CHAPTER 33
Suge’s funeral was loud and slamming. Everybody and their mama was crowded into that hot-ass church, and folks were wailing their lungs out left and right. All of his friends and family from Dallas were representing and the crazy Dominion crew from Houston had turned out big-time too. Suge was one of them cats who had never met a stranger. People loved him. They took to him and they wanted to be up under him. And now that he was gone, every damn body was missing him. Especially me.
I was sitting in the front row of the big old church crammed in between Selah and Fallon. The tabernacle choir was belting out “Precious Lord” and the joint was rocking. I had on a long black dress and my whole body heaved as I cried big fat, horrible tears. My man was dead and gone. Wiped out by Gutta’s bullet, and no matter which way I looked at it, it was all my fault.
“It’s okay, baby,” Mama Selah leaned over and whispered as she rubbed my back with sympathy all in her hands. “He’s in a better place. God don’t make no mistakes.”
Just hearing that shit sent a fresh wave of grief surging through me and I hunched over until my head hit my knees, then pressed my face into my hands and cried real loud and hard, just like a little baby.
The preacher was bringing down the house and the choir was going to town. But all that holy ghost stuff missed me and went right over my head as I sat there crying and snotting into my hands, consumed by the loss of my boo.
“Get up, Mink,” Selah said as her and Fallon lifted me by my arms so we could walk up to the casket and say our last good-byes. “Come on, baby. Stand up. We’ll help you.”
I slow-walked up to that casket crying and shrieking so bad I teetered around in my high heel shoes and almost busted my ass.
“Oooh,” one of the church mothers said out loud, “for her to just be his niece she sure is taking it hard.”
I ain’t his goddamn niece! I wanted to whirl around and scream on her. I’m his woman! His bae! His boo!
I pulled away from Selah and Fallon and walked up to his open coffin. Suge was dressed out the ass, just like always. His suit was top-shelf, his white shirt starched, and his sexy moustache was trimmed to perfection. He had on a pair of twenty-thousand-dollar alligator boots, and I knew them babies had been specially made and hand-crafted just for him.
“I luh-luh-lub you, Suge Dominion,” I said loudly, blinded by my tears as sticky trails of snot ran outta my nose and down my top lip. “I don’t care what n-n-n-no fuckin’ body thinks! I’m your woman, Suge! You my man! And I’ma always love you!”
My head was banging and my heart hurt so fucking bad. After all my tricks and ganks and schemes and hustles, I had finally been blessed with the love of a good man, and in an instant our entire future was taken away from us. It wasn’t fuckin’ fair! I had paid for all my criminal capers and I had suffered enough! Shaking and crying out in grief, I leaned down in that casket and wrapped my arms around my big old handsome man . . . and damn if he didn’t sit up and kiss me on my forehead and hug me right back!
“Mink,” Suge said, cradling her in his big, strong arms as they sat on the pavement beside his truck. Wake up, baby. C’mon now, sugar. Open your eyes.”
Mink’s face was swollen and covered with bruises. Fresh blood trickled from a cut in her hairline. Suge found a smooth spot on her forehead, then bent over and kissed her on it. “Wake up, baby. Open your eyes.”
“W-w-what?” Mink said as her eyelids fluttered and then opened wide. The wail of an ambulance was sounding in the distance and a look of confusion spread across her battered face. She gazed around. The back lift of Suge’s truck was down, and inside the bed she saw Gutta bleeding from his gunshot and hog-tied with his wrists to his ankles with a stone cold look of terror on his face. Shy’s body was still on the ground where he had landed when he got ejected from the car. His neck was bent at a funny angle and he was soaking in a pool of blood.
Mink squeezed her eyes tightly closed and trembled. “S-S-Suge?” his name came out in a tortured moan. “How you . . . ? But baby you got . . . ?”
“Don’t worry about me, I’m good,” he said gruffly as relief flooded his voice. “You a’ight, sweetie? You okay?”
“B-b-but you got shot,” Mink insisted. Cradling her cut hand to her breast, she ran her good hand all over his chest and down his stomach searching for his bullet wound. “Both of y’all did! I saw that crazy nigga pull the trigger! He shot you and you flew backward and grabbed your stomach. And then you went . . . down . . .”
Suge grinned as he leaned back and yanked up his shirt. Mink’s eyes got wide as hell as she stared at the big silver TEXAS belt buckle sitting right below his bulging six-pack. She frowned at the stupid-expensive piece of solid silver that she had bought him at the mall. There was a big dent in the crosshairs of the letter X where the bullet had struck the belt and ricocheted off, but Suge’s muscle-bound chocolate stomach was still smoother than a baby’s ass, and other than the sexy trail of curly hair leading from his navel down into his pants, his stomach didn’t have a mark on it.
“Y-y-you wore it . . . I left it out on the bed and . . .”
“And I’m good, baby,” he reassured her again as her body trembled in his arms. “For real, you saved my life, Mink. You saved me.”
Mink tried to grin even though the split that Gutta had put in her lip hurt like hell. “Uh-uh, it was this big old ugly belt,” she said, running her grateful fingers over the nick in the letter X.
She turned back to the truck and gave Gutta the stank look.
“That pussy-ass New York nigga must don’t know!” she drawled as she reached up and wrapped her arm around Big Suge’s neck buried her face in his barrel chest. “Don’t mess with Texas!” she muttered. “Don’t you mess with fuckin’ Texas!”