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  The more Halleigh thought about it, the more she realized that she, too, could use that money. Working for Manolo, she barely made enough money to take care of her personal needs. The split with Manolo was 80/20, Manolo receiving the larger share, of course. He felt as though the girls required less since he was the one who had to keep the roof over their heads; since he was the one who provided their clothes and food. Halleigh knew that if she went with Mimi on this little one-hour gig, she could pocket the money without Manolo getting a cut.

  “All right, I’ll go. One hour and then I’m out,” Halleigh said matter-of-factly.

  “One hour, I promise!” Mimi exclaimed with excitement, running over and hugging and kissing Halleigh on the cheek. “We’ll drop by the party at around ten o’clock. We’re not set to go on until eleven-thirty, so that gives us an hour to do what we got to do and a half hour to check in with Tasha so that she won’t know what’s up.”

  “Where are we going to tell Tasha that we are at?” Halleigh asked, making sure that Mimi had crossed all the Ts and dotted all the Is.

  “I don’t know . . . we’ll just tell her a john wanted a private at his house or something and that we paired up for safety. I’ll check in the money for a blow job or something out of my share. Don’t worry, Hal. Your girl’s got this.”

  “You better know what you’re doing.” Halleigh walked by Mimi and lightly swatted her on the ass as she headed to the shower to get ready.

  “Oh, I know what I’m doing all right,” Mimi was talking to herself because Halleigh had already left the room. She rubbed her hands together in greed. “I’m about to get paid is what I’m doing.” Mimi tapped herself on the shoulder for a job well done in getting Halleigh to roll with her. Next, she said a small prayer. “Lord, please get us through this night without anything going wrong.” Mimi then left the room, not realizing that tonight, she’d need more than just a prayer to get her out of the situation she had gotten herself, and now Halleigh, into. She’d need a miracle.

  Chapter Five

  Tariq maneuvered the ‘99 Chevy Suburban into the Valley, one of Flint’s South Side neighborhoods. His windows were tinted, so he didn’t have to worry about anyone seeing his face. But he was still nervous about being out of his own territory.

  This nigga bullshitting, having me meet him on the South, Tariq thought. I done murked too many niggas on this side of town to be riding around this bitch solo. Tariq kept checking his rearview mirror to make sure no one was tailing him. The last thing he was trying to do was to get caught slipping. He put his hand on the snub-nosed pistol tucked at his waistline for reassurance. This is all the back-up I need. He bobbed his head to Tupac’s “Me and My Girlfriend.”

  Tariq turned onto Tebo Street and parked his truck on the curb in front of the small blue-and-white house. He turned off the ignition and sat nervously inside the car for a couple of minutes. He had to get his head right, to make sure that he was prepared to do what he was about to do; because one thing he knew for sure was that once he stepped foot out of that car and went up to that house, there would be no turning back.

  He looked around cautiously before he unlocked his car door and stepped out. He kept his hand on his pistol the entire time as he walked swiftly up the driveway and knocked on the back door.

  Tap, tap, tap!

  He knocked on the steel screen door. A few seconds passed, but it felt like hours as Tariq continuously looked over his shoulders. This mu’fucka better come on, he thought, stepping nervously from side to side.

  Tariq knocked a little more forcefully this time.

  Sweets finally appeared at the door. “Fuck you beating down my door for, nigga?” He was shirtless and wore only jean shorts and Nike flip-flops. His tattooed, hardcore body was ripped like LL Cool J’s. It was a body most women would die for, and some men, too, considering Sweets was a “homo thug” who slept with both men and women.

  “Man, you gon’ let me in or what?” Tariq looked around, still observing his surroundings.

  Sweets smiled coyly and replied “Oh yeah, I forgot. You scared of us South Side niggas. Only time y’all North Siders got heart is when you cliqued up.”

  “Just open the door,” Tariq responded impatiently.

  Sweets opened the door and stepped to the side as Tariq walked into his house. “We in the basement,” he said and began to walk down the stairs.

  “Who the fuck is we?” Tariq asked. “I don’t need more than your ears hearing what I got to say, nah mean?”

  “Nah, don’t worry about it. I understand what’s up. My man down here ain’t a street nigga. He ain’t worried ’bout what you talking.”

  Tariq reluctantly walked down the steps behind Sweets, patting his weapon for reassurance just in case something did jump off.

  The basement was arranged more like a den, with a sofa, love seat, and a 72-inch plasma TV all positioned comfortably in the small space. Sweets took a seat on the sofa. His company, who was a dark-skinned dude with a striped button-up shirt on, snuggled up against him.

  Tariq almost gagged at the sight. This gay mu’fucka, he thought, turning his nose up. Tariq was disgusted, not only because of the sight before him, but because it reminded him of how his own pops was living.

  Tariq’s mom thought she was the luckiest woman in the world when Tariq Sr. chose to make a home with her. Although the two never married, they were together for ten years total. When Tariq was eight years old, his pops left him and his mom. Tariq never knew what happened. He just came home from school one day to find all of his father’s things gone. When he asked his mother where his father was, her only reply was, “He’s left.”

  Until Tariq was about twelve years old, he hated his father for abandoning them. He wondered how he could just pick up and leave without even saying good-bye. Tariq would spend hours in his room alone, blaming himself for his father up and leaving. His relationship with his mother, which had once been closeknit and healthy, became severed and weak. Thinking that it might help pull Tariq out of his slumping funk of depression, his mother decided it might be a good ideal to tell Tariq the truth about his father. She decided to do it before it was too late for them to even be able to mend their own mother and son relationship.

  The day Tariq’s mother sat him down and told him that his father didn’t just up and leave, but that she had put him out and ordered him to never come around them again, Tariq immediately shifted his hate from his father to his mother. He couldn’t imagine why she would do such a thing. He began to disrespect her by cursing and yelling. It was then she knew that she had to tell him the full reason why she had done so.

  Tariq’s mother explained to him that his father had used her; had used both of them to paint an image in order to cover up who he really was. While on the outside he looked like the typical husband and father, on the inside, he truly desired men. Convinced that some homosexual spirit was on him, she put him out and told him that if he ever came around her or her son, she would expose him for who he really was. Tariq’s father wasn’t willing to come out of the closet and face the prejudice of society and his family and friends, from whom he had managed for so many years to keep the truth. So he agreed, packing up all of his things and leaving, knowing he’d never be able to see his son again. Within months of leaving Tariq and his mother, he found another woman whom he impregnated. She gave him another child, behind whom he hid his true self.

  Upon hearing that his father was homosexual, the only thing that came to Tariq’s mind was how people would always tell him how he was just like his father, how he looked just like his father and how when he grew up, he was probably going to be just like his father. This made Tariq sick to his stomach. After hearing the bomb his mother had dropped on him, the last person he wanted to be like was his dad.

  From that point on, Tariq felt he had to do everything possible to prove himself as a real man, and not some soft-ass punk buried in a man’s body like his father. So he took to acting out; acting hard and getting
into trouble. He hooked up with the hardest cats in school to prove he wasn’t a sissy. He went through girls one after another to prove that he liked girls and not men. The night he raped Halleigh, it was just another way of proving his manhood; having control and power over someone else.

  His father’s lifestyle had messed up his head in more ways than one, and now seeing Sweets hugged with another man so openly made him want to vomit.

  Sweets picked up an Xbox controller and resumed the Madden game he’d been playing with his manfriend before Tariq arrived. “What you got for me?” Sweets asked as his friend licked his neck teasingly.

  Tariq looked at Sweets in disbelief. “Yo, man, can we handle this in private?” Tariq didn’t mask the irritation in his voice.

  Sweets whispered in his companion’s ear, and then the dude rose from the couch, mean-mugging Tariq, smacking his lips and rolling his eyes before leaving the room.

  Tariq just shook his head and waited until the man left the room. One thing he could say about Sweets, though; he definitely wasn’t on the down low. He kept his shit wide and out in the open. But his reputation and credential on the street let cats know that in spite of what things looked like, he was a real nigga when it came to handling his business.

  “What you got for me?”

  “What you got for me?” Tariq asked right back. He was about to give Sweets some valuable information, but it wouldn’t come without a price. Hell, nothing in this world came for free.

  “It depends on what you tell me,” Sweets replied. “I’m trying to murder this nigga. He hit my li’l man, Rah-Rah, at the Berston Park shootout last year. It’s about time we got back at him, you know. Can’t let that shit rest . . . no, no,” Sweets stated to himself more than to Tariq.

  Certain members of Sweets’ crew had been wanting to retaliate right after the shooting. Sweets knew how the game worked, though. He knew that Jamaica Joe and his crew would be expecting immediate retaliation and would certainly have their guards up. He felt that it would be better to wait it out and catch them fools off guard, and with the help of Tariq, it looked as though they were about to do just that.

  A streak of guilt ran through Tariq as he thought about exactly what it was he was planning to do to his comrade. But then he thought about how his comrade had been so quick to put the young boy Malek on. This nigga been acting like Malek is his right hand instead of me, the nigga that done had his back for all these years. That li’l nigga ain’t put in no work, but Joe got this dude in the cut like he belongs.

  “Joe having a get-together tonight at his crib on Coldwater,” Tariq began to sing.

  Sweets didn’t take his eyes off the game he was playing when he said, “What I’m supposed to do with that information, fam?”

  “I’m just letting you know there’s a window of opportunity, if you trying to take it.”

  “Yo’ mama ain’t never teach you not to take your fight to your enemy’s house? Ain’t no telling what he got in that mu’fucka,” Sweets stated. “What they looking like anyway, as far as heat is concerned? They gon’ have the burners on ’em?”

  “That’s just it,” Tariq said in a tone that told Sweets if he’d just shut up and let him finish, he’d have all his questions answered. “Ain’t nobody allowed to take no heat in Joe’s house. Niggas be leaving them shits in their whips. Joe gon’ be the only one holding.”

  “I don’t know,” Sweets replied, shaking his head as he operated the remote control. “This might not be too valuable. Sounds kind of risky to me.”

  Tariq felt that Sweets might be trying to play him by pretending that the information was of little use, so that he didn’t have to pay Tariq for it. But Tariq knew Sweets would still use the info, so he decided to throw in a little extra incentive, just to make sure that Sweets sealed the deal. “I know where the bricks at too. I can put you up on them, if the split is right.”

  Sweets paused the game system. “The bricks in his house?” he asked. He had now given Tariq his full, undivided attention.

  Tariq nodded. “In the basement. Fifteen joints in the safe. You get in, hit Joe, and then take the bricks.”

  All of this sounded too good to be true, so he had to question Tariq’s intentions. “What you getting out of all this?” Sweets asked suspiciously.

  Tariq knew that he better pick his words carefully. He didn’t want Sweets to think that he was trying to play both sides of the fence. “It’s time for a new era, baby. I ain’t making that much paper under Joe. He put this new kid on, and it seems to me that the li’l nigga making more moves than me. So, to make a long story short, it’s time to take what I’m owed.”

  Sweets thought for a minute. Tariq was the type he feared most on his own team: a jealous nigga. He knew how they operated. Their loyalty was only as good as the dough coming their way that paid for their loyalty. And now that it seemed that another nigga was cutting into Tariq’s paper, he was ready to turn against the captain. It always added salt to the wound when the next player in line was some young cat who still had milk behind his ears.

  “You mean that kid Malek? Is that who you feel is steppin’ on your toes?” Sweets had been hearing about Malek on the streets. The kid was definitely coming up in the game.

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah, I been hearing ’bout the little nigga. Used to hoop, right? My li’l nigga shot up his ol’ miss a while back. He stopped one of my soldiers from hitting Joe at Berston. That was the only time we had a chance to get him, too,” Sweets said, regretting that his crew missed Joe that time.

  Tariq was surprised to hear that the Shottah Boyz were responsible for killing Malek’s mother, and obviously his stepfather too. The shooters had been unknown to him until that moment. Even though Jamaica Joe had put money on the table for anyone who brought back information on the shooting, nothing had surfaced.

  Tariq quickly got back on task and cut to the chase. “This is your chance to get Joe, fam. It might not be another chance. He doesn’t put down his guard a lot,” Tariq said, getting frustrated.

  Sweets nodded his head in understanding. He reached under his sofa and pulled out a roll of money: five thousand dollars, to be exact. Tossing it to Tariq, he asked, “So what time should I crash the party?”

  Tariq flipped through the rolls and then replied, “Party start at eleven o’clock. Joe lives on Coldwater, between Jennings and Clio, not that spot over there on Harriet Street where everybody think he lays his head. Come through around midnight. I’ll make sure that I’m at the door by then, and I’ll let you slide through.”

  “You do that,” Sweets told him, nodding his head because he knew it was on. Revenge was finally about to be served.

  Chapter Six

  Halleigh looked around nervously as she and Mimi walked up the long circular driveway to Jamaica Joe’s luxury house. It was a sand-colored, five-level stucco house with a brick front. There were no flowers or anything like that planted, but the landscape was immaculate. All of the bushes were evenly trimmed, surrounded by black mulch. The house had to be around 4,500 square feet, not including the attached three-car garage.

  “Damn,” Mimi said, admiring the mini-castle. “Shit, I should have charged they asses two grand each.” She looked around. “After all, what’s another five hundred each to this nigga?”

  “You mean a thousand each,” Halleigh corrected her.

  Mimi thought for a moment, realizing that she almost blew her cover by revealing the fact that Joe was really paying $1,500 per girl instead of the $1,000 she had told Halleigh he was paying. “Oh yeah, that’s right, girl. You know I’m not good at math.”

  “Not when it comes to other people’s money you’re not,” Halleigh said sarcastically. “But I will agree that from the looks of this house,” Halleigh stated as she too admired the dwelling, “they could have afforded it, that’s for sure.”

  The two women made their way to the back door, which Mimi had been instructed by Joe to use. When they got there, the only thing that sto
od between them and the man on the other side was a glass storm door.

  “Y’all the dancers?” the man asked, opening the door for them.

  “Naw, we here to deliver pizza,” Mimi said sarcastically as she made her way past the man. Halleigh followed close behind.

  Instantly the women’s nostrils were filled with the smell of weed as they peeped out their surroundings. Mimi appeared to be confident that the gig would go down without a hitch and that Manolo would never find out about it. After all, no one who associated with the North Side crews associated with the South Side crews, so she knew that there was no mutual player to go back and run his mouth. Halleigh, on the other hand, wasn’t as convinced as Mimi that Manolo would never find out. She couldn’t stop the butterflies from fluttering in her stomach.

  “Mimi, are you sure about this?”

  “Yeah. Just chill, Hal.” Mimi spotted Joe standing at the bottom of the basement steps. “There’s Joe right there.”

  Joe ascended the steps and hugged Mimi as if they were old friends.

  Halleigh took a deep breath to calm her nerves. One hour and then we’re out, she reminded herself. Now that she stood there, she couldn’t believe that she had let Mimi talk her into this madness.

  “Joe, this is my girl, Sunshine,” Mimi said, using the name Manolo had branded Halleigh with. “But you can call her Sunny.” Mimi turned to Halleigh. “Sunny, this is Joe.”

  Joe nodded a “what up” at Halleigh and then stepped out of the landing and up onto the main level of his luxurious home. Mimi grabbed Halleigh’s hand, and they followed Joe toward the back of the house, where the bedrooms were located.