Shetani's Sister (11 page)

No, he decided, he would have to alter his strategy with the Crane problem. Ninety-percent certainty that Crane was a squad traitor wasn't enough. He would devise a trap for Crane to prove him 100 percent guilty or innocent.

He pulled away for the station to brief the 11:00-p.m.-to-8:00-a.m. shift on Shetani.

Inside the motel room, shirtless Crane finished shooting coke into a vein. Petra sat fully clothed on the bed beside him.

“Don't you want me to hit you with a light one?” he said as he stroked the bluish veins on her forearm.

She jerked her arm away. She, the stone H-junkie, enjoyed an interior chuckle. “Hell, no! I just snort a little. I don't want to be a fuckin' dope fiend.”

He said, “You forgot to give me something.”

She took a five-hundred-dollar roll of bills from her bosom and held it in her fist. He held out his palm.

“I didn't really forget. Listen, baby, your candy account is almost four grand in the red. I've got orders from the boss to start deducting a grand a week from the payoff until it's paid.”

He glared at her as he took the money. He shrugged his shoulders. “Massa's word is de law.”

Her face flushed scarlet. “That's nasty cute, you racist prick,” she hissed.

His fingers crawled up her inner thigh toward her sex nest.

“Leo, what is the important matter that you wanted to talk about?” she said as she clamped her thighs together.

He got to his feet and strolled the carpet for a moment. “Well, uh, we're going to have to tighten up the security of our relationship…I, uh…”

His hesitancy made her paranoid. She crossed her legs and leaned back on her elbows before she cut him off.

“Say what! Why? What's going down, Leo?”

He stood in the blue heat of her eyes for several heartbeats. “Doll, nothing went down. I just think we should be more careful. Believe me, everything is super-normal.”

She grimaced. “Hey, copper, what the fuck is super-normal?”

He forced a grin and sat down beside her. “All right. Here it is. I heard a rumor—I repeat, a rumor—that a citizens' group has hired a firm of private investigators to look into the vice situation in Hollywood.” He paused to try for a lighthearted laugh that bombed her ears.

“So how do we deal with that shit, Leo?”

He went on. “We stop meeting every night. I'll tape any new squad license numbers and other info under the middle phone ledge inside the drugstore. I'll meet you every Saturday night, around eleven, at different motels to get my coke and payoff. What motel or any other item will be with the squad info. The main thing is to be always alerted for a tail anytime you're in the street. Got it?”

She studied him. She was certain he wasn't leveling with her. “Yeah. I got it,” she said softly.

He leaned to suck her earlobe. “Take off your clothes, doll,” he whispered.

She moved her head away. “Leo, I don't want to fuck tonight. How about settling for a blow job?”

He unzipped his pants and lay back on the bed. She knelt and attacked his organ with oral ferocity until he ejaculated.

Fearful and distrustful of Crane, Petra called Shetani to get permission to bring the stable home at 1:00 a.m. This was several hours earlier than usual. All the girls had been given bedtime shots of skag by 2:00 a.m. Shetani and Petra sat on a sofa in the redwood den of the mansion. She had just finished a detailed rundown of her motel tryst with Crane. She nervously watched purple-robed Shetani's face harden as she waited for his response.

Finally, he fractured the silence with a rumble of his basso-profundo voice. “Girl, it was a mistake to let you play me into pulling the girls off the track early. I see at least a couple grand blown away by bullshit.”

He rumbled on, with his nightmare eyes mesmerizing her. “Bitch, you sounded so motherfucking shaky on the phone, I knew we had a legit problem. But, shit, it turns out you reacted like a dumb turnout with some cunt vibes off that sucker pig. If all you ho's get busted, I got the bankroll to raise everybody.”

He leaned his brutish face close to hers. “You're supposed to be the toughest and strongest ho in the family. Don't you know, bitch, that they ain't gonna have no more guts than you got. When you shit your pants, they shit with you. We got a three-way hook in that pig's ass. Don't waste your time trying to read his mind, bitch. Read the license-plate numbers he gives you. I'll know you're hot when you get busted.”

He stood up. He took a length of chain and a padlock off the fireplace ledge. He slapped the chain against his thigh. “Follow me. I'm gonna lock you up until noon tomorrow.”

She fell to her knees and clasped her arms around his legs. She shrieked, “Oh, please, Master! Whip my ass, anything. I can't stand that tight place and that darkness! Please!”

He stooped and jerked her to her feet. “Follow me or I'll lock you up for the rest of the week.”

Sobbing, she followed him down a hallway to a mahogany door. He swung it open. He flipped a light switch. They descended a stairway to the musky basement. A small cell with silver-and-red-painted bars shone eerily in the pale light. It had been constructed by a prior occupant of the mansion with a passion for bondage-and-discipline sex play.

“Please, Master, don't put me in there!” she wailed as he hooked an arm around her waist to half carry her into the cell.

He stepped out and slammed the door. He locked it with the chain and padlock. He stood staring at her. She moved close to the cell door. Her eyes were dry now, and her voice was clear and calm. “Master, I'm taking this from you. But I know this is unfair and you'll know when you think about it. I don't deserve this, after all I've endured for you. Think about it, Master.”

He turned away and went up the staircase. She squatted to pee into a hole in the floor. Then she went to sit down on her bed, a slab of thick steel jutting from the concrete wall.

When Shetani reached the top of the stairs, he heard the ringing of the den phone. He hurried and picked up, to Pee Wee's troubled voice.

“Daddy, I'm in Chicago, at the airport. I took a nice order from a customer, but got a big hassle behind it…”

He cut in. “Say, girl, run it down. You—”

She cut him off: “I can't run it down on the phone. Daddy, I'm on the way to L.A. Bye!”

He stood in the middle of the floor, glaring at the receiver in his fist.

“Master, can I come in?” a sugary voice purred behind him.

He whirled around to tongue-lash the intruder. It was Tuta in the doorway, gazing at him with dreamy eyes. She wore see-through pink bikini panties and top.

He constructed a smile. “Hi, sugar, come in and listen to some music.”

She smiled wickedly and came to him. He cradled the phone and hugged her. He froze as her fingertips stroked across his ass and then his testicles. He disengaged.

She gave him a look before she went to an old Seeburg jukebox. She pushed in the coin slot and punched on “You'll Never Find” by Lou Rawls. She sat down beside him and dropped her head into his lap. He squirmed, for he was naked beneath the robe. He could feel the pressure of her head against his scrotum. Her green eyes sparkled with guile and hot mischief as she looked up into his tense face.

“Master, do you think I'm sexy?” she said in a contralto whisper.

He nodded.

“Master, you won't get salty if I ask you something personal?”

“No,” he croaked.

“Have you got a dick?”

He frowned. “Don't ask silly questions.”

She rose out of his lap to press her shoulder against him. She giggled. “I'm serious. I touched your balls. I mean, I'm a curious bitch. I want to know whether my man's dick is sweet or sour, long or short, fat or skinny, ugly or pretty, or whatever. Is that unreasonable?”

His left cheek twitched. “Shut up, girl. You can't see or have my dick yet.”

She moved away, her cute mouth petulant. “I'll work after the other girls come home. Please, let me suck it for just a couple of minutes,” she begged.

He shook his head. “No, Tuta, not tonight.”

She sprang to her feet. Her high-yellow cheeks were rosy with angry frustration. “If I had the right paint job, like Petra, I'm sure I could get it.”

He stared at her until she averted her eyes. In a painful silence, he, the wizard rapper, discovered for the first time that he couldn't rap himself into control.

He fought against confiding in her the secret fact that she was his blood baby sister, returned to life—she'd think he was crazy, he thought.

He stood and kissed her forehead. “We're gonna have lots of fun together, Tuta. Now, go to bed and wake up sweet.”

She brushed her lips against his mouth and giggled as she turned to leave.

He grabbed her arm and pulled her close. “What's so funny, girl?” he asked sternly.

She smiled. “You won't get salty?” He shook his head as they locked eyes. “I was thinkin', if you don't get me off soon, I'll find a nice street mailbox. I'll drop my bread in it and rub my pussy 'ginst it till I get off. Master, ain't that funny?”

He dropped his arms from around her waist. She wasn't smiling when she broke away and left the room.

Rucker dressed for work several mornings after he discovered Crane's intimate connection to Petra. He hadn't taken a drink since he left New York and had resumed attending AA meetings. He hadn't yet thought of a way to trap Crane. His difficulty in devising a plan of entrapment was due to his reluctance to use other cops in a plan. However, he was certain that very soon he would solve the problem, since his mind addressed it for most of his waking hours.

He left the house and drove down Sunset. He frowned to see a parade of half-naked hookers. They strutted beneath the bright early-September sun like vulgar birds with painted faces.

At a stoplight, he heard a familiar voice.

“Hi, Sergeant.”

He turned his head toward Leon, under the wheel of his gold Caddie, stopped adjacent to his Lincoln. He was irritated that Leon had spoken to him with a passenger in his car. Unsmilingly, Rucker nodded at Leon as the light turned green.

Inside the Caddie, Leon turned off Sunset onto Western Avenue. “Rainbow, that was Sergeant Rucker, the only good cop I've ever knowed. He's the boss of the special ho squad in Hollywood,” Leon said to his dwarfish companion.

“Well, bro, I guess you must know the only good cop alive,” Rainbow said as he hunched bony shoulders inside his shocking-pink sports coat.

Leon pulled into a supermarket parking lot. Rainbow flashed his gold choppers in his flat black face as he tipped his sky-blue hat to an Arab woman pushing a grocery cart. She gave him a venomous look.

Leon parked. They got out and split up. They had fake Cartier wristwatches and phony diamond rings. They hustled the grocery shoppers for nearly a hundred bucks apiece net, in less than an hour. They got in the Caddie and emptied a pint bottle of 100-proof vodka.

As Leon drove down Sunset, Rainbow said, “Bro, downin' slum is great, but I ain't goin' to stop tryin' to cop a ho and pimp my ass off before I die.”

A half-block away, Leon parked near a cluster of hookers. They sat there, watching and wishing for a chance or cue to take a shot.

At that moment, high in his Hollywood Hills mansion, Shetani was refusing a Pee Wee Smith request.

“Girl, I'm still hurtin', too, about the cruel way that customer hurt Bianca. I can understand why you want to send a piece of the sting to her mama for the plastic-surgery nut…”

He wasn't a square-ass sucker who would send even a buck to the Apple, he thought. He paused to snort coke from a diamond-encrusted spoon. She lay in his arms and shook her head when he moved the spoon toward her nose. She sighed.

“But I feel so shitty about keepin' the whole six grand after what she went through. Daddy, please let's send at least a grand. I'm so—”

He cut her off as he stared at a reflection of their nude bodies in a ceiling mirror.

“Now, listen, Baby Wee, don't forget what was said about the case in the
Milwaukee Journal
that Eli copped from the out-of-town newsstand. Remember, the Beer Town police are looking for a girl that split the scene who fits your description like a glove. They got a eyewitness, Wee, waiting to finger you. The beer pigs have run a FBI make on Bianca's prints. Then they'll wire up the Apple pigs to find out if the bitch that split was also in Sugar Red's stable.”

He paused to take a sip of wine. He continued: “Suppose it hits the street grapevine that Bianca's mama got some payoff bread from the West Coast. Why, shit, a slew of motherfuckers—my enemies, and the Apple police—would figure the bread was sent by the little black fox with a doll face who blew that peckerwood away. If the heat don't pick up your trail, Red will be out here to shake us down. Then we'll pay off. Wee, don't crack nothin' else about that score and murder. We got to worry about keepin' you, the livin', out of the joint.”

She moved out of his arms. They lay in thunderous silence. She bombed it with a harsh whisper: “When you gonna fire Petra, like you promised?”

He glared at her. “You motherfuckin' bitch. Don't pressure me. You ain't in a position to demand nothin'. You jumped bond in L.A., bitch. Brucker, the pig that killed Big Cat, is achin' to bust you.”

She spat out, “It's Rucker, not Brucker.”

“Shut up. You so hot you couldn't be the bottom woman. So get out of my face with that shit!”

She slid from the bed with a mean face and eased from the room. She went into her beige-and-rust bedroom, down the hallway. She sat on the side of a twin bed, with her shoulders slumped. She lit a cigarette. She stared, trancelike, through a window at a carpet of jade lawn, ringed by yellow roses. A pair of blue jays squabbled raucously in a sun-dappled tree.

Pee Wee's roommate came out of the adjoining bathroom. “Hi, lucky girl,” terry-robed Tuta said as she sat down before a dresser mirror to make up her face.

Pee Wee frowned as she looked into the mirror and saw Tuta staring at her. “Why are you looking at me like that? Say, I'm not a lucky girl. I'm Pee Wee.”

Tuta shrugged and dabbed cleansing cream on her face. “Pee Wee, I'm sorry you're upset. I just thought you were lucky to be in Daddy's bed for two hours and thirty-five minutes.” She paused to say wistfully, “I've never been in his bed for even one minute.”

After an extended silence, Pee Wee said gently, “Tu, I didn't mean to hurt your feelin's…That was my first time makin' love with him. I don't feel lucky.”

Tuta spun around to face Pee Wee. “Please don't get salty, but tell me, was it good?”

Pee Wee smiled. “I'll tell ya, 'cause you're a sweet baby. It was a seven on a ten scale, considerin' my long bread he's counted. Shetani fucks like a tiger with a toothache. You know, kinda hateful-like. My dead daddy, Big Cat, was a ten-plus in bed, 'cause he was full of sweetness and warmth.”

Tuta laughed and turned back to her makeup. “Maybe he fucks Petra in a sweeter way. Maybe he loves her.”

Pee Wee belly-laughed. “Love, sugar? These cold-blooded niggers don't love no ho, 'specially a dope-fiend player like Shetani. Don't forget, he put Petra in that cell 'cause she brought the stable home early.”

Pee Wee went to take a shower. Tuta finished her makeup and dressed for early-afternoon work in a lavender minidress and gold shoes.

Pee Wee came out of the bathroom as Tuta was leaving. “Good catchin', lil' girl,” Pee Wee said as she kissed Tuta's cheek.

“Thanks, Mommy,” Tuta said as she barely moved her behind into the hallway to escape Pee Wee's playful slap at it.

Pee Wee was surprised to see her turn left, toward Shetani's bedroom, instead of right, to the staircase leading to the first floor.

Pee Wee stepped back and peeked down the hallway. She saw Tuta knock and then enter Shetani's bedroom.

Pee Wee crept to the side of the cracked door with bare feet. She craned her neck to eavesdrop.

Inside the room, Tuta was on the carpet beside the bed, on her hands and knees. Her dress was hiked up to her waist. Her panties were pulled down to expose her yellow ass and vulva.

“Tuta, I'm gonna hit you this time. Next time, get your street shot from Petra with the rest of the girls,” he said as he spiked into a vein between her vulva and inside lower buttock. He squeezed in the shot when the syringe turned scarlet with her blood.

“Thanks, Master. I love it when you hit me,” she said as she stood. She pulled up her panties and arranged her dress. He patted the bed. She sat down beside him. He put an arm around her waist.

“I want us to have some adventure tonight, together around eleven. Will you keep it a stone secret?”

She nodded vigorously. His voice was so low and soft that Pee Wee scarcely heard him.

He went on, “The twins and me will pick you up on Vine a half-block south of Sunset.”

She leaned to half bite and suck his bottom lip. He drew back as if snake-bit.

“Where we goin'?” she asked in a whisper that Pee Wee didn't hear.

“We're gonna cabaret at Memory Lane, in South Central L.A.”

She frowned. “If I leave the track at eleven, my check-in bread to Petra will be short.”

He winked and stroked her shoulder. “I'll make your bread right for check-in.”

They touched lips. She stood.

Pee Wee raced back to her bedroom. Tuta hurried downstairs to get into the van for the trip to the fast track.

At 9:30 p.m. that night, Pee Wee called a cab to pick her up at an address down the road from home. She slipped out of the mansion. She was wearing a black evening gown, black wig with heavy bangs, and dark glasses.

The cab took her to a fast-food restaurant across the boulevard from the Memory Lane cabaret. She sat drinking coffee near a window. At 11:25, she saw Shetani and Tuta leave the van and enter the club. She waited fifteen minutes before she crossed the street and went into the crowded place. She took a seat at the bar.

Several black pussy-chasers hit on her immediately. She told them she was waiting for her husband to join her.

She spotted Shetani and Tuta at a ringside table, with champagne in a bucket. They faced Pee Wee, intently watching Sir Lady Java, a curvaceous transvestite dancing topless in a spot of copper light to savage band music.

“How about taking a picture, gorgeous lady,” a wiry house photographer asked as he touched the camera slung around his neck.

She smiled. “Thanks for the compliment…You can take a picture of that girl in the lavender dress sitting with the man in the gray silk suit at ringside.”

His eyes narrowed knowingly.

“Can you zoom in on them from here?”

He nodded. “Ordinarily, the fee is five—”

She cut him off: “I'll give you twenty for the shot.”

He aimed the camera and took the picture with a flash of light. “I'll be back in a few minutes. I've got a developing setup in the basement,” he said as he turned and walked away.

She ordered a champagne cocktail while she waited.

He returned with a vividly clear image of Shetani with his pet.

Pee Wee left the club, intending to walk down King Boulevard to get a passing cab.

“Hey, pretty, what's happening?” she heard a voice say behind her.

She stopped and glanced over her shoulder. One of the pussy-chasers had followed her.

“Cuteness, I'll drop you off on the moon…anywhere,” he said tipsily as he galloped into her face.

Her bandit eyes told her his silk suit was in the five-to-seven-bill class. That was no guarantee that he was carrying big bread in his leather, she thought.

Her fingertips gently held him at bay for an instant to feel the leather in his inner coat pocket. It could be empty. However, she was certain the fiery diamond ring on his left pinkie was real.

She bared her pearly teeth. “You're sweet, but I don't know you,” she cooed and started to turn away.

He grabbed the sleeve of her blue fox jacket. “You're Iona. I'm Roger Lee. We met at the bar. You said your husband…”

She put an index finger across his big mouth. “Please, don't mention him to me…Where are you parked?”

His maroon eyes glowed with crotch joy as he led her into a new silver Eldorado parked on the club lot. He pressed himself against her as he let her into the car. He got in under the wheel and eye-swept her curves.

“Roger, please, don't look at me like that. Take me to Carson,” she said sweetly.

She coyly switched her eyes to the dashboard. He moved across the seat to box her in. His left hand, heavy with alcohol, stroked her knee. She turned her face away from a gust of rancid breath.

“Please, Roger, stop!” she squealed with pro-ho come-on in her voice. She opened her thighs to his sucker left hand, bearing the huge diamond. She recoiled and closed her thighs when his index finger penetrated her.

“Ouch! I'm tight. Use your little finger at first,” she said as she wet his pinkie with her spit from her index finger.

He jabbed it into her until she cried out, “Oowee! I'm so hot!” She unzipped his fly. His erected enemy sprang from his pants. She pressed his left hand against her vulva. She slipped the diamond off his slimy pinkie as she swung onto his lap. She dropped the ring into her bosom as she rubbed her sex nest against his rod.