by Noire
“Don’t shoot me!” Slick hollered loudly. “Please! I’ll open the door and toss it out! Please don’t shoot me, sir! I’m just doing my fucking job!”
“Stop stalling!” Sly shouted back. He licked a couple of harmless shots at the bottom edge of the door, and then he moved over to the driver’s door. He aimed his strap through the window as Wild Man dove face-down across the front seat and threw his arms over his head, concealing his mug. He had grimy history with Sly McFly, and he knew for a fact that if that bastard recognized him he would shoot through the glass and plant one right in his melon.
“I’m not gonna repeat my muthafuckin self!” Sly warned for the last time. “You try some super-hero shit and I’ma dump a whole clip right into this fuckin window!”
Slick quickly undid the latch on the back door. With his cap pulled down low, he tossed the jewelry box outta the truck and then yanked the door shut and locked it again.
“Take it!” he screamed in a terrified voice. “Just take it and leave us alone!”
Two members of the stick-up crew scrambled to retrieve the small jewelry box, and then along with the old head who was aiming his ratchet at the back of Wild Man’s skull through the window, they wasted no time in making their retreat.
But before they could get in their vans and jet, the sounds of sirens started wailing and Slick knew that meant trouble for all of them.
“Move out!” Sly McFly screamed into his cell phone. “Thirty seconds, you bitches! We got thirty seconds to clear the fuck out so let’s go!”
The two concrete trucks up ahead got to rolling and pulled off toward the intersection, and Sly McFly’s set scattered like roaches as they rushed back to their vans. The sirens were getting louder as the police began to close in, and both of Sly’s vans hit reverse with their tires screeching and backed off quickly down the street.
“Ayo, Slick!” Wild Man yelled from the front seat. The concrete trucks were gone and now two police cars were speeding the wrong way down the one-way street and coming right at them. “Here come the pigs, yo! They right up on us!”
“Get outta the damn truck!” Slick yelled. “Act like you got stabbed!” he spit over his shoulder, and two seconds later him and Wild Man were both hopping outta the armored truck looking panicked as fuck. The officers jumped outta their patrol cars too, and when Slick saw their weapons drawn he acted swiftly.
“Officer! Officer! We need help!” Slick pointed at Wild Man and making sure the pigs saw he was Asian. “Call an ambulance! We just got ambushed! Two vans and two concrete trucks! They stabbed my partner and stole our whole fuckin load!”
He let Wild Man go and pointed up the street and down the street at the same time. “The vans went that way and the concrete trucks headed that way!”
The officer took one look at Whitey’s gory blood that was splattered all over Wild Man’s shirt, and he got ready to say something when suddenly two explosions went off on opposite ends of the block.
Boom! Boom!
The earth seemed to shake under their feet and people started screaming off in the distance.
“Stay with him!” the young white cop shouted as he pointed to Wild Man. “We gotta check that out! I’ll put out a call for the paramedics and they’ll be on the way!”
Slick nodded as the cops split into pairs again and took off in their cruisers in opposite directions with their lights flashing and their sirens blaring.
The cruisers weren’t even off the block good when the two Zip ’em up gunslingers dove back in the Brinks truck to retrieve their backpacks.
Unit 201, come in. There seems to be a problem on your route. Copy with your location if you hear me.
The staticky two-way radio was steady squelching with a message from Brinks’ base operations, but Slick and Wild Man ignored that shit as they grabbed their bags and took off walking quickly down the sidewalk.
With the fifty million dollar Pink Lady diamond nestled safely in Slick’s front pocket, they beat feet and kept their heads low and strode smoothly away from the scene of the crime.
CHAPTER 13
Play Ya Cards Right
Sly McFly was in the front seat of the bakery van barking orders into his cell phone when the explosives went off in the distance.
“What the fuck?” Sly screwed up his face as Chimp Charlie gripped the steering wheel and pushed the van down the busy Staten Island streets. “They set the goddamn bombs off too early!” he bitched. “Stupid idiots! They ain’t even give us enough time to get away!”
The heat was on, and although they had pulled off the Brinks heist and they had the Pink Lady diamond safely in their possession, 5-0 was hot on their asses and it was time to sky up.
Honore turned around and climbed over her seat, and now she sat on the second row bench seat beside Avi. Both of them glanced around nervously as Chimp Charlie drove with precision and full concentration. They rode in silence as they listened to the sirens getting closer and closer and sweated AK-47 bullets.
“Them muthafuckas are closing in!” Quest’s voice crackled through Sly’s speakerphone as he rode a block or so up ahead of them in the other van. “Them bombs is drawing every cop right to our location! We about to get caught up in the drag-net!”
Quest was one of Sly’s coolest niggas in the trenches, but right now his voice was so high it sounded like he had some bitch in him.
“Just get yo ass to the tucky spot nigga and stay off my line!” Sly spit into his phone. He couldn’t believe that young nigga was in panic mode and wearing his ear out on the other end. But moments later Sly heard gunshots and screams and suddenly the phone went silent.
“Shit!” Sly cursed. “Yo, Charlie,” he urged his boy. “You gotta get us the fuck outta here man! The pigs are crawling around everywhere and I think they just hit Quest and his crew!”
Chimp Charlie nodded. He made a quick left down a side street and then a sharp right turn dead into heavy traffic. The street was clogged tight but Charlie didn’t appear shook. In fact, under the circumstances he was doing a damn good job of keeping his cool. But the sirens were starting to become deafening and the traffic up ahead was at a standstill as people flooded the streets tryna find out what the hell had blown up.
“Hey, Sly,” Honore whispered from the backseat like the Feds had wiretapped the van and might overhear her. “Pass that diamond back here real quick so Avi can take a look at it. Let him check it out while you and Charlie focus on getting us the fuck outta this goddamn borough.”
Sly reached inside his jacket pocket and passed Honore the small, well-designed container that held the Pink Lady diamond.
When Honore opened the box and saw what was inside she damn near fainted. That shit was blinging like BLING fuckin BLAHW!
None of the stories she’d read about the precious stone did it a damn bit of justice. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever laid her deceitful little eyes on. It was more stunning than she coulda ever imagined, and even Avi’s mouth was hanging open as he marveled at the masterfully crafted multi-million dollar prize.
“Oh my fucking God!” Avi said, dazed and taken aback. “This is really fucking it! The one and only Pink Lady! Can you believe it, Honore? Can you believe it?”
“It’s gorgeous,” Honore responded in glee. “This is the one y’all! This baby right here is a mothafuckin game changer! It’s so pretty it hurts my eyes. I ain’t never in life seen anything so flawless.”
“Yes,” Avi said eagerly. “We’ve gotten our hands on the most exquisite jewel on the market right now. In my professional opinion we’re going to be wealthy beyond our wildest imaginations.”
“Are you sure?” Honore pressed her hand to her chest and asked breathlessly. “Are you really, really sure?”
Avi beamed as he nodded. “I’m sure. I mean, I’m as sure as I can be with only an examination with the naked eye, but I’ve been in this business for a long time and I’d bet my life on it.”
“Is that right?” Honore asked, seizi
ng the moment. As Avi nodded again she yanked her pistol outta her purse and planted a slug dead in his heart at point-blank range.
Whewpt!
The silencer on the tip muffled the sound as Avi pitched forward and banged his face into the back of Sly’s headrest. He was dead before he even knew what hit him.
Sly whirled around in his seat, startled by the impact and the muffled sound of the gunshot.
“Honore! What the fuck type shit you on? You crazy bitch!”
“Oh shut up Mister Mack,” Honore shot back as she passed the diamond over the seat and back to him. “He already gave us his professional opinion and now that’s one less money split we gotta worry about. Don’t act like you wasn’t gonna off his ass later on down the line anyway, Sly. We ain’t never trusted this bastard for real like that.”
“Yeah, I was gonna dirt-nap the idiot,” Sly spit and pocketed the diamond with his lips tight. “But not right here and not right now, you fuckin airhead dummy! We need Avi’s connections to get that shit outta the country and sell it, remember?”
Honore waved her hand. “No we don’t. Avi ain’t the only shiesty mothafucka out there who wanna make some money, Sly! I already found us somebody else who can trade underground for us and he’s way cheaper.”
“That’s all you worried about is who’s cheaper? Goddammit!” Sly spit, biting back his rage. “Baby girl your greedy ass just fucked us up big time!”
While Sly and Honore were arguing back and forth over the dead connect, Chimp Charlie made a turn onto a main street and his heart almost jumped outta his fat chest.
A police check-point and roadblock had been set up right up ahead. Traffic was being merged into one jam-packed lane. The street was crawling with po-po’s out the ass and they were walking back and forth and in between cars, shining their flashlights in windows and picking out random vehicles to search.
Chimp Charlie finally lost his cool.
“Awwww, fuckkkk meeeee!” he squealed as a cop looked dead at him. The cop pointed his nightstick and motioned for Charlie to pull over and be searched. Escapism jumped into Charlie’s heart but he was jammed in tight. With traffic held up in front of him, and a line of cars packing in behind him, there was no place to run.
“This shit is over, y’all!” Charlie yelped, sweat popping out all over his ape-looking nose. “These fuckin pigs wanna search us and we fucked, baby, fucked!”
“Charlie shut yo bitch-ass up!” Sly barked, ready to slap the shit outta him. “It ain’t over till it’s over goddammit, so take off ya pink panties, bitch! Gangstas like us don’t fold under pressure nigga, so you better tighten yo spine up!”
“You shut the fuck up, Sly!” Charlie barked, dissing his boss for the first time in his life. “Y’all muthafuckas got me driving around with a dead body and a hot-ass diamond in the van and I’m about to go to jail!”
Three cops were approaching them now and despite his brave barking Sly could see that they were in a very sticky situation. Staten Island’s finest were heavy on the scene and it looked like they were squeezing down with a serious purpose.
SHIT! SHIT! SHIT!
Sly glanced over at Charlie and got madder than a sum bitch. He had never seen his friend drenched in so much hot stankin sweat in his life. He didn’t even know his partner had this level of bitch living inside of him. Judging by the way Charlie’s hands were shaking on the steering wheel Sly knew for sure that they would never make it through the cop’s search or past the NYPD barricade.
“Shit, goddammit!” Charlie cried out as he sat there shitting bricks. The cops were still searching the car directly ahead of them and they were doing a real thorough job. “Them bastards are coming for us next! What we gonna do when they get here, Sly? I can’t go back to jail, goddammit! I can’t go back to the joint!”
Sly McFly stared at the uniformed police officers who were now less than five minutes away from busting them in the middle of the biggest heist in the whole fuckin world!
“Well what the hell are we gonna do, Sly?” Honore piped in. Her voice quivered as she glanced over at Avi’s dead body as he lay bleeding all over the seat beside her.
Suddenly she regretted clapping him so hastily. “Come on, old man!” she hollered at Sly. Think, goddammit! You the damn boss! There’s gotta be some way outta this mess!”
Sly sat there silently as his nimble mind raced all around the track and kept coming up the same results.
Abso-fuckin-lutley nothing.
The cops were finishing up at the car in front of them and Charlie was babbling and losing all control.
Sly turned his head and hit his man with a bitter cold look of disgust.
Coward!
And that’s when the shit really hit the fuckin fan.
“I just can’t, man!” Charlie hollered as he looked at Sly with a pair of panicked eyes that resembled a gutter rat caught in a trap. “I’m telling you I can’t go to fuckin jail! I’m a convicted pedophile, man! A short eyes! Them muthafuckas’ll kill me in the joint! Man, fuck you and that stupid diamond, Sly!”
“Charlie, noooo!!!” Sly roared but it was too late.
Chimp Charlie, one of Sly’s oldest and most trusted friends, flung open the van door and made a run for it. Sly watched in horror as the cop right ahead of him looked up and saw Charlie running wildly through traffic.
“Freeze, nigger!” the cop shouted as he yanked out his heat and gave chase. “Freeze, I said, goddammit!”
Suddenly it dawned on Sly that Charlie’s bitchery mighta been a great big blessing in disguise because right now all the attention was on the fleeing black man instead of the fake bakery van. He had just put his hand on the door latch and was getting ready to jump out when Honore yelled, “Sly! Where you going? You not leaving me here by myself, are you?”
Sly turned over his shoulder toward Honore and shook his head sadly. A strange look entered his eyes as he reached out and gently stroked the side of her face.
“You look just like your momma,” he whispered. “You dumb as shit, but you beautiful, just like she was.”
Sly turned back around and hit the door handle. “You on ya own, now baby girl!” he hollered as he pushed his door open and jumped outta the van. “It’s time to sink or swim, my darling! And I taught you how to swim!”
“Slyyyy!” Honore wailed as she lunged over the seat to grab the back of his jacket and missed. “Don’t you fuckin leave me! You said you loved meeeee! You supposed to be my godfather!!!! Slyyyyyyy!!!!”
Dressed in his dapper blue suit, Sly strode off with a mean pep in his step and ducked quickly behind a garbage truck that was parked at the curb. He never even looked back as a bunch of cops swarmed on the bakery van and yanked Honore out and threw her on the ground.
The rest of the cops were so focused on catching Chimp Charlie that they didn’t even notice one of the slickest masterminds in the Empire State as he slipped right out of their dragnet and beat feet deeply into the crowd.
But the cracking sound of gunshots splitting the air almost froze Sly McFly in his tracks. Onlookers and pedestrians ducked down and started screaming like crazy. It took everything Sly had in him not to turn around because he knew Chimp Charlie had just met his fate and Honore would soon be meeting hers too.
As Sly pushed his way through the sidewalk crowd he noticed a bum slumped over in a wheelchair just up ahead. The handicapped man was parked in a doorway of a liquor store, and he looked like he was sleeping one off.
Without hesitating Sly rushed up behind him and smooth picked him up. Lifting him high in the air, he tossed his drunk ass right outta the wheelchair.
“Hey!” the homeless bum yelled as his bony ass cracked on the pavement. “What the hell are you doing, dude?”
Sly McFly ignored him as he plopped down in the dirty chair and started wheeling himself furiously down the street. He kept his head low as he jetted in the opposite direction of the cops and the dragnet. He was halfway to the corner when he heard Honore scream lou
dly and cry out in pain. His heart quaked with love and he couldn’t help but look back with sorrow and worry in his eyes. But when he saw the legion of cops who were surrounding her and swinging their billy clubs high in the air, he dropped his head back down and kept right on rolling.
CHAPTER 14
Get Low
Still dressed in their security uniforms, Slick and Wild Man had played it smooth and cool as they walked away from the stolen Brinks truck. Experienced professionals, they hadn’t given so much as a backward glance toward the scene of their crime as they moved swiftly down the streets of Staten Island.
Fifteen minutes later they came upon a strip-mall shopping plaza and headed around towards the back of the stores. They ducked behind the loading dock of a large grocery joint, and then they finally paused to catch their breaths.
“Yo, I think we good man,” Wild Man said, looking around as he breathed heavily. “Ain’t nobody on us, so what’s the next move?”
Slick shrugged and took off his backpack. “The next move is for us to split up and be out, bruh. I’ma change clothes and go up to the hospital and find Jewelz and snatch her up. And after that I’m catching a flight. I’m getting Jewelz the fuck outta here, yo. She’s sick man, so I’ma take her overseas somewhere and get her right. I gotta get her the best medical treatment that money can buy so we can live the rest of our lives somewhere chill. Together.”
“Word? It’s like that? Where you taking her? The Bahamas?”
“Nah,” Slick shook his head. “Prolly somewhere further. Maybe Europe. But check it, you need to fade out and keep your head low too, slime. Shit is hot. The last thing you wanna do is come up on somebody’s fuckin radar, you feel me?”
“Ay, I’m good, man. Ain’t nobody checkin for me. Besides, I’m Asian and we all look alike, remember?”