Urban Renewal Read Free

voice.
    The brunette got up and walked off, not looking back.

    “ WHAT ’ D HE do
this
time, Buddha?”
    “This’s got nothing to do with Princess, boss.” The speaker was a short, pudgy man with pitch-dark eyes that were slightly corner-slanted. “It’s So Long. She came up with a real moneymaker of an idea—”
    “She ever come up with any
other
kind of idea?”
    “You got any more potshots you want to take, or can I just get on with this?”
    Cross scrubbed out his cigarette.
    “Thing is,” Buddha said, “she wants to meet with you about it.”
    “You inviting me over for dinner?”
    “Come on, boss, you don’t have to keep lobbing those frags my way. She’ll come to the spot, how’s that?”
    “Sure. Couldn’t bring her here, right? She’d want to look at the books.”
    “
Damn!
Lighten up, okay? You think I don’t know what the deal is with my own wife?”
    “No, brother—I think you do. So I’m puzzled—why would you want her in
our
business all of a sudden? Everything we own on paper, it’s in your name and Ace’s, joint owners. And it’s a total tontine, so she’s in for half no matter what. That makes her fifty-fifty to take it all.”
    “I don’t get—”
    “You go first, Ace’s woman, she takes everything. You know Sharyn—she’d cut it right down the middle, give So Long her rightful piece. But if
Ace
goes first, it all goes to So Long. You saying
she’d
cut Sharyn in?”
    “That’s what she promised when we all made the deal.”
    “Yeah. And she’s gonna
keep
that promise, because nobody’s selling nothing off until we’re
all
gone. So, if I’m still around—or Rhino, or maybe even Tracker and Tiger, depending—she’s going to do the right thing.”
    “Or Sharyn ends up with it all, you’re saying?”
    “Do I have to?”
    “Yeah. Yeah, you do, boss. Spell it out for me,” the pudgy man said, comfortable in the seat vacated by the brunette. Nothing in his posture vibed “danger,” but he wasn’t a member of the Cross crew for his looks.
    “Okay, brother,” Cross said, not raising his voice. “There’s a few of us.
Damn
few of us. None of us young, and none of us expecting to die of old age, either. Ace and Sharyn have been together a long time. Five kids.”
    “Two of them are old enough—”
    “Five kids,” Cross went on, as if Buddha hadn’t spoken. “Sharyn may not know exactly what Ace does, but she knows he doesn’t bring home a paycheck. Or any other kind of check.
    “And he takes care of her. Of her and those kids.
Good
care. What So Long knows … well, let’s just say that’s one very curious woman. And a real smart one, too.”
    “Tell me something I don’t know.”
    “I can’t do that, brother. You just want me to say it out loud, yeah? All right, then: If Ace goes before you do, you’d be the only one who owns anything that we all put together. So Sharyn keeps right on getting whatever money she needs. We take care of our own.
    “But So Long, she’s got both smart and greedy in her. If the greedy part wins out, then Sharyn is gonna end up with it all.”
    “Because she’d be the sole survivor.”
    “Yeah.”
    “That’s my wife, Cross.”
    “Right.
Your
wife. Ace and me, we partnered up when we were little kids. Had no choice. Rhino, me and Ace found him inside that joint. They had him down as a monster retard, a drooling idiot they had to keep chained up—they were afraid of what would happen if he ever got loose.
    “Well, we got him out of those chains. And he got
me
over the wall. He got hurt doing that, but we came back for him, just like I promised. That was the core. The OGs. You were the first we brought in with us. And it was me who certified you—the skills and the mind, you had it all.
    “Then it was just the four of us, for a long time. So youknow what happened when we went down south … and came back with Princess. You know how we added Tracker, but he only works with us when he wants to. Same as