Puck’s Property by Monique Moreau
ChapterEleven
Puck may not have been able to see Ava, but his thoughts never strayed far from her. Being cut off from his family, his brothers, his bike, and his home was unnerving. He didn’t have any of his belongings. There was no privacy. Noise and chatter all the fucking time. Tack on mind-numbing boredom, and stir-crazy didn’t begin to describe what he felt like. His trial date hadn’t been set, so Puck had a chunk of time on his hands. It was the thought of losing his jury trial that had him shuddering in his oversized jumper. If he was convicted, he was looking at a minimum of five years in a federal penitentiary. He could plead down to second-degree assault, but then he was guaranteed to serve over a year. What a fucking mess.
Ava was his oasis of sanity. It offset the powder keg of stress he lived with every day. At times, he had to go back to the basics, like focusing on her sultry vanilla scent. Instead of being in an enclosed musty room stinking of sour body odor, he was transported to a beach in the Florida Keys.
The following day, Puck called Loki and found out she was home with a cold but, otherwise, doing well. Pride swelled his chest when he heard how she took the Tylenol because she’d run out. See, what’d I tell you? he wanted to shout out to the universe. Loki complimented him on how fine his woman was, and then ribbed him until Puck got sick of it and simply hung up on his ass.
Feeling more at peace after his call, he set out to do the job he’d promised Ava. Puck played cards, but it took a while to get in on a game with Kingpin’s crew. There was one man, a kid really, who either worked for the drug dealer or was related to him. Little shit was named Jiggins. High half the time, the kid was a weak link, and Puck’s way in.
Hanging around the card tables, Puck got subbed in on a card game of spades with Kingpin, Jiggins, and another guy named Poison, of all things. Jiggins must’ve sucked ass if Puck was teamed up with him.
“Ace high, no bags,” Jiggins called out as he gave Puck a wink. What in the fuck that meant, Puck had no idea. It didn’t take long to find out Kingpin had a little side hustle, managing the gambling at the card tables and taking sports bets. Enterprising man.
To gamble, the inmates used bags of chips and sodas from the commissary, a store inside the jail, where inmates purchased stuff, like snacks and hygiene products. From his dilated eyes, it was evident Jiggins was coming off a high, which meant this was gonna be a wash of a game. He ground down on his back teeth. Puck hated losing, for any reason, but it was a necessary evil to get an in with this crew.
Kingpin scratched his closely shaved head as he dealt the cards. On the other side of thirty, he had a square jaw and heavy jowls. Skinny guy with a paunch, generic tribal tats covered his biceps and neck, poking up from beneath his collar. Puck knew exactly the type of dealer he was. The chummy kind, who pretended to use alongside his customers but cut his product with God knows what behind their back. All in all, he was a viper and a coward. But, first and foremost, he was an opportunist. Being a hustler himself, that was something Puck could exploit.
Picking up his cards, Puck considered them as Jiggins bid his tricks. They went around until each player bid. The game played itself out, and Kingpin won the round with a ten of spades, the highest card. Jiggins was the next to deal.
Grabbing the deck of cards, he shuffled a few times and asked Puck, “Whatcha in for, dude? Me, I’m in for possession.” It was a common question among inmates, as an icebreaker but also to get a pulse on the kind of man they were dealing with.
“Pistol-whipped a guy,” he replied as he picked up his cards. “Owed me five Gs. Couldn’t let that stand.” The assault was true, the reason behind it was not, but he didn’t much care if they believed him. He sure as hell didn’t believe every damn thing an inmate told him.
“Five Gs is a lot of dough,” commiserated Poison.
“Fuck yeah, it is. If you don’t got the money, then you gotta pay up another way, know what I mean? I’m not from a bitch-ass club.”
“I heard the Squad went clean,” Kingpin murmured, studying his cards intently.
So the fucker kept tabs on other criminal enterprises in the city. The Squad had been one of the main cigarette smugglers in the region for years, until recently.
“There’s clean, and then there’s clean. President’s old lady is a lawyer, so we had to clean up the image, know what I mean? But a brother’s gotta do what a brother’s gotta a do to survive, feel me?”
“True dat,” piped up Jiggins.
“You’ve got to survive,” Kingpin repeated.
What the fuck does that mean? What kind of cryptic shit is that?
“Survival’s the name of the game, yo,” Puck stated, watching Kingpin from the corner of his eye. Kingpin lifted his gaze from his cards and carefully studied Puck. Tapping his cards against the table, he refocused his attention and played his hand. Puck had to give it to him; he was a cool motherfucker.
“Amen,” supplied Jiggins.
Each man called out his tricks and they settled down to playing their hands in silence. Puck wasn’t surprised when Kingpin won game after game.
“With the luck I’m having, if I’m gonna keep playing cards, I’m gonna need cash,” Puck muttered, loud enough for Jiggins to hear, but not the rest of the men milling around their table.
Jiggins’s gaze shot to Puck’s face. “Yeah?”
“Always ready to make money moves,” replied Puck. “My brothers take care of commissary, but they’re not generous enough to pay the bills pilin’ up while I’m laid up in here. And playing cards? Let’s just say, I can’t be owing people.”
“That you can’t,” Jiggins agreed.
“Yeah, already had one fight and got thrown in the hole. Not lookin’ for a repeat.”
“There might be somethin’ for you to do. Always lookin’ for hard-workin’ men who know the score.”
“That would be me, but I ain’t lookin’ to add time to what I already have,” Puck warned. It was the God’s honest truth.
Jiggins chuckled low. “No worries, brah. The COs don’t give a fuck what we do as long as we don’t riot. It’s fucking Walmart on Black Friday up in here. I’ll talk to Kingpin and see what you can do. Gonna be real small in the beginning. Test you out to see if you do what you’re told.”
“I can be trusted,” intoned Puck. Jiggins shouldn’t be running his mouth, but that wasn’t his problem.
“Like I said, I’ll talk to my cousin. It’s for him to decide.”
So Puck was right that the little shit was related to Kingpin. Nothing else made as much sense. Satisfied with having set the wheels in motion, Puck got up from the table once the game was done and paid his loss. Chips and soda were a small price to pay for entry into Kingpin’s circle.
