kind that slid open. He did this with a wavy show of his hand, as
if opening a display case with a choice of doors. To my utter shock,
there were two people blindfolded and hog-tied. I slammed the
door back, scared that someone might see inside the van. As it
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was, we were attracting attention.
“What the fuck are you doing man?” I snapped.
“That’s Dre’. We found him in Sarasota at his dad’s crib. I had
to shoot the old man,” Blazack said matter of factly.
“Who is the other guy wit’em?” I asked.
“Oh, dat’s just a guy we hitched a ride from.”
“Hitched a ride from? Nigga you done kidnapped a cracka!” I
said, not believing what I was hearing. “Look man, ya’ll got to get
this shit out of here,” I said talking fast, and walking faster, trying
to distance myself from that van. I suddenly stopped and dug into
my pockets. I had twenty dollars and a diamond bracelet. “Ya’ll
wait here. I’ll be right back,” I said and took off into a trot.
*****
“How much money you got?” I asked Trina as soon as I
walked in the door.
“Who was that outside?” she asked, ignoring my question.
“They my boys from Miami. How much money do you got?”
I repeated again, this time with a little more urgency in my voice.
“About eighteen dollars,” she said looking up while measuring
cocaine into a pot.
“Shit!” I cursed.
“Papi, I bought you an outfit while I was in Brooklyn, used
the last bit of the money,” she said apologetically.
Suddenly I had an idea. “Lock the door, put the chair under
the knob, and don’t open it for nobody,” I said heading for the
door. Then on second thought, I turned. She was wearing that
please don’t leave me
sour expression on her pretty face. I walked to
the table, tore a piece of paper off one of the shopping bags and
filled it with about an ounce of cocaine, pecked Trina on the lips
and bounced out the door.
*****
I hurried over to Evette and Tomica’s room. Evette answered
the door scantly dressed in a white halter top and pink short shorts
with a fat pussy print like a big fist in her drawers. I looked around
the room for Tomica. “Where’s Tomica at?” I asked. I could see
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that Evette was easily intimidated by my presence.
“Sh … sh … she’s in the shower,” Evette stuttered.
“Here’s the bracelet, where’s my money?” I asked as I showed
her the bracelet. She pointed at her purse and walked over to it.
“You got ID in there good enough to rent an apartment?”
“Yeah, why?” She looked at me like I just hit her with a trick
question.
“Come go with me,” I said and pulled her arm. I could tell by
the frightened expression on her face that she wanted to scream.
Slightly she resisted and then something washed over her face the
way a mouse looks up when the heel of a boot is about to come
crashing down on him, or perhaps she recalled the episode at the
mall with the cop, or maybe the demonstration in the parking lot
when I slapped the shit out of Trina. Whatever it was, Evette was
easily persuaded. We walked out of the door with her wearing
them little ole shorts.
My plan was to get Evette to rent an apartment or something
until I could figure out what I was going to do with the crew. Dre’
the snitch weighed heavy on my mind.
I walked fast with Evette in tow.
“Give me the money,” I said, suddenly stopping in my tracks.
She dug into her purse and removed a roll of cash big enough to
choke a cow and counted out five hundred dollars.
“Damn girl! How much money is that?” I asked in disbelief.
Evette was a little slow, but she was far from being dumb. She just
looked up at me with cloudy eyes and did not answer. I thought
about their caper with the credit cards and all that stolen shit back
at their room and God only knows what else them two broads had
had at least twenty grand in her purse. I grab her by the arm tight-
ly. “Listen Shouty, whatever you do, don’t let these niggas see that
money. They’ll slit your throat and take it!” I was taking about
Blazack. She looked up at me, swallowed in her throat and looked
around like this was a hostage situation. I wondered if she would
take off r unning.
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As we approached the stolen van, loud music was playing. The
van rocked from side to side. Blazack was at the driver’s seat smok-
ing a blunt. Something in the back of the van had his attention.
He was laughing hysterically. I peeked inside of the van. They
were all piled up in there like the forty thieves. Mad Ball had a cig-
arette lighter out burning the white man on the ass with it. His
pants were down around his ankles, booty tooted up in the air
because of the way that they had him hog-tied. As soon as every-
one saw Evette, the games stopped and catcalls ensued. “Look at
the fat monkey on that bitch, looks like she got a boxing glove in
her drawers,” someone said.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I lost my composure.
“What the fuck ya’ll doin’? Stop the dumb shit! These crackas
in this town ain’t playin’. This is the capital of Florida. These red-
necks gonna give a nigga a life sentence if they catch us with this
cracka.” Blazack casually turned, looked at me and blew smoke
into my face. Someone in the back of the van snickered at me.
Then I heard giggles, the white man yelled again in pain. It was as
if I was talking to the five stooges. So I tried my hand at diplo-
macy. My voice lowered a notch.
“Listen, ya’ll follow me. We’re going to see if we can we rent
ya’ll a place to stay,” I said, nodding at Evette. She looked like she
was about to make a dash for it after hearing the horrible sounds
coming from inside the van.
*****
Five hours later, thanks to Evette and her hot pants, we were
finally about to rent a house right off FAMU Campus on Stocky
Street. Evette was able to talk an elderly white man into renting an
older model four bedroom, two-bathroom home with a nice spa-
cious yard. She flirted and laughed showing him a lot of teeth.
With a $1,800 dollar deposit she had the keys and with them was
a piece of paper with a phone number on it. The old man really
liked her.
Now the problem was, what to do with the stolen van, its
owner and Dre’ the snitch. When I confronted Blazack about it,
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all he said was, “Dre’ was a wrap,” and signaled with his hand slic-
ing across his throat. I walked away leaving it up to him. My con-
science was getting the better of me. Call me soft, but I did not
want to see Blazack kill Dre’. He was my dawg at one time, he just
went bad. I know that if I
tried to stop it, it would be like signing
my own death warrant, like I was admitting I conspired with Dre’
to set up Lil Cal. One thing was definitely for sure, Blazack had
no problem making people disappear.
“Yo!” I turned as I was about to get in the car. I handed
Blazack the packet of cocaine I had taken earlier from my room.
A few of the crew liked to smoke Bunk–that’s weed mixed with
cocaine.
*****
Blazack drove along in the van with the human cargo. I did
not ask him what he was going to do with it, that would have been
asking too much.
I pulled out into traffic with a feeling of utter relief. I noticed
Evette watching intently. For the first time I thought I detected a
pleasant smirk on her face.
“Daaamn Shouty, why you looking at a nigga like that?” I
asked. Evette made a face. “You’re something else,” she beamed.
“You tricked us.” Her voice chimed sweetly as she crossed her long
legs, one over the other, hands snuggly clasped between curva-
ceous thighs, the way a woman does when she’s getting comfort-
able and looking sexy and unconscious of it.
“Are you a pimp or something?” she asked. For the first time
I gave her my undivided attention. The expression on her face said
that she was dead-ass serious.
“Why you say that?”
“Cause, first you tricked us by actin’ like you was a college stu-
dent. Then you beat up that security guard back there at the mall
and took our bracelet.” Her eyes leered at me when she said our
bracelet. “You jumped on that poor girl in the hotel parking lot,
and you just took my money too,” she said in one long breath.
“I told you I was going to give you back your money,” I said.
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She rolled her eyes twisting her lips to the side of her face, typical
Black woman antics. Shyly she smiled, and then burst out in
hearty laughter, the kind of laughter that has a soulful melody of
a Black woman. It spilled on to me, and I can’t help but smile back
at her. “What’s so damn funny?” I asked.
“You.”
“Me?”
“You should have seen the expression on your face when
Tomica handcuffed you to the love seat, and you pulled out that
big ole dick and started wackin’ off.” She laughed hysterically. I
think it must have been all that built up frustration stressing her
over the past twenty-four hours. She wiped her eyes and her laugh-
ter subsided. On a more serious note she said, “I would have been
game for the threesome … twosome even.” For emphasis she
uncrossed her legs opening them like showing me the packaged
goods. As I drove I had a lot on my mind. A fat pussy was not one
of them. Evette sensed my mood and turned away sitting straight
for ward in her seat.
I pulled into the hotel parking lot and looked for any sign of
anything unusual. This was not the time to get caught slipping.
“Go to your room. If Tomica asks you about the money just tell
her I took it, and I’m gonna pay it back,” I said.
“Just give me the bracelet,” Evette suggested, and made a face
at me, the kind that says,
you ain’t shit
.
“Go!” I yelled. She slammed the door and stalked off.
*****
I inserted my key into the door. Just as I asked, Trina barri-
caded herself inside using a chair and the burglar chain. She
opened the door and greeted me with a hug and kiss like I had
been gone for years. Inside, to my dismay, Tomica was sitting at
the table cutting up dope. Her eyes flashed signals that said,
let’s
keep what happened in my room a secret
.
“What the fuck? What you doin’ in here?” Trina tugged at my
arm like a three-year-old trying to get my attention. Soft-spoken,
she said, “Tomica’s my homegirl. She’s from Brooklyn.”
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“Ya’ll know each other?” I interrupted, in total disbelief.
“Naw, well, sorta.” Trina stuttered under the weight of my eyes
boring holes through her. She was nervous. “She came here look-
ing for you. I recognized the Brooklyn accent. This bitch is my
homegirl. I went to school with her brother Rakim.” Together the
two of them giggled like school girls that shared a secret. Women.
I suddenly had the uncanny feeling that the two of them were
talking about me in my absence. I just openly stared at Tomica,
wondering just how much I could trust her.
One thing about this business, there is no room for mistakes,
most importantly in the judgment of people’s character. Maybe
Tomica was on to the scent of Trina’s pussy. It’s always important
to know a person’s motives when they are trying to get close to
you. I walked up and inspected the dope. It looked nearly perfect,
except for a few air pockets. Trina said that it would take longer to
dry. I vaguely heard her as my mind churned numbers, ounces and
prices. It was then I realized that Trina made her second biggest
blunder of the day. The first was letting the dyke Tomica in the
door, the second was the dope was shor t by my figures. This is
impor tant, very important, and not just the financial aspects of it.
New acclaimed power is like an iron fist, it is meant to be chal-
lenged like all authority. People will seek out its weaknesses, espe-
cially women. It’s in their ver y nature to find the core of a man’s
soft spot. I wasn’t having none of that! “This muthafuckin dope
short a few ounces!”
“You took some when you left, remember? Plus, I got all that
left over in the plate over there at the sink.” She pointed. There
was a pile of cocaine there that I didn’t notice. I shrugged an
expression that said,
my bad
, and turned and walked over to the
window peeking out of the curtains. Hustler’s habit. I plopped
down on the chair by the window. I was tired and wary. Over the
past few days it seemed like things were moving fast, unpre-
dictable, and now I was moving into a realm of the game that I
really had no experience in. To top it off, I was in a spot that ain’t
never been friendly to niggas from out of town. Now, in a matter
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of seconds, I turned from flat foot hustlin’, to dope man entrepre-
neur, pushing weight. The contrast of the two professions is about
as different as night and day. For me to be successful it would take
the cunning wit of a fox, along with the organizing skills of a
crooked preacher soliciting money from his parishioners. There
was zero room for mistakes. In the dope game you got leaders and
followers, there is no in between. The streets keep the score: who
leads, who follows. Caskets and prison cells bore witness to a hus-
tler’s timely demise. All this was in my thoughts as I plucked my
last cigarette from the pack, lit it and inhaled deeply. As the smoke
filled my lungs, I gazed up at
the ceiling reflecting on all the shit
that had happened. I exhaled, trying to erase everything from my
mind. There was a spider web in the corner of the ceiling.
Something about it held my attention. For some strange reason,
Hope’s face flashed in my mind, voice echoing,
you’ll end up dead
or in prison.
Suddenly I had an urge for a strong drink.
“Can Tomica have the last of the coke in the plate?” Trina
asked casually as if it were a request for a slice of pie. She indeed
confirmed my thoughts, the two of them were talking about more
than the old days. There can be a lot of wisdom in playing dumb,
my stepmother used to say. So I did my part and let her question
roll right over my head. I took off my shoes, my dogs were killing
me.
“How long is it going to take ya’ll to finish cutting up the
dope?” I inquired.
“Just about all day,” Trina replied.
“Tell you what, go to the store and get me a bottle of
Hennessy and a pack of smokes, stop by Popeye’s and get some-
thing to eat, I’m starving, and you can have some of the coke.”
Tomica stood up in front of the chair, eyes flaming with anger.
“I just know you ain’t finna try me like that!”
“Tr y you like what?” I raised my voice. Realizing this dyke was
trying to show off for the benefit of Trina’s presence, I prepared to
bust her ass if she got out of line.
“Tr y me like I’m some junkie, or something.” Tomica sat back
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down. I was eyeballing her like she went there. On second
thought, I had a better idea. I stood taking the gun out of my
pocket, along with the diamond bracelet and began to strip down
to my boxer shorts.
“Boo, where are the clothes that you bought?” I asked Trina,
as both women looked at me quizzically.
“Over there on the other side of the bed,” Trina answered.
I walked over looked inside of the shopping bag, pulled out
the expensive two-piece Versailles outfit–a jacket and pants in a
beautiful shade of turquoise and gold, strictly a baller’s style. Trina
had good taste in clothes. I hurried getting dressed. Afterward, I
looked in the mirror and I wanted to salute my muthafuckin’ self.