Hell's Diva (7 page)

The government had received information from a confidential informant about Ruby and her organization. The informant couldn’t provide how much money Ruby was pulling in from her distribution of crack cocaine, but the government estimated that her gross amount was in the hundreds of thousands. So when the judge in the federal courthouse in Brooklyn placed Ruby’s bail at $2 million, Ruby got out within a week.

The F.B.I. knew they stumbled onto an organization that was beyond your average drug gang. The informant either didn’t know the part Mecca played in the organization or just didn’t want her in jail. Stone’s bail was set at $100,000, and Ruby made sure he was bailed out.

“What makes you think it’s Stone?” Mecca asked innocently, not wanting to jump the gun.

“Who else could it be? Who else knows all about me besides you and him? Monique is gone!” Ruby yelled at Mecca as they sat in Mecca’s Sutter Gardens apartment’s living room.

Mecca’s apartment was simply decorated. Her living room had a black, big pillowed couch, a forty-two-inch television that sat on a crystal television stand, and a six-disc Sony surround sound system that was surrounded by black art on the walls with cream frames to match the curtains she had hung at the window. Over the television she had a large picture of her parents that was hand drawn by a street artist, and a wooden wall unit with family pictures on it as well.

“He’s a crack-head, Mecca. They’ll do anything to get a hit. Those crackers probably gave him a hit just to snitch,” Ruby said while trying to calm down.

“Why didn’t he say anything to me or Dawn?” Mecca wondered out loud.

“Where is that bitch anyway?” Ruby asked skeptically.

“With her boyfriend,” Mecca responded, but she had a skeptical look on her face. She didn’t think Dawn would do anything like that. What would she gain from it?

All Dawn thinks about is that no-good boyfriend of hers. One of Tah’s flunkies. Dawn hasn’t been around lately since she met him, and that nigga has her strung out.
Then Mecca remembered something that Dawn said, and it made her wonder:

“Mecca, I think we better leave this game alone. I feel like something bad is gonna happen if we keep going on like this. We gonna end up either in jail or dead.”

“Don’t go getting paranoid now, bitch. I can’t just bounce up out the game like that,” Mecca said to Dawn, not believing her ears. If it weren’t for the game, they wouldn’t have all the shit they had.

She brushed off the thought, concluding that Dawn was just paranoid at the time. Shit, she was the one who said they should get in the game in the first place.

“Since y’all bitches got them boyfriends y’all been on some real slackin’ shit. Y’all let them niggas get the best of y’all. Mecca, you know better,” Ruby scolded her, trying to talk some sense into Mecca to keep from punching her in her damn mouth.

“So what we gonna do?” Mecca asked, wanting to get off the boyfriend subject.

Ruby rubbed her temples and sighed. “I took a big loss. That bail really fucked me up. I got to get consignment off these Dominican mu’fuckas and start from scratch. What’s up with these Sutter Garden niggas? They gettin’ money?”

“Please. Those sorry-ass niggas hustle for outfits. You see the ones in front of the building? They stand there all day every day like they doing security and none of them niggas even got a Honda scooter. They some bus’ ass niggas,” Mecca replied, sucking her teeth.

“Those the types of mu’fuckas we want. Niggas who don’t want much. That’s how we get rich. If all they want is outfits then they will go hard for them. If we offer them more than what they got now, they’ll gladly work for us. C’mon, Mecca, wake up, girl!” Ruby said, smiling.

Ruby kept quiet while she and Stone drove, then she parked on a small block on Twenty-third Street and Surface. The beach was at the end of the block. The block was deserted on the chilly night. Stone was always nervous in the presence of Ruby: he knew she was unpredictable and would kill in a heartbeat.

“Somebody snitching on us, Rube. We got to find out who did this. If you want, I’ll handle this kid who got Mo—”

Ruby drew the .45 with a silencer so quick, Stone didn’t have time to finish the sentence. His head exploded against the passenger-side window as Ruby sent one bullet into his temple. Ruby got out of the driver’s side and walked over to the passenger side. She opened the door and let Stone’s body, fall onto the sidewalk. She smiled when she heard the waves crashing into the beach. No one would hear her.

She went to the trunk of the car and removed a bottle of bleach and a dirty rag. She poured the bleach on the rag, stepped over Stone’s body and wiped the blood off the window and door.

She looked at Stone’s body and ripped open his black silk shirt to see if he was wired. He wasn’t. She removed the gold Gucci link chain from his neck, and searched his black corduroy pants pocket, and removed $500 from his pocket. She left them turned inside out to make it look like he had been shot right there in the street. Ruby pumped more bullets in his head and body, and then she got back in the car and slowly drove off.

The next morning, Ruby drove into Manhattan with her hair in a ponytail, wearing a beige cotton skirt that reached her knees, a white blouse under a beige blazer, black sheer pantyhose to match, and black, five-inch heel shoes. The office of Gilmore, Stein and Bloomberg was located on Thirty-ninth Street and Park Avenue. Ruby walked in the office of Stanley Gilmore, Esq., the senior partner of the law firm. She had had him on retainer since 1987. He had a perfect record of all wins, no losses. She had met him through Stone.

Stone killed a Jamaican cat in front of the entire Langston Hughes projects during an annual Langston Hughes day, the day the project celebrated when it was built. Every project in New York has a day like that, as if the residents are celebrating the fact that they live in poverty-stricken, low-income projects with conditions a fence away from being a prison.

No one from the projects gave information to the police. There was no need to. Stone killed the man in the view of a housing cop walking the beat. Gilmore had the cop on the stand for almost two hours and when he was done with him, the jury was ready to convict the cop for the murder.

Ruby placed a brown paper bag on Gilmore’s desk while he sat in his large, black leather recliner with an expensive, three-piece black, pinstriped suit resembling a 1920’s Mafioso. He tried to conceal his receding hairline by combing the little hair he had left on the top of his bald spot.

“That’s fifteen. I’ll have the rest for you next week,” Ruby said, sitting in one of the smaller leather chairs in front of Gilmore’s large wooden desk. Gilmore grabbed the paper bag, looked in, and then placed the brown paper bag in one of the drawers in the desk.

“So how are things looking?” Ruby asked, folding her leg over the other, watching Gilmore stare at her finely toned thighs. Gilmore stood up and paced behind his desk with his hand in his pockets.

“I’m still waiting on the government to turn over the discovery. From what I do know,” Gilmore said, pausing to face Ruby “there’s an informant that gave up a lot of info. They’re making it a RICO case. You getting out on that two million raised some flags in the IRS, too. How are you going to account for that?” he asked.

“My life savings and donations from friends to get me out,” Ruby replied with a straight face.

Gilmore shook his head.

“I don’t think that the government’s going to buy that. What about the cars, the house in the Hamptons? They’re gonna want to know how you went from a Brownsville housing project to the Hamptons with no job.”

“You’re my lawyer; tell me what should I do,” Ruby barked.

Gilmore sighed. “As an officer of the court, I can’t give you incriminating advice.” Gilmore then smiled. “But as a friend, I can show you how to clean your cash.”

“You can’t find out who this snitch is now? I mean, pull some strings?” Ruby asked.

Gilmore walked to the front of his desk and sat on it in front of her. Ruby already figured she knew that Stone was the rat, but she wanted to make sure. She laughed inwardly about how she was able to convince Stone, who she knew was scared to death of her and probably knew she would figure he was a rat, to get in the car with her in the middle of the night and ride to Coney Island.

After bailing Stone out of the M.C.C. (Metropolitan Correctional Center) in Manhattan, she sent a message for Stone to meet her at the Stillwell Avenue train station in Coney Island. She wanted to discuss how they were going to get back in business. Knowing that Stone was smoking crack, when Stone got in the car, Ruby had a crack pipe in her hand, and before she drove off, she acted as if she needed to take a hit from the pipe. Stone stared at Ruby in disbelief.

Ruby sparked the lighter, held the fire at the end of the pipe, and inhaled the weed she had placed in the pipe. She opened the window and blew the smoke out of it. She looked at Stone and grinned.

“You know a bitch do this once in a blue. You wanna hit?” Ruby asked, reaching in her pocket and pulling out a small vial of crack.

She held out the stem to Stone. Stone snatched the vial out of her hand, and the stem, and with hands shaking he bit the top off the vial, removing the yellow top. He poured the pebble in the stem.

Ruby handed him the lighter. Stone inhaled the crack smoke deeply and held it in his lungs as long as possible. He spoke while holding his breath.

“Damn, Ruby, I ain’t know you fuck around.”

“Yeah, once in a while. A bitch be stressed, ya know.” Ruby drove, looking at the road.

It was just that easy for Ruby to put him at ease so he wouldn’t expect her to put bullets in him while they were both high off crack. Stone thought that if Ruby found out he was smoking crack she would kill him. To see her doing it made him feel comfortable around her, and that was his demise.

“It depends. I can definitely pull some strings, but I’m taking a big risk,” Gilmore continued, still grinning at Ruby and staring at her well-built calves. Ruby stood up in front of Gilmore and grabbed him by the crotch.

“I know what you want, you freaky mu’fucka!” Grinning, she unzipped his pants and pulled out his small, shriveled-up, pinkish penis and gave him a hand job. While she jerked his dick, she smacked him on his face hard. He smiled.

“You like that, huh, you cracka!” Ruby growled, stroking him faster, thinking,
Men are so simple. The things they will do for a nut
. They are all the same. “If you cum in my hand, I’ll beat the shit out of your old ass,” Ruby threatened.

“I won’t, just don’t stop,” Gilmore moaned, holding the corner of the desk tightly. He reached on his desk for a piece of tissue in a Kleenex box.

“Oh God! I’m cummin’….”

Mecca felt someone placing a robe on her naked body. She couldn’t see who it was. When she turned her head, it was dark. She looked down at her body, and a white linen robe was covering her. Lou stood with his arms folded, still in a red robe.

“How much death and mayhem does it take for a person to realize that what they are into is wrong?” Lou asked. He then counted on his fingers and said, “Your parents, Darnell, Wise, Monique, Stone. Then your aunt goes to jail and everybody involved in the organization except you and Dawn are caught up. You didn’t see the blessing in that, huh?”

“Blessing! What blessing? Where’s the blessing in death and jail?” Mecca yelled.

Lou became angry and it could be heard in his raised voice. “The fact that it didn’t happen to you. That’s the blessing!” He paused, then shook his head and continued in a low tone. “But, once again, Mecca, you had a veil over your eyes. It’s all a game, right, Mecca?”

“Why you gotta yell like that? I can hear you,” Mecca snapped, causing Lou to laugh.

“We all know you can hear. You just have a problem seeing. We all know you can hear, but you don’t listen. Soon you’re going to see and listen to what you didn’t listen to before, whether you like it or not.”

“I don’t care who’s first or who’s last, I just know y’all better rock this at the drop of a dime, baby!” Marley Marl screamed on the intro of “The Symphony” a collaboration of Master Ace, Craig G, Kool G Rap, and Big Daddy Kane. As Mecca and Dawn walked through the crowd on the dance floor of the Union Square club in Manhattan. This was a crowd Mecca or Dawn didn’t stand out in, regardless that Mecca wore a Louis Vuitton three-quarter jacket with the matching boots, and bucket hat with the brim flipped up, while Dawn wore the same getup, but the brand name was Gucci.

There were people in the club from all five boroughs and surrounding areas like Mount Vernon, Yonkers, and Jersey, who came to the Union Square in their best. There were girls and guys in full-length minks, shoes and boots from various reptiles, diamond-studded jewelry from neck to wrist, and mouths full of gold. Moët was the main beverage. The high rollers had cases of Dom Pérignon at their disposal.

It wasn’t unusual to run into hip-hop celebrities in the crowd. Nice & Smooth, Doug E. Fresh, and Special Ed were in attendance. The crowd was usually split into groups according to the group’s geographical location in the city. The Harlem cats stood in one corner, the Bronx cats in another, and the Queens cats had theirs. The Brooklyn cats usually were spread out, scheming on people to remove their jewelry or clothing from. Along with their fake IDs, Mecca and Dawn came with razor blades hidden under their collars, taped with Scotch tape. Before Mecca taped a razor to Dawn’s collar, Dawn asked why they needed them.

“Just in case some jealous-ass bitch gets out of line, or some drunk nigga tries to touch you. You know how niggas is.”

When Big Daddy Kane’s “Ain’t No Half-Steppin’” roared through the club, the crowd reacted enthusiastically. Some wallflowers hit the dance floor, screaming, “That’s my shit!” while other groups of cats who didn’t dance leaned against the walls giving other cats evil stares.

If the crowd of guys made up of Harlemites didn’t look in a certain direction, Mecca and Dawn would have never noticed Tah and his crew walk in the club, most of them wearing camouflage jackets with Champion hooded sweat shirts under the jacket, black jeans, and black Timberlands. Mecca noticed Tah didn’t have any of his jewelry on, and he and his crew looked at the crowd as if they were looking at everyone individually looking for someone. Dawn was about to walk over to them, seeing her boyfriend with Tah, when Mecca grabbed her by her shoulder.

“Chill out, Dawn. Don’t go over there. Them niggas look like they up to something, and it’s something you don’t wanna get caught in the middle of.”

Dawn looked around the club and noticed girls and guys who were showcasing their jewelry moments ago stuff their chains inside their shirts. Some girls put their earrings in their pockets and some headed to the exit. To add to the fear and tension lingering in the air, the D.J., who was from Brooklyn, put on a Slick Rick song called “The Moment I Feared” where Slick Rick spits, “Boogie Down was performin’ hey they ain’t no joke/And a bunch of Brooklyn kids was lookin’ all down my throat/Was it my big chains with the big plates on ’em?/ Then they rolled on me and told me to run ’em/This was the moment I feared.”

Tah and his crew split up and walked around the club. Tah made his way to the bar and bought a bottle of Dom P. He grinned at some women at the bar, who probably thought that because of the way he looked he wouldn’t be able to afford Dom Pérignon. They could tell he was from Brooklyn, and Brooklyn cats had a reputation of not being high rollers, but cats who lived off of robbery. Mecca stepped in front of him, rolling her eyes at the women at the bar.

“What’s up, nigga? What you doing here?”

“The question is, what you doing here?” Tah shot back.

“I told you I was coming here tonight. Me and Dawn.” Mecca smiled and grabbed Tah’s hand. “Dance with me.”

Tah pulled his hand away and smirked. “Dance! I look like the type of nigga to dance? You buggin’, Mecca.”

Mecca figured Tah wasn’t the dancing type but she wanted to avoid him getting into trouble, and possibly getting hurt or going to jail. A lot of niggas in New York were hip to what went down in the clubs. Everybody came to chill and show off the latest gear. Guys came to meet girls and vice versa, but Brooklyn guys came to see what they could take and start trouble. Niggas from other boroughs knew the deal, and some came prepared for it. Some didn’t.

“Dancing is for herbs,” Tah continued.

Dawn was walking behind her boyfriend, who was walking toward Tah. Dawn looked frustrated to Mecca when he leaned and whispered in Tah’s ear. Tah nodded. Dawn looked at Mecca with her arms folded and rolled her eyes. Tah and his partner started to walk off. Stopping briefly, Tah turned to Mecca.

“I’ll see you in the ville.”

With an anxious look on her face, Mecca yelled, “Where you going?”

Tah walked off. Walking over to Mecca, Dawn leaned to her ear and said, “They stupid, Mecca. They always starting something.”

Mecca watched Tah and his crew walk to the exit and out of the club. The crowd seemed relieved. Five minutes later, Mecca and Dawn noticed some guys in the crowd talking to each other and hyperactively walking toward the exit. Then a bunch of girls and guys all headed toward the exit.

Mecca heard a girl tell another girl, “Something happened outside. It’s probably them grimy-ass Brooklyn niggas!”

Mecca had a feeling whatever happened outside had Tah and his crew written all over it. Mecca grabbed Dawn and headed toward the exit. When they got in the front, a crowd gathered around someone lying on the ground. Mecca and Dawn broke through the crowd to see who the person was and what had happened to him.

“That’s what niggas get when they try to rob somebody. Good for his ass!” Mecca and Dawn heard someone in the crowd yell out.

Dawn’s legs gave out from under her when she saw her boyfriend laid out on the concrete with blood flowing out of his neck. He was making a gurgling sound. Dawn crawled to him as Mecca tried to hold her. Mecca looked up and down the block to see if she saw Tah or anybody in his crew, and they were nowhere to be found.

Ruby started second-guessing her decision to turn everything over to Mecca. Mecca was strong and could handle herself on the streets, but she had a weakness. A man. Ruby constantly told Mecca that a man would be her downfall. She introduced her to her Dominican connect in Harlem. She told her connect that she was hot, and she told him about her arrest and the arrest of her workers.

“Don’t worry, Ruby, my friend. Everything good for you. You beat the case,” he responded in his thick Spanish accent. Ruby nodded grimly.

“Yeah, hopefully. Until then, I’m laying low. I’m going to let her run things until this shit is over. She knows what’s what. This is my niece.”

Ruby asked the Dominican for three kilos of cocaine on consignment so she could get things back in order. He told her to pick things up in two days. Back in Mecca’s East New York apartment, Ruby gave Mecca instructions on how to run the show.

“Dawn is gonna have to manage all the spots for you. You’re the boss now. You got to lay low. I’m going to give you the three pies, one for Coney Island, one for the ville, and the other for around here. Li’l Shamel got these cats around here in check. He’s going to make sure these niggas do what they have to do. What’s up with Dawn? You think she can handle this?” Ruby asked.

“Yeah, she knows what to do,” Mecca replied.

Ruby’s face turned sad. “I might have to do some time. Hopefully, this lawyer could get me a good plea or beat this shit. I’ma need you to hold shit down though, Mecca. You got to be strong. Don’t let nothing slide. Don’t show no weakness. The minute these niggas think that you going soft, they will be all over you like vultures. Somebody fuck up something small, treat it like it’s big. These niggas y’all dealing with, don’t let them in your business. Let them continue doing their own things. In fact, don’t let them know nothing. The minute a nigga know you’re doing better than him, his eyes will get in the way and cause serious problems.”

Mecca nodded and soaked in everything Ruby said. She felt tears about to well up in her eyes at the thought of Ruby going to jail for a long time. Things wouldn’t be the same without Ruby. She didn’t know how she would be able to hold things down without her being around. She knew she had to do it, though, for Ruby and to prove to herself that she was a survivor. That night, Mecca decided to celebrate her new position, and she and Dawn headed to Union Square. Dawn would never be the same afterward.

The night Dawn’s boyfriend was shot and killed at Union Square, Mecca was angry at Tah because it was their troublemaking that got Dawn’s boyfriend, his partner, killed. Mecca decided she wouldn’t talk to him for a few days. On the other hand, Dawn went to Brownsville Houses to confront Tah face to face.

“Why did y’all leave him?” Dawn yelled at Tah in an apartment rented by a crackhead Tah used as a hangout. Tah hugged Dawn, placing her head against his chest.

“Yo, we ain’t know dude had a K-tone on him, Dawn. Son grabbed the nigga chain and yapped it before I could walk up. Then dude let off.”

Dawn sobbed harder. “Why y’all gotta do that? Y’all got money! What y’all need a chain for?”

Tah couldn’t answer that. He never thought of it like that. It’s just the way he and his friends he grew up with were.
Dawn doesn’t understand, it’s the Brownsville way.

Tah was caught off guard when Dawn grabbed his face and began kissing his lips. Tah kissed her back on her lips, at first gently, then their kissing became almost savage-like. They licked each other’s faces then Tah pulled off his hooded sweatshirt.

Before either could make the conscious decision to stop and think about Mecca, Tah already had Dawn naked and there was no stopping them. In honesty it felt so good they didn’t want to stop, but after the act was over they both knew they had fucked up. Mecca was like Dawn’s sister and she was Tah’s girl. Trying to avoid eye contact as they got dressed, they both knew they would have to take their betrayal to the grave. If Mecca ever found out what they had done, they would be in the grave a lot sooner than they would have liked to be. Without saying a word, Dawn left the house vowing to never get caught up with Tah like that again. Tah, on the other hand, knew he was wrong, but figured Dawn was weak and he could probably hit it again. As long as Mecca didn’t know, they would be cool.

Mecca tried to block the vision of Dawn sucking Tah’s dick out of her head, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t close her eyes to the vision because it was in her head.

“Why are you doing this to me?” Mecca yelled to Lou.

“You did this to yourself, Mecca. You chose this life. You made your bed. You ever heard the phrase ‘life is what you make it’? Well, so is hell,” Lou replied, laughing. “Ain’t it hell watching your whole life recur?”

“Whatever point you tried to prove, you did it, okay?” Mecca yelled.

“Don’t you wish you knew that your best friend was messing with your man, when you were alive?” Lou teased. “You would have killed her, right, Mecca?”

Mecca stood silent. She imagined herself finding out about Dawn and Tah. She envisioned herself walking in on them, pulling out a gun from her Coach bag, and shooting Tah first while Dawn watched in horror, then turning the gun on Dawn. She played the scene out in her head while Lou watched in amusement.

“Is he worth it, bitch? Is he?”

Dawn was crying and pleading, “I’m sorry, Mecca. I was just lonely after my boy died. Tah consoled me.”

“You were lonely? Bitch, you know you could have come to me. You know what, fuck you, bitch!” Mecca pulled the trigger.

She snapped out of her vision when Lou said, “Betrayal hurts like hell, don’t it? Trust me, I know how it feels. The creation of you human beings was a betrayal,” Lou said, looking off in deep thought. “But that’s another issue. Right now, Mecca, don’t you wish you could start all over? Do you think you would do things different?”

Mecca held her head down with her eyes closed, shaking her head.” What’s the reason for all of this?” she asked.

Lou smiled while rubbing his palms together as if he were warming them. “I wouldn’t use the word ‘reason’,” he said, putting his index finger up on his temple with his arms folded. “I would say…” Lou paused, going into deep thought, then, pointing his finger at Mecca, he concluded. “Purpose. The purpose for all of this.”

“Well, what is the purpose?”

“I can show you better than I can tell you.”