King Maker

CHAPTER SEVEN

Only the desire remained.

Tavon Little didn't care that he killed himself a bit at a time. Squatting to eye level with the table, he carefully doled out the powdered heroin; his works spread out like instruments in an operating theater. He sprayed water from the syringe (Evian – he was particular). He loved this part of it, when he wasn't too sick, the dick-hard anticipation of the ever briefly sated hunger. The match's flame caught the bottom of the bottle cap. Slowly he loaded his syringe, the puff of pink in the bottom of his spike confirmed entry. He shut his eyes and slammed it all home, indifferent to the possibility of an overdose. So what if he did? It'd be a rush all the way. A high to end all highs.

He leaned against the rotted drywall and let the first wave of the blast crash into his skull. A slight moan escaped his cracked lips. He pulled one side of his old Army jacket over his dirty tank top to try and keep in some heat. Except for the grime and the worn cuffs, it was in pretty good shape. With his red sweatpants he considered himself the height of fashion. Yeah, he was set for tonight. Tomorrow he'd have to come up with a new hustle to set them up, but he wasn't worried. He still had a good head on him – he couldn't survive the game long if he didn't – but he also suffered from a good heart. Anywhere except here and that was probably a good thing. He simply wasn't wired to do what it took to survive, to prey on his own. Hell, he could barely lie to people he knew, so no stick-ups and no moves that might hurt someone. And it meant that he often suffered bad luck, like yesterday, the C-Devils weren't shit.

"You feelin' it?" Miss Jane asked, ever skeptical.

"Mm-hmm," Loose Tooth mumbled.

"I ain't feelin' shit. What about you?"

"I'm feelin' somethin', but it ain't like it was yesterday."

"Product been stepped on so many times, tryin' to make it last till that new package comes through," Miss Jane said.

"Heard they was gonna re-up in the mornin'. Damn, look at Tae. He's gone f'real."

"I swear that nigga could shoot water into his veins an' get high."

Tavon heard them, but didn't care. He didn't want to even open his eyes, but he knew he'd have to eventually, or else Miss Jane might run off with the rest of the stash, convinced that he somehow had kept the good stuff for himself. Both Loose Tooth and Miss Jane had been in deep from when Tavon was a kid. Theirs was a makeshift DMZ. Their spot was on the corner, a bright lime-colored house from the Arts and Crafts era with brown doors and trim; clay-tiled roof, and a wrap-around porch made of stones. Probably a show home in its day, now a board-covered shadow of itself.

One street over, things were downright civilized. A KFC/Taco Bell/Pizza Hut ("Kentacohut" they called it) recently opened. Twenty-fourth and North Penn, on the edge of what some called Li'l Nam, that part of Indianapolis that no one liked to talk about. Almost two hundred properties owned by the same slumlord. Funny, Tavon thought, how one man had the power to run down a whole neighborhood. Rumor had it that the slumlord was negotiating with the city to sell off a few streets' worth of homes and move to Florida. Especially the homes along the main city thoroughfares, like Meridian, Pennsylvania, and Delaware Streets so that rush-hour commuters wouldn't have to automatically check to see if their doors were locked every time they drove past the houses.

Tavon slipped his stash and works into his Crown Royal bag and stuffed it into a hole behind him, past the slats that kicked up a cloud of dust (hopefully not asbestos, he heard that shit was cancerous) every time he bumped against it. He could feel the toll of the hunger. Everything grew more difficult. Ideas. Words. Slower, fewer, simpler. A dope-fiend lucidity. He fell into a nod, not caring about the drool oozing out the side of his mouth.

Tavon's eyes fluttered open, squinting in the sunlight, taking in the familiar surroundings. The dirty mattress cushioned the floor of his room. He kicked his soiled sheets from him in disgust. Not at his condition, but at the fact that since he had help getting to bed, his stash that he'd saved to get started this morning had probably already launched Miss Jane. Only half-awake, he rested his head between his knees, hunched over in the dance of the dry heaves. He hated the nausea, even more than the pounding of his head.

The hunger called.

A bottle of lotion wouldn't have helped the dryness of the cratered alligator skin of his needle-scarred hands. Even his scabs had scabs. He soldiered on, another gaunt, dark-skinned fiend in service to the hunger. The hunger that squirmed its way through his intestines pulled at him in a relentless assault. He shuffled with his hunger down to the front porch, sitting on the steps and tamping out a Kool cigarette. Blankets nailed over closets; kung fu posed Power Rangers stood guard over their clothes. The landlord's fix-it guy had patched drywall by nailing a door to the ceiling. Opaque Plexiglas windows partly blocked the wind and might've done a better job if they hadn't been only stapled over the open frame. People actually lived here only a few months ago, but even Section 8 housing said enough was enough as even government housing could only sink so low.

"The hawk is out." Loose Tooth sauntered over toward him in an Izod T-shirt with holes in it.

"You know that's right. Winter'll soon be here."

"Why ain't you in school?" Loose Tooth asked, strictly to give him static.

"Half-day. Teacher conference," Tavon joked without missing a beat. So black he was practically blue, with his long arms and bowed legs, he looked like an awkward praying mantis. He attended – well, attended was a strong word, but he made a pretense of going to – Crispus Attucks High School as a heldback senior. He couldn't even get a social promotion. The system simply waited for him to drop out. School meant nothing to him, his future even less. Playing at being "gangsta" until he started fiending his own product, he fell to the lure, the allure, of the streets. Now he was half a tout, a one-man walking billboard for new product.

"Ain't this the third conference this week?" Loose Tooth joked. "You got another one o' those?"

"Nah, it's my last one," Tavon said, guiltily tucking the rest of his pack deeper into his pocket. Give away one, might as well give away the whole pack. If Tavon had been holding some candy, he wouldn't have bothered with the lame lie. Loose Tooth – born Earl Anderson, one-time prince of the streets who called himself CashMoney – would've sniffed it out. Though he probably knew that Tavon had some more squares, he didn't press the matter. He was a one man 411, old for the streets – well, over forty anyway – and quick to remind anyone "look here youngblood, I'm the last of these cats out here."

"Got a quarter?" Loose Tooth asked, obviously hoping to score a single cigarette down at the Korean's store.

"Please. I'm out here hustlin' just like you." Tavon put his cigarette out in the crumbling cement.

No one flinched at the reports of a few gunshots: too far away to be concerned about. Not as bad as New Year's Eve when that shit sounded like the 4th of July. The shots, however, drove a lightskinned and freckled young man down the street toward them. With a slight limp, his half-strut and Harlem Globetrotters gear was recognizable even without that pinched reserve the bow-tie-wearing set had.

"Ah, hell," Loose Tooth whispered when he saw him.

(120 Degrees of) Knowledge Allah. "Brothas."

"What's up, Knowledge?" Tavon asked.

"That's right, today's mathematics is knowledge. Let me break it down for you: know the ledge." Knowledge Allah was a fixture in the neighborhood even if no one knew much about him. When he first started coming around, all Loose Tooth offered was his theory that "Black folks always thinkin' they superheroes or somethin', needin' a secret identity."

"Here we go. Why you even got to say 'boo' to him?" Loose Tooth asked.

The problem with Knowledge Allah was that you had to know the code of his language before he made any sense. And it was too difficult to decipher codes while high, or looking to get high.

"You don't know who you are," Knowledge Allah said. "Take on your true name. Arm. Leg. Leg. Arm. Head. You are the original man. You are gods. Yet you sit here, blind, deaf, and dumb to your potential."

"I sit here wanting to get high," Loose Tooth growled.

"They set snares that have been prepared for you. Snares meant to lead you from your path of righteousness. You've let them cave you."

"They who?" Tavon asked.

"Don't ask him questions," Loose Tooth chided. "If you ignore him, he'll bounce sooner."

"Your so-called grafted government's behind it," Knowledge Allah continued undeterred. "The next phase is to destroy us. You think it stopped with Tuskegee? No, they just got slicker. We don't have poppy fields. We don't have planes. We don't have labs. They put chemicals in everything, destroying you cell by cell. Turning you."

"Sounds like we don't have shit," Loose Tooth said, nudging Tavon. But Tavon listened intently, a little too polite for his own good. He enjoyed the way Knowledge Allah spoke. He loved the idea of big ideas, even ones that he didn't agree with or didn't get. There was something about the way Knowledge Allah appeared. Maybe it was a by-product of his high, but if he caught Knowledge Allah out the corner of his eye, he looked different.

"Don't get caught in the game of the eighty-five It didn't stop with Tuskegee," Knowledge Allah said, either out of steam or wishing to move on to a more receptive congregation. "It's all about the third eye. Remember who you are. G is the seventh letter made."

Before Knowledge Allah had strolled even partway down the block, the slow roll of the squad car – once a half-hour – paused their conversation. Timeout. The officers, that cracka devil and house nigga pair, engaged them in a mutual eye fuck, challenging their right to the corner. Their glare read contempt, but it, too, was part of the game.

"What's all the drama about?" Loose Tooth asked.

"Someone probably shot Trevant," Miss Jane said. Her breasts hung like floppy hound ears, the nipples poking through her grungy golf shirt. When times got hard, she was the neighborhood ho, but times were rarely that hard for her. She had a hunter's instinct and had been known to run game on folks. Only in her late twenties, practically fifty in street years, she was the picture of a haggard party girl, partied out. Rail thin, many wondered if she had the bug.

"Who would waste a bullet on him?" Tavon asked.

"Probably got shot up over selling burn bags. Everyone told him to quit sellin' that Arm amp; Hammer shit so often," Loose Tooth said.

"Yeah, he'll be back on it in a few days." Miss Jane focused on Tavon. "Tae, lemme hold twenty for a minute."

Tavon did the ghetto math. A minute in CP time was bad enough, but in fiend time, shit, that money was hitchhiking to Neverland. Besides, it was time to go. He could parlay aluminum cans into vials with the industry of a fiend. "No need. It's time to go to work."

Negotiating the minefield of broken bottles, newspapers, cigarette butts, stray couch cushions, and burnt-bottomed bottle caps, Tavon and Loose Tooth stalked through the alleys that were the arteries of Li'l Nam. The hunger drove them. Tavon didn't even know he had a habit until the first day it wasn't around. Now all he had was the hustle, the part of the game that had its own adrenaline rush. Always thinking of the latest dope-fiend move and its accompanying childlike thrill; like when he was a kid and used to boost Star Wars figures from Toys "R" Us or smuggle comic books out of Lindner's Ice Cream Shop to read then sell.

They scanned the streets for any house undergoing any kind of remodeling. Their hopes were dashed after their escapades on Talbot Street. Rumors of the city's plans to redevelop the area had already made it fashionable for young yuppie couples and homosexuals to buy up the old, stylized homes. Talbot was now a show street – a well-patrolled show street – but when it was first being gutted, fiends were all over the place. Contractors couldn't walk into a house for thirty seconds without all their tools being stripped from their trucks. Copper piping grew legs and walked off every night. The discriminating fiend, such as Tavon, even took off with antique fixtures.

But niggas got too bold.

The story went that some contractors spent the day putting up siding on a house. They came back the next day and the siding had been stripped off and by strange coincidence, the Jenkins' place a few blocks up had about a day's worth of new siding on their house. After that, lockdown: constant patrols and overnight guards.

After a half-hour of scooping up aluminum cans, Tavon was the first to hear it. He caught Loose Tooth's attention and the two of them crept behind the bushes to get a better look at the scene. Dollar and his boys squared off against Miss Jane and her latest dupe.

Tavon knew Dollar, from another life it seemed. They were childhood friends, having grown up in Section 8 housing back when the Phoenix was still called the Meadows, back when life was all potential. He lived two houses down from Tavon, but they might as well have shared a room for all the time they spent together. In another circumstance, Tavon might have admitted to loving him. Boys never said such things, but they fit, despite how most thought they shouldn't. They liked different teams, different television shows, different music. But they shared copies of Player magazine stolen from his dad's closet. They skipped classes together. They ran from the police, after hitting a passing squad car with rocks, together. They played roof tag, diving into snow banks during the thick of winter. Always together.

Dollar gave himself his own nickname, reasoning that it was better to fashion your own legend than leave it to chance. Soft-spoken and calm, he turned cold and all the way hard, embracing the quiet unnerving certainty of the inevitable. He had an upper-management resume that anyone could admire: he monitored sales and mitigated product loss (no one messed up a count or snorted his product on his watch); he tabulated product (handled distribution); he invoiced shipping (got a package, broke it down, and re-upped); he arranged staff (set up lookouts, runners, touts); he organized and motivated staff (often by the barrel of a gun, but mostly by the implied threat of such); and he oversaw several branches (ran two corners – here and at Breton Court – and had his eye on a high rise). And he was a marketing genius. He was all about brand names, having successfully launched Widowmaker (it helped that it had been spiked and killed a few fiends the first day. Fiends flocked to it the next day, assuming that their dead friends simply couldn't handle their high); and all the fiends were a-buzz about his new product launch, Black Zombie (call the fiends what they were and they would still snatch it up). So excited, that it led one of the more ingenious fiends, namely Miss Jane (behind the body of her dupe) to sell burn bags with the Black Zombie skull and crossbones stamp.

Tavon had seen this kind of Mexican stand-off before. Dollar – with his roughneck gait, all stiff-legged and locked jaw – waited wordlessly with his hard stare. A pantomime of threat, neither side could back down without losing face, though Miss Jane had a lot more to lose than face. She and her stick-figure physique had only daring for strength, her implied craziness returning his cold glare. She brazenly stood eye-to-eye, even leaning into Dollar's boy, Prez. A bold tactic for sure, but someone had to pay for this sojourn into Dollar's market.

Dollar gave a rueful nod.

With a rancorous snarl, his boys pushed Miss Jane to the side and sprang on the fool who still held the forged product in his hands. He raised a lone hand, a drowning man beneath a tidal wave of fists. Tavon turned his head from the worst of it, settling for listening to the sounds of weakening frantic pleas and the thwacks of flesh pummeling flesh. Loose Tooth scrambled for a better view. Not a peep from Miss Jane. She was a hard one. When Tavon turned to look again, Dollar had his back to the display. He'd settled into an odd posture, as if resenting his own soldiers. They were the new breed, who enjoyed violence for violence's sake. They didn't care because they had no future, no connection to anyone beyond themselves.

"Don't let me catch you again," Dollar said, pulling on a pair of gloves as Miss Jane scuttled down the alley. She didn't even help her played paramour to his feet, but he nipped at her heels anyway. Dollar muttered, "Dusty-ass heifer."

By all rights, Miss Jane earned a beat down. It wasn't like Dollar's crew was above hurting women, but not in Dollar's presence. Tavon wondered if the rumors were true about Miss Jane and her boy being untouchable.

Dollar and Tavon were the only family each other had, really. Most of the kids on their block regarded Tavon as soft; he always had problems hitting other people. Dollar, on the other hand, loved it. He thought of Tavon as a dog, faithful, following him around only for the beggin' bits he had, or rather, the vials at his disposal. Even if Tavon turned on him, as all bitches eventually did, all Tavon was capable of was the occasional buzz of an irritating gnat.

Dollar dropped out of school to pursue his ambitions, which involved a lot of sitting on a front stoop, running the streets and getting his head up in chronic. Tavon joined him. It was like they ran out of imagination and couldn't see a life for themselves outside of the streets, like they didn't have any ideas about what to do.

"You can come out now, Tae," Dollar said casually. His boys reached into their waistbands, but Dollar waved them off.

"How'd you know we was here?" Tavon asked, Loose Tooth standing silently behind him.

"My alley. You see anything interesting?"

"Naw." Especially not anything he'd report back to the police.

"Good. How about I set you all up tonight. Testers for the new line. Come morning you all spread the word that Black Zombie's the shit."

"For old times' sake?"

"Yeah, for old times' sake."

• • •

Michaela hated being referred to as one of the Durham Brothers. But life was all about marketing and the Durham Brothers was a solid brand. Not that she was ladylike, but she hated being discounted as a male because she rolled harder than most thugs she ran across. Michaela was the elder by thirteen seconds, though it might as well have been a decade the way she lorded it over her brother, Marshall. Neither she nor her brother were attractive in any way, she accepted that, with their pug noses beneath eyes too small for their large heads. Jagged scars, like lightning bolts, crossed each side of their faces. Because of their constant flop sweat, their long hair stuck to their foreheads. They could each stand to lose fifty pounds. A half-dozen deodorizers dangled from the rearview mirror of their Ford Focus. Each of them had drowned themselves in cologne. Incense choked the air of their room, yet a musky, earthy odor clung to them despite their best efforts.

Rarely separated, the Durham Brothers stood equally tall, their muscles filled out their gray Armani suits which they wore awkwardly, not quite comfortable in their latest image choice. Every encounter – other drivers at a stop light, any jostling in a crowded room, little old ladies at church – was taken as a challenge from all around them which usually resulted in a beatdown. Their father was not from around there, so they were told. Their mother was on the slow train to Crackville, which was why they killed her. And ate her.

To be honest, Michaela was surprised when she got the call from Dred. It wasn't as if they had parted on the best terms. To hear Dred tell it, Michaela and Marshall were brood vipers prone to attacking whoever was about whenever they felt underused or underappreciated. The cost of doing business with them, he said. Michaela saw it differently. Dred played his family close, from Baylon to a few other members, keeping them in a tight circle around him. Everyone else he treated like second-class citizens. So no matter how much she or her brother tried to do to demonstrate their loyalty, they were always on the outside looking in. Of course, that was enough to make any man, or woman, snap after a while.

Granted, maybe Marshall didn't need to burn Dred's stash house down or try to spread the man's business on the streets, but Marshall could be less than reasonable once he built up a head full of steam. His was a scorched-earth policy for even the slightest perceived infraction, which often left him ass out because once you've scorched enough earth, you found that you had no place to plant new seed. Sooner or later, they'd have to come crawling back to Dred, all contrite and apologetic, trying to make good, and the cycle would begin again.

They pulled into the school parking lot. A couple of Green's troops played dice at the side of the building.

"What do you think?" Michaela asked. "Should we say 'hi'?"

"They don't look like much."

"No, I suppose they wouldn't. I hear Green's over them."

"Green, huh?" Marshall sneered.

"They look more impressive now?"

"Not really. I've always wondered about Green."

"They say he eternal."

"They who?" Marshall remained unimpressed. His sluggish thoughts flowed toward the mundane of when they were going to eat or where they were going to crash that night.

"I guess they who survive those who didn't outlive him."

"I'd like to test that sometime." He punched his left fist into his right hand, imagining a set of brass knuckles crunching into a jaw.

"I'm sure you'll get your chance before too long."

Omarosa stood in front of the full-length mirror admiring the figure before her, not entirely satisfied with her make-up. Her eyes the color of frost on grass, matted by her cream-complected oval face and crowned by her freshly done braids; she hadn't quite attained her "you can't get with this face" and as such continued her tireless primping. A mix of both woman and fey, she now employed the glamour known as science to accomplish her will.

The time and attention spent by someone who accomplished her business by not being seen was an irony that eluded her. Vanity was an inherited trait of her people as was her gift with any weapon. And she had some serious creep to her. Her twin brother was an assassin of the first order, while she preferred life closer to the streets. Life was all about illusion. She read the streets better than anyone, hoarding intelligence like an information magpie. True pros kept little piles of clothes in the gangway or along the side of the building in case they were going to be out a couple of days or needed to appear in court. The girls were just as invisible as junkies; except with them, instead of a person, people saw a searching dimebag. No one ever saw Omarosa actually take a john, but because she worked the stroll, they assumed her to be a pro. She did little to dissuade them, going so far as to dress in fishnet hose under a blue jean miniskirt. Her cashmere jacket kept her plenty warm.

A warm, breezy fall night, churning the humidity stirred by the low-lying gray clouds threatening a chance of rain. It was as if someone blew hot breath about. Omarosa leaned against the brick facade of the old Bank One building. Though the chain had been bought out by Chase, this particular branch across the street from the Phoenix Apartments building was simply closed rather than renovated. From her vantage point, the comings and goings of the Phoenix opened itself up to her. She absently twirled a set of handcuffs around her index finger then caught them, spinning them with a flourish before "holstering" them. Her inner gunslinger satisfied, she clicked the jaws of one side through, letting the clink of each tooth settle before continuing.

• • •

Hypnotized by her poise, Lee McCarrell watched her. His stomach rumbled as he set up to watch this latest player. Just south of her position, in the rear of the old Bank One parking lot, an open driveway entrance had been blocked off by cement barricades to prevent parked loitering. Folks stole the other one so they could still come and go as they pleased. Situated behind a row of trees, the northbound traffic along Sherman Drive couldn't see him.

On the TIPS line, a woman who refused to give her name claimed to have seen two young black men exchanging a gun. The younger of the two walked toward the back of a man, took aim with the gun turned on its side, and fired. The man, once he realized he wasn't hit, took off running. The shot went through the window of the Walker family. The crime scene unit's investigation had come to a similar conclusion and a hunt was underway for the anonymous woman as well as the man who apparently never saw a thing, but thanked God for a wannabe gangsta's poor aim.

Not officially on duty, he had no business at the Phoenix Apartments – a white boy no less – unless he were out to score. He tired of Octavia pointing out his lack of street intelligence. According to her, he had to learn to talk to people, to read the streets. "A detective is only as good as his informants," and he hadn't cultivated many. Yet he kept watching her, even found himself lighting up a cigarette to help while away the time. A potential john approached her. To his surprise, a sudden wave of protectiveness for her enveloped him. He forgot all about food.

Omarosa sensed the man long before he made himself visible. His nervous gait betrayed him, his palms sweating so much he had to shove them in his pockets. From his approach, she calculated that she could cripple him six different ways.

"How much?" he asked.

Omarosa laughed both at his effrontery as well as his nerve. Were she a common whore, she would still demand someone who'd bathed at least once this week and who didn't share his clothes with lice.

"How much for what?"

"A debate about politics. What do you think? Say a half and half."

Obviously her game must be off. Once stationed here, even the regular girls stayed away from her. Dealers, fiends, everyone left her alone. Either he was too high, too bold, or too stupid to live, but she was in a charitable mood.

Her elbow jutted into his neck with enough force to render him unconscious before his body hit the ground. She followed through the balletic turn of her movement with a raised knee to his groin which lobbed him into the air. A roundhouse high snap kick sent him flying into the shadows of the parking lot.

The lights of a squad car flared to life. Lee McCarrell pulled his car into the lot, his surveillance distracted by the street beef. Cigarette smoke issued from his window as it rolled down. Letting him see she was unarmed, she approached with a cautious confidence, and rested her forearms on the lip of the window.

"So what are you, this week's offender, victim, or witness?" Lee asked.

"No problem here, detective. Merely a girl defending her honor against the lecherous advance of someone mistaking her for a whore."

"Guess that makes you the victim."

"I'm no one's victim. My, such an awfully cynical attitude."

"These are cynical times."

"I know. No room for magic in anyone's soul." Omarosa shifted allowing a better view of her cleavage.

"Magic?" Lee's eyes obliged her gesture.

"Everyday magic. Like, say, a chance encounter between a man and a woman who hit it off immediately. That spark, that fortune, that synchronicity of crossed paths."

"The magic," Lee repeated, his voice faraway. Entranced by her beauty. There was something different about this girl. Something enchanting. Intoxicating. The longer she lingered the more she seemed to fill up his mind. Already the hump who had his ass handed to him faded into the mists of distant memory. Lee's standard credo, how anything could happen at any moment on the streets, fell by the wayside, his guard dropping despite himself.

"Exactly. I'm sure this isn't the worst thing you've ever seen."

"Not the worst things I'd seen by half."

Words tumbled out of his heart to this stranger as if they were long-time lovers. "This one time I was called to a scene where a new mother hadn't slept in three days. You could see it in her face, all drawn and gray, even the rings around her eyes had rings. She received no support from friends or family. I don't even know for sure if she had either. Too many people find themselves alone and when a baby comes along, they don't know what to do with this intrusion into their personal space. So she chopped up her baby and left the pile of limbs in the center of her bed. She just stood there, blood all over her as if someone else had come in and did it. She turned to me and said that she still wanted another baby. A chance to prove that she could be a good mother."

"I guess we all want second chances." Omarosa met his gaze. Her intensity made his insides squirm.

"So what are you doing out here if you aren't working the stroll?"

"I'm merely an observer of life's little games. A people-watcher. And the Phoenix gives me plenty to watch."

"Is that so? I always thought that we ought to go in, bust some heads, and send those assholes a message." Lee backed up, suddenly aware of her blackness, despite her hypnotic green eyes. "That's not racist: if someone's an asshole, I'm gonna treat them like an asshole, because assholishness knows no color. It's not my fault most everyone out here's an asshole."

"Most." Omarosa smiled, a delicious curve to her lips. She had watched the detective and his partner staking out Dred's crew for a while now, but she hadn't guessed the gang mess had wormed its way so under his skin that he'd taken to working it on his own time. Or maybe… maybe his partner had gotten into his head. Omarosa was never one to pass up an opportunity. "Now the way I see it, you're a real man. I'm tired of all these wannabe hoodlums trying to play hard. Want to talk that 'whose dick is this?' mess out one side of their mouth and talk about how women ain't nothing but tricks and gold diggers out the other. Like there's any gold to be found in them trifling fools other than in they mouth.

"I need a real man. One who knows how to handle a woman who's been bad. One who can put me in my place, not let me walk all over him like I'm better than him. Who do I think I am? I'm no better than any other of these… well, you know. You deserve better.

"So, you want to ride my black ass? Take me down a few notches?"

Lee's heart thudded so hard it pained his chest. His saliva turned thick, he suddenly found it difficult to swallow. His palms slickened as they rested on the steering wheel. He leaned over, opened the passenger side door, and she climbed in.