The Golden Hustla Page 8

  Alexis rolled her eyes, got up and stormed past Rinaldo. Her cell phone vibrated and she answered it. “What’s up, mama?” It was Supreme, her baby’s daddy.

  “How’s my daughter?” Nina asked, trying her damndest to be friendly to someone whom she now considered to be her enemy.

  “She’s fine, I just spoke to her. She misses you.”

  “Can I talk to her?”

  “Yeah, hold on.” He had to click over and call her on a three-way.

  Supreme was doing a bid down in Trenton State Prison for murder. He had been locked up going on his fifth year. Now here he was calling her on a cell phone from prison. He wanted Nina back into his life and to move back to Jersey. The longer she kept refusing, the longer he would keep her from Jatana.

  “Jatana, I got Mommy on the line,” Supreme told her.

  “Mommy!” Jatana yelled with glee.

  “Hey, baby. Mommy loves you. You know that, right?”

  “Uh-huh. I got a Wii.”

  “You got a Wii? Who bought that for you?”

  “My grandma.”

  “That’s so nice. I miss you. You talked to Daysha and Jermichael?”

  “Uh-huh. They got a Wii too.”

  “I know.”

  “Mommy, when you coming to get me?”

  “Okay, Mommy gotta go now,” Supreme interrupted.

  “Wait, Supreme. I love you, Jatana.” She didn’t want to end the conversation so quickly.

  “Love you too, Mommy.”

  Nina waited until she was sure that Jatana was no longer on the line. “Supreme, how long do you think I’ma let you get away with this?” Nina asked through clenched teeth. Her rage and hatred for him building by the second.

  “Come see me and we can talk about it,” he replied as if everything was everything.

  Nina hung up the phone on him. She went into Milt’s office, sat down and started crying.

  The only thing to make her sob in this day and time was her children. And Milt was the only person who saw her shed a tear.

  “Nina, let everything play out. Jatana is fine. You’ll get her back. Make this money while we got the chance. Trust me. Everything will work itself out.” Milt became quiet to allow Nina the chance to pull herself together. This wasn’t the first time she came into his office and simply collapsed in defeat.

  When Nina managed to get herself together she got up and went back into her office.

  It was closing time at WMM. It was Friday and Rinaldo was already gone. Deanna and Simeon were left to close the office for the weekend. Simeon had about seven grand and he was ready to go get high and Deanna had a plane to catch. She was going to see her parents in Wyoming. It was their twenty-fifth anniversary.

  She had just copied the sales sheets for the day and counted the twenty-six hundred dollars she collected from the beginning sales team. They were always asking for draws against their upcoming paychecks. Rinaldo would give it to them… at ten percent interest. She was preparing to seal up the envelope to be given to Rinaldo when she remembered that she didn’t get the two grand from Shawn.

  She paged him on the intercom. “Shawn, can you come to the front office? Shawn, I need you to come to the front office,” she repeated.

  After five minutes, Deanna stormed towards his office and barged in. He was sitting there smoking a cigarette, thumbing through a F.E.D.S. magazine. On the cover was the New World Nation of Islam. The phone was resting on his shoulder. He ignored her so she started flicking his lights on and off.

  “Hold on, Marge, dear. The front office is paging me for something. In the meantime, you mull over what I’ve just proposed. And remember, you’ve come too far to back out now. Do you understand me, honey? Fine. I’ll be right back.” He put her on hold. “What the fuck is the matter with you? Can’t you see I’m working?” he snapped at her.

  “Shawn, you are the last one here. We are trying to lock up. I have a plane to catch and I need Rinaldo’s two grand that you owe.”

  “Girl, I got a customer trying to send in fifty grand and you sweatin’ me about two? Somebody needs to stay here and keep this muthafucka open until I make it happen with this client.”

  “Shawn, it’s Friday. I have a plane to catch and I gotta get this money over to Rochelle. I’m locking the door in five minutes,” she stated with conviction.

  “Come on, girl, stop playin’. Where’s Simeon?”

  “He just left. You got five minutes,” she warned him.

  “I can’t close this customer in five minutes,” Shawn barked.

  “Okay, I’ll give you fifteen minutes, but you will have to drop this money over to Rochelle’s for Rinaldo. That would help me out a lot. Can you do that for me? Pleeassse, Shawn. Pretty pleeeease?”

  Shawn waved her off and got back on the phone with Marge.

  “Thank you!” She threw a kiss at him.

  Shawn pulled his S500 in Rinaldo’s driveway and deaded the engine. He got out and walked to the front door. The screen door was closed but the front door was open. He rang the bell. Rochelle came dressed in a Prada crystal-embroidered tank top, Prada jeans and a pair of Chanel calfskin clogs. Her hair was bone straight and hanging loosely. She had Shawn drooling at the mouth.

  She opened the door and told him to come in and have a seat. When she turned around and he saw that ass in those jeans he asked her, “Why the fuck is you with him?” It just came out and he knew you couldn’t take back spoken words.

  It shocked her. “What did you say?”

  “You heard me. Why the fuck are you with him?”

  “Would I be better off with you?”

  “Yeah, you would.”

  “Why the fuck do you work for him?” she snapped back.

  “That’s different. I ain’t got to fuck him.”

  “Who says I’m fucking him?” She looked Shawn up and down, liking what she saw. In fact, she always liked what she saw.

  “Come on, playgirl. Ain’t no way in hell you staying in the man’s house, spending his money and you ain’t giving up no pussy. That’s bullshit.”

  “You wish you knew the intricacies of our relationship.” Rochelle smirked.

  “Well, I’m sure you set for life. If you ain’t I suggest that you get with the program. This shit ain’t promised forever.”

  “Can I get you something to drink?” she asked him. She wanted to hear more of what he had to say.

  “Only if you got something to smoke with it.” Shawn sat down on the huge soft leather sectional and made himself comfortable.

  “No, I don’t have anything to smoke, but if you do, light it up. I’m down. My baby is at his grandmother’s.”

  She didn’t have to tell Shawn twice. He took the envelope that Deanna gave him and set it on the coffee table. He put his two thousand in there and sealed it up. He pulled out a plastic bag of dro, his Phillies and went to work.

  She reappeared with a bottle of Patrón and two champagne glasses. She turned on the CD player and Sade’s Soldier of Love began oozing out of the system.

  She sat down next to him and watched as he skillfully rolled the blunts. Rinaldo or their son wouldn’t be back until Sunday. It was the weekend, and she did not want to spend it alone. But now she believed that it was no coincidence that Shawn showed up at her door. She had been looking for someone to play her game and she planned on taking full advantage of his visit.

  Shawn lit the first blunt as she poured the drinks. “Would you fuck me?” she asked him while watching him closely to gauge his reaction to her very direct question.

  He took another pull of his blunt and his eyes roamed across her body, in an attempt to memorize her curves. She lifted her champagne glass and took a sip of the Patrón.

  “What’s in it for me?” he finally asked her.

  “What do you mean what’s in it for you?”

  “Cut the bullshit, Rochelle. I mean, you obviously ain’t stupid. Shit, you latched on to that muthafucka. I mean, I can’t stand his ass but the muthafucka
is brilliant. I’ll give him that. Now I’m sure you got some shit up your sleeve. So again, what’s in it for me?”

  “Let’s talk about it over dinner.” She stood up and took the Patrón and two glasses of champagne and disappeared.

  Shawn stood up and mumbled, “This is going to be interesting.”

  “Now that everyone is back from lunch, I want all the Platinum Pros in my office in the next ten minutes. I want all of the Platinum Pros in my office,” Rinaldo announced, yelling over the intercom. And, inevitably, right after Rinaldo would make an announcement, he would come flying around the corner to tell them the same thing in person. It was as if he thought that they didn’t hear him.

  “I need to go over some things.” He stuck his head in Nina’s office. He closed her door. “Including you, lazy!” Rinaldo then barked, “And get on those phones in the meantime. Standing here shooting the breeze. You can sell somebody in ten minutes. Stop being so fuckin’ lazy!” He stuck his head in Milt’s office.

  “Can you believe this guy?” Shawn looked at Milt in disbelief. He was standing in Milt’s office talking.

  “Hey, man. He’s the boss.” Milt decided to kiss some ass.

  “Whatever, man.” Shawn waved them both off and headed back to his desk.

  Fifteen minutes later, the entire Platinum crew was seated in Rinaldo’s office. Everyone staring straight ahead. Rinaldo stood up, slowly rattled the lid off his cigar box and set his gaze on Shawn.

  “Why you lookin’ at me? All of these other people in here and you looking at me.”

  Rinaldo ignored Shawn as he ran his fingers across the remaining cigars in the box. The room was silent as they watched Rinaldo grab his lighter in anticipation of what bullshit he was going to pull next.

  “C’mon, Rinaldo. I hate that cigarette smoke,” Nina whined.

  “It’s cigar smoke, Alexis, and this is my office.” He lit the cigar anyway.

  Nina grabbed her chair and moved it as far away from his desk as she could. “I never seen somebody so damn rude and inconsiderate,” she spat.

  Rinaldo sat down, propped his feet up on the desk and puffed away.

  “This is going to be short and to the point. Everyone in here is on my Platinum Team. Whatever is said in this office remains in this office. If you get any strange phone calls or visits, don’t say shit, and notify me immediately. Even if you have to call me on my cell or home phone. Does everyone understand me?”

  “What do you mean strange visits or phone calls?” Jeff wanted to know. Jeff was thin as a rail. He wore wire-rimmed glasses that rested on the tip of his nose and he looked like a rat. His shirtsleeves were always rolled up and he always had ink pens in his shirt pocket. He was often in and out of jail for DUI.

  “What the fuck you think? Phone calls asking about our organization. About what we do and how we do it. Questions about Florida. As long as you do like I’m telling you, you’ll be fine. Otherwise, you are headed for big trouble. Trouble that I won’t be able to get you out of. Again, does everyone understand where I’m coming from?” Rinaldo rested his gaze on everyone in the room. “Good. Moving right along. I’m raising the late fees.”

  He got outbursts from the entire room.

  “I knew it was some sheisty bullshit getting ready to come out of his mouth,” Nina barked.

  “This doesn’t make any sense. C’mon, man,” Milt pleaded. “Is this the way you treat your employees? I mean, we putting money in your pockets!”

  “Man, you crazy!” Shawn yelled. “Raising them to what?”

  “I don’t believe this.” Pete rocked back and forth in his chair. The afternoon sunlight glared off his bald head. Rinaldo was once again finding a way to cut into his get-high money.

  “Rinaldo, man, you said we supposed to be family, man. Is this the way you treat family?” Jeff asked.

  “It is when y’all start getting slack and lazy. Obviously, what I’m already charging ain’t enough.”

  He opened his desk drawer and threw a stack of time cards in the air. “Look at these time cards. Eight-oh-five, eight twenty-two, eight forty. Y’all muthafuckers gettin’ later and later. And Alexis came in damn near three hours late last week and she didn’t even bother to punch in. She conveniently said fuck Rinaldo.”

  “You know why I was late, Rinaldo,” Nina snapped.

  “Yeah, but you didn’t call, and like I said, this is a place of business. I provide a very comfortable and professional environment for y’all to come in and to make money. The least y’all could do is be on time. So instead of five hundred dollars a day, now it’s a thousand dollars a day.”

  “Man, fuck this!” Pete shouted, finally coming to a figure of how much Rinaldo was cutting into his get-high stash. Pete was a heroin addict with excellent sales skills who was late almost every day except for Friday… payday. His clients loved him. As long as he made enough to easily feed his habit for a week and money to keep Jill happy, he never complained. But this… he wasn’t going for. “A thousand dollars a day? You need money that bad? What? You tryna buy another car? You got me fucked up, man!” Pete ranted.

  “Yeah, well tell Jill to go half with you. Since y’all like to be late together and get high together. A heroin addict and a cokehead. What a fuckin’ combination,” Rinaldo teased. “But I don’t need y’all fuckin’ late fines to buy me a car. I gots money. A shitload of it.”

  Jill was Pete’s fiancée, who introduced him to snorting heroin. Coke was her vice. She liked to dress fly, throw parties and snort coke as if she lived in Hollywood. She kept very close tabs on Pete, which is why she took a job at WMM. She was an intermediate salesperson who was just that… intermediate. No matter how hard she tried she couldn’t graduate to a Platinum Pro. Nina and everyone else was convinced that Rinaldo would make sure that never happened. She was a tooter and Rinaldo simply did not like her. He felt that Pete was only getting high because of her. The two had been planning this huge wedding since forever. The date kept getting pushed back, it seemed every other week she was announcing a new date or passing out new invitations.

  “Well, you got me and Jill fucked up,” Pete ranted again.

  “You got me fucked up!” Rinaldo mocked Pete’s high-pitched voice. “Have yo’ lady come suck my dick and I might cut your fine in half.”

  “What the fuck did you just say?” Pete jumped up and charged at Rinaldo. Rinaldo snatched his burner from under the desk, cocked it and pointed it at Pete.

  “C’mon, money. Put that away,” Milt said in an attempt to defuse the situation.

  “What’s it gonna be?” Rinaldo ignored Milt and was testing Pete, who was frozen in place. After staring Rinaldo down, he stormed out of his office. “And whoever else don’t like it can leave now. You’re either a professional or a bum. All bums leave.” He slid the burner back under the desk.

  Shawn got up and headed for the door. Rinaldo started laughing. “I knew you were going to be the first one to go.”

  “Rinaldo, come to the front,” Deanna was yelling frantically over the intercom, interrupting the late-fines debate. “Mr. Branson’s son is out here. He will not stop kicking the door. He says he wants to talk to the owner. And he keeps pushing on this friggin’ buzzer. Should I call the police?”

  “Naw, I got it.” Rinaldo felt under his desk and this time he pulled out a .45 automatic. He stuck it in his waistband. “This meeting is adjourned. All of y’all get the fuck out!”

  “Drama queen,” Nina hissed.

  CHAPTER SIX

  WE DON’T GIVE REFUNDS

  Sir, can you stop laying on the buzzer? Someone will be with you shortly,” Deanna pleaded with exasperation.

  “Why can’t you open the goddamned door? I want to see the owner, now!” the persistent man yelled into the intercom as he kept pressing the buzzer.

  Rinaldo made his way into the receptionist’s office. “What the fuck?” he mumbled as he adjusted the security camera to get a close-up on what he was dealing with. “Whose son is he?�
�� Rinaldo was eyeing the huge white man with a Texas hat and cowboy boots with silver spurs. His tight blue jeans were tattered on both knees. He carried an expensive briefcase. His face was fire-engine red, as if he had just downed one too many drinks. His pudgy nose was even redder. The buzzer was still ringing.

  “Ted Branson.” Deana was thumbing through the file cabinet in search of the Branson file.

  “Ted Branson doesn’t have a son. Ask him his name,” Rinaldo barked, priding himself with knowing every detail regarding everything about each and every one of his customers.

  “Excuse me, sir. I didn’t get your name,” Deanna stated into the intercom.

  “What?” he yelled.

  “I didn’t get your name.”

  “That’s because you didn’t bother to ask. I’m Darwin Branson and I’m here on behalf of my uncle, Ted Branson.”

  “Okay, sir. Someone will be right with you.” Deanna sighed.

  Rinaldo was looking at previous sales sheets. Ted Branson was a client who loved Alexis. He had been buying from her for almost eight months now and had spent almost $150,000. Rinaldo looked at Darwin again. Branson’s file said nothing about a nephew. “Alexis, come up front,” Rinaldo paged her as he continued going through the file.

  “Is the owner gonna come talk to me, or do I have to call the law?” Darwin Branson threatened.

  Deanna looked at Rinaldo.

  “Tell him the owner is in a meeting but will be with him shortly.”

  “Mr. Branson, the owner is in a meeting but will be with you shortly. Just be a little more patient.”

  “What’s up, Rinaldo?” Alexis asked as soon as she stepped into Deanna’s office.

  “What’s the story with Ted Branson? Is he a satisfied or a disgruntled customer?” Rinaldo asked.

  “He is very satisfied. He even wants me to come visit him. I keep telling him I have a sick grandmother who I cannot leave, not even overnight. If he was disgruntled, you know I would have told you.”