Free Working Girls by Treasure Hernandez Page A

wouldn’t give anybody the pleasure of seeing him panic.
    â€œOkay, so you wanna do this the hard way?” Sweets jammed his gun in Joe’s neck and jerked him by the collar as he turned to face Lynch. “You see that nigga right there? He’s waiting for me to give him the go-ahead. He is trying to get at you, for real. You took something away from him that he can’t get back, nah mean?”
    Joe stared at the man before him, but he couldn’t see his face. It wasn’t until he looked at his forearms that he saw the word Shottah tattooed in black ink. Fuck, he thought, knowing that the young boy before him was the brother of the nigga he’d murdered at Berston.
    â€œNow, let’s try this again. Where’s the safe?”
    Joe stood strong and still didn’t respond.
    Lynch, growing tired of Jamaica Joe’s games, ran up on him and split his nose with the butt of his gun. “Nigga, you thinks this a game? Where the mu’fuckin’ safe?” He whipped Joe across the face with the pistol two more times.
    Jamaica Joe dropped to his knees in pain. He held his face and blood seeped in between his fingers. He weighed his options and knew that he would have to reveal his safe to his intruders. I got a pistol in that safe, he thought. He knew that he was outnumbered greatly and began to regret not letting his boys enter his house with their pistols. One gun didn’t amount to much, but he knew that it gave him a better chance of walking out of the situation with his life.
    â€œIt’s underneath the floor,” he stated as he got up and walked toward a bookshelf in the corner of the room.
    â€œHurry up.” Sweets pushed Joe slightly, urging him to speed up the process.
    Jamaica Joe pulled up some loose floorboards in his basement and revealed a steel combination safe. He paused, trying to buy more time. How the fuck am I gon’ get out of this? And where the fuck is Tariq?
    â€œOpen it!” Sweets demanded.
    Joe twisted the knob to the safe and opened the door, revealing the crystal-white cocaine inside.
    â€œLoad that shit up,” Sweets ordered Joe then looked over to Lynch. “Handle your business, man,” he stated, giving him the okay to shoot Joe.
    Lynch raised his arm and aimed the .357 at Joe’s head. Just as he was getting ready to pull the trigger, they heard a loud banging on the back door.
    â€œFlint Police Department! Is anyone home?” the voice yelled loudly.
    Sweets, Manolo, and the other two Shottah Boyz looked at each other nervously. They quickly snatched off their masks. “Block that mu’fucka,” Sweets whispered, referring to the open safe, and Lynch quickly pushed the bookshelf over the missing floorboards.
    Sweets put his finger to his lips, signaling for everyone in the basement to keep quiet.
    Jamaica Joe never thought he would be so happy to have the cops at his door.
    â€œFlint Police! We’re coming in!” they shouted.
    Jamaica Joe heard his back door open and shut. Sweets and his crew tried to hide their guns as the police came down the steps.
    Two white cops came into the room. One immediately went to the home stereo system and cut the volume, and the other one looked around the room, his hand on his holster, looking for an excuse to open fire.
    Even though Jamaica Joe’s guests were afraid of Sweets and his crew, snitching was a no-no in Flint, so everyone kept their mouths shut and waited to see how the scene would play out.
    â€œWhat seems to be the problem, officers?” Sweets asked, removing all traces of slang from his vocabulary.
    â€œAre you the owner of this house?” one of the officers asked.
    â€œNo, sir,” Sweets responded.
    â€œThen who is?”
    â€œI am,” Jamaica Joe stated with a smile.
    The officer frowned when he saw Joe’s busted nose and asked, “Is everything all right here? What’s going on?” He eyed the group of men