Durty South Grind (19 page)

With obvious concern, he mouthed, “A red what?” He was confused.

She cocked her head to the side and narrowed her eyes. “Aw damn, you must've just got around this way or something, but don't worry you'll definitely hear about them soon enough. Here, man, take this money, for god's sake, and give me some stuff to keep these geeking muthafuckas from looking all crazy and shit. They been here for a minute, waiting for something to come through. Oh yeah, and make that four lots because with that alert, they gonna be hanging around for a while.”

“Four lots, oh, aaah okay,” he said quietly as he took the bills while reaching into his jacket and placed the dope in her outstretched hand.

To his surprise, she immediately took out one of the Ziplocs, magically produced a glass smoker's bowl and lit up. She inhaled deeply on the rock before handing the bowl to him, which he politely refused with a wave of the hand. In a nonchalant manner, she hunched her shoulders, took a longer drag and said between gulps of breath, “You gonna count that, ain'tcha?”

Snapping out of his mini daze, he said, “Oh yeah,” and started rifling through the bills.

“It's all there,” she said, smiling shyly up at him.

He leaned away from her. “Girlie, I'm just—”

She didn't even let him finish and gently touched his elbow. “I was just testing you, playa; it's always all there.”

He pinched his nose and stared at her feeling sorta stupid, not knowing quite how to respond.

Sliding her hand slowly down his arm to rub his hand, she smiled demurely and said, “Playa, don't worry about it, you'll get to know me in a little bit, and I know ya got to be stepping fast right now, so we'll get a chance to kick it later on, aight?”

He'd barely nodded okay before she was guiding him out of the bathroom and toward the twins, who were standing at the door ready to go.

With her hand in the middle of his back, she nodded and winked at the twins. She let out a short laugh and reached around him to open the door. “I'll be seeing you soon, playa. Hey, how ya'll girls doing?”

Ignoring whatever response the twins might have made, she turned back to the people in the room and said in a hard, all-business-like tone, “Okay, ya'll muthafuckas line ya'll asses up and let's do this.”

Turning to them, she said, “I'll see ya'll folks later. As you can see the herd be waiting on a bitch and I got to get to serving them before they start to getting rowdy up in here.” She winked and smiled before she turned back into the room and closed the door.

As he followed the twins down the stairs, it dawned on him that he hadn't seen either of them use the phone while they were on the highway.

As if she were reading his mind, Cherry smiled, raised the hem on her blouse and patted the cell phone hooked to the side of her skirt. “It ain't magic, playa. She texted while we were on the exit ramp. Come on; it's time to meet Miss Sissy.” The smirk she'd had earlier had returned. Feeling a little dumb, he jacked up his jeans and quietly followed them to the car.

At that same moment, on the other side of town, the clicking from the soles of the shiny, wing-tipped tan gators dominated the sound in the room on the tiled floor in the dimly lit room as the lanky veteran street player paced back and forth. A mist of aromatic smoke swirled in a steady stream from the thick Cuban cigar clenched in the corner of his mouth, emanating from the shadowy figure sitting behind the large oval desk. Long manicured fingers, bejeweled with several expensive rings, tapped a slow beat on the highly glossed mahogany top. The soulful flow of Young Jeezy's “I Luv It, ” was booming, adding sparks to the tension-filled room. The seriousness of the situation was proving to be a necessary evil but his thoughts were on the lovely sexpot, who was at that very moment cuddled up in his bed in the next room. It only added to his desire to get this talk over.

“My man, why are you acting so nervous and shit?” his baritone voice boomed at the stalking figure pacing, as swirls of smoke
turned into halos that rose from the shadows to evaporate into a cloudy mist that rose to the ceiling.

The intensity in his voice caused the man to slow down his pace. “Yo, you haven't known these dudes as long as I have, so you wouldn't understand.”

“What's that got to do with us allowing these muthafuckas to disrupt our coin counting, unless of course you'll turn heartless on me or something?” The mere thought of that got the man more pissed. Suddenly, he slapped down on the table so hard that sparks shot from the cigar cornered tightly in his mouth.

He stretched his six-foot-five frame. “You ain't telling me I've got to start worrying if you can handle your end of things?”

The stalker blinked several times before he spoke. “Man, these dudes ain't nothing to play with. Either one of them would blow your brains out at the drop of a hat with the same expression as if they had spit in your face or shook your hand.”

His grit was solid stone. “You telling me that I can't handle them niggas? Muthafucka, get a grip. This is my turf and ain't no nigga gonna do what the fuck he wants to on it. Fuck them, shit, fuck them straight up. You with me or what? Let me know right muthafucking now.” Unknown to the stalker, an itchy finger tightened around the trigger of the nine-milli that was aimed straight at his stomach.

The stalker nodded two, three times and pushed the black fedora back on his head. One thing was for certain, taking over the hustling lanes from this particular crew wasn't going to be easy.

As the insane eyes in the devilish face leaned out of the shadows, he began to wonder which side of the fence was safer. Even though he was nodding in agreement, in his heart he knew that neither side was.

Beverly pondered over the information one of her prize detectives had just revealed to her. She was faced with an unusual dilemma, with being the top cop to protect and serve the people of her beloved hometown. As a friend and a woman reared in the ghetto, she owed an enduring loyalty to her closest childhood buddies. To help send either one or all three back to prison would be a stressful task she couldn't possibly enjoy; she didn't really think she could do it. As she absorbed the information in one ear and the humming of the police ticker in the other, she started daydreaming.

She smiled at the heartwarming memories of three snotty-nosed, nappy-headed ruffians mercilessly picking at her in the sandbox at the kindergarten on Candler Road in Decatur. They were the exact same trio that used to yank her plaits and snatch her dessert off her tray in elementary school, laughing the whole time at her protest. The same trio that used to raid her nana's grapevine and peach trees. Oooh, how hair-pulling mad she'd get at them for all of those childhood antics.

She became overflowed with warmth, when she recalled that same terrible trio that used to beat up anybody that even thought about bothering her. Any one of them would rush to mow the grass, rake the leaves or carry the grocery bags from the store. At least one was always there for her during the dramas of her teenage adolescence. She could still feel the ache in her jaws from smiling so hard when she was the only girl at her senior prom with three handsomely clad tuxedoed escorts. And of course the overwhelming joy from when they paid for her college tuition every year at Georgia State University.

Her private reverie was abruptly snapped when the deputy chief
entered her shade-drawn door unannounced. She made a mental note to discipline him the next time they were alone, but at the moment her mind was too occupied and she certainly wasn't going to discuss those affairs with him. There were too many others within earshot and she had a self-control policy not to try to embarrass her subordinates out in the open; especially those that had a lot of clout on Capitol Hill. And this certain deputy had plenty of that.

She started feeling like she was stuck between rocks when she saw that stern look on his face. Even though she was well familiar with their street names that were tossed around the precinct, she was just as aware that she was probably the only one there who knew about her connection to them. Talking about skeletons in the closet, whew.

She loved all three of them dearly, especially Sparkle, who happened to be the playground, elementary and high school sweetheart, as well as the high school sports star turned hoodlum, or vice versa. He was the curly-haired mutt who had gotten her cherry. She blushed whenever she thought of that wonderful night so long ago. The fast lane reps of her three amigos had grown right along with her rise in the law enforcement ranks.

She'd lost count of how many times she'd put her career on the line alerting the two Johnnies about raids on their drug and pimping turfs. How she had managed to keep their closeness a secret for all of these years was still a mystery to her.

That loyalty was in contrast to her belief in keeping the streets of Atlanta crime free; still it had remained strong her entire career. For years she'd maintained a private scrabble telephone that only those knuckleheads had access to with the main criteria being that there be no conversations about their criminal activities.

As she listened to the deputy chief and other detectives discussing
strategies for dealing with the recent Jamaican drug invasion, she really felt the weight of maintaining that loyalty. As the horror stories of the drug wars continued to trickle in, she really didn't know if she could do it any longer.

W
hen Sparkle and the girls pulled around to the backside of the Holiday Inn, the side facing the express-way, there was a short stocky girl leaning on the ice machine with her arms folded, staring off into space.

Her expression hardened when they stepped out of the car. Sparkle stepped behind the girls studying shawtie as they approached. She was dressed in a faded blue jean outfit with a Braves baseball cap turned backward on a head of close-cropped hair. Even though she had a real baby face, her mannerism was straight-up dude.

She pushed off the machine and started walking with a bow-legged strut in the opposite direction, ending at the last room on the row. She didn't wait for them but she did leave the door open when she went into the room. They walked directly in behind her.

“Yo, J and P called over an hour ago about ya'll being on the way, so what the fuck took ya so long?” She spit in a husky voice that didn't come close to matching her barely five-foot frame. Matter of fact the way she was packed in that little body, it would be very easy to envision her as a midget.

She was leaning against the sink like she consumed the whole room. Feeling the twins' scary vibes hitting him from both sides, he gave them a short-gritted snort and stepped in first.

He lifted his head in greeting as he walked directly toward her.
She certainly didn't appreciate anyone approaching her like they were disrespecting her gangster, so she hung her arms along her side like she was ready to go to war. Her defensive posture made him pause for a brief moment, but he shrugged it off and reached into his jacket to take out the package.

As she reached for it, he saw out of the corner of his eye a tall shape emerge out of the bathroom. His eyes got a lot bigger when he saw that the figure was that of a true Amazon. A six-three Diana Ross was the only way he could describe her with those big eyes smiling at him.

When she spoke, it came out just the opposite of Sissy's, squeaky and sweet, as she looked him up and down. “Mmm, how ya doing there, handsome?”

He was so stunned by the contrast of the two women that he barely noticed when Sissy slapped a wad of bills in his hand at the same time that she extracted the dope out of his grip.

While he examined the wad of wrinkled bills, Sissy turned to the basin and took two bundles out of the package.

Long'n'Lovely massaged his shoulder ever so gently. “So you're Sparkle, huh? I done heard some good things about you, sweetie.”

Sparkle admired her long frame for a moment before breaking out in a smile as he replied, “Oh yeah, that's nice to hear. So what's your name, princess?” His eyes started to glitter at her vision.