Dim lights, dark carpet and plentiful mirrors promoted the illusion that the building was bigger inside than it was outside. The doorman led them through a narrow hall to a wider control room area. Hannibal recognized the large mixing boards that lined one side of the room and wondered how anyone could master the vast array of switches, knobs and slider pots. The board faced a glass wall, beyond which a solitary Black woman in a jogging suit and headphones stood speaking into a hanging microphone, reading from a sheaf of paper.
Monte saw none of this. He saw only one of the two men behind the board, a slight man with close cut hair and two armfuls of tattoos showing below the sleeves of his vintage tee shirt.
“Huge!” Monte said leaping forward. When the man turned toward him he switched to, “Mister Wilson. Holy shit it’s really you! Oh my God.”
“Chill out, man,” Huge said in his natural falsetto. “We’re working on something here. Give me just a minute.”
Huge was also wearing headphones and Hannibal realized he was hearing the woman’s words while the rest of the room was in silence. They stood watching the silent performance for another two minutes, until Huge raised a hand to signal the woman to stop.
“That was off the hook, Delicia,” he said into a microphone. “Now take five while I chat to a couple of visitors for a minute.” The woman smiled and left the recording room by a second entrance. Monte’s eyes were riveted on her impressive rear end.
“So this is your little friend you wanted me to meet,” Huge said to Hannibal. “He’s got a good eye for talent. Monte, right?”
“Ohmygodican’tbelieveit.”
Huge sat back in his rolling black leather chair. “Hannibal told me you were a hustler. Said you got your name from running a three card monte game and that the day he met you, you took him for a bundle. That true?”
“Well, yeah,” Monte said.
“Well you sure don’t look like a hustler to me. Why don’t you sit here for a bit and let T.L. here give you a quick rundown on what we’re doing here today. Delicia is going to be the next Missy Elliot. While you do that, Hannibal and me got some business.”
Huge stood, took Hannibal’s arm, and led him out of the room. They moved down the darkened hall to a small conference room. There was barely enough space for the simple cherry wood table and the eight chairs around it. As they entered Hannibal was struck by two conflicting sensations: the sight of a half-full coffee pot, and the smell of leftover marijuana smoke. Huge started pouring coffee before he noticed Hannibal’s reaction.
“Oh, you don’t blow the chronic, do you?”
Hannibal did a quick mental translation. “No, it’s not for me. Or Monte.”
Huge’s head bobbled like a sports figure doll as he handed Hannibal a Styrofoam cup. Huge was physically slight, but there was no denying the energy the man generated, the subtle sense of power, and his total comfort with the power he had.
“You told me your friend had no interest in school, right? Let me talk to him. I ain’t a gangster, you know. Never pretended to be, but I’ll tell you, the G’s don’t fuck with me cause I can give them the beats that get asses on the floor, and that lets them clock the dollars.”
Hannibal nodded, but didn’t sit because Huge was still standing. Huge wasn’t a gangster, or a “G” as he and his friends would say, but he commanded respect. On reflection, Hannibal realized that his relationship with Huge was in many ways similar to the one he had with Ronzini.
“So, you haven’t asked me about your Rod Mantooth problem,” Huge said, starting to walk around the table. “I love that name.”
“You’ll tell me when you have something.”
“This is my city, brother man,” Huge said, spinning to point a skinny finger at Hannibal. “You think it’s hard to find one funky white dude? Shee-it. But of course, your call last night made it too easy. We got one for you.”
“Got one? Who?”
“Lime,” Huge said, pulling a note pad from the hip pocket of his baggy shorts. “We got Lime.” From the pad he pulled a photo and two pieces of paper, which he dramatically slid across the table’s glossy surface. Hannibal scooped them up and examined them one at a time. The photo was a candid shot of a beautiful young woman with a cream complexion that could have made her part Asian, or Hawaiian, or Middle Eastern, or half a dozen other possibilities. Her hair was long, thick and naturally wavy, the color of balsa wood with blonde streaks. Bright green, slightly slanted eyes stared out above a tiny pert nose and full, challenging lips. This was the girl in the lime colored bathing suit. The other papers bore an address and details of the time and location of the sighting.
“One in the morning?” Hannibal asked. “And she wasn’t with Mantooth?”
“My man said she was patrolling the beach, still in that bikini. Not sure if she was dropping off or picking up, but it sure looked like a drug run to my partner. That was taken on the boardwalk just before shit started shutting down. He clicked a lot. I kept the rest. Man, I’d put her in a video in a heartbeat. And check it, she don’t look like a woman who’s been abused, do she?”
Hannibal saw as much strength in her face as in her long striding legs. “Maybe she likes it. Or, maybe she’s a partner. Or maybe she likes girls.”
“Only one way to know, bro,” Huge said. He had come full circle and stood facing Hannibal now. “One thing’s for sure, she’ll lead you to the man you want to meet. You go check it out, and come back to pick up Monte tonight sometime.”
“What do you have in mind for him?”
Huge’s grin was so broad it was infectious. “Gonna show him how it all works, dig? Introduce him to some people who wish they’d stayed in school. Some people who had a lot of money go through their hands and got nothing cause they didn’t know how to handle it. You just leave this one to me, brother. Now, you going down the beach to meet this bitch? Tell her to introduce you to this player so you can straighten his ass out?”
“Something like that,” Hannibal said.
Huge leaned back, scanning Hannibal up and down. “You don’t do undercover, do you? I mean, a black suit on the beach in summer is going to stand out a bit. You need to loosen up some if you’re going to get within half a mile of this ho.”
When did a lazy pronunciation of the word “whore” come to be a synonym for woman, Hannibal wondered. “I’ll keep my distance. Besides, if I take my jacket and shirt off I’ll stand out even more. I don’t have any tattoos.”
But back at his car, Hannibal started the engine, cranked the air conditioner to maximum and got back out. He folded his jacket and laid it on the back seat. He laid his tie atop that and opened the top button of his white shirt. Then he rolled his sleeves up to just below his elbows and returned to the driver’s seat. For now, that was as incognito as he was prepared to be.
A little known CD by The Georgia Satellites pumped his speakers while he drove southward down Atlantic Avenue, almost to Rudee Inlet. He cut right on Fifth Street, almost the end of the resort area beach, and eased a short way down Salem Avenue. Just like Atlantic City, he thought. As soon as you get a few blocks from the Boardwalk it stops being a resort town and starts showing its less impressive side.
Hannibal had always heard that Monopoly was based on Atlantic City, because that was the Boardwalk he knew about. He reconsidered that assumption as he drove past Baltic Avenue and turned up Mediterranean. The modest houses he was passing were surely the least expensive properties on this particular board. He cruised slowly up the narrow street until he spotted the address Huge had written down. He parked between an aging aqua Fairlane and a drab green Chevette. Walking toward the wooden cottage Hannibal was praying that the drivers of the two cars were careful. If paint from either one got scraped onto his white tornado, he might just have to have the car put down.