“Ain’t nobody gone shit. I don’t like dude ’cause he ain’t real. But I don’t got that much hate for him to get murked.”

  “Nobody said anything about killing anyone,” Bobby said. “We just said he has to go. Soon! I got a couple of more movies for you to take a look at. Gordy was talking to us for a while when his brother was away. He was trying to work out a deal with us to get rid of his brother and Mack. He was giving us information and also these.” He pulled two more movies from the glove compartment. “I think you’ll want to watch this alone. Get on up in the front seat. I’m going to take a piss. Hey, Jeff, my doctor said I shouldn’t carry anything heavy.” He laughed and got out the car.

  “You should’ve thought about that before you married that pig.”

  “She’s working on her weight.”

  “Only thing she’s working on is how much butter it’ll take to rub around the sides of the tub so she can slide in.”

  I sat back and pressed play.

  “Drink, nigga, drink,” Gordy said, laughing.

  Mack was getting head and kissing Storm. Gordy continued passing him drinks while the strippers rubbed they titties in his face. After the show was over, whoever was taping the party followed the girls into the dressing room.

  Gordy walked ahead of the camera and turned around. “Welcome to the exposure room.” He laughed. “Hey, bitches, that nigga Gordo in the building. That was a good job y’all did tonight. Where muthafucking Storm’s ol’ freaky ass at?”

  The cameraman walked across the room, zooming in on all the various-shaped tits and trimmed bushes. Some girls covered up; others shook them and pinched their nipples. Some even kissed the lens of the camera. He stopped at a door, and Gordy pounded on it.

  “Open up, ya big sexy. Open the fucking door.” Gordy laughed in his drunken state.

  The door slowly opened, and the camera aimed at the black leather heels she was wearing. It slowly crept up her body to her large chest, and finally her face. She was wiping the remainder of thick earth-tone makeup to conceal her obvious masculine features. Gordy had gotten this nigga drunk and had him chilling with a transvestite. Everybody was in on it. And now so was I.

  “Storm!” I pounded on her apartment door. “Storm!” I pounded again, not waiting on a response.

  “This better be good,” she said from behind the door. “Who is it? It’s three o’clock in the morning.”

  The door opened, and I looked her straight in the eyes. “Can I come in?”

  “I don’t know, Ton. It’s kind of late, and I have to get an early start in the morning, you know how it is.”

  “This’ll only take a minute. I just need to ask you a few questions.”

  “Well, okay. Long as it don’t take all night. You want to sit down?”

  “Naw, I don’t want to sit down nowhere in here. I’m gonna get right to the point. You a man,” I said, pulling out my gun.

  She nervously said in her seductive voice. “Baby, are you crazy?”

  “I saw the dressing room digital after you and Mack did the thing. You a dude. Why’d Gordy pay you to do that?”

  He began in that fag voice, “I—”

  I lifted my gun before he could go on. “Speak regular.” I warned.

  “Oh God, please don’t kill me,” he whimpered as his hands shook. “He wanted to prove to everybody that Mack was a fag. He wanted everybody to stop loving him so much. So he paid me to do what I do, then make it look like he knew about it all along. That would shut his whole shit down.”

  “So you mean to tell me that he still don’t know? That’s bullshit. He knew. How the fuck you don’t know how a man look?”

  “I fooled you. The men in the club. I don’t let them feel in between my legs. And even if they do accidentally come across it they usually never question it. That’s why they drink until they’re drunk. They figure there ain’t no accountability for their actions if under the influence.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Oh God, I think I just tinkled myself,” he said, covering up his crotch area.

  “You don’t try disappearing nowhere. You is going to tell everybody about this at the ball next week. We’re going to expose this together. Then you gonna leave New York. Got a problem with that?”

  “It’s all about you, boo.”

  “Don’t be calling me that shit. Fucking homo!” I said, slamming the door behind me as I walked out.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  MACK

  Not that it really mattered to me that Glen was my father, but I still felt compelled to go and see him. I wanted to give him a piece of my mind. I wanted him to see that without his presence in my life I’d still become successful.

  “You got no reason to be here,” he heartlessly said.

  “I got every reason to be here. I just wanted to see the bitch who deserted his son. That’s all I’m here to do. I ain’t trying to bond with no nigga in my manhood, father or no father.”

  “Oh really? Nothing like when you was looking up to my cousin, huh?”

  “That was different. He gave me more fatherhood than you ever could. Look at you. Even now you in denial. I’m glad they got your deadbeat ass up in here. You always get caught sooner or later. Do you even remember who my moms was?”

  “She was a crackhead, boy. A stone-cold chimney-stack-smoking whore. Way before you was even around. And that’s the God’s honest truth. I say that to say if I’d known your momma was pregnant I would’ve did the right thing.”

  “The right thing? Is that why you got a second child running around somewhere in the world that you ain’t never met?”

  “Boy, where you think you get it from? Fucking bitches run in the family. But I done heard some next shit about you. And you doing more than just fucking bitches. I know all about you and Solomon’s little secret. Don’t know how it stayed a secret for so long, but when the truth comes out you’ll be one sorry bastard.”

  “Why’d you think trying to connect me and Joi to the killing you did would work? Once those blood samples come back you’re fucked.”

  “I’m fucked? Your whole career is built on bullshit, Mack. Those detectives are dirty as a muthafucka and you fuck with them, just like Solomon did. Look where he at now. You get used to this setting, boy, because it may not be today, and it may not be tomorrow. But your ass is going down. And for your sake, you better pray it’s in prison and not the ground.”

  “Oh, so now you wanna step up and give advice? Well, fuck you, nigga. I just came here to see the bitch who abandoned his responsibilities. Look at me. I became something without you to teach me nothing.”

  “What you done did that you think I’m supposed to be impressed or shocked?”

  “I became successful.”

  “You became a pimp, and from what I hear, not a very good one at that.”

  “There ain’t nothing you can say to get under my skin, old man. Just look where you at then take a look where I’m at. So fuck you and your life sentence.”

  “I’m still your father, and you’re not gonna disrespect me.”

  I exploded in laughter. “So long, Glen. Happy life sentence,” I said, turning my back on him.

  As I walked out the gates of the prison and looked up at the fourth floor window. “I’m successful,” I yelled up toward the window, a pronounced smile of achievement on my face.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  COCAINE

  “I don’t give a shit how you do it. Just get the shit done, nigga. I don’t give a fuck about no monitored calls. Fuck them. I’m locked up in here for the next six lifetimes. You think I’m concerned with who’s listening? Put that word out that anybody in the way becomes part of the circumstance.” I slammed down the phone inside Character Builder prison in upstate New York.

  I walked into the rec room and sat in an orange plastic chair. I extended my legs and leaned back. Terror squad members leaned against the hard, cold walls and just stared at me. Something was up because nobody was saying shit. I just started seeing COs conveniently deserting their posts for safety and solitude on the other side of the bars. A big dude walked into the rec room accompanied by a group of lifers. Young lifers. They had nothing to lose and everything to gain. Hop on me and you got yourself a sweet reputation. With nobody from my clique to back me, I just sat motionless.

  The dude had to be about twenty-seven or some shit like that. His hair was all wild and bushy. He didn’t have a five o’clock shadow growing on his face. He just had a shadow. He stood six-feet six and looked like he wasn’t ready for the small talk.

  Everyone crowded around as I coolly sat with my arms folded.

  “Hey, you Cocaine, right?”

  “Yeah. You might’ve heard of me. Head of OPT. Running that pussy throughout Queens. Hit man one time or another.”

  “Nigga, did I ask for your resume? Just shut the fuck up and listen. Me and my dudes right here want in on what you got cracking back out in the world. It’s not up for debate.”

  “Well, boy, you must’ve thought you was talking to some punk muthafucka. Your size don’t intimidate me.” I raised up.

  His first short right cross to my chin unhinged my jaw and shook my brain around inside my skull. An uppercut stood me back up straight off my feet. I fell back into the row of bolted-down plastic seats, then on my face.

  The violent uproar of the inmates inspired the corrupt COs to place bets on the winner. Big boy came down with a pounding right but missed when I turned my head. His hand smashed into the hard concrete floor.

  I quickly scrambled to my old-ass feet and kicked him in the ribs. He grabbed my leg as he stood and lifted me above his head.

  “Throw him, throw him,” the inmates chanted.

  I waved my arms in the air as he prepared to propel me across the room. Which is just what he did. I slammed, back first, into the steel bars and dropped. As he went to take a running jump onto my head, the midnight hopper was halted in his tracks by rubber bullets. The bullets sunk deeply into his flabby mold and dropped him like dimes. We both were immediately pulled to our feet and jerked around.

  The inmates, still amped off the melee, began arguing, but that was taken care of quickly, and we were each sent to the hole for one month.

  The instant I came out the hole the warden wanted to see me.

  “How are you feeling, Mr. Ivory?”

  “How you think I’m feeling, man? I’m fresh out the hole.”

  “All right, you just be easy. You’ll be back to your cell after I ask you some questions.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What was the fight about last month?”

  “What fight?”

  “The altercation between you and Duane Faison.”

  “Huh?”

  “D-Gunz.”

  “Look, man, why you bothering me about this past shit?”

  “I need to know if this is going to cause some kind of friction between your people and his.”

  “I don’t got no people here. Y’all made sure of that before I came. So what retaliation you talking?”

  “I mean, in the streets.”

  “Man, that shit don’t even got nothing to do with you. You only the police in here. And before you ask, no, I don’t want to press charges for assault. So fuck you and this system.”

  “You just earned yourself another month in the hole,” he said. “Guards, take him back. We’ll see you in a month, Mr. Ivory.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  MACK

  I know earlier I said shit was going smoothly. And it was. Right up until those blood samples from Sade’s moms murder scene came back. Naturally, shit came back negative, far as me and Joi was both concerned. Just as before. But this time when they ran Joi’s blood across Glen’s it was a perfect DNA match. Hence, the missing child he never knew he had. We didn’t believe it at first until we did some test. It was right on point. Me and Joi was brother and sister with a child on the way. Joi fainted right inside the doctor’s office, his black leather lazy chair catching her fall. Her eye slowly opened with shock and tears in them.

  “This goes outside the professional boundaries of my position, but I think that you two are sick. Do you know what’s going to happen when the baby is born?” the doctor said.

  Nothing was said as Joi and I began to psychologically and emotionally detach instantly. We was ashamed and embarrassed. Embarrassed because we both knew what this had to look like. Two sick individuals breaking the core of morality. Ashamed because . . . who the fuck does this happen to? Was that something God could forgive if you didn’t know? Or was it just sinful enough sleeping together in the first place?

  “This is my punishment,” Joi cried, balling up in the chair.

  I wanted to reach out to touch her, but our auras repelled one another’s.

  “There are more tests that can be ran if you’d like.”

  “More tests for what? She’s not keeping it. I ain’t tryin’-a be no father to no retard. Uh-uh, no way.”

  “That’s what should’ve been said to prevent all of this. I mean, I am really disgusted. And I’m sorry for speaking my mind. But how in the hell do you sleep with your own sister?” He looked at Joi. “Your own brother?”

  “See, man, you got it all wrong. We just met for the first time a couple of years ago. I just recently found my father, and she’s just finding out today we both got the same father. We didn’t know shit until just now. It’s creeping me out.” I turned away from Joi.

  “That’s a real weird story.”

  “But it’s true.”

  I looked over to Joi as she sat curled up in a fetal position, her thumb in her mouth. She was in a catatonic state, and the doctor said it’d be best if she stayed at the hospital overnight.

  “No, I wanna go home,” she protested, immediately snapping out of her hypnotic trance.

  “We can’t hold her if she doesn’t want to stay,” he said, still looking on in disgust, as if everything I just told him was bullshit.

  Truth be told, I wouldn’t believe that shit neither. You know why? Because look at what type shit the crackers be doing—fucking they pets, de-virginizing their own daughters before puberty, eating their kids in some satanic sacrifice. And he gonna look at me funny?

  When we got home Joi went straight upstairs. I called Ton and told him I wouldn’t be at the club tonight, so he’d have to hold it down for dolo. I flopped back on the couch and tossed my feet up on the coffee table. My cell rang just as I began to doze off.

  “Yeah?”

  “Hey, boo. It’s Storm. Whatcha doing tonight?”

  “I’m dealing with some issues right now. I’m-a have to holla at you later.”

  “Oh, I just wanted to see you for a minute.”

  “I said no.” I turned the power off on my cell and clicked on the stereo.

  I’ve been so many places in my life and time

  I always liked this song. It felt like he was telling me about my life. The people watching. The constant acting. The never ending show.

  A constant crashing from upstairs interrupted the flow. I ran up the stairs and opened the door. Joi had wrecked the room and was standing on the other side of the bed naked.

  “Why is you looking at me?” she said, taking swipes at me from across the room. “Stop looking, you dirty muthafucka.”

  “Joi, what you doing with that glass?” I said. “Give it here.” I attempted to reach for it.

  “Stay back.” She swung. “I’m not having this baby. He’s gonna be born a sin-baby. And it’s all our faults.”

  “Come on, Joi, we can talk about it like brother and sister.” I reached out again.

  She poked herself twice in the stomach, enough to get a nice flow of blood going. “You think I’m playing?” she yelled. “Stay back. Why it had to be like this, Mack? Why we had to grow up fucked up then get this too? I don’t wanna live with this on my head.”

  “Joi, you talking crazy. Just drop the glass and get some sleep. You be better by the morning.”

  “It’s just always that simple with you. You just sleep everything off. I can’t do that, not with this. I am your fucking sister and we’re having a baby. I hate you.” She spat at me. “I’m taking him with me,” she said, wiping blood off her stomach.

  “What?” I quickly leaped over the bed to grab her.

  She took one step back and slit her right wrist clean through, and blood gushed to the ceiling from the deep incision, spraying graffiti on the paneled walls. She dropped to the floor and began convulsing.

  “Joi,” I yelled frantically. I wrapped a pillowcase around the wound and quickly dialed 9-1-1, but she died before I could hang up the phone.

  “Oh no! Joi.” I lifted her by the back of her head into my embrace. “No,” I cried, squeezing her tighter.

  When the ambulance and police arrived in front of the house, I ran down the stairs and let them in.

  As she lay there with her eyes opened and her lips tightly shut, they greeted me with, “There’s nothing we can do for her.” Her bodily function began to give way, and that’s when I knew it was final. But all the shit and piss smell in the world wasn’t going to let me leave her side until the day she was buried.

  Even though my child and sister was gone, it was back to business. They even re-scheduled the Ballerz thing, just on the strength of my suffering. But I made it up to everybody.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  MACK

  “Ton, we got a serious problem,” I said to him as he drove to a custom tailor shop in Harlem.

  “What’s that, doggy?”

  “I don’t know what Coke was thinking when he got those bitches.”

  “What’s the deal, man?”

  “I had them taken out today for a physical.”

  “And?”