Hell's Diva (8 page)

“I’m going uptown real quick, wait for me at your crib. I’ma bring those through. We are going to bag up in them tall caps. Go get them thirty ones illusion black tops,” Ruby commanded Mecca over a pay phone on the corner of Bedford Avenue and Fulton Street.

The corner was crowded with men and women dressed in the clothing of Arabs. The men and women weren’t Arabs though. They were black men and women attending the mosque on the corner where Ruby used the pay phone. The smell of incense and oils permeated the sunny Bedford-Stuyvesant morning air.

While Ruby talked on the phone, she scanned the area up and down the street for any tails; police, or somebody trying to rob or kill her for something she did to her numerous victims. Fulton Street was a crowded street full of vendors selling T-shirts, children’s and cultural books, and bootleg clothing and music, grocery stores, and guys hanging out hustling or looking for girls who paraded down one of the boroughs’ main strips.

Ruby eyed almost everyone, thinking any of these people could be her killer. It was that way of thinking and paranoia that kept her alive as long as she had. Still in all it was impossible for her to see everybody, especially when that person was sitting in a burgundy Honda Accord with dark tinted windows watching her every move and following her.

“I’ll be there in two hours. Don’t go anywhere,” Ruby concluded before hanging up. She got into her black Saab and drove down Fulton Street until she got to Flatbush Avenue. She turned on Flatbush Avenue and headed to the Manhattan Bridge. Ruby constantly checked her rearview mirror for any tail. The burgundy Honda Accord stayed three cars behind knowing, where Ruby was headed.

She looked at her Bulova watch with gold numbers and hands against a black face. It was 9:30
A.M
. She thought she’d be uptown by ten o’clock. She figured her connect would have her package by 10:45.
Them Dominican niggas be taking forever with the shit. I’ll be in East New York by twelve o’clock
.

Ruby drove up the FDR Drive and got off at the 155th Street exit. She drove up to Eighth Avenue and went up to 155th Street. She pulled over, seeing her connect waiting on the corner. He smiled at Ruby as he got in. He was a skinny, dark-skinned Dominican cat. He wore a silk shirt opened at the chest, showing his multiple gold chains against his hairy chest. He reeked of cheap cologne, and his hair was slicked back. A midnight shadow adorned his face.

“Wassup, my friend?” he asked Ruby.

“What’s up, Papi? Where we going?” Ruby asked driving slow.

Papi turned in his seat, looking out the back window. “Drive to the Bronx. It’s hot around here. T.N.T. everywhere.”

“The Bronx!” Ruby barked, frustrated. “Why all the way up there?”

“It’s not far. It’s right over the bridge,” Papi countered.

Ruby sighed. No sense in arguing with him. Better safe than sorry. Ruby drove over the small bridge connecting the Bronx to Harlem. They drove a block away from Yankee Stadium, still being tailed by the burgundy Honda Accord, and pulled in front of a run-down tenement.

“Wait right here a few seconds. You got the money?” Papi asked.

If it were somebody else, Ruby would have killed him for asking for the money without showing the product. But she’d been dealing with him for years and they had a good repoire with each other. Ruby reached in the backseat and handed Papi a black Jansport book bag with $60,000 cash in it.

“You wait here. I come right back,” Papi said, opening the door and jogging into the tenement. The area was also crowded with Spanish men on corners. Some were at small tables, playing dominoes and listening to salsa music. Women were hanging out of tenement windows looking at the men or watching their children play stickball in the streets.

The man in the Honda Accord fit right in with the neighborhood. He was a short Spanish man with a low haircut and a red Sergio Tacchini jogging suit. He slowly got out of the Accord while concealing behind his back a black .380 with a silencer on it. Ruby kept her eye on the tenement that Papi had gone into. Fortunately for her, a police cruiser stopped across the street from where she was parked. The driver of the Accord walked back to his car. Ruby, using her street smarts, drove off and didn’t return. She drove back into Manhattan and the Spanish guy in the Accord followed. Ruby thought about the $60,000 she gave Papi, and decided she’d go back uptown tonight and meet him.

When Papi came out of the tenement, he saw the police car across the street and he walked to the corner store. He came out of the tenement without Ruby’s Jansport. Ruby stopped at a pay phone on 125th and Eighth Avenue. Mecca picked up on the first ring.

“I’m going to be running late. It’s hot. I had to get ghost for a minute. Just make sure you in the crib around eight o’clock tonight.” Ruby hung up, paused, then dialed another number. After three rings a voice came over the line.

“Gilmore, Stein and Bloomberg, how may I assist you?” the secretary said in a squeaky voice, sounding as if she were holding her nose.

“I need to speak to Gilmore. Tell him it’s Ruby Davidson.”

“Hold on, Ms. Davidson.” Ruby held on for what seemed like hours, listening to music that reminded her of the elevators she rode in when she went on a school trip to the Empire State Building as a kid.

“Ruby! What’s up?” Gilmore said excitedly.

“Damn, you had me on hold long enough.”

“Sorry about that. I was in a meeting with the partners. By the way, I got the discovery this morning. I need to go over some things with you. If you need a copy, I’ll have my secretary do them now,” Gilmore said wearily.

“I’ll drop by and pick up the copies. I have to make some runs so we can discuss it tomorrow,” Ruby said.

“All right, that’ll be fine. I’ll tell my secretary to have them ready. When can you stop by?” he asked.

“I’ll be there in a half.” Ruby hung up.

The Spanish guy driving the Accord watched Ruby from across the street while he ordered a hot dog from a vendor. With the crowds of people walking up and down and hanging around the world-renowned Harlem street with the famous Apollo Theater a few feet away, Ruby couldn’t notice if anyone was following her. The Spanish guy kept a good distance between himself and Ruby when he knew where she was headed. Now that he had no idea where she was going, he played her a little closer than before.

A half hour later, Ruby picked up the copy of the government’s evidence against her from Gilmore’s secretary. The file was thick. There were hundreds of surveillance photos of Ruby and Stone getting into her Sterling in Brownsville. Stone’s rap sheet was twenty pages long. There were mug shots of Ruby’s workers in Brownsville and Coney Island.

Ruby was shocked to see a picture of her and her Dominican connect sitting in a Spanish restaurant on Amsterdam Avenue. There was a picture of Mecca in Langston Hughes and underneath the picture it said, “Davidson niece.” There was a report on Mecca behind the picture. Ruby read the report.

Daughter of Bobby “Blast” Sykes and wife Mecca Sykes, who was killed in 1982 by masked men who invaded the home to rob Bobby Sykes of money and drugs. Present during the home invasion and murder of her parents, but couldn’t identify the killers. Ruby Davidson took legal custody of her niece subsequently. G.I. Number 1 informs us that Mecca Sykes is not involved in her aunt’s organization. This has to be investigated.

Ruby sighed as she parked on a side street in Midtown Manhattan reading the file. Before continuing to read, she took a sip of a Sprite she bought from a corner bodega. She turned to another page that had a picture of Dawn. Ruby spilled the Sprite on the car floor from the shock of what was written over Dawn’s name. In bold, black print it said, “
G.I. NUMBER
1.”

Blinded to what was going on in the street outside of the car, Ruby put the file on the passenger seat and reached down to get the soda can. The Spanish guy who drove the Accord exited his vehicle and sped toward her car. Ruby opened up the door and got out to wipe the car floor with a rag she took out of the glove compartment. The busy Manhattan day was buzzing with the sounds of loud talking, car horns, and trucks.

The Spanish guy approached from behind, but before he could raise his gun, Ruby spun around and pulled the trigger of her nickel-plated .45 that sent three bullets into the Spanish guy’s face. The loud boom of the gun sent people on the streets running for cover. There were screams.

A police officer walking the beat saw Ruby standing over the Spanish guy, pumping three more bullets into his chest. Ducking down, she ripped the Spanish guy’s pocket in his jogging suit and took a wad of bills. She picked up his gun and put it in her dark blue Fila velour pants and started walking back to her car.

“Lady, don’t move! Drop the weapon and put your hands up!”

Ruby hesitated. She thought about Mecca. Her mind flashed back to when she was first born, when her sister had to get a C-section at Kings County Hospital.
What would Mecca do without me?
she thought. She had to tell Mecca about Dawn. She had to live. Ruby did as the cop ordered and dropped her weapon. Tears rolled down her face. She couldn’t remember the last time she cried.

“Drop to your knees!” the cop yelled.

A crowd gathered around, looking at the dead Spanish guy with his blood flowing into the gutter. Cars stopped, blocking traffic, to see the bloody scene. The world seemed as if it were spinning to her. The cop’s voice echoed in her ears.

“Put your hands above your head!”

Ruby put her hands behind her head and put her head down. She knew this was the end of her life of crime…at least on the streets.

“The Feds gave your aunt four life sentences and almost three hundred years and you still didn’t get the message!” Lou barked at Mecca.

Mecca unfolded her arms and tried to turn her back on him, but everywhere she turned, Lou’s image was in front of her.

“You didn’t have to remind me,” Mecca replied gravely. For the first time in her life Mecca felt like maybe she should have gotten out of the game earlier. Dawn had suggested it years ago, but now Mecca felt like she was a snake, too, and anyone she loved couldn’t be trusted. Mecca was confused, and was trying to make sense of her life…the only life she knew how to live.

“Wow! Then your so-called best friend informed on her. Y’all call it snitching these days, ratting, whatever term y’all use. But you best friend? How much betrayal and loss of lives you’ve witnessed and experienced and you’re not convinced that the life you were in wasn’t worth all you went through?” Lou grinned as he spoke. Suddenly, he looked off to nowhere and spoke as if someone else was there with him and Mecca.

“I told you they would prove me right, Your Majesty,” Lou yelled. Mecca looked around to see if she could see whom Lou was talking to, but saw nothing. “Why did I have to belittle myself for these beings who caused so much bloodshed and havoc among themselves? I deserve better,” he screamed. Mecca had to hold her ears. In a split second Lou became calm again and turned back to her.

“Why did you have to kill Dawn? She didn’t inform on you. She did what she did to save your life. To save you from the destructive life that your aunt, your own flesh and blood, led you to?”

“She did it to save her own ass.”

“I beg to differ,” Lou replied, snapping his fingers.

The snap made Mecca close her eyes and rub her temples as if she were suffering a migraine headache. An image appeared in her head. It was after Mecca received Dawn’s photo with “G.I. Number 1” on it in the mail from Ruby.

Mecca, dressed in a blue Polo sweat suit and blue Reeboks, with her head wrapped in a blue bandanna scarf, held the papers in her hand as she and Dawn (dressed in a pair of hip-hugging, black Levi jeans, white Reeboks, and a white-button down Tommy Hilfiger shirt) sat on a bench in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park on a late night.

Mecca waited almost a month after Ruby’s letter, which simply said, “If you don’t get rid of her, she will be your downfall. Remember, I told you before, don’t let nothing slide.” When Mecca gave Dawn the paper, Dawn reacted with shock and disbelief on her face.

“This ain’t true, Mecca! I swear, I…” she cried. “You were at your aunt’s hearing! I didn’t testify against her at the hearing when the grand jury indicted her!”

Mecca thought,
this bitch must think I’m dumb
. They don’t need her testimony at the grand jury! As Dawn spoke, Mecca looked around the park. It was dark except for the few streetlights that lined the walkways and streets that went through the park. Mecca chose a spot behind the trees and brush, blocking them from the view of people outside the park.

“Why would my aunt make this up? Why would she choose you to make this up on?” Mecca asked, beginning to feel the tears form in her eyes. She was in pain, hurt from the betrayal at the hands of her best friend, the only person she trusted besides her aunt. Dawn was like her sister and she had betrayed that trust. Mecca hated the position that she was in. The position the game forced her in. She couldn’t walk away from this now. She had to hold it down for Ruby.

“Even if I did, Mecca, I would have done it for you. For you to get out of this game! But I didn’t do—”

Before Dawn could finish her sentence, Mecca let off three shots to the chest, silencing her forever. It hurt because they had been through so much together, but then Mecca remembered that you couldn’t trust anyone in the street. Especially someone that who supposed to be your family.

“You were a monster, Mecca!” Lou yelled as Mecca snapped out of the vision of shooting Dawn in the chest with a black .22 revolver, and afterward running out of the park, where Tah picked her up in his Porsche. Lou laughed. “I love it!”

Mecca looked at him confused. “Why is it so funny? I thought you didn’t like what I was doing.” Mecca said.

“I never said I liked it or didn’t. I just find it hysterical and rather strange that”—Lou held his hands making quotation signs “God would create you human beings and allow you all to do these things to one another.”

Mecca looked confused and finally asked, “Where am I? How long is this going to last?”