Angel smiled and blew a kiss through the phone.
“You’re gonna pack and get ready for Hawaii,” Angel told her and hung up the phone.
Three days later, Devon was found in a Dumpster in the Projects in Patterson, courtesy of Nitti. Roll was impressed by the way Angel always stayed one step ahead of the game even if he couldn’t figure out how she did it. If only he knew the pussy she was getting, it might have given him an inkling. But he had no clue.
None of the hustlers understood Angel’s game. They were too wrapped up in their own lustful greed and trying to fuck her instead of trying to figure her out. They didn’t realize that Angel was sucking, both literally and figuratively, the loyalty from their women right in front of their lustful eyes.
“These niggas don’t give a fuck about you, boo,” Angel whispered in the ear of a chick named Trina. She was Rich’s baby mama and Rich was one of Roll’s chief bosses in East Orange.
She and Trina were lying next to each other in Trina’s bed.
“But Rich takes good care of me and his son,” Trina stated naively.
Angel brushed the hair from her face and massaged Trina’s sweaty stomach. “Don’t I take good care of you, too?”
“Yes.”
“And I would never do anything to hurt Rich, but… I need you to promise me something. You’ll never let Rich do anything to hurt me, okay?” Angel said in between laps with her skilled tongue. Angel really was a clit lickin’ captain and could get a bitch to do anything she wanted.
“He… he won’t,” Trina gasped, gripping the sheets.
“Stick with me, baby girl, and you’ll always be taken care of. Even when Rich is long gone.”
Angel sucked and fucked the cream of the crop. She had all the most powerful hustlers’ female companions on her side. She even got to the chicks the niggas had on the side. And once she felt her position with these different women was solid, she turned her attention to the street soldiers, the ones with the money.
“Them young niggas out here is fuckin’ up, papi. I’ma show ’em how to grind and make sure our paper stays straight,” Angel announced to Roll.
Roll was all for it. To have the legendary Angel out on the block for him, handling his business, made him look like a true kingpin, a real Dutch kind of guy. He didn’t realize that Angel was toying with his mind, his ego, and his dick.
Angel strapped up her Tims, put some sweats on over her long johns, grabbed her Canadian Goose Helliarctic, and went back to the corner to hustle bundles of heroin. She wanted to hand-pick her army from Roll’s payroll. So, carefully, she watched the young wolves in their prime and selected the best of them. Then she took them under her wing. Gradually, she won their trust. To them, she was a made bitch, a legend. Seeing her out on the block with them, sleeping in hallways, ducking 5-0 and busting her gun made them feel like big niggas.
“This is how you stay on top of your game. Stay hungry. All the Benzes and bottles of Cris don’t mean shit ’cause when a nigga gets too big to walk the same streets that made him, he’s out of touch with his own fate. And no matter what happens, if he can’t go back to where he started, how can he ever make shit happen again? Muthafuckas catch cases puttin’ weak niggas between them and the streets. You got to be the streets,” Angel said, schooling her wolves. They listened like she was teaching Hustle 101.
A young Puerto Rican cat from her old stomping grounds on Dayton Street was especially attentive. She nicknamed him Capo because she told him that was what he was gonna be.
“Never forget the grind, Capo. Never forget the streets. You hear me? And always throw back. Don’t wait until you’re Big Willie to throw back. Pay rent, give a dollar or two, buy some groceries. Create loyalty around you and you’ll die fat and rich in Miami somewhere.”
Capo soaked it up like he was a sponge.
Angel’s plan moved steadily ahead until she got a call from Roll.
“Hey, yo. You need to holla at your man ’cause he about to make me see him!”
Her man was Rahman, better known on the streets as One-eyed Roc, and the reason Roll was threatening to go to him was Miss Grownie Pants.
Miss Grownie Pants, Sonia, Jamillah, got off the bus near her apartment on Somerset Avenue. She had just come home from her job at the abused women’s shelter to find a 5-series BMW parked outside her building. As she got closer, her heart skipped a beat when she realized who was leaning on the car: her baby’s father, Jerome. He had been locked up for the last three years.
Before he went away, their time together produced two children. Once he got knocked, though, she basically turned her back on him. She stopped writing after a few months and lost her phone because he ran the bill up so high she couldn’t pay it. Once the calls and the writing stopped, so did the contact and the relationship.
Jerome, for the most part, had carried himself while in prison, and over the course of his incarceration, his anger for Sonia festered. He felt his entire hustle had meant nothing to her. Didn’t she know what jail was? Didn’t she understand his sacrifice? To Jerome, his choices were between death and jail, and he took the chances for his family, for her and for their two children. In his mind, she had become a fuckin’ slut who didn’t write or bring his kids to visit.
Jerome had anxiously awaited his release so he could see her face to face. He wanted to punch her in the eye. So his first stop after his release was to visit her. For Jerome, it was payback time. He planned to sex her then beat her, or beat her then sex her. He hadn’t made up his mind. But either way, he was going to stomp on her head when he had the chance.
Jamillah wanted to turn around and wait until he left, but she knew Jerome and she knew he’d come back again until he saw her.
It was broad daylight and the streets were packed with summer activity. Jamillah decided it was best to get the confrontation over with.
She took a deep breath and kept her pace. When Jerome finally recognized her, his eyes widened in surprise.
Jerome looked at her. She was covered properly with a niqab from head to toe, and she wore a baby-blue kemar over her head. Jerome couldn’t believe it but it didn’t make him respect her. In fact it made him even angrier, thinking the man in her life had converted her.
“Ohh, so you a Muslim now?” Jerome snickered, stepping into her path. “No more strippin’ and trickin’, huh?”
“Hello, Jerome,” Jamillah replied. “I see they let you out,” she added as if she wished otherwise.
“Damn right I’m out and back on already,” he responded, gesturing to his BMW. “I just copped the five but gimme a month and it’ll be a quarter to eight,” he boasted.
“Mm-hmm,” she said, uninterested. “Well, the kids aren’t here. They’re in Linden at my mama’s house. So come back-”
He cut her off. “Come back? Why can’t we go get ’em now? I know they wanna see Daddy. We can go shoppin’, get somethin’ to eat,” he offered, trying to get her in the car.
“No, that’s all right. I’ll pick them up tomorrow. Just give me your number and I’ll call you.”
“Why can’t I have your number? What, your man might answer the phone? Fuck dat nigga!”
“I ain’t got no man! But if you must know, I don’t want you callin’ my house,” Jamillah said, sucking her teeth. “You want to see your kids, fine. Tell me when and I’ll have them ready. Other than that, we really ain’t got nothin’ to discuss.”
Jamillah tried to turn away but Jerome grabbed her arm.
“Get off me!” she hissed, snatching her arm away.
“Oh, so it’s fuck me now, huh? You think you gonna just shit on me like that?”
“Jerome, you went to jail and I was left behind with two babies. I was livin’ in a shelter until my mama took me in. I had to work and I been trying to get myself together in school and I don’t care what you or anyone else thinks of me. You shit on me when you left me and your children alone with nothing. I’m finally here and I’m not going backward.”
