The Reason Why Read online

  Let That Be the Reason was the breakthrough debut novel that became an urban-lit classic and launched Vickie Stringer’s career as bestselling author and publisher. Imagine This was the bestselling sequel and now comes the prequel The Reason Why, the long-awaited revelation of how Pamela and Chino became an urban contemporary Bonnie and Clyde.

  Pamela was a naive coed from Detroit, going to classes by day and clubs by night. The hottest spot was Jazzy Jay’s, and that’s where one of the guys slipped his gun into her pocketbook, knowing that the police who had just descended on the club wouldn’t check the girls for weapons. She didn’t know his name or anything other than he was cute and charming. But when she tracked him down to return his property, she found out his name was Chino; his game was hustling; and his plan was to make her his woman, his wifey, and give her more than she ever bargained for out of life, love, and the pursuit of money.

  VICKIE M. STRINGER is the author of Essence bestsellers including Imagine This, Let That Be the Reason, Dirty Red, and Still Dirty. She is the publisher of Triple Crown Publications, one of the most successful African-American book publishers in the country and abroad. She has been featured in such prominent news media as the New York Times, Newsweek, MTV News, Publishers Weekly, Vibe, Millionaire Blueprints, Black Expressions, and many more. She lives in Columbus, Ohio, with her two children. Visit her website at www.triplecrownpublications.com.

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  COVER DESIGN BY PATRICK KANG • COVER PHOTO BY MARLON RICHARDSON/GETTY (WOMAN), TODD GIPSTEIN/GETTY (STREET), SONJA PACHO/ZEFA/CORBIS (MAN) • AUTHOR PHOTO BY PETER CHIN

  Also by Vickie M. Stringer

  STILL DIRTY

  DIRTY RED

  IMAGINE THIS

  LET THAT BE THE REASON

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either

  are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance

  to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2009 by Vickie M. Stringer

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions

  thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Atria Books Subsidiary

  Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  First Atria Paperback edition August 2009

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  Designed by Nancy Singer

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Stringer, Vickie M.

  The reason why: a novel/Vickie M. Stringer.—1st Atria Paperback ed.

  p. cm.

  Prequel to: Let that be the reason.

  1. African American women—Fiction. 2. African Americans—Fiction.

  3. Drug dealers—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3569.T69586R43 2009

  813’.54—dc22 2009018265

  ISBN 978-1-4391-6609-3

  ISBN 978-1-4391-6610-9 (ebook)

  Contents

  Intro

  Chapter 1: A Dream

  Chapter 2: We Belong Together

  Chapter 3: Be Careful

  Chapter 4: Keeping Promises

  Chapter 5: You Bring Me Joy

  Chapter 6: Everything That Glitters Ain’t Gold

  Chapter 7: Slow It Down

  Chapter 8: Straight Ballin’

  Chapter 9: Forever True

  Chapter 10: Me Against the World

  Chapter 11: Giving My All to You

  Chapter 12: Right Place, Right Time

  Chapter 13: Wait Till I Get My Money Right

  Chapter 14: The Family

  Chapter 15: The Sky Is the Limit

  Chapter 16: I’m a Hustla, Baby

  Chapter 17: Making It Happen

  Chapter 18: Keep Movin’, Don’t Stop

  Chapter 19: They Smile in Your Face

  Chapter 20: Money to Burn

  Chapter 21: Keeping Score

  Chapter 22: Wife Me

  Chapter 23: Expensive Taste

  Chapter 24: Diamonds Are Forever

  Chapter 25: Bonnie & Clyde

  Chapter 26: Soul Mates

  Chapter 27: Mother Knows Best

  Chapter 28: More to Life

  Chapter 29: Loving You

  Chapter 30: Untouchables

  Chapter 31: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

  Chapter 32: Tick Tock

  Chapter 33: Doing Time

  Chapter 34: A Down Chick

  Chapter 35: Eyes Wide Shut

  Chapter 36: Consequences

  Chapter 37: Betrayal

  Chapter 38: Keeping Secrets

  Chapter 39: Numbers

  Chapter 40: They Can’t Hold Me

  Chapter 41: Don’t Be Afraid

  Chapter 42: Slow Down

  Chapter 43: If

  Chapter 44: Let’s Ride

  Chapter 45: I Would Die for You

  Chapter 46: Touch me. Tease me.

  Chapter 47: Dangerously in Love

  Chapter 48: I Belong to You

  Chapter 49: The Future

  Chapter 50: Giving My All

  Chapter 51: The End

  Acknowledgments

  Chino, my first love, this one’s for you!!!

  It is better to be feared than loved.

  —Machiavelli

  Intro

  “What a bitch gone do?”

  Pammy loved Chino, because he could make toe-curling love. He could make her laugh or smile when all the chips were down and the shit was hitting the fan. He had taken an innocent little cookie from Detroit and turned her out with the street life. More than the money, the hairdos, the clothes, the cars, the status. The love was intoxicating, healing: like chicken noodle soup when Pammy was sick, Chino protecting her body with his when the bullets were flying, the dreams that they shared together. Knight in shining armor my ass, he was her everything.

  Imagine This. The Reason Why.

  Chapter 1

  A Dream

  It was the summer of 1988. Jazzy Jay’s was the premiere hot spot in the city on Saturday night. The converted storefront with a massive bar and a thumping surround-sound stereo system was the club of choice for all Columbus, Ohio ballers and cluck-cluck heads who were after the ballers’ money. Dope boys and gold diggers alike dressed their best when stepping up in Jazzy’s and made sure that their whips were fresh to impress. But for all Jazzy’s promises, its shortcomings were the 2 a.m. closing time and that it didn’t serve food. For this reason, the Waffle House was the place to head after the club.

  The Waffle House was often packed to capacity, and this breezy night it was no different. The washed, waxed, and chromed-out rides filling the parking lot looked like a car show. Jimmy Blazers rolled through bumping EPMD; IROCs burnt rubber up and down the street, racing and showing off their accelerat
ion. BMW 325s were here and there, along with several 5.0 Mustangs and chromed-out Cutlass Supremes and Regals, while Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth, Run DMC, and LL Cool J provided the soundtrack for the night—that was, until the police showed up and mobbed the place.

  Some folks fled, others stayed. This was typical. The police knew that the Waffle House was where everyone hung out after Jazzy’s closed. They also knew that people raced . . . and they weren’t going to stop. We were just young people having fun and we were going to continue. Depending on the po-po’s mood, they’d run up on us like Rambo just to see folks scatter like roaches.

  “Look at those fucking idiots in the street drag racing!” Chino said, protesting to Fabian when he saw the swarm of officers. Leaning up against his Jeep Cherokee, Chino shook his head in disgust.

  The officers climbed out of their police cars and started herding the crowd back against the Waffle House’s side wall. Some of the officers began searching the gathered crowd. “Damn, I’m strapped, yo!” Chino whispered into Fabian’s ear.

  “Shit, get rid of it, kid!”

  “They searching!”

  “Peep game!” Fabian nodded to his right. “They ain’t searching the boppers!”

  “Well shit, I need to slip my jammy to a chicken head,” Chino said.

  “Do that and kiss it good-bye, man,” Fabian told him. “Damn, that was my favorite pistol of yours, too. You should have sold it to me when I asked you to. You’d let some chick hold it, risk not getting it back, but you couldn’t sell it to me. Dude, that’s fucked up.”

  “You trippin’ rap,” Chino told him. “I got my Ruger P-89, not the Beretta but I’ll sell this bitch to you right here, right now.” Chino looked at Fabian seriously. He didn’t care about his piece. He just wanted it off him.

  Fabian laughed. “Nigga, you crazy. That’s yo’ case. Enjoy it.”

  “Bullshit!” Chino told him defiantly. He maneuvered away from Fabian and into the crowd. He squeezed his way through until he found what he was looking for—a female with a large purse. He slipped his weapon inside the slit on the side.

  “What are you doing?” Pam asked, turning in his direction.

  Pam Xavier was fresh to the city. She had grown up in Detroit’s famed LeDroit Park area, the daughter of upper-middle-class parents who gave her the best. Private school, lessons in piano, French and Spanish, the best of everything. She was sixteen and already a graduate from Catholic school. Pam was an all-American girl who was away from the watchful eyes of her parents, living it up in a place she knew little about. She was totally brand-new.

  “Yo, check it, lil mama,” Chino told her. “They checking the hard heads, not the chicken heads, so you can just close up your purse and hold on to that for daddy.”

  “First of all,” Pam said, craning her neck, “I’m not your little mama, you’re not my daddy, I’m not a chicken head, and I’m not holding shit for you.” Pam looked inside her purse and her eyes became large when she saw what he had placed in there. “Hell naw!” she screeched in an angry tone. “Definitely not this!”

  Chino held up his hands. “Okay, say it a little louder. I don’t think the po-po heard you. Damn, give a brother a case, why don’t you.”

  “This is your case,” Pam told him. “You shouldn’t be carrying a gun anyway. It’s guys like you that mess things up for everyone else.”

  “Hey, we can debate the merits of being judged by twelve or carried by six another time,” Chino said with a smile, trying to defuse Pam’s anger, “but for right now, a brother really ain’t trying to go to jail. Can you be a soldier and help out a general?”

  Pam turned away and smiled. He had a way with words that made her laugh. She turned back toward him. “A general? You mean a private, don’t you?”

  “No, lil mama, I’m a straight up commander in chief. If stars and bars indicate rank, you can just call me General Milky Way, ’cause I got enough stars to be my own galaxy, and enough bars to open my own candy factory.”

  Pam smiled.

  “Guys over there. Ladies to the side!” An officer yelled, pulling Chino away, separating him from Pam. He winked and blew a kiss her way.

  “Hey, how will I find you?” Pam shouted.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll find you!” Chino shouted back.

  He was cute, Pam thought. Cuter than cute. Pearly whites that looked like he just stepped out of a dental factory. Low-cut, curly hair, smooth peanut butter skin, hazel eyes that look like crushed brown and green crystals. And he had the gift of gab. He probably had a saying for everything. If he didn’t find her, she certainly would have to find him.

  “Did you get rid of it?” Fabian asked, gathered with the group of young men the police had snatched up.

  Chino nodded. “Nice little red bone. See the one over there with the red Coca-Cola shirt?”

  “Where?” Fabian asked, stretching his neck and using his six-foot-three height to look over the crowd.

  “The one with the mushroom hairstyle,” Chino told him.

  “Cute,” Fabian nodded his approval. “One question, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “What if she turns you in?”

  “Then that’s her shit,” Chino declared.

  “And if she tries to press the issue?” Fabian asked.

  Chino shrugged. “Then you know how we do it. She does some shady shit like that, then she’ll be dealt with.”

  Chapter 2

  We Belong Together

  Pam sat on her bed inside her dorm room at the Ohio State University, staring at the black handgun lying just in front of her. She couldn’t believe what had happened at the Waffle House. It was surreal. Her brazen attempt at trying to be cute now crumbled. She had never seen a real handgun, let alone touched one, until last night. It took her two hours of pacing and debating just to get up the nerve to pull it out of her purse. She slept little during the night, thinking of it in her room. Should she call the police? Should she go to the dean of students? Should she call the campus police? How about just toss the thing inside the nearest trash can? But what if she ran into him again, and he wanted it back? What would she do? What would he do if she didn’t have it to give back?

  “So, what are you going to do?” Tomiko asked, looking at Pam, then at the gun.

  Tomiko Harrison was Pam’s roommate. She was nineteen, a sophomore from Houston, Texas. She had run to Ohio State because it was the first place she could think of that was far enough away from her parents, particularly her mother.

  Tomiko wasn’t going to be the long-haired, green-eyed, yellow-skinned AKA with the Fisk degree and fiancé from Meharry Medical School. Those were her mother’s dreams, not her own. She was determined never to set foot on that campus in Nashville, if she could help it.

  Her mother was crestfallen at Tomiko’s graduation when she had broken the news, but her father had given her a secret thumbs-up. To gain her own identity, Tomiko had stripped the perm out of her hair and did everything she could to lock it. She wore it in twists, and braids, and even had coarser hair braided into her fine locks so that she could have the appearance of dreads. It was her personal declaration of independence from her mother.

  Thanks to Tomiko, Pam was quickly learning where to get a decent hot meal on High Street, away from the dorm cafeteria, how to balance school and her blooming social life, and where the hottest nightspots were nestled in the bustling streets of downtown Columbus.

  “I don’t know!” Pam answered Tomiko’s question.

  Tomiko sat on Pam’s bed, with the handgun sitting between them. “Well, you better decide something quick.”

  “I know, girl!” Pam sighed, frustrated. “What do you think I should do?”

  “Get rid of the thing! I would have given it to the police last night!”

  “No,” Pam said, shaking her head, “he would have gone to jail.”

  “So?” Tomiko said, turning up her palms. “You don’t even know him!”

  “I know he’s black . .
. and there are enough black men in jail already!”

  “He was carrying a gun, Pammy! You wonder why there are so many in jail. Maybe it’s because they do stupid shit like carry guns to places where people are just having a good time. This is how so many of our guys also end up in the cemetery.”

  Pam nodded. Tomiko had a point.

  “I say we take it to him, and throw it at him,” Tomiko suggested.

  “What?”

  “He didn’t give a shit about you when he stuck it in your purse last night!”

  “He did. He just knew that the police weren’t searching the women.”

  “Make excuses for him,” Tomiko said with a teasing smile. “He must have been cute.”

  “That has nothing to do with anything,” Pam protested.

  “Was he cute, Pammy?”

  Pam hesitated and then nodded reluctantly. “He was kinda cute. Girl, he had some pretty-ass eyes.”

  Tomiko nodded. “Um-hum, that’s what I thought. Girl, you willing to go to jail for a cute face. I really need to school you.”

  “I ain’t stupid, girl,” Pam confirmed, rolling her eyes. “You don’t need to school me.”

  “This isn’t you.” Tomiko pointed toward the gun. “In the streets, you’re like a babe in the woods. I knew I shouldn’t have took you to the spot last night.”

  “Girl please, that has nothing to do with anything.”

  Tomiko grabbed her purse. “Look, let’s hop in the Beemer and go and find this mystery man.”

  “How are we going to do that? It’s Sunday afternoon, and shit, I don’t even know his name!”

  “You know what he looks like, don’t you?” Tomiko quizzed. “Besides, we know he carries a gun, so he’s probably one of those fools that hang out at the gambling shack, or over by the projects selling that stuff.”

  “You want to go over there?” Pam said, with her eyes bucked out of her head.

  “Girl, we can leave the top up on the ride and just roll through real quick to see if you spot him.”