by Anna J.
“You heard of Blast right?” Boog asked, and Tah nodded his head, indicating that he remembered. “That’s her pops. Darnell bodied her mom and pop and her aunt took her in. That bitch from Langston Hughes.”
“Mecca, let me ask you something,” Tah said as he took a sip from his glass of Moët.
“Go ahead, ask me whatever,” she answered, hoping he wasn’t going to back out on her.
“Where you be getting money from? How you get all that fly gear?” Tah asked, registering the look on her face. The smile left Mecca’s face. His question surprised her. She wondered why he asked that after all this time they been together. Mecca put her head down, looking at the bubbling water.
“My parents are dead, and I get SSI checks.”
It was true, Mecca did receive SSI, but it was a mere $500 a month. She put that in a bank account and spent the money she made working for her aunt on the things she had. Tah was glad that she didn’t lie, figuring since he had heard her parents were dead, that just maybe she was getting SSI. He chalked up the idea that she may be working for her aunt as just a rumor.
“Damn, sorry to hear that. Do you mind me asking how they died?” Tah replied consolingly, hoping she would open up more to him.
“Yes, I do mind, so don’t ask,” Mecca said, cutting him off.
Tah watched Mecca’s facial expression change into one that he had never seen on her before: the look of pure rage. It was more than rage; it was more like pure evil. Tah knew it was time to change the topic before the mood got messed up. Besides, he wanted some more pussy because his dick was hard again.
“I didn’t mean to make you angry, Mecca. I’m sorry.” Tah smiled, then reached over to kiss her.
He kissed her cheek, and his mouth traveled down her neck. He placed his hand between her thighs and his fingers found their way to her clit. The evil look on Mecca’s face disappeared, and she expressed pure pleasure. Deciding to not even leave the Jacuzzi, Tah sexed Mecca in every position imaginable until the wee hours of the morning.
A week after Monique’s death, Stone had just finished making his rounds at each of Ruby’s spots. He stopped in Langston Hughes to chat with some of the workers who were mostly young teenagers whose parents were customers. Stone saw one of the workers running through the projects, and stopped to see what was happening. By the time he and the other workers realized what the young guy was running from, they were all surrounded by unmarked cars, undercover detectives, and federal agents.
People in their apartments, and hoe’s standing outside in the area, heard cars screeching and the sound of police yelling for them to get on the ground and put their hands in the air before they blew their brains out. At the same time there were raids conducted in Langston Hughes, Ruby’s spots in Brownsville and Coney Island were being raided as well. Ruby was watching an episode of As The World Turns when she heard a knock on the door. Dressed in only a long blue and yellow Polo robe with thong to match, she hated to have to get up from in front of the television, but she had no choice. She got off the couch and walked to the large, white double doors, grabbing hold of the gold-plated doorknobs.
“Who is it?” Ruby yelled on her way to the door.
“It’s the police and we have a warrant. Open up!” an officer yelled through the door.
“Hold on, let me get dressed,” Ruby yelled back, not knowing what move to make next.
“Open up, now!” the officer yelled before busting through the door and rushing Ruby to the floor before she had a chance to get one of her guns from the closet. Ruby didn’t plan on getting arrested. She planned to go out in a gunfight, but it was too late.
“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney…”
Chapter Ten
A faithful witness will not lie, but a false witness will utter lies.
Proverbs 14:4
The government had received information from a confidential informant about Ruby and her organization. The informant couldn’t provide how much money Ruby was pulling in from her distribution of crack cocaine, but the government estimated that her gross amount was in the hundreds of thousands. So when the judge in the federal courthouse in Brooklyn placed Ruby’s bail at $2 million, Ruby got out within a week.
The F.B.I. knew they stumbled onto an organization that was beyond your average drug gang. The informant either didn’t know the part Mecca played in the organization or just didn’t want her in jail. Stone’s bail was set at $100,000, and Ruby made sure he was bailed out.
“What makes you think it’s Stone?” Mecca asked innocently, not wanting to jump the gun.
“Who else could it be? Who else knows all about me besides you and him? Monique is gone!” Ruby yelled at Mecca as they sat in Mecca’s Sutter Gardens apartment’s living room.
Mecca’s apartment was simply decorated. Her living room had a black, big pillowed couch, a forty-two-inch television that sat on a crystal television stand, and a six-disc Sony surround sound system that was surrounded by black art on the walls with cream frames to match the curtains she had hung at the window. Over the television she had a large picture of her parents that was hand drawn by a street artist, and a wooden wall unit with family pictures on it as well.
“He’s a crack-head, Mecca. They’ll do anything to get a hit. Those crackers probably gave him a hit just to snitch,” Ruby said while trying to calm down.
“Why didn’t he say anything to me or Dawn?” Mecca wondered out loud.
“Where is that bitch anyway?” Ruby asked skeptically.
“With her boyfriend,” Mecca responded, but she had a skeptical look on her face. She didn’t think Dawn would do anything like that. What would she gain from it?
All Dawn thinks about is that no-good boyfriend of hers. One of Tah’s flunkies. Dawn hasn’t been around lately since she met him, and that nigga has her strung out. Then Mecca remembered something that Dawn said, and it made her wonder:
“Mecca, I think we better leave this game alone. I feel like something bad is gonna happen if we keep going on like this. We gonna end up either in jail or dead.”
“Don’t go getting paranoid now, bitch. I can’t just bounce up out the game like that,” Mecca said to Dawn, not believing her ears. If it weren’t for the game, they wouldn’t have all the shit they had.
She brushed off the thought, concluding that Dawn was just paranoid at the time. Shit, she was the one who said they should get in the game in the first place.
“Since y’all bitches got them boyfriends y’all been on some real slackin’ shit. Y’all let them niggas get the best of y’all. Mecca, you know better,” Ruby scolded her, trying to talk some sense into Mecca to keep from punching her in her damn mouth.
“So what we gonna do?” Mecca asked, wanting to get off the boyfriend subject.
Ruby rubbed her temples and sighed. “I took a big loss. That bail really fucked me up. I got to get consignment off these Dominican mu’fuckas and start from scratch. What’s up with these Sutter Garden niggas? They gettin’ money?”
“Please. Those sorry-ass niggas hustle for outfits. You see the ones in front of the building? They stand there all day every day like they doing security and none of them niggas even got a Honda scooter. They some bus’ ass niggas,” Mecca replied, sucking her teeth.
“Those the types of mu’fuckas we want. Niggas who don’t want much. That’s how we get rich. If all they want is outfits then they will go hard for them. If we offer them more than what they got now, they’ll gladly work for us. C’mon, Mecca, wake up, girl!” Ruby said, smiling.
Ruby kept quiet while she and Stone drove, then she parked on a small block on Twenty-third Street and Surface. The beach was at the end of the block. The block was deserted on the chilly night. Stone was always nervous in the presence of Ruby: he knew she was unpredictable and would kill in a heartbeat.
“Somebody snitching on us, Rube. We got to find out who did t
his. If you want, I’ll handle this kid who got Mo—”
Ruby drew the .45 with a silencer so quick, Stone didn’t have time to finish the sentence. His head exploded against the passenger-side window as Ruby sent one bullet into his temple. Ruby got out of the driver’s side and walked over to the passenger side. She opened the door and let Stone’s body, fall onto the sidewalk. She smiled when she heard the waves crashing into the beach. No one would hear her.
She went to the trunk of the car and removed a bottle of bleach and a dirty rag. She poured the bleach on the rag, stepped over Stone’s body and wiped the blood off the window and door.
She looked at Stone’s body and ripped open his black silk shirt to see if he was wired. He wasn’t. She removed the gold Gucci link chain from his neck, and searched his black corduroy pants pocket, and removed $500 from his pocket. She left them turned inside out to make it look like he had been shot right there in the street. Ruby pumped more bullets in his head and body, and then she got back in the car and slowly drove off.
The next morning, Ruby drove into Manhattan with her hair in a ponytail, wearing a beige cotton skirt that reached her knees, a white blouse under a beige blazer, black sheer pantyhose to match, and black, five-inch heel shoes. The office of Gilmore, Stein and Bloomberg was located on Thirty-ninth Street and Park Avenue. Ruby walked in the office of Stanley Gilmore, Esq., the senior partner of the law firm. She had had him on retainer since 1987. He had a perfect record of all wins, no losses. She had met him through Stone.
Stone killed a Jamaican cat in front of the entire Langston Hughes projects during an annual Langston Hughes day, the day the project celebrated when it was built. Every project in New York has a day like that, as if the residents are celebrating the fact that they live in poverty-stricken, low-income projects with conditions a fence away from being a prison.
No one from the projects gave information to the police. There was no need to. Stone killed the man in the view of a housing cop walking the beat. Gilmore had the cop on the stand for almost two hours and when he was done with him, the jury was ready to convict the cop for the murder.
Ruby placed a brown paper bag on Gilmore’s desk while he sat in his large, black leather recliner with an expensive, three-piece black, pinstriped suit resembling a 1920’s Mafioso. He tried to conceal his receding hairline by combing the little hair he had left on the top of his bald spot.
“That’s fifteen. I’ll have the rest for you next week,” Ruby said, sitting in one of the smaller leather chairs in front of Gilmore’s large wooden desk. Gilmore grabbed the paper bag, looked in, and then placed the brown paper bag in one of the drawers in the desk.
“So how are things looking?” Ruby asked, folding her leg over the other, watching Gilmore stare at her finely toned thighs. Gilmore stood up and paced behind his desk with his hand in his pockets.
“I’m still waiting on the government to turn over the discovery. From what I do know,” Gilmore said, pausing to face Ruby “there’s an informant that gave up a lot of info. They’re making it a RICO case. You getting out on that two million raised some flags in the IRS, too. How are you going to account for that?” he asked.
“My life savings and donations from friends to get me out,” Ruby replied with a straight face.
Gilmore shook his head.
“I don’t think that the government’s going to buy that. What about the cars, the house in the Hamptons? They’re gonna want to know how you went from a Brownsville housing project to the Hamptons with no job.”
“You’re my lawyer; tell me what should I do,” Ruby barked.
Gilmore sighed. “As an officer of the court, I can’t give you incriminating advice.” Gilmore then smiled. “But as a friend, I can show you how to clean your cash.”
“You can’t find out who this snitch is now? I mean, pull some strings?” Ruby asked.
Gilmore walked to the front of his desk and sat on it in front of her. Ruby already figured she knew that Stone was the rat, but she wanted to make sure. She laughed inwardly about how she was able to convince Stone, who she knew was scared to death of her and probably knew she would figure he was a rat, to get in the car with her in the middle of the night and ride to Coney Island.
After bailing Stone out of the M.C.C. (Metropolitan Correctional Center) in Manhattan, she sent a message for Stone to meet her at the Stillwell Avenue train station in Coney Island. She wanted to discuss how they were going to get back in business. Knowing that Stone was smoking crack, when Stone got in the car, Ruby had a crack pipe in her hand, and before she drove off, she acted as if she needed to take a hit from the pipe. Stone stared at Ruby in disbelief.
Ruby sparked the lighter, held the fire at the end of the pipe, and inhaled the weed she had placed in the pipe. She opened the window and blew the smoke out of it. She looked at Stone and grinned.
“You know a bitch do this once in a blue. You wanna hit?” Ruby asked, reaching in her pocket and pulling out a small vial of crack.
She held out the stem to Stone. Stone snatched the vial out of her hand, and the stem, and with hands shaking he bit the top off the vial, removing the yellow top. He poured the pebble in the stem.
Ruby handed him the lighter. Stone inhaled the crack smoke deeply and held it in his lungs as long as possible. He spoke while holding his breath.
“Damn, Ruby, I ain’t know you fuck around.”
“Yeah, once in a while. A bitch be stressed, ya know.” Ruby drove, looking at the road.
It was just that easy for Ruby to put him at ease so he wouldn’t expect her to put bullets in him while they were both high off crack. Stone thought that if Ruby found out he was smoking crack she would kill him. To see her doing it made him feel comfortable around her, and that was his demise.
“It depends. I can definitely pull some strings, but I’m taking a big risk,” Gilmore continued, still grinning at Ruby and staring at her well-built calves. Ruby stood up in front of Gilmore and grabbed him by the crotch.
“I know what you want, you freaky mu’fucka!” Grinning, she unzipped his pants and pulled out his small, shriveled-up, pinkish penis and gave him a hand job. While she jerked his dick, she smacked him on his face hard. He smiled.
“You like that, huh, you cracka!” Ruby growled, stroking him faster, thinking, Men are so simple. The things they will do for a nut. They are all the same. “If you cum in my hand, I’ll beat the shit out of your old ass,” Ruby threatened.
“I won’t, just don’t stop,” Gilmore moaned, holding the corner of the desk tightly. He reached on his desk for a piece of tissue in a Kleenex box.
“Oh God! I’m cummin’….”
Mecca felt someone placing a robe on her naked body. She couldn’t see who it was. When she turned her head, it was dark. She looked down at her body, and a white linen robe was covering her. Lou stood with his arms folded, still in a red robe.
“How much death and mayhem does it take for a person to realize that what they are into is wrong?” Lou asked. He then counted on his fingers and said, “Your parents, Darnell, Wise, Monique, Stone. Then your aunt goes to jail and everybody involved in the organization except you and Dawn are caught up. You didn’t see the blessing in that, huh?”
“Blessing! What blessing? Where’s the blessing in death and jail?” Mecca yelled.
Lou became angry and it could be heard in his raised voice. “The fact that it didn’t happen to you. That’s the blessing!” He paused, then shook his head and continued in a low tone. “But, once again, Mecca, you had a veil over your eyes. It’s all a game, right, Mecca?”
“Why you gotta yell like that? I can hear you,” Mecca snapped, causing Lou to laugh.
“We all know you can hear. You just have a problem seeing. We all know you can hear, but you don’t listen. Soon you’re going to see and listen to what you didn’t listen to before, whether you like it or not.”
Chapter Eleven
Every wise woman buildeth her houses but foolish plucketh
it down with her hands.
Proverbs 14
“I don’t care who’s first or who’s last, I just know y’all better rock this at the drop of a dime, baby!” Marley Marl screamed on the intro of “The Symphony” a collaboration of Master Ace, Craig G, Kool G Rap, and Big Daddy Kane. As Mecca and Dawn walked through the crowd on the dance floor of the Union Square club in Manhattan. This was a crowd Mecca or Dawn didn’t stand out in, regardless that Mecca wore a Louis Vuitton three-quarter jacket with the matching boots, and bucket hat with the brim flipped up, while Dawn wore the same getup, but the brand name was Gucci.
There were people in the club from all five boroughs and surrounding areas like Mount Vernon, Yonkers, and Jersey, who came to the Union Square in their best. There were girls and guys in full-length minks, shoes and boots from various reptiles, diamond-studded jewelry from neck to wrist, and mouths full of gold. Moët was the main beverage. The high rollers had cases of Dom Pérignon at their disposal.
It wasn’t unusual to run into hip-hop celebrities in the crowd. Nice & Smooth, Doug E. Fresh, and Special Ed were in attendance. The crowd was usually split into groups according to the group’s geographical location in the city. The Harlem cats stood in one corner, the Bronx cats in another, and the Queens cats had theirs. The Brooklyn cats usually were spread out, scheming on people to remove their jewelry or clothing from. Along with their fake IDs, Mecca and Dawn came with razor blades hidden under their collars, taped with Scotch tape. Before Mecca taped a razor to Dawn’s collar, Dawn asked why they needed them.
“Just in case some jealous-ass bitch gets out of line, or some drunk nigga tries to touch you. You know how niggas is.”
When Big Daddy Kane’s “Ain’t No Half-Steppin’” roared through the club, the crowd reacted enthusiastically. Some wallflowers hit the dance floor, screaming, “That’s my shit!” while other groups of cats who didn’t dance leaned against the walls giving other cats evil stares.