16
I
t was two days before Noble’s birthday, and him and Pap were going to their boy Yard’s bachelor party. Just a few hours earlier Yard had called Noble and told him his store had been robbed again the night before.
“What’s this?” Noble asked. “Five, six times?”
“Yeah, them grimy niggahs hit me again, man,” Yard complained. “But I’ma get they asses this time. They about to get exposed!”
“You know who did it?” Noble asked. “Do I need to call one of my boys at the precinct and have ’em go pick somebody up?”
“Nah,” Yard said. “Not yet. I put one of those hidden video cameras up in my joint a couple of weeks ago. It was rolling good and everything, but now I can’t get the fuckin’ tape out. I got my boy down at Best Buy working on it for me, and as soon as he gets that tape rolling I’ma smash whatever thieving niggah’s face is on it!”
Noble knew Yard was serious about that shit, and in a way he missed being the kind of cop that bagged bad guys every day. Directing traffic was decent, but it wasn’t what Noble wanted to do for the rest of his life. He was actually thinking about retiring and starting his own business. He had plenty of cream stashed in plenty of places, and if he never worked again, him—and whoever he decided to marry—would still be set.
Just thinking of the girl he was gonna marry put a grin on Noble’s face. Yep, he had made his decision. The lucky honey had been chosen. He had picked door number ... It had been hard as hell for him to cross all those lovely, beautiful women off his list and settle on just one, but Noble had done it. He was going to propose to his number-one honey in less than forty-eight hours, and he was more than sure that he’d be doing the right thing by taking her for his wife.
Yard’s bachelor party was being held at an exclusive gentleman’s club downtown. His boys had rented a private room, and had the liquor and the broads on stock in ample supply. They’d chosen to have it on a Sunday because the rates were half price, and even though everybody had to go to work the next day, Yard was set to have a big turnout.
Noble thought about the bachelor party he was gonna have one day soon. He planned to take a lot of notes at Yard’s party so he could get some ideas on how he wanted his done.
He drove downtown in his ’Vette, feeling real sure about himself. He’d swung by to see Bam earlier in the day and he had been happy to see his father on his feet and feeling good. There was nothing he could do for his pops medically or financially that wasn’t already being done. Bam had some of the best doctors in the city, and thanks to his knowledge of the market and their early investing habits, the old man had enough money to keep him comfortable in his final days.
All Bam was missing now was a grandchild. Noble knew he wasn’t gonna get his new wife knocked up on their wedding night, but he hoped she wouldn’t mind having his baby sooner rather than later.
It was close to ten when Noble arrived at the party. Pap opened the door for him and handed him a glass of yak.
“Whut up, niggah!” his boy said, slurring his words. “It’s about time you got here!” A half-naked chick with butterscotch skin and gigantic titties was hanging off his arm. Pap twisted one of her two-inch nipples and bust out laughing.
Noble took the drink and dapped Pap out. His dude was already well lit, and so were most of the other guys who were chilling up in the suite. Pap nodded toward a large room to Noble’s left and told him he could find Yard in there.
As he entered the room, Noble grinned and shook his head. Mad food had been catered, and sexy-ass go-go dancers and waitresses wearing heels and thongs were everywhere.
He looked for his boy and spotted Yard sitting on a king’s chair with a freak perched on each knee. The two hot-body chicks were giving him a double-trouble lap dance, and his boy was so open on them strippers he had sweat dripping from his chin.
The girls were beauties, but Noble could tell they were professionals performing strictly for cash. Yard looked ready to throw both chicks on the floor and fuck the dog shit outta them, but it was hard for Noble to get turned on by a chick who shook her ass for a living. It was like being with a prostitute. You could never tell if she was feeling you for real, or just doing her damned job.
A cute little Hispanic chick had just walked by and squeezed Noble’s nuts when Pap yelled for everybody to shut the fuck up because they were about to roll Yard’s bachelor cake into the room.
The joint got real quiet as some funky-slow stripper music came outta the speakers, and two dudes pushed a huge round box decorated like a white wedding cake into the room. The box was sitting up on a dolly, and streams of silky white material was draped around each layer of the cake.
Pap held up his drink and was in the middle of making a dead playa’s toast to Yard, when the top of the cake popped open and a stunning white chick rose up outta that bad boy like a genie coming out of a bottle.
Noble’s eyes bucked open wide as she slithered and strutted and paraded her firm frame around the room for all the men to see, winding her creamy body like ten miles of smooth, delicious road.
“Take it
off
! Take it
off
! Take it
off
!” yelled the guy standing next to Noble as he waved some ho’s garter belt high in the air.
Pap nudged him and screamed something in his ear, but Noble was frozen where he stood as he watched every niggah in the room get a hard-on from the solid hunk of good ass that was being shaken by the stripper. She was working her body so scrumptiously, bucking and rolling her pelvis like she was getting a damn good fucking, that it was no surprise that niggahs was starting to close in on her as she danced with her eyes closed and a smile of pure delight on her wicked, pretty face.
It wasn’t until she starting inching off her diamond-studded thong and a thick mass of dudes rushed to surround her that Noble was able to move. And move he did.
Straight out the mothafuckin’ door!
17
T
he next day Noble stood on his grid square chewing the fuck outta his whistle. It had been a long, crazy night, and he’d spent a lot of time fuming over how he had let himself get straight played.
Seeing Kiki bust outta that cake topless and wearing the diamond-studded thong he’d bought her had almost fucked him up. He’d wanted to fight his boy Pap when he’d hollered, “Yo,
No
! Man, ain’t that one of the broads you tryna wife?”
Now he knew where her sleazy ass had picked up all them cold nasty tricks! Kiki was a graduate of Stripper’s University, and Noble was gonna lay a charge on her scandalous ass the moment her bus pulled up at the stop.
Just the thought that he’d been considering her as a potential life mate, and as the mother of his unborn tykes, had Noble fuming. He wasn’t the type of cat to get mad and fly off the handle on the regular, but fuckin’ around with a shameless bitch like Kiki could make even the most peaceful brother get throwed off.
There’d been so many horny niggahs in the room last night that Noble knew Kiki hadn’t seen him, and since tomorrow was his birthday, she was probably rolling around the city thinking she was still in the runnings. For all Kiki knew, she was about to get plastered with a fat engagement ring, but Noble knew better. Her ass had already been straight crossed off his list. He felt for her kids, but she was gonna have to find another sucker-niggah’s pole to climb.
Noble was feeling like the biggest sucker on the block when his phone vibrated on his hip. He waited until the light turned red, then stepped outta the grid and crossed the street to the sidewalk.
He had a text from his boy Yard, and Noble narrowed his eyes as he read what it said:
Got the tape out. U ain’t gonna believe who’s on it. Holla.
Noble’s fingers fumbled to open up his contacts and press Yard’s name, and when his dude answered the phone, Noble could tell by the tone of his voice that shit was not gonna be good.
“S’up?” he asked. “Who’s on the tape?”
“Man, I didn’t believe that shit when I seen it. I ain’t wanna believe it, yo. It’s fucked up, that’s what’s real, though. Ya girl been fucking me up.”
Noble frowned. “Yo, what the fuck you talkin’ about?
My
girl? Who? Who been fuckin’ you up?”
Noble was in no way prepared for the name that Yard dropped on him.
It exploded on his head like a bomb.
“
Sissy,
niggah!” Yard spit. “Sissy’s on the tape digging her fingers all in my pie! She’s the one been stealing from the old folks in the building too. Her and that dyke bitch, Shannie! Man, don’t you trust that girl, I’m telling you, No. That trifling bitch is a lesbo
and
a thief!”
Sissy was walking to work swinging her arms and looking all innocent when Noble spotted her. If there was one thing Noble didn’t respect, it was larceny. As a kid there had been plenty of junkies and criminal-minded nigs who figured they could pull an easy kick door on Bam and make off with his money and his hocked shit, but Noble’s father had always been ready for them. Bam had taught Noble that the only thing worse than a liar was a thief.
And one was coming straight at him right now.
He watched as Sissy made her way through the intersection. She was almost up on him when Noble broke.
“Yo,
bandit
!” he spit angrily. “How the fuck could you steal from all them poor old people, Sissy? My boy Yard got you on tape, miss! You better hope they don’t send your ass back to jail—”
Suddenly Noble caught a glimpse of movement outta his right eye.
The bus!
It was Kiki’s bus! An image of her round, naked ass bucking and popping outta that cake flashed through Noble’s mind. He had some bizz to handle with that chick real quick too!
Sissy was opening her mouth to deny his charges when something whizzed between them. It was hot and fast, and the sound it made was unmistakable.
“Get down!” Noble shouted, but Sissy wasn’t even trying to hear him. She took off running. In fact, she barreled right through him, wobbling him on his feet and knocking his fake leg out from under him.
Noble hit the ground hard as Sissy hauled ass. He turned his head and saw her jump on the bus that had just pulled up at the corner stop, screaming for the driver to take off.
Noble could only watch as Kiki, staring at him from the driver’s seat with her big blue eyes, got hip to the flying bullets and was trying to decide whether or not to step on the gas. Noble flipped over on his belly. Bullets were zipping over his head. His prosthesis strap had slipped off his thigh and his leg was loose in his pants. Bullets were coming from both directions, and Noble knew he had to move. Pulling himself up on his good knee, he half-hopped, half-hobbled toward the idling bus for cover.
But before he could get there, he heard Sissy yelling again.
“
Drive,
bitch!
Drive!
” she screamed.
Noble was only a few feet away when Kiki did just that. Their eyes locked for a split second, and then the unmistakable hiss of hydraulics sounded as the bus pulled off, leaving Noble standing in the street on one leg, exposed to the gunfire.
And he was straight exposed too. To Noble it felt like déjà vu. He was right back in that abandoned auto shop taking hot rounds all over his body. But it wasn’t a drug bust gone bad this time, Noble realized. It was a bank robbery. Two security guards had chased three armed men out the front doors of Omega Bank. They were trading bullets back and forth, and Noble was caught in the crossfire.
The screech of tires and the blare of horns filled the air as the bank thieves turned and began firing back. Drivers ducked down in their seats and passengers hit the floorboards. The blind vendor at the corner newsstand went down, and the terrified screams of his wife and other pedestrians pierced the air.
Noble had always heard that lightning never struck the same place twice. But that didn’t stop him from catching another heat round. A stray slug sank into Noble’s thigh, and both his feet flew out from under him. Once again he was down on the ground, shot up and defenseless.
Malisha and her coworkers were staring out of the bank window as the security guards chased the three thieves into the street. In horror, she realized that Noble was ass-out in the middle of the gunfight, and when he grabbed his leg and crumpled to the ground, Malisha reacted from her gut, without thinking.
Ignoring the warnings of her coworkers, Malisha ran outta the bank screaming Noble’s name. Oblivious to the danger, she rushed out into the street. But instead of pulling Noble to safety, she started patting and searching the downed man’s pockets as he struggled to sit up.
“I’m okay, baby,” he muttered, dazed and confused. The sound of police sirens was in the air, and three patrol cars had just pulled up on the scene. Another bullet whizzed by and Noble instinctively reached for Malisha. He thought she had rushed out to help him, but when he tried to roll his body protectively on top of hers, she reached back and smacked the shit outta him and screamed, “Don’t die! Don’t you
dare
fuckin’ die, ’cause we ain’t married yet! Those assholes hit the goddamn vault! Give me the key to the safety deposit box so I can make sure all my gold is okay!”
Noble lay back on the ground and closed his eyes.
These chicks were just too fuckin’ much.
He had a feeling he was gonna be single for a long, long time.