by Noire
“Nah, I went and got it.” Hot shame had my cheeks burning red. “But then I lost it.”
“You lost the fuckin’ money?” Bunni shrieked. With her hands on her hips she swayed back, posing with a bitch-no-you-didn’t look on her face. “How the hell did you do that shit, Mink? How much did you lose?”
I dropped my eyes. “The whole twenty large.”
“Mink!” Bunni shrieked again. “Gutta is gonna kill your ass!”
“Our asses!” I snapped. “Gutta’s gonna kill our asses, Bunni! We tricked that dough off together, baby, remember? Don’t go getting amnesia on me now. Just look at your damn shoes!”
Bunni glanced down at her feet.
“Them butter bitches cost damn-near half a grand! And your earrings!”
Her hands flew up to her earlobes.
“Those are Zintys, baby! That’s another two yards right there! I ain’t even gonna mention all the rest of the clothes, liquor, weed, and partying his dough been financing for the last five months!”
“But Mink ... all you had to do was pick up the cash and dip,” Bunni wailed. “You was supposed to get the package and then jump in a cab and come straight back! Why you didn’t just stick to the damn plan?”
I swallowed hard. I was so humiliated.
“I tried.”
“You tried? And what the hell happened?”
I barely whispered, “I got ganked.”
“You got ganked?”
“Yeah. I was leaving the hotel when a mark stepped to me. I thought he was green, but he was out working too. He told me he was a balla from Philly and got me open. We slid into the VIP lounge for drinks, and the next thing I knew I was waking up in an empty fuckin’ hotel room! He musta seen me at the club and decided to roll me. He got me good too. My earrings, my bracelet . .. my thong . ..” I got mad just remembering how that cool breeze had felt on my coochie when I snuck on the train and squatted down under the turnstile with no drawers on.
My friends stared at me in shock. Bunni shook her head in disbelief. Peaches just sat there looking prissy and swinging that muscular leg he had crossed over his knee.
I put my forehead in my hands. “I don’t know how that shit happened, y’all. Dude’s name was Daddy Long Stroke and he caught me out there,” I added quickly. “I swear he looked like an easy mark. He was adorned in jewels out the ass, and the cologne coming off him cost six-fifty a bottle! It musta been the liquor. He hit me with some jiggle juice. He musta paid somebody at the bar to slip it in my drink.”
“Oh, he slipped sumpthin’ in your sumpthin’ all right.” Bunni side-eyed me with a disgusted smirk. “With all them hickeys on your neck I’ma hafta say he slipped his dick in your twat!”
“Madame Mink ... ,” Peaches admonished me calmly as he put down his tweezers and began fussing with his bob-cut weave. He was feminine and flamboyant. Fabulous and queer. There weren’t a whole lotta people in this world that I paid much attention to, but when Peaches had something to say I was usually all ears. After all, Peaches was a master of the con game and he had taught me everything I knew. He had shown me and Bunni how to do our makeup and style our hair, how to show off our bodies and how to hook a man. And when we were thirteen years old, it had been Peaches who taught us both how to use a tampon.
“So you think you got ganked, huh?” He chuckled dryly and picked up his tweezers again. “Oh, that wasn’t a gank, my darling. What you got caught in was a flimflam.”
I frowned. “A flimflam? You mean them fools trapped me in a cross-con? Are you serious?” I stared at him. “You think that old head principal set me up?”
“Errm-herrm.” Peaches bit his top lip as he plucked a real long hair outta his nose. “Damn right he did. We sent you to rip him off, and he sent Daddy Long Stroke to rip you off right back.” He shrugged and peered up his right nostril through the mirror. “It happens sometimes, but it’s usually hard to flam somebody like you who’s so gifted in the grift.”
I didn’t wanna believe it, but when I thought back carefully, everything Peaches was saying made perfect sense. That principal had read our asses like a coloring book. He was a slick muthafucka!
“Sorry, y’all. I fucked up. I know we all needed that money, but don’t worry. I’ll think of something else.”
Bunni sat down beside me. Her eyes looked all big in her crafty little face. “Well you ain’t gotta think too hard.” She reached for the carton of milk that was still sitting out on the table and spun it around so the back was facing us.
“Check her out. This you right here, Mink!” Bunni giggled. “Girl, this chick is so you!”
I stared at the two black-and-white photos that were printed on the carton of milk and my breath caught in my throat. The picture on the top was of a cute little girl with two long ponytails and a real big smile. She was pretty and looked like a regular little happy kid, but the picture on the bottom damn-near knocked me out. It had been aged progressed by about 18 years, and there was no doubt about it. Bunni had that shit right. Even in black-and-white it was easy to see that the chick looked just like me. We had almost the exact same face and big bright smile.
I shrugged. “Yeah, okay. We favor. So what? There’s a whole lotta ‘Bad News LaRues’ out there. Hell, there’s about a hundred of them right here in New York, and ninety-nine of their trifling asses look just me.”
“Uh-huh.” Bunni shoved the milk carton up closer to me. “But they wasn’t all born on the same damn day, was they? On your birthday?”
I read the words that were printed under the photo. Sho nuff, not only did the girl in the picture look just like me, but we had the same birthday too.
“That’s real tight.” I frowned. “Who is this chick?”
“Her name is Sable Dominion,” Bunni said. “She went missing in Midtown when she was only three years old. I Googled that ass, and lil mama got a rich-ass daddy!”
Peaches chuckled again. He was caking a tube of mascara on his short eyelashes.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Her name is Sable. Mink and Sable. You get it?”
I kinda got it, but I still couldn’t take my eyes off the picture. “Go get your laptop,” I told Bunni. “I wanna check her out real quick.”
Bunni ran in her bedroom and got her laptop, and a few minutes later me, her, and Peaches were all eyeball-deep on a Web site for missing and exploited children. Bunni typed in the name ‘Sable Dominion’ and the little girl’s picture popped right up.
“Damn. They lost her up in a Duane Reade’s,” I said as I skimmed the Web site.
Peaches tsked deep in his throat. “Please. How the hell do you lose a three-year-old?”
“Easy,” Bunni said. “Her ghetto-ass mama probably wasn’t payin’ her no attention.”
I shook my head. “Her mother ain’t even ghetto, Bunni. Her family is from Texas. It says so right here. They came to New York for a vacation and that’s when their daughter got snatched.”
“What? They ain’t got no ghettos in Texas?”
I slid the laptop away from Bunni and my fingers flew across the keyboard. I opened a new window and clicked on Google and punched in Sable’s name again.
“Yeah,” I said as my eyes flew across the screen and landed on a newspaper article that had a video next to it. “They got ghettos in Texas, Bunni.” I clicked on the page and read all the way down to the bottom and then added, “But you can bet your left titty that Sable’s paid-ass mama and daddy damn sure don’t live in one!”
CHAPTER 6
The Dominion name rang big bells down in Texas. They were a super-rich black family who owned their own oil company, and when I went to their Web site their mugs looked better than the Obamas, and they flossed harder too.
The info on their site confirmed what we had read everywhere else. Sable Dominion was about to turn twenty-one, just like me. But while I was broke as shit, her ass was gonna come into a hundred-thousand-dollar inheritance if she ever turned up alive. I
was getting more and more hyped by the second, and Bunni was too.
There were two videos linked to their Web site, and Bunni clicked the one on top first. A news lady came on and she talked about some kinda explosion on an oil rig where seven people were killed and four had been injured. She said Viceroy Dominion, the president and CEO of Dominion Oil, was one of the people involved and that he had a serious head injury and was in critical care at a Houston Hospital.
The news lady talked for a good minute about how Dominion Oil got started and about the dangers of rig explosions, and then she introduced a real pretty black woman who she said was Viceroy’s wife, Selah Ducane Dominion.
Mami had on a bad-ass black Prada dress and she looked like she was about to bust out crying in just a second. I figured she was holding a press conference or something right there at the hospital, because she was posted up in front of a microphone and surrounded by doctors and nurses.
I checked her out. She was light-skinned like me, and she had a heart-shaped face and a whole lot of long, butter hair that definitely wasn’t a weave. She had some style about her and she was on the skinny side, but she was definitely polished up right. The earrings she wore glittered under the camera lights, and I had seen a pair almost like them in Tiffany’s that were way smaller and were going for seventeen grand. She sounded East Coast and she came off kinda bougie with her flow, and she had one of those model stances like she was used to struttin’ her shit on a runway.
Selah Dominion stared dead into the camera as she asked everybody to pray for the families of all the people who had been killed in the explosion, and then she asked for prayers for her husband, who was still in the hospital, and the other three people who had been injured too.
The video went off and Bunni clicked on the second link before I could get the words outta my mouth. You coulda heard a rat fart in our kitchen when that bad boy started playing. Selah Dominion popped up on the screen again. She had on the same clothes and the background was still the same. She still looked real sad too, but this time instead of talking about her husband, she was pleading with the public for information that could help them find their long-lost daughter, Sable Dominion, who had been snatched from a crowded New York City drugstore when she was just a little girl.
“For the past eighteen years my family has lived with a hole in our hearts. Our baby daughter, Sable, was taken from us by an unknown stranger right after her third birthday. We have searched endlessly for our daughter, and today, as we approach her twenty-first birthday, and with my husband, Viceroy, so gravely injured, we believe finding Sable will give Viceroy the strength he needs to fight for his life. Please. Please. If you have any information, any small shred of knowledge at all, that might help us find our daughter, please contact us immediately.”
“Get to the money part!” Bunni feened. “Hurry up and say something about the money part!”
Tears flowed from Selah’s eyes as she looked into the camera and continued making her plea. “Also ...”
I was kinda surprised that she didn’t sound all proper like you woulda expected from a rich chick, but her voice was real smoove and you could tell she was used to talking in public.
“Just as we have in the past, our family continues to offer a cash reward for any information that leads to Sable’s safe return. We realize it’s been a long time and memories fade, but if you know anything, or remember anything at all ... even a tiny shred of information that may seem insignificant to you might be the piece that helps us solve this puzzle. We beg of you. Call the number on the bottom of your screen. Our daughter belongs with us. We want her to come home! Home to see her father ... while there’s still time. Won’t you help us, please?”
The news lady from the first video came back on as a phone number flashed on the bottom of the screen. “Well, there you have it,” she said. “Tonight the Dominion family is in a situation that no family ever wants to be in. Not only are they praying for the recovery of their esteemed husband and father, they are also praying for the safe return of their daughter, Sable, and any information you have can be reported by calling the number on the bottom of your screen. This is Crystal Hunter for Channel Seven news.”
I let my fingers fly over the keyboard and went to a celebrity gossip site. They were sorta like the online version of the Star or the Enquirer, and they loved to talk shit about the rich and sexy. The site had all kinds of juicy stuff posted up about the Dominions, and I found an article that talked about their daughter’s hundred-grand inheritance and a twenty-five-thousand-dollar reward the family was offering for information leading to Sable’s return. Bunni was all over that shit. She almost jumped outta her skin as she went bonkers about the reward money.
“Twenty-five large?” she shouted. Bunni scooted her chair real close to mine and started drumrollin’ her feet on the floor like an excited little kid.
“A’ight now, Mink! You know what you gotta do don’tchu girl?”
I looked at her and giggled. “Are you fuckin’ serious?”
“C’mon, heffa! You look just like that chick. Your own mama couldn’t tell y’all apart. You should do it, Mink! Go to Texas! Just do it!”
I shook my head. “Uh-uh. Them rich people ain’t gonna be stupid enough to fall for that kinda scam, Bunni.”
“Why the hell not? Remember last year when somebody stole your identity and caught all them cases over in Philly? Now you got a chance to steal somebody else’s identity and get you some money and some payback too—at the same time!”
A hundred grand. I added up the twenty-five grand I owed Gutta and all the fines and interest that had been tacked onto my bad-check-writing restitution payments. If I had just a little more time I could scramble me up a hustle and get all that weight off my back. But time was not on my side. Gutta would be home in a few weeks, and if my ass didn’t show up in court on Monday morning the judge was gonna issue a warrant for my arrest.
“Nah.” I shook my head. “I don’t know shit about Texas, Bunni, and I ain’t hardly getting my ass on no airplane by myself.”
Before she could open her mouth to bitch, I snapped the laptop closed and pushed that shit way to the other side of the table. “Yeah, you be coming up with some crazy-ass schemes Bunni-baby, but this ridiculous shit right here just straight-up takes the cake!”
CHAPTER 7
Bunni used to have a lil sherm fuck buddy named Red, and Red had a lil sherm homeboy named Borne. Borne was a regular nigga who drove a beat-up Ford and worked for the post office, and whenever Gutta got locked up I kicked it off and on with Borne.
Borne was a square. He wasn’t in the game and he wasn’t really street-worthy neither. But one thing he definitely was, was reliable. He was always good for a couple of quick dollars in a clutch, and when my life got too shitty Borne had no problem kicking his little chickens out the side door so I could bunk with him in the basement apartment he rented out from his super-religious mother and father.
I had been back and forth between Bunni’s house and Borne’s basement ever since I lost Gutta’s apartment and had to put all his furniture in a storage facility. Borne’s parents were old as shit. His moms couldn’t stand the sight of me. I heard her tell Borne I was a greedy little freak, but his father seemed to like me a lot. His old senile ass thought I was some porn star chick from back in the day, and if Borne wasn’t around that old man would whip out his lil crispy two-inch dick and try to rub it on me in a minute.
Borne had picked me up in his beat-up clunker on Saturday night, and the next morning he snuck upstairs to cook me some breakfast while his mother and father were at early church services. But when he came back downstairs with a plate of French toast and turkey sausage I was so uptight I couldn’t eat. I was too busy worrying about my court appointment the next day. I owed the city of New York a whole lotta cheddar, and all the judge had to do was say the word and my ass would be riding a dirty-ass bus over the bridge to Rikers Island.
“Yo, I keep telling you,” Borne
said as he stuffed his face with his food and mine too. He was skinny as hell for somebody who ate so much, and all his weight musta went straight to his dick ’cause he wasn’t nothing like his little burnt hot dog daddy. That lil nigga was hung.
“It’s gonna be all right, girl. I got you boo. Ya boy just got his first credit card, nah’mean? You gonna be straight, shawty. Stop worrying, baby girl. You gonna be straight.”
I was sitting cross-legged on his bumpy little bed. Borne dipped his finger in some syrup and dotted it on my bottom lip. I stuck my tongue out to lick it, and he slipped his finger in my mouth so I could suck it.
His other hand crawled up my thigh and grabbed my titty. He squeezed it gently, then swept his thumb back and forth across my nipple until heat got to rising in me and I started to relax.
He leaned me back, and I unfolded my legs and stretched out flat. “Raise up,” he told me, then stuck a pillow under my head tryna make sure I was comfortable. I closed my eyes and sighed as I felt his fingers wandering over me. He lifted up my top and stared at my titties. My twins sat up straight in the air, and my nipples were aimed at the ceiling.
Borne slipped his fingers under the elastic band of my boy shorts. He inched them down over my hips, and then slid them past my knees and tossed them on the floor.
“Open up them legs,” he said, and dove nose-first into my pussy. He braced his elbows on the sides of my hips, and he slid his palms under my ass and gripped my booty cheeks as he licked all over my clit.
I shivered and moaned as he ate me for a while, then let my ass go and licked his middle finger. He inserted it between my pussy lips and I couldn’t help grabbing his wrist and guiding him to the right spot. My shit was soppy like a sponge inside. His fingers moved in and out of me as my pussy made wet, squishy noises that drove both of us wild.
Borne finger-fucked me and kissed up and down my smooth thighs. He nibbled on me so good I started moaning and clamping my insides down on his finger like I had a dick inside of me.