Lust by Noire

pool halls, and number spots. Them cats had been making ha-ha’s and poppin’ live shit about Salida and the new direction that she had taken the G-Spot in. Ace didn’t like his woman being the butt of nobody’s fuckin’ jokes, and he couldn’t help thinking that his manz Pluto was behind some of that noise.
    The tension between the two men had grown thick as shit, and it wasn’t that he had let a piece of pussy fuck up their partnership like Pluto claimed he did. Nah, it was about being a stand-up niggah and doing whatever it took to get what you needed out on these mean streets.
    Not only had Salida launched a whole new flava and attracted new customers to the Spot, her club drug operation was booming like a muh’fucka and that shit she cooked upstairs was now being packaged for deep distribution all over Harlem.
    Pluto swore Salida was just greedy and selfish, and he claimed she wasn’t doing a damn thing to put any extra dollars in his pockets.
    “You let that chick take over everything, man,” he had complained one night. “You wanted me to go along with her shit and we was all supposed to benefit from it. As far as I can tell ain’t nobody collected a dime off of nothing she got going except her.”
    “But that’s the thing,” Ace had countered, rushing to Salida’s defense. “Just because her shit is jumping off don’t mean me and you can just sit back and play with our nuts, son. We had a mission and we fucked it up and that’s why me and you is broke. Haters gone hate, but who you think paid the back rent up in here? How is the damn cops getting their cut every week, and how you think we got squared up with the back utility bills and the liquor license too? All that shit got taken care of outta the doe Salida brought in. Me and you still gots to get our own.”
    It was this kinda talk that pissed Pluto off. Salida was all the time yakking about how bad him and Ace had fucked up their opportunity to get their hands on some big cash. She was still mad as fuck that Juicy had slipped through their fingers, and he figured she was withholding her cash from them as some type of punishment or some shit.
    Pluto had smirked and waved his boy off. “Both of y’all can kill all that whining about G’s missing doe, yo. That shit is gone somewhere out in Cali and what’s done is done. Don’t nobody know where that bitch Juicy is at, and don’t nobody know where the money is neither.”
    “But see, that’s where your thinking is all fucked up,” Ace insisted. “We can’t forget about that shit, man. We gotta keep pushin’. We gotta be diligent. We gotta go back in, ak. And we gotta go back in hard.”
    “That shit is dead, man. It’s dead.”
    That’s the same thing Ace had tried to tell Salida, but she had snapped on him with a quickness, telling him, “Dead my ass. I know damn well y’all ain’t gonna just give up on that kinda goddamn money! I ain’t the only one still scheming and dreaming up in here, am I? ’Cause if I am, what the hell do I need with you two broke-ass clowns?”
    “Look, P,” Ace had pleaded with his partner. Yeah, he had sent Izzy and Zero out on a death-mission over that doe, but what the fuck. His cousin Rabbit wasn’t even speakin’ to him no more. He told him he didn’t give a fuck how much money Juicy mighta been hiding out in Cali. He had lost two good killers when that car bomb went off and Ace could kiss his black ass. “Pluto, that money is still out there somewhere, man. It didn’t disappear. It’s up to us to use everything we got to find it and get it back.”
    Pluto took a deep breath and grilled his old friend. “I tell you what, niggah. I ain’t feelin’ the kinda slimy shit y’all niggahs been pullin’ on Nooni, ya heard? She’s Truth’s bitch, and that shit just ain’t right. If we go at that money one last time and we still come up empty, then we gotta let that girl go.”
    With his eyes wide and innocent, Ace had nodded in agreement.