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  Jaye was impressed by the girls’ fight scene. The moves and timing were so perfect that it looked as if they had spent time training with actual Hollywood stunt men. Jaye was only a foot away from the action, and even though she knew it was fake, she still thought that their blows had made contact. “Wait a minute,” she said, curious. “I know she ain’t really just slap you but I swear I heard that shit.”

  “What you heard was this.” Tuesday clapped her hand against her meaty thigh. She explained: “I’m the one gettin’ hit. You lookin at my face and her hand. You ain’t watching my hands! Me and Tush just got this shit down because we been at it longer than y’all.”

  “Well, I ain’t gone go through all that,” Brianna said, standing up to stretch. “Next time I’m just gone bust a bitch head for real!”

  “And now can we wrap up this little meeting so I can get paid and get the fuck outta here. I got shit to do.”

  Tuesday went into her Louis bag and pulled out a brick of cash. She carefully counted it out into five separate stacks then began to pass out the dividends. As the girls took their individual shares, Tuesday could see the disappointment on their faces. They were expecting more and she was too.

  She passed two stacks to Doll, who took one then handed the other to Brianna. Bree made a quick count of the cash then dropped the sixty-five hundred onto the loveseat as if it were nothing. “What the fuck is this?”

  Tuesday sighed because she knew this was coming and knew it would be from her. “Look, I know it’s kinda short. Shit fucked up all the way around. I got twenty for the truck, seventeen for the work, and my mans said I was lucky to get that.”

  After doing two months of surveillance on Tank, Tuesday had put Baby Doll on him. It took another couple of weeks of Doll’s sweet manipulation to get everything they needed for the lick: personal information, alarm codes, copies of his house keys, the location of his stash, and a head so far gone that he wouldn’t risk Doll’s life to protect it. The girls had hoped for a big score but found out that Tank was not the hustler they thought he was. The scouting report said that he was heavy in the brick game and the team targeted him expecting at least a six-figure payoff, but when they opened fat boy’s safe all he had was forty-two thousand in cash and twenty-four packaged-up ounces of hard. Disappointed, the girls took his Denali even though it wasn’t originally part of the plan. They split the cash that night but it was Tuesday’s job to slang the truck and dope; now the girls didn’t even get what they hoped for that. Minus what was due to their sixth silent partner, almost four months of work had only grossed them a little over thirteen racks apiece—if you factor in the expenses of renting a temporary place for Doll’s alter ego, Simone and the Pontiac G6 she drove, they actually netted a lot less. The team typically went after bigger fish, and while they only did about five or six of these jobs a year (sometimes having a few going on at once), they were used to making twenty-five to thirty stacks each, so a lick that only pulled seventy-nine total was a bust.

  Tuesday leaned back against her desk. “Look, ladies, I know shit ain’t really come through how we wanted on this one. That’s my bad but I promise we gone eat right on the next one.” She took the blame because as leader of the group the responsibility always fell on her.

  Code name: Tuesday aka Boss Lady. Tuesday was light-skinned, five foot nine, and thick. She didn’t have junk like Tushie but her booty was bigger than average and had been turning heads since puberty. Aside from a pretty face and juicy lips, she had cat eyes that shifted from green to gray according to her mood. Tuesday had put this team together and was the brains behind it. She realized when she was just a dancer that clapping her ass all night for a few dollars in tips wouldn’t cut it for a bitch who had bills and wanted nice shit. At nineteen she started hitting licks with A.D., and after he went away, she continued on her own. Over time she recruited Tushie then slowly pulled in the others. Each of these girls had come to The Bounce just as broke and desperate as she was and Tuesday saw something in each of them that made her think they would be a good fit for the team. Tuesday’s best asset was her experience. She had years on every other girl in the group and none of them could crawl inside a mark’s head better than she could. She gave them all their game and therefore had each of their skills. She knew how to make a read on a nigga and adapt to the type of girl it took to get him. She could play the innocent square better than Doll, the cool homegirl better than Jaye, and the high-maintenance trophy bitch better than Brianna. She could play one role to a T or blend a few of them together if it was necessary. Her strength was that she was not one-dimensional like the others. For Tuesday, her secret weapon was actually her secret weakness. None of the girls knew she suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder. Her illness caused her to reorganize things over and over until they were perfect. Her nature to obsess over every little detail did make her a neat freak, but also the ultimate strategist. Tuesday had a way of seeing all the moves ahead of time and putting together airtight plans that accounted for every problem that might arise.

  “He only gave you twenty for the truck, rims and all?” Bree asked with some skepticism in her voice that everybody heard.

  Tuesday nodded. “He said he couldn’t do no better than that.”

  “You know that was the new Denali, right? That’s at least a fifty-thousand-dollar whip.”

  Tuesday frowned. “It’s a fifty-thousand-dollar whip that’s stolen! You think he gone give me sticker price for it?”

  Brianna shrugged and studied her nails again. “I don’t know. Just seem like you got worked to me. Either that or somethin’ wrong with yo math!”

  That made Tuesday stand up straight. Every other woman in that room felt the sudden shift in the vibe as her eyes quickly changed from lime green to icy gray. “Bitch, is you tryin’ to say somethin’?”

  Bree didn’t retreat from her stare. “All I’m sayin’ is that we done put in a lot of time for a punk-ass thirteen G’s! If you figure it all out we basically got a little over three thousand a month. A bitch can get a job and do better than that!”

  “The lick wasn’t what I thought it was and I apologized for that.” Tuesday inched closer to her. “But when you got to talkin’ all this bullshit about my math, I thought you was tryin’ to hint at somethin’ else. So if you got anythang you wanna get off yo double D’s about that, feel free to speak up!”

  Jaye and Doll just sat there silent because they both knew what Brianna had tried to insinuate and knew that Tuesday had peeped it.

  Tushie was quiet too but she was more alert. She knew Tuesday better than anybody, and she knew if Brianna said the wrong thing that Tuesday was going to beat her ass. The girl was just tits on a stick and Tushie figured Tuesday could handle that skinny hoe alone, but Doll and Bree were tight. Jaye fucked with Brianna too even though Tushie didn’t know how cool they were. She was getting ready just in case she needed to have Tuesday’s back.

  The tension that swelled in the room seemed to have distorted time so after a second that felt much longer Brianna tucked her tail by looking away. She snatched up the money and threw the straps to her Fendi bag on her shoulder. “Well, if we ain’t got no more business, then I’m out.” She pushed off the loveseat and started for the door. “Doll, if you wanna ride, you betta come on!”

  Just as Baby Doll got up to follow, Tuesday called out to Brianna. She paused to look back just as she grabbed the knob.

  “You done got you a li’l Camaro, a couple purses, and some shoes and let that shit go to yo head. You the same broke bitch who pulled up in a busted ass V-Dub Beetle three years ago beggin’ for a job; the same bony bitch who used to be out there on the floor looking all stiff and scared, barely making enough to tip out. I pulled you in, gave you the game, and got you together. Bree, don’t forget that you came up fuckin’ with me, you ain’t make me better.”

  To that, all Brianna could do was roll her eyes.

  “But if you ever decide that you don’t like what we doin’ in her
e, that door swing both ways.” Tuesday looked around, making eye contact with each of them except Tushie, then added, “And that go for everybody!”

  “Is you finished?” Brianna tried to redeem herself from getting hoed out earlier by trying her best to look hard again.

  Tuesday just waved her off. “Bitch, beat it.”

  Bree left out the office with Doll right on her heels. Jaye got up too but threw Tuesday a we’re still cool nod before she dipped.

  When Tushie got up and went to the door it was only to close it behind them. She smiled. “I thought you wuz ’bout to whup dat bitch.”

  “I was. She did the right thang!” Tuesday went behind her desk and fell back into her chair. “I don’t know where this bitch done got all this mouth from lately but she startin’ to talk real reckless. If she keep it up, what almost happened today is definitely gone happen soon.”

  Tuesday dug into the inside pocket of her bag and pulled out a quarter ounce of kush that was tied in a sandwich bag. She passed the weed to Tushie along with a cigar because her girl rolled tighter than she did.

  Of the team, Tushie had been down with her the longest and been through the most shit. Even though she was five years younger, they were tight and if Tuesday were ever asked to name her best friend, there was no one else more deserving of the title.

  Back in the early part of ’05 that ass had already made Tushie a legend in the New Orleans strip clubs. Magazines like King and Black Men were calling her the new “It Girl” and for a while rappers all over the south were clamoring to have her pop that fifty-six-inch donk in their videos. She had milked that little bit of fame into a brand-new house and a S550 Benz until Katrina came along and washed it all away.

  Then she found herself living in Detroit and having to start from scratch. Tushie featured in a few clubs, and because she still had a strong buzz, she was the most sought-after free agent since LeBron James. All the big gentlemen’s clubs were shooting for her and as bad as Tuesday wanted her, she didn’t think she had a chance. She quickly learned that this country girl had a sharp business mind because Tushie agreed to come dance at the struggling little spot that Tuesday had just bought, but only if she made her a partner.

  Tuesday was leery at first but it turned out to be the best decision she ever made. When Tuesday took over The Bounce House it was losing money faster than she could earn it, but when Tushie the Tease became a regular featured dancer, all that turned around. She was like a carnival attraction as niggas from as far as New York came to see if she could really walk across the stage with two champagne bottles on her ass and not spill a drop, or clap it louder than a .22 pistol. The club was packed like sardines whenever she performed. Within months The Bounce House was turning a decent profit. Tushie kept the place jumping for five years, until she finally hung up her thong and retired from the stage.

  Single-handedly saving the club made her a good business partner but years of loyalty and her down ass ways made Tushie a good friend. Tuesday trusted her so much that she put her up on how they could make some real money together: by robbing niggas who couldn’t report the losses.

  Tushie finished rolling the blunt, lit it and took her first three hits. She was passing it across the desk to Tuesday when she spoke in a voice strained from the smoke in her lungs: “I already know you gone talk to Dres ’bout dis shit.”

  Tuesday accepted the weed with a nod. “Hell, yeah,” she said in between puffs. “I’m on my way to do that soon as I leave here. I’m damn sure ’bout to find out why he sent us on this dummy mission.”

  Chapter Three

  After leaving Tushie at the club, Tuesday was headed to meet their silent partner, Dres, at a motel on Telegraph that rented rooms by the hour. She had pushed for a more public location but Dres had insisted on the motel and Tuesday already knew what that meant. As much as she hated this, she preferred to do business here rather than having him show up at The Bounce.

  She parked her gleaming white Caddy into a slot next to his silver Charger. The motel had three separate buildings with sixteen units apiece and he was waiting in room 304. Tuesday didn’t miss the joke.

  When she got to the room the door was unlocked and Dres was inside sprawled across the bed watching a porno where a pair of white blondes with obviously fake tits were sharing a two-sided dildo. Tuesday sighed as she came in and closed the door.

  “Now that’s truly a thing of beauty,” he said, nodding to the screen. “You should take a good look because these are what real women look like.”

  Tuesday rolled her eyes. “Can we get this over with? I gotta be somewhere in like twenty minutes.”

  “I don’t give a shit where you have to be!” he snarled in that gravelly voice that always grated her nerves and had scared the shit out of Tank. His deep, raspy tone had a frightening quality, which was why Tuesday used him to make the recordings in the first place. She and the girls could disguise themselves as men but not fake a masculine voice.

  “And you can bet your fat black ass you’re gonna miss that appointment,” said Dres. “Now gimme what you got for me.”

  Tuesday sat her purse atop a small bureau next to the door and dug inside it. She found the envelope with his cut of the score, but next to it she had a small Heckler & Koch P7M8 that was small enough to conceal in her bag without producing any bulges. Tuesday gave serious thought to pulling that out instead.

  As if reading her mind, Dres whipped a huge .454 cannon from underneath a pillow. “Ms. Knight, I’ll have you know that I never walk into a room that I don’t know how to walk out of.”

  Tuesday slowly pulled out the thick envelope then held it up so that he could see it was harmless. “What, you scared of a paper cut?”

  She tossed it onto his lap and he quickly thumbed through the bills inside. “There had damned well better be another envelope for me in that bag!”

  “No, that’s it!” She threw up her hands. “And you can thank yourself for that.” Tuesday explained that she and the girls had pulled the job off without a problem but the fact that it had earned so little was due to his own bad information about Tank.

  “That’s bullshit!” Dres swung his legs off the bed. “I know for a fact that he was a major mover. Narcotics has been watching him for months, almost from the day he got out of prison.”

  “Dres,” or Lieutenant Kyle Dresden, was a dirty cop that Tuesday had had the misfortune of crossing paths with two years back. The team had knocked a nigga for two bricks and eighty thousand in cash not knowing that he was a snitch under Dresden’s protection. After months of investigation in which he watched them get two other D-boys, Dresden tracked Tuesday down and muscled her into a partnership. In exchange for an equal share, he would use his connections within the police force to point them toward the biggest dealers.

  Dres peeked inside the envelope again as if the amount might change. He dropped it on the nightstand then glared at her. “How do I know you bitches aren’t lying? How do I know there wasn’t a lot more in that safe and you and your little team of sluts aren’t trying to steal from me now?”

  “You always get an equal cut,” Tuesday lied. She shorted him every chance she got and had clipped him for fifteen hundred this time for what she knew was about to happen. “Believe whatever you want!”

  Tuesday turned to leave but in a flash Dresden overtook her. He pinned her against the door, his beefy forearm on her throat, with the barrel of the gun pressed into her cheek.

  “What makes you think I’d believe a black lying thief whore bitch like you?” he sneered in a low, guttural voice.

  Kyle Dresden was a very muscular six foot six with blue eyes and sandy brown hair that he wore in a military-style buzz cut. He reminded Tuesday of the big Russian that Rocky fought in the fourth movie played by Dolph Lundgren. She might have actually found the white boy attractive under different circumstances but there was an ugliness about him that his looks couldn’t mask. His blue eyes were cold and hard and he was never without a scowl. On top
of being a crooked cop who was cruel and sadistic, adding to his charm was the fact that Dresden was an unabashed racist who always spouted his Aryan views.

  “Where’s the rest of my money at, bitch?” He kept the gun in her face but took his free hand and swept it up and down her thighs frisking her. Tuesday could tell by his heavy breaths and the bulge in his pants that this had nothing to do with the money.

  She knew coming in that she was going to be raped today. This was another unfortunate condition of their partnership. From the beginning he had made it clear that everything was to be on his terms, so when they met for Dres to collect his cut, sometimes he only wanted the money but most of the time he wanted more. There were instances when Tuesday was able to sweet-talk her way out of it but some days Dresden refused to be denied.

  “I told you I have to be somewhere in twenty minutes,” she said with neither terror nor malice in her voice.

  He moved his large hand up her skirt and groped roughly at her 36C’s. “And I told you I don’t give a fuck what you gotta do. You ugly-ass yellow bitch, you’re gonna pay me one way or another!” Dresden reached around, grabbed her butt, and squeezed it hard. “You know I’ve been waiting for this. You knew I wanted it as soon as you walked in.”