Real Wifeys: Get Money (21 page)

“But you’re not a girl, Michel, you got a dick big as a bat. You’re a boy playing dress-up and not every dude is feeling that,” I insisted.

“But a
lot
do,” he stressed.

“But how do you know the difference?” I shot back.

He shrugged and waved his wig.

“Would you ever have the surgery?” I asked, finishing my wine and moving around the counter to pour another one. Fuck it. Michel could drive.

“I’m sorry, friend, but there is no surgery to turn me straight,” he said, sounding hurt and a little angry as he pulled the wig over his own hair that he kept cut low.

I sat my goblet on the counter and came around to help him put the adhesive on the back of the wig. “No, I mean would you get the titties and a pussy. You know, become a woman.”

Michel looked up at me in the mirror. “I do not want a pussy or even want to be anywhere near a motherfuckin’ pussy. There is nothing like the taste, the touch, and the feel of a hard dick. I’m gay. I’m not taking hormones or getting THE DICK cut off.”

My face screwed up as the bloody image flashed in my head again. I definitely could do without
that
shit.

“Now, if you ready to get up outta my business,” Michel said, meeting my eyes in the mirror.

“I just don’t want you to get hurt, Michel,” I said, turning to pick up my glass of wine to sip.

“I can understand that but I’m good, so don’t worry,” he said. “Plus you got enough on your plate.”

The front door opened and Eve strolled in. Her face was free of makeup. “Whassup,” she said, not at all looking or sounding like her usual lively self.

Michel lifted an arched brow as he finished putting on his wig. “Humph, somebody got drama for days,” he muttered under his breath, giving Eve a mean side-eye.

I turned and eyed her. “What’s up with you?” I asked, pouring her a glass of wine.

Eve turned and just crossed her arms over her chest.

I leaned back at that. Eve—“I love alcohol whenever I can get it”—turned down moscato. There was one of two things going on. “You pregnant or on antibiotics?” I asked her, sitting the wine on the counter.

“Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding,” Michel said in a falsetto.

Eve glared at him. “Shuddafuckup,
Michael
,” she snapped.

I sighed, because Eve didn’t need a baby or a disease. “So you two keeping secrets now?” I asked.

“You been busy,” Eve said, walking the short distance to plop down on the sofa.

“Not that busy,” I popped back.

Now Michel gave me a side-eye and a mouth twist that said, “Whatever, bitch,” before he dropped his robe and started to get dressed, his padded bra and thong already on. I finished my drink as he dressed in a short black ruffled skirt with a skintight black tee that read
yummy entertainment
in neon colors. Sky-high fuchsia pumps and fingernails were bright enough to glow in the dark. He sprayed his Gucci perfume in the air and then stepped into the mist with a wink.

Ignoring him, I looked back at Eve. “Which one is it?” I asked, feeling more like her older sister than a cousin and friend the same damn age.

Michel mimicked a baby’s cry.

Shit!

Eve sat up straight. “I’m not pregnant!”

Michel shrugged. “I know that. I just wanted you to answer the question . . . with your itchy coochie.”

No he didn’t.
I turned my head so Eve wouldn’t see me fighting not to laugh.

When Michel pretended to scratch his crotch with a crazy face, even Eve had to laugh as she tossed one of his throw pillows at him.

“Can we go now?” I said, already planning to buy my cousin enough condoms to fill a drawer. Eve didn’t believe in relationships and boyfriends. She was a female playa, but I thought she was playing safe.

“Let me beat this bitch face real quick,” Michel said, motioning his hand over his dressing chair.

Eve made her way into the chair and I finished sipping my wine while Michel did her makeup and spiked her hair. We were out there in less than ten minutes. Michel locked his apartment and we laughed as we headed downstairs.

I climbed in the driver’s seat and closed the door as Michel let Eve climb in the back via the passenger door. A carload of dudes rolled by in an old Chevy Caprice. One of them leaned out the passenger window. “What’s up, lovely?” he yelled back at Michel.

Michel blew gloss-covered kisses as he flipped his wig before he finally climbed in my car as the rear lights of the Caprice disappeared around the corner. There is no way he could convince me that every last one of the niggas in that car would wanna fuck him and not beat his ass for being an undercover dude. Michel was flirting with danger.

“You don’t judge me. I don’t judge you,” he said, closing my passenger door.

I pressed my lips together as I checked the rearview mirror and then pulled off to zoom up the street.

The comedy show was another hit for us. Profits all around. As soon as the last people left we settled up with the owner of the venue and headed to Club 973 to party the last few hours of the night away until the club lights came on.

“Let’s go to Dino’s,” Eve said, her legs looking twice as long in the black linen shorts she wore with matching gladiator sandals and her Yummy T-shirt.

My cell phone vibrated in my hand. I looked down at the caller ID as we stood by my Jag in the parking lot. “I gotta take this call,” I said, moving away from them as I flipped my hair back and pressed the phone to my ear.

“What’s up?”

“Goldie sent me on a job, right?” my snitch said. “A car service picked me up, took me to the motherfucking Plaza, back entrance, penthouse suite.”

“And?”

“And nothing. Girl, I just fucked the hell out of a senator. Goldie on some real big-time shit. Like for real. She making money, you hear me?”

No wonder that bitch was living on the Upper East Side and pushing a Bentley. She was on some politician-type shit. Major.

“I got the video of me and the senator for you. If me letting this freak pretend to be a baby, putting baby powder on his saggy nuts, and diapering his old ass ain’t enough for you, I don’t know what is.”

I paced around the parking lot thinking, while Michel and Eve motioned for me to hurry. “Do you got him on video paying you?” I asked, looking up at the full moon in the sky.

“No. Goldie handles the money. We never touch it or see it.”

“Then all we have is a political scandal. Some freaky politician getting served up by a young girl. We got
him
by the balls, not Goldie.”

My snitch sighed.

“I need paperwork. Can you get into her office?” I asked, starting to walk back over to Michel and Eve.

“I want Goldie just as bad as you, but you asking for the impossible.”

When she told me Goldie was pimping bitches out, I never expected her to actually start tricking for Goldie—but it was her pussy to handle. “Just try for me. Okay?”

“A’ight. But the number I had in my head for payment just went up.”

I ended the call and looked over at Eve and Michel. “Let’s roll—”

They both waved their hand and
sshhed
me. “Girl, Tek-9 and about nine other niggas got arrested in a big drug raid about an hour ago,” Eve said.

That shit made my steps pause as Michel turned up the car’s radio.

“More news to come later on this just-breaking story.”

Damn. “What did it say?” I asked.

“Just that the police had been investigating him and a group of people for over a year and when they raided his house they found guns and a lot of weed,” Eve said.

“Damn,” I said.

I liked Tek-9 and now his ass was locked up for slanging dope. Like, why rap if you still was going to hustle? When I first met Make$ he was still in the dope game. But he eventually left that shit alone when he got busy touring and making money.

“And the DJs cracked jokes about him and Make$ winding up in the same facility or cell and be up in there fighting butt-naked over you,” Eve added, getting a nasty stare from Michel.

“What? They did?” Eve said, defending herself.

Was I ever going to live that lie down?

“Let’s go eat,” I said, climbing into the driver’s seat. I wished Eve drove so that they could ride together. I didn’t feel like all they gossiping and shit.

My mind was racing the whole way to Dino’s diner. I hated to hear about Tek-9 getting locked up, especially since I couldn’t even chance trying to visit him. The rumors would never die after that. And there went my plans to expand Yummy Entertainment. How was he gonna perform in jail?
Goodbye, Bentley. Goodbye, upscale New York apartment.

Goldie always came out on top even when the bitch wasn’t trying.

The parking lot of Dino’s was packed as always for a weekend night. After the club, it was the spot to catch a meal before taking it to the crib. In the days after Dyme’s wife made him kick Goldie’s ass to the far left, the bitch had worked the third shift at the diner. Eventually Slick Rick recruited her ass to dance in the restaurant’s private dining room for a grand.

I wished I coulda seen her around that motherfucker, greasy and sweating and smelling like French fries.

Once we walked into the twenty-four-hour diner we waited for a clean booth. A lot of the chatter in the diner was about Tek-9’s arrest. I still couldn’t believe it. Dudes had to stop being so damn greedy wanting to make legit
and
illegit money.

The hostess finally led us to a booth in the back by the emergency door.

“Yo, Luscious!”

I stopped and stepped back to look through the open doors of one of the private rooms at Slick Rick the Ruler and his crew of dancers. Slick Rick’s sexy self made mad money as an exotic dancer in the tristate area before he opened his own strip club on Clinton Avenue. It was a Club Naughty tradition for him to take the nighttime strippers for breakfast after the club closed.

“Whassup, y’all,” I said, eyeing Rick’s cinnamon-brown complexion with his jet-black hair freshly faded and framing up his handsome round face.

It’s funny that as fine as Rick was, especially with a twelve-inch ruler-length dick, he never did anything for me. He had been one of Goldie’s exes too, but it never crossed my mind to fuck him out of revenge. Not like Has. Rick couldn’t fuck with Has. Not in my book . . . or Goldie’s either.

“I ain’t seen you in a minute,” he said, dropping his napkin onto his unfinished stack of buttermilk pancakes.

I shrugged. “I been busy.”

Rick chuckled. “So I hear,” he said, running his tongue over his white and even teeth like he was freeing something from them.

“You still mad, Rick?” I asked, frowning at him like I wasn’t in the mood for jokes.

“Nah, I ain’t mad.”

“What the fuck ever,” I said. “Enjoy your breakfast.”

I turned and left him and his smug-ass expression behind. Rick was pissed off when Goldie dumped his ass, opened her own strip club in her apartment, and then hired me and Missy from his club to dance for her.
He’ll be the fuck all right.

“Excuse me, Miss Jordan.”

I turned to find a white dude in a shirt, tie, and slacks standing behind me. My eyes dropped down to the detective’s badge hanging on a metal chain around his neck and the gun holster on his hip.

My nerves instantly got shot to hell . . . especially since he knew my name. He came looking for me.

“Yes?” I asked.

“I need to talk to you in private,” he said, already lightly grasping my elbow.

“For what?” I asked, my heart pounding and my stomach feeling like that childhood song “Diarrhea” was going to be real appropriate in a minute.

“You want to discuss this here or outside?” he asked, his New York–Italian accent thick as hell.

I looked around. All nearby eyes in the restaurant were on me—including Michel’s and Eve’s. My friends were already getting to their feet.

I waved them back down. “I’ll be right back,” I said, turning to follow the detective out of the diner.

He led me to a unmarked car and then pulled a mini DVD player from the trunk. “This is a series of videos of you and one Terrence Gardner, aka Make$,” he began, his coal-black eyes shifting from the screen to look over at me.

My eyes got big at seeing me and Make$ sitting inside his car as he talked to someone. It was obvious whoever it was wore an undercover camera. That shit was clear as HDTV. I remembered those late-night drives into New York when we first started messing around.

The detective turned the volume up.

I recognized the voice of Poppi, Make$’s dope supplier, as Make$ handed him a stack of cash before Poppi passed him the weight. I was sitting back lounging like I wasn’t witness to a major drug deal.

I crossed my arms over my chest as the shit continued to hit the fan.

There was three more scenes of me right at Make$’s side as he handled business. In one snapshot I even counted out the money for Make$ to give Poppi.

I felt like falling the fuck out.

The detective pushed his hands into the pockets of his slacks. “This is enough to get you arrested for possession of drugs and conspiracy to traffic drugs across state lines,” he said.

BOOM.

Talk about scared? My fucking heart raced and for a second I thought about kicking off my heels and hauling ass. But just for a second.

“Now,” the detective said as he closed the DVD player and locked it back in his trunk. “We had Make$ and his crew under surveillance. These little business transactions with your involvement was a little icing on the cupcake . . . for me.”

I couldn’t believe I was about to get locked the fuck up. Humph. Life was filled with irony. I was just thinking Tek-9 was wrong for being greedy and
bam
, here’s Make$’s shit reminding me to sweep at my own damn door.