“Damn it!” he said, recognizing who was calling without needing to look at the phone screen.
“Anything wrong?” Carmelita said, watching the skinny Tyrone walk quickly to the couch and grab the phone off the seat cushion.
He ignored her, then snapped at the caller: “You better be calling to say it’s done.”
Carmelita could hear the male voice of the caller but could not make out what he was saying, only picking up on his tone. He sounded, she thought, excited in a nervous way-maybe even scared.
“Look, man,” Tyrone said angrily, his eyes darting at Carmelita then away, “we’ve been over this. You gotta just do it. You hearing me? ’Cause if you don’t, you know what happens.”
There was no reply for a moment, then Carmelita heard the caller mumble, “All right.”
“Don’t say it-do it! Let me know when it’s done. No surprises.”
Hooks ended the call, and was about to toss the phone back on the cushion when it made a Ping-Ping! sound.
He looked at the screen and read the text message: “Yo, King. Bags in AC safe. All good here. TV news keeps showing smash amp; grab. That dude really dead???”
Tyrone turned his back to Carmelita, then thumbed a reply: “News says 1 dead 1 shot. Stay there. No casinos!! Lay low til I say.”
He nodded as he glanced at the crushed velvet pouch and thought: Lucky they got to the Shore quick. Five-Oh really got to be looking hard for them, especially since he killed that guy. Damn good news that loot’s locked up.
Right after he hit SEND, the phone made another Ping-Ping!
“Damn,” he said in a hiss, then flipped the switch to silence the phone.
He suddenly felt the warmth of Carmelita’s skin against his back, then her arms wrapping around him, her gentle fingers finding his curly black chest hairs. She rested her chin on his shoulder. He could feel her moist breath on his ear.
“You ever shoot anyone, King?” she said.
Hooks jerked his head.
“Why the hell you say that?”
“You rap about it,” she said, her tone playful but serious. “You got the nine. Just wonder sometimes if you’ve done it.”
She buried her face in his neck as her right hand slipped down to his belly and then to his groin.
Hooks inhaled deeply.
“Well, baby, I rap about some super-hot sex, too, so what do you think?”
He exhaled as he glanced at the phone screen and saw that the text massage read “Call me QUICK!”
“What’s that text about?” Carmelita said.
“You oughta not ask so many questions,” Hooks said sharply, turning from the phone toward her.
She stuck out her lower lip in a pout-just as her hand grasped him in a way that left no question she wasn’t really pouting.
After a very brief moment he grinned, tossed the phone back beside the pistol on the couch, and said, “But that one’s about nothing that ain’t gonna wait!”
He then roughly pulled a giggling Carmelita back across the room to the bed.
–
A half hour later, Hooks hit a speed-dial key on his cellular phone as he watched Carmelita, sitting up in bed beside him, take a fat pinch of crushed marijuana from a clear plastic zip-top bag and refill the bowl of the glass pipe that had been on the desk.
“Don’t forget I need you to call your brother after that bowl’s burned,” Tyrone told her. “I got a job for him.”
“What you want with Ruben?” she said, picking up a matchbook from the bedsheet.
“Baby girl, what’d I tell you about asking so many questions?” Tyrone said, then barked into the phone, “Yo!”
“You call that calling me quick?” DiAndre Pringle answered.
“I had something I had to do first.”
Carmelita giggled.
“Whatever, Ty,” Pringle said.
Hooks guessed that Pringle had overheard Carmelita, and grinned at her.
“Listen,” Pringle went on, “I wanted you to call quick ’cause I’d just got an idea for you.”
“This about me performing at that Turkey Day gig?”
“No.”
“What? I’m still doing the gig, right?”
“Yeah, Ty. But you want to work another gig?”
Hooks looked at Carmelita, grinned, then said, “Depends. I don’t know. Might be busy. When?”
“This afternoon.”
“Today? You messing with me?”
“No. You heard that the Rev is putting on a rally, right?”
“Rally? About what?”
“About all the killing that’s going on. About stopping Killadelphia.”
Hooks felt the hair on his neck stand up.
He can’t mean what happened this morning.
How’d he know about my boys?
Unless somebody else went and talked. .
“Going to be lots of people at the ministry here, Ty. And I figured you’d be really good at really amping up the crowd.”
Yeah, he does mean my raps.
“How much?” Hooks said.
“How many people?”
“No. How much I get paid?”
“Are you serious? Ain’t nobody getting paid. I mean, c’mon, it’s for our people!”
Hooks was quiet a moment.
Guess I’m about to get me a good grip for that loot-plenty of benjamins for a while.
And it’d look good if I played that rally.
Might even be news covering it. Get me on TV.
“TV news coming?” he said.
“Yeah. I left messages with ’em all. That Philly News Now and Channel 10 called back and said they were sending reporters. Sure there’ll be more.”
Hooks’s eyebrows went up.
“Yeah, man,” he said, nodding, “I could seriously amp that crowd up.”
“Don’t need you to do a whole set or nothing. Just rap one or two songs. Rev Cross doesn’t like folks taking over his stage.”
Carmelita lit a match, then put the flame to the pot in the pipe bowl. She took a deep puff on the glass pipe and held it in, before holding out the pipe to Hooks.
“So,” Pringle said, “whatcha say, King?”
Tyrone Hooks looked at his gold Rolex watch.
“I say what time you want me there?” he said, winked at Carmelita, then took a puff on the pipe.
[FOUR]
Lucky Stars Casino amp; Entertainment
North Beach Street, Philadelphia
Saturday, December 15, 3:45 P.M.
“The way this ghetto punk strutted out of here, he must’ve really thought that he’d conned everyone, that we were just gonna swallow this little charade of his,” Security Director Sean Francis O’Sullivan said, as he gestured toward the wall of flat-panel monitors showing live video feeds of activity throughout the casino property. One monitor had a sharp freeze-framed close-up image of a smirking Tyrone Hooks as he sat on a Winner’s Lounge barstool.
O’Sullivan looked at Homicide Detective Anthony Harris, and went on: “He expects us to believe that, after being in the jewelry store, he just happened to be having a beer while the robbery was taking place downstairs? Innocently playing a couple hands of five-card stud on the video game at the bar? And then that he just happened to leave the scene after it’s all gone down?”
“That really is pretty ballsy bullshit, Sully,” Harris said, looking from the close-up image and meeting O’Sullivan’s eyes. “Almost like he’s taunting whoever’s watching.”
“I’d say more bullshit than ballsy, Tony. I really don’t think he’s that smart, or that he realizes what deep shit he’s in. Because what I do know is that Mr. Antonov is more than a little pissed. He’s been in and out of here constantly all day, watching the videos, getting information updates, and saying to make sure that we-meaning me personally-give you everything you need.”