A Sticky Situation (19 page)

“Well, have you noticed anything between them two?”

“No, but that still doesn’t mean they aren’t. Like I said, if they are sneaking around, they are keeping it on the D.L.”

“Well listen, I want you to do me a favor.”

“What’s up?”

“Would you walk with me down to Melody’s place, so it won’t look suspicious when I try to look through her window?”

“I’ll walk with you down there, but I know you ain’t going to be able to peep in her windows because she has black curtains covering every single window.”

“Damn! What am I going to do now?”

“I’ll tell you what: if you give me ten dollars, I’ll have a reason to knock on her door and look and see if I can see something.”

I reached inside my sweatpants, pulled out the only twenty-dollar bill I had to my name, and handed it to Faith. “I want my change back,” I told her.

“All right,” she replied and we started walking.

My heart started beating like crazy. “So, what do you want me to do while you go up to the house?”

“Just stand back a couple of feet and act like you’re watching my back or something.”

“But what if he sees me?”

“If you stand around the other side of the building, he won’t.”

“All right,” I said again because at last, it seemed like a plan was coming together.

When we got up to Melody’s apartment Seth’s car was, indeed, parked out front. I walked by it and rubbed my hand across the hood to feel if it was still warm, and it was. “You weren’t lying,” I said to Faith.

“What are you talking about?”

“The hood of his car is still warm so you were right; he did just get here.”

Faith smiled, revealing her yellow-stained teeth, and turned to walk toward the back of the building. I followed her to the edge of the building and stopped. Faith tapped on the window, told Seth what she wanted, handed him the money and got her drugs in her hands in less than sixty seconds flat. I was truly amazed at how their transaction went so smoothly. When Faith walked back around the building, I held out my hand for my change and asked her if she was able to get a look into the house.

“Nah, I couldn’t see shit because he turned off the kitchen light when he came back to the window with the dope.”

“What about before? Did you get to look inside when he first took your money?”

“Nope, because he only cracked the window just enough so that he would be able to take the money out of my hands.”

“Damn!” I said as we walked back down the street toward my car.

“What’s wrong?” Faith asked me.

“I am so frustrated right now, I could scream.”

“Well, don’t do that,” she warned me.

I sighed heavily and was about to say something when I got sidetracked by someone’s screen door closing. When I turned around and saw Seth walking outside toward his car, my face lit up. Instead of bringing attention to myself by standing in the middle of the sidewalk, I pulled Faith over to a car parked a couple feet from where we were. I took a seat on the hood and acted as if we were talking. Faith stumbled a bit but she caught her balance. “Whatchu doing?” she wondered, and before I could answer her, Melody came storming out the front door behind Seth, with bare feet and wearing a skimpy-looking night gown.

“Wait, Seth! I am so sorry! Please let me make this right. I will do anything,” she begged.

Seth hit the alarm on his car to unlock the door. “You better get the fuck away from me before I smack the hell out of you.”

Melody grabbed his shirt. “Please let me make this right!” she said again.

“Didn’t I tell you to get the fuck away from me?” he snapped.

“Please don’t go. I am sorry. I promise I won’t do it anymore.” She began to cry.

“I know you won’t, because after Mike gets through with your ass, you’re gonna be sorry for real!”

Melody literally got down on her knees and started sobbing uncontrollably. “Seth, please don’t tell Mike. He will kill me!”

Seth burst into laughter. “Yeah, I know he will, and that’s probably what your silly ass needs. Now, get your dumb ass off the ground and get back in the house.”

Melody got off her knees and before she turned around to go back into the house, she looked at Seth and said, “Please give me another chance.”

“Come on now, how many chances do you want? This was my second time catching you sniffing that shit, so I ain’t gon’ let it slide this time.”

Melody stood there in silence for about ten seconds and then I heard her say, “You know what? You can go right ahead and tell him but just know that when you do, I’m gon’ come right behind you and tell him me and you been fucking.”

Hearing her come out of her mouth and say that they had been intimate gave me a queasy feeling in my stomach. I almost threw up, but I held my composure long enough to see Seth smack the shit out of her. He hit her so hard, I heard her ass slide across the rocks.

“Yeah, and while you’re at it, tell him I smacked the hell out of you, too.”

Melody gave him a look of disbelief as she held the side of her face with her hand. I thought she was going to get up and charge at him, but she didn’t. Seth got into his car and flew out of there like a bat out of hell. I started to get into my car and follow him, but I decided against it when I saw Melody trying to stand to her feet.

“Where you going?” Faith asked me when I began to walk toward Melody.

“I am going to go and talk to her.”

“Well, I’m gone. I’ll be around here somewhere if you need me,” she said and walked in the opposite direction.

By the time I got within a couple feet of Melody, she stood to her feet and began to brush the small fragments of dirt off her butt. “You all right?” I asked her.

Startled by my sudden appearance, she looked at me and said, “Oh shit, you scared me.”

“I’m sorry. But are you all right?”

“I think I got a couple of scrapes and bruises on my ass, but I’ll be all right.” She limped toward her front door.

I started walking along side of her. “Need some help?”

“Nah, I’m all right.”

“Hey, wait. Can I ask you something?”

Melody stopped and turned around. “What is it?”

I took a couple of steps closer to her, so I could get a better look at her face. “I just want to let you know that I saw what happened to you. Now, I don’t know what made him smack you like he did, but I just want to let you know that you shouldn’t tolerate a man putting his hands on you.”

Melody smiled. “Girl, that wasn’t nothing. Me and him just had a misunderstanding. Trust me, he’ll be back after he calms down.”

“Is he your man?” I asked, hoping she would give me the information I’d been searching for.

“Nah, but we’re close friends, though.”

“What do you mean by close friends?”

“See, me and him got a thing where he’s got his girl and I got my man, but we still find the time to spend together while he’s here.”

“It doesn’t bother you that he has a girlfriend?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because from what he tells me, she’s in jail. And what can she possibly do for him while she’s in there? Nothing. So that’s why I’m keeping her spot warm.”

Listening to this fucking slut tell me that she and Seth been fucking, and that she was keeping Samantha’s spot warm until she came out of prison, sent me a clear message that I must’ve been out of the equation, for real. What really made me nauseous was the fact that I was standing directly in front of a Section Eight bitch that got to fuck my man more than I did. Now what part of the game was that? I mean, what did I have to do to get this man to see that I had more to offer than Samantha and this low-class whore right here? Did I have to lose everything I had worked so hard for just to get down to his level? I mean, come on. What was this world coming to?

After going back and forth with this dingbat about her drama-filled life, I ended our conversation with my “I wish you the best,” spiel and got the hell out of Dodge. Believe you me, I wanted to burst her bubble and tell her who the hell I really was, but I figured if I had, I probably would not have gotten as much information out of her stupid ass. So in a way, I was kind of happy that I did the right thing . . . even though I would have liked to see her expression when I let the cat out of the bag that I was his woman, for real. Anyway, all was not lost. I got what I came out there for. Now, I could move forward with my plans to shut all this shit down.

SETH

You Gotta Watch Your Own Back

Melody was one sneaky-ass bitch! I couldn’t believe she stole another pill of dope from me and tried to push the shit up her nose while I was in the next room. Was she crazy, or was she fucking stupid? Whatever the hell she was, I knew she’d better not try that bullshit again, because if she did, I was going to definitely have to tell Mike. Now, I knew he was not gonna be too happy about it but hey, what could I say? His bitch was a fiend and I was not gonna take the fall for her ass. It was not gonna happen. The best thing for me was to keep the dope on me at all times and make sure she stayed the hell away from me. I was not trying to fuck her no more, and I was not really trying to have too much talk for her, either.

According to Mike, we only had about three more weeks’ worth of dope and we were done. That meant that we were going to close down the shop for good and I could take my money and get as far away as I could from Melody’s dumb ass. Me and my baby Samantha could go live big and do whatever the fuck we wanted to; that was, if Maxine didn’t decide to wreck our plans. She did have the power to throw a monkey wrench at any given moment, so I was going to have to think of something to prevent her from doing it. Shit, I might have to start giving her the dick again and make her think that everything was OK between us. Knowing her, though, she’d probably see right through it. I just hoped she didn’t fuck with Samantha because she was the type of chick that would go upside Maxine’s head and wouldn’t think about the repercussions until later. I mean, Samantha would hurt her real bad. I didn’t want my baby going back to prison behind some shit I could have handled, so I was going to have to think of something real fast. Whether I wanted to believe it or not, Maxine hadn’t talked to me for over two weeks so I knew she was really upset with me and was plotting on a way to get me back. I was gonna have to put on my thinking cap as well.

Mike and I hooked up at a nearby gas station so he could furnish me with another batch of dope. He handed me a Ziploc bag of twenty-five hundred pills. I looked at the motherfucker like he was crazy.

“Man, we ain’t gon’ be able to get rid of all this shit by nightfall,” I told him.

“Yo, I just heard it’s a drought out there, so trust me, dopefiends from all over are going to be coming at you.”

“You know the police been riding real hard these last few days.”

“That’s because niggas is running their mouths. But don’t sweat it. Remember, you got some thorough-ass young’uns out there with you, and the way I see it, they ain’t gon’ let the police kick up in that spot.”

What Mike said kind of made sense, but if those narcs wanted to run up in Melody’s crib bad enough, they’d find a way. I knew from experience how they operated. They’d send two undercover police, looking just like dopefiends, to the spot and would have those young boys down on their faces before they saw it coming. I listened to Mike run his mouth about how we had shit around the way locked down, but like I said before, anything you built up could be knocked down. In other words, I was gonna need to be on my p’s and q’s from this point on. After our conversation was over, Mike asked me if I would do a job for him. I looked at him with a curious expression and asked him what kind of job did he want me to do. When he told me that he wanted me to get rid of Jay, I was at a loss for words.

“Whatchu mean, you want me to get rid of him?” I asked.

“I want you to kill him.”

Caught off guard by his abrupt decision to end Jay’s life, I hesitated for a moment and then I looked at him in a bizarre kind of way. “Damn, son, what’s going on? You and that nigga beefing or something?”

“Nah, we ain’t been beefing but for the last week or so, my dough has been coming up short. And when I asked that nigga where my money was, he gave me some ol’ bogus-ass excuse about how he had to take a lot of shorts off each pill of dope, so that’s why the count was off. But I know that’s bullshit because I’ve got this young nigga over there at the spot telling me that Jay is taking straight money and he’s beating the head off every pill he sells.”

“Word?”

“Come on now, son, you know I don’t play about shit like that.”

“How much did he say he was losing off every pill?”

“He told me he was taking two-dollars shorts.”

“Damn! That’s a lot of dough to be losing on a daily basis, especially if you’re giving him two to three thousand pills. Shit, that nigga got to be pocketing anywhere between four to six grand, plus whatever he’s making from the dope he’s taking out of the pills you give him.”

“I know, and the thought of it makes me wanna put a bullet right in that motherfucker’s dome!”

“So, why don’t you just step to him and tell him to give you your motherfucking dough?”

“Because I know the nigga is going to stand right in my face and lie to me.”

“But what if he doesn’t, and fucks around and gives you your dough?”

“It still isn’t going to matter. I can’t have that nigga on my payroll anymore. Once you betray my trust, I can’t have you around me anymore. That’s why if you hurry up and get rid of his ass for me, I’ll give you a third of everything he took from me.”

“When do you want this done?”

“The sooner the better.”

“A’ight. Well, give me a couple of days and I’ll have it done.”

“You think you’re gonna need a couple of burners?”

“Nah, I’m straight. I do need to know where you want me to clip him. I mean, I know you don’t want me bringing any heat to the spot.”

“Yeah, I was going to tell you that the best way to get him is when he leaves the spot because he always stops by the smoke spot on Reservoir Avenue before he goes to the crib. Out there it is very dark because the niggas ’round there knocked out all the streetlights to keep the narcs from running up on them at any given moment. So if you can run up on him and put a couple slugs in his head right after he comes back out of the spot, niggas is going to think that he’s either getting robbed or he’s got beef, so they’re gonna run for cover and you ain’t gonna have to worry about any witnesses.”