by Noire
Menace was screaming along with the other riders, and holding on to the safety rail for all he was worth. The wheel was turning so fast that he flipped head over feet in his metal cage, banging his shoulders, knees, and arms, and flinging bile and acid into his throat, making him throw up.
The wheel slowed slightly, and Menace clenched his stomach muscles and tried to fight the wave of dizziness that gripped him, but just when he thought shit was under control, two things happened: the Ferris wheel picked up speed again and the door to his compartment flew open.
Screaming, Menace went sailing out into the warm summer air, and as his body tumbled in a free fall toward the ground, there was only one thing on his mind.
Pearl!
He sat up in the bed before he could hit the ground.
Pearl. Goddamn Pearl.
A wave of nausea gripped him. His stomach heaved, the bile rising in his mouth really real, not a dream. He stumbled into the bathroom and hugged the toilet, and when there was nothing left inside him, he pulled himself to his feet and looked in the mirror and immediately he knew.
Slick-ass Pearl. She had fucked him up.
The details of the night before came back to him. Menace had never felt so sick or slept so deep in his life. He didn’t know what she’d given him, but he knew she’d given him something strong.
And he knew why too.
Splashing cold water on his face, Menace rinsed his mouth with Listerine and took a piss. He was gonna get that damned girl. For real. It was Saturday, and he could pretty much figure out where she was and what she was doing. And ten minutes after waking up with Pearl’s name on his lips, he jumped in his whip and once again headed over to the Primero Hotel to find her.
So far revenge was feeling sweet as hell to Pearl, and very soon her mission would be complete and the souls of her people could finally rest. The satisfaction she felt just from knowing that Mookie’s henchmen would never break down another door and terrorize another innocent family was like a ton of boulders being lifted from her heart. But there was still a small, or rather a large matter that had to be attended to.
Although Pearl had annihilated four of Mookie’s main manz with her very own hands, the ultimate satisfaction would come when she’d taken it to the head with the capo who had actually ordered the hits.
Losing her father and her daughter and her sister and her niece was horrific, but it was the brutal shit that had been done to her mother that had Pearl crying oceans. Zeta had been a beautiful woman who Mookie had used to break Irish’s spirit before taking his life. The degrading shit that Mookie ordered inflicted on Zeta with spiked metal dicks and hammers let it be known that shit was personal between him and Irish. Dicking his woman in the mouth had made it so, and Pearl was about to make sure shit got real personal for Mookie too.
See, some years earlier another New York City family had been victimized in a crime that had a very similar MO as the one Mookie had perpetrated on Pearl’s family. Before she left D.C., Pearl had asked Carlita to search the FBI’s crime database for any home invasions that came close in scope to the one that took her family. Together they located the unsolved case of Marlo and Tricia Honore, an East Harlem couple who had been the victims of an assault with details that were very similar to those in the murder of Pearl’s family.
In the Honore murders, Marlo had been an assistant prosecutor who was working on a number of cases involving gambling, drugs, and prostitution in East Harlem. He was working with an unknown informant and on the verge of obtaining some solid information that would take down an empire, when a crew of goonies pulled a kick-door on his family.
Marlo’s five-year-old daughter had been having a birthday sleepover that night, and somehow he had heard them coming and managed to hold the goonies off with a small caliber pistol while his wife hid their daughter and four of her young cousins. The girls were stuffed under the subfloor in various rooms of the Honore house, as Marlo and his wife were bum-rushed and attacked.
All kinds of unmentionable shit had been done to the Honores as their girls cowered out of sight under the wooden floorboards shaking in horror and fear. As in the Baines case, Marlo’s wife had been tortured and sexually violated, her mouth brutally torn apart with a jagged metal object. The murderous thugs had poured gasoline everywhere and set the house on fire before leaving, and all five of the poor babies hiding under the floorboards had either burned to a crisp or suffocated to death.
The more Pearl learned about Mookie Murdock and compared the two cases, the more she was convinced that, like her family, the couple and their girls had been killed by his order. Mookie was running shit from one end of Harlem to the other, and the details of both cases had his personal stamp of sadism all over them. Pearl was almost sure that Mookie had put a hit out on both families.
It had taken quite a bit of work, but hunkered down in her room a few mornings earlier at the Sunset Motel, Pearl had gone through the Honore file and called the mothers of those four little girls. Nobody had ever been brought to justice for murdering their little girls, and the families had never gotten any retribution or any closure. Even after three years, the four mothers were still grieving, and sitting on the dirty floor of her motel room, Pearl didn’t have to do a whole lot of talking to convince them that Mookie had burned and killed their precious babies, or to persuade them to get on board with her program to take him down for good.
Carlita’s niece Zoe was working as the trainer for the East Coast basketball team playing in the Classic, and she was more than willing to help out too. Pearl would need a couple of solids from Zoe to pull this thing off, and Zoe was more than down to help her out. At Pearl’s request she had arranged a car and driver to get the Honores to the Primero Hotel when shit popped off, and then to get them back to East Harlem again. All Pearl had to do was set shit up lovely and make sure the timing was just right.
As with everything else, Pearl had planned her details down to a tee, but where Yoda, Donut, Tank, and Piff had been relatively easy to get next to, nobody got close to Mookie Murdock without his permission.
Mookie had rented himself a penthouse suite, and according to Yoda, Mookie was the only one with the elevator code, and he changed it each time he let someone up. Pearl had thought about rappelling in off the roof, but the penthouse had no balcony, and all that swinging on a rope and breaking through a glass window shit only went right half the time. There was a real risk that both her damn legs woulda been broken trying to bust through all that thick-ass Plexiglas, and she would have probably ended up dangling outside his suite bleeding and cracked all the hell up.
She’d also considered posing as room service again or maybe even housekeeping, but Mookie was a highly suspicious niggah, and if he didn’t order it or ask for it, he’d smell a rat if you tried to force it on him.
It was the smelling of a rat that gave Pearl an idea. Just thinking about it was nasty and it damn sure wasn’t something she had planned on doing, but if this was the only way she could get up in Mookie’s suite, then the foul deed just had to be done.
Pearl tried to keep her mind blank as she slid her card key through the slot and reentered Yoda’s room. For a moment she swore she could smell that niggah rotting behind the wall, but her experience told her that Yoda hadn’t been dead long enough to put out no real funk.
Pearl’s hands were steady as she used a small pocket tool to loosen the screws on the condenser grating. She kept her focus strictly on what she was doing and why she was doing it, and refused to think about what was there on the other side of the grille.
Digging around in a dead man’s pockets wasn’t something Pearl was anxious to do, but thankfully she didn’t have to. Yoda’s phone was attached to his belt, and Pearl braced herself before rolling his dead ass to the right, then felt around on his waistband and unsnapped his clip.
Minutes later the grille panel was screwed back in place, Yoda was once again out of sight, and Pearl had exactly what she needed to get next to Mookie. Of
course the niggah’s cell phone was just as dead as he was, but the charger was still plugged in near the nightstand where Yoda had left it, and she waited patiently until there was enough life in the battery to process a call and access the contact list.
Back now. What’s the code.
Is what she texted to Mookie once Yoda’s phone went live, and to her relief she got a text back almost right away.
*87352* Hurrup.
Pearl hurried all right. With her Attack Pak stuffed with handy shit, she took the main elevator to the lobby and pressed the button for the penthouse elevator. She used the code Mookie had texted her to gain access to the private elevator, and once she was inside and the doors had closed she immediately sent Mookie another text.
Wait. 4got my shit. Be a minnit.
Then Pearl went to work. It was an easy jump to reach the emergency exit panel overhead, and Pearl lifted herself through the small passageway with no problem. The elevator shaft was dark and drafty, and the cables creaked as the car skipped past the other floors and rose steadily toward the penthouse.
The elevator came to a stop, and crouched on top of the dusty car Pearl held her breath as the doors opened directly into the living room of Mookie’s phat penthouse suite.
“Fuckin’ stupid Yoda … dumb ass musta got off the elevator …” Pearl heard a big voice say as the empty elevator stood open on Mookie’s suite. Game time was approaching and Pearl figured Mookie had been waiting for Yoda to show up so they could roll out to the Garden, but of course he hadn’t heard from his manz. ’Cause Yoda was downstairs in his room dead as fuck. Pearl glanced down as a text came over Yoda’s phone.
Where da fuck u at? Ball is bouncin. Get up here.
Pearl texted right back.
My bad. Be a minnit.
“Where that niggah at?” Pearl heard one of Mookie’s bodyguards say. It was that country niggah Ransom. Her and Yoda had run into him the day before on their way to the Chinese restaurant. Pearl had stood by listening as the two men talked shit about opposing teams in the Classic, and now she recognized his drawling voice. “Muhfuckah been chasing pussy and missing in action ever since we rolled in.”
“Yeah,” Mookie said quietly, and Pearl could actually feel the suspicion in his voice. Mookie was a swift nig who wasn’t about to be caught sleeping. He was a psychopath but he hadn’t reigned this long or this large by being slow. “I’m about to switch up that code, though. Let that niggah ask for it again when he gets back.”
Pearl moved quietly from her perch on top of the elevator and grabbed on to the railing along the shaft’s perimeter. It was dark and scary in the shaft, but Pearl had been in this type of environment plenty of times while on the job. Instead of being afraid she kept her focus on getting Mookie. She crept along a dusty beam until she found what she was looking for, and minutes later she slid back a cover that led to the industrial air duct right above Mookie’s kitchen.
Music thumped from the living room, and peering through the vent Pearl looked down at the empty gourmet kitchen complete with granite counters and high-tech appliances.
The grate was slick with accumulated grease and dust, and Pearl’s hand slipped several times before she was able to pry the screws off and swing the grille downward on its hinges. Squeezing her toned body through the narrow opening, Pearl dropped into the kitchen like a cat, silent and on the balls of her feet.
Ransom was in the living room rapping to Robb Hawk’s latest cut. Pearl didn’t have no beef with Ransom, but he was in her way, so he had to go. She could have bust on both of them at once, but that would have ruined the little party she had planned, so she decided to lure Ransom into the kitchen and knock him out the box real quick.
She listened as he spit over Hawk’s track. Ransom had a dope bass voice and sounded pretty good, but little did he know he was rapping his last song. Getting him in the kitchen by himself was gonna take some work, but there was a carton of Chinese food on the counter with a plastic fork stuck inside of it, and Pearl decided to use what was available.
Turning a front burner on high, she laid the plastic fork on top of the coil, then unclipped her Attack Pak. She took out a blow dart and extended the narrow plastic tubing. Checking the mosquito needle at the end, Pearl flipped off the cork, priming the dart and shaking poison into its tip.
As the plastic fork smoldered and melted on the stove, Pearl ducked behind the small island and waited. And she waited, and waited.
Dumb asses, Pearl thought, rolling her eyes as she crouched on the floor. That was just like a bunch of men. They didn’t even notice the smell. Tiptoeing back to the stove, Pearl pulled the entire carton of food onto the cherry-red burner, and watched briefly until the cardboard caught a spark, and then a flame.
Back behind the island she crouched in wait again, hoping like hell Ransom came in to put the fire out before shit got bad and she had to put it out herself. But just then she heard Mookie yell, “Yo niggah, get me a Yellow Boy,” and Pearl grinned. That would work too.
She braced herself as Ransom entered the kitchen, and without even glancing at the stove, he opened the refrigerator and took out a Corona.
Pearl moved quick.
Jumping to her feet she blew the FBI-designed dart at that niggah and hit him in the back of the neck, then yanked the dart back as he slapped his neck like he was killing a mosquito.
Pearl crouched back down for just a second, and listened as Ransom started stumbling.
“Oh … shit …” he yelled as he dropped the beer and his body hit the floor with a thud.
Pearl froze. The glass bottle had shattered on the porcelain-tiled floor and that niggah had yelled so loud Mookie woulda had to be dead not to hear him.
“Yo, whattup?” Mookie called from the living room. Pearl heard his heavy footsteps nearing, and thinking faster than a mother, she snatched a Taser from her attack bag and ran toward Ransom, who had landed on his back and was thrashing his limbs around on the beer-soaked floor.
Pearl threw herself on top of him, face up, and reached for his massive left arm and crooked it around her own neck. Holding the Taser, she pressed her right fist into Ransom’s right palm, and started wiggling like a dying roach, flinging both of them around on the floor like it was a life-or-death struggle for real.
And this was the scene Mookie discovered when he walked into his penthouse kitchen. Pearl slobbering and gasping for breath as Ransom gripped her in a headlock and choked the shit out of her.
“Who dis bitch?” Mookie shrieked. “Yeah! Choke her monkey ass! Fuck that troll up!”
Pearl faked like a pro. She dug her heels into the floor and flopped around on top of Ransom slinging both of them from side to side and waiting for Mookie to come just a little bit closer.
And when he did, stomping his sloppy fat ass into the kitchen with glee in his eyes and rage in his grin, Pearl zapped that motherfucker with fifty thousand volts of electricity that made him hit the floor hard enough to cave that shit in.
It was Mookie who was stiff and doing the dying roach dance now, as Pearl jumped to her feet and zapped him again.
“Yeah, muthafucker!” Pearl yelled as she looked down into the contorted face of her daughter’s killer. “You about to get yours, you grimy black bitch. You’s about to get it real good.”
Pearl was a strong girl, but lifting Mookie’s three-hundred-pound ass was out of the question.
Slicing the cord off the suite’s venetian blinds, Pearl tied Mookie at the hands and the feet. She tied another length of cord around his neck, then used all her strength to drag him into the living room.
“Bitch, is you crazy?” the monstrous niggah sputtered as soon as he was able to speak. “How’d you get up in here? Do you know who the fuck I am?”
Pearl walked over and buried her boot in Mookie’s gut, but otherwise ignored his noise. There would be plenty of time for the two of them to catch up on shit later. Right now she needed to get the new code for the elevator so she could put the next phas
e of her plan into motion.
“Okay,” Mookie gasped. “This is about bank, I know. Tell me how much you want.” Mookie’s words were even-toned but there was a calculating fury in his eyes that Pearl recognized well. She’d seen it in the eyes of serial killers and mass murderers. If Mookie ever made it out of this he would kill her real slow. Twice.
“There ain’t enough money in the world to pay for what you did, Mookie.”
Mookie laughed. “Everybody got a price, sweetheart. Yours is prolly pretty cheap. Lay it on me.”
“Shit,” Pearl said, glancing at her cell phone as it vibrated on her hip. She frowned. “You are one arrogant niggah, ain’t you, Mookie? Well, we’ve got company, baby. Give me the new code for the elevator and then we can talk about how much this is gonna cost you.”
Mookie laughed his ass off.
“Oh, so now you need something from Big Mook? Well bitch you betta fuckin’ get down here and take it!”
Pearl sighed and looked down at the fat ugly beast that lay tied up on the floor at her feet. She wasn’t about to play no games with him. At least not yet. The Classic basketball game was already in progress and time was getting short. The Honore women were downstairs just itching to come up, and Justine Honore had already texted Pearl twice to get the correct elevator code.
“You better do what you can do to me,” Mookie warned coldly, his dark eyes sinister and deadly. “ ’Cause when I get loose …”
“Niggah please,” Pearl smirked. “Be careful what you ask for. What’s the goddamn elevator code?”
“Word is bond,” Mookie said, quietly ignoring her request. “I’ma eat ya ass when I get loose. I can promise you that.”
And Pearl believed him too.
She reached for her Taser and zapped his fuckin’ ass again, letting his evil black ass have it until he passed out.
After making sure he was unconscious, Pearl strode calmly into the kitchen and got the dishrag she had used to put out the fire she’d started on the stove. Back in the living room she planted her left foot hard on Mookie’s forehead, then scrunched the rag up into a ball and shoved it deep in his mouth.