by Cash
‘I’ma chalk these violations up. Just charge ‘em to my heart. Fuck it.”
He dialed B-Man’s number.
“Gwen put my brother on the phone!”
“Yeah?” answered B-Man coming on the line.
“Look, bruh, I don’t know why you stepping on my toes like dat. That’s three of my people you done jacked. Now I’ma charge those to my heart and wipe the slate clean ‘cause I love you, nigga. But if you bother any of my people again, it’s gonna get ugly,” Q warned before ending the call.
The stress B-Man was purposely causing Q wasn’t the only drama that was pressing on Q’s nerves, making him wanna go the fuck off. Persia was being vindictive now that he didn’t fuck with her no more. At court, for Q’s preliminary hearing for the domestic battery charge Persia, showed her ass.
As soon as Q walked into the courtroom, accompanied by his lawyer, his pop and Corlette, Persia, went into a hysterical fit, frontin’ like she was deathly afraid of Q. She was frontin’ so hard the judge ordered the bailiff to stand next to Q, to assure Persia that he could not get to her. Q just shook his head. This bitch clowning like a muthafucka in front of these crackers! I had to be blind not to be able to see through this fake bitch.
In the middle of the precedings Persia asked the judge if he could order Q to pay her some type of alimony.
“No, ma’am. This is not a divorce hearing,” replied the judge.
“Your Honor, my client and Persia Atkinson were never legally married,” interjected Q’s attorney.
“Well, she could pursue financial support under the laws of palimony,” the judge said. “However, this is not the proper place for that.”
“Anyway, your Honor, my client is presently unemployed.”
“He ain’t unemployed!” yelled out Persia. “Judge, he got plenty money! He’s a drug dealer, and—“
“Your Honor, I object!” screamed Q’s lawyer.
His face was as red as a ripe tomato.
The judge smirked, “Calm down, Counselor. You opened the door for that. Be that as it may, Miss Atkinson I won’t allow you to blurt out accusations such as that in my courtroom. We are here on charges totally unrelated to the road we’ve somehow veered down. Will counsel for both parties please approach the bench.”
Q didn’t chance looking at Persia, for fear that he’d be unable to stop himself from running over there and knocking the bitch’s teeth out. Corlette was mean-mugging the punk bitch, though. As they left the courthouse Q had to grab Corlette and pull her away, to keep her from going after Persia.
“Boo, let me kick that bitch’s ass!” Corlette pleaded.
“She ain’t even worth it, shawdy,” he said.
“Let her go!” screamed Persia. “I’ll tear that ho a new asshole.”
Q had to practically drag Corlette to the car.
On the way home he admonished her for letting Persia get to her. But deep down he was feelin’ the way Corlette was ready to represent him.
If he didn’t already have enough drama in his mix, more was added when his cell phone rang.
“What it do, pimp?” began Fazio.
“Who dis?” asked Q.
“Oh, since you a big-timer now, you don’t recognize my voice no more?”
“Oh,” recognizing the voice now. “I’m good, folks. How you?”
“Could be better.”
“I heard that.”
“You ready to start back shopping with me?” asked Fazio.
“Naw, I’m good where I’m at, folks. ‘Preciate it.”
“Who put you on your feet, Q?”
“You helped me up,” conceded Q, “and I ‘preciate dat.”
“You ain’t acting like it.”
“Damn, man, what you want from a nigga?”
“Loyalty.”
Q half-laughed. “Dat shit gotta go both ways, don’t it? You ain’t showed me none when I was stressin’ dat.”
“After all I done for you; that’s how you gon’do it?”
“Yo, man, this conversation ain’t going nowhere. I’ma get at you another time,” said Q.
“You gettin’ too big for your G. You know you not built like that.”
Q caught the threat and the insult, but he let them both slide.
“Whatever dawg. I’m just doing me.”
“Get at me soon or I’ma get at you,” Fazio said, his implication apparent. “For real, though.”
Q wasn’t faded. What Fazio didn’t know was that Q had elevated to that other level. The game had brought out the killa in him when the twins killed his innocent baby. It didn’t even matter now.
The next day Q went and got “Alize” tatted over his heart.
Now, let Fazio and the rest of ‘em bring it on!
Corlette was over in Thomasville Heights at a baby shower for a friend that she had grown up with. It was just coincidental that B-Man was cruising through the projects when Corlette came out of the apartment where her friend’s baby shower had just concluded. B-Man spotted her and pulled up to the curb and parked.
“What’s up, shawdy?” he spoke to Corlette, getting out of his hard-top Chevy, the ’64 he had before he copped the drop.
It wasn’t until he was right up on her that Corlette recognized B-Man. Damn, he’s looking bad! She said to herself, frowning at B-Man because she held him to blame for Alize’s death.
B-Man drawed back and stuck a burner to her head.
“Take off all your jewelry, and give it to me!” he barked, eyes looking crazy.
“B-Man, why you doing this?” she cried as she began removing her jewels.
“Gimme that purse, too, bitch!”
After he removed the money he found inside her purse, B-Man tossed it on the ground at her feet.
“Tell your nigga if you want to, you just gon’ get him killed!”
Several girls had seen the robbery going down, from the doorway of the apartment where the baby shower was held. They had been afraid to intervene, but they had called the police.
Of course, B-Man was long gone when po-po pulled up.
Corlette refused to file a complaint despite being pressured to do so.
After po-po left, one of Corlette’s friends asked, “Wasn’t that Q’s brother, B-Man who robbed you?”
“Looked like his car,” one whispered to another.
Corlette didn’t respond. She got in her car and drove straight home, crying all the way there. When Q came home, later that night, he could tell something was wrong with his lady. When he asked what was the matter, Corlette lied to him.
“My stomach hurts,” she said.
But she knew it would be just a matter of time before he noticed she wasn’t wearing her necklace, watch and rings. Still, she didn’t wanna get anyone killed.
Sinnamon hurriedly raced down to the dressing room and threw on her street clothes. She was crying and shaking so bad she could hardly button her blouse. B-Man had showed up at the club to come and get her and take her to Khalil. Her man had been shot in the head in an altercation with the police. He was holed up at the Days Inn, off of Cleveland Avenue, and had sent his brother to bring her to him.
She didn’t realize she had been tricked until the hotel room door closed behind them, and Khalil wasn’t there.
Smack! B-Man knocked her on the bed.
“Get naked, bitch!”
The gun was inches from her face. Sinnamon was a pro; she didn’t panic. Becoming hysterical might get her killed.
“We can do this, baby boy, without all that.”
She undressed.
“Let me give you a condom to put on, to protect us both, baby.”
“Naw, bitch! Open your mouth. And if you bite my shit I’ma pull this trigger!”
B-Man made Sinnamon suck him until she thought her jaws might permanently lock. Then he punished her with the dick. He fucked her ass and pussy with a violence that was maniacal. He tore poor Sinnamon’s ass guts to shreds. Left her leaking like a dripping faucet.
> Khalil was furious! Q was, too. Early that morning Corlette had tearfully told him truth.
When Q and Khalil shared information about what B-Man had done to their ladies Khalil recalled seeing the baby doll wrapped in a blanket in the backseat of B-Man’s whip. He remembered that Elisse had said that the woman who set up the robbery seemed to have a doll wrapped in a blanket, disguised as a real baby.
“Fam, I think it was B-Man who robbed and shot pop. And I think Rapheal has known it all along.”
Q nodded his head, he concluded that they couldn’t put nothing pass B-Man.
“I got this!” Q angrily insisted Khalil let him handle it.
“I’ll be back tomorrow night. Me and Bed-Stuy going to Savannah to handle some business,” B-Man told Gwen, as he bent down to lock the small safe in the bedroom closet.
“Okay. Did you leave me something out?”
“Yeah.”
He tossed her a half-ounce of crack.
“Thank you, baby,” beamed Gwen. “Be careful.”
B-Man wasn’t going to Savannah; that was aight. He was going to spend the night with Amore. He hadn’t gone out much the last three days. He’d been staying at the crib expecting his brothers to come over there talking shit.
The young boy saw B-Man get in his ’64 Chevy and drive off. When the car’s tail lights could no longer be seen, he waited fifteen minutes then walked up to the apartment door and knocked.
“Who is it?” Gwen asked, vexed that someone was interrupting her smoking.
“Is B-Man home?”
“No, he’s not.”
“Well, I’m s’pose to drop off some money I owe him. I’m Bed-Stuy’s nephew.”
Money? Gwen peeked through the peephole and saw a tall young boy. He didn’t look threatening so she opened the door.
The gun appeared out of nowhere. Its tip was deathly cold against her forehead. “Back all the way into the kitchen and you bet’ not scream, bitch!” his voice was as cold as his eyes. Gwen did as he instructed. In the kitchen he made her kneel down as if she was praying.
Boc! Boc!
The next day, when B-Man returned home, he found his girl face down, with two holes in the back of her head. And the safe was missing. He removed all the guns and drug paraphernalia from the apartment before calling the police.
As soon as he was able to get away from the po-po and their accusatory questioning, he called Bed-Stuy and told him the business. He needed to gauge whether or not his jack partner was somehow responsible.
“Fuck outta here!” Bed-Stuy uttered, in genuine disbelief. “Yo son, that’s fucked up! Who you think did that shit?”
“Maybe, Shawn,” guessed B-Man, before reconsidering. “Naw, he too pussy.”
“I hate to say this, B, but . . . nah fuck it.”
“Say it, nigga.”
“What about one of your brothers?”
“Maybe Khalil,” he allowed. He was still underestimating Q.
When B-Man called him talking a lot of gorilla shit, Khalil said, “Nigga, miss me with all them threats. I ain’t slump ya junkie bitch. But karma is a mafucka.”
B-Man hung up and called Q, just on a hunch.
“Touch mine. I’ll touch yours!” Q simply said. “Now, let shit go, shawdy. Oh, it’s gon’ get ugly.”
“It done already got ugly, bitch nigga,” B-Man snapped.
Q went to visit Black Girl’s grave. This was the first time he had been back since they put her in the ground. He sat down on the ground, next to the small headstone with her name inscribed on it.
“Hey, Ma,” he began slowly. “If you’re somewhere watching over us I know you’re ashamed of what’s going on between your boys. We promised you on your deathbed that we would never let it come to this. But Ma, it’s like B-Man don’t want it no other way. I don’t wanna kill my own blood but I don’t wanna let him kill me either. Tell me what to do, Black Girl, ‘cause I don’t have the answer.” Tears dripped from Q’s eyes. “What I gotta do? Move away? Ma, I don’t understand why B-Man so angry at me and Khalil. What we do to him? So what if Rapheal ain’t his biological? Me and Khalil are still his brothers—bonded by your blood.”
Q stayed for more than an hour. It felt good to talk to his mom.
Before getting ready to leave, he said, “Oh, Black Girl, what you think about Corlette? She’s the one, ain’t she? Well, I’ma bounce now. Word is bond, Ma. Ain’t nothin’ gon’ make me kill my brother, even if that means he’ll end up killing me. On another note Pop doing good, huh? Yeah, he done bounced back. Gotta go, Ma. I love you. Kiss Alize for me.”
The tears were still falling when Q reached his whip.
Chapter Twenty Six
Khalil had no complaints with the way Q chose to respond to the foul shit B-Man had done lately. An eye for an eye. He had no tears to shed for Gwen. The junkie bitch had been killing herself slowly anyway, and taking B-Man down with her.
Khalil was glad he had let Q handle that because had he handled it, B-Man might’ve been on today’s obituary page in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, instead of Gwen. That’s how hot Khalil had been when he found out what B-Man had done to his top ho. Sinnamon was fucked up. She was wearing a diaper like a twenty-seven year old baby. It would be at least another two weeks before she would be able to go back to work.
To make up for Sinnamon’s lost wages, he had to push his other hos to fill her quota as well as their own. Emily had no problem stepping up her game; she had a list of wealthy clients that could be counted on to come through for her. Rayne, who didn’t enjoy her line of work anyway, wasn’t pleased to learn that she would have to turn extra tricks. Nevertheless, she complied. Cha Cha wasn’t agreeable, though. But she quickly changed her attitude when Khalil tapped that hard head and threatened to send her back to Roco. Cha Cha didn’t want that; she knew if she was sent back to her ex man, ass whippin’s would become regular. With Khalil they were few and far between.
Khalil moved Rayne and Cha Cha out of the apartment in Riverdale as a precaution against anything B-Man might be planning to do to them. Khalil couldn’t figure out what his crazy ass brother might do next. It seemed that B-Man was determined to force his hand. Unlike Q, Khalil wasn’t willing to grant their brother immunity from his gun. If it came down to him or B-Man, he wasn’t going to his grave just to uphold his promise to Black Girl. If B-Man didn’t back the fuck up off him, Khalil was prepared to do what he had to do.
Rayne was especially shook up over what had happened to Sinnamon. She couldn’t understand why Khalil’s own brother would violate one of them like that.
Another thing she couldn’t understand was Khalil being so tight with Q these days. They were thick as thieves, as far as she could tell. Just seeing them together, the bond between them was obvious. All of which didn’t add up to Rayne. She thought back to when Khalil was desperate for money to pay off that gambling debt. She had called Q to plead with him to help Khalil out and Q had rejected her pleas with an indifference to Khalil’s problems that was in contrast to the love she saw between them now. She didn’t say anything to Khalil about it because she had vowed to believe in him. However, doubt had begun to creep into her head.
B-Man was fucked up. Gwen was dead, and the apartment manager refused to allow him to continue the lease. Bed-Stuy hadn’t come through for him. After all the shit they had done together, the nigga hadn’t even offered him a place to lay his head until he could get his own. That bitch Amore had said, when he asked to rest at her spot, “We aight, baby boy, but I ain’t tryna do it like that.”
B-Man punched the bitch in the goddamn face.
Then he hit Persia on the hip to see where she was resting at. Maybe she’d let him rest with her, if for no other reason than to get back at Q for kicking her to the curb. Once he rested with her for a minute, she would fall in love, and he’d finally have her. He’d also have to fake her out like he had bank ‘cause she definitely wouldn’t fuck with a broke nigga.
“I’m glad you cal
led,” Persia said when B-Man rang her phone. “Yeah, we can meet. I need to talk to you, too,” she said.
Yeah I knew she missed the dick! B-Man said to himself. If he would’ve had money for a room, he would’ve told her to meet him at the Hyatt. But since he’d been wiped out when they killed Gwen and took his safe, B-Man asked Persia to meet him in the parking lot of South DeKalb Mall.
If Persia had fell off, haters couldn’t tell by her appearance. Q’s ex pulled up in her freshly washed and waxed Ford Escape SUV. She parked beside B-Man, got out and slid into his passenger seat. The black suede pants she was rockin’ hugged her thighs and tapered down, where they disappeared into the top of calf-high leather boots. A suede and leather jacket set off the hookup. Her hair was in long curls, one of which she had to keep tossing out of her face. The femininity of the movement had B-Man craving to have her as his. Persia was still shining, looking like a star. I’ll rob banks to keep this bitch happy, if she’d just be mine.
“So, what’s up, baby boy?” she asked. Her sexy red lips were hypnotic.
“Oh, I’m good. What’s been up with you?”
“Nothing, really. Just missing the hell out of your brother.”
“Oh, yeah,” replied B-Man, dejected. He had thought she was about to say she’d been missing him!
“For real. Look, B-Man, tell Q that you lied about us sleeping together. Please. Just do me that one good.”
“It’s too late for dat. He ain’t gon’ believe me. Anyway, I don’t fuck with him and Khalil no more.”
“Why’d you have to tell him in the first place?” she asked angrily.
“Fuck that nigga. We can hook up—you and me.”
“That ain’t happening, B-Man. I should’ve never fucked with you like that no way,” she said. Now that her well had run dry, she missed her water.
“What, I ain’t good enough for you?” B-Man asked.
“You want the truth?”
“Yeah.”
“No, you don’t,” she assured him.
“It’s like dat?”
“Life’s a bitch, baby boy.”
She sounded so heartless B-Man realized that it would’ve been futile to ask her for a place to rest his head. What the fuck did she care about him? Everything was all about her.