing for the girls and her parents, she had pushed her fears for her sister into the subconscious of her mind and hoped for the best.
All that horrendous pain came rushing back to the surface now, though, and Pearl slid down Menace’s body as her knees buckled and she cried loud, gut-wrenching tears for her twin.
“I’m sorry, baby” was all Menace could say as he lifted her to her feet and stood strong with her close in his arms as he tried to comfort her. “Cry if you need to, Pearl. I know it’s hard baby, but it’s gonna be okay.”
Pearl cried until she was cried out. She was grateful when Menace led her to the small bedroom Irish had furnished in the back of the center and laid her down. He took off her shoes then slid in next to her and held her in his arms. He kissed her hair and rubbed her back as he murmured soothing words in her ear.
Pearl could only lay there and whimper. She was drunk with grief, but also feeling safe and warm, secure in the arms of the only man she had ever loved.
Later, when her tears had finally dried up, Pearl had gotten up to pee and wash her face. When she came back in the room Menace was sitting up on the bed waiting for her.
“You okay?” he asked gently.
“Yeah,” Pearl snapped. She hated herself for breaking down in front of him. For being so weak when she had big things to do. “I’m straight. You can leave now.”
“Nah,” Menace said, standing up and getting his attitude on too. “This is my shit, not yours. You can get gone.”
Pearl sighed, but she couldn’t raise her eyes to look at him. “I’ll be gone after I get what I came for, Menace. I need time to go through my father’s papers. I need to take a look at some of his files.”
“For what?”
Pearl sighed again. “I have to find out what my father had going on when he died. Who he was dealing with, what kind of dirt he was trying to clean up. Those criminals murked my family for a reason, Menace. Either my father had something on them, or he found out something they didn’t want him to tell. They didn’t kick in the door and burn down the house just because he was helping young dudes come up proper. Something else was going down. Something shiesty. I need to know who my father was dealing with, and what he was after.”
Menace shook his head. “If your pops wanted you involved with that kinda grime he woulda put you on, Pearl. Irish always protected you from the slime. Just let shit rest, okay? The guilty will get theirs, no doubt about it. Just go back to D.C., where you got a good job and a good life. Leave the thug life for the thugs like me to figure out.”
Pearl exploded. She couldn’t believe the shit he was talking.
“Somebody killed my whole fuckin’ family, Menace! You expect me to just accept that shit and not try to find out who and why? Them niggahs is probably walking up and down the street real chill right now! Looking right through the front door and laughing at us, ’cause they know they got away with murder! You might be able to lay down on that, but I can’t.”
It was Menace’s turn to explode.
“I ain’t laying down on a goddamn thing! You don’t know shit about me, Pearl, or shit about what I do! Irish was my street daddy, and you can believe I got eyes and ears out there just waiting for a niggah’s head to pop up so I can slice it off! What you think I came back here for? I’ma find out who shit on your fam, but it was your pops who trained me. I was a soldier in Irish’s army! He warned me about charging in all crazy for get-back, Pearl. He taught me to think when I was dealing with shit on the streets ’cause Irish got his payback by saving just one more kid, by snatching one more black boy outta the gutter. That’s how your father handled shit, Pearl. He hit back like that.”
“That was back then,” Pearl said as she heard the words her father had spoken to her from the grave.
Get even, Daddy’s Pearl! I want you to get even!
“Daddy mighta felt that way back then. But everything is different now. Like I said, I need to get in his office. I wanna check out a few things.”
“Look, I shut my business down for a month, just to come here and find out who killed your father, and to figure out what I’m gonna do with the rest of my life. I ain’t got nothing but time to piece shit together. If there’s anything in Irish’s files that links back to his killers, trust me, I’ll find it and handle it. So go home, Pearl. Go on back to ya little fairy-tale life in D.C. with that soft, comfy niggah Cole.”
Pearl stared at him hard, and all the pain and determination she felt was contained in one look.
“I’m getting in that office, Menace. With or without you.”
Menace shrugged. He had seen that look of do-or-die determination before. In the eyes of Pearl’s father. He reached into his pocket and tossed her a key.
“Then I guess it’s with me, then. If there’s any information in those files, then we’ll have to find it together.”
Seated at her father’s desk, Pearl spent the next three hours going through the file cabinets in his office. Irish had been even bolder and badder than she’d known. Like Menace had said, Irish had always taken great care to shield Pearl from all the shady shit that went down in Harlem. He was wise and forward thinking like that, and didn’t want nothing that was going down on the Harlem street scene to jump up and bite Pearl later.
Irish had explained that Pearl might one day need to qualify for a top-level security clearance, and he didn’t want anything about his former life of crime or his current business rivals to stand in the way of her dreams.
Pearl had been happy to stay out of Harlem as much as possible at her father’s command, but that meant she knew very little about what had been going on in his life that might have made somebody want to murk him. The things she was learning about her father right now made her head spin. Irish had a few top contacts at the Bureau, and for a moment Pearl wondered if he had done something or pulled a few strings to help her get into the FBI Academy.
She read through the folder eagerly, and to her amazement her father had been meticulous with his shit. Irish had kept detailed notes and handwritten files on his enemies and their ventures. While fighting for his community he had been in recent contact with his high post political connects all over New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Philadelphia.
One name that kept coming up in Irish’s notes over and over again was some cat called Mookie Murdock. Irish’s log revealed that he had asked one of his connects to watch Mookie closely, and there was a detailed file on him and his crew, complete with several color photos labeled with names, and brief notes on each person’s habits and criminal characteristics.
Seeing the underworld through her father’s eyes, Pearl learned that Mookie was a local kingpin who was responsible for all kinds of ill shit concerning drugs, gambling, identity theft, and racketeering. But unlike other urban linchpins, Mookie was a virtual recluse. He kept himself out of sight and almost out of mind.
“What do you know about a dude named Mookie Murdock?” Pearl asked Menace without taking her eyes off the file.
“That nig’s nasty bizz,” Menace said, frowning. “Your father hipped me to him a little bit. Mookie runs a lot of shit, but primarily he’s a gambler. They say he’s one of the fiercest primetime underground betters in the tristate area. Mookie p
uts grand stakes on sporting events, boxing matches, horse races, football, and basket ball, but he don’t just stop there. He’ll bet on anything as long as the odds are good. And from what your pops said, Mookie don’t just bet like no ordinary hustler, either. He gambles big. Real big. But always from a distance. A niggah like Mookie likes to keep clean hands, so he gets his manz to do all his dirty work.”
Pearl absorbed that info as she read through the file further. Irish’s notes indicated that Mookie ran an illegal numbers game, took wagers under the table at the racetracks, and had a slew of trainers and professional athletes, especially boxers, who were in his pocket and got paid good money to throw games and matches.
And from the rest of the stuff Pearl read, it seemed like Mookie also had a distinct cruel streak running through him too.
“So that’s why Diamond got all her fingers smashed …” Pearl bit her lip and mused as she read a copy of a letter that her father had sent to a federal law enforcement agency some months earlier. In the letter, Irish described an incident where his daughter had nearly had her fingers cut off after pulling a scam in a Connecticut casino for a man named Mookie Murdock. Pearl remembered Diamond getting fucked up and ending up with both her hands in casts, but Diamond had given her so many bullshit versions of how it happened till Pearl couldn’t keep the stories straight.
But it was all right there for her to read now in black and white. Irish’s letter said that Diamond had been caught skimming some illegal casino bank, and as a concerned private citizen and community activist he was pressing the authorities to investigate the business dealings of Mookie Murdock.
Even good men had their limits, and Pearl’s father had had his. Irish hadn’t so much as thrown a cigarette butt on the sidewalk for over fifteen years. He was truly a reformed man. But if Mookie thought Irish was gonna lay down on what had been done to his child, he was dead wrong. Irish didn’t fuck around when it came down to his daughters, and he’d vowed to put a stop to the kinda shit that Mookie had done to Diamond and what he was doing to their community in general.