Red Hot Liar (9781617738654) (27 page)

Read Red Hot Liar (9781617738654) Online

Authors: Noire

AND THEN . . .
F
or such a short election campaign it had been a real damn intense one, and everybody in the joint was happy it was about to be over. The precincts would be closing soon and the polls would shut down at that time, but due to statistics and demographics, the election winner would be projected before then.
Viceroy was feeling good and stepping lively as his entire campaign crew gathered in the presidential suite at the Ritz Hotel in Dallas. The buzz of excitement in the air was bigger than anything he had ever felt and staffers, volunteers, and campaign officials were skitting around like a bunch of nervous nellies as the clocked ticked down and the votes began getting tallied.
If there was one person in the midst of the firestorm who was walking around with flame-proof drawers on, it was Viceroy himself. Being the center of this type of attention was right up his alley and he knew how to stay cool and calm under pressure. He almost felt like President Obama on the night before he ordered that hit on Saddam Hussein. Cooler than shit. He walked around cracking jokes, shooting the shit, and putting everybody else at ease with his unruffled chill-under-fire charm.
The fact that he was even still good with the Governor and his name was still on the ballot was sweet as hell. After all that slick shit Ruddman had pulled to get him disqualified he was still standing tall and black. Of course, having that dime-dropping Wally Su clock out before he could testify in front of the commission had done a whole lot to help, and with Selah coming through with the only other copy of the stock option agreement between him and Earl Washington, it had taken all the teeth outta the bear trap that Ruddman had set for him.
In fact, everything he touched had turned to gold. Bob Easton's advice to shoot the undocumented workers ad spot and to reveal Peaches to the world had been a real ratings booster. The reality show hadn't been shot yet, but just the news that his family was gonna expose their throats like that had voters jumping on his tip.
All that left Viceroy feeling pretty fuckin' cock-strong as he strode through the enormous presidential suite dapping folks out and reveling in his own glow. He didn't know which way the election was gonna swing, but with all the odds evened out he felt he had more than a fighting chance to get the win in his column.
He walked into the main sitting area and looked around. The room was packed with people and all of them were there to support and encourage him. He saw Selah and Dane talking to Bob Easton and the four other members of the Gang of Five, and there were a bunch of college kids sitting cross-legged on the floor chatting into their cell phones as they made a few last-minute cold calls to voters who were still straddling the fence.
“It's a freaking dog race!” Fred Stein beamed happily, gesturing toward the large-screened television set where the names of the three candidates and their current standing in the race was displayed. “You're barely trailing Stewie Baker, but you're edging Rodney Ruddman out by a nose.”
Viceroy felt a surge of competitive excitement flow through his legs, like a punch-drunk boxer who was tied on the cards with less than minute to go in the last round.
He parked his ass in a plush chair in the midst of his supporters and glued his eyes to the television screen. The atmosphere was lively and energized and several beautiful waitresses were walking around the suite bearing trays filled with drinks and snacks. He had just tossed back a double-shot of Courvoisier when Selah came over and sat down beside him.
“Where's Barron?” she asked.
Viceroy shrugged and looked around. “I don't know. He should have been here a long time ago.”
“Well, I hope he gets here before it's all over,” she said, smelling delicious and looking beautifully put together in her navy blue dress and white pearls.
Viceroy grinned and reached out and hugged her tightly. “I've got a good feeling about it, baby. I think we just might pull it off.” A waitress walked past and he signaled for another drink. “I know I owe a whole lot of this to you, Selah,” he said truthfully. “Getting those papers from Wally Su was some real good shit. But you can tell me, baby,” he said, leaning in close to her. “Did you kill him, sugar? Did you choke his ass?”
Selah bust out laughing. It felt so good to be back in her man's good graces. Ever since she had busted up in his office and shoved those precious papers under his nose Viceroy had been acting more and more like his old self.
“You play too much,” she told him, flirting with her eyes. Viceroy had been behaving better but she was still stuck out in that damn pool house and she was ready to be inside and in his bed. He had one more night to play games with her. One more night and she was gonna have to rip off his pants and take his ass to the mat.
“Nah.” He leaned against her laughing. “I'm serious. Did you do that mothafucka, baby? Did you off his ass?”
The smile dropped straight from Selah's face. Her mug was brick-wall serious and she stared right into her husband's eyes as she nodded her head and said, “Yep.”
 
It was getting close to crunch time and the final projections were almost in. The race was so tight that the TV announcers covering the local events were reluctant to make any predictions and everyone agreed this thing could go either way.
Viceroy was getting worried. Suge had texted and said him and Mink were both running late, but Barron still hadn't been heard from and was nowhere to be found.
“Where the hell is my boy?” Viceroy stood up and demanded loudly. Heads got to shaking and Selah caught his eye from across the room and shrugged her shoulders as if to say she was just as puzzled as he was.
Viceroy's earlier cool was just about all gone. The liquor was making him tight and the fact that Barron wasn't there for one of the most important events in his career was pissing him off. The boy had been walking around with a real fucked-up chip on his shoulder for weeks now, and as soon as this election was over and things settled down Viceroy was gonna have to get with his ass and tighten him up.
Suddenly folks jumped up and started clapping and screaming with glee. “You just passed Stewart Baker!” one of his staffers shouted. “You're in first place with over fifty percent of the precincts reporting!”
“Yeah!” Viceroy hollered in victory. His heart thudded in his chest as he glanced up at the screen. This shit was between him and Rodney Ruddman now, and Rodney was behind. Poetic fuckin' justice. No matter how cool he tried to act, he
wanted
this shit. He wanted it badder than bad. The joint was really jumping now. There were about fifty people crowded around the television set with their eyes wide and their mouths running a million miles a minute. His posse was chanting now. Loud as hell. Counting down the percentages of precincts that had reported their results, knowing that soon the margin of victory would be impossible to beat.
“Fifty-eight! Fifty-nine! Sixty! Sixty-one! Sixty-two . . .”
Viceroy was just about to open his mouth to join them when his phone vibrated on his waist and he snatched it off his clip.
“Yeah?” he spoke loudly over the roar of his staff.
“What was that?” He stuck his finger in his ear. “Speak up, I can't hear you. Huh? What did you say? Hold on a quick second . . .”
With the eyes of his entire team glued to the television screen and their chants rising in the air, Viceroy slipped out of the room and strode over to the small kitchen in the main foyer of the suite and then stepped inside.
 
“Stay with Channel Two for more election night coverage! It was looking like a one-man race there for a minute, but suddenly Stewart Baker and Rodney Ruddman both have had a sudden surge in votes. And now, with ninety-seven percent of the precincts reporting, local stations are calling the race for chairman of the railroad commission . . . a three-way tie!”
A deafening roar went up in the presidential suite as Team Dominion reacted to the news. Some were disappointed that Viceroy hadn't gotten the outright win, but others were excited at the chance to keep this thing going with a run-off election.
“Viceroy! Viceroy! Viceroy!” Everybody was jumping up and down and chanting, and then a male voice rose over the noise.
“Mr. Dominion? Where's Mr. Dominion?”
People started looking around and a low buzz of have you seen hims filled the air.
“
Has anyone seen Mr. Dominion
?”
“Check the bedroom.”
“Maybe he went to the bathroom.”
“Well, he's gotta be around here somewhere,” a young college student offered, and that's when they heard it.
“Eeeeeeeeeeek!” a high-pitched shriek rang out in the main foyer and the sound of a dropped tray and shattering wineglasses rose in the air. “Oh my
Goddddd
! He's been shot! My God, Mr. Dominion has been
shot!
”
 
To Be Continued....
Discussion Questions
1.
Viceroy has put Selah out in the poolhouse. Was his affair with her sister worse than Selah's affair with Rodney Ruddman?
2.
GiGi Molinex has been hired to throw shit up in Viceroy's election game. Will she twist Barron up against his family? Will Lil Bump become her next victim?
3.
Bunni was so hyped on her reality show drama that she failed to see the flimflam when it was being laid down on her. Now that she's peeped GiGi Molinex's game, how is she going to pay the red hot liar back and get her hood revenge?
4.
Miyoko Su has Suge by the balls. Does his loyalty to Mink outweigh his loyalty to the family? Should he have risked his sex thang with Mink to ensure the preservation of the Dominion dynasty?
5.
Rodney Ruddman is a crafty old bastard. Will his scheme against Viceroy end up backfiring against him in the long run? Has he underestimated his longtime arch-enemy?
6.
Suge promised Mink that no other woman could take the love he had for her. Her jealousy over his ex-flame could have meant disaster for the family fortune. Is she woman enough for a man like Big Suge?
7.
Pilar thinks she's hit the jackpot with her new friend Gutta. Did the scheming country diva bite off more than she can chew?
8.
Dy-Nasty called Selah from jail asking for help. In exchange for being bailed out, she promises to return Selah's engagement ring, which will get Selah off the hook with Viceroy. Should Selah trust her? Does Dy-Nasty have another trick up her sleeve?
9.
Mink is slowly changing. Her love for her dude Suge seems to be correcting some of her illicit tendencies. Did finding out the truth about her real mother and all the drama that went down between Jude and her father help her become more mature about her outlook on love?
10.
GiGi Molinex just pulled the con game of a lifetime. Is she a better schemer than Mink and Bunni combined? Or will the two Harlem scrippers come out on top in the end?
11.
Who shot Viceroy?
What can go wrong when con-mami Mink LaRue joins forces with her slick-tongued look-alike Dy-Nasty Jenkins to run a three-hundred-grand hustle on the super-rich Dominion oil family?
 
 
Dirty Rotten Liar
 
 
Available wherever books and ebooks are sold
 
 
Turn the page for an excerpt from
Dirty Rotten Liar
. . .
CHAPTER 1
W
atching your mama take her last breath was a hurtin'-ass thang.
Especially when you had a mannish hater flappin' her gums in your ear and talking trash right over her dead body!
It had all happened so fast. One minute I was chillin' down in Texas tryna pull off the flimflam of a lifetime with Uncle Suge, Bunni, and a skanky chickenhead from Philly named Dy-Nasty, and the next thing I knew, Bunni's brother Peaches was on the phone telling me my mama was about to die!
“The nursing home called and said your mama had a stroke,” Peaches had said. “I'm sorry, sweetie, but they don't think she's gonna make it.”
With those words swirling around in my head I busted straight up in the Dominion mansion and lied my ass off! I told them rich fools that my boss had just caught a stray bullet in a kick-door robbery, and then I hopped my ass on the first thing smoking back to New York City to see about my sick mama!
I made it up to the hospital just in time to catch the last few minutes of Jude Jackson's life, and I almost blacked out from grief as I stood beside her bed feeling helpless as hell as Mama pursed her twisted lips and reached out to me with her crooked hands like she was tryna tell me her deepest, darkest secret. “
Shhhlll . . . Shhhlll . . . Shhhlll . . .
” she had squinted up at me and gasped. “
Shhhlll . . . Shhhlll . . . Shhhlll . . .
”
I tried my best to make out what she was tryna say, but Mama died before she could spit it out. And now, as I stood next to her body shaking with grief, my bald-headed aunt Bibby clocked me with some wild shit that dropped me right down to my knees!
“There was two of y'all, you know. Somewhere out there in the world you got yourself a sister, Mink, 'cause you was a twin.”
My head jerked up in surprise as I squatted down with my ass touching the floor.
“C-c-come again?”
“You heard me,” Aunt Bibby snapped. “Ain't nobody stutter! Your mama shoulda been woman enough to tell you the truth straight from the jump!”
“You dirty bitch!” I spit real softly as tears ran from my eyes. Mama's spirit hadn't even left the room yet and this box-shaped bitch was already hatin'! “How the hell you sound talking bad about my mama?”
“How the hell I said it?”
My aunt put her hands on her stud hips and stared me down. She was grilling me with a killer look, but I could tell she wasn't really tryna cut me with no slick talk the way she was known for doing bitches out on the street.
“You're a twin, Mink. You can believe it baby, because it's true.”
I wiped my eyes and then smirked at her real shitty-like. Uh-huh. I knew what time it was. Aunt Bibby used to fuck with duji real bad back in the day, and her ass musta been playing with the needle again.
“See there,” I told her. “You need to stop shootin' that dog food in ya veins, cause with all that bullshit you talking you
must
be high.”
“Ain't nobody getting high and ain't nobody bullshittin' neither, Mink! My brother Moe had
two
daughters, baby. And like I said, you got you a twin!”
I stared down at my mother's still body.
Me? A
twin
?
That shit was impossible!
But then . . .
Dy-Nasty!
That guttersnipe's name exploded in my brain and my heart skipped about five beats! I looked at Aunt Bibby again and all of a sudden the room got real hot and my head started buzzing. I couldn't hardly get no air in my lungs. I tried to say something but it felt like glass splinters were sticking me all in my throat.
All I could think was,
What if that Philly heffa was my goddamn sister?
I could feel the possibility of it all down in my bones, but I damn sure didn't wanna believe it.
That trifling trick could actually be my fuckin' sister!
“Uh-uh.” I shook my head and slung snot everywhere. “You's a liar, Aunt Bibby!” I moaned as I keeled forward and hit my knees, ready to deny that shit with my last breath. “You ain't nothing but a big-ass bald-headed
liar
!”
“Mink!” Aunt Bibby barked in her jailhouse voice. “Why don't you stand up and face the truth for once in ya life! Everybody in this
room
is a goddamn liar! But the biggest liar of us all”—Aunt Bibby pointed down at the body in the bed—“was your
mama
! Jude Jackson wasn't nothin' but a
lying sack a' shit
!”
Her eyes flashed and Aunt Bibby crossed her muscled-up sailor-looking arms over her tatted-up titties and grilled me. “Now, there! I done said what the fuck I had to say, and I ain't taking none of it back neither!”
I stared at her mannish ass with my nostrils flaring like a racehorse. I wanted to
bite
that bitch! I wanted to shove my fist down her throat and make her choke on her lying-ass tongue!
But instead I stayed right there crouched down on my knees as my aunt continued to lay the cold, naked truth on me.
“Now, don't get me wrong,” Aunt Bibby said quietly. “I loved me some Jude, but that heffa didn't have a truth-bone in her whole damn body! Why you think she drove her car into that goddamn river with you sitting right there in the front seat next to her, Mink? Huh? Why you
think
, stupid girl? Not even the lowest, raggediest, black-hearted
trash-ass
mama does no crazy shit like that!”
I grilled Aunt Bibby through a watery haze of tears. Oh for true, for true, I was 'bout to clock this big beefy bitch! Just wear her ass
out
for calling my dead mama outta her name! But before I could come up off my knees Aunt Bibby nailed me with another gut shot when she opened her big mouth and said, “And while ya bullshittin', Jude didn't even give birth to y'all right there in Harlem Hospital like she said, neither.”
“What?” I squeaked. “How you know? How the hell you know something like that?”
“ 'Cause Jude
told
me!” Aunt Bibby barked. And then she glanced over at my scandalous-ass, welfare-queen grandmother, who sat in the corner styling her stolen Gucci gear with her long pretty legs crossed all proper.
“Tell her, Mama. Tell Mink the goddamn truth!”
My grandmother wagged her leg and nodded. She twisted up her lips like she was still twenty-five and fine and said, “Bibby's tellin' it right, Mink. You got a twin sister, baby. You was about three years old when Jude first brought you around here. She told everybody she went down south and had twins and put one up for adoption. So I guess you do got yourself a sister out there somewhere in the world, baby. I just wish Jude woulda told you how to find her before she drove off in all that cold water and fucked herself up!”
Cold water. Cold water. Cold water.
I was freezing inside. All the way down to my trembling bones. All I wanted to do was go somewhere where I could get warm and block out the pain and the noise, but no matter how hard I igged her, my best friend Bunni Baines just wouldn't leave me the hell alone.
Instead of flossin' fly and fancy in a big mansion down in Dallas, Texas, me and Bunni were right back home in the gritty town of Harlem. I was laying on my little cot in her bedroom with my face turned toward the wall and my eyelids squeezed tight. I was sniffling into a boogered-up snot rag I had pressed up against my stuffy nose, and the top of my head was banging like a drum. My breath felt hot and stank as I breathed through my mouth, and my bottom lip trembled as I slobbered and cried into my pillow.
“C'mon now, Mink,” Bunni begged me for the two millionth time. “You gots to get up outta this bed, boo! You gotta get your ass
up
.”
I shrugged her off, wishing she would just leave me the hell alone. Bunni was barking about how I needed to get my shit together and get back on my game, but I kept tryna tell her I didn't have no fight left in me. It was gone. All the grime, all the hustle, and every drop of my love for the con game.
Poof
. It was all gone.
“Madame Mink,” Peaches jumped in with his deep, baritone voice. “Me and Bunni know what you going through right now, baby. But the funeral is gonna be starting in an hour, darling! Now, I'ma need you to get up out that bed and get yourself dressed, sugar, and ready to roll!”
I laid there and igged the hell outta Peaches too.
Shoot, I wasn't thinkin' about him, and I wasn't thinkin' about Bunni, and I damn sure wasn't thinkin' about going to Mama's funeral neither!
Bunni sighed real loud, then crawled underneath my blanket and snuggled up behind me like she used to do when we was kids. She wrapped her arms around me and spooned me, rocking me back and forth as she tried her best to convince me that I needed to stand up on my feet and face what was left of my shitty little life.
And it was definitely shitty too. Just when I thought I was at the top of my game and everything flowing through my hood was damn good, I'd been blasted with a major shot to the gut that took my feet out from under me and sat me right down on my plump apple ass.
“It's been a whole damn week, Mink,” Bunni said from behind me, “and, girlfriend, you ain't put enough food in your stomach to feed a fly! Hmph. You ain't combed your hair or brushed your teef.” She backed off of me a lil bit. “And you ain't took a damn bath neither!”
I still didn't say shit. I just laid there in igg mode.
“I don't know why you be listening to that old crazy-ass Bibby
anyway
.” Peaches jumped back in with a whole lotta bass in his voice this time. “Jude was your
mama
. And no matter
what
the hell she did, or how she did it, she was still your
mama
!”
“Jude was a
liar
!” I screamed into my pillow. My whole chest ached from Mama's lies and her low-down betrayal. “She was a goddamn
liar
!”
“Ermmm herrrm,” Peaches said agreeably, and even without looking at him I could tell his lips was twisted.
“Yeah, that's right. She was a liar. But so are
you
, Madame Mink! Lying is what schemers like us
do
! So get your ass up outta that bed so we can get down to that funeral home and make sure they send your lying-ass mama off right!”
Deep in my heart I knew I had to go pay my last respects to the woman who had given birth to me but I still didn't wanna move.
So I laid there on my shaky lil cot in Bunni's junky room and thought about the next moves I was gonna make in my life. I had always been the type of slick, carefree diva who flounced around flossin' like everything in my life was all Hennessy and weed, but for the first time in a real long time I was forced to take a real good look down the gutter road that I had traveled. I
made
myself remember all the shit I had tried to erase from my mind. All the shit that I had been running from for so many years. The kind of shit that had been way too painful for a thirteen-year-old girl to live with, so she had fought like hell to forget it.

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