Unzipped: An Urban Erotic Tale (23 page)

Pearl was too sick to respond. She gagged and threw up all over the couch, her stomach wrenching violently. Dark spots were filling her left eye and her lips felt numb. She couldn’t bear hearing any more about her family’s torture, but Yoda wasn’t finished talking shit yet. There was more he had to tell.

“I put the hammer on that old bitch, too, ya heard? Mashed them fingers so good she called me all kinds of dirty muthafuckahs!
That was before I rodded her throat, tho, nah’mean? After she sucked that iron dick she wasn’t tryna call on nobody but God!”

Even through the haze of drugs and the horror of hearing what had happened to her mother, Pearl’s fury was ever strong. She didn’t know how the hell Scotch had hipped Yoda to her game, but it didn’t matter. This motherfucker wanted her dead, and he meant that shit.

“You thought you was just gonna ride up in here and put that ill na-na on me and make me bite my own nuts, right? You thought I’d bitch out my boss over your sweet little pussy, right? Oh, ya shit is good, I ain’t gone lie, but it ain’t good as that poison I dropped in ya drink, lil skank. I was gonna let you lick my balls one last time but that spit around ya mouth got you looking a lil raggedy. So just chill right there for a minute, okay, ma? I’ma go cancel that meeting and be right back with the posse. Wait till I tell ’em who you really is! First I’ma let my man Donut bang that sweet gushy real quick, then I’ma let Mook get hold of you. That niggah gonna crush ya neck just like he did ya sister. Bash them little short brains in. Can’t no gutta bitch outslick a real hustler. Believe that!”

Yoda talked big shit as Pearl fought the sensation of suffocation. She gasped as she struggled for each breath. The room looped around her in crazy slow circles and the leftover lobster and butter clashed in her stomach and rose to the back of her throat, then came splashing out of her mouth again. Yoda had given her enough drugs to fuck her up for a minute. Pearl battled to hold on to her bowels. Drool slid from her mouth and her left eye twitched violently. She slumped over on the sofa, striking her head on something hard inside of her red bag. She closed her hand over it, feeling it on the sly.

Yoda was still laughing as he walked toward the door, and the sound seemed to come from a million miles away. He had just
opened the door as Pearl slipped her hand inside of her purse and dug around sneaky-like.

“Ya daddy wasn’t shit,” he said over his shoulder, “ya sister wasn’t shit, and you ain’t shit neither, bitch. Wait till I get back and you gone see how fuckin’ with me and my manz can get a ho like you planted like a flower.”

Yoda turned to walk out the door and it was nothing but sheer will and determination that gave Pearl the strength to move. With the last bit of strength left in her body, and as the room grew dark and fuzzy, she reached into her Gucci bag and came out with her FBI special miniature crossbow.

With only a glancing aim, she seated her arrow and let it fly, and with fate and the ghost of her dead father’s hand guiding its path, the poison-tipped arrow penetrated Yoda’s back and pierced the killer’s treacherous black heart.

S
ometime later—she couldn’t tell how long—Pearl heard her name being called and felt herself being cradled in strong, protective arms. Her eyes fluttered open and she saw that Menace was there. He was looking down at her with deep concern as he wiped traces of dried vomit away from her mouth.

“Pearl. Open ya eyes, baby. You okay?”

Pearl struggled to sit up, thankful that at least a little bit of the fog seemed to have lifted from her brain.

“I got your text. Lil Dray was dead on it. Yoda was the inside man. He did the murders too. But you handled him, Pearl. You took that niggah down and got some for your whole family. It’s done, baby. It’s done.”

Pearl looked around. Yoda was laying dead in the foyer, one arm sticking through the crack of the door. Menace followed her eyes, then walked briskly over to the body and dragged Yoda into
the room by one foot, allowing the door to close. He locked it, then returned to Pearl and propped a pillow behind her back and covered her up with the blanket from the bed. Next he walked over to the bar and took some ice from the freezer and wrapped it in a washcloth and pressed it against her swollen jaw.

“Can you hold this while I take care of business?”

Pearl nodded, reaching for the ice and touching it to her face where Yoda had fucked her up. She watched as Menace unscrewed the long panel on the room’s air-conditioning vent. The suite had its own condenser unit and at first glance it looked just like a closet, except it had a ventilation grille on the door.

She was speechless as Menace removed the grille and looked inside.

“Yeah,” he said, mostly to himself. “That’ll work.”

Without hesitating, Menace went back to Yoda and grabbed his ankle again. He dragged the grimy bastard across the carpet on his face, handling him like the piece of shit he was. Moments later, Yoda’s body had been folded and stuffed through the grille and the front panel had been screwed back in place.

For the next fifteen minutes Menace scrubbed Yoda’s blood out of the carpet and cleaned up Pearl’s blood from the bathroom floor.

“Aiight,” he said when he was finally done. The room was pretty straight. Nobody would be able to tell what had gone down in there just by peeping in. “Time to go.”

Whatever Yoda had slipped on her was beginning to wear off. Menace helped her to her feet, and Pearl did her best to stand on her own.

“Whoa—,” Menace said as he reached out to steady her. Pearl was still wobbly on her feet, and she leaned into him gratefully as he propped her up. She blinked a few times, relieved that the
dark spot had faded from the vision in her left eye. But with her vision clearing, Pearl was able to see something else. She saw the small vial of liquid on the coffee table. The one that Yoda had held up for her to see.

“I gotta sit down,” Pearl mumbled and staggered.

Plopping on the couch, she bent over and put her head down on her knees.

“You aiight?” Menace asked, worried. “You wanna lay down for a little while?”

Pearl shook her head. Hell no. Not with Yoda’s dead ass behind that vent. She was getting the fuck outta that room. Just as soon as she got what she needed.

“Nah, I’m straight. But I could use a glass of ice water, though.”

The moment Menace turned his back Pearl went into action. Her hand snaked out faster than shit. She chilled as she heard Menace in the freezer getting ice again. Moments later he was standing over her, holding out the cold glass of water.

“Here, Pearl. Drink this so we can get outta here.”

Pearl drank gratefully, washing away the traces of sickness from her mouth. Between sips she asked, “How’d you find out about Yoda?”

Menace grimaced. “One of your father’s boyz put me down. A young kid who Irish used to look out for the same way he looked out for me. His sister used to hang with Diamond. She told him it was Yoda, Plus Piff, Tank, and Donut, three of Mookie’s other right hand manz who did your family.”

As weak as she was, Pearl straight-up ate the words coming out of Menace’s mouth. Piff, Tank, Donut. She had it. She finished drinking the water and handed the glass to Menace. “Okay,” she said. “I’m ready.”

They left the hotel all hugged up, with Pearl’s hair hiding the
lump on her face as she stumbled beside Menace like a drunken partygoer. In his rush to get to her, Menace had parked his whip illegally on the curb and he was glad nobody had come by and towed his shit away.

“Where are we going?” Pearl asked. Somebody else had rented Menace’s old room above Nastee’s long ago, and Pearl sure as fuck wasn’t gonna let him take her to the grimy hot-ho motel she was staying in off Forty-second Street.

“I got a little spot here in New York,” Menace said as he buckled her in. “It’s right here in Midtown. That’s how I was able to get over here so fast.”

He took her to an old clothing warehouse that had been partitioned off into lofts. His crib was a two-bedroom palace with shiny wood floors and huge windows that would have been a blast to decorate.

But Menace wasn’t the decorating type. There wasn’t much of anything in his crib, other than a small sofa, a folding table he used to eat off, and a big-screen television.

He led Pearl over to the sofa, which was made of soft, fine leather, and went in the kitchen to get her an ice pack. He fixed her a warm cup of herbal tea, then ran her a bath and closed the bathroom door so she could take off her clothes and get in the tub.

While Pearl soaked in the bubbly water, Menace changed the sheets on his bed and got an extra pillow from his closet. He didn’t have anything decent to eat in the kitchen, so he tossed a bag of popcorn in the microwave and set the timer. He poured both of them a glass of apple juice, and was just putting a napkin by her plate when Pearl walked into the kitchen wearing a robe he’d left hanging on a hook for her.

“Hungry?” he asked.

Pearl shrugged. “I could use a little something on my stomach.” She picked up a few kernels of popcorn, keeping her eyes down like she didn’t want to look at him.

“You aiight?” he asked.

She nodded. “I’m good, thanks. But my head is banging. You have any Tylenol?”

“Yeah,” he said, getting up. “They’re in the bathroom. I’ll go get ’em.”

Pearl was on her feet the moment he walked out of the kitchen. Dashing into the living room, she snatched her Gucci bag and ran back to the kitchen. Her hands were trembling as she laced Menace’s juice with some of the liquid from Yoda’s vial. By the time he came back with the Tylenol she had stirred his juice with her finger, then wiped her hand off on his robe.

They ate in silence with Pearl pretending to doze off, nodding at the table. She was glad when Menace tossed back his apple juice and ate the last bit of popcorn from the bottom of the bowl. She thanked him as he led her to his bedroom and told her he would be right in the living room on the couch if she needed him.

“No!” Pearl said, her eyes big and wide. “I don’t wanna sleep by myself, Menace. Can you stay in here with me? Please?”

He hesitated, then nodded. Menace waited until she was under the covers, then lay down beside her on the bed. Pearl listened to his breathing in the darkness, and was surprised by how fast he fell off. Her intentions were to be at the Sunset Motel by 6 a.m., but there was still work to be done before she could rest. With Menace snoring softly beside her, Pearl dug around in her bag and retrieved the folder of notes she’d taken from her father’s files. She skimmed through the paragraphs, extracting info about the three murderous goonies, Piff, Tank, and Donut, and committed the details to her memory. When she was sure she knew
every single thing that her father had known about them, Pearl snuggled down next to Menace in his bed. She ran the next day’s plan over in her mind two and a half times before falling off to sleep.

What seemed like minutes later Pearl woke up in a panic. She’d only planned to sleep for a few hours, but after the drama and trauma of the day before, she’d slept deeply until almost noon, which was much longer than she’d wanted.

She glanced over at Menace. He was knocked out and beautiful, and snoring his ass off. After the way he put her on to Yoda then charged in to help her, Pearl felt a little guilty about dropping some of Yoda’s shit in his juice.

But just a little.

She had crazy feelings for the dude, but she was working the critical parts of her plan today and she needed Menace out of her way. She figured Yoda had only given her a little bit of the date-rape drug. That niggah had wanted her conscious and aware so him and his manz could torture her ass. Pearl had no idea how much of that shit she should have given Menace, all she knew was that she wanted him knocked out. For a long time.

Pulling on her clothes, Pearl scribbled Menace a short note, then tiptoed quickly out the room. She paused in the living room and thought for a moment, then hurried back into the bedroom. With a final glance at his chocolate fineness, Pearl walked out of Menace’s apartment and headed back to the Sunset Motel to finish what she had started.