I couldn’t believe I was having such a good time on a vacation I didn’t even want to come on, especially since I hadn’t been able to catch up with Jimmy. Gino had let me use his cell phone for the last two nights, but for some reason nobody picked up at the apartment. I’d broken down and called the Spot, and Cooter told me Jimmy had been in off and on, but spent most of his time upstairs supervising the workers in the cut room.

You should have seen how I was steaming as I hung up. I was mad as hell that Jimmy was working that close to drugs, and somebody was gonna have to explain that shit to me when I got back to Harlem.

Justin was taking us to a tourist spot called the Polynesian Cultural Center when I decided to call Jimmy again. We’d stopped at a roadside truck that had big shrimp painted on the sides, and Justin assured us that local gut trucks like these were the best-kept secrets on the island. Gino ordered fried shrimp and I ordered garlic prawns, and then sat down on an empty bench and Gino passed me his cell phone.

I dialed the Spot, but the line at the bar just rang, so I clicked over and dialed another number. A female voice answered the phone in the cut room. “Jimmy there?” I demanded before she could get her “hello” out good.

“Nah. He left.”

Too late, I recognized the voice. “Dicey?”

Click.

I pressed redial and the phone just rang and rang. But Dicey had answered that phone. Sure as hell, it had been her. I called the line at the bar again and this time Cooter picked up. I gave him a message for Jimmy saying he’d better call me at the hotel within twenty-four hours or his ass was gonna get kicked when I got back home.

I was so stressed when I hung up that I couldn’t eat my prawns.

“Worried about your brother?” Gino asked.

I nodded. I was fronting like I was mad, but worried was a lot more like it.

“Don’t be pressed. He’ll be okay.”

I shook my head and pushed my plate away. “I don’t know… it just doesn’t feel right to me. I don’t know why he had to stay back anyway. He should have came with us from the door.”

“G had other plans for him,” Gino said. He opened a pack of hot sauce and squirted it all over his shrimp. “But if I was you, I’d watch that shit. Limit all that control y’all done gave him. Motherfuckers like G don’t mean you no good.”

I stared at him. This was the first time he’d said anything negative about his father and I wanted to hear more. “Why you say that?”

“Come on, Juicy. Why do you think?”

“G’s been good to me. To Jimmy, too. I just have to convince him to keep Jimmy out of the Spot and let him go to college. Just like he did for you.”

Gino laughed like crazy. “Oh, so you think G let my ass go to college? Let? ‘Let’ didn’t have shit to do with it. I was going. One way or another, I was going.” He wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Besides, he felt guilty behind the way he fucked up my life. If he didn’t pay my way through school my grandmother woulda worked some Santeria roots on his ass that would make his dick fall off.”

“Ain’t like he’s using it anyway,” I mumbled.

“What was that?”

“Nothing,” I said, shaking my head.

Gino laughed again. “Aiiight, now. Don’t be putting the man’s business all out in the street. I don’t want to hear shit about what you do with him.”

“There’s not much to hear, so that shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Whatever, Juicy. Do you, sister. Just watch your back. You better watch Jimmy’s back, too.”

Now I was really worried. Gino sounded like he knew something I didn’t know.

“Can I ask you something and have it stay between us? You know, something you don’t go running your mouth off to G with?”

His face got real serious and he put his hand on my arm. “Dig, I don’t tell G shit. We don’t roll that way. Anything me and you toss back and forth is strictly between us. Word.”

Something in his eyes told me I could trust him. Besides, I needed some info and who better to put me down on G’s true nature than his son. “Okay.” I nodded. “I believe I can trust you, and even though you think I’m a chickenhead, you really can trust me, too. Tell me,” I said, looking so deep into his eyes I could see his heart. “Tell me what happened to your mother.”

Chapter Fifteen

Gino had some love in his heart for G, but judging by the things he told me, he had every right to hate him, too. Chills ran through me as I sat listening to him talk about the way G treated and controlled his mother. He had done her the exact same way he was doing me, only I didn’t have a child to worry about protecting the way Gino’s moms had. It always messed me up when I heard about foul stuff people did to their kids. It took me right back to that cold December night when a junkie ho tried to trade my life for hers.

“My mother was special,” Gino said. “Not only was Salida the finest Puerto Rican chick in Harlem, she was smart, too. Her father died young and her mother was poor, so she thought she’d hit the jackpot when my father took her in, but G is a crafty nigger and when she stepped out of line he broke her down, mentally and physically.”

I shivered and picked at my prawns even though the sun was roasting my back and neck. “I know what you mean. Whatever G wants, G gets.”

“That’s right. But what’s worse, Juicy, is, G’s truly cold. There’s no margin of error with him when it comes to shit like loyalty and respecting his word. When you fuck up with him, you fuck up. It’s all or nothing. He don’t even know what it means to forgive.”

I thought about all the people G had put down over the years, and a picture of that man’s head hitting the Dungeon’s door flashed through my mind. G ran his life the way he ran his business. Cut and dried. The game was his scripture and the gun was his bible.

Gino took a sip of my soda. “After my mother disappeared I heard all kinds of shit. I was only twelve, but her family put me down on everything that came through the streets. There were so many sightings of her you would have thought she was Tupac or Elvis. Her brothers and uncles looked for her for years. Even after it was obvious she had to be dead. I mean, if she could have come back home, she would have. Dig?”

“Didn’t you ask G what happened to her?”

“Yeah. I did, and it was the only time I ever saw my father cry. He came to me one night and swore up and down he didn’t know where she was. Fed me some shit about her running off with some dealer from Brooklyn. Said somebody told her he knew she was fucking around and dipping in the cut room, too, so she got scared and took off.”

I had to ask. “Did you believe him?”

“C’mon, Juicy. I was a twelve-year-old kid, but I wasn’t no fuckin sherm. I knew his ass was grimy. G hates women. In his game they’re all either bitches or hoes, or training to be both. Whenever my mother tried to think for herself he would kick her ass to both ends of the house and back. Shoes, belts, brooms-even as young as seven I would hide in my closet just to keep from jumping in and killing his ass. But G was careful though. He could whip her ass all night long, but he never left a mark on her where me or anybody else could see it. That’s why I got scared one morning when I woke up to go to school and her eye had been dotted and her nose was broke. I knew what time it was then. Once my father fucked up Salida’s face, she could kiss it good-bye. I told you my mother was bad. She was G’s Cadillac. His Jaguar and his Rolls-Royce. G is all about status and appearance, and the minute he stopped giving a fuck about what she looked like, she might as well have been dead.”

Gino made G sound like a monster. I shivered again and was glad when Justin called us over to the car. I got in and turned my face toward the window as we drove. It shocked me when I felt Gino’s fingers on my arm, and then he was holding my hand.