Unzipped: An Urban Erotic Tale (18 page)

“So that’s why Diamond got all her fingers smashed …” Pearl bit her lip and mused as she read a copy of a letter that her father had sent to a federal law enforcement agency some months earlier. In the letter, Irish described an incident where his daughter had nearly had her fingers cut off after pulling a scam in a Connecticut casino for a man named Mookie Murdock. Pearl remembered Diamond getting fucked up and ending up with both her hands in casts, but Diamond had given her so many bullshit versions of how it happened till Pearl couldn’t keep the stories straight.

But it was all right there for her to read now in black and white. Irish’s letter said that Diamond had been caught skimming some illegal casino bank, and as a concerned private citizen and community activist he was pressing the authorities to investigate the business dealings of Mookie Murdock.

Even good men had their limits, and Pearl’s father had had his. Irish hadn’t so much as thrown a cigarette butt on the sidewalk for over fifteen years. He was truly a reformed man. But if Mookie thought Irish was gonna lay down on what had been
done to his child, he was dead wrong. Irish didn’t fuck around when it came down to his daughters, and he’d vowed to put a stop to the kinda shit that Mookie had done to Diamond and what he was doing to their community in general.

“Mookie had some dealings with your father a while back,” Menace told her. “He offered to skim a little cream off the top of his profits if Irish would turn his head and look the other way when he saw Mookie coming, but you know your pops wasn’t about none of that.”

Pearl’s eyebrow shot up.

The dealings with Mookie were just one more thing she didn’t know about her father. She felt like a little blind mouse, bumping into all kinds of shit in the dark.

“Yeah,” Menace continued. “Irish despised that fuckin’ bottom-feeder. Your pops wasn’t the look the other way type of niggah, so him and Mookie stayed battling hard for the young souls in this hood.”

Pearl couldn’t help but ask.

“Do you think Mookie mighta had something to do with killing my family?”

Menace shrugged.

“I can’t say, Pearl. I mean, that shit definitely crossed my mind, and even before the funerals I put some feelers out there to see what I could find, but Mookie’s shit was locked up real tight. Your pops was surprised when Mookie fucked Diamond’s hands up out in public ’cause he ain’t the type to bring attention to himself. If Mookie was behind the murders then he sure cleaned up quick as shit because I couldn’t find a speck of dirt nowhere near his ass.”

Pearl nodded as she listened to Menace and studied Mookie’s photograph. He was one ugly muhfuckah. She heard Menace talking but she wasn’t sure about all that. She knew how her father got down when it came to his girls. The brutality that
Mookie had orchestrated on Diamond was all Irish needed to declare an all-out war on his beastly looking, overweight adversary.

Yeah, Pearl finally sighed. Judging by the file, war had certainly been declared, but from where Pearl was sitting it looked like Mookie had won. While Irish had used his life experiences and motivating personality to keep his boys coming back to No Limitz so they could escape the ghetto and do something positive with their lives, Mookie had been busy sliding the young’uns designer gear and expensive sneakers he got from professional basket ball and football teams. He’d dress them up real nice and tight and put a little gwap in their pockets, then put them on the corner to run numbers, sell tan goods, and keep their eyes open for fresh young pussy meat. It was a constant struggle between good and evil, but Pearl was proud to know that no matter how much ground he lost, her father had refused to bow down in defeat.

In fact, as Pearl read on she discovered that before his death, Irish had found himself an inside man in Mookie’s organization. Together, they had been working hard to clamp down on Mookie’s most lucrative source of income: his gambling ventures. Irish had called a friend who worked for the federal authorities and they got hot on Mookie’s trail and forced him to go even deeper underground than usual and wait for shit to cool off.

But things hadn’t cooled off, it seemed. If anything, all that heat focused on his gambling and intricate identity-theft operations had been burning the shit outta Mookie’s black ass.

Pearl wondered. Could the Feds have been hounding Mookie so hard that he’d decided that the only way to get the heat off his ass was to light a fire under Irish’s?

Pearl thought back to her conversation with Cole about Patrick Ewing’s Summer Basketball Classic and tried to fit all the pieces together. According to her father’s notes, Mookie normally ran his gambling operation from a distance. But Cole had told
her that high-rolling parties at major events like the Basketball Classic drew a lot of vice-related activity, including prostitution, liquor, and gambling.

Pearl figured she probably needed to get next to Mr. Mookie Murdock and take a closer look. With the type of betting crowds that Cole said showed up for major sporting events, Pearl figured Mookie would be all over any opportunity to stack some paper during the Classic weekend. Hell, he was so big-time that he’d probably take his entire operation mobile. A capo like Mookie would sponsor all the pregame and after parties, and provide all the hoes right out of his own stable. And he’d have his finger on every dime that was wagered too, Pearl bet. Yeah, a moneymaking weekend like this would probably be straight up Mookie’s alley.

But getting up close and personal with Mookie might be easier desired than done. If her father’s files were right, Mookie was hardly ever on the front lines of any of his operations, and getting next to him was damn-near impossible unless you had come up with him on the streets. Pearl guessed that’s where her father’s inside man had come in. He might have been the pathway for the Feds to get some inroads to Mookie, and he was probably scheming on some sort of takedown or coup.

Pearl read everything in front of her at least twice, and by the time she was finished, a whole lot of puzzle pieces had fallen into place. She was organizing the files into a time line and planning to go through every scrap of paper one more time with an eagle eye and a fine-toothed comb, when she remembered something.

“You ever heard of a place called Club Humpz?” she asked Menace, thinking about that call she’d gotten from her high school lover Vince some time back. He’d told her that Diamond was doing some heavy dancing and stripping up in there and pulling in big bank.

Seated at his own desk, opposite of Irish’s, Menace nodded.

“Yeah,” he said and leaned back in his chair. “It’s up there on the Ave. Your sister was hung up on that joint. It’s Mookie’s place but Yoda Green runs it day to day.”

Pearl nodded. “My father wrote a lot of notes about some inside man at Mookie’s club who was giving him backdoor information. Somebody who was close enough to Mookie to flip on him. I wonder who it was?” Pearl said, nodding toward a ledger in her father’s handwriting that detailed his contacts and activities with the man with no name.

“Yeah, the inside man,” she said, tapping the document that Irish had left behind. “If Mookie sent somebody to kill my family, Yoda Green might know exactly who it was. If I can hook up with Yoda then maybe I can find out who this inside dude is.”

Menace looked at her. “Like I said, your sister spent a lot of time slumming over at Humpz, so I know your father despised those niggahs and had no respect for them. But don’t take your ass over to that club trying to do nothing without me, Pearl, ya heard? Them niggahs will be all over you. I told you I got my feelers out on the streets. Let me deal with Mookie and them, aiight?”

“Hmm …,” Pearl said like she hadn’t heard a word that came out of his mouth. “You used to play a lot of basketball, Menace. Tell me what you know about Patrick Ewing’s Summer Basketball Classic.”

“What the fuck do basketball have to do with keeping you safe, Pearl?”

“Just tell me what you know about the Classic. Please?”

“I know it’s hot.” Menace shrugged and said, “They pull some of the best young talent in the nation together. East Coast teams against West Coast teams. Even with the refs taking bets and shaving points, them young dudes bounce that rock.”

Pearl nodded. “Yeah, but what goes on outside of the arena? Before and after the games are played?”

Menace frowned. “The usual shit. Niggahs go to fancy hotels to party and drink, chase hoes, listen to music. Of course they got plenty of drugs flowing up in them hotels, you know that. But they also gamble big-time, chicks do apple bobbing and big-booty contests, and give celebrity lap dances. You know. The kind of low-post shit that happens behind the scenes at every professional sporting event.”

“I bet Mookie’s gonna be at that Basketball Classic. I wonder if I could get up on him while he’s there,” Pearl said. “You know, find a way to get close without him knowing it.”

“Don’t fuck around, Pearl,” Menace said, narrowing his eyes. “Gimme a couple of days. I might be able to dig up some shit in that direction.”

“I didn’t say you, I said me.”

Menace got swole. “Yo, Pearl! I’m telling you, don’t go up in there without me. They’ll eat ya ass out. They got police, politicians, and all kinds of Harlem law enforcement in they back pockets, girl. You been rolling with the FBI for two minutes and now you think you bad enough to fuck with Mookie Murdock? Well, what you got, huh? Tell me what the fuck you got?”

Right then and there Pearl’s mind started clicking and calculating like a computer. Instead of reliving her worst nightmare and trembling under the weight of her dead daughter’s accusing cries, Pearl was visualizing strategies and tactics, developing a plan of action, readying herself to implement her sophisticated line of attack. There wasn’t a drop of fear in her at that moment. No grief either. Only a cunning, calculated wrath that was focused strictly on the bizz at hand. The bizz of gettin’ even.

Pearl narrowed her eyes and glared at Menace, thinking,
This niggah must not know about me
.

“I got a plan,” she said finally, glaring coldly into Menace’s eyes. “I got me a plan.”

W
alking out of No Limitz, Pearl’s mind continued to whirl as she pulled her suitcase behind her on the dreaded streets of Harlem. Her initial plan had been to come back to New York and find out anything she could about her sisters’ whereabouts and the murder of her family, but now that Diamond was dead and she was onto Mookie Murdock, it was time to move forward and do what needed to be done.

The inside man her father had written about was now her first target. No matter what Menace said, after reading through Irish’s folders Pearl was convinced that Mookie had ordered her family’s hit. If she could find that inside man and convince him to help her the way he had been helping her father, then she could figure out how to go about attacking Mookie from the inside.

She walked the city streets, just soaking up the depressing sights and the rotten flavor of Harlem. A lot had changed since she used to run these streets. Old houses had been abandoned or
torn down, and quite a few brownstones had been renovated. Old businesses had closed their doors and new ones had opened.

Still, she had to admit that there was no place on the face of the earth like Harlem. All the storefronts, the bodegas, the brownstones, the project buildings and tenements … it was a place of hard times and sorrow. A melting pot of danger and excitement. Young girls walked around looking lost and turned out by the age of fourteen, and almost every young dude of color looked like he was posing to have his face plastered on a wanted poster.

Pearl walked past the funeral home where her family’s home-going services had been held.

Her heart quaked. She had suffered like hell on these streets and her family had been murdered here. Once she did what she came here to do Pearl didn’t give a damn if she never saw or smelled Harlem again. The earth could open up and suck the whole damn neighborhood down a shitty drain as far as Pearl was concerned.

She pulled her suitcase along a few more blocks until she found what she was looking for.

Club Humpz.

It looked harmless in the daytime, but Pearl knew shit would be live and popping come nightfall. She eyed the chained doorway with her bottom lip trembling. She was gonna get up in Club Humpz. Get up in there and do some damage. Pearl knew Diamond had walked through those same doors countless times, but who knew if her sister had ever walked back out?

Pearl continued to walk the city streets for over an hour. She stopped at a pizza shop and ordered a slice, then sprinkled crushed red pepper flakes all over it before tearing into it like she used to do when she was a kid. When she was done, she bought
a MetroCard, hopped on the 4 train, and headed downtown to Grand Central Station.

Once there, she walked through the terminal until she found what she was looking for. Glancing around to make sure there were no fiends scoping her, Pearl opened her suitcase and pulled out the clear plastic bag that held her jewelry, credit cards, and driver’s license, and stashed it in a long-term locker. It was Tuesday, and Pearl knew the Classic wouldn’t begin until Friday. If she handled her business properly, by Sunday it would all be over. A killer would be dead, her conscience would be quieted, and Irish would have his revenge.