The Golden Hustla Page 18

  “Thanks, Matt.” Nina smiled at him.

  “I’ll see you all at the office tomorrow,” Rinaldo yelled. “Nine sharp!”

  “Later, Pete. Jeff,” Milt called out as they headed out of the restaurant. Both Pete and Jeff remained seated at the table.

  “Damn. They just up and left all of this food,” Jeff said to Pete.

  “Ain’t nobody thinking about food,” Pete told him. “We about to go to prison. How can you be hungry?” Pete got up from the table and walked out too.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  IT’S ON NOW

  On the ride to the office to pick up their cars everyone was trying to talk about what happened and what they were going to do now. But all Nina could do was think about Rick and that he was a damn cop. Questions kept crossing her mind. Did he set her up? Was the whole relationship a decoy to get info for his case? It couldn’t have been because she never told him where she worked or what she did. They never talked about her job. Hell, he claimed he thought she was Nina Coleman. She didn’t know what to believe. Nina knew that she and Rick shared something special but the thoughts of sitting in a fucking cell for ten to twenty years scared her to death. But when she set eyes on the man she was falling for in the courthouse, he did not sit right with her.

  “Nina, why are you so quiet?” Her thoughts were interrupted by Milt.

  “I’m just trying to plan my next move, that’s all.”

  After the taxi dropped off Shawn, Milt and Nina at the offices of WMM, they stood in the parking lot stunned at what caused them to be standing there. None of them wanting to believe it. Each one of them thinking about the coulda, woulda, shouldas. A few minutes later a taxi pulled up and it was Pete. They all watched as he rushed to his ride and jumped in.

  With a nonchalance Shawn said, “That nigga got the shakes. His jones is calling him.”

  “What a waste. All that talent,” Milt commented.

  “What about today, y’all?” Nina brought them back to why they were all standing there in the first place, in the middle of the parking lot looking lost. “Can you believe it? Here I try to do the job thing, stay legal and this is what I get. A case? I mean, what the fuck? Where do we go from here? Are y’all coming to work tomorrow?”

  “Hell no!” Shawn spat.

  Milt said, “We haven’t done anything. How can we catch a case? All we do is get on the phones and sell the customer a product. We don’t twist their arms and force them to buy. How can they arrest us for that?”

  “Dude, they just did!” Nina belted.

  “You damn fuckin’ right they did. But ain’t no fuckin’ jury gonna convict us,” Shawn spat.

  “I don’t know about that, y’all. The feds had Rinaldo on their radar for almost three years now. Plus…” Nina caught herself and decided not to say what she had started to say.

  Just then Pete joined them. It was obvious that he was talking to his fiancée, Jill, on the phone. As he was cussing her out, they could hear her screaming and crying on the other end. When he hung up, he spat, “That bitch got me fucked up! But listen, y’all, I don’t know about y’all but I’ll be here in the morning. It’s time to stack as much paper as we can.”

  “Man, you crazy! It’s too late for that shit. You should have been doing that all along,” Shawn snapped. “Did you hear them muthafuckin’ attorneys? Them muthafuckas instructed Rinaldo to not open and to shut this shit down! How you gonna not listen to them?”

  “Yeah, that’s what they said. We don’t need to be back up in here,” Milt reasoned. “At least not until they get things straightened out.”

  “Shit, Pete. You talking about stackin’ dough. The feds froze the muthafuckin’ accounts!” Shawn yelled.

  “Y’all know Rinaldo got stacks put away. The nigga pays us in cash,” Pete reminded them. “He better pay me my muthafuckin’ money, I know that.”

  “Well, Pete is right, y’all. He definitely got a stash,” Milt said.

  The Atlanta temperature was beginning to drop, causing Nina to shiver. She had had enough for the day. She was overwhelmed. “Look, I’m out. I’ll holla at y’all tomorrow.” Nina left the guys standing there and went to her car.

  “Call me if you need me, Nina,” Milt yelled out. He could tell she was shook from the day’s events.

  “Thanks, Milt. I will.”

  She hopped in her ride, shut the door and rested her head back on the headrest. She took a deep breath, then grabbed her purse and looked for her cell phone. She had mixed feelings and couldn’t decide if she should call him or not. She started the car and started out the parking lot. She opened the phone and saw she had five messages and the first one was from Rick. She stopped so that she could listen to them.

  “Nina, I don’t want to fight with you. I care about you too much. You have to believe me. Call me. I need to talk to you.” Shit.

  “Hey, Nina. This is Reese. I haven’t talked to you in a while. I am just checking on you. If you ever need me I’m here. And for what it’s worth, I’m missing you like fuck.” Oh really?

  “Where the fuck are you. Why you ain’t home yet. Call me back when you get this message.” Cream sounded pissed off. What the fuck does he want?

  “Nina, call me when you get this,” Rick said. I can’t.

  “Nina, it’s your mother. Call me when you get this.” How much now?

  Nina threw the phone in the seat next to her and drove home in silence. Twenty minutes later when Nina pulled up in front of her condo, the garage door was open. She eased into the garage and was surprised when Cream appeared at the back door.

  “Now what?” She exhaled, as she asked, not even getting out of the car good, “Cream, I am not in the mood. And you said you didn’t have any more of my keys. How did you get in here?”

  “I only came over to check on you. I know what happened, baby. How are you holding up?” He came down the garage stairs, grabbed her and pulled her close, giving her a huge hug. This was the closest they had been in almost two months. Nina got comfortable in his arms as he gently rubbed up and down her back.

  “I’m sorry,” Cream whispered. “I’ma make sure that you’re going to be okay. I promise you that.”

  “I knew I should have quit when my gut was telling me to.” She disgustedly pushed him away, blaming him for getting her the job. “I was fingerprinted, handcuffed, had a shotgun poked at my head. I now have an FBI file and the federal government wants to lock me up for ten to twenty-five years. So how can you make sure I’ma be all right? Then, on top of that, I no longer have a job, but I still have a mortgage payment, car notes, credit card bills, utilities and insurance… I don’t believe this. This has been one of the worst days of my life.”

  “You don’t see it now, but you will. I told you I got you,” he assured her.

  “How? You gonna get them to drop all charges against me? Give my fingerprint cards back? Get them to issue me a public apology saying they made a mistake today? And that I wasn’t supposed to get arrested? I don’t think so, Cream.”

  Cream’s cell phone rang, saving him from her ranting. He answered it. “Yeah. Yeah, she’s here. A little shook up, but she’s okay. I got it. I got it, man.” He hung up. “I gotta make a run.”

  “Who was that?” she snapped, and was appalled and felt defeated that she didn’t know what he had going on.

  “My peoples I was telling you about.”

  “Why were they asking you about me? And who are these people, Cream? You better fuckin’ tell me something. And I mean now.”

  “Just hang tight. I’ll be back in a couple of hours, and trust me. My peoples said you ain’t got anything to worry about.” He pulled his keys out of his back pocket and jetted out of the garage, once again leaving Nina in a total state of confusion.

  “Cream! Cream!” she screamed after him. She cursed him out under her breath. As soon as she walked into the kitchen, the phone rang. The caller ID said it was her mother.

  Nina snatched the phone off the wall. “Hey,
Mom, how’s the kids?”

  Her mother was quiet for several seconds. “Me and the kids are fine. What’s the matter with you?”

  “Let me speak to them, please.”

  “They went to church with the deacon.”

  “Ma, who is this man that you keep sending my kids to church with?”

  “Deacon Rutherford.”

  “Don’t make Daysha go if she doesn’t want to.”

  “Don’t tell me how to raise these children. And don’t forget, they belong to the Lord not you. What is your problem?”

  Deciding not to tell her mother what happened, Nina said, “I’m tired, Mom. I’ve had a very long day, that’s all.” Telling her mother that she got locked up would send her on a verbal tirade and would only confirm in her mother’s mind that much more as to why she has Nina’s children and Nina was living in Georgia.

  “Well, you sound terrible. I’ve been calling your cell phone all day long.”

  “I’ve been busy, Mom. But I’m here now.” How much do you need this time? Nina said to herself, eyes rolling. “What’s up, Mom?”

  “Why did you stop payment on that last five-thousand-dollar check you sent me? You could have at least called me before I deposited it.”

  “Stop payment? I didn’t stop payment on no check. What are you talking about?” Nina was baffled.

  “When I went to the bank to withdraw the money, it wasn’t there. I went to my bank manager and she said that you had put a stop payment on it. Are you doing that bad down there?”

  “Mom, let me call you back.”

  “Are you doing bad down there?”

  “No, Mom. I am not doing bad. Let me call you right back.”

  “Wait. Then how soon—”

  Nina hung up without waiting for her mother to finish her sentence and went over to her computer. She powered it up, wondering what was going on. As soon as she logged in, she went to her bank’s website. What she saw had her mouth hanging open. Wire transfer after wire transfer. “What the fuck? This has gotta be a mistake. All of my accounts have less than two thousand dollars!” she screamed. She was going through the accounts looking at the amounts that were transferred out: $7,500, $6,200, $9,700, $5,400. “This has got to be a mistake.” She needed to talk to someone at that damn bank. She needed answers. And she needed them now. She began pacing the floor as she called the bank.

  As soon as the customer service recording came on the line, it hit her like a ton of bricks.

  Cream.

  She hung up the phone.

  Cream. That snake bastard! Oh shit! My safe!

  She rushed upstairs to her bedroom closet. Remembering how her brother had stolen all of her cash, she slowed down with each step she took. Actually it was her brother’s thievery that catapulted her to being in Atlanta.

  She opened the closet door, slid the clothes back and let out a sigh of relief when she saw that the safe hadn’t been tampered with. She opened it up. The envelope with the ten grand Cream gave her was there but it felt lighter. She opened it up and counted thirty-five hundred dollars.

  Cream. How did he get the combination to my safe? My pillow talk ain’t like that… is it? She thumbed through her stacks of gold coins. She never counted them so she didn’t know how many she actually had. Her other stacks of money felt the same. She had at least forty-two g’s stashed outside of the hundred grand left from the keys. Why didn’t he touch the other money? And my jewelry?

  Nina remained on her knees staring at the safe for almost an hour racking her brain trying to figure out what Cream was up to. How was he able to go into my accounts? Especially since he’s not a signee? How did he know the combination to the safe?

  The phone in the background had been ringing. It stopped and began ringing again. Wanting the noise to go away, she dragged herself up off the floor to answer it. “Hello.”

  “I asked you to call me as soon as you were done.” It was Rick. “We need to talk, Nina.”

  “I’m just getting in and I have to make a quick run,” she lied. “Let me call you when I get back.” She hung up without waiting for his response. She didn’t want to talk to him because she didn’t know what to say or what she wanted to do. Just then the phone rang, startling the hell out of her. Her stomach flipped. She looked at the caller ID. Cream. She frowned.

  It’s time for me to do what I should have done a long time ago. It’s on now! She was going to have to kill Cream.

  Twenty minutes later Rick called again. “Rick, I’m not home yet. I’ll call you when I get there.”

  “Nina, you never left out. I’m getting out of my car now. Come open the door.”

  Shit. She ran and looked out her window, phone glued to her ear. Sure enough he was getting out of the white Escalade. She was busted.

  “Come open the door, Nina.”

  She hung up and went downstairs to open the door. She didn’t know what she was going to say to him. When she opened the front door and set eyes on him, she knew he would never set her up. Rick didn’t give her a chance to say a word. He grabbed her and started to kiss her. Nina was caught totally off guard. The next thing she knew she was standing in her bedroom being undressed by Detective Rick Brown and wasn’t trying to resist. Nina loved everything about him. Within minutes, Rick was lying on top of Nina preparing to get him some good loving.

  “You still don’t like fucking with the police?” Rick asked her between kisses.

  Nina moaned. “Arrest me, Officer.”

  “I couldn’t do that.”

  “Well, tell lil’ King his boss needs to take him real deep undercover,” she purred as she wrapped her legs around his back. And Rick did just that, stroked her long and deep.

  They then spent the rest of the night strengthening their relationship. When they got up in the morning, they began planning what they were going to do to get Nina out of this bullshit.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  A SUICIDE MISSION

  The next morning, the sun glaring through the bedroom window woke Nina up. When her eyes popped open, she tossed the sheet over her face. She didn’t even remember going to bed. The last thing she remembered was getting a… dick… ted. As the fog cleared her mind she did remember Rick kissing all over her breasts and nipples and then saying goodbye. A tingling sensation surged through her body. It immediately went away when she reflected on the arrest, the charges, the courtroom, the meeting at the restaurant and her bank accounts.

  Rinaldo.

  A text coming across her cell caused her to throw the sheets off her face. She reached over to her nightstand and grabbed her BlackBerry. She had already missed three calls. The text was from Rinaldo: IF YOU WANT YOUR CHECK ON FRIDAY BE HERE AT TEN. The hairs on her arms stood up. He is such a prick.

  She called Milt.

  “Good morning,” Milt’s voice boomed. “I called you earlier. Did Rinaldo call you?”

  “I’m sure he did. I just read his pompous-ass text message. I overslept and was sleeping hard. I usually wake up at six. No later than six thirty.”

  “Well, it’s almost nine thirty. But hey, you must have needed it. Especially after yesterday. Shit, I ain’t mad at you. I couldn’t sleep at all.”

  Nina groaned. “Don’t remind me about the nightmare that I wish it was. Y’all going in?”

  “I’m on my way now. I need my money. Plus, I need to hear what he has to say. We can play his little game until Friday,” Milt told her.

  I’ma play the fuckin’ game all right. I’ma play everybody’s fuckin’ game.

  “Nina, you still there?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Just until Friday. I need my money. You don’t need yours? You got a stash that long?” Milt let out a chuckle.

  “Please!” Thinking about Cream, she said, “You don’t know the half of it. I may be a little late, but I’ll be there.”

  Nina checked her voice mail. Cream had the nerve to call saying he would be there in a couple of hours. The other two messages were fro
m Rinaldo and her mother. Rinaldo told her to be there at ten or come and clean out her desk. What desk? The feds shut them down. He is so disillusioned. She got up, showered and threw on a pair of sweats and some sneakers and headed to the office.

  Nina eased her Benz into her parking spot. The parking lot was full as if it was a regular working day. Knowing Rinaldo, he probably called every employee and told them to come to work, there was money to be made. She knew that the entire parking lot was not there to clean out their desks.

  The door inside the waiting area was off the hinges. The time card slots were empty. Deanna the receptionist had a phone glued to each ear. The next thing Nina noticed was their big white money board was gone. She assumed the feds would use that as evidence.

  “Nina, here.” Deanna shoved about six or seven messages into her hand. “Please call Ed Simmons. I had to stop writing his messages down. He’s been calling every half hour it seems.”

  “Thanks, Deanna.” Nina balled up the messages and dropped them into the first trash can she saw. She had no intentions on calling anyone. She slowly eased the door open to her office. She didn’t know what to expect. All of her motivational Post-its were gone. The ones that said, I GOTTA MAKE 10,000 A DAY, and DON’T TAKE NO FOR AN ANSWER, and YOU GOT THE MONEY! And several others that kept her focused on her job. Her sales log was gone, but other than that, she didn’t notice anything else missing.

  “Hey,” Jeff said as he invited himself in. He gave her a hug and she was tempted to push his ass onto the floor. He had tears coming down his face. Bitch-ass nigga! “You okay?” he asked her.

  She gently pushed him away. “I’m all right. Thanks. Where is everyone?”

  “They’re around here somewhere.” He quickly wiped away his tears.

  She walked around his bitch-ass leaving him standing in her office. Rinaldo and the rest of the Platinum crew were coming out of the lounge area.