Dirty Rotten Liar

by Noire

  Bunni had picked out all my accessories, and she had done a damn good job too. I dripped a dainty pair of diamond earrings that we had charged on the Dominion’s credit account at the rich people’s mall, and a matching necklace that had a soft triangle of chipped diamonds that rested with the tip pointing right down into my cleavage.

  Since I was gonna be meeting Viceroy I had left all my colorful Glama-Glos right in my suitcase. Today I was rocking my own hair, and I had washed it and let it air dry a little bit, and then twisted the ends with my fingers until they coiled around in shiny little curls.

  About an hour after we got there a big commotion popped off in the front of the house, and when me and Bunni slid that way to see what was happening, we peeped a sleek black stretch limo in the driveway with a bunch of people standing around whistling and clapping.

  “Uh-oh,” Bunni said as the driver held the back door open and a foot slid out with a real expensive-looking men’s shoe on it. “It’s Big Daddy Domino, baybeee! Put ya game face on, Mink Mami! Get ready to hook this Texas fish and gut his ass out!”

  Butterflies started beating all down in my stomach as I thought about how Viceroy’s swollen-up eyeball had stared at me when he was in the hospital and supposed to be in a coma. Fuck what the doctors said, as soon as I walked in that room I just knew his ass was fake-sleep and was grilling me on the sly!

  “Yo, I don’t think Viceroy likes me, Bunni,” I mumbled under my breath.

  “Bullshit!” she snapped. “That fool don’t even know you! Remember,” she sang out, “ages eight to eighty, baybeee! Blind, cripple, and crazeee! Besides, look at all that!” She slapped me hard on my ass. “What straight dude you ever met who wasn’t feelin’ what you packin’, boo?”

  Selah had hired a couple of male nurses to take care of Viceroy for the day, and me and Bunni hung in the background and watched them get him outta the limo and into a wheelchair, and then push him down the stone path that led to the huge backyard on the lake.

  “Pappa Doo is a G,” Bunni said like she was real impressed. Viceroy was sportin’ some real casual attire, but his gear might as well have had big fat price tags hangin’ off of it because from his imported alligator shoes to the bone-crushin’ ring on his pinkie finger, to his fifteen-hundred-dollar Louis Vuitton Evasions, it was obvious that he was swimming in cash.

  “He’s skinny as a mug, though,” I said as we followed the crowd that was following him. “Looks kinda light in the ass.”

  “Sho do,” Bunni agreed as we rounded the corner to the backyard. “Dude needs to get up on a couple of them BBQ ribs and suck down a few cold ones. Fatten his narrow ass right on up!”

  My eyeballs was on high-scrutiny mode as they crawled over every inch of that backyard. There was a white cloth awning set up for Viceroy to sit under that blocked out the sun, and underneath it were about five big folding chairs with fluffy pillows on the seats. His nursing attendants tried to help him get up outta his wheelchair but he waved them off, and with Selah holding him by the arm, everybody clapped and cheered as he walked real shaky-like over to the big chair in the middle of the row and lowered his bony self down into it.

  Barron sat down on one side of his father and Selah perched her ass in a chair on his other side. For the party to be kickin’ so live Mama Selah sure looked jacked in the mug. She sat next to her man tryna slime like it was a joyful reunion, but on the real, her lips were balled up and twisted like shit.

  Barron was looking like somebody had snipped off one of his balls too. He was sitting right beside his daddy, but he was leaning far away from Viceroy’s ass. Every now and then he would sit up straight and listen when Viceroy spit something out the corner of his mouth, but other than that Barron’s mug looked hit too.

  I glanced down at myself nervously. It was a damn good thing that Bunni had told me to go for the innocent-wouldn’t-bust-a-grape look, because stupid-ass Dy-Nasty already had the slutty I-fuck-for-peanuts look on lock!

  “Scab!” Bunni turned down her lips as Dy-Nasty swung her hips like baseball bats as she sashayed through the crowd of rich clear folks, talking all loud and grinning up in their faces. She had on a pair of purple dukey shorts like the kind those female volleyball players wear all the time. But Dy-Nasty’s scandalous ass wasn’t shaped like no athlete! Her thick yellow jelly was pouring outta them shorts like lemon custard pudding, and the lil top she had on wasn’t even as big as a bra.

  “That bitch ain’t nowhere near as smoove wit’ it as you are, Mink,” my girl Bunni complimented me. “Naw, Dy-Dooky over there is just a straight-up loose-booty scab!”

  I turned my lip up and watched as she walked right over to where Viceroy and Selah were sitting. Bunni had that shit right. The party hadn’t been going but a hot-ass minute and Mizz Thang was already super tipsy and lookin’ stank and raunchy in her coochie-cutter shorts.

  I couldn’t believe it when she bent her wide ass over right in front of Viceroy and dug around for a cold bottle of beer from the bottom of an icy cooler. She pried the cap off that baby with her back teeth, then gripped the neck and turned that shit up to her lips like a natural man.

  Dy-Nasty’s throat was so damn long, and she guzzled that brew so damn hard, that it started leaking all outta the corners of her mouth. And then, right there in front of Viceroy and all his rich white cronies, her dumb tail belched real loud and then laughed like crazy as she wiped at her wet chin with the back of her hand.

  “Look,” Bunni said, and elbowed the shit outta me real quick. “Check out ya play papa! Daddy-O ain’t feelin’ Stanky’s ass at all.”

  Bunni was batting a thousand. The sneer on Viceroy’s face was enough to say it all. He leaned over and whispered something to Selah, and she nodded a few times and then reached over and patted his hand.

  “Ha!” Bunni said as she snatched me by my arm and we walked past a smoking grill. She snatched a burnt hot dog off a platter that had been smothered in ketchup, relish, and onions, and gobbled up half of that shit in just one bite.

  “Leggo Mink,” she said, sashaying out into the crowded yard. “Get ready to put a big W in our column baby ’cause this here gank is ’bout to be a wrap. You ain’t got a damn thing to worry about,” she assured me over her shoulder as she switched her high booty toward the outdoor happenings. “ ’Cause that lil amateur guttersnipe walking around in them stank purple panties ain’t got shit on you!”

  “What the hell you mean the Web site ain’t there no more?” Dy-Nasty snapped with her hand on her hip. Her and Pilar were crammed together in the downstairs powder room while the rest of the party got their drink on and partied outside.

  “I meant exactly what I said,” Pilar muttered. “That shit isn’t there anymore.” She held her iPad up in the air and shook it like it was an Etch A Sketch.

  “Well where the hell could it be?”

  Pilar ignored the girl breathing down her neck as she refreshed the browser on her iPad and then typed in the Web address again.

  And again, a PAGE NOT FOUND message came up on her screen and made her scratch her damn head.

  Dy-Nasty whipped out her cell phone and started punching buttons.

  “I know that million damn dollars better be in my goddamn bank account,” she huffed. “Suge said he was gonna transfer it by 12 o’clock noon and that shit damn sure better be there!”

  Pilar didn’t say a word as she turned off the cellular data on her iPad and then turned it back on. She typed in the Web address one last time and came up with a fail again.

  “Something ain’t right,” she muttered.

  “It damn sure ain’t!” Dy-Nasty hollered as she stared down at her cell phone. “I’ma fuck Suge up! There ain’t but twelve damn dollars in my bank account!”

  Pilar whirled around and blasted on the girl.

  “You just couldn’t keep your damn mouth closed, could you? Who else did your stupid-ass tell about this shit?”

  “Whut?” Dy-Nasty rose straight up outta the gutters of Philad
elphia. “Yo who da fuck is you callin’ stupid? I didn’t tell nobody but Suge! It ain’t my goddamn fault that they done shut the Web site down! Who the hell else did you tell?”

  “Why in the world would I tell somebody?” Pilar screamed on her. “I’m the one who tried to hook you up in the first place!”

  “Stop trippin’! We can still gank they asses just as long as we can show them a copy of them pictures. You printed them shits out, didn’t you?”

  Pilar took a real deep breath. “No. I didn’t print the damn things out. Did you?”

  Dy-Nasty clutched her chest. “How the hell was I supposed to print ’em out? Do you see me walking around here with a printer and a goddamn computer?”

  Pilar folded her arms over her breasts and peered at Dy-Nasty suspiciously. “Are you sure you didn’t tell anyone about this other than Uncle Suge?”

  “Hell yeah, I’m sure,” Dy-Nasty lied as she thought about the convo she’d had with her mother. Technically she had told two people, but Pat didn’t really count. “I did just like you told me to do! I got with Suge and squeezed his nuts. And that’s the only person I told!”

  Pilar looked Dy-Nasty up and down and then slapped her own forehead and snorted in pure disgust.

  “I don’t know what the hell made me trust you to do even the simplest thing right. What in the world was I thinking?”

  “I don’t know why I trusted your fake ass neither!” Dy-Nasty shot back. “You ain’t do nothin’ but waste my time!”

  “Well somebody else must have found out about it,” Pilar said, unlocking the bathroom door and reaching for the knob. “Because the pictures are gone. But that’s cool, I’ll just have to find another way to stick it to Barron because I’m out of it now. I have a feeling this shit is about to get way too messy for me.”

  “Oh, so now you just gonna be out and forget all about me? Well what about my damn money?”

  Pilar looked down her nose at the grimy hood chick with the tatted up tits and the terrible weave and said, “I don’t know, what about it?”

  Dy-Nasty’s eyes got real small.

  “You stuck up bitch, you! I oughta wipe this whole damn bathroom up with you! I oughta stomp a mud-hole in your boojie ass and give you a head swirly right here in this goddamn toilet bowl!”

  “Oh yeah?” Pilar said, turning around to face the tough Philly street chick head-up. “Go ’head and try it, bitch. You put one goddamn finger on me and what you oughta do is get ready to take your raggedy ass to jail!”

  CHAPTER 22

  Viceroy looked pretty damn decent for an oil blast victim, and the fact that he had come up out of his coma was cool and all, but Digger Ducane didn’t drive all the way to Austin because he gave a hot goddamn about his brother-in-law. Hell no. He had come down to Austin to try to save his own ass.

  He had called his sister Selah to see if she was still mad about him crossing enemy lines to work for Rodney Ruddman, and as soon as she answered the phone he could tell right off the bat that, yep, she was still pissed.

  “Hey sis.” He’d started out trying to smooth talk her like everything was everything and they were still all the way cool. “I heard Viceroy is out of his coma! God is good all the time, ain’t he?”

  “What do you want, Duncan?”

  Oh, hell yeah. She was pissed all right. Selah hadn’t called him Duncan since he was twelve damn years old!

  “Pilar told me about the barbeque,” he’d said, throwing his daughter’s name in the mix because he knew his sister was a sucker for her niece. “I was just wondering if I could bum a ride down to Austin with the rest of the family.”

  Digger made sure he put a lotta weight behind that last word. Family. Him and Selah were family and she needed to remember that shit. They had the exact same blood running through their veins, and no matter what went down between them, blood was always gonna be thicker than mud.

  “Sorry,” Selah had said coldly. “The business jet is full. If you want to come to Austin you’re going to have to drive down.”

  That was some bullshit and Digger knew it, but he had waited for Pilar to get ready, then stuffed his fat gut behind the wheel of his Caddy and driven the two hours south anyway.

  Viceroy was a big willie in the great state of Texas, and a lakeside ’que thrown in his honor had pulled a helluva turnout. Sitting under an umbrella table and sipping from an icy glass of vodka and orange juice, Digger looked around at the huge crowd of drinking and picnicking folks and felt a little lonely.

  He had put in close to thirty years with Dominion Oil, and almost everybody out there had either ran the streets with him in the past or had been his close business associate or friend.

  But all that shit had changed in a hurry when he defected from Dominion Oil and jumped in bed with their main competitor, Ruddman Energy. Yeah, Digger knew it took some real big Brooklyn balls for him to show his face in this crowd today, but he wasn’t no grimier than those Dominions were. Besides, according to Pilar, Viceroy had woken up with a couple of screws loose. Hell, his marbles were bouncing around in his damn head so bad that they hadn’t even told him about Digger leaving the company yet.

  Digger sighed and swigged a mouthful of liquor. Viceroy used to be his main man and he felt real low for betraying him, but who the hell knew he was gonna wake up?

  Digger watched as his old friend sat next to Selah and talked shit and cut up with all his old business partners. He missed being a part of that set. Yeah, the pay was definitely steady over at Ruddman Energy, but when it came to doing business Rodney Ruddman was one greasy-ass fuck! On the real, Digger doubted if he would even have a damn job when he got back to Dallas.

  He thought about the call he’d gotten on Friday afternoon. It was from a secretary in human resources instructing him to be in Rodney’s office with his logbooks and his company keys the first thing Monday morning at seven sharp.

  Digger knew damn well that old fool wasn’t calling him on the carpet because he wanted to go hit a few holes of golf. Nah, that little ruthless bastard was about to fire him, and Digger knew it. He had a feeling Ruddman wanted to stick it to him personally instead of letting human resources shut him down because that little bastard wanted to humiliate him first.

  Digger knew he had it coming, but still, his pockets couldn’t stand it. The thought of being broke and out of a job made him drain his shot glass and signal to a passing waiter to bring him a refill. He glanced toward the lake and spotted his daughter stretched out on a floater and his stomach clenched. The only way for him to dodge the unemployment bullet was to convince his sister to forget what he had done and let him come back and pick up his old contracting spot at Dominion Oil.

  The problem was, Selah had already told him it would be a cold day in hell before she fucked with him again, and since the weather was a sticky eighty-something degrees and rising in the heart of central Texas, Digger knew his sister probably wouldn’t be fucking with him today.

  I had been watching Viceroy on the sly ever since he had rolled up at the party, and I still got the same creepy-ass feeling about him that I had gotten when he was laid up in his hospital bed.

  Dude was a gamer, I could tell.

  He had the look of a natural grifter about him. Like he had hustled up on some serious squares in his day. A working person could usually peep another working person right off the bat, and that’s the shit that had me worried when Selah motioned me over and said she wanted to introduce me and Dy-Nasty to Viceroy.

  “C’mon over here, Mink.” Selah smiled and reached out to me as Dy-Nasty hung off her other arm like a stank lil rag. “It’s time for the two of you to get to know Viceroy. I’ve told him a little bit about you ladies, and he’s been looking forward to meeting you.”

  Bullshit, I thought as I busted the chilly look in his predatory eyes when he peeped the three of us coming his way. I couldn’t speak for Dy-Nasty, but this cat was definitely not feeling me, and his animal instincts showed on his dark, handsome face.

>   “Viceroy,” Selah called to him. Barron jumped up outta his chair and offered it to his mother but she waved him right off. “Listen, dear. I need to go inside and freshen up for a while, but before I leave I’d like you to meet Dy-Nasty and Mink.”

  What the fuck? I felt myself getting swole inside as Selah walked away and left us standing in front of her man like two greedy idiots. Why in the hell did she say Dy-Nasty’s name before she said mine, when I was the one who got to the mansion first?

  I stood there and tried to look all innocent as Viceroy’s eyes rode rough over us like a scratchy black blanket. That ol’ right eye of his wasn’t swelled up like a hard-boiled egg no more but it was still scary as hell.

  “Dy-Nasty and Mink,” he growled with his top lip turned up like he smelled something stank. I just knew he was looking at us all funky ’cause of them nasty lil purple coochie-cutters Dy-Nasty had on, but then I realized he wasn’t even paying her no attention and all that funktified eye-grillin’ was aimed dead at me!

  “Nice to meet you,” I said, pulling my little hoity-toity white girl voice outta my trick bag as I got ready to perform my ass off. “I’m so happy you’re out of your coma. God bless, Mr. Viceroy! God bless you!”

  “Really, Mink?” Dy-Nasty turned around and busted on me like, Bitch, come up offa that bullshit! “Really?”

  She rolled her ugly eyes at me and then she reached out to pound Viceroy out like she was a dude giving up the dap.

  “Hey, how you feeling, Pops?”

  “Pretty good for an old fella,” Viceroy said, and I almost shit when he dropped his frown a lil bit. “I’m hanging. I’m hanging.”

  Dy-Nasty bent over in her ass-almighty shorts and dug her hand way down in the bottom of the huge cooler that sat by his chair. She came up holding two ice-cold beers. She paused to lick the icy liquid off the bottom of both cans before holding one out to our play-daddy, and then she popped the tab on the other one and tipped that baby up and let it flow.