Pimp

Thirteen

Mo had it all figured out. Once they got the money from that Larry Reed motherfucker, they’d take out the boss too. Hell, why the fuck not? Mo liked even numbers a lot more than odd. Mo never was too good at math in school — or maybe the problem was he wasn’t in school all that much at all — but he knew 85K split two ways was a lot more than 85K split three. But can you even split 85? He thought you could only split even numbers. Fuck it, man, if there was an extra dollar, he’d keep it, and they’d go down to Meh-hee-coe. Man, eighty-five thousand dollars is like a million pesos down there. Money’s worth more below the border, he didn’t know why everybody didn’t want to move down there. Why waste your time with dollars when you can have pesos?

Mo’s plan: they could use some of the cash to buy a ranch-type hacienda or whatever they were called, then use the rest to see how they might take on part of the cartel’s business. Stay small but profitable. He’d need Jo for the heavy lifting, the guy was dumb as shit, but you don’t got a wingman, who else gonna take out the trash?

But Jo, man, he’d been sniffing round Larry Reed’s wife, going, “Can’t wait to taste a piece of that meat” and “Bet the lady be tastin’ sweet” and “There’s a sweet hole down in that basement and I’m gonna plug it.”

Disrespectful-to-women shit like that.

Mo was southern, and all southern boys are gentlemen. He didn’t mind that talk when it was for show, like at the producer’s house. But that was just to put on a show, to scare the dumb guy.

Mo went to Jo, “You talk to your momma with that mouth?” and Jo said, “If I wanted to fuck her, I would.”

Jo was so stupid, it was impossible to have a sensible conversation around the man.

Mo was from Tennessee, hundred miles outside Memphis. Mo was the type of guy who’d kill a man who looked at him funny — and he had, seven times. Make that eight — there was that guy who gave him queer looks at that honkytonk back home. But women, man, he didn’t never kill none of them. Women were sacred to Mo. He didn’t understand how any man could ever hurt a woman. Women were a gift from God. Just look at them — how soft and gentle they all were, with all them curves. A woman was like a beautiful white mountain. Not that women had to be white, he wasn’t no redneck — at least not when it came to fucking. He’d fuck any woman, no matter what color. Like at ho houses, some guys would only pick the white girls, but Mo went black, Chinese, Mexican, didn’t matter to him. But most of the guys Mo knew growin’ up went around hating niggers.

That’s one reason why Mo took off for Los Angeles. He had big dreams and he knew none of them would come true if he stayed in the back country with a bunch of morons his whole life.

The thing that surprised Mo most about L.A.: there were just as many morons out here as back home. Different kind of morons though, ’cause back home people were dumb and knew it, but out here people were dumb and acted smart. Putting on a front, always like a movie camera was going and they were, what, actors? Mo could see through all that fake though. People out here with their clothes and their cars and their perfect teeth, acting like they knew everything about the world. Whenever Mo saw one of them Hollywood dickbags he would be laughing his ass off inside, knowing the truth even if nobody else did.

Mo made money like he’d been doing back home — little dealing, little protection, little GTA. Only had to kill people once in a while. Struck out twice but, like a cat, he was good at burying his shit, and he never went down for killing nobody.

Mo had met Jo on a job, hired to kick the shit out of some dumb Hollywood fuck who owed money for coke. Mo thought Jo was all right, except for the way he treated women.

Driving in Santa Monica, passing a pretty blonde in a bikini, Jo yelled out the window, “Yeah, baby, sit on my face with that shit, I wanna taste you.”

Mo grabbed Jo, nearly crashed the damn car, said, “The fuck you talkin’ to her like that for? That there’s a woman. She’s sacred, man.”

“You crazy, yo?” Jo said. “Almost gettin’ our asses killed just ’cause I was talkin’ to a bitch.”

“Tellin’ a woman to sit on your face ain’t talkin’ to her,” Mo said.

“Where I come from it is,” Jo said. “Different rules in Colombia, kid.”

The fuck did that mean?

Mo said to Jo, “The fuck does that mean?”

Jo said, “Go down to Colombia someday, you find out.”

This was the kind of stupid talk that made Mo’s head want to explode. The man wasn’t even from Colombia and he was talking about Colombia rules? Jo was part Colombian and part something else, maybe American Indian, and was born and raised in goddamn Phoenix. Mo’s family went back to France, but you didn’t hear Mo saying, “Different rules in France.”

Shit.

So now when Mo told Jo to chill with the nasty talk about the producer’s wife, and Jo went, “Different rules in Colombia, kid,” Mo was ready.

Went, “I don’t give a shit what the rules are in Colombia, where my people come from in France, we respect women. When I fuck a woman, I thank her afterwards, call her ma’am, even if she is the biggest ho at the ho house. You understand what I’m sayin’ to you? You have a woman tied up in your basement, you understand that even though she’s a hostage, she’s still a woman, and as a man you respect that, ’cause that’s what men do.”

Jo stared at Mo, dumb look, then went, “You some kinda faggot?”

Mo punched Jo in the face — heard the crunch, saw the blood. Man, Mo loved red, had to be his favorite goddamn color.

Then he grabbed a sixer from the refrigerator, settled in to check out some Netflix.