Let Me Hear a Rhyme Read online

  “Oh, are you with Architect’s managing firm?”

  “Um . . . yeah!”

  “Got it. Well, Mr. Williams heard Architect’s demo and saw his feature in Vibe. He’s interested in setting up a meeting. Say, the Oct Bar? Tomorrow night, around nine thirty?

  “Mm-hmm, yeah. That’ll be perfect.”

  “Now, please remind your client not to be late. Mr. Williams is all about promptness.”

  “Will do. Thank you so much.”

  I slam down the phone and run around the room, screaming inside my sweater.

  17

  Quadir

  As soon as we step past security, I release the breath I’ve been holding since we got off the train in Times Square. I don’t wanna say I’m scared ’cause that’d make me sound like some chump. I just never tried to sneak into a club before.

  “Aye yo, I can’t believe those IDs worked,” I whisper, feeling way more relaxed with the music thumping through my chest.

  Rell smirks. “I told you Mack had the hookup. You were all shook for nothing.”

  I wasn’t shook. I just didn’t want to embarrass ourselves.

  Oct Bar is real classy inside. All orange, yellow, and red with black leather sofas, disco lights, and a glass staircase. The bar has this kinda clear amber color with mirrors, like my uncle Frank’s ashtray. The place looked like money with shorties walking around in high heels and skirts, carrying designer bags, glossy lips sipping on martini glasses. I shouldn’t say shorties—I’m talking real women, like my sister’s age. Brown skin, dark skin, light skin, Puerto Ricans, whites, all fine as hell. The fellas look fly too. Versace shades, Gucci belts, gold chains and rings, buying bottles at the bar. I’m glad Rell came over and made me change my clothes. We couldn’t walk up in here in sneakers and durags. Rell scopes out the scene, a big ol’ smile on his face, rubbing his hands together like he’s about to be up to no good.

  “How do I look?”

  Rell has on his COOGI sweater, black jeans, and gators. That sweater cost him over two hundred dollars. Steph told him he was crazy for buying something so ugly.

  “Cool. How about me?”

  I had on my nice hard-bottoms, brown slacks, and a gold button-down shirt I borrowed from my pops.

  Rell smirks. “Like you sixteen in your daddy’s clothes. And I keep forgetting without a durag you look like a Chia Pet fried in corn oil.”

  “Man, shut up.”

  This tall straight-gorgeous Amazon woman passes by in a blue backless shirt held up by strings. She winks at me and I smile back.

  “Damn, kid. Last time a shorty looked at me like that was never.” Rell chuckles, shaking his head. “Ain’t no way shorty got a bra on with that top.”

  “Aight, let’s focus. Where Jazz tell us to meet this dude? ’Cause if we don’t handle business soon, you gonna get us in trouble up in here.”

  Rell chuckles. “You mean before or after you told Jazz she couldn’t come with us?”

  “I’m saying, even with that body, we couldn’t get her up in here with all these real ladies!”

  Rell’s head bounces back. “Ohhhh, so you checking out her body now, huh?”

  Damn, busted.

  “NO! I mean, nah, I . . . I didn’t mean it like . . . man, whatever. She’s too young!”

  “Son, she’s a fifteen-year-old project chick! That makes her at least twenty-one mentally. Besides fool, you sixteen. You act like you R. Kelly and she Aaliyah or something.”

  I ain’t have nothing to say back to that. Feels weird even having a conversation about Jasmine like she’s a real girl or something.

  “Aight,” he says with a smirk. “Just don’t let Ronnie hear you talking like that or that’s your ass. Come on. Jazz said see the hostess and she’ll bring us to his VIP table.”

  “Bet.”

  We follow the hostess up two flights of stairs, where it’s less crowded, but the vibe the same. From the landing, I spot his white blazer before I see his face, sitting on a red velvet sofa surrounded by these fly-ass ladies in the VIP section. He’s laughing and joking while his homies pour champagne into glasses. A scene straight out of a music video.

  As we approach, we catch the end of his conversation with this Asian girl he got his arm around.

  “So, baby, like I was saying, how about you and me take a little trip? Nothing too fancy, I just got this spot up in the Hamptons I like. Me and Puff be there all the time.”

  The girl gushes and nods. “Really?”

  “I’m telling you, baby, when you roll with me, it’s nothing but high class.” He laughs, that type of laugh like he’s the king of the world and she’s twirling her hair falling for it.

  This dude is smooth.

  But before we even touch the velvet rope, a skinny, brown-skin dude in a tight, shiny, gray suit swoop in on us.

  “Hi! You must be Architect! I’m Fletch, and you’re right on time. Thanks for coming!”

  I shake his hand. “Oh, no, nah, we—”

  “Mr. Williams! Mr. Williams? He’s here!”

  Pierce glances up at us with a big grin and throws back his drink.

  “There he goes! Just the man I was looking for!” He looks around at his party. “Aight, Come on, y’all. Everybody out!”

  He takes the Asian lady’s drink, nudging her away.

  “Sorry, baby, you gotta go. Got business to take care of. I’ll call you, okay? We’ll set that trip up soon. Real soon, okay?”

  She rolls her eyes, mumbling something under her breath before pushing through us and storming away.

  “Don’t worry about her,” he says, waving it off. “Come, come. Have a seat! Fletch!”

  Fletch jumps. “Yes, sir,” he says, his voice shaky.

  “Get me another bottle for my guest. And some of them strawberries too. Make sure they fresh, I don’t like no bruised berries in my champagne.”

  “Yes, yes. Right away, sir!”

  Fletch scurries down the stairs. Over the balcony, we see DJ Clue in the booth, spinning for a crowded dance floor, the party poppin’.

  “What y’all standing there for,” Pierce says. “Sit down! Make yourselves comfortable!”

  Rell pops down on the mini chair across from him, all hyped. I sit down slow, suspicious of anyone this friendly.

  Pierce rubs his hands together and points at Jarrell.

  “So let me guess. You’re Architect. Man, you look nothing like your picture and you definitely gained some weight, but I can work with that! We gotta hook you up with a stylist ’cause you looking like some hood kid straight outta Brooklyn, and that’s not what’s hot in the streets right now. You feel me? We need you looking like money! Designer everything!”

  Jarrell smirks, then all cocky says, “Who me? Oh nah, man. I’m not Architect. He ain’t coming.”

  Pierce’s smile drops to a straight line, and right then and there I knew Rell fucked up.

  “Shit,” I mumble.

  Fletch returns with a waitress and four bottles of Cristal.

  “Fletch!” Pierce barks. “I thought you told me this is Architect?”

  Fletch frowns, eyes ping-ponging between Rell and me.

  “They . . . I mean he told me he was!”

  “No, we didn’t.”

  “Then . . . who the fuck are you?”

  “We his representatives,” Rell says, trying to sound tough, but I’ve know him long enough to know when he’s shook.

  “His what?”

  Fletch’s eyes go wide as he holds up his hands. “I swear, sir, they told me—”

  “Managers! We’re his managers!” Damn, Rell just gonna continue to dig us a grave.

  Pierce rolls his eyes in disgust. He’s heated for real.

  “Man, get the fuck out of here with that bullshit! What are you, twelve? I don’t have time for games with pointless lackeys.” He rips some money off a bill clip. “Here, take this five dollars.” He slams it on the table and we both jump back. “Go buy yourself a metro card and take your as
ses back to BK and tell your ‘artist’ I don’t deal with big-headed male groupies like yourselves, aight? I’m with Red Starr Entertainment! We ain’t no little bullshit-ass label. We the real deal! I put people like Fast Pace on the map!”

  I glance at Rell. He’s speechless.

  “Well? The fuck you still sitting there for? Get out before I have you thrown out! In fact . . .” He waves at two brolic cats standing by the VIP entrance, ready to break our arms with they pinkies. I could see the headlines now:

  Two High School Juniors Found in Dumpsters Outside Times Square Nightclub

  Nah, I had to jump in.

  “Whoa, whoa. Yo, we meant no disrespect, Mr. Williams! Just that Architect had a family emergency—”

  “Yeah, a death in the family,” Jarrell adds, and I kick him under the table.

  “And he didn’t want to miss this meeting with you. He admires you! Ever since you started at Def Jam and all the work you did with artists like Redman, Method Man, and LL Cool J. He would never disrespect you like that! But, like I said, he had an emergency, and he didn’t want to cancel . . . so he sent us instead. We sorry for the confusion. We ain’t trying to waste your time.”

  Pierce chuckles. “Death in the family? What d’you think, I’m stupid?”

  Them big dudes are standing right behind us, breathing down our necks. He could snap his fingers at any moment and have us yoked out of here.

  “Word on my mother, I’m telling you, if he could be here, right now, he would. Music was everything—”

  “IS everything to him, sir,” Jarrell says. “We’ve been helping him with his career from the start. He trusts us to handle business.”

  Pierce eyes us down. He’s suspicious, and I don’t blame him. I don’t know if I would’ve believed us. He nods and waves the bouncers away. Jarrell exhales and clutches his chest like he’s a second away from a heart attack.

  “Aight. I hear you. Tell ya man that Red Starr Entertainment is looking for its next big breakout artist. Need someone who got flow and originality. I listened to his demo. It’s good. But I need great. Nah, fuck that, I need outstanding. Nah, fuck that, I need excellence!”

  He snaps at Fletch. Fletch runs over and hands him a CD.

  “The beats on this . . . certified bangers. I need your man to make a single off one of those tracks in a week.”

  Jarrell does a double take. “A week?”

  Pierce raises an eyebrow. “Is that a problem?”

  I touch Rell’s arm. “Nah. We’ll let him know.”

  Pierce looks us over again. “Aight. Now get out of my face.”

  We jump up, ready to dip. After dodging a bullet, no sense in overstaying our welcome.

  “One more thing,” he says to our backs. “Tell your man if he fucks up and pulls some shit like this again, the only place his music is gonna be heard is at his funeral.”

  Jarrell chuckles and I punch his side.

  “Yo, would you shut the fuck up,” I grumble through my teeth and nod back at Pierce.

  “Deliver that song by the end of the week or I’ll come looking for it. And y’all don’t want me to come looking for y’all.”

  18

  November 3, 1997

  “So nobody knows nothing yet?”

  Quadir practiced his handles in front of the bodega, the bouncing clashing with the car stereo passing by. “No witnesses, no nothing. All those people? Nah, someone saw something.”

  It had been eight months since Big’s funeral. As “I’ll Be Missing You” by Puff Daddy and the Bad Boy family stayed on top of the charts, and more and more people came with new stories about Biggie’s life, none of those stories answered the most important question: Who shot Big?

  Steph popped a few Dipsy Doodles into his mouth. He wanted something salty before eating his last piece of taffy saved in his jean pocket. The last taste of summer, he thought as the leaves kick up in the late autumn breeze.

  “If they haven’t figured out who killed Pac, what makes you think they gonna figure out who killed Big?”

  “’Cause, for real, it’s connected!”

  “Bet you it was someone in Pac’s crew,” Jarrell sniffled into a tissue. “They think Biggie had something to do with him being popped, so it was eye for an eye! You saw Boyz n the Hood, you know how shit be out there. It’s like the wild, wild west for real.”

  Jarrell blew his nose, coughing into the sleeve of his Nautica jacket. Another cold, right on schedule. He always caught one around the end of fall that messed with his asthma, but he hated carrying around the bulky inhaler the doctor gave him after his last hospital visit. It clashed with sneakers, socks, belt, and whatever else he planned to wear.

  “Nah, I got a cousin who lives out there. She said it’s not a war zone like people think,” Steph chuckled. “Probably like the way white people think it’s mad crazy in Brooklyn. But look at us. Kicking it, drinking our quarter waters in peace.”

  “So why ain’t anyone saying nothing?” Quadir asked. “Cops don’t have no witnesses or nothing?”

  The question kept Quadir up at night. He read every newspaper and magazine that discussed the investigation, but no other information had been released except for the basic details:

  • Biggie, along with the his Bad Boy crew including Puff Daddy and Lil’ Cease, left a party the day after the Soul Train Music Awards early, due to overcrowding.

  • Biggie’s Suburban SUV stopped at a red light on the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and South Fairfax Avenue, near the venue.

  • A Chevrolet Impala SS pulled up alongside the SUV.

  • The driver of the Impala, a black male dressed in a blue suit and bow tie, pulled out a 9mm and shot into Biggie’s passenger-side door.

  • Biggie was taken straight to the hospital where he was pronounced dead thirty minutes later.

  “It just don’t make no sense. They expect us to believe with the streets being mad crowded and the police and fire department shutting the club down, Big gets popped a few feet away, and no one saw nothing? No cameras. No paparazzi. No one?” Quadir shook his head. “Yo, deadass, I think it’s a conspiracy. The government is in on it. Trying to take out hip-hop ’cause we taking over. First NWA, now Big.”

  For a change, the boys didn’t argue with him. With so few answers, the impossible did not seem so far off.

  “Son, you right,” Steph said, clawing the taffy out of his pocket. “With all those people, someone . . . definitely saw something.”

  “So what, you expect people to snitch?” Jarrell asked, his face turned up as if the words stank.

  There it was. The s word. The one word that hit worse than a curse.

  Quadir stopped bouncing his ball to face Jarrell, his eyes wide. “Well . . . yeah . . . kinda. Not like that . . . I mean, just leave an anonymous tip or something.”

  Jarrell shook his head. “Son, snitches get stitches. You don’t ever want be labeled a snitch, ’specially in the hood! That shit will follow you like a disease.”

  Steph held his breath, palming the taffy in his pocket. He knew what his father would say, but things were different now.

  “But . . . that’s just mad stupid,” Quadir said incredulously. “You telling me, if you see someone get murked, you ain’t gonna say nothing?”

  Jarrell sucked his teeth. “Son, if I want to stay breathing, I ain’t saying shit. And you wouldn’t either. If cats out here know that you know anything . . . they won’t hesitate to pull a trigger on you and your whole family. I don’t even feel comfortable talking about this out here.”

  Jarrell looked over both his shoulders with a wary eye before sneezing into his jacket.

  “Steph,” Quadir said. “What’d you think?”

  Steph gulped. “I . . . don’t know.

  “You don’t know?” Jarrell barked. “Son, keep it real with me. Is you a snitch?”

  “What? Nah, I ain’t no snitch!”

  “Yo, ’cause for real, though, you acting wild suspect, and I can’t be assoc
iated with snitches.”

  Steph’s eyes narrowed as he stepped to him. “Well, I told you I ain’t, so back up off me!”

  Quadir quickly intervened. “Y’all! Chill. It ain’t even that serious.”

  Steph stood inches from Jarrell’s face, breathing hard, not saying a word.

  Jarrell sized him up with a snarl. Same height, but he had at least thirty pounds over him. Cold or no cold, he could still take him, but crazy that he’d even had to consider it. In all their years of friendship, Steph had never stepped to him. What’s going on with him? Rell thought.

  “Then what you trying to say with all that shrugging shoulders and shit?”

  Steph crossed his arms. “I’m saying, what if you knew someone that knew something . . . about how my dad died, what would you do?”

  Stunned to silence, Quadir and Jarrell share a quick look. They weren’t expecting to talk about anyone so close to home.

  “That’s . . . different,” Jarrell struggled to say, stepping back.

  “How?” Steph snapped.

  “’Cause I know you! You my brother! If I knew anything, you’d be the first one I tell!”

  “So. Someone knew Biggie. Biggie was a lot of people’s brother. He was a father, a husband, and a son. But that don’t mean shit. Why? All ’cause of some code about snitching, and now his family can’t get justice.”

  The boys stop talking, not knowing what else to say. Steph returned to his spot on the corner, trying to quiet the thoughts bouncing in his head. What if someone did see something, would he blame them for not coming forward, if only to protect his or her family? He’d do anything to protect his. Wonder what Pops would say about all this, he thought. He wasn’t down with the no-snitching rule. He was all about protecting the community at all costs.

  Even if that meant losing his life to prove that point.

  “Aye, man, sorry about calling you a snitch,” Jarrell said. “But yo, word on Moms, I’d kill the mutherfucker myself who did your pops. A hit and run . . . man that’s some sucker shit, for real.”