The Golden Hustla Read online

  “And it gets freakier.” Pete leaned back into his chair, placing his hands behind his head with a smirk on his face.

  “What, man?” Rinaldo urged.

  “The game is to be sold not told,” Pete reminded him.

  “I don’t know if I really want to hear this or not,” Nina said, and Jeff was in agreement.

  “Oh you want to hear this!” Pete teased. “Trust me.”

  Rinaldo pulled out another grand and placed it on the desk. Pete got up and swept it up. “Keep talking, muthafucka!”

  “He then asked me to play in his ass!”

  “Illlk!” Nina screamed. “He’s seventy-two for crying out loud. He can’t have any sexual desires!”

  “Aww hell to the naw!” Shawn was up and out of his seat pacing back and forth.

  “Aww, money. I know you didn’t go there, did you?” Milt looked at him, hoping that he was going to say no.

  BANG! BANG!

  “What the fuck?” Rinaldo jumped up to see what the commotion was.

  “They back there fighting,” Nina yelled after Rinaldo. “It is too early in the damn morning!” she snapped. “So much for being a respectable place of business.” She smiled.

  “He should let Simeon handle that shit. That is what he pays him for! Plus, I wasn’t finished telling y’all the rest.” Pete didn’t want his fifteen minutes of fame to be over just yet.

  “It’s a raid, y’all,” Rinaldo calmly stated as he came back into his office.

  “What?” Milt asked.

  “Call Charlie, Deanna,” he yelled out. “It’s a raid.” Rinaldo picked up the phone to call his lawyer.

  BOOM! The front door came down. FBI, ATF, DEA agents and local police clad in dark blue khaki uniforms, black helmets and black boots swarmed the office, all yelling at once, guns pointed.

  “FBI! Get on the fucking floor! Now! Everybody! On the floor, hands behind your head.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  SHE SAW HIM

  Nina sat alone in the backseat of the unmarked fed vehicle. She was relieved that the handcuffs weren’t tight. She assumed that she was sitting in a car by herself because she was the only girl. She kept hearing them ask, “You got the girl?” as if she was some sort of prized possession.

  None of the Platinum squad had been brought out yet. She was watching as all the beginning and intermediate salespeople were jumping into their cars and scattering like roaches being exposed to light, including Pete’s fiancée, Jill.

  Twenty minutes later, out strolled Rinaldo. He appeared to be calm as they placed him inside one of the unmarked vehicles. Then all the men on the Platinum Sales Team were led out in cuffs. One by one. They too were put in separate vehicles. Nina tried to read the expressions on everyone’s face. The only one who was sweating was Pete.

  The female agent, Melissa Korn, jumped in the front seat of the vehicle. “I have your purse and I wrote down everything that was inside of it.”

  “Thank you.” Nina was wondering why she was being so helpful, when an hour ago she was pointing a shotgun to her head.

  She looked back at Nina, jumped out and opened the back door to fasten the seat belt on Nina. Then, just as quick, she was back in the driver’s seat. “We’re on our way down to the Federal Building.” Nina nodded as she anticipated what fate awaited her.

  All types of thoughts were running through her mind. What is this about? Will I spend the night in jail? Did Cream know about this? What about Rick? What would he say if he found out? Will I have a job tomorrow? Now what?

  When they pulled up to the Federal Building, Nina was taken to an underground garage and then escorted onto an elevator. This was her first time being arrested and undoubtedly she wanted it to be her last time. The elevator door opened and Agent Korn led her by the elbow down the corridor through some wire mesh gates that enclosed several holding cells. She was then uncuffed and placed into a cell with another female who actually looked like a dude. She was stretched out on the wooden bench, looked Nina over and then turned her back towards her, obviously intending to get some sleep.

  Nina looked around the cell at the writing on the walls. JIMMY WAS HERE, THE FEDS AIN’T SHIT!, FUCK THE LAW!, DOWN WITH SNITCHES, TAMEKA AND SHELLY FOREVER! The cell smelled as if they had just waxed the floor. It was clean. It was quiet. Something she had not expected. Well actually, she didn’t know what to expect. She did know that her adrenaline level was extremely high. The anticipation of what was going to happen next was killing her.

  Finally, she heard keys jingling and stood up. When Agent Korn unlocked the door she told her to step out and follow her.

  “What about me?” Nina’s cell mate yelled out, jumping up off the steel bunk.

  “Not yet, Turner,” Agent Korn told her.

  “Why not? What the hell is taking so long? Y’all muthafuckas think everything is a game.”

  “Come on, Miss Coles,” Korn told Nina, who followed her around a corner, then went down three steps and was buzzed into the room where the sign on the door read, PROCESSING. As Nina stood in the doorway, she looked around the well-lit room. It was spotless and smelled like fresh wax just like the holding cell. There was a small radio in the back playing jazz.

  That was when Nina saw him. Rick. She literally stood there holding her breath. He felt her gaze, stopped what he was doing and looked up. His gaze locked on hers. Both obviously surprised.

  Agent Korn said, “Right this way, Miss Coles. We gotta get your fingerprints on file.”

  Nina could not stop looking at Rick. He could not stop looking at her.

  “You all right, Nina?” Milt asked her. He was standing at the sink washing off the black fingerprint ink. “What, you know money over there?” he asked, referring to Rick. He witnessed their exchange.

  “Where is everybody else?” she asked Milt.

  “They already been through here. We are the last ones.”

  Agent Korn pointed her towards the fingerprinting stand.

  “Don’t I get a phone call?” Nina asked nobody in particular, but was looking at Rick.

  “Yeah, you get one. I had mines,” Milt said, then went back to talking to Detective Rick Brown. Milt was refusing to sign one of the documents that Rick had given him and he was explaining to Rick why.

  “You can have your phone call as soon as I get you processed,” Agent Korn assured her.

  Nina did not know who to call. It was not like she had a whole lot of options. She didn’t have any friends, only a casual relationship with Rochelle, and she was the last person she needed to be calling at this time. The only choices were Cream, her mom and her oldest brother, Peedie. After thinking it over, she decided not to call anyone. Korn took her mug shot and fingerprinted her. She gathered all of the required intake forms for her to fill out and showed her to a chair. “Start filling these out and I’ll be right back.” Korn then whispered something to Rick and then she left.

  Nina began filling out the forms but she kept looking up at Rick.

  Damn. Nina Coleman. Nina Coles. How could I not make the connection? Rick tried to shake the thought as he walked past her, leading Milt out of the processing room.

  When he came back he was in there alone with Nina. He saw the pictures of the leading lady of WMM but they were not crystal clear. They didn’t look like Nina.

  She got in his face. “A cop? I’m fucking a cop?”

  “Lower your voice. And I’m a detective, Nina.”

  “Cop, detective, five-o, po-po, it’s all the same.”

  “So what? You got a problem with fucking the police?”

  “Fuck you, Rick. You could have at least been honest with me, Detective,” she said, sarcastically emphasizing “detective.”

  “You didn’t care who I was when I was deep undercover in that pussy.” He shot her a sexy grin.

  Nina sucked her teeth and rolled her eyes at him. “Does this appear to be the time for fucking jokes?”

  “Well aiight then. What about you, Nina Coleman? T
hat ain’t even your fuckin’ name.”

  “Not right now.” She waved him off. “Don’t try and flip the bullshit. You the one privy to all the information, Detective,” she snapped.

  “Look, let’s put this shit on the fucking table. Do you have a problem with fucking the police? Because it damn sure didn’t feel like it when you were ridin’ my dick and screaming my name.”

  Nina sighed. At this moment she didn’t know what or who she had a problem with or what she had gotten herself into. She gritted her teeth and said, “I don’t know. I thought you did something else. I didn’t know I was fucking the enemy.”

  “Something else? Enemy? Who the fuck did you think I was?” Rick was now beginning to get pissed.

  Nina was embarrassed to say who she thought he was. Then she thought about his deceit and said, “Nigga, I thought you was a hustla!”

  “Hustla?” Rick chuckled. “What gave you that idea?”

  “You just came off to me as a hustla.”

  Rick chuckled. “Nina, don’t tell me that’s the life you want. Because if it is—”

  “I saw that exchange you had in the parking lot with that dude on the bike. That’s just the impression I got and it stayed with me.”

  “Well, you got the wrong impression. I was working.”

  Nina was dumbfounded. Then she replayed the scene from that night in the parking lot: “I swear, man. I’ma get that for you. Just give me a couple of more days.” The dude whined like a bitch.

  “Yeah, aiight, you got that, my nigga. But only because I want you to spread the word that I’m that nigga. I’m King, muthafucka. You got that?”

  This nigga is a cop. Then her stomach took a dive. “So wait a minute. You knew about all this here shit and didn’t tell me? You were using me all this time?” she strongly accused Rick. “Was fucking me a part of your job too?”

  In a twisted way Rick was actually turned on by her little tantrum and the fact that he was busted. “You couldn’t tell by the way I was touching you that it was more to us than just my work?” He reached over and ran his thumb across her erect nipple. “Bitches, I don’t care about. I don’t make them cum the way I had you cumming,” he said while gazing in her eyes. “But I care about you. About us.”

  Nina pushed his hand away.

  The only sound in the room was the faintness of the jazz station. This whole scenario was awkward.

  Rick finally spoke, “Look, I ain’t no hustla, not anymore. And I wasn’t using you. That’s my word. I didn’t know.”

  At that moment, Nina almost gave in. But she decided against it. She knew these muthafuckas would use whatever, even their own mamas, to get their man. And now her fucking freedom was on the line. She glared at him and gritted, “Rick… did… you… know… about me?”

  “No, I didn’t know, Nina Coleman. Remember, you gave me the wrong fucking name. I didn’t put the pieces together until they hauled your ass up in here. I would have eventually, but I mean, what are the odds of us hooking up like we did?”

  “There are no odds, nigga, you knew all along.” Nina felt hurt and betrayed, refusing to believe that he didn’t know. “You knew,” she said with finality.

  “Believe whatever the fuck you want to believe.” Rick was now ready to slap the shit out of her. He gave her a dirty look and said, “Are you done filling out the forms? They’re waiting for you.”

  Just then, Agent Korn barged back into the room, interrupting their heated exchange.

  She finished up the last document and held them out to no one in particular. Rick took the forms from her and she watched him place them in a folder and walk off. A fuckin’ cop, Nina said to herself as she stared out into space. Her trance was interrupted when Agent Korn tapped her on the shoulder, shooed her out of the room and pointed down the hall. They turned the corner and stopped at the big brown door. Agent Korn tapped lightly, someone with keys on the other side unlocked it and Nina walked into a full courtroom that was already in session. She was seated at the table with the rest of the Platinum staff. Rinaldo sat close to the WMM attorneys that Nina recognized as Matt Stone and Mack and David Abramoff.

  “What’s going on?” she leaned over and whispered to Milt.

  “Shh!” he hushed her, smacking her lip with the back of his hand in the process.

  Embarrassed, she looked around to see if anyone had caught the exchange. Mack and his team were shuffling through papers as the prosecutor was talking. The judge then said for counsel and government to approach the bench. Both sides handed the judge some paperwork. She scanned through all of it as she continuously pushed her glasses up on her nose. After several minutes, she gave the paperwork back. She then set another hearing for thirty days and released all of them on their own recognizance.

  And just like that, everyone was free to go.

  Nina looked towards the back of the courtroom for Agent Korn. She needed her purse. She didn’t see her. But her heart skipped a beat when Rick held up her belongings and motioned for her to come over to where he was.

  “Call me as soon as you wrap this shit up,” he hissed. She could tell that he was beyond pissed. He gave her her belongings and started to say something else but Rinaldo started yelling and he turned around and left.

  “Alexis!” He yelled out her phone name as if they were in the office. “Come over here with everyone else instead of fraternizing with the enemy.”

  “Rinaldo…” She decided against saying what was really on her mind. Instead she sat down and was acting as if she was making sure that everything was in her purse. But she was really collecting her thoughts. Her knees had felt like rubber and her head was spinning as she wondered if shit could get any more interesting at this point.

  Rinaldo and the attorneys gathered everyone together. Matt asked if everyone would rather go to their offices or to a restaurant. Everyone said restaurant, jumped into the three attorney vehicles and headed to the Cheesecake Factory.

  After everyone was seated and the waitress took everyone’s order, Nina was the first to speak. “Okay. In layman’s terms, why did they arrest us?” Nina directed her question to Mack.

  She watched him pour sugar into his already-sweetened lemonade. Then he looked around at all of the Platinum members and began to explain. “In June, the grand jury returned an indictment, charging you and the Platinum Team with multiple counts of mail and wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. In April, the grand jury turned right back around and returned their first superceding indictment. This one is charging you guys with conspiracy, multiple counts of mail and wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.”

  “Two indictments?” Milt questioned.

  “Yes, two,” Mack said.

  “This is ridiculous.” Nina sighed.

  “Trust me, y’all. You guys have nothing to worry about,” Rinaldo cut in. “We’re not doing anything wrong.”

  “Then why the fuck did they arrest us?” Shawn spat.

  “Because they think that they have something. The more shit they throw at us, it raises their chances of making sure something sticks.”

  “I saw that guy Houser from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation sitting in the courtroom. Do you think he was behind this?” Nina wanted to know, since she was actually clueless to the whole arrest, indictments and the entire court process.

  “Well actually, that’s where these types of cases usually get started. That is, after the Better Business Bureau starts to get repeated complaints, the attorney general’s office and the GBI will step in. Plus, we’re talking thousands of dollars per complaint coming from your firm. So someone is going to eventually pay attention,” Matt, Mack’s partner, explained to her.

  “Fuck the BBB, GBI, attorney general, FBI and whoever else,” Rinaldo ranted. “WMM is a legal enterprise and we have done nothing wrong,” he stated matter-of-factly. “Fuck them all!”

  The waitress was back and everyone was silent as she placed their meals in front of them. As soon as she left,
Matt continued.

  “Rinaldo,” Matt said as he sliced his steak. “You guys gotta lay low. It’s no going back to work in the morning, no conducting business as usual.”

  “Why not?” Rinaldo snapped. “They didn’t shut me down. I don’t have a cease and desist order.”

  “They didn’t issue you one on paper, but believe me when I tell you, if you take your ass back and continue doing business it’s only going to compound the problem.” Mack glanced at everyone seated around the table.

  Rinaldo is such a greedy asshole. Nina shook her head in disbelief.

  It was as if Shawn was reading her mind because he was shaking his head as if to say, “He sure is.”

  “He’s right,” Matt chimed in.

  “That’s what the fuck I pay y’all for, to allow me to continue to do business,” Rinaldo huffed in arrogance.

  “I’ve heard enough,” Milt mumbled. “Look, Rinaldo, we have just been arrested and indicted on money laundering, mail fraud, wire fraud and I don’t even remember the rest. This is serious, money.”

  “You look, money.” Rinaldo pointed in his face. “I’m talking to my attorneys. This is between me and them.”

  “Between you and them?” Shawn, Milt and Nina said at the same time.

  “Fuck that! This is between us when you puttin’ my freedom on the line,” Shawn snapped and was now standing up.

  Dave grabbed his elbow. “Calm down, big fella. I understand that this is a stressful time for everyone. And right now I know it’s kind of difficult to even think straight.”

  “This is bullshit! Rinaldo, you better stop playing, man. This is my freedom you fuckin’ with!” Shawn warned him.

  “C’mon, money.” Milt had grabbed both of Shawn’s shoulders.

  Nina stood up as well. “We can all share a cab. I know how to reach you, if I need to,” she said to the attorneys. Nina could not help but notice how Matt had been looking at her the entire time as if she were a chocolate-covered cherry. Let me find out Matt has jungle fever, she said to herself.

  “Take my card.” Matt stood up and placed it gently in the palm of her hand. “Any questions or concerns, don’t hesitate to call me. We’ll talk some sense into this guy’s head right here. He’ll be all right.” He shot a nasty look at Rinaldo, who was sitting there looking like a madman. His ponytail was coming loose, his face was beet red and sweaty and his usually neat clothing were all in disarray.