Money Makin Manhattan

by Noire

  “Aggghhh!” he yelled as his knees wobbled and he collapsed down on top of her. He gasped as he tried to catch his breath, and when he finally did he rolled Honore over and pulled her into his arms. Their bodies were hot and sticky as they held on to each other and drifted off into a deep, fuck-out type of sleep.

  She was snoring softly in the crook of his arm when he heard it.

  Downstairs, under his bedroom window. It wasn’t more than a scratch. Not even enough to wake up a mouse.

  But Wild Man had heard it.

  His ears had been trained to detect the slightest abnormality in his environment, and two seconds after the sound reached him he was wide-awake and on high alert.

  His leaned over and got his gat outta his nightstand drawer as he inched his other arm out from under Honore’s sleeping head and lowered her gently to the pillow. Without disturbing her, he sprang to his feet like a cat. Reaching under the bed, he swept his pants up with one hand and pulled them on. Moments later he was jetting outta his front door, his pockets heavy with the tools of his trade.

  The air outside was damp and misty as Wild Man exited his building barefooted and bare-chested. Silently he crept around the corner and crouched down behind a row of parked cars. He was cloaked in the shadows as he stared up at his guest room window and assessed the situation in just a quick second.

  Darting toward the building, his powerful legs were like springboards. Wild Man leaped in the air and grasped the last rung of the fire escape in his strong grip. Pulling himself up by his massive arms, he scrambled up on the metal platform and scared the living shit outta the dude who was crouched down by his window trying his best to bust the lock.

  “Agghh!” dude cried out sharply as Wild Man jabbed an icepick deep into the back of his neck. He yelped again as Wild Man snatched him up by his jacket and sent him flying over the fire escape’s railing.

  The cat burglar hit the damp ground with a sickening crunch. Moments later Wild Man lowered himself down the fire escape and landed right beside him, and dude immediately started begging.

  “Yo, I’m hurt, fam,” the thugsta moaned in pain. “You ain’t hafta toss a nigga down to the ground like that! Fuck man, I think I’m bleeding on the inside. I’m sorry, son. I’m sorry. I’m all busted up inside. Call me an ambulance. Pleeeease. I think my leg is broke. Call a fuckin ambulance!”

  “I got your fuckin ambulance,” Wild Man muttered as he grabbed him by the ankle and started dragging him down a short ramp that led to the basement door.

  “What the fuck you doin, god!” The cat screamed in pain and bucked his hips up and down as he struggled to get free. “Hold the fuck up, goddamn it!” he screeched, kicking out with his good foot. “I think my fuckin leg is broke!”

  “Probably is,” Wild Man said coldly as he kept right on dragging his ass down the ramp.

  Dude started really begging now. “A’ight. You got me, a’ight? You got me!!! Lemme ’fess up, god. I was gonna rob ya ass! I was gonna clean your crib the fuck out! But c’mon, now! I didn’t even get inside, yo. No harm, no foul cause I didn’t even take shit from you. Lemme go, man! Lemme go!”

  Wild Man cracked a smile at that one. If dude wanted to perpetrate like he was some type of ordinary cat burglar, then let him. But game recognized game and Wild Man had peeped this fucka right from the gate. This lil bitch wasn’t tryna get in his window cause he wanted to steal. Hell nah. This amateur idiot had been up on his fire escape because he wanted to kill.

  Wild Man chuckled deep inside. He didn’t know who the fuck had sent this lame muthafucka to sleep walk him, but he was damn sure about to find out.

  $$$$$

  Almost fifteen minutes had passed. The bloody body sprawled at Wild Man’s feet looked like a flat tire that had sprung a thousand leaks.

  The basement under his apartment building was cool and damp, and Wild Man had turned that bitch into a slaughterhouse. It was pure-dee torture. He had started out poking deep holes in the young coward with his trusted icepick, and for the last few minutes he’d been carving tick-tack-toes everywhere this muthafucka had a smooth spot.

  “I’ma ask you again. Who sent you?” Wild Man inquired calmly. He had fucked around and hit an artery in ol’ boy’s thigh, and dude was laying in a widening pool of warm dark blood.

  Wild Man dropped his meat cleaver and picked up his ice pick again. He jabbed it deep into the cat’s thick shoulder muscle.

  The would-be killer winced and moaned, but he was all out of screams.

  Wild Man went for broke. Rising to his feet, he snatched dude’s pants and drawers down to his ankles and stood over him sweating. Dude wasn’t lying. His fuckin leg was broke. And judging from the angle of his kneecap and the white bone that protruded from his shin that shit was broken in at least two places.

  “I’ma ask you one more time,” Wild Man warned him. “And then the next hole I poke is gonna be in ya nuts. Who the fuck sent you?”

  Dude bit down on his lip and squeezed his eyes shut tightly. He was in agony and desperate to live, but there was no way in fuck he could answer that question. At least not truthfully.

  Because T-Bone knew that if he gave up that info it wouldn’t just be his balls on the line. It would be his mama, his grandmama, his bae, and both of his precious kids who got smoked too. Nah, no matter what the fuck this psycho-ass Asian did to him, there were two words that wasn’t never gonna come outta his mouth: Sly and McFly.

  So when Wild Man gripped his shriveled nut sack in his fist and roared in dude’s face, “Who the fuck sent you, muthafucka!?!?”

  T-Bone swallowed a mouthful of blood and lied through his sliced up lips. “The Queen sent me, yo! It was Honore!”

  CHAPTER 19

  Outta Sight, Outta Mind

  “That shiesty slant-eyed bastard!” Honore bitched as she sat up naked and alone in the empty bed. She kicked off the sexed-up sheets and scrambled to her feet, fuming mad.

  She looked around Wild Man’s empty bedroom and sneered. “Oh, so your grimy ass waited until I fell asleep so you could go creep with some other bitch, huh?”

  Storming into the living room she reaching for her tank top and pulled it over her bouncing titties, then she bent over and snatched up her short denim skirt. She wanted to kick her own self up the ass. Just like a true sucka, she had given up the booty before she got the info she had come there for!

  Ignoring the thong that she had tossed across the room, Honore pulled the skirt up over her hips then slid her bare feet into her flats and grabbed her purse and sweater up off the glass table.

  “If that pie-faced fucker was feening for some random pussy he coulda just woke me up and sent my black ass home!”

  Honore stomped outta the small crib punching in a number on her cell phone. She slammed the apartment door hard on her way out, and her footsteps echoed in the empty hallway as she stormed down the steps madder than fuck.

  “Charlie!” she spit into the phone as soon as it was picked up on the other line. “I need you to come and get me. Yeah, mothafucka! Right now! I don’t give a fuck what time it is, come and get me!”

  She listened to him for a moment as she pushed the heavy front door open and stepped outta the building and into the dampness of the cool night air. “Alright, bet. Yeah, that’ll work. Meet me at the all-night joint on the corner. I’m heading towards the avenue right now.”

  Click.

  Honore had stormed halfway up the block when she turned around and glared at Wild Man’s apartment building over her shoulder. She twisted her lips as she looked up at his window and spit, “I hope you busting a real nice nut up in ya lil skank-ass bitch because there’ll be no more of this good pussy for you, Mr. William fuckin Wild Man Choo! You hear me, minute-man? On everything I love!”

  $$$$$

  The sky was colored in the greyness of pre-dawn when Wild Man re-entered his apartment. Gripping his bloody icepick in his hand he stormed straight to his bedroom and walked over to his bed.

  T
he sheets were rumpled and the smell of hot sex and expensive perfume still lingered in the air, but the chick he had just smashed the shit out of was nowhere to be found.

  He stood there fuming mad with a whole bunch of questions to ask, but no one to ask them of.

  Because Honore was gone.

  $$$$$

  Goody’s insides felt like they were boiling in acid as he stepped inside the project elevator. He knew better than anyone the casualties you faced when playing the type of game he played. No matter how arrogant and ambitious he was out there on the streets, Handgun knew full well that no one was untouchable. No one was off limits. The only thing a gangsta could do was try to make the penalty for violating so severe that it sent a deadly message to his enemies. Fear was much stronger than love, and it was an emotion that was universally respected whether you were a common crook or a Wall Street banker.

  And at that particular moment Handgun had to admit that he was feeling a little fearful himself. He was riding the pissy graffiti-streaked elevator up to the apartment of the woman who had given birth to him. It was his responsibility to tell her that her baby boy had been murdered under his watch, and the ruthless drug lord who sat at the head of one of the most powerful gangs in New York City had the jitters as he knocked on his mother’s door and prepared to give her the bad news.

  “Who is it?” Ms. Goode called out in a surprised voice from the other side of the door.

  “It’s Hand—” Goody started to say and then checked himself. “It’s Michael, Momma. It’s Mike.”

  Ms. Goode unlocked multiple locks and chains and cracked the door open slightly.

  “Hello Michael,” Ms. Goode said as she stared at him up and down. She was dressed in all white and disappointment filled her eyes as she gazed at her oldest boy. “You know you aren’t allowed in my house, is there something I can do for you?”

  “I just came by to tell you what’s going on,” Handgun said quietly. He didn’t care if she didn’t invite him in because he didn’t wanna step foot up in her house no way. There were too many bad memories and shitty regrets in there for him to handle. “I gotta talk to you for a minute. Can you at least step out in the hallway? Please, Ma?”

  “What is it Michael?” Ms. Goode said as she stepped across her threshold. “You’re wearing expensive clothes and shiny shoes so I know you haven’t stopped selling dope and gone broke. What do you want of me?”

  “This is not about me, Ma,” Handgun said quietly as he stared down at the grimy project floor. “It’s about Maurice. Mama I’m sorry, but Mo was murdered last night. I wanted to tell you before you heard it someplace else. I’ll be handling the cost of the funeral and everything so you don’t have to worry about none of that. They said he was at some party and—”

  “It doesn’t matter how it happened or where he was at!” Ms. Goode snapped. “What’s dead is done,” she said firmly. “I tried to raise all my boys—you, Malik, Marcus, Melvin, Marlon and especially Maurice, to be stand-up men like your Daddy was. Poor Mo was just out there trying to follow your path of destruction, boy. I worked my fingers to the bone trying to keep my baby outta those streets but you still managed to pull him right down in the gutter with you! It don’t matter who killed him. You’re responsible for this, Michael. You’re the one who started this unholy domino effect with your little brothers, and now my baby’s blood is on your hands. You deal with it!”

  Before Goody could say anything his mother stepped back inside her apartment and slammed the door in his face. He stood there speechless and alone. The expression of straight disgust on his mother’s face had looked real familiar to him. He’d been seeing that recriminating look in her eyes ever since his Dirty Mike days.

  But she was absolutely right, though. His baby brother’s blood was on his hands. Goody gritted his teeth and clenched his fists as he walked away from his childhood home. The tongue-lashing his mother had put on him was inspirational and it burned motivation deep in his soul. He knew what had to be done, and he was on his way to put vengeance into motion.

  Thirty minutes later he was issuing his bang-up orders.

  “Y’all better beat these fucking blocks up, son!” Goody roared at his hittas. The Boss of Bosses had called a meeting with his remaining brothers, his soldiers, his corner boys, and even all the young chickenheads that he paid to keep an ear out on the blocks.

  “Somebody set my fuckin baby brother on fire in the middle of the street and I want y’all to flush ’em the fuck out! I got an eighty-thousand dollar bonus for the mothafucka who finds out who did this shit and brings me back a body!”

  Goody’s gang sat in the room stone-faced and dead serious, brandishing burners and ready to get bizzy. That amount of bread on a nigga’s head made all the wolves thirsty. They could all use a piece of that change, and they would put their best foot forward to try and get at it.

  “I don’t give a fuck who it is!” Goody screamed. “I don’t care what click they rollin with or who they big homey is! It’s a green light on anybody who even knew about this shit! Y’all got my full support and backing. Do I make myself dead-ass clear?”

  All it took was a head nod from his crew. The mission was set and now it was time for the goons to earn their keep. Blood would flow in the streets of Crooklyn and everybody knew it. Goody’s wrath would be felt in more ways than one.

  CHAPTER 20

  Sex, Money, Murder

  Razorblade Goody was dead and buried, and Slick and Jewelz were ready to scratch another name off the Goode Brother’s kill list.

  Tonight the sky was dark as they sat in a dilapidated Chevy with out-of-state license plates on the back. They had driven way outta Brooklyn and followed a tricked-out burgundy Cadillac to a McDonald’s located on the Lower East Side of the magnificent town of Manhattan.

  “He’s going through the drive-thru,” Jewelz said, pointing towards Hammerhead Goody’s whip as it pulled up at the end of a long line of waiting cars. Hammerhead was the second oldest Goode brother and he was also the softest and the least disciplined of the bunch. He was sloppy-fat in appearance and prone to doing stupid shit.

  Jewelz sucked her teeth as she eyed the crazy line snaking around the golden arches. “He’s gonna be all damn night in that line,” she complained as they watched several cars slide up behind him and box him in. “They must be selling crack on that damn dollar menu.”

  “That’s a good thing,” Slick said as he trained a pair of binoculars on the Caddy and scoped shit out.

  Suddenly he froze.

  “Goddamn,” he muttered under his breath. “That stupid fuck!”

  “What?” Jewelz demanded. They had been following the fat boy all around town and she was tired as hell. She couldn’t wait to get this job over and done with so she could go home and hit her pillow and crash out.

  “Check this shit out,” Slick said, passing her the binoculars. “That wanksta got a lil kid with him.”

  Jewelz peered through the lenses for a few seconds and then nodded her head when she saw a little arm waving around in the air.

  “He sure do! Why he got that little one hanging out so late at night? He ain’t even in a car seat! That child’s mama oughtta kick his ass for riding her baby around in the front like that. I guess we gotta fall back and call it off. I can’t believe we wasted all this time following Hammerhead’s fat ass around for nothing!”

  Slick cut his eyes and gave her a cold look.

  “Fuck outta here. Take this wheel girl.” He grabbed his gat from under the front seat then opened his door and started getting out the car.

  “Where you going?” Jewelz demanded.

  “Yo, as soon as you see that muthafucka pull up to the first window I want you to drive around to the other side of the restaurant. Pick me up right at the front door. You dig?”

  “But he’s got a lil kid with him!”

  “Fuck that shit!” Slick barked, his eyes shooting cold fury down at her. “My mama had lil kids with her too! Now drive your
ass around to the muthafuckin front and meet me over there!”

  Moments later Slick was crouching down low and hauling ass across the street. He ran across the grass toward the line of cars that were waiting in the drive-thru lane, and Jewelz lost sight of him as he slipped between some hedges.

  “Shit!” she cursed out loud as she climbed over the center console and plopped her ass down in the driver’s seat. She rolled down both front windows, then pulled the seat forward and adjusted her mirrors. Satisfied, Jewelz put the car in drive and eased it outta the parking lot. She kept her eyes steady trained on Hammerhead Goody’s ride as he advanced in the fast food line and approached the first window.

  Jewelz had nosed the car across the narrow street and was just pulling into the McDonald’s lot when she saw the back door of Hammerhead’s car open and a figure jump in. Before the door slammed shut Jewelz heard the faint but unmistakable sound of two gunshots.

  Pop! Pop!

  She hit the gas and cut the wheel as she pulled forward and stopped right outside the fast food doors, just like she was instructed. Moments later Slick pushed through the front door and strolled out looking unfazed and winter cool.

  Jewelz’s eyes were all over him as he hopped in the passenger seat, and as soon as his door slammed shut she pulled outta the lot and merged into the light traffic.

  “Did you clip both of them?” she swallowed hard and asked him, her heart sinking deep down into her stomach. “Don’t tell me you popped that lil baby too?”

  The look Slick gave her was evil and icy. It was filled with rage and bitter contempt.