by Noire
Jewelz was struggling to sit up when she locked gazes with him. Goody was sitting in a big leather recliner near the foot of the bed and his eyes were fixed firmly on hers. He had taken off his shirt and a huge tattoo that said HEARTLESS in big bold letters stood out on his muscular chest.
“Where are we?” Jewelz licked her lips and asked softly.
“Shhhh…” he said, pocketing his cell phone as he stood up from his chair. “Don’t worry, you’re safe, baby. We’re at my crib. You’re in my bed. You’re safe.”
Jewelz was hella dizzy and weak, but the irony of how she had finally ended up in the monster’s lair after all her failed efforts to get up close on him almost made her smile.
Because Handgun Goody was most definitely a monster. But he was a monster who was all about her. If Jewelz hadn’t known that he was the same man who had hurt her all those years ago she coulda seen herself falling real hard for him. In just a few weeks Handgun Goody had treated her with more tender loving care and respect than any man had ever shown her in her whole damn life. She was starting to think that she might just need to go on that all-expenses paid vacation to Jamaica with him after all. While she still had a little bit of life left in her.
“How you feeling?” Goody asked in a worried tone as he came over and sat down next to her. He looked mad relieved as he reached out and rubbed the back of his hand tenderly over her forehead.
“You want some juice or some water? Is your stomach good now? Do you want something to eat? Tell me what you want, baby. Just tell me, Jewelz, and you got it.”
As sick as she was Jewelz just couldn’t believe how worried this hardbody street killer was about her health.
“I’m okay,” she said softly. “I don’t think I can put anything in my stomach just yet though.”
Goody let out a big sigh.
“Look here, Jewelz. I don’t know whattup witchu baby doll, but that was a whole lotta fuckin blood that came outta ya mouth, yo! Let me take you to the hospital, a’ight? I promise, no matter what they say is wrong with you I’ll get you the best doctors that money can buy. I don’t wanna see you suffering and I damn sure don’t wanna lose you. I got a lotta people dropping around me like flies these days and I just don’t want nothing to happen to you, a’ight?”
Jewelz could only shake her head. She was finally in a room alone with Handgun Goody and she didn’t have the strength or the will to kill him.
“No hospitals, Mister Goody. Please. I promise you I’m straight now. I got an appointment with my doctor next week anyhow,” she lied. “I probably got one of them bleeding ulcers or something in my stomach. It’s probably nothing more than that.”
“I hope you right about that, girl,” Goody muttered. He touched Jewelz’s cheek gently again then pulled a blunt from behind his ear and sparked it up.
Here,” he said holding the weed out to her. “See if this kush makes you feel a little better.”
Despite herself, Jewelz took a few tokes of haze and then fell back onto the soft pillows and closed her eyes. She heard the sounds of Handgun’s zipper going down as he took off his pants. Then she felt him lay his muscular frame down next to her on the bed. She didn’t have the desire to resist when Goody pulled her into his arms and rubbed his hands gently all over her back. He massaged her arms, her stomach, her ass and her thighs. His hands were everywhere on her, touching her all the way down to her soul, but there was nothing sexual about it.
Swept up in another wave of pain, Jewelz couldn’t remember the last time she had been held so close or touched with such tenderness. Despite the fact that these were the same two hands that had brutally plunged a knife into her womb, she couldn’t help but enjoy the feelings of adoration and safety that Handgun Goody was stroking up in her now.
The last thing Jewelz remembered thinking before the potent weed and Goody’s strong, soothing hands eased her back into a sweet dark slumber was, Why, dammit? Why couldn’t Slick love her like this?
CHAPTER 26
Back-Alley Bullets
Wild Man was speeding up the New York Thruway in a Con Edison truck and blasting some Notorious B.I.G. as he rushed his scoob Noodles to an event that was taking place just south of Westchester County.
You’re nobody...till somebody...kills you… Biggie rapped through the speakers as both men nodded their heads to the classic Puffy beat.
Noodles was rolling out on a solo mission today and he had asked Wild Man to give him a ride. That lil falling out they’d had over the failed beauty parlor hit was way behind them now, and once Wild Man had apologized for his actions they’d gone back to hanging out together again like true blood brothers do.
They had met up at Slick’s crib in the projects early in the day and the three of them had played some poker and put back some brewskis. Around lunchtime Slick said he had to break out to take care of some issues for one of the old ladies in the building, so Noodles had asked Wild Man to do him a solid.
I need a favor, yo, Noodles wrote on his text-to-speech device. I need you to gimme a ride up to Westchester. I got a lil job to handle so I need you to drop me off and then come back and pick me up later.
Wild Man had shrugged. “Cool. I got a lil something to handle today myself, but I can make time for you, my G. As long as you ain’t got a problem riding around in the raggedy Con Ed truck I’m pushing.”
“Yo,” Slick asked, tossing back the last corner of his brew, “Y’all niggas got some bizzness that I don’t know about? What kinda job you got happening up in Westchester, Noodles?”
Instead of answering, Noodles had dapped his boss manz out and grinned as him and Wild Man got ready to break out. He knew Slick was curious, but Noodles was from the school of closed lips and he didn’t give up nothing until he was good and ready.
Chilling in the Con Ed truck, Wild Man and Noodles shot the shit back and forth as they rolled outta Brooklyn and headed into Manhattan.
“Ayo,” Wild Man said, bouncing in his seat as the truck flew over potholes that were as deep as graves. Noodles was his muthafuckin bro, and it felt good to be back chilling with him again.
“Lemme run something by you. I ain’t pulled Slick’s coat to this shit yet, but you know that fine chick he picked up after that hit at the jewelry store on Fulton Street that night?”
Noodles nodded.
“That bitch is shady,” Wild Man said. “Check this out. I had to poke a coupla holes in some young nigga the other night, man. He was outside my window tryna violate. That lil sucka sang like a bird before I off’d him, and while he was singing he spit some wild shit in my ear that sounded suspicious as fuck.”
Noodles didn’t need to type his response into his text-to-talk device this time. The curious look on his face said it all.
“Ay,” Wild Man took his eyes off the road and turned to him for a second so Noodles could see just how serious he was. “I don’t think Slick’s new honey is no innocent lil college chick like she tried to make us believe. I think she’s fraudin, man. I’m about to go check something out so I can get the real scoop on that bitch.”
Noodles’s fingers moved furiously as he typed on his device. Yeah, she might be a minor problem but she ain’t our MAJOR problem. We might have us a snake sliding up even closer to home than that, my nigga.
Wild Man shot him a look. “What you saying, man?”
Noodles shrugged and typed. I ain’t saying shit right now. But I’ll know something for sure by the time you pick me up.
“Yo, fuck is going on up in Westchester?” Wild Man asked, repeating Slick’s earlier question.
But Noodles’s lips were still closed. He was tracking hard and sniffing up on something big, and the only thing he would say right now was, Hurry up, man. I’m running late.
Thirty minutes later they pulled up in an alley about a block away from their destination.
Pick me up right here in exactly an hour and a half, Noodles typed on his device.
“Bet dat,” Wild Man nodded setting the ti
mer on his Apple watch. “Ninety minutes. I’m on it. I got you, bruh.”
Noodles nodded back then grabbed his duffel bag off the floor. He gave Wild Man a pound and then jumped outta the truck and prepared to get shit started.
$$$$$
Noodles had been putting his counterintelligence training to good use ever since he got kicked outta the Marine Corps. Recently, he had tapped into a certain phone line and found out about a back-room meeting that was gonna take place at the Jewish Center while a bar mitzvah was going on.
Noodles was like a bloodhound sniffing out this funny-style shit. He’d been watching this one particular cat on the sly for a minute now, and as good as dude was at operating under the radar and covering his tracks, he wasn’t better at the game than Noodles was.
But dude was definitely up to something, and lately the slimy snake seemed to show up everywhere he wasn’t supposed to be. But Noodles took pride in the fact that he beat that bastard to the spot every single time. By the time son arrived on the scene Noodles had usually already been waiting and watching in the shadows for hours.
All of Noodles’s surveillance was about to pay off though. Not being able to talk had made him a damn good listener, and after hearing all the coded chatter going back and forth about a major diamond getting snatched, his suspicions had only deepened.
“We gotta go see Benny,” Noodles had dipped in on an intercepted conversation between his target and a cat he’d peeped as an international diamond dealer named Avi.
“Me?” Avi had continued, “I’m just a small-fry peon. Guys like Benny are the real movers and shakers. They have all the money and all the power. Without Benny’s help nothing moves and we can’t make anything happen. I’ll introduce you as my business partner during his son’s bar mitzvah.”
Just hearing that shit over the wire had told Noodles what kind of amateur his target was dealing with. Benny was one of the biggest Jewish mobsters in New York, and even the Italian gangsters were leery of him. The middle-aged shyster had his hands in all kinds of rackets and extortion schemes, and anybody who opposed him was getting knocked off with ruthless brutality and professional efficiency. If Benny ever found out that his peon was spitting his name and discussing business over the phone, he would lay dude’s whole family down.
The cat Noodles was stalking today was somebody he loved from the heart. Somebody he had fought side-by-side with and stood back-to-back with and woulda given his life for, no questions asked. For Noodles, suspecting somebody you had love for of doing the ultimate foul shit went against the laws of nature.
But the minute he had busted his boy lying and disobeying orders and tryna pull a fast one on Slick, a nagging feeling had jumped on Noodles and it just wouldn’t let him go. That one transgression had led to another one, and then to another one, until a building block of doubt and distrust found Noodles trailing Whitey’s grimy ass all over the city of New York.
See, not too long ago he had followed Whitey to a locker in Manhattan where he was supposed to drop off a briefcase from that jewelry store hit in Brooklyn. To Noodles’s surprise, Whitey had fucked around and stashed the red briefcase in a completely different locker than the one he was told to. That right there had convinced Noodles that his man was a snake, and he’d been on that muthafucka’s ass like a thong on a stripper from that point on.
Today’s job was crucial because Noodles was gonna get the video proof he needed to rally the rest of the posse together and bring a major charge of treason up on that bastard Whitey Reynolds. And the penalty for that type of betrayal was cold death.
Noodles had done some research and found out which restaurant had been hired to cater the food for today’s bar mitzvah, and then he dropped a rack of doe to convince the manager in charge of food services to switch places with him.
Fernando, the manager, had called his crew and told them that a man named Michael Wallace would be filling in for him at the event. Noodles had gotten himself an ID badge made in the name of Michael Wallace, and got his waiter gear together and he was set to go.
Fernando had assured Noodles that his serving crew could handle the job and all he had to do was look like he was making everything run smoothly. He’d also informed Noodles that there would be no weapons and no cameras allowed at the bar mitzvah. The Feds had Benny paranoid as fuck and he had a very strict rule about that sort of thing.
“They’re gonna pat you down and make sure you ain’t hiding nothing under your nuts,” Felix had warned him. “So be prepared for that shit, homey.”
The bar mitzvah was being held at the Jewish Recreational Center owned by Benny and located in a nice area up past Yonkers and just below Westchester. Noodles headed deep into the shadows of the alley and switched into the proper threads for the event. Five minutes later he was neatly dressed in black pants and a matching black vest, a starched white dress shirt and a black bow tie. His shoes were nice and shiny and he was properly groomed.
When he stepped outta the shadows the cat called Noodles was gone and Michael Wallace, the event supervisor for Wine and Dine catering, was ready for action.
He made his way to the back door of the recreation center where he saw a long line of employees waiting to enter. When Noodles finally got inside the large kitchen the cooks and waiters were hustling and bustling trying to get everything in order.
“Oh hello, Michael,” an older white guy said as he read Noodles’s nametag. “I’m Tommy, the co-manager. Felix told me you’d be filling in for him today so let me know if you need anything. Nice to meet you, but excuse me while I run next door and check on the auditorium crew. You gotta make sure you look busy around here, you know. The big boss is a fanatic. He doesn’t like wasting his time or his money.”
$$$$$
Wild Man had a reputation for being a spark-it-up hothead, but in reality he was real crafty with his shit. He had to be. It was an Asian thing, which was about to be demonstrated as his cell phone rang and he glanced down and saw it was his homey Detective Wayne “Flaco” Choo.
Detective Choo was in no way related to him even though their parents had come from the same region in China. But that was a small thing. The Asian community was all about the “hook up” and they lived and breathed that shit every single day.
So when Wild Man had hit his manz up and told him he needed to check out some video from a recent crime scene, he knew it wasn’t gonna take no whole lotta convincing to get his dude to cooperate. It was gonna take a whole lotta cash, but not a whole lotta convincing.
“Yo, whattup Flaco,” he spoke into the phone. “What’s good, what you got for me?”
Flaco was a young cop who was on Wild Man’s family payroll. He used to run the streets with Wild Man when they were coming up, but he’d managed to stay out of trouble long enough to become a police officer. Flaco did small favors for most of the Chinese business owners in Brooklyn, to include Wild Man’s father. He wasn’t a gangsta but he wasn’t a church-boy neither. He had grown up despising the cops just like everybody else in the hood did, but Flaco was smart enough to know that being on the right side of the law could have some real sweet future benefits. Even though him and Wild Man ran on opposite sides of the tracks they still considered themselves old friends, and Wild Man always hit him up with a few dollars and paid him nicely for his services.
“Yo, what’s good, fam?” Flaco said, sounding like he was in a rush. “Check it, I got that tape you asked for. Getting hold of that shit wasn’t easy and I’ma need to dish it off as fast as possible. Where you at?”
“I’m around,” Wild Man said. “I’ma swing by there but you gotta give me a little time though. I had to make a lil run up past the Bronx, man.”
Flaco scoffed. “Fuck that! You wanna see that goddamn footage, right? Check it, I got about forty-five minutes until I’m due at a briefing with my chief. You gotta come peep it real quick ’cause I don’t trust nobody in here to sit on it. I took that shit outta the evidence locker and I gotta make sure I cover my as
s and put it right back.”
Wild Man glanced down at his watch. He had less than an hour and a half left before he had to scoop Noodles up. At this time of day he could probably push it to Flaco’s station in forty minutes or less and hopefully be back up in Westchester in forty minutes too.
“A’ight, yeah I got you, son,” Wild Man said, already putting his truck in gear. “I’m on my way, nigga, just don’t leave. Yo, what’s the damage gonna be on this one?”
“We can square up on my fee later,” Flaco said. “Just hurry up so I can get this shit back in the locker and outta my hands.”
“Say no more, I’ll be there in few, my G,” Wild Man promised as he ended the call.
Wild Man pulled into traffic and got ready to haul ass to Brooklyn. He knew he was gonna have to push it hard in the big raggedy truck, but he was confident that he could make it there and back to Westchester in time to pick Noodles up.
He drove away from the Lincoln Park Jewish Center and jetted south down eighty-seven and into the Major Deegan Expressway. He kept south until he hit the FDR Drive, then following the curve of Harlem River, he zipped toward Lower Manhattan and crossed the Brooklyn Bridge and headed toward the precinct.
Less than forty-five minutes later Wild Man was pulling into an expensive pay-for-parking garage near the police station where Flaco worked. He pulled a ticket and drove to a secluded spot way in the back. It was their designated meeting spot, and as soon as he parked the truck Wild Man texted Flaco and waited for him to arrive.
Five minutes later Flaco arrived and tapped on the window, then climbed into the passenger seat of the truck.
“Wuddup, Flaco,” Wild Man grinned as he gave up some dap and greeted his homey.
“Same shit different day, you know how it goes. Trying to maintain some honor around these wack-ass cops,” Flaco joked as they laughed at the irony.