Hustlin' Divas (19 page)

F
at Ace moves a bit slow and has a new scar jagging across his jaw. I haven't seen him since the night before the shoot-out at the Med. For the most part, he looks good; then again, I'm not all that surprised. I've come to suspect that the man has nine lives.

“Profit, I'm gonna have to call you back,” he says, and disconnects his cell phone. “Well, don't just stand there, Mel. Come show your nigga some love.” He smiles and opens his mountain-size arms.

I quickly rush into his embrace and relish how it feels being wrapped in a big warm blanket and how this big muthafucka always smells like fresh baby powder. “I've missed you. I've been soooo worried.”

“Ah. Now that's what a nigga likes to hear.” He leans down and sweeps his tongue into my mouth. I moan even though he doesn't taste as good as Python or even get my titties to tingle, mainly because Fat Ace has a habit of tasting like Hennessy and pistachios. Lord knows the nigga eats them by the pound. When we finally pull apart, I playfully swipe the residue of my coral lipstick from his lips and smile.

“I've been meaning to see you, but the streets are still on fire,” Fat Ace says. “But you've definitely been on my mind.”

“Now that's what a girl likes to hear.” I keep my arms wrapped around his thick neck and try to work up the courage to do what I have to do. “How's your chest?”

“It's all good, Mel. You know you don't have to worry about your boy. Those paper gangsters can't find their own asshole while they shitting. You feel me?” He kisses the tip of my nose.

Behind me the door opens and Lucifer steps in.

“You know, Mel, I never thanked you for the heads-up when my brother was laid up in the hospital,” Fat Ace says.

Now I start easing out of his arms while a different kind of tingle skips down my spine. “It's no thing. Once I realized who he was, of course I called.”

Fat Ace nods while his broad lips start to lose their smile. “Yeah. I appreciate that shit, especially since it's possible that you're the one who put that bullet in him.”

There's an accusation and a question in that statement. All I can do is draw a deep breath and hold my head up. “It's possible,” I say honestly. “He was at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“There's definitely an argument for that,” he says, turning away and folding his large frame back into his chair. “My only problem is figuring out how the Gangster Disciples knew that I was at that hospital.”

The office roars with silence as my gaze shifts from him to the bitch standing behind me.

“I mean, I couldn't have been there more than…what?” He glances over to Lucifer.

“Fifteen minutes,” Lucifer answers, glaring dead at me.

“Exactly what are you asking me?” I challenge, settling my hands on my hips and turning my stare back toward Fat Ace. “You think I told them? Are you suggesting that I set you up?”

Fat Ace's brows dip over his cataract eye. “I didn't say that…but it's an interesting question now that you've brought it up.”

“Are you for real?” My eyes shift back over to Lucifer, whose hands are now inching toward her waist. “I don't fuckin' believe this shit. I didn't tell a soul that you were heading to that hospital. Why the fuck would I?”

Fat Ace shrugs. “You used to have a thing with Python.”

My heart drops. “Who told you that?”

His gaze now looks as hard as the bitch standing behind me. “Niggas talk.”

I have two seconds to defuse this shit or my baby is going to be an orphan. “That shit went down in high school. Ancient history.”

“Then how come you never told me about you two?”

“For the same reason. It's ancient history.” I make sure to hold his gaze and pray that his vision is just a little cloudy and he doesn't see that I'm lying my ass off.

“See there, Lucifer? I told you we didn't have nothing to worry about with Mel.” His lips turn up into a smile again. “Now get over here and sit on Daddy's lap.”

I don't waste any time popping a squat on one of his powerful thighs and pressing another kiss against his warm mouth. “Are we cool now, baby?”

“We're always cool, Mel.” He laughs and pinches me on the ass.

Lucifer makes her exit and relief rushes through me like a tidal wave.

“It's all love. Heard about what happened to O'Malley. I'm sure you're all busted up over it.” He eyes me as if waiting for some type of response. “You didn't happen to cap that racist muthafucka yourself, did you?”

“What kind of fuckin' question is that?”

“A serious one.”

I turn away from his milky cataract because I don't think I can survive another round of his tight scrutiny. “Let's just say I haven't lost any sleep over his passing and leave it at that.”

Fat Ace laughs and tosses up his hands. “A'ight. I'm gonna leave it alone. Less I know about how you legal gangstas do your dirt the better, right?”

The smallest smile flickers at my lips but then vanishes. If he can put two and two together, then how many people down at the station have been looking at me sideways?

“Uh-huh.” Fat Ace snickers. “Like father like daughter.”

“Not funny.” I start to hop off his lap, but he easily holds me down.

“Aww, now. Did I hurt your little feelings? Don't worry. I'm not going to throw shade over his perfectly crafted supercop title. My lips are sealed.” He leans in for another kiss and starts sliding his hand up under my shirt. “So to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit? Am I on one of your people's radar or have you finally come to your senses and want to come over to the dark side?”

“Very funny.”

“I wasn't tryna be. This side of the fence pays better than that chump change the city tax dollars are paying y'all to dodge bullets. Believe that.” He meets my gaze. “Ask your pops.”

The tension thickens between us.

“Okay,” he finally says. “You're not here for a pay raise. So what's up?” He tilts up my chin so that my gaze stops wandering around the room. “So what's so important that you had to rush over here in the middle of the day?”

“I wanted to…share some news with you.”

“I'm all ears,” he says, nibbling on my ears.

“Well, you know the night before you, um, got shot?”

His smile kicks up a few notches. “Of course I remember. I plan on us doing a few of those positions again as soon as these wounds heal all the way. I took five plugs, you know.” His hands slide down my backside so that he can give my ass a good squeeze.

“I'd like that,” I say, easing closer. “But there's something I think you need to know.”

“All right.” He notes my serious expression and pulls back a bit to fold his arms. “This looks serious. What is it?”

My smile wobbles. If I'm going to do this, I need to just spit it out. Once I say the words, there's no going back. “I'm pregnant.” The tension only thickens while the silence nearly deafens me. “Well?”

Slowly, Fat Ace's wide, rubber-band lips stretch from ear to ear. “You're shitting me.”

I shake my head while I try to evaluate if he really thinks the news is good or not, but like Python, it's never easy reading him. “I'm gonna have a baby!”

At long last, Fat Ace's face lights up like a Christmas tree and his big meaty arms wrap around my waist like a steel vise. “HELL YEAH!”

His voice nearly blows my eardrum out, and he starts to swing me around the office like a rag doll. I really hope I know what the fuck I'm doing.

A
l Green is bumping on my old stereo. Not the new I-found-Jesus Al Green, but the old red-light-in-the-basement Al Green, who puts a smile on my face and has my hips rocking as I sweep off my front porch. “Oh, baby, love and happiness…”

“Aww. Sookie, sookie now.”

I glance over my shoulder to see Rufus leaning against the front chain-link fence, grinning at me like I'm giving him a personal lap dance. “Now what the fuck do you want?”

“Right now, I'm just satisfied to watch you back that ass up. Now let me see you drop it like it's hot.” Cheesing, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out dollar bills. “C'mon, girl. Make this money.”

How can I
not
laugh at his stupid ass? “Get the fuck on with that.”

“There you go. Here I am tryna help you out and this is how you act?” He returns the money to his front pocket. “A'ight. That young nigga must be breaking you off something lovely.”

“In and out of bed,” I brag, rolling my neck.

Rufus shakes his head. “That shit ain't right.” He glances off toward a cluster of niggas mobbin' down Shotgun Row with clouds of smoke hanging over them.

“What ain't right about it? That a woman has the audacity to do what y'all niggas do all day every day? I seen you rolling up on some of these young girls out here, most of them too young to know better, and you got the nerve to throw shade on my game. Nigga, puh-leeze.”

“Nah, nah. That was probably my niece you seen me with. I ain't out here like that.”

This muthafucka damn near got my eyes rolling out the back of my head. Niggas and their double and triple standards.

“For real, Peaches. You know you're the only one who got my heart. It's time for you to stop breast-feeding these niggas in diapers and get in with the grown and sexy crowd.” He claps his hands and strikes a Herculean pose so I can check out his guns…and they weren't too bad.

“Momma Peaches, you need to stop torturing that man,” Chantal shouts from her front porch. “I ain't seen no nigga put in this much work for a woman in all my life.”

“Shit. I ain't stuttin' this old nigga.”

Rufus laughs. “I'm the same damn age you are.”

“Whatever.” At the sound of a souped-up motor, I glance up to see my nephew's Monte Carlo cruising down the block. A smile eases onto my face as niggas start pointing and waving their hellos. My heart warms every time I see Python. The weight he be moving and the amount of dirt he's buried in up to his neck, it's just a miracle he ain't locked down, let alone walking around breathing. However, when he pulls up to my curb in the middle of day, I know something must wrong.

My suspicions are confirmed when he rolls out of the car and I see his face. I know that face like I know my own. Clearly he's got a lot of shit on his mind that he can't work out on his own, and he needs his auntie.

Leave it to Chantal to point out the obvious. “Looks like you got company.”

Rufus eases off the fence and tips his head so that my nephew can enter the gate. “S'up, Python?”

“Everythang is still everythang.” Python looks Rufus over. “You still out here tryna holla at my aunt?”

“A real man never runs off the battlefield, NahwhatImean?”

Python snickers while he gives Rufus dabs. “Do you, nigga. Do you.”

That shit just makes Rufus's lips stretch wider. “You see this, Peaches? This is like the Good Housekeeping seal of approval right here.”

By the time Python is bouncing up my stairs, he's laughing his ass off. “How you doing, Momma?” He leans over and kisses me on the cheek.

“I was doing fine until you encouraged that fool with his nonsense. Now I'm never going to be able to get rid of his ass.” Turning, I set the broom aside and slap my hands onto my hips.

“That nigga has been out here tryna holla at you since I was like fifteen. The only way you going to get rid of a nigga like that is to break him off.”

“And let the church say ‘amen and amen,'” Rufus shouts, waving his hands in the air.

Chantal and Python crack up.

“Boy, you can have these niggas out here thinking I won't bend your big ass over my knee if you wanna, but me and you know the real deal. Don't we?”

Python laughs and just heads on into the house.

“Yeah, that's what I thought.” I follow behind him. “Now what's up? You hungry? I have some gumbo warming up on the stove from last night.”

“You always trying to feed somebody,” he says, plopping down at the table.

“That didn't sound like a no to me.” Grabbing a bowl out of the cabinet, I quickly fill it up. “Besides, I like feeding folks.”

“That explains why niggas are always running in and out your house.” His eyes light up when I set the steaming bowl and a cold beer down in front of him. “Thanks, Momma.”

“Uh-huh. You need to send LeShelle over here so I can teach her how to boil some water. Maybe that way you can keep your ass out of so many women's houses.”

A pained look flashes in his eyes for a brief moment. “There you go. All up in my personal business.”

“Oh, I'm sorry, but wasn't that you out on my porch telling me to break some nigga off some pussy?” I pop him on the back of the head.

That has him cracking up again. “A'ight. You got me on that shit.” He shovels down a few mouthfuls of gumbo.

“Does she cook at all?”

“She cooks where it counts,” he says, twitching his eyebrows.

“Clearly that ain't enough to keep your ass at home.”

“Here we go.” He sighs. “Check it. I love LeShelle. No chick come harder or is willing to go to the max for her man like my boo. In return, I take care of her and make sure she don't want for nothing. You feel me? But I'm a man, MommaP. We prey, hunt, and conquer pussy. That's just what the fuck we do. And Melanie just gotta understand that shit.”

“Melanie?”

Python tosses down his spoon, props his elbows up on the table, and starts shaking his head. “Melanie rolled by the club this afternoon. She sort of caught me with, um, one the dancers.”

I'm rolling the name around in my head. “You mean that cop's daughter you had a thing for back in the day? You are still messing with that girl?”

“She's raising one of my seeds,” he says, shrugging.

“She and how many others?”

“Nah, nah. It's just…”

“Damn. You sprung on a cop's girl? Wait. Ain't she a cop, too?”

“If you start laughing, I'm gonna be out this bitch.” He looks me dead in the eye. “For real.”

Good thing he said that shit just before I really got going, because I find this shit absolutely hilarious. “Boy, I ain't gonna laugh at you.”

Python takes a deep breath and holds my gaze for a while. Then he starts glancing around the house like we ain't the only two up in this son of a bitch. By the way he's acting, I'm expecting him to tell me he shot the president of the United States or something.

I reach out across the table and cover his hand with mine. “Terrell Jerome Carver, spit it out.”
Before you give me a heart attack or something.

“A'ight.” He finally eases back in his chair. “Yeah. I still got a thing for her. You know, she was sort of my first love and shit. But circumstances and politics being what they are…” He shrugs his large shoulders and shakes his head. “Plus, her old man put so much heat on me back in the day. Word must've gotten to him about me and his daughter and that his grandson is my seed, because suddenly he was riding me and my niggas so hard we had to wave a white fuckin' flag. It was either that or let him drag our black asses down to the station each time we step outside. Don't you remember that shit?”

I nodded, remembering supercop Melvin Johnson and his men policing Shotgun Row so much it started looking like a fuckin' precinct down in this muthafucka.

“Was that what all that shit was about?”

“Fuck yeah. We couldn't move shit. Supplies dried up, customers took they asses to blocks the Vice Lords and the Crips were holding down. Shit. You know crackheads ain't got no loyalty. So I had to get that nigga off my neck some kind of way.”

“So you had to stop seeing her?”

“Yeah. At least for a little while. Now I creep over there when I can—to see Christopher and shit. But for the most part I try to stay off that muthafucka's radar. You feel me?”

“Did you ever tell her?”

“Fuck naw. Melanie thinks his ass don't know shit. She would've just confronted his ass, and I would've been right back where I started—in the precinct Monday through Sunday, forced to stand in every fuckin' lineup for every fuckin' crime in the city. You know I got to be about this paper, staying on top of this game.”

“And where does Yolanda fit in all this?”

“Yolanda?”

“Look. Normally I don't give a damn about which one of these fast girls you done run up on, but Yolanda—Yo-Yo? You know the kind of shit that girl has been through. And I ain't all that sure she's right in the head.”

“Who said anything about my ass being with that girl?”

Leaning back in my chair, I give him the who-in-the-hell-you-think-you're-fooling look. “I was born at night, but it wasn't last night. Shit don't stay quiet in these streets.”

“A'ight. Yeah, me and Yo-Yo hook up now and then. We both grown. But it ain't no thang. She know the deal, and she gonna play her position.”

I don't know about that, but I'm the last one to be preaching. “So…Melanie walked in on you and Yolanda? That's what's behind the long face?”

“Nah…Yes. Fuck. I don't know. These damn bitches…I mean women.” He glances at me and clears his throat. “Anyway, they just stressing me. It's gonna work out, though. I'm just gonna give Melanie a minute to calm down, and then I'll roll by and settle the shit.”

“All right. But let me tell you—eventually women get tired of being sick and tired. You have my word on that. And when she does the little bit of hell you putting out, ain't shit on what a woman can do to you. Personally, the one I'd be watching if I was you is LeShelle. That girl ain't the fuckin' type to cross.” I hold my nephew's gaze, hoping my message will sink in, but like all men, he's hardheaded and he's going to have to learn the hard way.

“The Chronic” starts blasting and Python scoops his cell phone out of his pocket. “Holla at me.”

Since I'm not all that interested in his business, I get up from the table and fix my own bowl of gumbo and something to drink. When I return to the table, Python's face appears to be even more troubled and I have a sneaking suspicion it don't have shit to do with women. When he finally meets my gaze again, he's angrier than I've ever seen him.

“Problem?”

“Datwon,” he spats.

“Your cousin?”

“Yeah. The muthafucka done turned fed.”