Sweeter Than Honey (12 page)

Undigested steak and potatoes raced up my throat and out of my mouth, splattering onto the sparkling crystal when I saw a young girl’s brains oozing out of the hole in her skull onto the floor. Backing up, I held my hands in the air. “Aw, fuck no, man. I ain’t touching her. What the fuck did you do that for, G? I’m out.”

“Out my ass!” Valentino yelled, placing a gun to my head. “You either clean this shit up so no one traces her back to me, or you join her and I’ll pay somebody to dispose of yo’ ass too, nigga. Don’t believe me, try me.” He shoved the barrel into my mouth.

Mumbling, I said, “I’m your boy, G.”

“Nigga, that’s why I called you. Now…” Valentino lowered the gun, then pointed at the girl.

Angrily biting my sore bottom lip, I felt sweat pouring from my forehead while vomit seeped into my mouth. Swallowing, I stooped closer to the body, then gasped, “My God, she’s so beautiful and so young.”

“If it makes you feel better, nigga, you can wish the bitch a happy birthday as you’re burying her ass. She’ll be twenty-one in an hour. The body bag is in the basement in the first closet to your left. Don’t open shit else.”

C
reeping along Las Vegas Boulevard in bumper-to-bumper traffic was every car from a hooptie to a Bentley glowing beneath a billion blinding night-lights. From the Stratosphere, Wynn, Treasure Island, and Harrahs, to Beuax Virage, Le Mirage, MGM Grand, Mandalay Bay, and the Hotel, to off in the distance at the Luxor, for miles all one saw was dazzling women and flashing lights: some sparkled between water beams, thunder, and fire while others caressed ships, lions, castles, or the pyramid.

Each casino strived to outdo the next by attracting gamblers with sideshows more spectacular than those performed by the automobile racers, but the outcomes were the same. Every outdoor show in Vegas created a traffic jam. No doubt Sin City was the premier attraction worth seeing at least once in everyone’s lifetime, but right now all these damn cars needed to get the hell out of my way.

I contemplated abandoning my Jaguar in the middle of the street to get myself a stiff drink, but some shyster’s ink would dry on the pawnshop’s papers before I made it to the bar. One could buy or sell anything from sex, diamonds, furs, and cars, to the plasma in their blood because pawnshops, like prostitution, in Vegas were more plentiful than casinos.

Honk! Honk!

Leaning on my horn, I yelled out my window, “Unobservant, inconsiderate fuck! Just move up two damn inches so I can pull into the fuckin’ driveway. My goodness. I can’t take this tonight. Let me get off the Strip until these tourists finish their after-midnight sightseeing before I shoot somebody.” I had to chill for a moment until I figured out what the two Negroes in my life were up to and why. A lot of unusual shit had happened over the last few hours and my gut instinct told me things were going to get a lot worse before they got better. Finally arriving at my destination, I refused to extend courtesy to the drivers ahead of me patiently waiting for assistance from the parking attendant.

Never giving a stranger access to all of my keys, I handed my car key and a fifty to the attendant at the Bellagio. I’d already locked Valentino’s money in my trunk and activated the lock so no one could search the contents. Strutting inside, I stopped at the first place serving alcohol, the Fontana Bar, draped with a décor of blazing red curtains. Dian Diaz onstage singing “No more tears for you, and now I’m over you…” was perhaps a sign I needed to let Benito go and meet someone new. Any man who was devious enough to jeopardize my livelihood was an abusive, controlling bastard I needed to live without.

Should I wait until our relationship escalated to violence or do what I knew I had to? Embracing my inevitable breakup with Benito, I took the only empty seat at the bar next to a gorgeous woman wearing a blue sheer dress with a split parting damn near up to her pussy. Pulling back my stool, I gazed at the vivid red, green, and blue tones swirling throughout the cream-colored carpet. If I were in the mood to recruit girl number thirteen, I’d hire this diva-bitch on the spot, but quality superseded quantity.

My twelve perfect escorts were manageable and in the highest demand. Girl seven used to be a geisha. Men liked the way she draped herself in layers, painted her face highlighting her red lips, swooped her hair atop her head, and took small steps toward them. Girl eight had the bluest eyes, the blondest hair, and smiled, giggling at every word that came out of a man’s mouth. Girl eight made her men feel smart and funny. Girl nine was a Polynesian double-jointed beauty.

Pimps and madams who recruited every available woman worked ten times harder than me and made only a fraction of the money I earned. Work smarter, not harder was a motto every woman should employ.

“What would you like?” the bartender asked in a tone insinuating I could have any top-shelf liquor in view or his fine sexy ass.

“A double beautiful heated,” I requested, scanning the lounge. I recognized a dozen men who were my clients dining with their wives or girlfriends, but I pretended not to notice because some of them were probably wondering why I wasn’t at IP. Irrespective of marital status, every high roller who frequented Vegas eventually made his way to IP for unforgettable nights of sexual pleasure. Men were shallow and I’d taught my girls how to make them feel extra special. Sunny was a natural at pleasing her johns, which unquestionably made her my top girl virtually overnight.

“But of course,” the bartender replied, pivoting his nice firm butt toward me.

Of all days, why had Benito made me late for work today and why had Valentino demanded I go straight to Immaculate Perception, pick up his money, then go straight home? If Valentino weren’t so busy trying to control everyone around him, he’d know that Lace danced to the beat of her own tune, not his. I’d go home whenever, if ever, I decided to go home. Retrieving my cell phone from my purse, I dialed Sunny’s number.

The woman to my right glanced at the lighted display on my phone, then quickly looked away.

What was this bitch up to?

“Enjoy,” the bartender said, flashing a smile and setting a glass of steamed water before me as he tilted the second snifter with Grand Marnier and Courvoisier atop.

Since I wouldn’t see Sunny at work tonight, I’d wait for her at her condo and fire Sunny when she got off; then I’d go home. From this day forth, Lace St. Thomas was a woman of her every word. I was serious. This was Sunny’s last day working for Valentino. But I could start up my own operation and hire Sunny as my personal assistant. That way I could keep Sunny close enough to make sure her impulsive ways didn’t get her hurt. Or killed.

The call went directly to voice mail, so I redialed the number this time, flipping my phone over so the nosy trick seated to my right molesting the rim of her martini glass with her tongue wouldn’t be up in my business.

Careful not to mention my name or Sunny’s, I left a brief message, “Hey, give me a call as soon as you get this.”

Whispering into the wind, the woman next to me said, “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”

Now, that bitch was certifiably insane. Where in the fuck did that come from? And who in the hell was she talking to? Probably trippin’ over some man.

I shook my head. I’d learned a long time ago that women had to observe their surroundings at all times. Most women like the one beside me were victimized because they lived in their fucking heads, fantasizing about shit that was far from reality.

I made him hit me because I wouldn’t shut up. He really is sorry this time. He loves me. He promised he’d never beat me again, so I’ma stay with him.

Until what? He beat her ass again or killed her? Every three seconds an American woman is beaten. And thirty percent of all female homicides in the U.S. are the results of domestic violence. So a battered woman swallows her poison every second she stays with her abuser. Some women perish slowly while others die instantly.

My having gone through that bullshit for years was the reason I kept my gun loaded. Most women couldn’t tell if a fly on their nose regurgitated on them because they’d swat it away without thinking, feeling, or looking. That’s why these fucked-up millionaires and billionaires and broke-ass men swarming around women like buzzards could prey upon any one of these whores for little or nothing. For real, deal or no deal, women would offer up pussy for free!

A woman would give her precious body to a complete stranger hoping he’d like her enough to, what? Buy her something pretty, give her a dollar or two, take her home to the wife he’d never mentioned, what? Most women didn’t know and didn’t think about what they wanted, so it didn’t matter if a repulsive maggot dressed in a nice suit or sagging jeans devoured a piece of meat or degraded them. Same results. Women literally permitted men to dissolve them into manure and then those same low-life men could convince a woman that she wasn’t smart enough to wipe the shit from her own ass without his permission.

A raspy voice resonated in my right ear, “You have beautiful green eyes.”

“Huh? What?” I said, looking at the woman’s hardened nipples showing through her thin blue dress. I’d had my share of threesomes, foursomes, and thensomes with both men and women and could tell from the way her plump red lips suctioned her middle finger before flicking her tongue on the tip of her nail that she knew how to please more than a dick. Her long, lean legs were now crossed. Toenails and fingernails nicely manicured. She tucked her long black artificial hair behind her ear. Nice wig but it didn’t match the natural brown strands of her eyebrows that the black liner pencil had missed.

“I complimented you on your eyes. They’re beautiful. Like you.”

Damn, her deep voice was sexy. If I hired her to book appointments, every man in the bar would immediately drop off his date at the hotel and head straight to IP. If I had sex with her, we’d come until the sun set.

“Thanks,” I said, turning away and sipping the warm brown liquor from the clear snifter.

What were Benito and Valentino up to? Whatever ship was getting ready to sink wasn’t going down with me on it, because I traveled with my life preserver at all times.

My phone rang. On the caller ID the number showed
private
. I always ignored private calls, but it might’ve been Sunny so I answered, “Yes?”

“Don’t yes me. This is your mother.”

The heartbeat thumping in my throat practically knocked me off my stool. Composing myself, I casually replied, “You’ve got the wrong number.”

Rita did have the wrong number. Giving birth didn’t make a woman a mother. I hadn’t been her daughter since conception. For a second, I thought about Jean, my father, wondering what he looked liked. Where he lived.

“You know I wouldn’t call you if I didn’t have to. I don’t need a damn thing from you. Honey needs you. She’s dying from cancer. I want you to take your ungrateful ass straight to the airport and get on the first plane into Flagstaff. Do you hear me?”

Once a bitch, always a bitch. I wanted to hang up in Rita’s face. But I couldn’t. “How’d you get my number?”

“You still askin’ dumb questions. I always know where you are.”

Well, Rita’s response clarified quite a few unanswered questions I had. My mother didn’t look for me because she didn’t want me.

Shifting my focus to my sister, I asked, “How sick is she?”

“I just said she’s dying. What are you, deaf or something? We’ll see you at eleven sharp at Flagstaff Med. There’s a six fifty-five morning flight from LAS to FLG that stops in Phoenix and arrives at Flagstaff at ten forty. Oh, and come prepared to stay a few days. The doctor said we might need some of your bone marrow or something. Honey is calling me, I gotta go,” Rita said, hanging up the phone.

God, I hate her. But I love my sister. Always have. Always will. I didn’t want Honey to die without holding her, without telling her how much I love her. But lying up in a hospital volunteering for doctors to cut, remove, then donate any parts of my flawless body was out of the question. Swallowing what was left of my drink, I tossed a twenty on the bar and pushed away from the counter.

The lady in blue seemed preoccupied as she looked across the lounge scanning the room for remnants of a prospective date.

“Good luck,” I said, turning my back on the woman.

Then I heard her raspy voice echo, “Nice seeing you, Lace.”

Aw, hell no!

Tapping her on the shoulder, I firmly asked, “What did you just say?”

“I said, ‘Nice lace.’”

Before leaving, I took a long, hard look at that bitch’s brown eyes peering beneath her gray contacts. I’d heard her right the first time. She’d called me Lace.

“W
hat are you doing with a body bag in your basement?” I asked Valentino, trying not to look at the dead body lying at my feet, wondering if my bloody shoes or soon-to-be bloody hands would become Exhibit A if I got charged with her death.

If I’d taken Lace’s advice and gotten a job, I wouldn’t have been so available to Valentino. Why did Johnnie Cochran have to die before I had a chance to hire him? I’d heard he’d done pro bono work. Surely he would’ve represented a national icon like me for free. I was certain Lace would let me rot behind bars before bailing me out believing I’d killed this girl.

“See, that’s the difference between a sergeant and a general. A general prepares for war in time of peace. Get your monkey ass downstairs, nigga. Now!”

Some black men were worse than white men. Give a brotha a little power or authority and he thought he had to prove himself worthy of being the white man’s equal. A black man in America would never be equal to the white man, but the black man would readily sacrifice another black man trying to make it.
See, boss, I done good. I caught this here nigga trying to be like us. I’m a good overseer. If ya wants me too, I’s hang this nigga, boss.

Didn’t matter if the black man was Mike, Ike, Michael, Wesley, Red, or Richard, the white man had all of those brothas believing they’d made
it
, whatever it was, simply because those black men had become successful utilizing their talents. But those same black men still couldn’t fight, sing, act, joke, or laugh without the white man’s permission.

The white man giveth and the white man tooketh away whenever he felt like it. Black men were whitewashed. Selling the white man’s drugs to black people in his own community. Shooting black mothers, babies, and his own brothers over territory the fools didn’t even own. Killing people over the white man’s drugs and white man’s money while the white man vacationed in Europe off the currency he’d stolen from the stupid black man, then exchanged for euros while the black man sat behind bars serving twice the time for the same exact crime committed by a white man.

Didn’t Valentino know that the white man could take all of his shit, lock his ass up, and swallow the key to his future? I sure did. When Uncle Sam slapped a for-sale notice on everything except my ass, Valentino bailed me out and introduced me to Lace.

Like a gofer, I’d raced to the basement and sure nuff discovered a stack of body bags behind door number one. Sweat streamed from my pores. “What the fuck am I getting myself into?” Counting from bottom to top, I mouthed, “One, two, three…twelve, thirteen.” I closed my eyes praying that the eleven escorts plus Lace’s names were nowhere on the remaining bags. There were two more doors, but I was in the damn basement afraid that an alarm would sound if I tried to escape. “Fuck.”

I stood there wondering how many black men were delivered through the back door to the U.S. from Iraq in body bags. Or dismembered? Or discharged, mentally unstable, left to their own devices to find a job or a black woman with a job? How many more soldiers would senselessly die before the war on black oil ended? If the president and Congress were so pro war, why didn’t they pick up semiautomatic weapons, load their wives, husbands, and children in tanks, then roll through the hot-ass desert praying they didn’t get blown the hell up?

Those who had the power made the laws, were above the law, and didn’t have to abide by the law. Any black man who didn’t vote or wasn’t involved with politics quietly gave the white man control over his life, thereby surrendering all the rights his ancestors fought, marched, and died for.

Young black men barely eighteen were stripped away from their mother’s bosom, good black family men were unconsciously taken away from their families, while single black men disappeared into the darkness of the night never again to date, marry, or love a black woman—all had one thing in common. They were all sold by Uncle Sam on a modified form of slavery with a license to kill or be killed while the white man watched or reported the highlights on CNN.

The stroke of a pen etching a signature, a commitment, a promise, encouraged by brainwashing lies of how a black man could pursue a career in music, obtain a communications degree, or receive a large cash bonus by serving his country was dangled in the black man’s face like fried chicken. The underlying truth the government didn’t tell the black man was he’d just signed up to manufacture one more body bag with his name on it. Maybe I didn’t want to have sons after all. But how can the black man continue his legacy with a world absent of his kind?

Valentino yelled from upstairs, “Hurry up, nigga. I ain’t got all night.”

Snatching the thick black rubber bag from the top of the stack, I dragged the bag up the steps. Bleach, ammonia, and other cleaning products were next to a plastic bucket of steaming water waiting for me.

“You got gloves, man? That water looks hot.”

“Not nearly as hot as your ass if I bust a cap in it.”

The chemical mixture and damn near boiling water blistered my flesh while Valentino stood over me pointing.

“Get that last piece of meat, then get her.”

As tears streamed down my face, I shoved the half-naked mutilated body into the bag, zipped it up, secured the straps across her breasts, waist, and legs, then asked, “What’s her name?”

“This ain’t
Who Wants to be a Millionaire
, nigga! Next thing I know you’ll be asking to phone a friend for help and shit. You got one more time to ask one more question and that’s yo’ ass! Hurry up and move this bitch out!”

You think you know someone until they threaten your life to save theirs. That was supposed to be my boy. Can’t say I ever did much for him other than be his friend. But he’d taken friendship too far.

Two hundred and fifty thousand wasn’t worth this, but it was enough to find that small town I’d thought about relocating to.

Drying the floor as fast as I could, I accidentally splashed bleach everywhere, wiped everything up, then hurled the body bag over my shoulder and watched it fall to the floor.

“Damn. Sorry, miss.”

“Nigga, drag her ass and take that gold bag too. Wait a minute,” Valentino said, slightly unzipping the bag. “Here.” He slapped the gun in my hand, then continued. “Toss this inside and bury all those cleaning supplies and her shit with her. Get some gasoline, then set her ass on fire before tossing dirt in her face.”

Placing the purse on my shoulder, I decided I wasn’t a mortician and wanted to ask where I should bury the body since I couldn’t legally burn it within city limits. But I knew better than to question my boy, so I kept walking backward, dragging the body.

Valentino’s eyes bulged. “Wait, have you ever done a strip search before?” he asked.

Hunching my shoulders, I shook my head, silently asking for Valentino’s mother’s forgiveness, certain Mama James was turning over in her grave like an overcooked rotisserie chicken.

“After you get rid of her, I’m sending you to my joint to strip-search these bitches. If you do a good job, I might hire you and fire your bitch. Call me when you’re done with Summer, I mean Sunny. That’s her name, Sunny. Then I’ll teach you how to demand respect from bitches.”

“Fuck, man! You tryna get me killed,” I said, dropping the bag. “Sunny was Lace’s favorite girl.” I could use that job, but would I live long enough to report on the first day?

Valentino’s eyes, lips, and forehead tightened. “Keep the ointment, nigga. You’ll need it to lube your ass.”

Good thing I didn’t have the nerves to search for that gun. Friend or no friend, I’d shoot Valentino. Or maybe after burying Sunny, I should kill myself before Lace got a chance to.

Silently, I dumped the body bag in the trunk of Lace’s car along with the purse, then sped down Rancho Road to the highway. Ten miles south on Interstate 15 as I headed toward…truth was I didn’t know where I was headed, weaving in and out of the three lanes…red and blue lights proceeded by several bloops and I got pulled over to the side of the road listening to a cop blare from an intercom, “Do not get out of your car!”

If I were lucky, he’d shoot first and ask questions when it was too late for me to answer. Sweat drenched my body. I darn near pissed on myself, but the thought of Lace cussing me out for messing up her leather-ventilated seat made me hold it in.

Walking up to my window with his hand on his gun, the police asked, “Where you in such a hurry to go to that you just about ran me off the road?”

Temporarily taking advantage of the Fifth Amendment, I sat with my hands at four and eight on Lace’s steering wheel so he couldn’t see the skin bubbling on the back of my hands.

“Let me see your license and registration.”

With my palm facing up, I cautiously handed him my driver’s license, along with Lace’s registration and insurance, refusing to speak unless I absolutely had to.

“Well, I’ll be darned! You the same Benito Bannister that won that there national football championship?”

“That’s me,” I said, nervously rotating the diamond ring on my finger to prove it. Leaning back in my seat, I prayed the cop didn’t see me sweating.

“Tell ya what, gimme that ring and I’ll let you go with a warning,” he said jokingly.

Forcing the ring off my finger, I wanted to scream like a bitch. I placed it in his hand, and eased my license and papers from between his fingers.

Frowning, he said, “Looks like there’s blood on this ring.”

“Yeah, I cut myself tossing a few balls. Gotta keep my arm strong just in case I come out of retirement. It’s no big deal, I’m used to injuries.”

“Guess you’re right, else you’d still be playing. Here, hold on to it for me,” he said, smiling. “But drive safe before you kill yourself or somebody else, ya hear?”

“Thanks, Officer.”

I sat there wondering where to take Sunny. After I was positively sure the cop was gone, I unlocked the trunk, then rambled through her gold bag. Her driver’s license had an address in North Las Vegas. “Hell, not only do I live in that area, I just left there.”

When I glanced at her birth date, my chin damn near hit my neck. “Fuck! This girl really is turning twenty-one in less than an hour!”

Knowing Valentino, I’m the one taking the rap for this if the police find out. “Fuck this.” I drove to the address on Chestnut, parked on the back side of the unit, and made sure the key worked before I returned to Lace’s car to get the body. Checking out her living room, I saw Sunny was fanatical about cleanliness. Rummaging through her kitchen, I opened the cabinet and found exactly what I needed: alcohol—vodka, tequila, rum, cognac.

Peeling the metal strip off the cognac, I gulped until my throat burned. “Argh!” I sat on the leather sofa dreading getting that girl’s body out of the trunk until my phone rang.

“You done, nigga?”

“Naw, man. Not yet,” I said, swallowing and looking around the contemporarily decorated unit. “Don’t you have a hookup or somebody who can take her off my hands?”

“You ain’t no runner, nigga. You da man. Lookahere, after you’re done dumping the body, this is how you do a strip search.”

As I listened in disgust, I could tell clearly he didn’t want any knowledge about where I was gonna bury this girl. I wanted to throw up again, but my aching stomach was on fire.

“I’ll stall Lace so you’ll get home before her. Finish both jobs, then call me when you’re on your way home. And thanks, man. We’re even,” Valentino exclaimed.

“What about my job?”

“What job?” Valentino asked, ending the call.

I remained silent staring at the photo above the fireplace doubting there was any money involved for my services. Now he was playing mind games with me. “Damn.” I pressed my thumb and middle finger into my eye sockets. “Is that Sunny? Am I drunk?” Or was I seeing doubles? Aw, hell no. Was this bitch a twin? “Argh! Fuck. Why me?” I yelled, finishing off the bottle.

Warm liquid streamed through my boxers, then down my thighs, soaking my sweatpants. Sliding off the pissy lime couch, I focused on what must’ve been their parents. They looked like such a lovely Christian family with their mother smiling and holding a Bible. Seemed like they’d raised them right, but where did Sunny’s life go wrong? People who thought they knew me well would ask the same question not if but when I was arrested for murder.

Leaving to get her body out of the car, I closed the door but wasn’t sure if I was returning upstairs, headed to Immaculate Perception, the police station, home, or straight to hell.