The Game Never Ends

by Zaire Crown

  She nodded. “I didn’t start this but I feel what you’re saying.”

  “Reina doesn’t just have money: she has men and the backing of the Mexican cartels. You’ll need an army.”

  “I’ll get one.”

  “You’ll need allies.”

  Tuesday didn’t have a quick response for that. For her, friends had always been in short supply.

  Brandon turned to examine her face. The entire left side was swollen and bruised, the eye half-closed. “You might need a doctor.”

  “I’m good. Not the first time I caught a fade. Some ice and a couple days, I’ll be right back to my fine ass self.”

  That made the old man chuckle. He couldn’t believe that Tuesday was able to make a joke right then.

  “Our story is that you and the girls weren’t home at the time but the authorities will still want to talk to you. I’ll stall that as long as I can but we still got to get you out of sight for now. Nearly all the hotels have cameras and the company jet won’t be available for a couple of days.”

  Tuesday slipped into her own thoughts for a moment then told Brandon to pull off the freeway at the next exit. “I know where me and the girls will be safe, at least for a little while.”

  An hour later Tuesday was pounding on the door of a low rent bungalow in West Hollywood. Brandon took an unnecessarily long and circuitous route to make sure they weren’t followed and still watched the house for a moment first.

  Shaun finally answered wearing a robe, head wrapped in a scarf. She blinked sleep from her eyes when she saw Tuesday standing under her porch light at three in the morning. Shaun’s expression went from surprised to horrified at the sight of Tuesday’s face.

  Before Shaun could start in, Tuesday silenced her and pushed her back across the threshold.

  “Is anybody here with you?” her voice an urgent whisper.

  “No. Nobody’s here.” Shaun mimicked her tone. She looked nervously at the pistol in Tuesday’s hand then past her to the creepy van parked out front. “Bae, what’s going on?”

  “I know we left things fucked up, but you the only person on this side of the country I can trust right now. I’m in trouble and I’m gone need to stay here for a couple days. Is that cool?”

  “Yeah. Of course.”

  “It’s the worst kind of trouble,” Tuesday warned. “The kind that might get you into trouble just for being close to me, so think on it and don’t just say—”

  Shaun was emphatically bobbing her head before Tuesday could finish the statement. She kissed Tuesday several times on the good cheek.

  Tuesday gently pushed her back. “My girls in the van: they scared, they confused, they been through some serious shit. Before I bring ’em in, we need to go over some ground rules.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Marcus’s Gulfstream G-650 officially belonged to Abel Incorporated, but had always been at Tuesday’s disposal when not in company use. During the four days she hid out at Shaun’s house waiting for the plane to become available, Brandon had come through with the paperwork that declared Marcus dead and transferred the estate and business to Tuesday. This only gave her more right to the jet.

  Tuesday looked out the window on their approach and saw the familiar Detroit skyline begin to take shape: the mirrored glass towers of the General Motors building (formerly known as the Renaissance) and the Ambassador Bridge stretching across the river to Windsor. With each thousand feet they descended, more came into focus, and Tuesday bounced her knees with nervous excitement.

  By the time they landed at Metro Airport, the excitement was gone, only leaving her the nerves. She was fearful the police would be waiting for her to arrive. She may have spent the last three years as Tabitha King, but Tuesday Knight still had warrants for three homicides and a missing person’s case. Despite having all the IDs and certificates to prove she was somebody else, she was still wearing the same face and fingerprints.

  Coming back to Detroit had been a big risk because if she were arrested by chance, she might never leave it.

  Her heart rate slowed a bit when she, Shaun, Danielle, and Tanisha made it through the airport without incident. She used her Tabitha King info to rent something inconspicuous and they pulled off in a blue Hyundai.

  Tuesday had set Shaun and the girls up at Marcus’s old house in a suburb of Metro Detroit called Romulus. It was the same low-key house where he had been living with Danielle when Tuesday first met him. She could only hope that La Guapa didn’t know about it.

  Tuesday never intended to bring Shaun along but the girl had insisted. After saying no a few times, Tuesday agreed for selfish reasons. She would be busy in Detroit and Shaun could help by watching the girls.

  Tuesday had appreciated Shaun letting her crash but needed her to understand they were not playing house. The ground rules were simple: no sex, no touching, no calling Tuesday Bae, Boo, or Sweetheart; none of Shaun’s loud declarations of her undying love. When Tuesday introduced Shaun to Tanisha and Danielle, Tuesday stressed the word friend so that Shaun would not get it twisted.

  They had landed late the previous night. Early that morning Tuesday was driving alone.

  In her absence, she had watched as her city got reduced to being a punchline in the national news. The proud Motor City, once the world’s leader in production and manufacturing, had only become famous for its corrupt officials, bankruptcy, and desperation. Tuesday drove through the streets feeling like a tourist. She saw some improvements made to downtown in the form of new and renovated sports venues, condominiums, and casinos.

  She cruised by the building that held her former condo. The Seymour was still well-maintained. Seeing it reminded Tuesday of the life she had there as well as the life she had taken there. She would never forget the day she came home to find two would-be killers waiting in the parking garage. Tuesday had caught her first body, had blown the chick’s brains out in the same elevator she once used every day. It was the last time she had ever stepped foot into a home that had been her sanctuary.

  She left downtown via I-96 headed for the Westside. The suburbanites didn’t shoot craps or watch the Red Wings there so the inner city didn’t see the same investment dollars. The malignancy of blight had grown like a cancer as Tuesday bypassed entire city blocks without livable dwellings, just abandoned ruins and trash-strewn fields.

  She continued her trip down memory lane by driving past the home where her best friend Tushie once lived. Surprisingly, the house still stood and appeared to have a family living there, although the overgrown lawn and peeling paint suggested the new tenants took far less pride in it than her girl had done.

  Some delusional part of Tuesday thought that if she went and knocked on that door, Tushie would answer it and greet her with a big hug. She would be standing there just as dark and pretty as Tuesday remembered her, wearing a pair of leggings that showed off the booty that earned her name and fame. Tuesday pictured them sitting like they used to, blowing blunt after blunt while they grinned and giggled like schoolgirls, putting each other up on everything that had been happening in their lives. Tuesday would show pictures and eventually introduce Tushie to the daughter she named after her. Tuesday could almost hear that sweet Louisiana accent and the thought made her smile to herself.

  Tuesday crept down the block and turned off at the corner. She couldn’t fool herself like with Marcus—she knew her homegirl was dead. Tuesday had discovered the body right in that very house. That fateful day she had rushed there to warn Tushie of the plot against them only to find her best friend butt-naked with a hole in her head. That image was enough to remove the smile.

  She headed for West 7 Mile to The Bounce House. It was the small strip club that Tuesday went from working at in her teens to owning in her thirties. It was also another storehouse of sweet and sour memories. The club had been more of a home to her than the dozens of apartments and multifamily flats she lived in during the same period. A place where desperate girls danced for balled-up dollar bills h
ad been the only permanent thing in her life.

  As much as she had come to hate the place, it also saddened her to see what had become of it. She pulled into the parking lot of the strip mall where her club had shared space with four other businesses to find a burned facade with boarded windows. The bricks were seared as black as charcoal briquettes. The plywood slab that covered the entrance had been tagged by the 7 Mile Bloods.

  She didn’t stop, just drifted past remembering all the faces she had seen come and go in that twenty years. A few girls had used The Bounce House as a spring board to better things; many more had taken losses so huge that it was their rock-bottom. Tuesday stared at the charred remains, silently paying homage to all of those women who had been made and broken there before she pulled out of the lot.

  As she drove it occurred to her that Detroit was pretty much the antithesis of Beverly Hills. One place represented abundance; the other, scarcity. One was mansions and movie stars, the other was crack houses and carjackers. Much of her city looked like the setting for an apocalyptic sci-fi thriller. Tuesday had been molested there as a child and raped there as an adult. She had been robbed, shot at, and nearly killed on these streets more times than she cared to count.

  When she paused at the red light on 7 Mile and Livernois, an ’83 Monte Carlo pulled up next to her, dripping green candy with bass that sounded like a gorilla trying to escape from the trunk. The driver wore a white do-rag, Cartier woods with ice in the frames, and had a three-year-old, red-nosed Pitbull riding shotgun. He puffed a Backwood, then gave Tuesday a slow nod that said she could get it.

  Tuesday returned the nod. He even brought out her smile again.

  It was not because she was feeling this nigga. It was because she missed these niggas. This was that Detroit shit. This was home.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  24 Karats was set in an old commercial complex that had once housed a supermarket, an auto parts store, a Foot Locker and a small coffee shop. Detroit’s sharp economic decline had claimed three of the five businesses. The community around Joy Road and Greenfield had obviously decided they needed caffeine and strippers to make it through the struggle.

  Due to the casualties, the strip club had inherited copious amounts of parking. In the huge lot, a cluster of vehicles fronted 24 Karats. The place was jumping for noon on a weekday. Tuesday left her rented Hyundai several rows behind the other patrons.

  Inside, the owner had gone with a cheesy Tibetan theme, played to death by so many Chinese carryout restaurants. The walls were covered with Oriental fret-work and the overuse of Buddha statues, dragons and paper lanterns, and would offend any Asian person who might walk in. Worse, they tried to tie it back to the club’s name by coating everything in cheap gold paint that looked closer to bronze.

  Tuesday did notice that more care had gone into selecting employees than in selecting decorators. The ladies were top notch at every position, from the dancers to the servers to the ones tending bar. The female deejay was even fine enough to make Tuesday take a second look.

  Most impressive was that Tuesday knew this couldn’t be their best line-up, not working this early on a weekday. The first string only worked the weekend nights when the real money showed up. Tuesday imagined they had to be goddesses.

  She approached one working the floor to inquire about the owner. She had to shout in order to compete with the music.

  The dancer responded with a friendly smile. “Big D’s office right up the stairs, but between me and you, I wouldn’t even do it.”

  This earned a puzzled look from Tuesday. “You wouldn’t do what?”

  She leaned into Tuesday’s ear as if sharing a secret. “I’m just sayin’ Big D is picky as a muthafucka. My li’l cousin’s nineteen, and so bad her IG page doin’ a hundred k, but the nigga turned her down just cause she got a birthmark on her cheek.

  “Now Auntie, I can tell you was a bad bitch back in yo’ day but—”

  Tuesday erupted. “You silly ass bitch, I ain’t trying to work here! Look at my bag, look at these heels! Take in my overall swag. Do I look like a bitch who need this in her life? Every morning I get dressed, I put on ten years’ worth of yo’ tips!”

  The apologetic look on the youngster’s face indicated she was only trying to be helpful but Tuesday still mugged her.

  Before she hit the stairs, Tuesday went into that huge ostrich bag, blindly tossed a stack of bills at the stage. It took the girls up there a moment to realize hundreds, not singles, had been rained on them. It caused a commotion to break out between the dancers and some of the slimy customers snatching at the bills.

  At the top of the steps was a short hall that terminated in a door with a camera mounted above. She put a hand over the lens and pounded on the wood like the police.

  After a few seconds of continuous hard knocking, the door was snatched open. The man looked like a grizzly bear standing on its hind legs; he stood six feet nine inches tall and weighed four hundred pounds. Sweat-shine and elaborate tattoos covered nearly every inch of his bare arms, chest, and bloated stomach. He used one hand to keep up his unbuttoned jeans, the other gripped a pistol.

  He barked, “What the fuck wrong wit’ you?”

  She smiled. “What’s up, Fatboy. Miss me?”

  He looked down on her, confused, and it took his red eyes several seconds before they flashed with recognition. His face morphed from pissed to pleased. “Are you kiddin’ me right now? What tha fuck you doin’ here?”

  DelRay tried to go in for a hug but Tuesday quickly pulled back. “Hell naw, nigga. I already know what you was doin’ in that bitch. I can smell weed and unwashed ass halfway down the hall.”

  Tuesday pushed her way inside and sure enough, found a pretty little mixed girl with blue weave on his sofa, hastily climbing into a fishnet body stocking.

  “Oh, so this how you gone play me, DelRay!” Tuesday said, pretending to spazz. “First yo’ ass give me herpes and now this!”

  Once the girl was presentable, she darted out of his office without comment but did throw DelRay a what the fuck? look.

  He tried to call out after her, “Aye Niecey, this my homegirl from back in the day. She just playin’ bout that herpes shit!”

  Tuesday laughed. “You shouldn’t be shittin’ where you eat, nigga.”

  He turned to her.

  “Just one of the perks of having a club. Like when you got a car dealership and get to drive the new models.”

  She countered, “But cars don’t get in they feelings when you wanna drive one today and a different one tomorrow.”

  “Damn girl, look at you,” he said shifting the focus to her. “Aging like fine wine. Still sexy than a muthafucka. Over forty and killin’ every bitch I got downstairs.”

  She checked him. “Just forty, nigga.” Tuesday still blushed like a teenager. She knew he was pouring it on but still sucked it up like a dry sponge. La Guapa had stirred insecurities in Tuesday which was why that ‘Auntie’ comment made her snap like that.

  DelRay dove into a 5x Polo shirt then shelved the Ruger he had carried with him to the door. “But on some real shit, blockin’ my camera and beatin’ on the door like that almost got you shot. Cain’t play like that, cause niggas hungry enough to run up on your business in the middle of the day.”

  Joking she said, “I know you ain’t worried ’bout nobody runnin’ up on Big D. Especially not here in the Filipino Palace.”

  “Big D, that’s just what everybody callin’ me now.” He wore a smug grin.

  “Everybody but me.”

  “And don’t be talkin’ shit about my spot neither. This bitch fuckin’ over The Bounce House.”

  She shrugged. “I cain’t hate, it is popping down there. It’s just that when I walked in, I ain’t know if I was gone get a lap dance or a pint of almond chicken.”

  That made the big man double over with laughter. When he was finally able to catch his breath he said, “Damn I missed you, TK. What the fuck brought you back to the city anywa
y?”

  The smile left her face. “The only thing that could: Life-And-Death shit.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Clearly the time for joking and catching up was over. DelRay’s demeanor changed to reflect the seriousness Tuesday projected. He pushed the door closed to give them privacy.

  His office was large and it broke away from the fake Oriental theme created for the customers downstairs. Tuesday thought it looked like something for the CEO of an investment firm that handled clients with old money. The twenty-five-by-forty-foot space was masculine, with black leather furniture, and walls covered with dark wood paneling. She could tell by how her shoes sank into the padding that the carpet wasn’t cheap.

  She took one of the seats that fronted a huge mahogany desk, while DelRay wedged his big body behind it and sank into a leather wing chair. It was a boss’s chair, and it made Tuesday feel good to see him in it. Her former bouncer had come into his own. She had the pride of a big sister.

  “I see you made some moves wit’ that li’l paper I left you. Now I gotta call in a favor.”

  He stared at her from across the desk. His eyes were earnest. “Everything I have is cause of you TK, and I ain’t never forgot that or took it for granted. Just tell me what you need and I got you.”

  “I need an army.”

  DelRay seemed to be waiting for her to elaborate, but nothing else followed. He wore a low fade that was a week overdue for a touchup; he scratched at the new growth with thick sausage-like fingers.

  “I don’t even know how to respond to that. When you said favor, I was thinkin’ a small loan or maybe a place to crash for a few days.”

  She said, “The night I left I put you up on a lick. What happened to the guns?”

  “Oh yeah, I’ve been waiting to talk to you about that,” he said with attitude. “That so-called lick almost got me murdered.”

  He explained. “Not an hour after you tell me about it, I grab one of my niggas and we shoot over to that junkyard on Grand River. And it’s just like you said it was, a little trapdoor in the floor of his office, down those stairs a room full of heat. Everything in that bitch: Uzis, SK’s, AR’s, AK’s, every pistol you can think of, even some explosives and shit. Crates and crates of this shit, military grade.”