by Noire
The scared young girl sitting in front of him had been the last person to see her, but Taleah was too shook to tell him what she knew. She was afraid somebody on the streets might find out she had snitched on a dope dealer, and come looking for her to get some payback.
“Nobody is gonna find out anything about you,” Trey told her. “And I can promise you that. C’mon, Taleah. Just tell us who Princess bought the dope from and where she went to get high.”
“But I don’t know the dude’s name, Trey! I swear to God I don’t. All I know is she asked me to give her a walk to the corner store up on Lenox so she could buy some skins. We was almost there when she saw a dude slanging on the corner. They walked over to the building together and she copped from him. That’s it. I don’t know where she went after that. She told me to go ahead and said she was gonna catch up with me later, so I left.”
“Did you see which way she went?” Mr. Howell, Princess’ eighty-two-year-old grandfather asked in a small, scared voice. “Baby, do you remember what street she was on when you last saw her?”
Tears ran down Taleah’s face. The poor girl was so shook she was trembling.
“Please, Trey.” Her nose was red as she pleaded with him. “I just don’t wanna get my name in nothing, you know what I mean? Them dudes out there are crazy, and if they find out I told you something they gonna come after me and my little brother too.”
“Yo, Taleah, listen.” Trey kneeled down in front of the girl and held both of her slender shoulders in his large hands. “I would never put you in any danger. And that’s word. Now, Princess is nine-months pregnant and ain’t nobody seen her in almost two days. She could be in some real trouble and she might just need our help. You were damn solid to tell her grandfather y’all had been smoking weed together, but now you gotta tell it all, baby girl. Mr. Howell is an old man, and he can’t handle all this stress. So I need you to tell me what street Princess copped on, and which way she was heading when you left her. Tell me, Taleah. Whatever you know you gotta tell me.”
Taleah took a deep breath and swallowed hard.
“I’m telling you the truth, Trey. I really don’t know the dude’s name. I just know he was tall and skinny, and he had cornrows going back in his hair. But I did…” she swallowed hard again. “I did see the building Princess went in. And if you come with me up on Lenox Avenue, I’ll show you.”
$$$$$
Trey helped Mr. Howell climb into his whip. The old man was so thin and feeble that his bones poked through the oversized shirt he wore and his belt damn near looped his thin waist twice.
“I just don’t understand it,” he kept shaking his gray-haired head. “She was doing so good, you know. She was off that stuff and doing good while she was hanging around up here with you. But as soon as she stopped showing up she started running the street again. You know she’s my little princess, Antonio.”
His thin voice was full of grief. “I was disappointed when she came home pregnant, but I accepted it as the Lord’s will. Princess and that baby she’s carrying are the last of my bloodline. They the only things I got left in this world.”
Trey waited patiently until the elderly man got himself strapped in. His gnarled hands shook as he tried to guide the seatbelt’s latch over to the lock, but somehow he got it done.
“I know, Mr. Howell.” Trey said as he climbed in on the driver’s side of the car. He had grown up next door to the Howell family and hung out a lot with Freda, Princess’ mother. Freda had gotten shot in a drive-by years ago while she was pregnant, and although she died, Princess survived. Mr. Howell had been raising the girl by himself until a local pimp got her pregnant and tricked her out on dope.
“Don’t worry,” Trey told him. “I got some good eyes out there on the streets looking for your granddaughter, Mr. Howell. She’s out there somewhere, and we’re gonna find her.”
Trey was pulling away from the curb when he felt his cell phone vibrate on his waist. He snatched it off the clip and pressed it to his ear.
“Yeah, whassup?”
It was his manz, Rain. He operated an icee stand near 116th Street, and he was calling with some real bad news.
“Yo, man. You know my oldest son’s mother works up on the baby ward at Harlem Hospital, man. I was asking around like you said, and she told me an ambulance brought a young pregnant girl in unconscious earlier today. The doctors operated on her but they couldn’t save her. The baby is alive, but the mother OD’d. I think this young chick might be the girl you lookin’ for, man. I think this might be her.”
Trey went ice-cold inside.
It felt like history was repeating itself.
He drove past the corner where Taleah said she had last saw Princess, and noted the building the girl pointed out. It was a well-known drug den, and Trey had gone up in there to pull out smoked-up kids quite a few times over the years.
Wordlessly, he dropped Taleah off at home, and then he drove down Malcolm X Blvd and took Mr. Howell inside Harlem Hospital. Two hours later, Trey held the weeping old man in his arms as they left the dank, impersonal morgue.
Thirteen-year-old Princess Howell’s body had been waiting in a freezer drawer to be identified. And while her underweight baby boy was upstairs in the NICU brain damaged from drugs and a lack of oxygen, the sight of the dead teen, barely old enough to be anybody’s mother, had rocked both Trey and her devastated grandfather deep down in their souls.
“I’m sorry, Mister H.” Trey let the old man press his bony face against his chest as he cried like a baby. Every life lost to drugs was another painful nick in the center of Trey’s heart. “I’m so fuckin’ sorry!” he said.
And he was. But what Trey didn’t tell the elderly man as he held him in his arms, was that he was mad as hell now, and he was on a mission too.
CHAPTER 20
Nooni was a nervous fuckin’ wreck.
She knew she was a murderer, and she kept peeking at the front door like the cops were gonna bust in and arrest her at any minute. Her hands were icy cold and her heart pounded in her chest as she wandered around the G-Spot looking lost and turned out.
To make things worse, Monique had overheard Greco asking her for his cell phone back, and that chick had wilded out on her like crazy.
“You tryna call some fuckin’ body, Nooni? Huh? Huh?” Monique slapped her upside her head and punched her in the eye. “Here I am tryna hide you and protect you, and you poppin’ your lil dumb ass head up to get picked off!”
Monique had put her hands around Nooni’s throat and dug her nails in deep as she squeezed the air outta her. “I ain’t going to jail for you, Nooni. I shoulda just called the cops when you killed that dude, but since I didn’t they can come after my ass behind that shit too, and I ain’t going to jail!”
She had pressed her fingers hard against Nooni’s windpipe, and when Nooni squirmed and tried to fight her off, Monique had come straight outta the projects and beat her down to the ground.
“Yo, what’s up with that chick?” Ace asked Salida. He was busy tryna think of how to pinch off a few ends so his cousin Rabb could pay for Izzy’s and Zero’s funerals, and Salida was busy chattering in his ear about the next week’s entertainment line up. They watched Nooni drag herself from the XXX cinema room and shuffle toward the staff bathrooms.
Ace shook his head. Something wasn’t right. Nooni used to be a stunning and sexy young mamacita, and now she was dragging her ass around like a dried up little old lady.
Salida smiled inside. Unlike Ace, she knew exactly why Nooni was all shook up, and she knew exactly what to do to get the young girl to calm down and relax a little bit too. So, later that night, Salida went and found Nooni sitting alone near a pool table.
“Come with me,” she said, and took Nooni by the hand. The girl’s fingers were ice-cold and Salida was pleased by how much they trembled.
She led Nooni upstairs and unlocked the door to the cut-room using the key on her wristband. They walked past all the jugs and containers, and
other drug-making paraphernalia, and into the small office.
“Sit down,” Salida told her.
Nooni did, but she kept her eyes on the floor.
“Something is wrong with you,” Salida spoke like she was a trained mental health professional, and after all those years in the nut house she had sat through enough counseling sessions to know exactly what tone to take. Her voice was calm and soothing, yet cool with authority.
“What’s going on?” Salida pressed.
Nooni shook her head.
“You’d feel so much better if you let it all out and told somebody,” Salida urged.
The girl looked damn near comatose. She was shivering uncontrollably, and the tips of her nails were stumped and bloody because she’d gnawed them all the way down to the meat.
Salida switched tactics.
“I see you and Truth are pretty close. I think he really cares about you.”
Silence.
“Are y’all still staying in that lil ass apartment with Pluto and Monique?”
A small nod.
“You and Truth need to work harder so y’all can get your own place. Monique is cool, but two women can’t live up under the same roof. Believe me, I know.”
Silence.
“Are you homesick or something, Nooni? Do you miss your family?”
The girl trembled visibly.
“I bet your people are probably really worried about you.”
A small tear slipped from Nooni’s eye.
“You want me to ask Monique if you can go home and see your sister?”
Nooni shook her head quickly. “She already said I can’t. The cops are looking for me.”
More tears came then. An ocean of them.
Salida pressed the girl to her breast in a motherly embrace. She whispered soothing words as the dumb-ass who was about to become her little in-house tester wept in her arms.
“There, there, there,” Salida cooed and rocked. “You don’t have to cry. You’re safe here with us. We’ll protect you. And things will get better for you, Nooni. I promise they will. In fact, I can help you start feeling better right now. Do you trust me?” she asked, smoothing down Nooni’s wild tangle of hair. “Do you trust me, Nooni?”
The girl nodded. Just once.
That was all Salida needed to see.
She reached into her top drawer and pulled out a small vial. The words Divine Nine were stamped on the outside. Shaking out two pills, she spoke gently to the crying girl.
“Open your mouth,” she said softly.
Nooni obeyed.
Salida placed the two pills on Nooni’s tongue, and when the young girl swallowed, Salida smiled.
CHAPTER 21
Slick Sallie was thinking fast and moving even faster.
He’d driven Mick’s car home after the bungled heist, but there was no time to grieve for his cousin and there was no time to wait around for the money that would come in after the microchips were sold to a company in Vietnam either.
Sallie had parked Mick’s car several blocks away, and let himself into his mother’s house. He’d showered and drank half a bottle of whisky, and after sleeping for a few fitful hours he’d gotten up with the sun and driven north for several hours.
After ditching Mick’s car on some railroad tracks, he’d hitched a lift back to the city from a truck driver who was hauling paper goods. He hopped out about a thirty-minute walk away from his mother’s house, and he was almost there when his cell phone rang.
“Uncle Frank,” he said. “Come stai?”
“Where the fuck are you, Salvatore?”
His uncle’s tone was cold and unforgiving, and Sallie sensed the danger right away.
“Uhhh,” he said, stalling, “I’m actually on my way to your house,” he lied. “Yeah, I should be there in a bit.”
“Good,” Frank said coldly. “Come quickly. I have something for you.”
Sal stuck the phone down in his pants and ran the rest of the way home. There was no time to waste now. His uncle’s voice had said it all. They knew about the bomb, they knew about the heist, they knew about Mick. There was gonna be fuckin’ hell to pay.
Back downstairs in his mother’s wine cellar, Sal once again dragged the heavy safe from its hiding space behind the dusty barrels.
“Stupid fuckin’ Mick,” he muttered. A tear slipped from his eye as he mourned briefly for his favorite cousin. “Retarded ass-wipe bastard.”
Steeling himself for the task at hand, Sallie plugged in his brand-new hacksaw, put on a pair of goggles, and went to work.
An hour later Gino’s safe sat gutted open in the middle of the floor. Without stopping to wipe the sweat from his face, Sallie plundered right in, pulling out stack after stack of money and tossing it to the floor at his feet. Quarter of a mil, his ass. There had to be hundreds of thousands crammed inside that baby, he realized. The money smelled dank, and slightly moldy, but it was definitely still spendable.
Only when the safe was finally empty did Sal use the end of his shirt to mop his dripping face and chin. He wanted to jump up and down at the sight of all the legal tender that was strewn out around him. There was more than enough there to set up an arms deal that a young drug lord in Harlem had asked him about, and to get into some other income-producing projects as well.
With one eye on the pile of dough at his feet, Sal took his cell phone off his belt and punched in a number.
“Three Brothers Funeral Home.” A female voice with a strong east coast accent greeted him from the other end of the line.
Sal grinned broadly, and then asked to speak to the slick New York City drug dealer who was going to help make him a millionaire.
CHAPTER 22
Lenox Avenue was live and on fire when Trey got back from dropping Mr. Howell off at his apartment. He parked his whip in front of a Spanish bodega that was owned by one of his homeboys in the Talented Ten coalition, and then walked around the corner without a bit of urgency in his stride.
The slanga he was looking for was holding his spot down real lovely in front of the dilapidated building. Customers were walking up on him from all directions, and the deadly tan goods he sold were flowing from his hands like city water.
“Yo whatchu want, whatchu want, whatchu want,” the young hustler chanted as Trey approached him. He eyed Trey’s hands in search of that mean green, and he was definitely ready to conduct some bizz.
Trey never slowed his stride as he snatched the trap boy up in his collar and muscled him over to the stoop of the drug den.
“Yo, what the fuck is you doin’ niggah?” the slanga struggled to get outta Trey’s killer grip. He swung a wild right hook, and Trey capped him in the grill, and then head-butted him hard on the bridge of his nose.
He pounded the young’un up the stairs and flung him through the rickety front door. They tussled as Trey dragged him, kicking and fighting, all the way up to the fifth floor.
The young man looked up from his knees, then twisted and bucked on the landing when he realized he was being dragging out on the roof. He tried to leap to his feet, and Trey crushed his grill with the heel of his boot, and sent a thick stream of blood flying from his mouth.
“Yo! Who da fuck is you?” the young man screamed around his busted teeth. “What I do, man? What the fuck did I do?”
He struggled some more as Trey flung him outside on the building’s roof. He got up on his hands and knees and tried to crawl away. Trey planted his foot in his ass and sent him crashing face-first into the asphalt.
Grabbing dude by the back of his shirt, Trey dragged him a couple of feet over to the edge of the roof. He lifted dude’s long, skinny ass easily to his feet, and held him upright while he wobbled and panted in confusion.
“What?” The dope slanga hollered, straight bewildered. “What? You got some bad shit? Well just ask for another package, my niggah! You ain’t gotta do all this here!”
“You like selling dope to pregnant girls and little kids, huh, muh’fucka?” T
rey spit, addressing the trap boy for the very first time. “You killed a little girl, man, and her baby is prolly gonna die too. You ain’t got no problem with that grimy shit huh?”
Dude shook his head. “What the fuck I look like to you, niggah? A fuckin’ baby sitter? Ay! I sell my shit to whoever got money, yo! Now do I go lookin’ for knocked up bitches and snotty-nosed kids? Nah, man, nah. But if they roll up on this block tryna conduct a transaction J-Ugly is gonna handle his!”
“Gimme what you got on you,” Trey said quietly. Heat was coming outta his eyes and he was damn close to losing his grip. “All of it. Whatever you got in ya muh’fuckin’ pockets, give that shit up right now.”
The trap boy bucked. “Niggah is you crazy? Yo ass ain’t about to stick me up without no burner, ya heard? Do you know who the fuck I rep for? Whose product you tryna gank? Man, Flex is my rowdy. I’m rolling with them Divine Nine niggahs, and you ain’t about to get my shit!”
“A’ight,” Trey said calmly. He reached behind dude’s knees and scooped his long ass straight up off his feet. He cradled dude in his arms like a baby, and tipped him backwards over the ledge of the roof.
“What the fuck is you doin’ man?” the dope slanga screeched and tried to wrap his arms around Trey’s thick neck and rocked up shoulders. “Man, if you drop me off this bitch my crew is gonna kill your ass!”
“Oh, them niggahs can get some too,” Trey said as he head-butted dude in the nose again, and flung him straight over the edge. He stepped over to the door without a backwards glance, and it slammed shut behind him right after dude’s body went splat on the ground.
“Hell yeah,” Trey muttered as he walked back down the stairs without an ounce of regret. “Them niggahs can get some too.”
CHAPTER 23