She wanted to scream. “You crazy bastard, you’ve really put your foot in it. Where are we supposed to go?”
“America,” Slide said.
And so they sat down, hatched out a plan to get some serious money and fast. In spite of all the fear, all the anger she felt toward Slide, Angela was excited about the thought of returning to New York. Oh God, she realized how much she missed it.
She gave Slide her full look, drilled her eyes into his, and she couldn’t help marveling at the piercing blue. His expression, as usual, was impossible to read, though. You never knew if he was planning murder, mayhem and general madness, thinking about sex, or some of each.
“Okay,” she said. “Here’s what we’re going to do and this is how we’re going to do it.”
The plan: They’d hit the bars, the posh ones where the suits and the money hung. She’d lure some schmuck outside and then Slide would do his gig. She was estimating if they hit maybe ten pubs, they’d score, say, in six, and have the run-like-fook-away money.
Slide was game, said, “Game on.”
As long as violence was in the mix, he was up for it.
She cautioned, “And try not to kill anyone, can you fucking do that?”
He smiled, said, “I love it when you talk dirty to me.”
Twelve
If a man should challenge me now, I would go to that man and take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand, lead him to a quiet retired spot and kill him.
Max was gearing up for the big meeting with the Colombians, trying to learn as much Español as he could. He’d sent his bee-atch out to get him the tapes and he was listening to them whenever he had time, which wasn’t often because he was mucho busy. Mucho, see how he intuitively knew this shit?
The idea to learn Spanish came to Max one morning on the bowl when he was thinking because, like, thinking was his forte.
See, when you were a clued-in dude like The M.A.X., you not only got to use words like forte, you had a reasonable idea of what they meant. He’d been telling himself like a mantra, know your market, and know the guys you’re dealing with. He hadn’t built up this hell of a business without being savvy, and he liked to think of himself as straddling both sides. Yeah, the boardroom, piece of cake, he could do the biz gig in his sleep. Sometimes he believed he was born with the Dow Jones in his mouth. Your regular working stiff, he read the sports section of the Daily News, moved his lips as he read, but The M.A.X., he didn’t just read the business section, he fucking devoured it. Wall Street Journal, man, he subscribed, and knew his name was in every editor’s address book over there. Come on, if you were a journalist in the business world and didn’t have an in with Max Fisher, then who the hell were you anyway?
Who knew, maybe one of these days the Journal would ask Max to do a regular column for them and if Max was in a philanthropic mood, had some free time on his hands, felt the need to give back, maybe he’d accept. He’d call the column, what else, The M.A.X. Have guys in all the happening bars going, “I was reading in The M.A.X.…” or “The M.A.X. says…” Yeah, he could see it. The double hit of coke he’d had with his croissant and skim milk latte helped the visualization. And, hey, it could happen. But the bottom line was Max was too busy. The guy who came up with multitasking, shit, that guy had The M.A.X. in mind.
So, anyway, Max was thinking that the Colombians were coming to town, and those dudes spoke, like, Spanish, right? So, you were going to be in bed with them, you better, like, speak their lingo. Seemed to make sense. And it was this kind of preparation that had made Max the hombre he was today.
Hombre. Man, he was getting this shit down fast.
He listened to the Spanish tapes whenever he got some downtime and when you were as freaking busy as Max, running a goddamn crack empire, there wasn’t a whole load of free time floating around. He listened when he was eating, on the shitter; he even wore the fucking headphones in bed, letting that crap seep into his subconscious, so even his sleep gig was, like, working. Did The Donald know that little trick?
And sure, okay, it was a little uncomfortable-damn earpiece fell out and poked you in the eye and the wire got wrapped round your throat-but who said knowledge was easy. Fuck, you ever hear old Stephen Hawking complaining? And that dude was wired if anyone was.
Max laughed out loud, loving his wit.
A few times there, yeah, when he’d gotten a little carried away with the crack, the booze, he’d put on the tapes, let it crank, played that shit loud till Felicia had screamed, “The fuck is wrong with you, put on some Lil’ Kim!”
The reason why she’d always be a follower, didn’t grasp the big picture. The bee-atch just didn’t get it.
One odd sidebar-the voice on the Spanish tapes had this, like, posh accent, like some Spanish royalty or shit, and Max could only speak the lingo in the same aristocratic tone. There was this Lopez dude doing the lessons and Max was incapable of speaking in a halfway decent Spanish accent if he didn’t add “Señor Lopez” to everything he said, in that upper-class tone. Like if he wanted to say “Puede ayudarme?” in a normal tone he sounded like shit. But if he said, “Puede ayudarme, Señor Lopez?” he sounded like a native.
Man, he sure as shit hoped one of these Colombians was named Lopez.
Another problem, his vocabulary wasn’t exactly massive. He wasn’t going to be entering any Spanish Scrabble tournaments any time soon. And a lot of the phrases he knew weren’t exactly useful. Like how many opportunities would he have to say, “Usted tiene gusto de dos limones y de dos naranjas, Señor Lopez?” Would you like two lemons and two oranges, Mr. Lopez? Or “A que hora abre la oficina de correos, Señor Lopez?” What time does the post office open, Mr. Lopez? Or, “A donde esta un buon restaurant in este ciudad, Señor Lopez?” Do you know where there is a good restaurant in this city, Mr. Lopez?
The Colombians might find it a tad odd that he was asking them what time the post office opened and where the good restaurants were since he was the one who lived in fucking New York. Or, make that Nueva York.
Eh, The M.A.X. would pull it off somehow. He always did.
He pushed the CD player away, went, “Usted tiene gusto de más blow, Señor Lopez?” and cut a fresh line.
Sha-Sha shifted on his water bed, couldn’t get comfortable. When you weigh in at four hundred pounds and change, comfort, man, that shit’s hard to come by.
He was twenty-six years old and where was his life at? Nowhere, that’s where. He was doing the same old, same old all the time, every day, and he was getting tired of all that bullshit. He was still out there on the corners, busting his ass and for what? He wasn’t The Man-shit, he wasn’t even on his way to being The Man. Niggas sixteen and seventeen were above him, bossing his ass around and shit, goin’, “Do this, Sha-Sha, do that, Sha-Sha, smoke that dude, Sha-Sha, how come you fucked up, Sha-Sha? Where’s my money at, Sha-Sha?” Man, he was thinking about going out there one day, blowing all their asses away. He get a piece and a hundred bullets and solve all his damn problems.
But Sha-Sha knew why he was where he was at-cause he was a sick-ass, that’s why. How many times he go to nigga above him and say, “I wanna move up,” and the nigga go back to him, “Fuck you”? Sha-Sha knew it was his own damn fault, cause he had no damn self control. He didn’t know how to stop hurting people and even the gangs, man, they didn’t need no crazyasses hangin’ around. Like sometimes Sha-Sha would be walkin’ down the street, and he didn’t like the way some nigga was lookin’ at him, or he didn’t like his sneakers, or the way he smelled, or sometimes there was no reason at all, and he’d take out his nine, pop the motherfucker in the head.