Games Divas Play (A Diva Mystery Novel)

by Angela Burt-Murray

  “Again, eight ball, corner pocket,” I said, not lifting my head from the table. I drew back my stick and hit the cue ball hard. It shot across the table, then ricocheted around. Slowing down, the ball then gently tapped the eight ball into the corner pocket.

  My work here was done.

  The bar erupted in hoots at my victory. Jake hung his head and laughed.

  “Damn, I thought I actually had a shot tonight.” Jake handed me twenty bucks and headed over to his friend. “Be very careful, Terrence. Nia’s a real shark.” He clapped his friend on the shoulder and then headed over to the bar to get another beer to soothe his wounded ego.

  “Is that true, Nia?” Terrence asked as he leaned against the table with a pool cue between his legs. He said my name slowly like he was trying it out for the first time, and I liked the way it sounded on his lips. “Are you a real shark?”

  “Well, Terrence. It is Terrence, right?” I said, playing with him. “Since you’ve never seen me play before and I just waxed the table with your boy, I’ll let you take your money back now if you’re scared.” I leaned against the table with one hand on my hip and the other holding out his fifty-dollar bill.

  He laughed and took the bill from my outstretched hand, then placed it back on the edge of the table.

  “Oh, now we’re going to play for sure. But let’s make it interesting.” He looked up at the ceiling as if trying to think of an interesting wager; then he turned back to me.

  “Fifty bucks if you win; your phone number if I win,” he said with a smile, the light from the bar dancing in his eyes.

  Oh shit. This brother is not slick. I know he’s not trying to spit game at me. He is fine, though. And I haven’t had anything close to a date or sex since I got to New York. This could get interesting. It could be nice to have a new friend with benefits.

  “You’re on. And I’ll even let you break to give you a fighting chance.” I walked around the table and got all the balls from the pockets as I sang Jay Z’s song “I’m a Hustla, Baby” and then racked them up with ease.

  “Well, I like your confidence. But it’s going to be sad to see that pretty face crumble when I beat you like you stole something.”

  “Yeah, right,” I said. “Let’s go, Officer.” It was on.

  As the last ball sank into the hole, I turned to look at Terrence with a sly grin on my face, half expecting to see him scowling because he got spanked. Beating him down was probably going to end our little flirt fest since I knew most brothers couldn’t handle getting beat by a woman.

  “Well, at least you made it competitive,” I said as I came around to the side of the table where he stood holding his fifty dollars out to me. I was surprised to see he had a slight smile on his face.

  “Well, at least you have to give me a chance to win my money back. Double or nothing?” He winked at me as he began to collect the balls from the pockets, assuming I’d accept his challenge. I was disappointed he hadn’t put my phone number back into the wager, but I tried not to let him see that.

  “Sure, I could always use some spa money,” I said cockily. I took off my jacket and laid it on the bar stool that also held my purse. “Loser breaks.”

  “With pleasure,” he said with a focused glint in his dark eyes.

  I never even made it back to the table. Terrence ran that table like a pro.

  Jake busted out in laughter and slapped Terrence’s palm.

  Damn, I had been hustled by a hustler. I was slipping.

  Terrence walked over to me, smiling with his palm outstretched. I’m supercompetitive, so it took everything I had not to ask for another round. I reached for my purse and pulled out my wallet. Of course, as usual I had little money on me because I never bother to bring money to a pool hall since I know I’m going to win.

  I hadn’t counted on getting hustled.

  I looked up sheepishly at him and held out his fifty, Jake’s twenty, a crumpled ten, and two fives dug out from the bottom of my bag.

  “I can run to the ATM and get the rest,” I said, my cheeks hot and red.

  “That’s OK,” he said as he pushed the money away. “All I really want is your number, and we’ll call it even.” He smiled wide, his perfect white teeth shining.

  Hell, yeah, you can have my number.

  Long after Jake and the rest of the crew from the paper left, Terrence and I closed down the bar that night, drinking, talking, and playing more pool. At one point when I was down in another round, he cautioned me about a shot I was about to take.

  “Look, I know you think you’re hot shit and all because you beat me, but I’ve been playing pool for over ten years, which I learned from true hustlers on Chi’s South Side. I know this is the shot to take.”

  “OK, OK, no need to jump down a brother’s throat. But let me show you this right quick.” He came up behind and lightly leaned on my back, placing his hands on top of mine on the pool cue. His breath felt warm on my ear as he talked about the shot I should take instead. As he talked, I could barely concentrate on what he was saying. I could feel his long leg muscles as they pressed into the back of my legs.

  “So try that shot instead and see how it works,” I heard him say as he stepped back. Shit, I’d been so caught up in him leaning up against me, I had missed everything he said. It had been a while since I’d had some physical contact. Time to play it off.

  “I like my shot better,” I said, and quickly took the shot, missing.

  “Told you so,” he said as he chuckled softly before he stepped up to take his shot and finish the table.

  He beat me again. I was hooked.

  That night, as we sipped our drinks and nibbled on hot wings at the bar, I learned about his childhood. He had grown up in Harlem with a single mom after his dad, who was also a cop, had been shot in the line of duty when Terrence was in the fourth grade. After watching his mother struggle to make ends meet, Terrence was driven to succeed so that he could help take care of his family. He attended the best New York City private schools through the A Better Chance program and went on to attend Columbia. He and Jake were roommates in college and had a long friendship. After graduation, he went into the police academy and for the last two years, he’d been assigned to the city’s dangerous narcotics and gang task force while attending law school at night at New York University. His plan was to get his juris doctorate and join the DA’s office as a prosecutor and then ultimately get into politics as a senator.

  I’d never met a man who was so driven and knew exactly what he wanted to do with his life. Terrence was serious about his future.

  I told him about growing up in Chicago and how, like him, I had a take-no-mess mom who fought to get me into the best city schools, which earned me a scholarship to Harvard. I told him I loved being a reporter, and while I was covering entertainment at the moment for the paper, ultimately I wanted to start a political magazine.

  All of it sounded kind of flaky when I said it out loud in the face of a guy who just told me he tracks down violent gang members during the day and goes to law school at night.

  “That’s cool, Nia. I look forward to reading your stuff.” No one I ever dated had said they looked forward to reading my stuff before. Most guys I had dated up to that point just wanted to talk about themselves, boast about their own jobs, and pretend to be interested in my life.

  When the bartender flicked the lights off and on and pointed at the clock on the wall, I was startled to see it was two in the morning.

  “Wow, where did the time go?” I asked as I slid off the bar stool to put on my blazer and pick up my purse.

  “Time goes by quickly when you’re having fun,” Terrence said as he smiled and slipped on a well-worn brown leather jacket.

  “Or maybe time goes by quickly when you’re getting hustled,” I said, heading for the door.

  “Hustled? I’m a New York City police office
r and future DA. Now does that sound like the type of cat that would hustle somebody?”

  Laughing, we stepped out in the crisp Manhattan night. The cool air felt good after being in the stuffy bar so long. I stepped to the curb and put my arm up to hail a cab. Luckily, it was so late that there were plenty to choose from. A speeding taxi swerved over across the street, cutting off several other cars, and stopped in front of me.

  “So, Nia, I never got your number,” Terrence said as he opened the taxi’s door for me so that I could slip into the backseat.

  “Yeah, I know,” I said, looking at him as I shut the door and then tapped the driver’s plastic partition, telling him to pull off.

  I turned around in the cab to look at him laughing as he stood in the middle of the street.

  The next day, he called my cell phone while I was sitting at my desk. My pulse quickened when I heard his voice on the other end of the line. I was glad to hear from him but tried to keep my voice level because I didn’t want to seem too eager.

  “How’d you get this number?” I asked, pretending to be pissed even though I was grinning like a Cheshire cat when I heard his voice.

  “I’m a cop—I can find anyone I want in this city,” he said. “Nah, I’m just playing. Jake dimed you out.”

  “Jake, huh . . . I’ll have to talk to him about giving my number to just anybody.”

  “Well, I’m not just anybody, and it’s the least he could do for his old roommate,” he said, laughing. I loved his laugh.

  That night we met for dinner, and shortly after that we were pretty much inseparable. We got to know each other over long conversations into the night while dining at cheap hole-in-the-wall restaurants that only Terrence seemed to know about. We talked passionately about our favorite books, politics, and pop culture. We had heated discussions about the city’s crime, the gentrification of Terrence’s old neighborhood that could soon force his mother to sell their family brownstone, and New York’s growing drug gang population.

  But the best part of our relationship was the lovemaking. Terrence explored every single inch of my body with his hands and tongue. He had a precision I had never before experienced. He left me quivering and begging. And while I’d had my fair share of partners, nothing came close to the intense physical connection that we created with our bodies. I craved that man. I couldn’t get enough of his chiseled brown body and the way he whispered my name when we made love.

  In a word, I was sprung.

  It was almost perfect. His job was the most difficult part of the relationship for me. I tried not to let him see how afraid I was, but whenever the news reported that an officer had been shot, I worried that it was Terrence.

  And if it wasn’t Terrence this time, I was certain it could be him the next.

  My concern for his safety and what I felt was his cavalier attitude about his well-being were the source of the only arguments we ever had. I pushed him to speed up his plans to leave the force and join the DA’s office while he finished his last year of law school, but Terrence said there was still more work for him to do. I tried to understand, but the fear wouldn’t go away.

  Spring came. We had been dating for nearly six months and were practically living together. We kept toiletries and several changes of clothing at each other’s apartments, and at the end of our evenings together, we would decide where to sleep based on whose apartment was closer.

  As summer approached, things were heating up with Terrence’s investigation into the Mexican drug gangs. While he never specifically discussed the details of the case they were building, as a reporter I was good at piecing together information from the bits of his cell phone conversations I would overhear when he thought I was sleeping and from pumping Jake on the crime desk. As the temperature rose, so did the gang violence. There were many nights when Terrence was roused from our bed to go out to a new crime scene. I found myself unable to sleep until he returned.

  At the end of the summer, I got a job offer in Los Angeles from Hollywood Scoop! We had just seen Two Trains Running, the August Wilson play, and I had planned to tell him about the offer and ask him to join me. We had returned to Terrence’s apartment in Harlem when he got an urgent call on his cell phone. I began to change my clothes and could tell from his clipped tone that something major was going down. When he got off the phone, he came into the bedroom and quickly stripped off his slacks and shirt to change into dark jeans, a black T-shirt, and boots. He pulled out something from the back of the closet I hadn’t seen before: a bulletproof vest.

  “What’s going on, Terrence?” I asked, my voice trembling as I watched him slip the protective vest over his head and attach the Velcro straps around his body.

  “You know I can’t talk to you about this, Nia,” he said tightly as he sat down on the bed and pulled out a long metal box from underneath it. He unlocked it, and inside was a menacing-looking cache of guns of varying sizes. He quickly selected two, checked to confirm they were loaded, and slipped one into the waistband of the back of his jeans and the other smaller gun into an ankle holster.

  “Terrence, baby, what’s going on?” I asked as I came and sat down on the bed next to him and put my arms tightly around his waist.

  “Nia, don’t do this now. I have to go.”

  His eyes had changed from the bright, laughing eyes that always sparkled at me. They had a thunderous darkness and intensity I’d never seen before.

  He grabbed a black nylon NYPD jacket from the closet and threw it over the vest. Then he grabbed his police shield off the dresser and put it around his neck. I followed him as he walked to the door, begging him not to go. There was a feeling in the pit of my stomach that told me something bad was going to happen.

  Tires screeched to a halt outside. I walked over to the window and leaned out to see two unmarked police cars parked in front of the building, their engines running. They were here for Terrence.

  “But I need to talk to you about something—”

  As he reached the front door, he turned back to look at me as I came up behind him. He took my face between his large hands and saw the fear in my eyes. He leaned down to kiss me softly on the lips.

  “Nia, I love you. I’m going to be fine.”

  That was the first time he said he loved me. My heart jumped, and tears began to slide down my face. I wanted to tell him I loved him, too, but before I could say anything, he walked out the door.

  The next phone call I received was from his mother, Brenda Joyce, telling me that Terrence had been shot and was in surgery at Lenox Hill Hospital.

  The rail-thin restaurant hostess, dressed in the ubiquitous tight black sheath, weaved her way through the room of lacquered tables, leading me to Terrence. Since I had last seen him in that hospital bed five years ago, I had changed quite a bit. My body was a little curvier and my hair much shorter. I could see as we approached the banquette that he looked the same, if not better, as he stood to greet me.

  I was glad I had stopped by my apartment to change my clothes and freshen up my makeup before coming to dinner. I had hopped in a quick shower and then slipped into black Yigal Azrouël leggings, a black silk DKNY T-shirt top, and a black leather Prada blazer with three-quarter sleeves I pushed up at the elbow. Six-inch Alexander McQueen black woven platform sandals with burnished gold studs, a couple of gold round and square bangles, and a black lizard envelope clutch completed the look. Luckily, the weekly manicure MJ insisted I have was still passable. My favorite OPI purple wine color still looked glossy and fresh.

  Terrence’s uniform of jeans, boots, and jackets that he had worn when we dated had been replaced by a well-cut wool Italian suit, crisp white shirt with French cuffs, and black tie. I’d never seen him in a tie before. His hair was still closely cropped, but there were a few flecks of gray coming in that made him look even more handsome. His mocha skin was as flawless as ever, and his dark brown eyes still sparkled brightly
when he smiled at me.

  “Hello, Nia,” Terrence said, his deep voice husky in my ear as he reached in to kiss me on the cheek. He ignored the awkward hand I stuck out as if former lovers seeing each other for the first time in five years would shake hands. I inhaled his scent. The clean soap smell was now layered with a hint of cologne. He always used to tell me he hated cologne, so what had changed? A new girlfriend’s gift perhaps?

  I scolded myself.

  Damn, Nia, did you think that he wouldn’t have a girlfriend or, hell, even a wife by now?

  A man this fine—straight, educated, and employed—wasn’t going to stay single forever. I snuck a glance down at his ring finger as I slid into the plush leather banquette and saw that it was bare. I cautioned myself that a naked ring finger didn’t mean there wasn’t a serious girlfriend.

  “How are you, Terrence?” I asked, wondering why my heart was suddenly beating so quickly.

  “I’m good. It’s nice to see you,” he said, settling back into his side of the banquette. The light from the small votive candle in the center of the table danced around. I was happy the waiter immediately came over to our table, giving me a chance to compose myself. I wasn’t sure why I was suddenly so nervous.

  “Good evening. My name is Blaine, and I’ll be your server this evening. Can I interest the lovely couple in a bottle of wine this evening?” the waiter asked.

  “Oh, we’re not a couple,” I jumped in to correct Blaine. “We were once. But not anymore.”

  “No, Blaine, we’re not a couple, but it seems like she could definitely use some wine,” Terrence said, chuckling.

  “Oh, my apologies, Mr. Graham.” A slight flush crept up Blaine’s face. “Well, perhaps I can interest you and your guest in a bottle of merlot?”

  “That sounds perfect. Sound good to you, Nia?” Terrence asked as he handed the wine list back to the flustered waiter.