Shetani's Sister

  Rucker drove to the station to brief the 3:00-to-11:00-p.m. shift. He parked the car and entered the station. He stepped inside the briefing room.

  Crane avoided eye contact with him during the routine ten-minute briefing. Then, as usual, Rucker handed each squad member a listing of current squad and regular vice-car licenses. He followed the squad to the parking lot and entered a Thunderbird undercover car. He was about to start the engine when it hit him that the license list he had just passed out was the key to trap Crane.

  He drove off the lot, refining the trap that he would set at Crane’s next briefing.

  —

  That evening, at midnight, Pee Wee relieved herself. She had decided she would sound out Petra before she confided Shetani’s sucker antics with Tuta. She knew strong Petra wouldn’t rush to Shetani in a jealous rage. She was leery because of Petra’s well-known loyalty to him. She had to gamble that Petra wouldn’t finger her as a snitch. She smiled wickedly as she got off the throne and flushed the toilet.

  At 2:30 a.m., Tuta came into the bedroom after getting her bedtime skag shot.

  “Shit, girl, you almost look as fresh as you did when you got down,” Pee Wee exclaimed.

  “Thanks. I had French tricks all night,” Tuta said as she slipped out of her lemon shoes and minidress.

  Pee Wee’s heart leapt out of rhythm at the voluptuous vision of Tuta’s nude body. She lay atop her bed and felt fiery springs of passion flood her head as she watched Tuta go into the shower.

  Shortly, Tuta came from the bathroom in a black silk-and-lace bikini.

  “You must have a date with the Master himself,” Pee Wee cracked as she watched her sit down and start to make up her face.

  “Yeah, Wee; only thing is, he don’t know it yet.”

  Pee Wee giggled. “You mean you gonna try to fuck him just like that?”

  Tuta sat motionless for a moment. “I mean he’s gonna get me off this mornin’ or else.”

  Pee Wee laughed. “Don’t jive me, baby. You ain’t gonna split from no righteous China white for dick reasons.”

  Tuta smiled. “I got a regular trick who deals China white. What the fuck, I’m a gorjus bitch. Daddy’s gonna get me off or I’m gonna get in the wind.”

  Pee Wee shook her head in puzzlement at it all. Why wasn’t Shetani fucking his pet? she asked herself.

  Moments later, Tuta stood in full radiant makeup. “See you later, Wee,” she said at the door.

  “I hope you score, baby. You better at least pick up that phone and call him first. You know it’s against the rules to go to his door after midnight with no appointment.”

  Tuta said, “I’m just gonna be a pure little bitch.”

  Pee Wee went to the doorway and watched Tuta wiggle her way to Shetani’s door.

  Inside his bedroom, Shetani received the night’s take in seventeen envelopes from Petra. They stared at each other at the sound of Tuta’s knock at the door.

  Shetani jerked his head toward the door. She went to peer through the peephole.

  “It’s Tuta. You must be expecting her,” Petra said as she glanced at him over her shoulder. He nodded. She opened the door.

  “Excuse me, Petra, I didn’t know you were here,” Tuta said as she looked over Petra’s head at the hardening face of Shetani.

  “Honey, come in. I’m leaving,” Petra said as she stepped aside for Tuta’s entry.

  “She looks like centerfold stuff, doesn’t she, Master?” thirty-year-old Petra said wistfully as she paused to survey Tuta’s teenage splendor.

  Petra left the room and shut the door.

  Shetani glared at Tuta as she sat down beside him on the bed. She started to rest her head on his shoulder. He moved away.

  “Master, I’m sorry I broke your rule. I needed to talk to you, body to body.”

  He threw a robe around her shoulders. “Silly bitch. Don’t break no more rules.”

  She flung the robe off her to the carpet. “I’m not silly! I’m just a human ho that’s gonna get sick if her man don’t get her off.”

  His hellish eyes burned through her as he sat like Satan, sculpted in black granite.

  She broke the silence. “What’s wrong with me, Master? All my tricks tell me how sexy I am. I’ll change my hair, perfume, anything, to make you want to make love to me.”

  He sprang to his feet before her. “Don’t pressure me for my dick, cunt. No bitch tells me when to fuck. You got that?”

  She fell to her knees. “Okay, Master. Just let me suck it a little. I’ve got tricks comin’ from the Valley twice a week for head. Let me show—”

  “You stinking low-life ho,” he thundered to cut her off.

  She stared up at him with extravagant surprise and disbelief on her face. She screamed, “It’s fuckin’ true I’m a ho. I’m proud to be a ho. I’ll die a ho!”

  He swung a violent backhand against the side of her head. She collapsed on the carpet, quivering. She scooted up to a sitting position against the bed frame. She held the side of her face.

  “Master, I bet you ain’t got no dick,” she said in a shaky whisper.

  With one hand he reached into his pajama pants and jerked out his long, limp penis. He seized her hair with the other hand. “See! Look! Now you know, bitch, I’ve got a dick.”

  He dragged her to the door and flung her into the hallway. He slammed the door.

  Pee Wee rushed to help her into their bedroom.

  “He’s stone crazy. Like I told you, Wee, I’m gettin’ in the wind,” Tuta sobbed as Pee Wee held her in her arms on a chaise.

  “Yeah, lil baby, he came down on your ass like a square. When you splittin’?”

  Tuta turned up her emerald eyes. “Tomorrow, after I make some bread.”

  Pee Wee tenderly kissed her bruised cheek. “That’s not soon enough. When he gets up, he could lock you in that cell in the cellar.”

  Tuta trembled. “How…What am I going to do?”

  Pee Wee squeezed her close to her bosom. “You lucky little sweet-eyes. You got me. We’ll pack your stuff, then we’ll get you a cab to a hotel room before he gets up.”

  Tuta said, “But I’m almost broke. I couldn’t even…”

  Pee Wee’s lips against hers interrupted the sentence. “I’m splittin’ soon. I’ll give you the bread for the cab and a pad that we can share. I’ll teach you how to be a superstar thievin’ ho. I’m gonna bring a kilo of boss China white with me.”

  Pee Wee’s tongue riffled through a downy forest of hairs at the nape of her neck without touching the electrified skinscape.

  Tuta hissed with pleasure and flung her thighs open in the throes of the thrill. Their clashing pygmy tools fired the furnace of their tender cannibalism.

  Consumed, they lay panting, with dewy bodies glistening. “We gonna be so happy together. Ain’t we, lil baby?” Pee Wee whispered in the moonlit stillness.

  “We gotta be, Wee. We ain’t got nobody but us,” Tuta softly answered.

  Half an hour later, Tuta went to sleep. Pee Wee went to shower. Coming back to bed, she glanced out the window. She stopped to stare at the ghostly figure of snow-blonde Petra in a white flowing robe. She strolled trancelike in the flower garden, with her arms folded.

  Pee Wee threw on a robe and, with the Memory Lane picture in her pocket, went to the garden.

  “Hi, Petra. I couldn’t sleep, either. I hope you don’t mind me buttin’ in,” Pee Wee said breezily as she sat down on a wrought-iron bench beside Petra.

  The red eye of Petra’s cigarette waggled a welcome signal. “Not at all, Pee Wee.”

  Pee Wee gazed up at the star-pocked sky. Petra laughed. “Lady, beware of heavenly awe. You might become born again.”

  Pee Wee rammed her hands into her robe pockets. “I ain’t in danger of that…I always think about Mama when the stars pop out. She believed in heaven and hell and the rest of the sucker fairy tale. She left me alone forever when I was twelve. She died with calluses everywhere, maybe even on her soul.”


  Petra’s face softened. “What did you do after…?”

  Pee Wee sighed. “I bunked in a junk car and stole food from markets. A coupla weeks after Mama left, a store pig busted me on the sidewalk with my bloomers fulla bread and cold cuts. Big Cat’s bottom woman hipped me how to steal. No, I ain’t in no danger of bein’ born again.”

  Pee Wee leaned in close to Petra. “But we ho’s are in danger of bein’ played for bigger fools than we are.”

  Petra recoiled. “If you’re unhappy, talk to Daddy about it. I don’t like to talk to unhappy people.”

  The whites of Pee Wee’s eyes flared like phosphorus. “Hey, Miss White Queen, don’t lay that shit on this ghetto bitch. Sure, you’re the bottom woman. I heard you been to college, that you was born in a pad like a castle. So what? Petra, you ain’t more than me or any other ho. All of us is just slaves, buyin’ so-called choice dick and protection. We get punished when we break Shetani’s rules. What the fuck happens when he…”

  “Shut up!” Petra said as she jerked herself to her feet. She glared down at Pee Wee as she went on. “I’m not going to listen to any more. You cracked about coming from a ghetto. Baby, you came from a relative paradise with a loving mother. I escaped from a ghetto of plastic people with bankbook hearts. My mother, may she rest in everlasting misery, was a savage in sable. She loved my younger sister. She hated me because I look like my father. She called me filthy names when I failed to be perfect. So don’t crack ghetto to me.”

  Petra turned away and moved toward the house. Pee Wee followed.

  “Petra, you riskin’ your ass every night, and you oughta know that Shetani is chumpin’ off with Tuta.”

  Petra halted at the back door. “Read my lips. I don’t want you to tell me anything about him,” she spat out.

  Pee Wee put her palm against the screen door. “I ain’t tellin’. I’m showin’,” she said as she whipped out the picture and shoved it under Petra’s eyes.

  Pee Wee noticed Petra’s hand tremble slightly as she stared at the picture in the glare of an overhead light. Pee Wee half whispered, “Last Saturday night, just before you took the girls to work, I heard him make a date with Tuta. He told Tuta he would take her to Memory Lane at eleven. He told her he’d make her money right for you at check-in time.”

  Petra turned and stuck the picture into Pee Wee’s robe pocket before she opened the screen door and entered the house. Pee Wee followed.

  “Pee Wee, I can’t say thanks, so I’m not saying anything.”

  Pee Wee said, “I’m sorry he got weak for her and broke a player’s rule.” Pee Wee split off from her in the kitchen and moved toward the staircase. She turned back into the kitchen. Petra was taking a carton of milk from the refrigerator.

  “I’m kinda hopin’ you won’t pull Shetani’s coat about me and the picture,” Pee Wee said softly.

  Petra turned to face her with elevated eyebrows. “Why did you show it and give me that rundown of what you overheard?”

  Pee Wee replied strongly, “ ’Cause he don’t deserve no star ho’s like us.”

  Petra smiled. “You could be right…Let’s keep the picture our secret.”

  Pee Wee shook Petra’s free hand. “Thanks, girl. I like you even though you are the bottom.” They laughed together. Pee Wee left the kitchen and hurried to her room. She packed Tuta’s belongings into two suitcases. Then she lay across her bed and catnapped until almost dawn. Then she called motels and hotels near Hollywood. She finally reserved a motel room in Silver Lake, a mecca for gay couples.

  She kissed Tuta awake. “Shetani is gonna try to trace you, baby. I think takin’ a cab is not cool. Ain’t you got some regular trick’s number you can call?”

  Tuta knuckled sleep from her eyes. “Yeah, I got a couple I’ll call after I pee,” she said as she swung out of bed for the bathroom.

  She returned to get, on her first call, the trick’s solemn promise to pick her up at an address down the road within twenty minutes.

  Shortly, dawn arrived. Before they left the room with the bags, Pee Wee shoved a packet of money and skag into Tuta’s bra.

  “Pay a week’s rent, and this medicine will keep you well until I see you,” Pee Wee said.

  They went through the quiet house to the front door.

  “Wee, somebody in the house, or maybe Froggy, might see you helping me. I can make it with the bags,” Tuta said as they kissed.

  Pee Wee opened the door. She blinked back tears as she watched Tuta go down the long driveway to a tall steel gate. She watched her glance at an adjoining cubicle, where Froggy slept, before she swung open the gate.

  Pee Wee stood in the doorway, ready to help her with the bags, until she disappeared from view.

  At that moment, Eli, seated on the throne in the guest bungalow, glanced out toward the roadway. His drowsy double-take revealed a deserted roadway. Had he really seen a flash of Tuta with suitcases? he wondered as he tissued himself and rose to his feet.

  He glanced into snoring Cazo’s room and smiled to see him asleep with his head between his sleeping girlfriend’s thighs.

  He went into his bedroom and lay down beside his girlfriend. A moment later, he jumped up and threw on a robe. He rushed to the roadway. He sprinted down it in the direction that Tuta had gone. He peered into several cars in driveways, and into stands of shrubbery, on his way back to the bungalow.

  He sat on the side of the bed, looking at the telephone. He decided he couldn’t awaken Shetani and risk his wrath with a false alarm.

  He went into Cazo’s room and took keys to the mansion off the dresser top. He used the back-door key to enter the house. He went up the staircase and down the hallway to Tuta’s room. The floorboards creaked beneath his weight when he put his ear to the door.

  Inside, Pee Wee faked sleep. Eli eased the door open and stared at Tuta’s empty bed. He looked in the closet and saw that Tuta’s bright-blue bags were gone. He went to check out the bathroom.

  He hurried to Shetani’s door. He knocked three times before Shetani eyed him through the peephole and removed the door chain to face him.

  “You forget how to dial a phone? What’s wrong?” Shetani said sharply as he glared at the giant.

  “Cap, Tuta’s done hit the wind,” Eli exclaimed.

  Shetani’s mouth gaped open. “Why? I mean, when?”

  Eli jiggled his platter palms in the air. “A few minutes ago Cap. I, uh…was half asleep when I thought I saw her splittin’. It was too late when I come to myself.”

  Shetani bulled him out of the way and ran to the side of Pee Wee’s bed. He stared down at her, with his mouth aquiver, for a moment. Then he bent over to whisper harshly into her ear: “You lousy cunt-eatin’ bitch! Open your eyes and tell me where my ho went.”

  Pee Wee remained in fake slumber. He took a lighter from his pajama pocket and flicked it on. He moved the flame close to her cheek. She stirred and moved her head. He whispered into her ear, “Bitch, I’m gonna set your hair on fire if you don’t open your eyes and tell me where my ho went.”

  Pee Wee’s eyes popped open. “Master, I swear I don’t know.”

  He rammed his face close to her. “Roommate, why didn’t you stop her or tip me off?”

  Pee Wee moved away to prop herself up against pillows. “Hey, Master, I ain’t your bottom. I ain’t responsible for no ho’s ass ’cept my own.”

  He gritted his teeth and made a fist. She screamed and half covered her face with her hands. He grunted for velocity and slammed his fist into her face. A huge diamond ring slashed a bloody rill across her cheek.

  Half stunned, she finger-patted the wound. He snatched her purse off her nightstand and dumped the contents onto the foot of her bed. She gazed at her bloody fingertips as he examined a notebook.

  Eli watched her shocked face deform into hideous rage. He moved to her bedside.

  She reached beneath the pillows. He sprang on her and seized her gun wrist as she blurred out her automatic and aimed it at Shetani’s head.
>
  Shetani dropped to the carpet at the pop of the round that entered the ceiling. Petra rushed into the room. Pee Wee was trapped beneath Eli’s bulk. Shetani pushed him away and locked his hands around Pee Wee’s throat.

  “Where’s Tuta?” he shrieked as he tightened his grip.

  “Stop! You’re killing her,” Petra wailed as she tried to pull Shetani away.

  Pee Wee went limp. Eli pried Shetani’s hands away.

  “Cap, you don’t really want to kill the ho,” Eli said as he half lifted Shetani into a leather chair.

  Shetani stared balefully at Pee Wee as she came to. “Lock that treacherous ho up, and warm up the van. We’re gonna find Tuta,” Shetani said, and got to his feet.

  “You mean you’re actually gonna try to find a runaway ho?” Petra cracked with sarcastic awe.

  He slapped her hard against the side of her face. “Don’t crack on me, ho. I’ll lock your ass up, too,” he shouted.

  Petra slunk from the room, rubbing her jaw.

  After Eli locked up Pee Wee, he awakened Cazo. In pajamas and robes, they sat in the idling van, waiting for Shetani.

  “Say, Cazo, Cap is been uncool since Petra hijacked Maxine—uh, Tuta—from that punk…a stone-to-the-bone mack like him ain’t fell in love, huh?”

  Cazo chewed his bottom lip. “Naw, Eli. I think Cap is in worse trouble than that. He don’t read nothin’ but them stack of books about dead people comin’ back to life. He loves his dead baby sis so much, I think he’s done conned himself that Maxine is really Tuta. Remember, he changed Maxine’s name soon as he saw her.”

  Eli shook his head. “Yeah. I guess you got him figured right…Sure is a shame for a mack like Cap to have a problem like that upstairs. I wonder what…”

  The approach of Shetani cut him off. “Let’s ride,” Shetani said as he took a seat between the twins. Eli pulled the van away down to the flatlands.

  “Cap, how, where we gonna start lookin’?” Eli said softly.

  “I’m gonna check cab companies and cabbies. I’m willing to lay out a grand to find out where Tuta went. Maybe she didn’t leave by cab. I’ll lay a grand apiece on you to snatch her whenever you spot her and bring her home to me.”