Diamonds and Pearl (24 page)

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

After dropping Big Stone off at his crib and making a few last-minute runs, Knowledge was finally able to call it a night. It felt like all that day the weight of the world had been resting on his shoulders, and he was happy to be able to put the burden down … if even only for a little while.

Pana's murder had been on his mind ever since Big Stone had broken the news to him. The fact that he hadn't heard about it first bothered him, but not more than Big Stone's reaction. In his years of service to the Stone family, he had seen death one thousand times over, mostly foes, but there was a fair share of friends, too. Never once had Big Stone so much as batted an eye. That changed when Pana got dropped. Big Stone was a man who had nerves of steel, and during that ride from the airport, Knowledge had seen those nerves waver, and it worried him. If not for Big Stone, than for his own piece of mind, Knowledge was going to making finding out who did it a priority.

Something else that had been troubling him was the situation earlier with Pearl. He thought for sure he had finally caught her ass dead to rights and Big Stone would finally see what everyone else was seeing, but once again she had managed to beat him. Knowledge wasn't someone who took defeat well, especially with someone who he had schooled to the game.

Big Stone was very adamant that street shit should be kept away from his children at all costs, and in the beginning Knowledge respected it, but Pearl made it hard for him to turn a blind eye to her shenanigans. Unbeknownst to her father, she was out and about in a quest to grow up way faster than she needed to, and she was going about it the wrong way. No matter how many times Knowledge chased her off random blocks or threatened her, Pearl always found her way back into harm's way. So Knowledge found himself faced with two choices: stand idle and hope nothing happened to her, or pull her coat and make sure of it. He went with the latter. Knowledge never went as far as putting Pearl in harm's way, but he didn't censor his lessons like her father did. He didn't teach her enough about the streets to turn her into a criminal, but enough to ensure she knew how to survive in the jungle. At the time he thought he was doing a noble thing, but looking back in hindsight, he had helped to create a monster. Lately Pearl had been flying less and less under the radar, and it was time to clip the wings of Daddy's little angel, even if it meant exposing her to her father.

After leaving Big Stone, Knowledge switched back to his own car and headed home. He pulled the Acura into the twenty-four-hour garage, which was two blocks away from where he lived. They had an underground parking garage in his building, but he didn't mind walking the few blocks as an added precaution. Everybody in the hood knew his car, and all it would take was the wrong person to recognize it and it would leave a trail of bread crumbs right to where he rested his head. That wasn't a chance he was willing to take.

On his walk to his building, he stopped at the corner deli to grab a box of cigars and a six-pack. He wasn't really a beer drinker, but after the day he'd had, a cold one seemed like the order of business. There was hardly anyone out at that hour, not that there was really ever anybody hugging the streets in that neighborhood. The quiet was one of the things that always reminded him that he wasn't in Harlem anymore. In the distance, his building loomed, a twenty-something-story high-rise on the Upper West Side. It was a far cry from the rat-infested tenement he had grown up in, but it was still close enough to where he could get to the action when he needed to. Some criticized him for shelling out the money for the two-bedroom apartment. They invested in money, cars, and clothes; he invested in peace of mind.

As he was going into the building, a girl named Laura was coming out. She was a short, thick Dominican girl who lived in the apartment next to his. Her parents had left it to her when they'd bought a house upstate. She played the bourgie role, but Knowledge had heard stories about the things she could do with a dick in her mouth.

“Hey, Mr. Man,” Laura greeted him.

“Sup?” Knowledge replied.

“How come I always catch you creeping in and out of the building in the middle of the night?” she asked playfully.

“Same reason I always catch you creeping in and out in the middle of the night,” Knowledge shot back.

Her eyes landed on the cigars in his hand. “When are you gonna invite me by for a smoke session? I know you be smoking that fire, because I be smelling it through the walls.”

Knowledge cracked a half smile. “Nah, I don't think that be in either of our best interests.”

“Why? I don't bite.”

“Who says I'm worried about
you
biting
me
? I'm gonna catch you on the rebound, Laura.” Knowledge wisely excused himself and went into the lobby.

“One of these days, Mr. Man,” she called after him. “One of these days.”

Knowledge waited until he was out of her line of vision before letting a sneaky smile form on his lips. Laura had been trying to throw the pussy on him since he'd moved into the building. It was tempting, but Knowledge was no fool. For as bad as Laura was, he knew shitting where he lived would complicate things. He had enough as it was going on in the streets and didn't want any drama in his building.

When he entered the apartment, the first thing he noticed was that it was dark. He usually left the light on over his stove, but the kitchen was pitch-black. The switch in his brain flipped, and the next thing he knew, he was creeping down his hallway, his gun drawn. His heart thudded in his chest as he neared his bedroom. There was a slither of light coming from the partially open door. This was his home … his sanctuary, and the fact that someone had violated it infuriated him. He only hoped that they were still in the apartment so that his pistol could properly articulate his displeasure.

He sat his six-pack down so that he could wrap both hands around the handle of his gun. He needed his aim to be steady and true. With his foot braced against the door, he took a deep breath to settle the butterflies in his stomach. No matter how many times he busted out his gun, it always felt like the first time. With murder in his heart, he pushed the door open and stepped into the room, prepared to dispatch the intruder, but his finger stopped short of depressing the trigger when he looked to his bed and found it occupied.

A dime piece of a rich caramel complexion lay nestled under the fluffy brown comforter. A scarf was tied around her head, preserving whatever style she was wearing her thick black hair in that week. She was so engrossed in the novel that she was reading that she didn't even notice him standing there. Knowledge decided to take the opportunity to have a little fun.

“You know what it is, run everything!” he barked. He intended it as a joke, but the joke quickly went sour when the woman dropped the book and produced a small .25. “Asia! Asia! Asia!” he spat her name in repetition while waving his hands in surrender, hoping she recognized him before accidentally ending him.

The panicked look she'd been wearing when she drew down on him was replaced by one of relief, then anger. “What the fuck, Knowledge?” She lowered her gun. “You know better than to be sneaking up on me like that. I could've capped you by accident.”

“I didn't know walking into my own pad could be considered sneaking up on someone, especially when I wasn't expecting them,” Knowledge said.

Asia cocked her head as if she hadn't heard him correctly. “Well, excuse me for intruding. When you gave me a key to your apartment, I assumed that meant we were past the point of me having to call before I came over. My bad—let me get out of your way.” She slid from beneath the comforter, wearing only his Patrick Ewing jersey.

Knowledge's eyes drank in her curvaceous figure and tender flesh. A tattoo of a dragon started just above her knee and disappeared somewhere up under the jersey. He knew where the tattoo ended and, with that in mind, moved to stop her. “Hold on, baby.” He took her by the wrist. “You know I didn't mean it like that.”

“All I know is what you put in front of me.” Asia jerked loose. She plucked her blue slacks from their resting place at the foot of the bed, but Knowledge snatched them away.

“Stop acting like that, Asia.” He held the pants just out of her arm's reach. “You know damn well I don't have a problem with you being here, and no, you don't have to call. I just meant that … fuck what I meant. I'm genuinely happy to see you, ma.”

Asia folded her arms, pretending to be angrier than she was. “Umm-hmm.” She looked him over. “You're probably really just happy I didn't bust you rolling up in here with one of them hood rats you love to keep company with.”

Knowledge moved behind Asia and draped his arms over her. “You know better than that, baby. Only the queen is fit to grace the palace. I take the hood rats downtown to the Liberty Inn.” He planted a kiss on her cheek playfully.

Asia hit him with a sharp elbow to the ribs, knocking him off-balance and then following up with a judo flip onto the bed. While he was still disorientated, she straddled his chest and gave him a little slap across the face. “What did I tell you about playing with me, George?” she said, calling him by his government name.

Knowledge threw his weight to dislodge her and used the momentum to roll on top of her. The tables had now been turned. “And I told you about all this black super-ninja shit. Now stop bugging—you know I only got eyes for you.” He leaned in to kiss her, and when he did, she nicked his lip with her teeth. “Ouch! What the fuck, Asia?” He jumped back.

“That old-ass pimp game you keeping picking up from Big Stone only works on women under twenty-three. Had you answered your phone, I could've told you that I wanted to crash here tonight. I've been calling you for the last three hours, but you ain't picking up. This raises the question: What or who you been doing that's kept you too busy to pick up for me?”

“My phone died.” The lie rolled off Knowledge's tongue before he even had a chance to think about it.

“Bullshit!” she spat. “Even if it were true, how come you didn't pick up your trap phone? I called that, too, and got the voice mail, and we both know you don't never let the money line go dead.”

Knowledge hated the fact that she knew him so well. Without even trying, he could've spun a million different half truths, but he didn't have it in him to get into it with her. “My fault, Asia. I just had a real hard day at work, so I was trying to stay focused on business. There's some shit going down that I need to try to put into perspective,” he admitted.

Based on the weary look on his face, Asia knew Knowledge had some heavy shit weighing on him, so she went from shrew back to caring-girlfriend mode. “You know I'm here for you if you need me,” she said, rubbing his back.

Knowledge smiled, knowing that his chick had his back. “I know you do, Asia. Honestly, the less you know about what I do in them streets, the better off you are.”

Asia frowned. “Here you go, treating me like some little square bitch who don't know what time it is. Knowledge, I knew who you were and what you were about before I decided to get into this relationship. Don't treat me like I'm some broad who's still trying to figure you out. Talk to me.”

Knowledge could tell by the intense look in her eyes she wasn't going to let it rest unless he told her something. “Look, I ain't about to get all into detail, but some real bad shit went down in the hood and everybody is just a little on edge.”

“All your people good?” Asia asked, genuinely concerned.

“Yeah, as far as I know. We know the dude who got killed, but he wasn't a friend of ours. His name carried a lot of weight, though. When a man of a certain caliber gets clipped and nobody knows jack shit about how or why it happened, it's a sign that everybody with a hand in the pot should grow eyes in the backs of their heads.”

Asia wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, but she wasn't slow, either. It didn't take her long to figure out that whatever Knowledge was telling her related to what she had seen on the news earlier about an explosion in Washington Heights. She never turned Knowledge onto the fact that she was hip, though. “Should we be worried?”

“No,
we
don't have anything to worry about. I told you when we started messing around that I would never allow what I do to poison what we got going on, and I meant that shit. I just gotta figure a few things out, that's all.”

“Maybe now would be a good time we took that vacation we've been talking about for the last six months. Nowhere too far—maybe hit Atlantic City for a week,” she suggested.

“And abandon my duties in a time of crisis? You know I can't do that. Big Stone needs me.”

“I need you too,” Asia countered.

Knowledge ran his hand over his head. “Asia, you said yourself that you knew who I was and what I was about before you got into this relationship, so you should know better than to try to make me choose between my duty and my heart. Let's not go there.”

Asia sat up, folding her legs under herself. “Knowledge, I know in the love department I'll always come in third behind the streets and Big Stone. That just is what it is. All I'm suggesting is that you ease back off the front line for a second, at least until you're sure where this is going. You're Big Stone's right hand and have command over his army, so let your soldiers do what you pay them to do.”

“I would love to, but you know it ain't in my character to ask another nigga to do anything I wouldn't. A good leader leads by example,” he told her. When he saw the troubled look on her face, he softened his tone. “Baby, I know you're worried, and even if I tell you not to be, that won't change. Just know that your man ain't no fool, and I promise I won't be take any unnecessary chances. Now, enough about all this street shit. How was your day?”