Gods & Gangsters 2 Read online

  He and Mona had done all the things lovers do in Venice, including taking the gondola ride, being photographed beneath the Bridge of Sighs, being serenaded by a sweet-voiced Italian playing a mandolin, eating gelato and drinking espresso on the palazzo.

  They had also shopped hard, feeding the fetish they both had for shoes.

  They got shoes and stilettos handmade, along with tailor-made suits.

  Before he knew it, Othello had spent well over fifty grand.

  But the smile on his wife’s lips was worth it.

  Standing in the doorway, he couldn’t imagine life without her.

  He had finally found something he would die for.

  Or kill for.

  He held a light blue silk scarf in his hand.

  It was her favorite color.

  He remembered her saying something about a scarf her grandmother used to have. She had described it with so much detail, and he’d listened, knowing it was important to her, so when he had it made, it was easy to duplicate.

  He sat on the edge of the bed and began to use the end of the scarf to lightly tickle her face.

  Mona wiggled her nose, frowned up and turned away.

  Then Othello let it barely touch her cheek.

  She slapped at it, slapping herself in her sleep.

  He held back laughter as he tickled her ear.

  She woke up, confused, but when he busted out laughing, she knew exactly what was going on.

  “Oh you wanna play, huh?” She cracked, wriggling around and jumping on Othello, knocking him over on the bed.

  Mona began punching him playfully, sticking her fingers in his ears and mouth until he was crying with tears.

  “Truce! Truce!” He cried.

  “No truce!” She cackled back.

  He held up the scarf. “Truuuuuce!”

  When she laid eyes on it, her heart skipped a beat. She stopped in her play-fight tracks. Her eyes couldn’t widen enough. This was her childhood.

  “Oh… my god,” she gasped, “Where..?”

  “I had it made for you yesterday. Remember the old man that made my ties? He said, “For your-ah beautiful wife-ah,” Othello said, playfully using a bad Italian accent.

  Mona didn’t know what to say. She had no words. She didn’t need them for him. The tears in her eyes said it all.

  “No one’s done something for me this beautiful, baby. Oh, I love you so much,” she declared, wrapping her arms around him and giving him a big kiss.

  “And you know I love you too, lettin’ you kiss me with that dragon breath!” He teased.

  Mona howled with laughter, while pummeling him with more love taps.

  Othello flipped her over and pinned her to the bed.

  “You my heart, babygirl,” he told her, solemnly.

  “And you’re mine,” she replied.

  Their long passionate kiss led to an early morning love-making session.

  Venice was like an aphrodisiac for any newlywed couple, so intensely beautiful and headily exotic.

  When it was time to go, and they were sat on the plane waiting for it to rumble down the runway, Mona whined, “Do we really have to leave? I love my family, but I could do this for a few more years.”

  Othello chuckled.

  “Soon.”

  “So what are you going to do now that you’re retiring?” Mona questioned.

  Othello rested his head against the headrest. “I don’t know, but it’s good to have choices, you know? Being a Black man with choices feels real good. And rare.”

  “Just hang around with me at the theater. Maybe we can even turn some of the plays and performances into movies,” Mona suggested. “Wouldn’t that be something?”

  “Not a bad idea. I could be like the gangsta Tyler Perry,” Othello joked.

  Mona laughed as the plane began its taxi, ready for takeoff to return to their real world.

  “Othello’s back from his honeymoon,” Mac told Cash over the phone.

  Kandi drove.

  He sat back in the passenger seat.

  “I heard,” Cash responded, across town sitting on his couch. The TV played in the background.

  “So now you can holler at Mona,” Mac stated.

  “Man, you sure this is a good idea?”

  “My nigga, who always keep it real with you?”

  “You.”

  “And I ain’t gonna steer you wrong now, am I? Don’t worry about O. I’ma take him out the way, you just go over to the theater and holler at Mona. She gonna put in the word for you. Trust me, you’ll be boss in no time! Just do me a favor, make sure you bounce by three.”

  “Okay… Okay, yeah set it up. And Mac, you know I appreciate this.”

  “I know you do,” Mac chuckled then hung up.

  “What he say?” Kandi wanted to know.

  “What you think he said? He swallowed that shit whole,” Mac laughed.

  “I gotta give it to you, babe, you a fuckin’ evil genius.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  The next day.

  Mac picked Othello up so that they could make the rounds. It was part of what they did: watching, being seen, which was important across the different spots in their territory. It showed people they were there. Othello leaned the seat back, cracked the window and lit a cigar. He’d picked the habit up from his new father-in-law, always sucking on those thick dick Cubans like some sort of Freudian thing-or was that the one where you wanted to bone your own mama?

  “Venus and Milk say shit is rolling lovely,” Othello remarked, lips off the cigar for long enough to lay down some wisdom. “Them two of the realest bitches I done met in a minute.”

  “No doubt, no doubt. But yo, I need to talk to you about something.”

  “What up, Mac?”

  “I’m getting out the game,” Mac told him.

  Othello looked at him.

  “What up, brah? You good? You ain’t sick or nothin are you? You ain’t got cancer or no shit like that, do you?”

  “Fuck is you talkin about? Hell no, I ain’t sick. Don’t mark me like that.”

  “Naw, I’m just sayin’ you getting out the game is like the sun getting out the sky. Nigga, you live for this shit,” Othello pointed out.

  Mac shrugged, backing the gesture with a subtle chuckle. “Time to move on, you know? Do some other things. We been hustlin’ since we was kids, my nigga, and we’ve had a good run, you know?”

  Othello nodded. “True dat. To be honest with you, I’ve been thinking along the same lines.”

  I know you have, you ungrateful ass nigga, Mac thought, but he hid his hiss in a smile and said, “Word?”

  “Word. I’m ready to move on, too. Start a family and just chill.”

  “That’s the real life right there. And speaking of chillin’, when was the last time you been to Ice’s?”

  “Ice’s? Man, goddamn, it’s been years since I even thought about that ol’ hole in the wall,” Othello laughed.

  Mac looked at his watch.

  “Let’s go have a drink or two. I have a surprise for you.”

  “I’m supposed to go by Mona’s theater. She’s having some dance exhibit next week and she want me to check out the rehearsal,” Othello said.

  “Damn, your leash reach to the Southside don’t it?” Mac joked.

  Othello laughed, but it worked out just the way he knew it would. “Nigga, fuck you. Like Kandi ain’t got you wrapped around her pinkie!”

  “What she got me wrapped wit’ might be pink, but it ain’t no finger!” Mac joked.

  “One drink,” Othello agreed.

  “Or two.”

  They arrived at the small out of the way tittie bar, needing to squint back the dark as they entered until their eyes properly adjusted to the gloom of the Graveyard.

  “This muhfuckin’ place ain’t gonna never change,” Othello commented, looking around.

  “Just like the past,” Mac added.

  They found a booth, then sat back blowing b
lunts and watching the bullet-scarred, stretch marked topless dancers gyrate around the half-empty room. There wasn’t so much as a dick twitch.

  “These bitches couldn’t sell pussy in a Mexican whorehouse, yo,” Othello cracked.

  When Kat walked up, her whole face lit up.

  “O?”

  Othello looked up. It took a heartbeat, then, “Kat?”

  “Surprise!” Mac commented, as Othello got up and wrapped Kat in a big hug, lifting her off her feet.

  “What up, ma! Where the hell you been?” Othello asked, looking her up and down, not much liking what he saw.

  “Vacation,” she chuckled.

  “So was I,” Othello answered. “How long?”

  “Seven years.”

  Othello shook his head.

  “That’s some stretch. Sit down. Have a drink with us.”

  Kat glanced at her manager, who was sitting by the bar watching her.

  “I can’t, I already took my break,” she apologized.

  Othello looked back at the manager, “Drinks on me for as long as I’m here, and I’m here as long as Kat can drink,” he called over.

  The manager gave him a thumbs up.

  Kat laughed.

  “Bring a bottle of Henny and three glasses, ma,” Othello told her.

  When she returned, the three of them sat back, drinking and smoking, and reminiscing about old times. For some around the table, better times.

  “Yeah, when Mac walked in here a few weeks ago, I couldn’t believe it,” Kat remarked, knocking back half her a glass in one gulp.

  Mac chuckled.

  “I couldn’t believe it either, believe me, girl.”

  “So what you doin’, Kat? You know you fucked with real niggas all your life. You ain’t gotta be up in this joint, scraping pennies.”

  Kat tapped the blunt ash in the tray and looked at Othello.

  “Those seven years broke me, O.” She shrugged and it was obvious she was telling the whole truth. “I promised myself I’d never put myself in a position to go back, and I’m not gonna.”

  “I respect that, believe me. I feel the same way. But I’ve got a lot of connects outside the game, maybe I can get you a job?” Othello proposed.

  Kat snorted a chuckle of self-contempt. “Doing what, nigga? The game is all I know. You think I’d be here if I had job skills? I know what I am, and that’s an addict, O. That dog food had me fucked up for a minute, but I go to my meetings, I keep my head down and thank the Lord for another day above ground. I’m good. I’m surviving, and that’s more than can be said for some.”

  “Naw, ma, my wife owns that new black theater downtown. I can get you a job over there. You can learn as you go.”

  “You have a wife? Not big, bad Othello? Shackled to a ball and chain. Damn I gotta meet the beauty that locked down the beast,” Kat laughed.

  Othello laughed right along with her.

  Cash pulled up in front of Mona’s theater, took a deep breath, centering himself, then cut the car off.

  He checked his face in the rearview mirror, looking into his own eyes and wondering what the fuck was wrong with him, giving himself butterflies so easily.

  “Here we go,” he told his mirror self, then got out of the car.

  Once inside, he went up to the receptionist desk.

  The sister behind the desk, a dead ringer for Jill Scott, beautiful smile, afro and all, beamed, “May I help you, sir?”

  “I’m here to see Mrs. Moore,” he replied, finding it hard to call Mona by her married name.

  “She’s in the dance studio at the end of the hall. Just keep straight and follow the music.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Anytime,” she said, with a hint of flirtation in her tone.

  Cash headed down the hall, taking in all the artwork on the walls. There were people in each of the rooms, and down on the stage, rehearsing and doing their thing. It felt good to see kids reaching for their dreams.

  He reached the dance studio, and stopped, looking in through the door.

  She was in there, looking like everything he had ever dreamed a woman should look. She had on a white leotard, and was dancing barefoot, with her hair held back in a ponytail.

  Even with no make-up, she glowed.

  She was teaching a group of young girls their steps.

  He stood in the doorway watching her for a moment, content. She moved with such grace and poise, he couldn’t help but imagine that Maya Angelou poem, Phenomenal Woman, had been written for her.

  One of the little girls saw him, and whispered to her friend, then they both broke into a fit of girlish giggles. The giggles went like wildfire through the tiny dancers. Mona heard them, how could she not? She looked up and was about to chide them when she saw the cause of their distraction.

  Her eyes held his for a beat, then she cleared her throat and told the kids, “Okay girls, take five. Five, not six. Got it?”

  As they raced off, she walked over to Cash, drying her face with a towel.

  “Hey… what are you doing here?” Mona questioned.

  “I’m sorry to impose, ma. It won’t take long, but I could use a favor,” he answered.

  She looked at him, like, “A favor?”

  “I’m hopin’ you’ll listen a few. I won’t take up too much of your time, if we could go somewhere?”

  Mona weighed it out, sighed and replied, “My office.”

  When they got inside her small, cramped cupboard of a room in the back of the dance studio, she sat on the desk. “Okay, Cash, I’m listening.”

  He gritted, looked her in the eye. God it was hard. He started, “I know Othello is falling back from the game. He’s got good reason to,” Cash offered her a compliment. Mona kept her game face, but the inside of her cheeks blushed.

  “And?”

  “He talked to Mac, but Mac is falling back, which only leaves me. But, O thinks I’m just a…”

  “Playboy, womanizer, heartbreaker, stop me when I’m warm,” Mona quipped playfully.

  Cash laughed.

  “Yeah, all that. I’m not that bad, yo.”

  “No, you’re worse. But go on.”

  “Anyway, I want that connect. He need to keep it in the family, but I’m afraid he’ll sell it to someone else on The Commission, someone who won’t keep me in the game. I don’t want to be frozen out,” Cash explained.

  “Okay, I can understand that, but what’s it got to do with me, Cassio? I don’t have anything to do with how Othello does business. That’s all him.”

  “Ma, that nigga love you to death. Your word matters to him. You don’t have to know his business, to put in a good word for me.”

  Mona looked at Cash. There was a curious expression on her face he couldn’t read. It wasn’t like she didn’t understand how the game was played. She was, after all, her father’s daughter, and the apple didn’t fall from the tree. Maybe she felt a little guilty for leaving Cash like she did? Maybe she felt like she owed him?

  “I don’t know how much help I could be, but I’ll mention it to him,” she promised.

  Cash breathed a sigh of relief.

  “I really appreciate that, ma.”

  Mona nodded.

  “No problem,” she answered, hopping off the desk. “Is there anything else? I've got an army of tiny tearaways waiting out there.”

  He looked at her. They were alone in a small room. No one would know if he expressed the secret language known only to his heart. The look in her eyes was almost like she wanted him to say something else, but the words were never going to come. Both of them were bound by an unbreakable allegiance to the same man for very different reasons.

  “No, that’s it.”

  She nodded, then turned to the door.

  When she grabbed the knob, he grabbed her arm.

  “No, I’m lying. There is one more thing.”

  “Guess who’s home?” Kat said.

  “Who?” Othello asked.

  “Rihanna! She got out about
a month ago,” Kat told him, feeling nice off the three glasses of Henny she’d knocked back and the blunt she had inhaled.

  “Rihanna?” Mac echoed, not following. He thought he knew everyone in O’s circle.

  “Naw, you don’t know ‘em. Word, that’s what’s up. I can’t front though, scrams go hard. So what up, you gonna ride with me or what on this job thing?” Othello wanted to know.

  Kat propped her hand under her chin and smirked. “It better be legit, O.”

  “Scout’s Honor.”

  “You were never a boy scout.”

  “But I’ve always had honor,” he winked.

  “It’s good to have family again,” she said.

  “To family,” Othello toasted, and they all clinked glasses.

  “Why?”

  Mona just looked at Cash.

  It was a simple question, the simplest, really, but it demanded a complicated response.

  She peeped out at the girls.

  They were working through their dance steps on their own with that quiet intensity only little ones can manage. She shut the door, and replied, “Cassio…okay. When my father found out that I had… been with you that night, he told me, if I ever saw you again he would kill you,” Mona explained.

  Cash shook his head.

  “But goddamn, you coulda gave me a chance to make the decision on my own. I didn’t need you to think for me,” he huffed, heated.

  “Cassio, you saw how he reacted to Othello. Do you seriously think he would’ve hesitated making good on that threat?”

  Cash sighed hard.

  “You left me cold, ma.”

  “I’m sorry. I really am.”

  “You broke my heart.”

  “Don’t do this, Cassio,” Mona begged softly.

  “I’m not doing anything, believe me ma, honest to God. I know where things stand, and I would never violate that.”

  “I would never let you violate that,” Mona stated firmly.