Power & Beauty (12 page)

“Well, you obviously did a wonderful selling job,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“Yuko just called to say that Mi has decided to stay. You made her comfortable. Or maybe you just made her.”

“I didn’t. We just walked.”

“Whatever you did, it worked. I called Sugar and let him know. He’s delighted. His flight from New York lands at eight and he wants you, Mi, and Yuko to meet him for dinner at Tropical Deco at ten. Do you know where it is?”

“I can find it. Should I pick up the girls and take them with me?”

“Yuko said that she and Mi had something to do beforehand. They’ll just meet you there.”

I was buzzed. I was buzzed out of my fuckin’ mind! Mi was staying. I could honestly say that Mi was my client. Since Sugar’s agency was representing her, and I was working for Sugar, Sugar would be crazy not to give me responsibility for her. After all, I was the reason she was staying here. According to Mrs. Vine, she was one of the hottest new-look fashion-forward models out there—and there was loads of work for her in all the best magazines. I was her agent, I was her man; I saw myself accompanying her to all her appointments, all her photo shoots. I’d go with her everywhere.

By nine thirty I was dressed and ready to go. I put on a shirt of black shiny cotton with the buttons running diagonally down the front. The thin tab collar was white. Because it was made by Comme des Garçons, a Japanese label, I thought Mi would notice it. It felt a little strange on me—I wasn’t used to wearing clothes this edgy—but I figured what the hell. Mi would like it.

Mi and Yuko were already at the table when I arrived at Tropical Deco. The place was designed to look like Miami Beach in the twenties and thirties. Very old-time, lots of fancy gold-framed paintings of starry nights and sunsets on the walls, cane tables and cane chairs, light fixtures that looked like something your old aunt might have in her house. I guess you could say it was retro trendy. The crowd was super-trendy, no one over thirty-five. The men looked rich, the women looked beautiful, and Mi looked more beautiful than all of them. As I approached her, she broke into a broad smile. I bent down and kissed her on the cheek. I wasn’t sure whether this was done in Japan or not. Maybe I should have bowed, but I couldn’t help myself. I had to kiss her. Just to cover my bases, I kissed Yuko as well. She was a little surprised. Compared to the other women at Tropical Deco, Mi and Yuko were understated. Yuko was dressed in deep black and Mi in pure white.

“Y’all look like a matching set,” I said to Yuko, who translated my words for Mi. Mi laughed and said something back.

“She says,” said Yuko, “we are salt and pepper.”

“And what does that make me?” I asked.

Through Yuko, Mi’s answer was, “You are sweet as sugar.”

“There’s only one Sugar,” said the man himself, who arrived in another Akoo outfit, this one a flaming red fleece hoodie and baggy black jeans. “And this Sugar is ready to party.”

He gave me a hug before kissing both Yuko and Mi on the lips. They were a little taken aback—I knew Sugar was being too forward with them—but Sugar was the boss and the boss was in a good mood. The boss was buying Dom Perignon champagne; the boss was buying steak and lobster; the boss was telling us nonstop stories about all the editors and art directors he’d met in New York, all the new models he’d seen, and how the Renato Ruiz Agency was the talk of the industry.

The talk went on all during dinner—Sugar’s talk, because no one else could or even wanted to get a word in. Sugar was talking about his plans to make his agency the biggest in the world. He was talking about opening offices in New York and L.A. and then Europe—first Paris, then Milan. Yuko struggled to keep up with his talk as she hurriedly translated for Mi, but I could tell she was always about two sentences behind. Mi tried to look interested, but it was obvious that she wasn’t. A little Latin band was playing music with a Caribbean groove, and, taking a chance, I asked Mi if she’d like to dance. Yuko relayed my request to her friend and Mi said yes.

I could see that she felt the music. We didn’t dance close. I knew to keep my distance. There was some touching—I touched her hand, I touched her waist, I gently grazed her arm. But mainly we were moving to the groove, reading each other’s rhythms like we did when we were walking. Without talking, without thinking, we were in sync. The groove was beautiful, the groove was easy, the groove was bringing us closer together. Without saying it, without knowing a word of her language, the words were loud and clear. I could read the words in her eyes: “Tonight’s the night.”

When the band hit a slow jam, we stayed on the floor and I brought her close to me. I held her tight. The song was in Spanish. The song had to be about love. It had to be about desire. My desire was hard. I pressed her into me so she could feel how much I wanted her. She didn’t back off. She moved even closer. Mi was mine, I was hers, it was happening. I closed my eyes as the music had us dancing on a cloud. I thought of Beauty; I thought of Mi; I thought of Beauty; I thought of Mi. It didn’t matter. Beauty was far away, living in a world I knew nothing about. Mi was here. Mi was in my arms.

We went back to the table, where Yuko and Sugar were sipping champagne and laughing out loud. It was a great night all around. Lots of people came up to greet Sugar, to compliment him about this or that. He seemed to know everyone in South Beach. He had good manners. He never forgot to introduce us to his friends. I didn’t care that he called me his assistant. I was happy to hear him describe Mi as his hottest signing.

The band was on break, and we’d been sitting around the table for several minutes when a brown-skinned young dude with a pencil-thin mustache and flipped-around Florida Marlins baseball cap came over to say hi. He was wearing baggy jeans and a blood-red silk shirt unbuttoned halfway down to show off his pecs. Given the powerful look of his upper body, I figured he lived in the gym. I guessed he was my age, nineteen or maybe twenty.

By then Sugar was a little tipsy. He glanced up at this dude, who said something to him in Spanish, and, just like that, Sugar’s eyes turned from friendly to frantic. Something clicked in Sugar’s brain. As the dude reached into his pocket, Sugar leaped up and violently turned over the table—dishes and ice and forks and knives and bottles flying everywhere—hitting the dude in the hand that was now holding a .45 pointed at Sugar’s head. Next thing I knew, gunshots were ringing past my ear, I’d been thrown on the floor by the overturned table, I was under the table, and so was Yuko, and people were screaming, more shots were fired, someone stepped on my hand, pain shot up my arm, but all I was thinking was,
Where’s Mi? Where’s Mi?,
when I turned my head to see Sugar on the floor, his arm bleeding, while the dude with the gun was running out the door. Trying to get up from under the table, I was desperately looking around for Mi. I couldn’t see her. I called for her and got no answer, but with people crying and yelling and running in every direction, I couldn’t be sure that she wasn’t up and running too until I myself managed to get up. That’s when I saw her. She was slumped over in the chair where she had been seated between me and Sugar when one of the bullets meant for Sugar had hit her in the chest, had ripped through her heart, her white dress covered in blood, her eyes closed, her body limp, no breath, no life left inside her, nothing . . . nothing . . . nothing . . .

Get Back Up, Got Your Back

T
he songs kept playing in my mind. I heard the songs in all the clubs. One was called “Get Back Up,” the other “Got Your Back.” I kept going to the clubs when Sugar kept saying, “Get back up, I got your back.” I pretended to be okay, but I wasn’t. The last few weeks had been a blur. The last weeks brought back all the pain of losing my mother—and losing Beauty as well. This time I lost someone I had just met, someone I barely knew, and yet the pain was so strong that sometimes I woke up at night unable to breathe. I felt myself choking on pain.

I kept playing and replaying the night of Mi’s murder. Sugar was the target, and Sugar’s reaction—overturning the table—had thrown the assassin off balance so that his shots were scattered, and for no reason except pure fuckin’ fate, Mi caught the worst bullet. After that, it was chaos. Cops and medics, stretchers and ambulances, hospital hallways, doctors and nurses and phone calls to Japan by Yuko, who controlled her hysteria long enough to call Mi’s parents in Tokyo.

“I don’t care what it costs,” said Sugar, whose arm had suffered a flesh wound but nothing more. “Make sure she gets back to Tokyo first-class. I want to send her back in style.”

I wanted to say to Sugar,
Motherfucker—she’s dead. What the fuck does first-class matter to someone who’s dead?
But I didn’t because I knew Sugar was shook up by the attempt on his life. Sugar had escaped death in the blink of an eye. And by “first-class” he meant make sure that her body got home as quickly as possible with flowers all over the portable casket. With Yuko’s help, I made those arrangements. I was there when the transport company came to the hospital and packed up her corpse. They asked me to identify her. I didn’t want to, but I also didn’t want the wrong body to arrive in Tokyo. I saw her face for the last time. Her face looked peaceful and calm. I felt anything
but
peaceful and calm.

I drove Yuko to the airport. She was going on the same flight to Tokyo that was carrying Mi. After having helped me with all the arrangements, she was now free to fall apart. She did. She cried her eyes out, cried and sobbed and wept like a little child.

“My heart . . .” she said through tears, “my heart is sick.”

“My heart is broken,” I said.

“Broken,” she repeated. “Very broken.”

I parked and accompanied her inside, carrying her bags. I waited as she checked in, then walked her to the security line.

“I’m sorry” was all I could say.

Her eyes were still filled with tears as she reached in her purse and found a small piece of notepad paper shaded in light purple and smelling of lavender. On it was a Japanese letter.

“I want you to have it,” she said.

“What does it mean?”

“It just says ‘Mi.’ It is her name.”

I took the small piece of paper into my hand and examined it for a long while. The letter looked like a piece of sculpture.

“ ‘Mi’ has special meaning in Japanese. Do you know what that is?”

“No,” I said.

“ ‘Beauty,’ ” Yuko explained. “ ‘Mi’ is ‘beauty.’ ”

When I got back from the airport, I called Wanda to make sure Beauty was okay.

“Why wouldn’t she be?” Wanda asked.

I couldn’t go into it. “I just need to know that she’s all right.”

“If it makes you feel better, I’ll call. But I’m not giving you the number. I told her I wouldn’t.”

Five minutes later Wanda called back to say that nothing was wrong.

“Is something wrong with
you
?” Wanda asked. “Boy, you sound like you done lost your best friend.”

“It’s all good,” I lied.

Weeks had passed since that happened. Weeks when my mind was fucked up. Weeks when Sugar explained why the dude with the Marlins cap was looking to off him.

The dude called himself Gigante. Turns out that Sugar had caught the dude’s brother—Pretty Boy Pablo—trying to leave Miami with fifty kilos of Sugar’s primo inventory. According to Sugar, Pretty Boy was the scum of the earth, a fellow Cuban who pretended to be his best friend while all the time plotting to steal from under his nose. Pablo had set up a secret organization with the sole purpose of bringing down Sugar and taking over his property and possessions. Sugar hadn’t seen it coming until a girl—a chick whose specialty was balling gangstas—whispered the truth in Sugar’s ear. Sugar personally took out Pretty Boy Pablo with a baseball bat.

“Why you’d use a baseball bat?” I asked Sugar.

“ ’Cause he rooted for the Marlins. I like Tampa Bay.”

“And Gigante? What are you going to do about him?”

“I figure there’s more in it for you than me.”

“How do you figure that?”

“He only got a little piece of my arm,” said Sugar. “But he got all of your girl, didn’t he?”

I hesitated to answer. I didn’t know what to say. To be honest, I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. Part of me wanted to see Gigante dead. He had killed a beautiful young woman with her whole life in front of her. The killing, though, was an accident. He had meant to kill Sugar. So shouldn’t Sugar be the one to get him? Gigante and his brother, Pretty Boy Pablo, were part of Sugar’s story, Sugar’s world—not mine.

“I know what you’re thinking,” said Sugar, “that this here shit, homes, is my bizness, not yours. But your bizness and my bizness are the same bizness. We in this together, ain’t we? Besides, it’s time to pop your cherry. Maybe that’s why Slim sent your young ass down this way. Slim knows this is cherry-poppin’ territory.”

Sugar had called Slim right after the shooting to assure him I was all right. When Slim called me, he didn’t sound too worried.

“You livin’ the life, boy, ain’t you?” asked Slim.

I didn’t say nothing about Mi. What would be the point?

“I’m lucky to be alive,” I said.

“You a blessed man,” said Slim. “You hanging tough, baby. You ain’t backing off and you building a rep strong as steel.”

I didn’t see it that way. Truth is, I didn’t do shit that night. It was Sugar who turned over the table and saved his own ass. Maybe I would have chased after Gigante if I hadn’t been pinned down—or maybe I wouldn’t have. No way of telling. But now I was suddenly faced with that decision all over again. Was I gonna chase after Gigante and bring him down?

“I gotta go to Atlanta this weekend and catch up with Slim for a hot minute,” I told Sugar. “We can work it out when I get back.”

“When will that be?”

“Day after tomorrow.”

“No problem, hombre,” said Sugar. “No fuckin’ problem at all.”

I figured Sugar knew that I was going home to ask Slim’s approval. He knew it was something I couldn’t discuss on the phone—and he also knew that since Slim had been his mentor as well as mine, it wasn’t a bad idea.

I was back in Slim’s house in Cascade Heights with the ice-white walls and mermaid fountain. I had arrived at eight
P.M
. Now it was ten
P.M
and Slim was just pulling up. He’d bought himself a new lotus-green Maybach 57, the kind of sedan that sells for $350,000.

“What do you think?” he said, leaping out of the car and giving me a hug. Dre was behind the wheel.

“Beautiful,” I said. “Business has got to be good.”

“Business is beautiful,” said Slim.

“P-P-P-P-P-P-P-Power,” said Dre, dressed elegantly, as always, in a custom-tailored pinstripe suit. “M-m-m-m-m-man, it’s good to see you. Y-y-y-y-you okay?”

“He’s alive, ain’t he?” said Slim. “He’s out there dodging them bullets. This boy is damn near bullet
proof
.”

“Th-th-th-th-th-th-that’s g-g-g-g-g-good,” said Dre.

“You wanna drive this thing?” Slim asked me. “Motherfucker drives likes a dream, don’t it, Dre?”

“It sure d-d-d-d-d-do,” Dre agreed.

I didn’t feel like driving a car. The plane ride had been turbulent from takeoff to landing. My stomach was queasy and my head, filled with questions about how or if I should deal with Gigante, was aching.

“I’d rather be driven than drive,” I said, “if that’s okay.”

“M-m-m-m-m-m-my p-p-p-p-p-p-pleasure,” said Dre. “You ge-ge-ge-ge-ge-gentlemen hop in the back. I’m glad you’re back h-h-h-h-ho—”

“Shut the fuck up, Dre,” Slim snapped. “We don’t got time for you to spit out those words. We got biz to discuss.”

I felt bad for Dre and wanted to say something but figured now wasn’t the time. I had more pressing things on my mind than trying to get Slim to stop humiliating Dre.

“This here leather is the finest money can buy,” said Slim, sliding in the backseat. I nearly choked on the smell of leather. Slim hit a button to electronically close the curtains that separated us from Dre. He hit another button that turned on the video screen showing soft-core porn. “See shorty with the crazy red wig and that booty from outer space? She was over two nights ago. She something, ain’t she, Power?”

I nodded. I wasn’t really in the mood to watch fake fucking on the Maybach’s DVD player. I turned away from the screen. Sensing my seriousness, Slim turned it off and said, “You do understand that Sugar’s out of the modeling biz, don’t you, Power?”

“He hasn’t really discussed it with me.”

“Nothing to discuss. One of his models murdered right at his table. What the fuck are the other models gonna do? They gonna ditch him. They leaving like rats running off a sinking ship. He got to go back to his core biz. And no doubt he will. Sugar’s a practical man. He knows he’s got to do what he does best.”

“The dude who shot him . . .”

“The brother of Pretty Boy Pablo . . .”

“You know about him?”

“I know about everything I needs to know about.”

“He’s called Gigante. And he’s still out there.”

“Not for long, baby. Sugar will see to that.”

“He wants me to see to that.”

My last statement stopped Slim cold. He took off his dark Gucci sunglasses and looked me deep in the eye. I think he was trying to see whether I was scared or not.

“I see,” he said. “Now I see what’s happening.”

“What do you think?”

Slim put back on his shades and, without missing a beat, said, “I think you’ve been given a job, boy.”

“And that’s it?”

“That’s the life. You done had all the foreplay you need. Now it’s time to stick it in. That what you came home to hear me say?”

“I guess so.”

“Well, sir, you done heard me say it.” And with that, Slim turned back on the DVD to watch the lady with the red wig and big butt.

The dreams were crazy. They started on the plane back to Miami when I drifted off. In one dream I took a butcher’s knife and slit the throat of a pig. In another I blasted a lion with a shotgun and the lion turned into a little boy. There was another dream where I was strangling an old man whose face was covered with pimples and wet blood. As I strangled him, blood oozed from his pimples.

“We’ve located him,” said Sugar on my first day back in the office. It was early August, only days from my twentieth birthday. “We know where he is.”

I didn’t say anything.

“What did Slim say?” asked Sugar.

“He said the modeling agency was in trouble.”

“Hey, man, fuck the modeling agency. What did he say about Gigante?”

“Same thing as you’re saying.”

Sugar smiled. “I got you an address. So get going.”

“Just like that? No plan. No prep. No word on his posse.”

“I figure you’re the Lone Ranger. You’re Slim’s star student. You don’t need no help. Far as machinery goes, ask and you will receive. Whatever you want. But the main thing I got for you is an address. Boca Raton. Ever been to Boca?”

“Never.”

“You’ll dig it. Nice class of people.”

Sugar opened the drawer to his desk and pulled out a sheet of paper and a small envelope. He handed me the paper, which had the words “1236 Marble Street” on it. Then he emptied out the contents of the envelope on a mirror.

“I’m taking one little hit that’ll last me for the next few days. You down?”

“I’ll pass. I got to stay clear.”

“This’ll help,” said Sugar.

“Like you said, I don’t need no help.”

Sugar half laughed before snorting up all the blow, including the line he had left for me.

I thought about that statement:
I don’t need no help
. I guess I made it as a declaration to Sugar and, though he wasn’t there, to Slim. I also made it a statement to myself. I didn’t see any other way. If Slim had said,
No, I don’t want my boy involved in any payback shit,
I’d have had an out. In truth, I would have welcomed the out. The idea of flat-out murder didn’t thrill me. On the other hand, if Sugar had given me a couple of guys and a game plan, I might have felt differently. But I was given nothing. I was told nothing except this one lousy address. It was all up to me.

I recognized this is as part test, part initiation rite. In Chicago, I had seen some stuff go down, but I wasn’t the guy who brought it down. Now I
was
the guy. Now my only choice was to leave this life or do what the life required. If I left this life, where would I go? I didn’t see any future outside of it. Besides, I was being groomed as a leader. This life—the life given to me by Slim after the death of my mom—had rewarded me handsomely. Beginning with my move to Slim’s place, look where I’d been living—in mansions, hip lofts, fancy apartments. Look who I’d been meeting—super-powerful men and superfine women. Look what I’d been learning—how to deal with real life, real problems; how to make real money. Now I had a real challenge: figure out how to kill the motherfucker who killed Mi and tried to kill Sugar.

My mind was made up, but my motivation needed to be stronger. I thought how this scumbag Gigante had robbed Mi of a long and good life. That got me mad, but mad enough to murder him? I wasn’t sure. I thought of how Gigante had tried to take out my friend Sugar. But was Sugar really my friend? Maybe yes, maybe no. It didn’t matter. Sugar was one of the teachers Slim had assigned to me. Sugar was testing me. I’d either pass or flunk. And I wasn’t about to flunk.