“Hello. This is the operator. You have a collect call from Glen, will you accept the charges?”

  What the fuck does he want now? I paid his child-support issue, put money in his commissary. See, that just goes to show that you can’t do shit for a nigga without him holding out his hand for more. But I wanted to be amused, so I took the call.

  “Solomon, hey, man, I really appreciate what you did for me.”

  “It’s nothing, but look here, me and you is done. I got too much going on for a nigga from prison to be calling my house. So who was the bitches that filed the cases against you?”

  “They didn’t do it. Welfare did it. I got two grown-ass kids running around out there and don’t know who they is.”

  “That’s real crazy.”

  “Yeah. Well, what the fuck you gonna do, man?”

  “I don’t know what you’re gonna do, but I myself have a lot of business to take care of, so you take care of yourself, cuz. Sorry it got to be this way, but I told you a long time ago about dealing with all them bitches. Now look where it done landed you at.”

  “This is all that damn Sade’s fault. You ain’t heard where they hiding that bitch out at yet, man?”

  “Look, don’t be talking crazy over the lines. And, naw, I ain’t heard shit. Take your medicine like a man, Glen. You fucked up. The bitch beat you to the punch.”

  “This not even fair. I can’t do no twenty-five years.”

  “Then may be you should’ve thought about that before you let some bitch put you in the mix.”

  “I’m not doing this time by myself. She gonna pay.”

  “All right, I’m about to go. Stop calling here collect. Matter of fact, stop calling here altogether. You’re gonna make my shit hot. I did all I can do for you.”

  “Not all. You know what I really need for you to do.”

  I disconnected the call before he started talking that “offing Sade” shit again. I had enough problems with them other muthafuckas trying to get me knocked. But as long as I could keep paying those two pigs their money, they’d hold on to all three of them. Boy, did they ever have Mack fooled, having him believe if he told on me they’d put him on top. He had no idea they was calling me every day, telling me every bit of information he said. The only reason why he wasn’t dead yet was because I didn’t need him dead yet. I needed him to take the fall when shit really did go down. If he really wanted to run this, he was going to suffer the consequences that came along with it. More important than that, I needed to find out where in the hell my brother disappeared to. He had some shit that could fuck up everybody, no matter how much of an ass he made Mack look like in the end.

  Tonight was turning out to be one of the best nights making money I’d had in years. These little bitches had to be the best idea I ever thought of. They became such a hot commodity, because their bodies had not yet experienced the wear and tear of aging, the older bitches started becoming jealous. The men loved them and the fact that their young tunnels of submissiveness provided a tight squeeze, as opposed to the older women, who at times were loose, sloppy, and stank. I had to let a couple of them go. I put Cakes in charge of keeping the young girls presentable. She became sort of like their house mother, keeping them nourished, clothed, and clean.

  “I don’t know if I like the idea of pimping these babies, daddy,” Cakes said.

  “It’s not your job to not like what I tell you to do. You just do the shit. I don’t pay you to think. If I did, we’d all be out on the street.”

  “One of the girl’s is looking sickly. She needs to go to the hospital.”

  “Just like you needed to go the other night, right? I don’t understand this. Y’all is off the street. A place to live, no problems in the street with nobody. What else y’all want from me? Why everybody trying to find a reason to desert me? All I’ve done is give, give, and give.”

  “If you talking about me so, what you give, give, give? You think this is something I wanna be doing for the rest of my life? You really think I wanna look back at my life and tell my kids the only thing that mommy was ever good at was keeping her legs cocked open?”

  “I tell you what, Cakes, we all gotta be good at something. You’re good at what you do, just like I’m good at what I do. You’re the company, and I’m the management. We not gonna be doing this here forever. But I need you to do what you do best, so we can keep getting that money. Then one day me and you can live in the lap of luxury. I’d never ask you to turn another trick again. You know you my number one superstar. I may not always act like it, but I’m under so much stress. I only yell at you because we in a business where there ain’t room for mistakes. You can understand that, right?”

  “I do understand that. I just wish you’d let me give my two cents every once in a while. You make me feel like I’m not shit sometimes,” she said, looking toward the floor.

  “Hey, you making me feel like I’m not shit right now.” I lifted her chin. “Out of every last one of these bitches that work for me, who I show the most love and respect to, huh?”

  “Me.”

  “And who I trust with the books?”

  “Me.”

  “Uh-huh. Who I let sit up in here and didn’t have to fuck not one nigga for months?”

  “Me.” She shyly looked on before letting her head drop back down.

  “So don’t you think you being just a bit unfair to me by saying I don’t listen to you? Just look around you, Cakes. You got it real good. Not every pimp can provide you with a home like this. I’ve been like your father, your lover, your best friend, the only person in the world looking out for your best interest. And don’t forget who paid for your mother to get into that drug rehab program.”

  “You right. You’ve done mad shit for me. I just want a little something that I can get on my own. I wanna feel adequate.”

  “You are adequate. When all this is over, we’re gonna get married in the Bahamas. Now I know I been promising you that forever, but this time I’m serious. Things is different now. You won’t have to do this for much longer. You trust me, right?”

  “Yeah. Who else do I have? What else do I have? Where else do I have to go?”

  “You don’t have to go nowhere. You’re already where you belong.”

  She threw her arms around my neck and clung on tight. She looked up at me and kissed my cheek then dropped to the floor.

  “Cakes,” I exclaimed, immediately falling by her side, “Cakes, quit playing.” I shook her shoulder as she moaned.

  “I don’t feel so good.”

  I ran back over to the phone and dialed 9-1-1.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  COCAINE

  I followed behind the speeding ambulance, dipping in and out of traffic. I parked in the handicapped zone and ran in the double sliding doors of the emergency room. I was directed into the rear of the hospital and told to wait.

  An hour later, I was called into an office by a doctor.

  “So what’s the matter with her, doc?” I said to him as we stood outside the room Cakes was resting in.

  “Well, I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this.” He looked down at his medical chart.

  “Don’t be sorry and don’t bullshit me. What’s the problem?” I snatched the chart from him. “What this all here mean?”

  “Do you want to talk inside?” he said, opening the door.

  “Let’s go. Cakes, how you doing?” I said, holding her hand. She had her back turned to us both.

  “Ms. Donavon,” he called to her, “are you all right?”

  She slowly turned over to face us both, tears in her eyes.

  “What’s the matter with you?” I said. “What’s the matter with her?”

  “I think this is something you two need to discuss. I’ll be in the other room, if you have any questions, Mr. Ivory,” he said, walking away.

  “You better talk to me, girl. What you done did? Catch something?”

  She stayed quiet.

  “Answer me,” I said, grabbing her by the shoulders.

  “I don’t want you to be mad.”

  “Too late for that. I already am. And you gonna see me get a lot more mad if you don’t tell me something. What’d he say?”

  “You promise not to beat me?”

  “Why would I do that? You ain’t did nothing wrong.”

  She looked at me as if she did do something though.

  “Well, did ya?”

  “I had a miscarriage.”

  “A what? Girl, who you been fucking? You only been back on the prime for a couple of weeks. So who ya been fucking? I know it wasn’t me, because I been away.”

  “I ain’t been fucking nobody.”

  “You gonna lay right there and lie? You not supposed to be fucking unless I tell you to. So who you think the father was? And it better not be who I’m thinking either, bitch.” I folded my arms.

  She turned back toward the wall. I grabbed her back over. She pulled back, and I snatched her by the wrist. “Who was it?” I said.

  “Gordy.”

  “What? My brother?” I slapped her in the face. “You slept with my brother?”

  “It wasn’t nothing planned. It just happened like that, baby.”

  “Oh, it just happened like that, huh? You just accidentally opened your legs, and he fell in, right? Right?” I said, raising my voice. “You better start saying something quick.” I pulled off my belt.

  “It just happened, Coke. There ain’t nothing else I can say.”

  “Let’s go,” I said, pulling her off the bed. “Get on your feet.”

  “The doctor didn’t say I could go yet.”

  “I don’t give a shit what the doctor said. We is going. I’m going to kick your ass when we get home.”

  The doctor walked from the back room through a curtain. “Excuse me, sir. Mr. Ivory, is there a problem?”

  “No problem at all. I’m just taking my wife on home now. She’s feeling a lot better. Ain’t cha, baby?” I squeezed her wrist.

  She sniffled. “I’m fine.”

  “No. I think you should stay about another half hour. Your body still needs to adjust,” he told her, while looking at me.

  “Naw. I’m in charge of her. Sign her ass out of here right now.”

  “Sir, I’m going to have to insist you allow her to stay a while longer.”

  I snatched Cakes by the arm and pulled her onto the opening elevator.

  When we arrived back at home I started sending some of the boys out to find Gordy. I told them not to come back unless they heard something or found him, and not necessarily in that order.

  “Get the fuck over here,” I yelled at Cakes.

  She ignored me and continued strolling up the stairs. The African girls was scurrying throughout the house, getting ready for tonight. They stayed far away from my yelling. They feared me because on my ship I was master. I took my shoe off my foot, and all twelve of them stopped in their tracks.

  “Cakes,” I yelled. I threw the shoe at the back of her head. Then I ran up the steps behind her and pulled her back down by her ponytail.

  She screamed and swung at the air. “No!”

  “Shut up,” I said, repeatedly slapping her face. “Just shut up.”

  “Please . . . I’m sorry.”

  The girls covered their faces and cried.

  “Shut the hell up,” I told them all. “You wanna be a slut, bitch?” I shook Cakes. “Sleep with my brother . . . “I slapped her to the floor.

  She tried crawling away, but I put my foot on her back and stood on it. She let out a long, drawn-out scream. I knelt down and popped her in the head with my knuckles. “You done disrespected me for the last time.”

  I went to beat her in the head again, and one of the girls yelled out. Before I could turn around, they all jumped on my ass, armed with pots and pans, nails, and heels. Some sank their teeth down into any body part they could reach, while the others took turns beating me to the floor with kitchen utensils.

  “Stop, stop, you crazy lil’ bitches. Stop,” I said, blocking the attack squad’s assault with my forearm.

  Cakes pushed herself up off the floor and balanced herself against the stove. She reached for a pot of boiling noodles then stood over me with it.

  I looked up at her. “You better think about what you doing, girl.”

  Tears flooded her eyes, and both her hands shook, causing a drop of boiling water to splash on my cheek.

  “Ah shit!” I grabbed the side of my face. “Watch what you doing, bitch.”

  The girls all laughed as I lay helpless under Cake’s steaming pot of payback.

  “Go, go, go,” the girls chanted in their native language.

  Cakes slowly began to tip the pot.

  “Cakes, don’t do it,” I said, closing my eyes down hard.

  “Go, go, go,” they continued.

  “Please, Cakes . . . I’m sorry.”

  “When I said sorry, did you listen to me?”

  “Baby, I love you.”

  “Fuck you, Solomon.”

  As soon as the words slipped out of her mouth, the downpour of noodles and piping hot water tortured my face and neck. I screamed until my tonsils blocked my esophagus.

  “How you like it, punk?” She kicked me in the ribs. “Let’s go, y’all,” she said to the girls.

  They all mimicked Cake’s confident bop in her neck and a hand on her hip. As they walked toward the front door, the very last one in line turned back to me, swung her hips, then winked. They all looked back and laughed.

  “I’m-a get you, Cakes. Won’t be nowhere you can hide.”

  “Whatever,” she said, opening the door.

  BLAM!

  Cakes’ head split apart, and her body back-flipped across the living room.

  The killer held all the girls at bay and ran over to me aiming. “Don’t say shit. Just listen.” He pulled his ski mask down snug under his chin. “You got less than two seconds to tell me where that bitch-nigga Gordy at.”

  “I ain’t seen him,” I said, holding my hands up.

  “Wrong answer.” He smashed the butt of the shotgun into my shoulder. “Try again,” he said, reloading.

  “Ay, nigga. Don’t even turn around, nigga.” Gordy quickly ran over to the man and put his nine right to his temple and pulled the trigger, sending the girls screaming up the stairs.

  “We gotta get outta here,” I said, reaching up to his hand. “Damn, Cakes!” I jumped over her body.

  We hopped into his black Maxima. He put a siren up in the windshield and closed the tinted windows.

  “This’ll divert they attention for a minute,” he said driving frantically down a residential street, both hands gripping the wood-grain steering wheel tight.

  I looked at him. “Where you been, Gordy? Why you just up and disappeared like that? Niggaz usually only do shit like that when they done did something wrong. You do something wrong?”

  “First of all, nigga, I just saved your life, so act like you thankful. Secondly, we ain’t kids, nigga. We is men. Me, I’m a man. I go and come as I damn well please, just like your little girlfriend, Mack.”

  I grabbed on to the coat rack as we made a sharp right turn. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I looked up to you, man. You was like my hero. I wanted to be like you.”

  “Nigga, you could’ve never been like me. You never could and never will be. You the type nigga who just shoot and don’t gain nothing from it. What part of the game is that? How the fuck you gonna make money if you just shooting a nigga and running? Huh? Who was the nigga in my house about to kill me but looking to kill you?”

  “Oh. Just somebody I paid to kill Cakes before she start talking to the D’s too.”

  “That’s bullshit. He asked for you.”

  “Fuck it then,” he said, finally merging into traffic on the Northern State Parkway. “I paid him to kill you, and her hooker ass was just in the way, is all.”

  I grabbed onto him, and we swerved in and out of the fast-moving traffic. He pushed the pedal down and accelerated our drift up and down the slopes of the winding parkway. By this time, we’d already exceeded the speed limit, leaving all the other vehicles behind.

  “You sent somebody to kill me? Your brother?”

  “You not my brother, you’re a fag, fucking homo.”

  I released my grasp. “What the fuck is you talking about?”

  A helicopter above shined its giant spotlight through Gordy’s moonroof.

  “I saw the shit, man, the initiation. You fucked him, that’s how he got in. And the worst part of it all is, you taped it. There ain’t nothing you can say. You and that bitch is busted. But you won’t embarrass me, though,” he said, trying to outrun the light.

  Far ahead we could both see the flashing police lights beyond the horizon.

  “We can’t go any further, man. Stop the car before you get us killed.”

  “I’m not going to jail.” He reached in his cup rest for a sniff.

  As police cars behind us began to ride the bumper, Gordy pushed it to the max.

  I fell back deep in my seat. “Gordy, stop, man, stop,” I yelled, looking back as two police cars pulled up on both sides.

  As we neared the forthcoming sirens, spikes was laid out to prevent our escape.

  “I’m not going to prison.” Gordy opened the door and bailed out.

  The car swerved right and hit one police car, then smashed through the guardrail, and rolled into the woods. A second later, a huge tree blocked my view.

  The last thing I felt was the skin rip off my face when I hit the windshield.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  MACK

  “I got some bad news and some good news, guys,” Jeff said.

  “Nothing can be worse than this bullshit here.”

  “Think not? Looks like Cocaine and Gordy went on a little killing spree last night. We’ve got them both red-handed. Well, not exactly both. Your boy Gordy jumped out his car while doing about one hundred and twenty miles an hour. He rolled off into a barrier and broke his neck. Cocaine’s in critical condition right now.”