“I mean you tore the buttons of this shirt, and I came out of my bra and panties before we left my apartment.”
I looked at the clock on the dash. “I could do that.” It was the least I could do under the circumstances.
We drove to Cross County Mall and since I hate shopping, I took a seat on a bench and told Rain to go on without me. “But don’t take too long.”
“I know, you got someplace to be,” Rain said and walked off.
As soon as she was out of sight, I took out my phone and called Wanda. Thankfully, she didn’t ask me any questions that I had to lie about. She said that she missed me and that Kevon was looking for me earlier.
“I talked to him. I gotta meet Black at Cuisine in about an hour.”
“I gotta go, but I was hoping that you could make some time for me tonight.”
“Sounds good. But let me see what Black wants before I say yes or no.”
“He wants to talk to you about Charles Watson. I checked it out like you asked and Mike is interested.”
“Then I’d say I’m probably gonna be busy tonight.”
“I understand that, but you gotta sleep sometime. Come by when you’re done. I need to see you. I mean, I really need to see you. I gotta go now, Nick, but come over tonight. It doesn’t matter what time,” Wanda said and hung up the phone.
I put my phone back in my pocket and thought about Wanda and what I had done with Rain the night before. Right or wrong, I had no regret about having sex with Rain. We both got what we wanted, and from the way we went at it, it was what we both needed.
The question was what now? What was gonna happen with me and Rain? I could drop her off wherever she wanted to be dropped off and be done with it.
The thing was, I liked Rain, enjoyed being with her, enjoyed sittin’ around talkin’ shit with her. I had to laugh though, ’cause every time we’ve been together we’ve killed somebody. And maybe that was part of the attraction.
Since I was out here with time to kill, I went by Bath amp; Body Works. Mrs. Phillips told me that Zakiya used to work there, so I went in hoping to learn something that would help me find her killer.
After talking with her manager, I went and reclaimed my spot of the bench. Like everybody else, her manager had nothing but high praise for Zakiya. What a wonderful person she was; a hardworking, dependable employee. That was Zakiya. But she was only working there part-time. Whoever Nice N. Slow was, he had money. All useful information, but moved me no closer to my objective.
It was over an hour later when Rain came walking up.
“How do I look?”
She was wearing a black sleeveless dress and heels to match. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and her face was made up.
“You look very nice.” She really did.
“You like this dress? It’s an Anne Klein taffeta dress.”
“I like it,” I said and started for the car. “It looks good on you.”
“Sorry it took me so long, but I had to do something with my hair and get some make up.”
“I understand,” I said as I got in the car, but I didn’t. I have never understood why it takes women so long to shop. “Where you want me to drop you off?”
“In a hurry to get rid of me now, huh?”
“I’m not in a hurry to get rid of you,” I promised, but I was ready for her to go.
“I know you got some place you gotta be, so you can take me back to the club.”
“Cool,” I said and drove off in that direction.
On the way there my phone rang. I looked at the display; it was Kevon calling.
“Hello.”
“Black here over an hour waiting for you. How long ’fore you reach?”
“I’ll be there fifteen minutes.” I hung up the phone and looked at Rain. “I need to get to this meeting-”
“I’m in no hurry. I got no place to be. Go on and handle your business. I hear the food is good there and I’m hungry. You can’t fuck me all night and not feed me. What kinda bitch you think I am?” Rain said with a smile.
“The kind that ain’t thought nothin’ about food while she was up fuckin’ all night.”
“You’re right. But right now, you ain’t fuckin’ me, so I’m hungry. So unless you plannin’ on pullin’ this XLR over and goin’ up in me, you need to just go on to you’re meeting. You talk to Black and I’ll eat.”
I was kind of reluctant to take Rain with me on the off chance that Wanda might be there. I thought about telling Rain how to play it in case she was, but I decided to tackle that when it came up.
It was after four when we got to Cuisine. They weren’t open yet, but I told Rain I’d see if there was somebody there that could fix something for her. “You have a seat at the bar and try not to shoot anybody.”
“Very funny. You get them to feed me or it might be you I kill,” Rain said as I walked away from her.
Black was seated at a table near the bar and I made my way to him. On the way, I stopped Lexi, the manager, and asked her to take care of Rain. When I got to the table, Kevon got up and walked away.
“I was gonna ask where you been, but I see,” Black said when I sat down.
“Sorry. I left my phone in the car. What’s up?”
Black told me about Angelo and his visit to Cuisine the night before. I was surprised. Not by Angelo’s request. It was a smart move on his part. The right move at the right time. No, what surprised me was that Black was even considering it.
We kicked it back and forth for awhile, each of us running through hypothetical situations. At the end, we both agreed that each hypothetical always ended the same way: In jail or dead.
“I ain’t goin’ to jail, Nick. We already got enough problems with the DEA without this. Last thing we need right now is them crawling all over us again.”
“So what are you gonna tell Angelo?”
“I been thinking about that. How I can give Angee what he wants without actually doin’ shit.”
I laughed. “How you plan on doin’ that?”
“I’m gonna get him and Stark together and then I’m gonna tell him that I would offer advice and counsel to Stark as a personal favor to him. But for reasons that I know he understands, I can’t go any further than that.”
“You think that will satisfy him?”
“As long as I can get Stark to do business and as long as I can control him. But for that to work, you gotta be my guarantee. You gotta make sure that nothing we do touches that. We can’t have our hands dirty in none of that.”
“I’ll stay on top of it.”
“I haven’t said anything about this to Wanda. But she was there when Angelo came to Cuisine, so she knows something’s up. She wasn’t happy with the answer I gave her, so she’ll be coming at you. But she doesn’t need to know anything about this.”
“Understood.”
“Everything else all right?” Black asked.
“Yeah, everything else is fine.”
“I want you to go ahead and take care of that thing with Watson we discussed.”
“Wanda mentioned that you did. It’s already in motion.”
“Who’s your friend?”
“Rain Robinson.”
“So that’s Rain Robinson. She looks like her daddy,” Black observed.
“Yeah, I noticed. I saw a picture of her mother and she definitely looks like her father.”
“Barbara Robinson.”
“You knew her?”
“No, just heard the stories.”
“What stories?”
“One of the great thug mysteries of all time: Who killed Barbara Robinson? You never heard this story?”
“No.”
“The story goes that Barbara used to fuck around with a low-rent pimp named Eddie Mars. Then JR comes along, falls hard for her, and sweeps her off her feet. They get married like a couple of months later. But the word
