Chapter 11

After the first game ended, I left the court to head to my car to grab some more books. Zetta followed close behind me like she was my bodyguard. We began talking on the way to my ride and she came clean with me, admitting that she wanted to come to the game today because she wanted to meet somebody.

“Did they show up?”

“Yeah, but I just wouldn’t feel right just leaving you out here all alone just to talk to ‘em. That would be rude, don’t you think?”

“Damn, Shorty, you could’ve taken a rain check with me. It ain’t that serious,” I told her, not really that mad about her using me because I did make some money out of the deal by selling a few novels.

“I know, but I did want to meet you today,” she said in an innocent tone, causing my manhood to twitch. What is this little bitch, doing to me, I thought.

Then I noticed this rat exiting the court area, walking with a light brown-skinned older guy who looked like he could be a drug connect. I remember the bitch nigga Duke from www.Ratz.com while reading the website the other day, confirming Cornell Best’s ultimate betrayal to the game. While scrolling through the site, I had seen the picture of the guy that was walking towards me right now. He had testified in a 2002 shooting he had witnessed, which eventually got a solid man sixty years in prison. Now he was out here living life without a care in the world like it was all good.

Damn, how can I crush this rat out here in front of all these people and get away? I wondered as the older guy headed towards  me and Zetta with the rat by his side.

After they reached us, Zetta gave the older guy a warm hug. “What’s up, Uncle D.C.?” she greeted him. “Who’s your friend?” Zetta asked as I looked around, trying to see who was actually watching this area of the parking lot.

We were standing over by Gilbert Arenas’s ivory white four-door Bentley GT with the factory rims on it. Storman Norman’s van was also parked in the vicinity. It was a bad area to kill the rat, so I decided to lay on him and watch his ass until I got the perfect chance to strike.

“Oh, his name’s Duke, but we ain’t like so. Slim just wanted to come over here and holla at the chick who was shutting shit down in the pink body suit.”

“Oh yeah? What he want to holla at me about?” Zetta replied like I wasn’t even there.

I was glad, because the less people I knew, the less could identify me for what I was about to do. “Ay, Zetta, I’m ‘bout to slide over on the court to pump some more of these books,” I said.

 “Okay, I’ll be over there in a minute.”

“Ay, D.C., support Slim’s hustle,” I heard her saying as I walked away. “You know I can’t get my book published by him if his books don’t sell.”

“I don’t be into reading dem weak-ass urban books,” I heard the older guy saying as I headed over near the court.

“D.C., stop playing, boy!” I heard Zetta getting loud as I got closer to the fence.

Seconds later, I heard D.C. calling my name, yelling for me to stop. Once he caught up to me, he asked to check out a book. I gave him one, glancing back at Duke’s hot ass. He was dying today if I had something to do with it. Even though I didn’t deal with the guy, Duke snitched, and I still felt it was my duty to exterminate the rat.

“Ay, I know this fat-ass nigga, Big Nate,” D.C. remarked. “He fuck with my man Titus.”

Titus? How he your man? I thought, focusing my attention on D.C. “You and T cool?”    

“Yeah, me and Slim go way back. He on any day status now. He s’posed to be getting out probably in a few months.”

“Yeah, I heard that too,” I said nonchalantly, not wanting to reveal too much. I knew the exact date my big homie was coming home, but I wasn’t going to tell this nigga. He could be an old enemy or anything. I played it casually, preferring to be safe instead of sorry for having loose lips. That’s how my partner Aaron got killed: by fucking with a chick who had loose lips.

“Yeah, next time you talk to Titus, just ask him about me, he’ll hip you - ”

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The sounds of gunfire cut D.C. off, making me hit the ground instinctively and glance around. I looked over by my ride and saw Zetta lying in a fetal position on the ground near the rat she had just been talking to. His brains were splattered all over the pavement, and he was drenched in the blood oozing from his dome.

Man, let me get the fuck out of here, I told myself, seeing everybody in the area running for safety. I saw D.C. running off with the book he wanted to buy and thought, Fuck it. I’ll just have to pay for it out of my pocket. I dashed over to my ride and saw that Zetta wasn’t hit. She looked up at me with fear in her eyes as I helped her to her feet.

“What happened, Shorty?” I asked, opening my door.

“I don’t know,” she stammered. “One minute we was talking, and the next minute somebody knock dude’s shit loose,” she said, backing away from me.

“Where you going? C’mon!” I told her.

“Go on. I’m fine. I got my motorcycle up here,” she said as she took off running towards a flaming red Kawasaki Hyabusa. I got stuck for a second watching her ass jiggle in the body suit as she ran.

As soon as I started my car to pull off, a cop screamed for me to get out of the vehicle. I looked over and saw that he had his gun pointed right at my head. At that moment, I realized the second I spent lusting over Zetta might have gotten me into some bullshit I couldn’t get out of.