“I’m already a star, I just want the world to know it.”
Duppy chuckled. “Confidence. I like that in a woman.”
“Thank you. I come from a long line of confident women. My great grandmother punched Al Capone in the face.”
“Get the fuck outta here,” Duppy said, covering his incredulity with a snicker. This woman was a fine thing, but he didn’t want to give too much away about how much he wanted her as an act in his growing stable. Business first. Pleasure later.
“True story. She worked at the Cotton Club in Harlem, you know, back in the 20’s. She was a dancer and a singer. She could’ve been a headliner, but she was darker than a paper bag,” Egypt explained.
“Darker than a paper bag?” Duppy hated showing there was shit he didn’t know.
“It was a Cotton Club thing. If you were darker than a paper bag, you couldn’t perform. My grandmother was an exception, but they still wouldn’t let her headline. Anyway, Al Capone wanted her to come back to Chicago with him and work in his club. ‘To headline?’ she’d asked. He said, ‘No, but you’d make a good whore.’ So she punched him in his face,” Egypt shrugged.
Duppy laughed. “Word? Your grandma was ill. What did Capone do?”
“He bought her a drink, and when she died, he sent a hundred roses. You want to know what the card said?”
“What?”
“You’ll headline in heaven.”
Duppy nodded. “Classy move.”
“Classy lady.”
“I see the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree,” Duppy complimented.
Egypt smiled. Duppy had to forcibly lift his eyes from the stretch of blue jean material across her inner thigh. She was beguiling him with looks and personality, and Duppy was drifting. It would be easy to get lost in the notion of this woman. Very easy indeed.
“So does that mean I get to headline your label?”
They looked at each other across the desk. Duppy’s wolf-eyed look said everything his words didn’t - I’ve got a whole lot more in mind for you.
Egypt’s face said, reading him perfectly - whatever it takes.
“I need to run down to the studio. You wanna ride with me?” Duppy inquired, getting up from behind the desk, coming around and offering his hand like a Knight to a Queen.
“I’d love to,” she said, taking it.
“A’ight, let’s take it from the top,” Kane said into the mic as he adjusted his headphones. The booth was full of smoke and magic. He passed the blunt to Power, exhaling hard. The screw turned to the max inside him. This was living.
There was smoke everywhere by this time, because Jimmy was totally caught up in the vibe. All rules were out the window. It was hot and dark in the studio. Just a lamp over the mixing desk, the glow from the LEDs hitting Jimmy’s face and turning it into a Halloween mask. In the booth all lights but a tiny spot was off. The studio was as dark as the beat, and the beat was lower than Hell.
The beat cracked open and filled the room like poison gas. Niggas jerked and bopped uncontrollably. This wasn’t music, this was voodoo that the street melted down and poured into your ears.
Kane ripped through his verse while Power chugged Henny, bobbing his head like his neck was broken. He was just about to kick his verse, when light from the studio door spread across the room as it was opened. Power was about to throw down at whoever had spoiled the atmosphere, breaking the mood, when he saw who had come in. It wasn’t only Duppy who had invaded - if it had, Power would have torn the nigga a new asshole - but it was who was with him that drained the anger from his lips.
Power passed the Henny to Kane, and just stared through the glass. The woman with Duppy was like something from a fever dream. If you put all the best aspects of the opposite sex into one body, and then made her walk like she owns the whole damn joint, then she would look like this.
Her eyes caught Power across the studio and through the glass. This was the kind of woman who knew exactly the effect she had on niggas. And she was working it like there were no more Saturday nights left in the universe.
Power stepped out of the booth and giving Duppy a just above zero nod of respect for a welcome took the woman’s hand.
And that’s when time stopped.
The night was thick layered around the dirty streets.
Her way into the alley was lit from above only by the yellow windows of the tenements around her. Her every step was firm but cautious. She knew her life depended on each eye movement and swing of her gaze.
A lid from a trashcan clattered to the ground. She spun her head, just in time to see a scrawny cat slinking into the shadows with its fish-head prize. Sirens wailed in the distance and the city seemed to breathe darkness along the lonely streets.
A white man with a knife jumped out from an alley. His eyes were wild, his face set. The knife glinting as he scythed it down through the cold air.
Buc! Buc!
She put two in his face, and the knifeman spun away, crashing into the cat’s trashcans.
She kept it moving. This was the worst part of town for a woman to be out in at night. The walls of the alley seemed to move in. She went forward on hurrying feet, hearing the click of her heels. At the junction she paused, not sure which way to go and then she heard a squeal of brakes and the rumble of a powerful engine. The car skids up, the driver hangs out the window with a MAC-11.
Buc! Buc! Buc!
Her first shot cracks his skull, the last two explode his face all over the dashboard. The body falls back, spurting blood. Should she take the car or keep running?
She runs. Aware that the street, slick with rain, could hold anything ahead, or anyone. Her nerves sang, her heart beat.
A white light to the left. The dazzle of the pistol flashlight?
Buc!
Egypt’s heart sank. She’d just put a .45 caliber bullet into a six-year-old’s forehead.
“Fuck!” Egypt yelled as she snatched the virtual-reality headset off.
No longer alone in the dark virtual street. She was in the media room of the Chicago Police Department’s 14th District, Shakespeare station. The room was bright from strip lights and from the windows looking out on North California Avenue. Cars shooshed by, just another day in the city.
For Egypt it was anything but.
Egypt’s eyes took a second or two to adjust and she was feeling the first splinter of a headache coming on from her thirty minutes in the VR training simulator.
“Run it again! Give me one more chance,” Egypt requested, looking at Sergeant Malone.
Malone sighed. He was a twenty-year veteran of the force, built like a linebacker. He looked like Ray Lewis with less hair and a badge. A good cop, but his limp from a liquor store bust that went south fifteen years ago, would have made him a liability behind the scrimmage. He had seen it all and liked telling Egypt that he had, but she always assumed he thought she wasn’t cut out to be a police officer.
“Let’s take five, okay?” he suggested.
Reluctantly, Egypt answered, “Okay.”
They went to his office, along the long-carpeted