Durty South Grind (31 page)

He downed the rest of his drink in one big gulp, pinched his nose and started walking back to the middle of the room. She stood at the sculpture with one hand on her hip—looking like she could have been the model used to carve the goddess—and eyed him up and down. She silently wondered how he was able to resist her feminine charms because most niggas melted whenever she so much as smiled at them. She squinted her nose at his departing back, his hard-to-get act making her more determined to get her way with him.

Refusing to be brushed off so quickly, she started stepping after him. He suddenly spun around, making her freeze in mid-stride. With an intense stare directly in her face, he picked up another cell phone from off of a similar statuette and held it out to her. “Is this yours?”

She placed a foot on the carpeted step and nodded. Cocking his head slightly to the side, he nonchalantly punched some numbers and handed it to her. “When you get the chance and the desire, holla at a nigga.” He didn't even wait for her reaction and walked out of the room.

Her eyes blinked rapidly at his departing figure until the door eased shut, and then she picked up the phone to check out the
numbers he had punched. Smiling warmly to herself, she clicked the numbers to her save unit and started rubbing the phone against her cheek. She was definitely enjoying the chase already.

When Stacy stepped back into the room, he looked right into a harsh stare from Al. He didn't know exactly what to make of his reaction. He didn't think that he had been gone that long, so he decided to play it by ear.

Since Al had just cut the deck, his attention was drawn back to the game and chatter. He picked up his money and asked the dealer, “What's your game, CeeDee?”

CeeDee was one of his regular buyers, scoring at least a quarter of a kilo every three days or so, which was really good considering that he was dealing his package out there in one of the rural areas, Henry County—a real country hot spot about ten miles outside of DeKalb County. In his mid-thirties, the boy had locks on the cocaine trade on his turf; mostly farmland with widespread black folk projects and trailer parks dotted throughout the land. For a big country boy his pockets stayed fat with Al's product.

He was a big boy with a rounded face full of facial hair and thick cornrows gracing his fat head. He had a thing for plaid shirts that he kept buttoned all the way to the neck and matched the bandana he always had wrapped around his head. His real trademark though was a derby hat he liked to wear cocked acey-deucey. If you saw him, you saw the bandana and derby.

He peeked at Al over a pair of wire-framed sunshades. “Let's try some of that stuff you like, big man…some of that forty-four, ah low card in your hand is wild for a bitch,” CeeDee said in his distinctive country boy drawl.

Stacy looked at his four cards and the four on the table. Right off the bat he knew that he would have a bad hand, so he folded and leaned back in the seat. After a couple of more hands, it was
obvious to him that his luck had run out. Along with wanting to hook up with his uncle, he decided to call it a night.

Pushing away from the table, Stacy stood up. “Yo folks, I'm going to catch ya'll another time. My moms wants me to do some thangs for her.” He turned toward Brenda and smiled. “Hey, pretty lady, I'll catch you at the club later on tonight, aight?”

She stopped counting her money long enough to smile up at him. “Yeah, okay, baby boy, don't spend all the loot in one place. I'll see you there. Oh yeah, tell your auntie that I'll call her sometime today to make an appointment for my hair and nails.”

Stacy nodded to the other players and walked out the room.

As he was backing out of the driveway, he noticed that Mona was watching him through a crack in the curtains. He smiled to himself but chose not to acknowledge her as he drove away. Besides, to his reasoning, anytime that a bitch would pull a stunt the way that she was, in a nigga's own house, how could he possibly trust her? Quickly recognizing the real for the real, he put his ego in check and decided to enjoy the chase.

After all of the gamblers had departed, Al sent Mona to the Sonic convenience store down the street to get enough cases of brew to restock the refrigerator in the game room. He watched through the blinds while she backed out of the driveway and drove down the street before he went to the wall behind the jukebox. Lifting a secret panel to reveal an electronic keypad, he punched in his code numbers. There was a near silent whirling sound as the pool table started sliding along the floor, opening to a stairway that led to a sub-basement.

He had taken a couple of steps when a sudden ringing sound
froze his leg in midair.
Stupid bitch done left her muthafucking key; that's what I get for fucking with a dilly ho
was the first thing to come to his mind as he spun around and rushed back to the top of the stairs. He fast-stepped back toward the panel hoping that he had enough time to close the secret stairway before she got back into the house. He didn't want anyone to know that the room even existed. By the time that he got to the jukebox, it dawned on him that the ringing sound was a different one from that of his doorbell. All he could do was stand shaking his head at his own stupidity when he saw the cell phone ringing on the pool table.
Damn, I must be slipping or something.
He couldn't remember putting it there.

With a huff of anguish, he stomped over to the table, snatched it up and saw Black Don's number blinking at him. Even though he needed to talk to him about some business, he clicked off and started back down the stairs. When his foot touched the bottom of the stairs, the pool table automatically slid back into place and the lights came on.

Feeling secure in his own little personal world, he sat down in front of a roll of monitors, pressed a series of buttons on the arm chair and sat back. He leaned back and massaged his mouth, chin and neck as he calmly viewed the screen for a couple of minutes. With nothing unusual happening during the poker session, he flipped over to the middle monitor. He touched another button that rewound it back to the time when Stacy had made his call. He listened to and watched the entire scene intently. Feeling good about his suspicions, he rewound several more times to cement the images in his mind, as he envisioned how he would repay the bitch for her dishonesty.

After satisfying his thirsty intuition, he called his boy Don. “What's up, partner? I heard that there was a little trouble out at one of your holes the other night.”

Don, who had spent the previous night at the Omni Hotel with a couple of girls who had delivered him a shipment of cocaine from Miami, was just pulling into the BP service station on Candler Road. He had been on his way to see Al after his confrontation with Bertha. And finding out that the black Amazon and butch queen in the corner room were working for what he considered his main competition, hadn't left him in the best of moods. So when Al hadn't picked up the phone on his first call, he had turned around and was headed back to his crib in East Point.

I should make his ass wait the same way that he did me. Who in the hell do he thinks he's fucking with anyhow, like I'm one of his peons or something,
he thought as he got out of the car and reached for the gas pump. By the time that the car was filled up, he figured that it would be best to go ahead and get their business out of the way. Before he pulled back out into the traffic, he went ahead and called him back. “Yeah, there was a little something-something out that way but it wasn't no biggie. I handled it, no problem, but shit, how did you find out?”

Al held the phone away from his face frowning at his response but held back from a negative retort. “I've got my ways, but fuck dat. When you gonna bring me my half of that piece we ordered?”

Don stared at the phone for a second before he replied, “Man, since you didn't pick up earlier, I thought I'd drop some off at a couple spots until you called me back. Why? You in a hurry or something? You know the shit's good, dog.”

“Naw, nigga, I ain't in no fucking hurry and I don't have to be, but my business is my business and I'd like to be able to handle my business when I need to, not when you choose to handle it for me. Just like you do!” he shouted into the receiver, showing his impatience.

“Okay, okay, you ain't got to blow a rod, damn.”

“Man, just tell me when you gonna bring me my shit, simple plain.”

“I just told ya, after I hit off a couple of my folks on my way over there.”

“Aight, call me when you're really on your way then.”

“Bet,” Don said and hung up before he could say anything else.

After he heard the click, Al quickly dialed another number. “Hey, man, let me know when you want to meet on that thing.” Since he was forced to use the voice mail, he hung up as soon as he'd left the message. “Damn, I hope this muthafucka ain't gonna play with a nigga, too,” he muttered to himself and started back up the stairs. He decided to take a shower to freshen up for the freak show he had planned for Mona when she got back.

After clicking Al off, Don decided to call his aunt Rose to check in. He pushed in Little Wayne's latest CD and started bobbing his head to some lollypop music as his mind drifted to thoughts of his auntie. He was always in awe of the way she managed to hide her true self from the horde of niggas that occupied their world. Everybody thought that she was a goodie-two-shoe. Little did they know that his sweet-faced overseer was just the opposite, though looking at her one wouldn't think so. Beyond the grandmotherly exterior, there was a hard-core ex-street walker, who had turned him out to the hustling life. She had been raised herself under the strong hand of a veteran macking gangster in those mean streets in Miami. Those heavy-handed lessons had prepared her well for dealing with the thug life.

When he was brutally murdered some years ago by a rival pimp, she was forced to leave Miami, but not before she had made a major connection in the drug game. Some of those connections still wanted to get their hands on her good-playing ass for ripping them off. So it was up to him to maintain a bumper between them and her. He paid good money to keep them off her ass.

Still there were other dope connections, that couldn't care less what she had done to their rivals and had actually helped her to bring Don to Atlanta to expand their product—a new, more powerful kind of cocaine that got to be known as Peruvian golden flake. So named because of the pinkish hue and the way that it glittered with gold specks when it was tilted from side to side. No doubt, she was the real deal, brains and power behind Don gaining prominence in Atlanta's red light district.

Not long after his arrival he'd gone into partnership in the 617-skin house gambling establishment and the strip club. Through the years the club had become well known for its beautiful exotic dancers and as a hub for scoring cocaine in huge quantities. He'd always guessed, but could never really confirm, that Rose's Miami connects were the ones that had greased the skid for him to do all the things he had done. And truth be told, he didn't give a fuck how he got there; he was thankful that he was there.

To see her most people would never imagine her as being the vicious, conniving silent partner and tutor of one of the most dangerous players in the hood. Those that did know her only saw the owner of a neighborhood corner store. This was exactly what she was in College Park, as a cover to keep the police and hustling competitors at bay.

Even Al, his other secret partner in crime, had no inkling of her real status. And as far as Don was concerned, she would remain his ace in the hole. Besides, even with all the money, power and respect that he'd gained since his arrival in Atlanta, and despite his physical prowess and widespread guerilla tactics toward any opposition, he knew that deep in his heart that without her he was nothing.

Though he loved and respected her more than anybody else in the whole world, there was a special aura about her that could be described only as straight-up “fear factor” that he certainly
couldn't ignore. He and he alone knew something that nobody in Atlanta even considered. That under the sweet old lady that masqueraded as the mild-mannered corner store owner, there was a scandalous, conniving, ruthless, cold-hearted, cold-blooded killer in disguise.

S
parkle took a quick peek at the Omega watch he had just bought from a young hustler, who was hawking his wares at the entrance to Underground Atlanta for $100. It read 11:30, which meant that Rainbow was supposed to be there by now.

He took a another sip out of the strawberry milkshake he'd brought at the Hardees restaurant a couple of blocks down the street, before he looked up and down Peachtree Street wondering where his boy could be. He had just unfolded the newspaper under his arm when he heard Rainbow's familiar twang from behind him. “You can stop looking all around the place. No, no, no, don't turn around. I had to come and let you know that I've been warming the vics up for a meet at his worksite by the Peachtree Towers at twelve. You ready, nigga, 'cause it's about to be on?”