Know Your Place

by Shelly Ellis

  When Derrick finished his story, she stared at him, gaping. She shook her head, sending her curls whipping around her shoulders.

  “I don’t . . . I don’t believe it,” she whispered, dumbfounded. “We’re talking about the same Cole, right? Chicken-chested, soft-spoken Cole Humphries?”

  “Yeah, the same one. He’s probably been working for Dolla Dolla this whole time. But what I’m not sure about is if Rodney is working for him too. Was Rodney just not paying attention when they brought that shit in here, or was he paid to look the other way? And how do I know for sure that Cole won’t do it again . . . that he isn’t still doing that shit right under my nose? As far as I know, there could be other suitcases stored around here.”

  He watched as she slumped back against his desk, looking almost dazed. She sighed a few seconds later. “So what do you want to do? Turn Cole over to the cops, then?”

  “I would . . . but I’ve lived in this city long enough to know who the hell Dolla Dolla is,” Derrick said, crossing his arms over his chest. “He isn’t going to take kindly to me snitching and turning in one of his runners. If I did that, I’d be risking not only my life, but the life of every single boy at the Institute and person who works here.”

  “So what’s the alternative then?” she asked, pushing herself away from his desk. “You’re gonna keep picking fights with Rodney? You’re gonna keep an eye on Cole forever?”

  He gave a half smile. “I was hoping you could suggest somethin’.”

  “Me? Why me?”

  He shrugged. “I trust you. You’ve given me good advice in the past.”

  At that, her face changed. Her expression softened in a way that it hadn’t in months. It was the same look she’d given him back when she used to look at him as they lay in each other’s arms. It was that loving look she had right before she used to raise her mouth to his for a searing hot kiss.

  She must have realized that she was making that face, because she quickly wiped it away and replaced it with a bland one.

  “I think you need to talk to Cole. Ask him point blank what’s going on.”

  “I’ve tried. And I can’t get a straight—”

  “But you haven’t tried while I’m there. Let me talk to him too. We’ll . . . we’ll do it together.”

  He raised his brows in shock. “You’d really do that?”

  “I told you . . . no matter what’s gone on between us, I still care about the Institute. I even care about Cole, despite the shit he’s gotten himself mixed up in. Maybe I can help talk some sense into the kid.”

  Derrick noticed that she hadn’t said that she still cared about him; she didn’t list that among the reasons why she was now inserting herself into this drama. But he wouldn’t focus on that right now. He would just appreciate her offer of intervention.

  “Thanks. I appreciate you doing this. I know you don’t have to do it so . . . so . . .” His words drifted off.

  She held his gaze for several seconds, both of them not saying a word.

  He saw a wellspring of emotion in her eyes and he wondered if it was reflected in his own. Sometimes, he wondered. . . he wondered if he had been a different man, if the circumstances had been different, would he still be with Morgan? Was it possible to love two women simultaneously? He certainly felt like it was possible, because he still had strong feelings for Morgan despite his love for Melissa. He still wanted to hold her, to kiss her, and judging from the way she was looking at him now, she might want him to do it too.

  His carnal thoughts were abruptly cut short when he heard a knock at the door. “Dee?” Melissa called out. “Dee, you in there?”

  “Uh, yeah!” he said, anxiously clearing his throat. “We were . . . we were . . . um . . . just finishing up, baby. You can come in.”

  The door eased open and he saw Melissa standing in the doorway, smiling timidly. “I didn’t mean to interrupt you. I was waiting for you at the front desk and you didn’t show, so I figured I’d come looking for you up here.” Her gaze shifted to Morgan. She extended her hand. “I’m sorry. We’ve never met. Hi, I’m Melissa, Derrick’s fiancée.”

  Derrick was gripped with panic. For a split second, he wondered if Morgan might do something or say something out of pocket or slick to Melissa, like Hi, I’m the bitch who almost took your man, or, Pleased to finally meet you. All the times Derrick said he was out with his friends, he was really kissing up on me.

  But she didn’t. Instead, Morgan painted on a polite smile. “Hey, I’m Morgan. I’m one of the teachers here at the Institute.”

  “Really? What do you teach?”

  “Carpentry.”

  Melissa’s eyes widened in amazement. “Wow, that is bomb! A woman carpenter, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Morgan said with a nod. “And I should probably head out now so I’m not late for my next class.” She then glanced over her shoulder at Derrick. “See you later,” she whispered before turning away. She then stepped around Melissa and almost ran to his office doorway. He watched as she damn near fled into the hall.

  Thankfully, Melissa didn’t notice her hasty retreat. She was too concerned with going to lunch. “You ready, baby? I’m starving!” she said.

  He nodded and walked toward her. “Yeah, sorry I was late.”

  “That’s fine. You guys were busy. I get it. She seemed nice though.”

  “She is,” he said as they stepped into the hall.

  “And pretty,” she said just as he shut his door behind them.

  “I guess. I hadn’t noticed.”

  “Oh, don’t lie,” Melissa chided. “She’s very pretty! And she does carpentry. She’s a full package! I wish I did carpentry. I can’t even bang a nail without warping it.”

  He leaned down and kissed her cheek. “I like you just the way you are, baby.”

  “Really?”

  “No doubt.”

  “Aww, thank you, honey,” she said, standing on the balls of her feet to wrap her arms around his shoulders and envelop him in a hug.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Morgan lingering at the end of the hall. She was staring at them. When their gazes met, she abruptly turned, opened the steel door leading to the stairwell, and let it bang shut behind her.

  Chapter 14

  Ricky

  “What’s up, Dolla? You called me?” Ricky asked as he strolled down the steps into the drug kingpin’s sunken living room.

  Ricky watched as Dolla Dolla finished his line of blow and slowly raised his bald head to peer up at him from his perch on the sofa. He still had white powder in his mustache. He wiped his nose absently as he nodded at Ricky, smearing the powder on the back of his hand.

  “Yeah, I called you. Sit down. Take a load off. You want some of this shit?” Dolla Dolla asked, gesturing to the remaining lines on the glass coffee table.

  Ricky sat down in the armchair facing him and shook his head. “Uh, nah, I’m good,” he said, waving him off.

  “You sure?”

  He nodded again. “Yeah.”

  He hadn’t done coke or Molly since the raids and his arrest.

  One of the conditions of being an informant was that he had to stay clean. They even made him pee in a cup every couple of weeks to prove he was off the stuff. Ricky had experienced some of the symptoms of withdrawal since then—fatigue and nightmares that left him waking up in a cold sweat, and his mind didn’t seem as sharply focused as it used to be. And he still got those cravings on occasion, especially at moments like this when temptation was sitting right in front of him, but at least it wasn’t as bad as it had been in the beginning. He hadn’t realized how much he’d been hooked on that stuff.

  In some ways, he was relieved to finally be rid of it. Like Simone, coke was something in his life that would’ve eventually come back to bite him in the ass in the end.

  Dolla Dolla stared at him for a few more seconds in confusion. Ricky didn’t usually turn down taking a hit. He started to wonder if maybe it had been a bad move to decline Dolla Dolla�
��s offer, but finally the kingpin shrugged. “Shit, more for me!” He leaned down and snorted another line. “I’mma need your help with somethin’, Pretty Ricky.”

  Ricky was relieved. Those were the words he had been waiting for weeks to hear.

  Detectives Ramsey and Dominguez had been on his ass about not giving them any new information for their investigation. But it wasn’t his fault that Dolla Dolla had gone quiet. He had hit up Dolla Dolla anyway. The search for Simone was at a standstill for now, and he wanted to appease the cops and get them off his back. He tried his best to let his former boss know that he was there if he needed him. Based on the call he had gotten today summoning him to Dolla Dolla’s Kalorama crib, it looked like Dolla Dolla was finally ready to take him up on his offer.

  “You know I’m here for you, Dolla. What you need me to do?”

  Dolla Dolla reached for the smoldering cigar sitting in the nearby glass ash tray and brought it to his mouth. “One of my girls reached out to me. She said she ready to come back home to daddy, but I need to know first if she’s been talking to the cops, if she told the prosecutor shit she shouldn’t have.” He took a puff from his cigar and blew out a stream of smoke. “I need you to find out for me.”

  Ricky frowned. “You want me to find out?”

  “Yeah, I can’t do it. She may be tellin’ me the truth, but she may not, and I’m not about to get set up in no entrapment, you feel me? Plus, you a charmin’ motherfucka. Talk to her. Work your Pretty Ricky magic. See what she says.” Dolla Dolla glanced up at one of his bodyguards who stood off to the side. “Melvin’ll take you there.”

  “Wait. We’re leaving now?”

  “Yeah, you leavin’ now, nigga!” Dolla Dolla laughed and took another puff. “You thought I was talking about next week?”

  “No, I just thought . . .” Ricky was at a loss for words, thrown off by Dolla Dolla’s request and the fact that he wanted it done right now. “So I’m just going there to talk? That’s all you want me to do?”

  Dolla Dolla took another puff from his cigar, blew out smoke, and cocked an eyebrow. “What? You plannin’ to fuck her too?” He chuckled again. “I know how you are.”

  “No, I mean . . .” Ricky leaned forward and dropped his voice to a whisper. “You just want me to get info from her and that’s it—right? Then me and Melvin dip out of there and I come back here. We tell you what she told me.”

  Ricky had assumed that when Dolla Dolla said he wanted to track down the girls, it wasn’t just to sip tea, eat cookies, and have a conversation with each of them. He thought the whole point was to silence them. Was this going to turn into an ambush for the poor woman? If so, he wanted nothing to do with it. He didn’t care what promises he’d made to the detectives. He wouldn’t be an accomplice to murder.

  Dolla Dolla nodded. “Yeah, what the fuck else you thought I expected you to do?”

  “Nothin’. Nothing else.” Ricky quickly shook his head and rose to his feet, relieved that he had made the wrong assumption. Maybe Dolla Dolla wasn’t as ruthless as he thought. “I’m ready to jet whenever you are, Mel.”

  The towering bodyguard nodded his dark head, turned, and walked toward the front door, leaving Ricky to trail behind him.

  * * *

  Ricky frowned as Melvin pulled to a stop in front of a rundown building where several children ran around the parched grass of the open courtyard and a group of men played dice on the cement.

  “This it?” Ricky asked.

  Melvin nodded. “This the address she gave.”

  The two men climbed out of the Mercedes and strolled up the walkway. When they did, one of the men playing craps glanced up at them and then stared at the glistening black Mercedes now parked along the curb.

  “Don’t even think about it, bruh,” Melvin said in a heavy baritone that sounded harder than granite. He then adjusted his jacket, revealing the Glock tucked in his waistband near his hip.

  The man returned his attention to the craps game, like the encounter hadn’t even happened. As they drew near the children, Melvin snapped his fingers. “Hey you! High-topped fade. Come over here!”

  A lanky boy who looked to be nine or ten years old strolled toward them. He was wearing a stained tank top and cargo shorts, attire that was much too light for the chilly March weather, but Ricky remembered those days when he was a kid and his grandmother only had a limited supply of clothes from Goodwill that she could hand off to him and his little sister, Desireé. You wore what was clean and what fit. Whether it was weather appropriate was sometimes irrelevant.

  “Yeah?” the boy asked, tugging up his sagging cargo shorts.

  “Look here, I want you to keep an eye on my ride for me,” Melvin said, reaching into his back pocket and pulling out his wallet. He handed the boy a hundred-dollar bill. “You see any of these niggas or anybody else even touch that shit, you tell me. You hear me?”

  The boy quickly nodded before folding the bill and tucking it into one of the many pockets of his shorts. “I got you.”

  A few minutes later, Ricky and Melvin climbed the last flight of stairs in the apartment complex, bringing them to the fifth floor. The dimly lit hallway smelled of dirty carpet and vaguely of urine. Melvin stopped in front of one of the maroon doors toward the end of the hall and knocked. When he did, they heard a female voice ask timidly, “Who is it?” on the other side of the door.

  “We’re friends of Big D. He sent us,” Ricky called back. “We came to talk to Tamika.”

  A few seconds later, the door cracked open only a few inches. He saw hazel eyes peering back at them through the gold door chain. “Sent you?” the woman asked. “Why . . . why he ain’t come here himself?”

  “He wanted us to talk to you first,” Ricky explained, painting on a smile. “Are you Tamika?”

  She hesitated again. Gradually, she nodded but still didn’t remove the door chain.

  He held up his hands, showing that they were empty. “Really, you’ve got nothin’ to worry about, sweetheart. We just came here to talk. It’s some stuff he couldn’t ask you over the phone so he wanted me to do it for him—in person. That’s all.”

  The door slammed shut. Ricky glanced up at Melvin, whose dark face settled into a scowl. The hulking bodyguard raised his fist to pound on her door again, but they heard a series of clicks and the door swung open before he could.

  In the doorway stood a young petite woman who looked to be in her early twenties. She wore a T-shirt and jeans. Her long hair was pulled back into a ponytail, revealing an almost angelic sienna-hued face with big hazel eyes and rounded cheeks.

  “What we need to talk about?” Tamika asked, narrowing those light eyes up at them suspiciously.

  “Stuff we really don’t want to talk about in the middle of the hallway,” Ricky said. “Do you mind if we come in?”

  Tamika hesitated again. He could understand why: Two big dudes she had never seen before had shown up to her apartment in the middle of the day, unannounced. He’d be suspicious of them too.

  “How about this? Do you mind if just I come in? Melvin can wait in the hall. And we can leave the door open if you don’t feel safe being alone with me in here.”

  Ricky could hear Melvin grumbling behind him, but he didn’t care. He was trying to earn this woman’s trust, to make her feel comfortable. That’s what Dolla Dolla had sent him here to do.

  She loudly exhaled, making her tiny nostrils flare, and then nodded, gesturing inside the apartment. “Okay. But just you! He waits out here and you better keep the door open, or I’m callin’ the police.”

  Ricky nodded before turning to Melvin. “I won’t be long.”

  Melvin grunted before slumping against the door frame.

  Ricky followed her down a short hallway into her kitchen. The apartment was filled with only a few pieces of furniture: one stained sofa, a television, a fold-up kitchen table and two chairs that didn’t match. A half-full Styrofoam cup of noodles sat on the table along with a can of soda.

&n
bsp; “Can I sit down?” Ricky asked, pulling out one of the chairs from the table.

  She shrugged and grabbed her cup of noodles. “I don’t care. Go ahead,” she said before shoving a fork in the cup and continuing to eat. He noticed she didn’t take the chair opposite him, but leaned against the counter instead as she ate. That was okay. Again, he knew he had to build her trust.

  “So how you been doing, Tamika?” Ricky asked.

  “Not too good,” she said between slurps, taking a darting glance around the kitchen. She was twitchy, like she couldn’t stand still. He wondered if she was nervous—or high. “I’m about to get kicked out of my place, and I need money. That’s why I wanna go back to Dolla—if he’ll take me back. I wouldn’t have left if the cops didn’t raid that joint. I know he took care of me. He took better care of me than any other niggas I fuck with,” she said with a sneer.

  “Did the cops talk to you after the raid? Did they ask you questions?”

  She nodded as she ate. “But I didn’t tell them shit. I couldn’t tell em. I didn’t know anything! They kept asking me about who my customers were. They showed me this binder full of pictures of dudes. I didn’t know none of them niggas.” She dumped the remaining noodles into the already overflowing kitchen sink along with her fork. “They asked me if Dolla made me stay there . . . if he wouldn’t let me go. I told them I was there because I fuckin’ wanted to be there. He was my man. I stayed with my man. Point blank period!”

  Ricky watched as she slouched back against the counter again. He wondered how many girls, like Tamika, may have been forced into prostitution by Dolla Dolla, but had led such horrible lives that they didn’t know abuse when they saw it. His sister had been a lot like them and she ended up six feet under before the age of sixteen. But he wasn’t here to impart words of wisdom. He wasn’t here to tell Tamika that she was better off staying far away from Dolla Dolla and men like him. He was here to save his own ass and that’s exactly what he was going to do.