Unzipped: An Urban Erotic Tale (12 page)

Problem solved!

Mookie was happy as fuck. Without Irish pushing the issue the Feds had eased off somewhat and moved on to cases that were much easier to trace and prosecute. And now that Irish was nothing more than hood dust and that bullshit little center of his was on the rocks, Mookie’s business revenue was about to pick up lovely.

T
he first few weeks after the murder of her family members were pure hell for Pearl. She was staying at Cole’s apartment because she wasn’t capable of being alone. Carlita came by to check on her every day after work, and her niece Zoe called Pearl with words of sympathy and support several times a week. Pearl hadn’t heard a word from Diamond since the night before their birthday, nor had her twin shown up at the funeral or at the cemetery to see their loved ones put in the ground.

It was hard for Pearl not to go crazy thinking about where Diamond could be or what could be happening to her, but it was even harder to accept the fact she’d never hear her mother’s sweet voice again or never again be able to call on her father for wisdom or advice. But the hardest thing was the knowledge that she’d never kiss or hug her daughter Sasha again, and that she’d never have a chance to explain to her child why she hadn’t been more of a mother to her during her short, beautiful life.

The funerals had been heart wrenching. Twice Pearl had lunged from her seat and tried to climb on top of her mother’s closed coffin. And twice Carlita and Zoe had broken into tears as several men held Pearl down while she kicked and screamed that her baby girl couldn’t breathe down inside that fuckin’ box!

And now, no matter where she was or what she was doing, Pearl just couldn’t get Sasha’s cries out of her ears. Her daughter’s spirit haunted her from the grave. Pearl just couldn’t stop seeing Sasha’s beautiful face or hearing her choking, anguished pleas for help as she suffered a cruel and heartless death that no child should ever have to bear.

Pearl also went through anguished bouts of guilt that were sometimes far more painful than her unbearable grief. She would fall to the ground on her hands and knees, wailing and screaming with her entire being racked with guilt and convinced that her selfishness had contributed to the murder of her precious little girl. If only she hadn’t left home! If only she hadn’t wanted to
be
somebody and have a fuckin’ future! If only she had stayed her ass in Harlem where the people she loved were, somehow she might have been able to protect and defend her family!

From head to toe, Pearl was an emotional wreck. She lost insane weight and her pretty hair started falling out in clumps. She couldn’t work and she couldn’t eat. Sleep eluded her night after night as she trembled and moaned and cried out, tortured by a child’s horrible screams that no one else seemed to hear.

Pearl’s emotional torment was unspeakable, and it was definitely unbearable. She had gone from a scared, nervous kid to a wild teen and had finally evolved into a highly capable young woman, yet she had failed at the one task that should have meant more to her than anything else: being a good mother to her daughter.

Cole was there for her 24/7. He fed her soup, bathed her tenderly,
held her when she cried, and soothed her through the murderous, smoke-filled night terrors she fought against in the midst of her dreams.

In fact, if it hadn’t been for Cole then Pearl would have probably died from grief. The FBI had placed her on a leave of absence from the Hostage Rescue Team immediately following her family’s murder, and they had even sent an agent to a Harlem precinct to inquire about her sister’s whereabouts.

“They don’t have any information listed about Diamond,” Carlita told Pearl after accessing the file. “But it looks like somebody up in higher headquarters put out some feelers based on a request by your father. I couldn’t get access to the complete file, but one of our governmental agencies was investigating something on your father’s behalf. Unfortunately, there’s nothing at all here about your sister.”

Pearl was devastated. It was like Harlem had opened its filthy mouth and swallowed Diamond whole. No matter which grimeball hole in the wall the cops searched, Pearl’s twin was nowhere to be found.

Pearl was emotionally busted. The leave of absence the FBI had insisted she take was definitely needed because she was in no condition to work anybody’s high-intensity job, not even at a desk answering phones. The FBI psychiatrist said she was in a severe depression brought on by extreme grief, and he prescribed her an antidepressant and something strong to help her sleep through the night.

But a couple of weeks later Pearl woke up in the middle of the night sweating in a cold panic. Sasha was crying and screaming for her in her dreams, and Pearl was reliving her worst nightmare. It was the night of the fire all over again. She was running out of Baskin Robbins and her high-heel pumps clacked on the concrete like drums in her ears.

Her legs were stroking, she was moving like a track star, and when she turned the corner and glimpsed her house, thick smoke and vicious flames were already shooting from the windows. Getting past the firemen was real easy in Pearl’s dream. She moved in slow motion and she took two of them down without breaking a sweat. The po-po were something else though. She fucked the young one up real good, the one who had Tasered her first. The second one got more than a broken nose for touching her fuckin’ hair, and Pearl left him on the ground trying to push his eyeball back inside of his skull.

She was almost at the front door, but moving in dream speed. She felt the heat and the smoke but she wasn’t gonna let it stop her. She reached for the white-hot door handle and felt bits of her palm flesh sear off and stick to it, but she yanked it open anyway and fled inside, pushed on by the desperate sound of her little girl’s cries.

She passed by her father Irish in the living room, and hesitated only briefly when she saw that he was beat down and bloody and hogtied to a chair. Pearl’s legs were long and strong as hell in her dream, and she bound into Sasha and Chante’s room in just three steps, yelling for the girls through the smoke as loud as she could.

“I’m coming, Sasha!” Pearl screamed to her dream daughter. “Hold on baby! I’m coming!!”

But just as she rounded the corner and burst into the blistering pink-and-brown room whose walls were already scorched black, Pearl stopped short, frozen in grief by what she saw.

Sasha stood next to her burning bed tapping one flaming foot on the floor. Her melted eyes were narrowed and her arms were crossed defiantly in front of her. She was pissed off and burning, and loose flesh was sliding off her like thick candle wax.

“You got time for every goddamn thing except
me,”
Pearl’s
dead daughter accused her from a mouth that was held together by crispy, burnt lips. “Why you running your ass up in here now? You shoulda been here for me the whole time,
Pearl
. But you left us here to die ’cause you was too busy thinking about
yourself.”

Then right before Pearl’s eyes, Sasha’s whole body began turning to liquid. It started at her feet and she melted to the floor, first to her knees, and then up to her waist, and then her shoulders and finally her head. The entire time her little girl was screaming, “
You left me, Pearl!
You made sure you got outta the hood, but you left me here to
die
!”

Pearl cried out and fled from the dream room as Sasha’s lips still moved accusingly in her puddle of human wax. She heard Irish moaning as she ran toward the front door and stopped when she saw her mother’s brutalized body near his feet. Zeta was dead. Streaks of blood were on her thighs. Her beautiful mouth was busted; bloodied and torn apart. Irish was strapped to a chair and he was on fire. Flames were coming out of his mouth, his nose, and his eyes.

“Them muthafuckas got us!” her father gurgled in her dream, spitting fire as he tried to shake the flames from his head. Pearl screamed again and ran toward the door.

“Get ’em back!” she heard Irish yelling behind her. “You get ’em back, Daddy’s Pearl! You pay them muhfuckahs
back
!”

Pearl screamed out loud and bolted upright in the bed for real. She was sweating and crying and could have sworn she tasted burnt flesh in her mouth. Her heart ached with grief, and the rage in her baby girl’s bubbling eyes and the ringing of her father’s last words in her ears caused her more pain than she had ever imagined possible.

She called out for Cole and found that she was alone in his apartment. He had left a note beside her on the bed saying he’d gone out to get something to eat and would be right back.

Pearl was alone and she knew what she had to do.

There was no way in hell she could live like this and there was no other way to end it.

She reached under Cole’s pillow and found his service revolver where he always left it when he was off duty. She thought about sticking the barrel in her mouth and eating some lead but she just couldn’t do it. That shit was too foul. Brains would be spattered all over the walls; blood and goo would be everywhere. Somebody would have to come behind her and clean all that shit up.

The same thing went for cutting her wrists or jumping off a roof. Too much fuckin’ drama. She wasn’t about leaving a whole bunch of mess behind for some poor fool to deal with. Pearl eyed the medicine vials on her night table. The FBI psychiatrist had prescribed the pills for her but they hadn’t done a damn bit of good. Her muscles were weak, but she managed to open both canisters. She shook out almost all the tablets from each one. She poured the tablets into her mouth and chewed them into a foul-tasting goo.

“Oh, Sasha,” Pearl moaned as she went into the bathroom, then climbed into the dry tub and stretched out flat. She was weak and exhausted and all she wanted was for the nightmare that had become her life to finally end.

“My
baby,”
she muttered, her heart aching and grieving as she visualized her dead daughter. “Oh God … my
baby.”

Tears rolled from Pearl’s eyes as she closed them and waited for the drugs to take effect. “I’m so sorry, baby girl,” she whispered. “Chante. Daddy. Mama. Diamond. I’m sorry y’all.”

C
ole walked the rainy streets of D.C. without an umbrella or a hat.

From the moment he had asked Pearl to be his woman for life, nothing but clouds had hung over their lives. He didn’t even feel the rain as it slid off his head and rolled down his neck. He was a big dude, and his feet kicked up waves in the puddles of the cracked pavement as he walked through the hood trying to figure out what to do about Pearl. He had to find a way to bring his baby back to life so she could start acting right again and they could get on with their relationship.

He stopped in a local pizza joint and got two hot slices and an order of buffalo wings to go. He stuffed the bulging paper bag under his jacket as he walked back out in the rain and headed to his small apartment where Pearl was waiting. He was tired as fuck, but there was no slowing down in sight. Ever since Pearl’s
family had died there had been no fun, no hanging out, no home cooking, and definitely no fucking.

Cole was a brother with needs, and the sooner Pearl came out of her funk and got her shit together the sooner he could get them met. The past few weeks had been real hard on him. He worked a twelve-hour shift every day then rushed home to take care of Pearl, who mostly cried her days away. She slept on and off, screaming from nightmares so loud that it scared the shit outta his neighbors.

It was all that crying that had gotten her sent home from the job.

The Bureau had given her two weeks of bereavement leave to bury her people and take care of bizz up in New York, but two weeks didn’t even put a dent in the amount of time it looked like Pearl was gonna need to get back on track.

For one thing, her sister Diamond had been missing since the night of their birthday, and now that she had been found at the county landfill just two days ago, Cole was hesitant about hitting Pearl with the devastating news about her twin. What good would knowing do her? Nah, Cole wasn’t with it. As bad as Pearl was grieving, hearing about Diamond’s death would fuck her head up even more and push her completely over the edge. Wasn’t no telling how long it would take her to get over that shit. After the way she had spazzed out at the funerals, Cole wasn’t about to lay no extra trip like that on her.