There were crazy rows of tombstones in here. Woodlawn was seriously overcrowded. I couldn’t help reading the dates on the bigger tombstones as Gino drove slowly down the narrow road, following the signs to the section I’d given him.

We drove past what looked like a small city of the dead and buried, and into an area that was full of mausoleums. These dead folks musta had some money, I thought. There were no in-the-ground graves over here at all. Just those little concrete houses built for people who could afford not to go six feet under.

“This is the area,” Gino said, and I nodded as I rechecked the paper in my hand. He was right. We were in the right section, but I wasn’t sure if it was where I wanted to be. G had taken care of Grandmother’s funeral and burial. Since I was too scared to walk close to a ditch, let alone stand over somebody’s open grave, G had paid for a private burial service for Grandmother.

I remembered it like it was yesterday because right after her funeral he had put me and Jimmy in a limo and sent us straight back to the apartment on Central Park West. I’d already written down what I wanted to have engraved on her headstone, and G had promised me that everything had been taken care of.

But a mausoleum?

This couldn’t be right. Where in the hell was my grandmother’s grave?

All of the little concrete houses had a number on the outside, and I told Gino to stop near the one that matched the gravesite number Rita had gotten from G’s computer files.

“I don’t know…,” I said as we got out the Explorer. “This don’t look right. Ain’t even no headstones over here. G had my grandmother put in the ground.”

Gino took my hand and pushed open the door with his shoulder. He didn’t look scared at all, and I was suddenly so happy that this big strong man was still by my side. “C’mon,” he said. “This gotta be her. Who else could be in there?”

We went inside, and suddenly I wasn’t scared no more. There was a smooth wall with the name Orleatha Mae Stanfield carved in script in the center, and a long brass hinge ran sideways almost halfway down the wall.

“Grandmother,” I whispered, and held on to Gino, and then I started crying just like a baby. Being here, this close to the woman who had loved me and raised me was just too much. So much shit had happened in my life, and most of it I didn’t think I deserved. And now, except for Gino, I was all by myself in the world. No grandmother, no brother, and not even a junkie for a mother. I was totally assed out, and it hurt me to my heart. I stared at my grandmother’s name on the slab and more tears than I knew I had left just fell from my eyes.

“It’s okay, baby,” Gino kept saying over and over. “You gonna be all right, Juicy. Everything is gonna be all right.”

There was a bunch of dried-up flowers on a small table against the back wall, and a metal chair right beside it. As bad as G had done Jimmy, I couldn’t believe he had still been coming here visiting with my grandmother, but the flowers proved it. Nobody else could have left them there. Gino held me as I collapsed into the chair, and when I put my head on my knees and hollered, he stayed right by my side, rubbing my back and rocking me the whole time.

I don’t know how long I stayed there with my head down in my lap. Lost in my grief. I hurt so bad inside I wanted to die. Not even all those ass-whippings and beatings I had taken, all those men who had run up in me and used me like animals, none of that shit came close to causing the kind of pain that losing Jimmy and Grandmother did.

Gino let me cry it out. He just stood quietly letting me know he was there if I needed him. At some point I was done. Just empty. But I still didn’t have the strength to move.

“C’mon, baby,” Gino said, putting his hand on my arm and taking my hand. We had a flight to catch and needed to get moving. I was lifting my head, just about to let him lead me to my feet, when I saw it. It was round and gold, and even from where I sat I could make out the words RENO SUPREME, one below the other, engraved in the metal.

I snatched my hand away from Gino and stuck it into the side pocket of my MGM bag. My keys clinked like crazy when I pulled them out in the stillness of the crypt, and I dropped them twice before I was steady enough to grab hold of the right one.

“Shit!” I yelled, my eyes already comparing the size of the key to the size of the lock on my grandmother’s crypt. “Oh, shit, Gino.” I passed the key ring to him, holding out the one I’d taken from G’s safe. “This is the key to Grandmother’s grave!”

For a moment Gino looked at me all crazy, then his whole face changed and I could tell we were thinking the same thing.

“That low-down motherfucker,” he said, shaking his head. “We can walk back out of here right now, Juicy. You don’t have to open that lock, but I don’t put shit past G’s grimy ass. This looks just like something he would do.”

Gino offered to open the crypt up for me, but I knew this was something I needed to do for myself. Yeah, I was scared shitless about what I might find when I turned that key and slid open that gigantic concrete drawer, but there was no way I could just walk away without knowing. How could I? I’d lost too much for that. My soul had died so that I could live, and I owed it to him to find whatever it was that G had tried so hard to hide from us.

I slid the key into the lock and it fit just like… well, like a key.

Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes and braced myself. For what, I did not know. Don’t be so damn scary, Juicy, I yeasted myself up. Grandmother would be in a coffin. Wasn’t like they just threw bodies into these things just like that. There was no way I’d slide this bad boy open and be treated to no bunch of decaying bones.

Gino was reading my mind.

“Even if it’s her, Juicy, you won’t see nothing. First they put them in a coffin, and then they put the coffin in a metal box.”

Slowly, I turned the key. It moved real easy, like it was either oiled or a new lock. Feeling along the ridge handle underneath the lock, I pulled once and nothing happened. Grandmother was heavy. Twice, and still the shit didn’t budge. Gino stepped up like he wanted to help, but I shook my head and put some ass behind my pull, and the entire drawer slid open.

My heart almost stopped, and by the way Gino’s body shook, I knew his did, too.

We stared down into the darkness of that drawer with our mouths wide open.

But it wasn’t Grandmother’s moldy body that had me and Gino sprung.

It was every dime of G’s money.

And at the end…

Gino and I missed our flight, and neither one of us was mad about it.

Plus, they don’t let you transport the kind of cash we were holding in your suitcases anyway, so flying out west was out of the question.

There had been rows and rows of bank in Grandmother’s crypt, each one stacked at least three bricks high and I don’t know how many across. All I saw were 50s and 100s. All of it banded and sealed in clear plastic.

My hands were shaking so bad Gino had to help me lock that bad boy back up, and then we jetted to a cheap motel off of White Plains Road and came up with our plan.

We bought four duffel bags from the Army-Navy store, then found one of the car dealerships that were known for taking cash under the table in exchange for a brand-new ride. Back at the cemetery it took us over an hour to clear out the crypt and stack the money inside of the duffel bags, and as soon as we closed the trunk we hauled ass getting out of there.

Cash talked real loud with the dealer we went to, and I had picked out a gray 2004 Volvo. Nice ride, lots of features, but not flashy enough to scream “drug money” and get us pulled over for driving while black. Gino was chilling behind the wheel, taking us out west, and I sat back in the leather seat and tried to stop my head from spinning.