Natural Born Hustler

by Nikki Turner

  “Air filters and smoke detector batteries, need to check them; it’ll only take a moment, sir.”

  The man with the goatee gave him a once-over, then a small nod of acquiescence. “Make it quick,” he said, “I gotta few things to do, okay.” He was a man used to giving orders.

  “Not a problem.” Fame slid by the dude and started flipping pages on his clipboard as if he were a coach going over his pregame plan.

  In the streets, Goatee went by the name of Carson. If talk on the street was right, he’d been in the drug game for over two decades and had never seen the inside of a jail a day in his life or even a holding pen. Rumor had it that Carson had a family connect from St. Maarten, but Fame listened closely, and there was no trace of a foreign accent in his voice. But that means nothing, Fame thought to himself. If a Chinese baby grew up in France, among a French household, the child would speak perfect French. Humans mimic what they hear.

  Cedar Woods was one of many places that Carson held down. He supposedly also had other houses in North Carolina, New York, California and on some island. Perhaps St. Maarten—who knew? All Fame was sure of was that the nigga was strapped. Fame had gotten lucky obtaining the whereabouts to this one.

  Fame’s homeboy Pockets, who worked at the car wash, was always on the lookout for somebody to hit up. He’d seen the address and registration to Carson’s Jaguar when he stopped to get it detailed at Carpool. Fame watched the apartment for two months before he finally spotted Carson, and could pin him down to somewhat of a pattern.

  Now the man was watching Fame closely. “Look here, I’m going to have to call you back,” he said into the phone before ringing off and clipping it to the waist of his jeans.

  Fame swapped the batteries in the alarm positioned in the ceiling of the hallway, and then he did the same thing to the one in the kitchen. Afterward, he took a look at the ventilation duct, the one that sucked the dirty air out, and checked the filter.

  “Do you know the last time this was changed?” Fame asked.

  Carson shook his head, not much of a talker apparently.

  “I need to go to the truck and get one,” Fame explained. He walked back toward the front door to block any possible retreat from Carson, then Fame reached under his blue work pants and removed the people mover. “But first,” he said, “I’m gonna have to get a few things up off of you.”

  The minute Carson spotted the Glock, his eyes sparked a look. “I should have known better. My wallet is in my back pocket.” He pulled it out and slowly handed it to Fame.

  The billfold was crammed with big-faced Franklins. That would have been a decent score for a small-time dude, but Fame knew better. There were bigger fish to be had in these here waters. He tossed the wallet to the floor. “This ain’t no joke, nigga. I want the real money.”

  Carson offered some unsolicited advice. “Your greed may be your undoing.”

  Fame answered by cracking him upside the temple with the gun, drawing blood. “Let me worry about my undoing! You just do what the fuck you’re told,” he snarled.

  Carson attempted to walk away. “What you think you’re doing?” Fame snapped.

  “You come for da money, right? It’s in the back,” Carson replied, in a matter-of-fact kind of way.

  Fame followed, with his gun pointed at Carson’s back, to the bedroom at the end of the hall. The furniture in the room was huge, a giant mahogany king-sized bed, matching dresser, with a huge mirror that took up an entire wall, a couple of night tables and a file cabinet that was the same finish as the furniture.

  Carson went to the cabinet, twisted a small key into the slot on top and then opened the upper drawer. It contained at least fifty manila envelopes filled with stacked hundreds, ten thousand a stack, five in each envelope. The contents of one had spilled out when Carson tossed the packages on the bed.

  Jackpot. Fame was amazed at the good fortune he’d put himself in position to cake up off Carson.

  But he could barely believe his eyes when Carson opened the second drawer and started tossing more stuffed manila envelopes on the bed, where he’d piled the others.

  Fame was so busy calculating the numbers, with his back turned to the bedroom door, that he failed to register the mistake, or exactly how much danger he was in, until it was too late.

  Out of nowhere he got bashed over the head from behind with a big-ass picture frame. He had seen it on the wall in the hall earlier, a picture of Bob Marley with an oversized spliff hanging from his mouth.

  Before Fame could regain his composure, Carson knocked the gun from his grip and had him in some type of choke hold.

  Fame twisted, ducked and grabbed at Carson’s arm, but none of it worked. The grip was vise tight. If he didn’t get out of the hold quickly, he would lose consciousness. His gun was now on the other side of the room, out of reach. Carson was screaming in his ear, “Yo try to kill me, fuck boy, huh? Yo don’t know who yo fuck wit,” he angrily said, unmasking his native tongue.

  Fame wasn’t sure where the person who had hit him with the picture had run off to, but he was thankful he wasn’t also whaling on him. Almost about to black out, he lurched as hard as he could, backward, knocking Carson into the dresser mirror. He cracked his head, glass shattered and a large jagged shard cut into the back of his neck.

  Carson’s grip loosened.

  Fame elbowed him with all his might; the solo flex. It didn’t take long before he broke free of the hold. With only a fraction of a second to make a quick choice: go for the gun on the opposite side of the room or the door, which was closer. The decision was hard for him, because he never left without what he came for—but Fame chose the door.

  Carson must have gotten to the gun, because Fame heard erratic gunshots as he ran down the steps three at a time and fell into the passenger side of the waiting car. Pockets jammed the already running car into gear, stepped on the gas, and they bailed out.

  “What the fuck happened?” Pockets asked once they were out of the immediate threat of danger. Fame hadn’t spoken since he’d gotten in the car looking half dead, trying to catch his breath.

  His neck was bruised, and his lungs were burning from lack of oxygen. “I need something to drink.” The words came out froggish. His eyes were rimmed with red. They finally pulled over at a gas station to get a bottle of water. It was the best water he had ever tasted in his entire young life.

  Fame looked at Pockets and held up Carson’s billfold, which he had scooped up in mid-stride from the floor of the apartment while running for his life, and said, “Shit, my nigga, dinner on the rude boy?”

  They shared a small chuckle after pulling safely into the lot of a familiar restaurant.

  11.

  The Showdown at Sunup

  Fame had a box of Cap’n Crunch, a giant plastic Tupperware bowl and a half-gallon jug of milk sitting on the kitchen table as Desember quietly opened the door of the apartment.

  “Where you been?” asked Fame between mouthfuls of his favorite cereal.

  It was 8:23 and Desember had just came home, being the first of the two to break her own rule by letting the sun beat her in.

  The potent bush that she and Kayla had smoked in conjunction with the wine coolers they had drunk had put both of them on their asses, out for the count. She woke up on Kayla’s couch at about 7:30 A.M. with a dry mouth and a cramp in her neck.

  “If you hada answered your phone,” she said dryly, “you woulda known where I was last night.” In her mind, he had no right to question her; he was the one who’d been funky last night.

  Fame dropped his spoon into the bowl, handle completely submerging into the milk. He looked like he was ready to blow up but amazingly he kept his composure when he said, “If you had been home where you belonged, there wouldna been no reason to use a phone.”

  He scanned her body for the first time. Her clothes were wrinkled from sleeping in them and her hair was sort of jacked up because she hadn’t wrapped it.

  “We can talk about who was w
rong or right later,” she said, walking away. “But right now I need a shower and something to eat.”

  Feeling disrespected, even more so by Desember turning her back to him, Fame leapt from his chair.

  “Don’t fucking turn your back to me in my house!” he yelled. “What? You trying to go wash some nigguh off you before you come near me?” he accused her. “You think I’m a fucking clown or something?” He grabbed her shoulder.

  “Not until you started talking like one,” she barked back. “Now I’m not too sure who you are.” She could see the hurt and anger in his eyes and face, but Desember didn’t give a damn at that point. She wanted to hurt him the way he had cut her with the remark about sleeping around. “A real man,” she continued, “wouldn’t have to ask where his wifey spent the—”

  Before he realized what he had done, Fame had slapped the only woman he’d ever loved. He instantly regretted his actions. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean …”

  Desember was stunned momentarily. He hadn’t put his hands on her in anger since they were in middle school.

  Before Fame could get his apology out, she was clawing at his face and eyes like a wild animal, a woman trying to protect herself.

  Fame knew he was wrong, but now all he could do was try to defend himself from her punching, scratching and kicking.

  They were making so much noise that one of the neighbors, probably old lady Connie, called the police. Fame was never so happy to see the law in his life, because when it came to Desember, he was a lover, not a fighter.

  By the laws of North Carolina, once the police are called and have to intervene during a domestic dispute, someone has to leave the house, and if there’s violence involved, someone has to take a ride in the squad car.

  In this case, after the police saw the damage done to Fame (mostly from Carson’s house) and the light mark on Desember’s face from the slap, there was only one thing to do. Neither wanted the other to go and both admitted that it was their fault, but the police still hauled them both away.

  The cells were six feet by nine feet: green walls, a steel rack—painted the same color as the walls—posing as a bed, and a stainless steel toilet/sink combination thingamajig. There was a huge light on the wall over the toilet, and a vent that pushed cold air in even though it was the early winter.

  There were only four of them in the entire miniature police precinct. For the past forty-five minutes, Desember had been housed in the cell closest to the front, Fame in the one next to hers. The town drunk occupied the one farthest to the back. He would be there six to eight hours, sleeping off his latest attempt at killing himself by way of Cold Duck.

  Deputy Jock was fifty-four years old, but could still wear his military uniform from when he had joined the army at eighteen. His black low-cut shoes were spit shined and his brown deputy digs were cardboard crisp. “The magistrate wants to see you at the same time,” he said, pulling them both.

  The magistrate was sitting in her closet-sized office: a wooden desk, a file cabinet and a picture of Ground Zero from when the Twin Towers were destroyed in New York.

  “How are you two doing today?” asked Magistrate Dobbson. She was 44 years young, her blond hair wrestling with gray and her figure reflecting a penchant for good cooking. After both Fame and Desember said they were okay, she lifted a paper from her cluttered desk. “Famis Maurauder and Desember Day,” she read from the warrant. “You two like to beat up on each other, huh?”

  Desember tried to explain first how they had just had a misunderstanding and nothing like this had happened before, Fame agreeing to whatever she said. They only wanted a bond and to get out of there.

  “Well,” Magistrate Dobbson said, gazing at them both to try to see if they were being honest with her, “from the looks of it, things got pretty ugly. Domestic violence is no small matter. Something I’ve never tolerated, and I don’t intend to start now.” She gave them a lecture.

  Fame looked at Desember, wondering what the hell they’d gotten themselves into.

  “This is what I’m gonna do,” the magistrate continued, “I’m gonna give you a two-thousand-dollar cash bond, each …”

  Then she hit them with the whammy when she said, “I’m going to implement a mandatory restraining order on the two of you for a period of four weeks. Maybe this’ll give you kids a chance to think about something besides hitting each other.”

  “But we live together,” Desember protested.

  “Not for the next four weeks you don’t.”

  Revelations

  12.

  ICU

  It was well into the wee hours of the morning when someone entered the chapel, snapping Desember out of thoughts of her and Fame’s relationship over the past few months.

  Despite feeling like ten-pound weights were fastened to her eyelids she raised them. Unaware of the hours that had lapsed since her arrival at the hospital, Desember tried to wipe the sleep from her tired eyes so they could better focus on the two people standing before her.

  Her eyes adjusted to the light and as the two people moved closer, she recognized Nurse Shelia, who had given her the change of clothes, with a doctor wearing blue surgical scrubs in tow.

  Desember thought maybe she should stand to hear what the doctor had to say, so she tried to rise to her feet. “Stay seated,” the doctor said in the voice of a man who had been tirelessly working to save a life, or lives, all night and was inured to the long hours. She knew that he was there to bring her the information that she’d been anxiously awaiting … or maybe dreading.

  Desember didn’t know what to think. An array of emotions raced through her mentally and physically drained body: fear, hate, anxiety, and hope as she waited to hear what the doctor had to say. She studied his lips, and the words seemed to be coming out of his mouth in slow motion, maybe because she was so eager to hear what he had to say, words that would impact the remainder of her life.

  “We removed the bullets but they caused a lot of internal damage.” The doctor never lost eye contact with her as tears filled hers. “Because of the inflamed damage, we had to leave his abdomen open, which could cause infection.”

  A teardrop of happiness rolled down her face. He was going to live. She knew it. He was going to live!

  “The next twenty-four hours are crucial. We’re really worried about infection setting in.”

  Desember sobbed, but in her heart she felt the worst had passed.

  “He’s a real fighter,” the doctor said, encouraging her hope.

  “When can I see him?” she managed to ask him between sobs.

  “He’s going to be in the intensive care unit in a short while and you will be able to see him.”

  As soon as Fame was moved into the ICU, Desember sat patiently on one side of the bed, his mother on the other. Since Francine still didn’t know the details surrounding the shooting, she didn’t have much to say to Desember, but she could sense that the girl loved her son.

  At the twenty-fifth hour since the shooting, Francine asked, “Do you want to go to the cafeteria and get something to eat?”

  For a brief moment Desember took her eyes off of Fame to address his mother. “No, ma’am, I’m good.”

  “Do you want me to bring you something back?”

  “No, thanks. I don’t have much of an appetite.” Desember’s stomach felt like it was tied in knots, and eating was the furthest thing from her mind.

  “Well, I’m starving and need to smoke a cigarette.” Francine grabbed her change purse, which seemed to double as a cigarette case, and began to exit the room. “I won’t be long,” she said, looking over her shoulder.

  After a while Desember tried to concentrate on a crossword puzzle, but when she looked up and saw Fame’s eyes flutter open, she rose, thinking that she was imagining things. His eyes looked weak, straining to focus, but it was a blessing that they were open. She was so excited to be able to face the love of her life again. His eyes searched hers. “I love you soooo much, Fame,” she whispered to
him.

  With the breathing tube in his mouth, he could only give her a smile and a nod. He was trying to say something with his hands. “What’s wrong, baby?” Desember asked, not wondering if the movement of his hand was a side effect of his surgery. Not knowing what else to do, she pressed the call button.

  A nurse came in and checked his vitals. “Looks good. He’s just regaining control of his muscles.”

  Once the nurse was gone, Fame’s eyes never left Desember’s, and it was clear he had something on his mind. With the index finger of his right hand and the palm of his left, Fame made a gesture as if he was writing. It clicked that he wanted something to write with. He was trying to communicate. She grabbed a pad and a pen off the bedside table and placed them in front of him.

  He fumbled with the pen at first, dropping it, but after she put it back in his hand he began, a little shakily, to write something. When he was done she took a look:

  U n danger!

  And underneath that:

  U gotta lay low!

  She shook her head. “I’m not leaving your side.”

  But Desember knew Fame had a point. Until this moment, she hadn’t realized she could be in danger. To be honest, she didn’t care. She could take care of herself. All her focus was on Fame and him pulling through.

  “Nothing’s going to happen to me,” she said.

  He started writing again:

  Can’t take that chance. Love u 2 much!

  His eyes were not trying to take no for an answer. The man could be so damn stubborn.

  “Okay,” she somewhat relented. Then she went on to tell him how the police and his family all thought she had something to do with the shooting.

  He started writing again. She could tell it was taking a lot out of him, but he continued.

  Don’t TALK to police or no one.

  “I didn’t—and don’t worry, I won’t,” she told him