I really should’ve known better.

I been a grown man a long time now. Well, maybe being thirty-three’s not that long a time grown up, but it’s enough to know the lay of the land. Hell, even as a boy of ten, I would know to steer clear of Joe-Dogs and anything he holds dear. I could ask my nephews, the ones still in primary school. Even they would know better, but I didn’t. And what to show for it now? I got what I deserved. Joe-Dogs would say I should die for it, but I’ll beg to differ on that. Besides, right about now, he’s got bigger fish to fry than me. But still, bottom-line: Katrina’s gone, and Melinda was gone before that, and I got chased out of my own town, too.

You get good enough at what you do, word gets around. Good thing is, you take care of the right people, and you keep it so only the right people find out what you’re so good at. Or if you’re really the man that plays his cards right, then both the police and the criminal know where to come when they need your help. Lucky me, thank my dad, whatever, but I’m good at not just one thing. You need a lock picked? You call me. You need to find somebody? Come visit, tell me who they are, I find them. You need to take back what’s yours, you say? I got the connections. I can make that happen, so long as there’s enough in it for me to make it worth the while.

And the people that need these things, and they’re all walks of life, they know where to find me. Judges looking for their own justice, businessman robbed, but got a solid look at the perpetrator,especially if there’s a witness. The stupid crooks don’t stay crooks, or at least, they don’t keep what they steal too long, not with me involved.

Relatives of the local gangster chief, you ask? Ah, you already know the story, you’re just anxious that I tell it. Well, okay. You know Katrina, right? Hell, everyone knows hot-ass Katrina, even though she been gone almost a year now, we all talk about her like she’s still here.

I was in my office. It was mid-day, just after a storm blows through and the sun is shining again. More heat, more sweat, and I was just thinking about maybe closing up and retreating for a long weekend, just for the hell of it. What good’s the blessing if you don’t take time to enjoy it, right? And Melinda, selling the real-estate full time now, she had more spare time than she’d admit to, but I know she’d take off work with me if I said the word. So I was about to do just that, when Everton comes in. He’s got my mail from downstairs, but he’s doling it out an envelope at a time and just staring at me, like I know he’s not there for just that.

“What is it, Everton?” I said, just to get him to come out with it. By then I’m hungry, too. The Juici Patties from down the street been wafting in the window all damn day.

“You know Katrina, boss?” he asks, with this look like I’m supposed to know, but I don’t, I just look at him. Surely it’s not just a name quiz, I’m thinking. “You know the gyal,” he says. “Joe-Dogs’ pickney. She be eighteen, nineteen now.” Oh lord, I think to myself. Katrina. Well I hadn’t seen the girl in years, not since I was at Doctor’s Cave beach some two, three years before and there she is, teen girl with Dog, her daddy, the baddest man this half the island. Nobody dare talked to her then, we just look from far away. Heard about her since, yes, maybe caught a glimpse in a restaurant, maybe not. I knew she lived the street royalty life a little bit, but I don’t make the club and party scene too much these days. I knew she was a wild child. After that, didn’t matter, because I knew she was Joe-Dogs’ child. You don’t mess with a gangster’s girl, be it the child or the lover. These things are just common sense, you know.

“She put the word out, boss. Wants to talk to you,” Everton says. Now he’s gauging me, because I can tell this girl, or whoever does the talking for this girl, Katrina, put the screws to Everton to talk me into something.

“What in the hell does a girl with a gangster daddy want with a white man in the shadows?” I ask him, honestly. Everton smiles. The smile that says: “I can stop beating around the bush now”.

“What does she want? Access to the money he won’t give her,” he says, and he leans back, satisfied that he’s done his part now. "She knows you can do it. You might be the only man in Jamaica that can do it without it getting back to Joe-Dogs." And I’m supposed to scale this gangster’s wall, risk my life and limb, and just take a few gold bricks for the party-girl daughter, yeah? Call me skeptical, but Everton keeps on. “It’s a real fuckery, boss, ‘tis true. She tell the whole story to me down at Marguerite’s, not even one hour ago, and I promise her I tell you first thing. The gyal turn eighteen, he promise her the riches to live on, but going on a year now, the man lie.”

“So it’s like a street gang trust fund deal then,” I say. “That’s a shame. Bet she wish she never wrecked that Aston Martin they find crunched in the gulley last year, I bet Joe-Dogs still mad about that. You know the time,” I remind Everton. “They even called me to get the prints, marching through mud and mosquitos. Katrina did it, the police say, but they couldn’t get a match off the birth prints. Surely, Katrina, though, even though she say the car got stolen.” And now Everton’s uneasy again and so I have to placate him and ask him just what the hell I’m supposed to do to get him off the hook.

“Just meet with the gyal,” he says. “She know where to find you. And don’t worry, boss man, she won’t bite, even though she look like she do,” he says, laughing at me.

Well, I didn’t think much of it, for one, two days. Then, on the third day, who walks into the office, come ten, eleven in the morning? Katrina herself. And I’ll be damned if she don’t look like she bites indeed! Not that she looks nasty, or ugly; no, quite the opposite. It’s more of a vibe, like she don’t take the guff from nobody for no reason. She stands maybe five feet, maybe five-one, hundred pounds give or take. A doll’s face if there ever was one, with hair that’s had the high-dollar white woman’s treatment, with the red-dye highlights. And you would think it would look a mess on a girl with that deep, deep dark skin, like the African royalty of old. But no, it all comes together and takes the breath away. Beautiful in a hard but delicate way, like she could scrap at the drop of a hat, then kick you a few extra times for making her break a nail. But those full, grown-woman breasts, long lashes, and pouty lips go a long ways to soften it all up.

And so she explains her predicament to me, but without really explaining it, you know? She talks in riddles, waiting for me to say too much, I think. Like I have to be cool enough to go along on whatever crazy scheme she’s gonna try to talk me into. And I guess I say all the right things because the next thing is her writing down her number for me. And the girl is glammed up solid! Gold bracelet, gold rings, just a heap of gold hanging off this tiny woman. Even her fingernails are bejeweled. You can tell she’s laying down the big American bills for the Chinese lady at the Ritz-Carlton to work her very best magic on her little hands and feet.

“So, you figure out where we eat tonight, yeah? Then you call me, I’ll be there. Need the big-time plan and you’re the man to plan it, understand?” The girl talks blunt and straight, not too educated, and she might not bite but she can damn well bark. And I want to be polite and say that yes, I do understand, but when she turns around to leave, I was made to understand something completely different. Believe me when I tell you that what I thought was beauty on its way in the door was just child’s play compared to what looked back at me on its way out. Got-damn! You want to talk about a booty? Now Katrina’s booty- or specifically the image of it looking back at me when she walked out- is etched in this man’s brain for life. I see it every night when I go to bed, and I wake up still seeing it. And you know what I’m talking about: it ain’t the fat booty, which there ain’t a thing wrong with, but it’s like the Lord took a regular girl and put a fat girl’s ass on her.

No, this backside has the perfect twin-bubble handfuls, you know the kind. Like the finest artwork, pictures never do it justice. It defies gravity. It’s soft but you know you could bounce a handful of coins off it and you’d be picking them up across the room. And framed by those strong, fit thighs and a slim back? Understand, right now, she walks out of there and I’m thinking, “no way I’m meeting the gangster’s girl for dinner, too insane,” at the same time, I’ve got a wood ready to bust out the zipper on my pants.

Well, you can guess what happened next, but the first thing I did was call Melinda, to let her know something came up for work and I’d be out for the night. At that point, I didn’t even know that I was going to take Katrina’s bait for sure, but the offer was heavy, man. Maybe you say, “but never mind that she’s Joe-Dog’s own flesh and blood, the girl’s still teen!” Well, be that as it may, if you saw this Katrina, you would see I had no choice. I needed to clear my schedule in order to clear my head and make a plan. Foremost in my mind, in a place I could not shake loose, was the vivid image of Katrina dropping that round ass on me, watching it eat up my wood and rest down on my loins. Mind you at that time, I hadn’t seen the girl’s naked skin like that, but in my mind it was still clear as day.

So where would I take this gangster’s girl? She says she wants to meet over a meal, it’s the least I can do, I figure. And a girl that look like that, no matter if she eighteen or forty-eight, you want to really do it right. But the top notch joints in town, like the Boathouse: too high profile, with the who’s-who there every night. They notice everything. Or Marguerite’s, but hell, Joe-Dogs practically runs the place. Katrina herself is there all the time. Got to stay lower profile.

Ah, but then I remember, Mr. Adam’s place, a good drive past town but close enough. He’s got the cozy little joint on the beach, just past the long row of all-inclusives that hug the main highway. He’s got the big straw roof, where everybody sit outside and they serve fresh fish, jerk pork, and Red Stripe. He also has the motel, mostly fishermen and the island weekend folk that stay there. The whole thing: casual, man. Out of the way, too. So we meet up then part ways, nobody knows. Perfect! But just one hitch, when I finally get the gumption to call the girl up, just like she asked:

“I needs a ride, man,” she says, then gives me an address up near the top road- not where Joe-Dogs is known to stay, mind you- to come and find her. Staying with friends, she says. In the in-between time, I’m only left to remind myself how stupid this idea is, and when I show up at the little hillside house to pick up Katrina, I’m feeling doubly-stupid, man. This girl, she’s nothing but trouble. I knew that already, but I’ll tell you what she wore, and you can believe it or not: a midriff shirt that’s hanging off the front of her tits up top, bright red peep-toe heels down below, and in between, the tightest jeans you ever saw. Well, tight everywhere except the very top, where the top hem was completely cut off, and here I am looking at the top humps of her ass just hanging out, showing me the crack. Sounds like true skank, right? Well believe me when I tell you, all it looks on this girl is like pure sex. And you think I have a shot to be businesslike? Tall order, for real. Also, she got these bright tattoos running all the way down her back and on her ass too. On black-as-black skin, I got no idea how they look so bright, but they do. And I can’t stop staring at all of this, but the look she give me when I finally see the girl in the eyes, says to me: stare all you want, white man, here it is. I think I’m less nervous if she just calls me a pig and snaps me out of it, but she loves the attention.

At Mr. Adam’s place, I order my usual: the ackee fruit and saltfish, and Katrina orders nothing. She says she’ll eat some of mine and orders rum on the rocks: serious drink for a fine tiny girl, gangster daddy or not. And she drinks half of it before saying a word, just making me sit there, look at the ocean to keep from staring at her, and the whole time she stares right at me.

“So you take time from your busy night to talk to a man you don’t even know,” I say, just to break the ice with this girl.

“Nah, man. I know you well,” she says. “Everybody know what you do. Besides, I met you at your office today, was pleasant, no?” She’s smiling at me, just toying. “So now I know you both ways.”

“Both ways,” I say. “Aren’t you missing another way that a man and a woman can know each other?” Why I would say such a thing, no idea, but Katrina don’t miss a beat.

“You are right about that, man. One way to know me still hanging out there,” she says. “But you can dream!” She shouts that last part with a flourish and a wide smile, and now I got strangers turning to look at me with this young flashy girl. Nobody I know, thank the Lord. I just smile and let it go. I mean, she’s fourteen, fifteen years my junior. I got no business with the monkey business anyway.

“So tell me, what we got to discuss here,” I say, and this time she tells it to me straight, the whole thing. About her daddy, Joe-Dogs, and the promise he made.

“I wasn’t eleven, twelve year old, understand…but he make a promise. He repeat that promise every year: that when I turn eighteen, he give me the money to be my own,” she says. Now in my line of work, my ability to read people is the difference between getting what I need and getting nothing. With this girl, it reads like a book. She might be a badass when the cards fall her way. But without that? Without bad-ass Joe-Dogs standing behind her, being the daddy? Just another lost girl, I can see it in her eyes. Sure, they’re fierce at first glance, but get a bit of the rum in her, let her talk, and out comes the girl, just like any girl.

“What do you mean, to be your own?” I ask. Katrina leans forward. Not to lower her voice, just to make sure I pay close attention, as if that was a problem.

“To not be the gangster’s girl my whole damn life,” she says. “I turn nineteen four weeks ago. I want to be my own girl, you know? I ask him again about the money, he just laugh and say ‘greedy bitch’. But he still lay down the law, right?” She slurped down the rest of her drink and ordered another. Feeling sheepish with my Red Stripe Light, I order a rum and rocks, same as her, and let the girl talk. She explains it all to me, including the most important part for her: where Joe-Dogs keeps a big money stash and how I can get it. The girl even has her own plan for me to implement! And finally when I say that I will look into it and try to help her with this situation, she relaxes a little bit, but that don’t mean she quit talking. If not for the booze rounding off her edges, the girl probably would have talked all the way through till morning. But she eventually turned her aim to me.

“So what can you tell me about you?” she says. Sounds polite of her, right? But it’s not. She’s fucking with me, but at least she’s good at it. “I hear a few things, let’s see if I learn something.” I ask her what she’s heard but she rebuffs me. “We get to that after you tell me some things first,” she says. The girl’s flirting with me, I’m sure of it. And she’s shifting in her seat, making her tits jiggle underneath that haltertop. I can’t stop looking, but Katrina don’t care. So what do I do? Something I almost never do: I talk about myself, to this young girl. I tell her things she shouldn’t know; things even Melinda don’t know. And the more I go on about how I started to do the things I do, and all my different irons in the fire, I see her just taking notes with her eyes. Just as I’m wondering what sort of calculation she’s making, sizing me up like she was, she says this:

“And I hear you’re the white man with the big bamboo ‘round here.”

Now here’s the thing: everybody on this side of the island knows everybody else. And I’m not exactly an old monk when it comes to sampling the fairer sex. I’ve had my fun, especially before settling down with Melinda. So the word gets around that I have a blessed endowment, fair enough. Should it make news that a white man’s carrying ‘round a big dagger? Maybe not, then again maybe it’s rare. Better that than to be the dark-skinned Jamaican with the tiny stem, no? Be that as it may, she hears about the big bamboo between my legs, who am I to deny it? The truth shall set you free, but still, that’s not the kind of claim you can cop to. What happened to the mystery of it?

“Where you hear some crazy stuff like that?” I ask, and I feel looser, right? Like even though I don’t really want to discuss my cock with this dangerous girl, it’s better than the thought of holding up her dad for a few hundred thousand in American cash, which is her proposal to me.

“I know things,” she says, all cocky, and holding up her empty rum glass for somebody to refill, but nobody sees it. “But I can find the proof,” she says, and right there in the restaurant, with all these fools seated around us, Katrina take her bare foot and press it right into my wood! What was half-hard is now full-hard in no time flat! The girl don’t make it obvious with her face either. She’s looking around for the waitress, needing that drink. In the meantime, I got five little toes pressing into my shit like she’s stepping on the gas in a getaway car.

It’s all more than I can think clearly through, now. Right then, I should be thinking things like, “politely decline to help this brat and get her back to town without being seen with her,” but with the ball of her foot running up and down my hard-on, I got only one coherent thought:

“I need to work this girl over, and it can’t wait.”

So that’s how I took the most foolish path ever, and tell her we shouldn’t discuss business out in the open any longer. It’s like she knew that was coming, and shoots out with, “yeah, man, where to?”

“The owner-man here, Mr. Adam, he owes me. We take a room overlooking the sea and talk private. No name on the books, nobody bother us.” And that’s all she needs to know. She stands up with her rum drink and walks out with it. I lay down the big Jamaican bills, covering the food and the drinks, and follow her towards the motel rooms, watching that blessed ass move in those tight jeans, with the crack staring up at me. The dirtiest things are in my mind, thinking about that naked little body touching mine, and I’m too cock-blooded right then to realize it looks like I’m stealing a plantain in the front of my pants, for real.

The room’s real spare, just enough space for a bed and a chair with a desk. The sliding glass door opens out to a grass lawn and then to the waterfront. It’s all real quiet here, nobody around. Jamaican surf don’t make the big waves and noise, not on this side. Mostly what you hear come night-time are the tree frogs and the wind. And the girl follows me right in and she stands up on the bed to where she’s looking down on me. Her tits are right in front of me, poking out at the midriff shirt. I can smell her skin.

“So you’re gonna help me get my money, right, man?” she’s saying. And I realize she got up on the bed, heels and all, just so she could have the upper hand here.

“This is gonna take some working out,” I said, cussing myself on the inside for saying what I was saying but what was I gonna do? I got the sweet smell of young sex filling all my senses, there was no room for smarts, believe me.

“Mm-hmm,” she says, just hovering there, man. “So we work it out then,” she says, and those little hands are touching my chest, feeling me up a little. “What do I call you, anyway, man?”

“You call me anything you want,” I said. I didn’t care about anything beyond what was underneath those clothes, and since there’s no cooler in a place like that, the air’s swampy and sweaty, even with the windows open, and this girl’s making me want to pounce.

“Alright then,” she says, all cool and low-voice. “I call you the Money-man then, since you gonna get my money.”

“How about just my name?” I ask, and now my hands are where I wanted them to be for the last hour, on her skin, right there at the waist.

“Nah, man. Fuck dat,” she says. “How about just ‘boss’? You wanna be the boss?” You’re damn right I wanna be the boss of at least one thing right then. And that’s when I lay the girl down and put my mouth on hers, tasting the sweet young breath mixed with Appleton rum and a trace of the ganja.

I get the girl right out of that shirt and she shimmies out of those jeans, releasing that juicy ass. No panties, but I knew that already. Then she goes to work on my pants, pulling them off, unbuttoning my shirt. Real quick, we get down to nothing, just my tall stocky body in a white skin, and this little black-as-night goddess. And she may be small, but she’s all woman, understand that: the round ass on flared hips, and hanging on the front are the most beautiful titties that could ever come free.

“They was right, boss,” she says. “Your wood is big, man.” Then she kneels down to suck on it, almost reverent-like. Not the girl’s first big stick to suck on, that much is clear, and that sweet mouth’s got the numb suction working straight away.

Katrina. Gangster’s girl, flashy girl, all contrast. Her skin’s so dark and so smooth that the light glints off it like its polished wood. Her eyes and teeth are the brightest bright, just like the gold that hangs around her neck, and fingers, ankles and wrists. And then there’s that huge, colorful tattoo that snakes all the way up her back and then down both cheeks of her ass. All of that pales though, compared with the real goods: the treasure. And they say all women are the same under the skin, but not true, man. No way. Walk in my shoes, you’ll see. The black Jamaican girls got the brightest, pinkest wet pussy, no lie. I don’t care how, I just know it’s true. It almost glows, it’s so bright. Hotter, too, like that deep mahogany skin traps in the heat, then if it all goes right, they release it in a sweaty tangle on a hot humid night on the coast. In the case of Katrina, you’re never the same afterward.

Her ass is backed up to me, wiggling just to tease, and the colors of her tats are muted in the dark light, but my touch is just fine. No stretch marks, nothing short of perfection. And when I take my long shaft in my hands and easy the head into her folds, I see that bright pink tunnel looking back at me, and the heat’s sucking me in. I’m giving it to her nice and slow, let the girl breath and moan her way through it until she’s used to me, right? Real Gent. Silly me, I don’t want to hurt the poor girl, but I was about to be shown the way.

The girl breathes and moans, all right, that’s true. Most Jamaican girls, do. Not like the American and English teens that scream and laugh their way through it, like it’s a roller coaster. No, man. Sex is serious business here, and a good Jamaican girl of any flavor will grind down like an animal in heat: no talk, just feel. But Katrina takes it to a whole other level, and she talks plenty, but all of it through her movements. I want to be gentle with her little body, but she drills me with it, swallowing me up to the root with ruthless power and efficiency. Backing up, I feel her pink sheathe stretch around my shaft, squeezing it, soaking it, deep as it can go, before releasing it again.

If I was a religious man, maybe I could compare it to that, but all I can say is that it was not one thing short of a re-education. I’m no dummy in bed, a good cocksman. You don’t hear what she heard about my wood if I was going around killing girls with it. But this girl makes me feel like a student, no lie. And in that hot room, with our bodies slick with sweat, I hover over her but she’s totally in control, with her black ass rippling a deep wave that bounces across all her curves each time she smacks back on my pale skin. A re-education. Breaking me down to build me back up again, to make me understand that she owns me, completely. I wouldn’t know it yet, but I would, just as soon as she lifts up and turns her head to me. I cup my hands on her tits, feeling the nipples between my fingers, hard as rocks, then the hot breath on my cheek, and those wild eyes leering back into mine.

“Lots of boys want to do things for me,” she says through the heaving breaths. “But you know the way to get inside me, boss?” There she goes with the boss again. I go a little more flush just hearing her say that word to me. I don’t answer her, but she goes on anyhow. I’m on the edge, feeling her pussy and her words completely, they're all that matter. “Change my life, steal for me. Steal for me, boss, and I’m yours.” And all the while I’m still deep inside that perfect body, and the second time she calls me boss, that’s it.

I’m yours, she says. With that, she plants a seed deep inside me, and I shake and grit my teeth, spurting my seed as deep as I could send it. She knows she's got me too, and slows that pink pussy down, gyrating, sucking me in deep, wanting to take everything into her womb while I’m pulsing something fierce against her insides. Oh hell yeah, man: this girl is a true baby-maker, even small as she is, no doubt. She has the curves and the deep pussy for it, when the timing all lines up. And when I finally pull out, watching that pink slit light up as I back away, I wait for my sperm to spill out, but I think her body kept it somehow. Collateral. Steal for me, boss, and I’m yours.

Now, I can’t even pretend that this is when I come to my senses and decide to take her home, buying me some time to wiggle my way out. That option was off the table as soon as she showed up at the curb with no underwear and everything on display. Now, I just want more. I want all of her. I turn her over, sucking on her tits and not five minutes later I’m back inside her, back in heaven, fucking her deep. Her legs are wrapped up around my body, digging her feet into my skin, and our hips are colliding noisily, violently. The bed is soaked from all our sweat and cum, and we add more to it really quick: I got my whole weight against her clit and she shudders hard. Those quick breaths in my ear and those hips taking control of my cock from the inside, it’s all too much to bear. I groan and flood Katrina's pussy again, adding even more hot to the hottest chamber on the pink planet. I look down at her when the flash and the ecstasy pass, and she just smiles, like she knows she owns me, before I steal a damn thing.

I fall asleep with her straddling me, rubbing my shoulders, and I can feel her wet slit against the small of my back, our juices leaking out onto my skin. The whole while, dancehall plays on the old radio and the frogs sing their harmonies outside. Finding bliss among peril, it’s the way of our people, you know.