“You was out in the yard doing lawn work and you went inside to use the bathroom. From there, you noticed the front door was hanging off its hinges, so you immediately ran up the stairs and that’s where you found her. Then someone hit you from behind and knocked you out. When you woke up they was gone, and so was the body.”

  “So how is we supposed to get the money if she’s buried in the woods?”

  “Listen, Glen, ever hear of an anonymous tip? Stick to the story. You found her dead.”

  We waited until nightfall then wrapped her body in sheets and plastic. My stomach churned at the awful stench.

  “Get her hand,” I said as it slipped out the last opening.

  It was ten o’ clock, and we figured it’d be better to wait until after midnight, when more people was asleep. I went up to my old bedroom, which once was fully furnished but now reduced to a miniature museum for outdated piles of newspapers, magazines, and old bags of clothing. There was a special hiding place up in my closet where I used to keep my most valuable things—jewelry, money, and the gun my boyfriend gave me for my fifteenth birthday. He told me to keep it for him since he was afraid he’d have to use it on me one day if I ever left him.

  I didn’t trust Glen at all, and I was praying to God that that gun was still up in that little crawl space. I pulled a chair over to the closet and stepped up on it. I lifted the small covering open with my hand and felt around the inner ledges. I felt around again, and there was nothing. My heat began to beat a little faster, as I gave it one last feel around before my hand gripped the hard, cold handle of the .25 automatic. I stuck it down into my panties and held it in place as I jogged back down the stairs and down into the basement. The guestroom down here was never too snazzy, just barely livable. I laid out across the bed and slipped my gun under the pillow.

  “Baby,” I said as Mack answered the phone, “you ain’t even call to see if I made it here all right.”

  “Huh? Sade, what’s good, ma? My bad. Shit been real hectic today. How your moms?”

  After a long pause, I said, “She’s good as she can be, considering.”

  “You a’ight?” he asked, as if he sensed something was bothering me. “That nigga giving you a problem? I’ll come down there right now,” he said over the loud music in the background.

  “No, everything’s going to be all right now. I’m feeling a lot better now that me and her talked.”

  “You sure, Sade?”

  “I’m sure, Mack.”

  “You don’t sound like it. When you coming home?”

  “I’ll be down here about a week. Look, babe, I’m tired. It’s been a real long day, and I need me some sleep. Do you love me?”

  “You know what’s up,” he said. Then he disconnected the call.

  It was around two o’clock in the morning when I heard feet creeping down the steps. I reached under the pillow and pretended to be asleep. There was three light knocks on the door. I’d forgotten to lock the door. I could hear the knob slowly turn. The smell of hard liquor quickly rushed into the room and crowded my nostrils.

  “You’s about a killing bitch,” Glen drunkenly slurred. He turned on the light switch. He swayed from side to side, a bottle in one hand, his gun in the other.

  I was never gonna be able to pull that shit from under the pillow fast enough, so I laid back.

  “Dirty ass, you killed your own mother.”

  “She deserved it.” I sat up on the bed. I was actually feeling no fear.

  “Who the fuck is you to be judge? You don’t decide shit.”

  “Glen, you better think about the money. Kill me if you want, but a lot of people know where I’m at. Play around.”

  “I want that money too.” He slowly lowered the gun but kept his hand steady on the trigger. “You know, Sade, you might’ve thought I was mad when I first seen you today, but that was just my way of showing how happy I was to see you. You know I always loved you.” He smiled and stuck his tongue through the space where his two front teeth used to be.

  “Fuck you!” I spat on him.

  “We used to have some real good times together, baby girl”—He tossed the bottle back—“And I’m sorry for taking it from you those times, but it was your fault. You walked around with that lil’ phat ass poking out, just calling a nigga. Then I gotta turn around and go to bed with an old bitch when a younger bitch is right up in my own house? Fuck that! You should’ve just been giving me the pussy. Then I wouldn’t have had to take your shit.

  I was too tight for tears and too smart to let my illogical instincts cause me to react in a way that would be detrimental to my health. I could see his dick hardening through his boxers then poke out through the slit. It was nothing special either. He massaged it with his gun in hand and looked directly in my eyes.

  “Don’t make me make you reunite with your momma tonight, bitch. You take off them fucking clothes.

  I slowly began unzipping my pink-and-white Sean John hoody. My breasts popped out soon as the zipper reached my waistline.

  “Don’t play with me”—He cocked the piece—“Faster.”

  I leaned back and pulled off the sweats and let them drop to the floor. I watched him as he approached with a smile.

  “Everything, bitch.” He placed the gun to the side of my head.

  He kept the gun to the side of my head and began roughly sucking on my titties. He pushed me on my back and got on top of me. I didn’t scream and I didn’t cry when he ripped off my panties and powerfully inserted his dick into my dry walls, grunting wildly as he pounded my insides with hate, anger, and aggression.

  The bed convulsively shook and hit the wall. “This not good to you,” he yelled. “Make a noise like you know good dick.” He pressed the gun deeper into my left temple. “Come on,” he said, dragging me off the bed by my arm.

  When I fell on the floor, he grabbed me by the wrist. “Stay on your knees,” he said, pulling his boxers off. His dick pointed at me and stared a bitch eye to eye. He grabbed the back of my head and led me to do what most of us bitches want to do in life anyway—get ahead.

  “Auuggh,” he screamed, looking up. “Ugghh.” He nutted inside my mouth.

  I literally drained his soul, and he momentarily lost focus. I quickly cocked back my fist and drove it straight into his balls. He didn’t just drop, the nigga tumbled backwards, but still had his hand on the muthafuckin’ gun. I darted to the pillow and cocked the .25 the way my ex had taught me.

  Just point and shoot! I kept quickly reminding myself. “Take your hand off that shit now, Glen, or I swear to God, I’ll kill you. Remember that—I swear to God, I’ll kill you?”

  He released the gun then balled up into the a fetal position and moaned in agony.

  I picked up his gun and kicked him in the balls. “Yeah, look at you now, helpless bitch.” I kicked him in the balls again. “Now, I’m-a tell you something. There never was a life insurance policy, asshole. That’s a ploy my mother used to attract greedy-ass niggas like yourself. Once word got out she was worth something everybody wanted to be her bodyguard.”

  “So we killed her for nothing?” he said through drunken pain.

  “No. See, your ass so stupid, you never knew my momma had some money tied up into the stocks. It’s worth a quarter of a million dollars. I got all her information, so I won’t have no problem getting it.” I stepped over him carrying both guns. “I was here to figure out a way to get my hands on it.” I pulled my sweats and hoody back on. “You just made shit a lot easier.”

  “So what you gonna do? Kill me?”

  “Get up!” I aimed both guns at him. “Get the fuck up!” I yelled. “You don’t know how bad I want to shoot you,” I said trembling.

  My phone chirped. Bleeeep!

  I ignored it and walked forward as Glen stood with his hands up.

  “Sade,” Mack said through the phone’s speaker. He called again, “Sade.”

  “You gonna answer that,” Glen said. “Helllllp,” Glen yelled toward the phone as if he could be heard.

  “Nigga can’t hear you, stupid. Get up the stairs. Where the keys to your car?”

  “I lost them,” he said as he reached the top step.

  I swung his gun into the back of his head and pushed him into the kitchen. “Where the keys, Glen?”

  He pulled the car keys out of his pocket and held them out to me.

  “Toss them here,” I said, holding my hand out.

  After he tossed them, I searched through the set looking for the one to his ’84 gold Plymouth.

  “All right, let’s go.” I directed him through the kitchen door into the garage. “Get in the car and drive,” I said, pushing the button to open the automatic garage.

  The loud humming of the motorized opener momentarily drowned out Mack’s voice. After a while he gave up chirping.

  I grabbed a shovel off the wall then got into the back seat of the car. Glen cautiously sat behind the wheel.

  “Drive,” I told him, as the door closed down behind us, and we pulled out the driveway.

  “Where we going?”

  “Where you think? To dig a hole for a body.”

  It took all night long, but Glen had finally completed digging the seven-foot grave. He crawled out of the hole and panted heavily. He staked the shovel down in the pile of soil next to the hole and used it to balance his over-exhausted body. “Now what.” He looked back at the grave.

  “Now nothing,” I said, aiming and shooting him once, with my eyes closed.

  The loud explosion caused by the gun echoed throughout the woods and sent the morning birds into a frenzied panic. They flew through the patches between the green leaves on the tall trees and danced in front of the red rising sun. I ran, following the same trail we’d both traveled to get here, and jumped into his car.

  I got onto the West Virginia Parkway and headed to a motel in Richmond. Sirens flashed behind me, and my heart skipped a beat. I looked into the rearview mirror then the driver’s mirror. I pushed both guns as far under my seat as they could go. They sped up beside me and accelerated after the green Nissan pushing well over one hundred miles per hour. As my heart slowed down, so did the car I was driving.

  I had to pull over on the side of the road for a minute to gather my composure. Traffic was light enough for me to toss both guns far off into the woods. I got back into the car and turned on the radio to my favorite station. I merged back into traffic with a smile on my face as if I’d just gotten away with murder or something.

  CHAPTER NINE

  MACK

  Cocaine’s white SL sat on shimmering chrome twenty-fours outside the chain-link-fenced gate of the park. Mad people shot up peace signs from the basketball court, and ladies young and old approached him with kisses in the lips and cheek as we sat on chess tables in Hollis Park.

  “See, young blood—Pardon me.” He looked at a potential ho wearing a skirt so short, you could see her bare cheeks firmly exposing themselves. “Mmm, mmm, mmm.” He shook his head from side to side. “When you ready to make some money, you holla at me, baby.” He smiled.

  “I will,” she shyly responded and walked away tugging her skirt down.

  “What you was saying, man?” I said.

  “See there, boy? That right there is gonna be a fine piece of ass one day.”

  “How you can tell?” I looked at her. “She only look about sixteen.”

  “That’s when the pussy is the freshest. You control that bitch while she a young ho then when she get older you’ll have a faithful ho. Your problem is that you too pretty for your own good. These bitches just ain’t gonna listen to you because you a sexy nigga. She not gonna suck your dick every night because you compliment her when y’all together. She’s never gonna respect you if you can’t take a situation in the chokehold and squeeze the life out of it. A bitch want to feel protected like she did when she lived with daddy. She want a hero.”

  “A’ight, super pimp,” I joked.

  “I’m serious. You need to know this because Anton ain’t the only nigga slipping, dig?”

  “Naw. What you talking about?”

  “She’s cramping your style. You used to be real hard on these broads. Now you be letting them make you meet their demands, instead of them meeting yours, man. I can’t hand this all over to you if you don’t have the mindset, baby.”

  “What? Sade don’t got nothing to do with this.”

  “She got everything to do with it. When was the last time you fucked another bitch besides her? Don’t even answer that.”

  “What about Cakes? She not cramping your style?”

  “Fuck a Cake. She’s my main investment. That’s all.”

  “You don’t be acting like it, yo.”

  “Anyway, this ain’t about her. You need to dead Sade or put her to work. She ain’t the prettiest thing, but she sure has a fine body, nice lips. Good for excellent service, baby. You better wake up if you really want this. You got six bitches to look over and whoever else you pull in. Now about that thing with Ton”—He moved closer to me.

  “What about him? What thing?”

  “The cops he popped, that thing,” he said, aggravated.

  A shadow over our heads blocked the sunlight, and our reflexes reacted accordingly as the leather orange ball from inside the courts bounced out over the gate and knocked over the two bottles of open Heineken.

  “Yo, man,” I yelled out standing up.

  A six feet seven nigga jogged out the court to retrieve the ball. “My bad.”

  Cocaine calmly asked the kid while pointing at the sudsy trail of beer, “You gonna pay for that?”

  “My bad, man. I just brought a can of soda with my last dollar. I’ll see if one of them niggaz over there got it.”

  “Naw, I want you to pay for it.”

  “I just told you I’m broke. What you beefing about? It’s only beer.”

  Cocaine swiftly hooked his cane around the kid’s ankle and made him fall backwards. As he tripped over and fell on his back, Cocaine began kicking him. Some of his peoples attempted to come to his rescue by hopping and flipping over the gate but quickly did the remix to Juvenile’s “Slow Motion” when I produced my burner .

  “Nigga, don’t you ever in your life disrespect a nigga that been on this earth before you,” he said, kicking his stomach. “Somebody got a problem with this?” Cocaine slid his .45 out of his back holster. “Do anybody got a problem?” he asked again, swinging the gun from left to right. “Now,” he said, looking down as he placed his joint back in its home, “I’m not one of these little-ass niggaz out here. You test me again and it’ll be the last test you ever fail, you understand me?” He pulled the dude to his feet. “Now get the fuck outta here.” He kicked the dude in his ass then threw the ball at the back of his head as he sprinted out the exit of the park.

  After the crowd dispersed, Cocaine kicked the shattered green glass in his path. “Let’s ride, nigga.”

  “What was that all about?” I asked, while he drove off with my foot still dangling outside.

  “Second thing you better remember about this line of business is that it ain’t no different than any other. My name is all I have. If you can’t keep niggaz from disrespecting me then why a bunch of bitches with aspirations gonna respect you? That boy was out of line. Sometimes you have to humiliate someone to make them humble theyself before you.”

  “But why you keep telling me shit I already know? You don’t have to keep schooling me.”

  “No, nigga. Apparently I do. Don’t be falling in love, youngster. You can’t have feelings for no ho then try and commit to one. These bitches will leave Nike tracks all over your forehead, nigga, I’m telling you.”

  “Not Sade, man. She’s a good girl.”

  “What are you, a fucking idiot? None of them is good. But fuck it, playa, you know some new shit about the game I don’t? Then ride with it, homeboy. I’m finished.” He headed toward Murdock Avenue. “Now about, Anton . . . he a real rider. He handles his business, but shooting them cops was one of the stupidest things he’s ever done. Not the only thing, but the stupidest. When he finally gets caught, he’ll talk.”

  “What? Ton a snitch? Never that.”

  “You’d be surprised the things a nigga will do when his back is up against the wall. He’ll talk, Mack, so he has to go.”

  “What?”

  He stuck up one finger in between us and continued. “Didn’t you learn anything while we was locked up? While you was locked up? The prisons is full of nothing but niggas who make deals to save their lives, save themselves from a lifetime sentence. Think about if it was you. Cops get some major case on you and they say, ‘Tell me something juicy.’ Whatever your charge is, whether it be murder, tax evasion, prostitution or even rape, if what you giving up is bigger than what you got going on, you just might be a free man the same day you was brought in. You understand what I’m saying to you? Pimping is understanding and conquering through reverse psychology.”

  Cocaine’s adamant philosophy on this, that, and the other was sinking in.

  Ton was my man, and if Cocaine wanted to kill him or have him killed, I was going to warn him first. At the same time, though dude had been acting mad suspect lately, all edgy and shit, it made me think back to that park incident last week. I shook the shit off.

  “So which one of the wolves you going to have take that man’s life?” I stared at him awkwardly.

  He stared back as we sat in the drive-thru at White Castle. “You.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  MACK

  I’d been ringing Sade’s phone off the hook for two days. Chirped that ass and everything. Guess I was going to have to schedule a trip down to VA the next day. I knew she was a soldier and all, but what if that Glen nigga had done something to her? Or maybe I was just bugging.

  She probably just wanted to chop shit up with moms undisturbed, I thought to myself as I drove to the mall to meet up with Joi, who was already in the parking lot when I pulled up.