Life (29 page)

fly as she eased inside my pants. “Papi … I would never betray

you … Never!” Vaguely I could hear what she said as my mind did

figures, weight, dollars. There are thirty-six ounces in a kilo of

dope. Two times thirty-six is seventy-two. Each ounce goes for

about a grand in Tallahassee. My face broke into a shit-eating grin.

Trina removed her hand and looked at me strangely, sensing where

my mind was, knowing it wasn’t on sex.

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“
Let me cook it for ya,” she offered. “I can make one hundred

thousand off each bird.”

I looked at her like she was crazy. “You must be going to make

up some fake dope -Dreams.”

“
No, no Papi. If you whip the dope just right, cook it slow and

use just enough baking soda and water you can make three ounces

out of one. My daddy taught me that. All the old heads in

Brooklyn have been doing that for years. The trick is to cut dime

rocks out of each ounce, that way you get more money, three

grand instead of the one.” I was listening to this Brooklyn chick

talk and I was sucking up game like a sponge. She continued, “By

selling dime rocks you keep the federalies off your ass. They’re

only looking for weight. Ain’t no longevity in the dope game, stick

and move. Get out within a year.”

*****

I sat back and watched her as she attempted to make her

magic. I had to see this shit to believe it. In all, she was going to

take two birds and make six. I had already decided if she fucked

up this dope I was going to kill her. Her face was fixed in heavy

concentration. Cooking cocaine was an art, like a delicate trade,

and it involved a special skill. Like a chef, every cook has his own

technique, as well as formula. That day, I was learning that Trina

was a pro at cooking dope. From a glance, you would think that

she was fixing dinner.

“
So how did you meet Nina Brown?” I asked. Trina turned

and looked at me with cocaine in a pot of hot water. Then there

was a knock on the door. A knock that only a hustler and his girl

can describe. Scared the hell out of both of us. Quickly, I grabbed

my gun. As I walked to the door looking out the peephole, Trina

gave me that look that asked,

what should I do?

Someone had their

finger or something over the hole blocking my vision. Police? I

turned to Trina and mouthed for her to put the yae away. She

scrambled around trying to hide all of the drug paraphernalia. I

dashed to the curtain and looked out. “Godamnmuthafuckin-

sonofabitch!” I saw Blazack standing outside the door with his fin-

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ger over the damn peephole. With him was a posse of niggas from

Miami’s notorious set, the Oplica Triangle. “It’s cool,” I said to

Trina over my shoulder. To my surprise, she was packing dope in

her panties. I walked out of the door into the sweltering heat.

Blazack and I ain’t never been close. It wasn’t nothing personal. It

was just his demeanor, cool and aloof. Looking at all of them I had

to smile. They all looked haggard and wary, like unemployed hus-

tlers. I knew the feeling.

In the crew with Blazack were Dirty, Gucci, Mad Ball and

Twine. All of us at one time or another hustled together, either in

Sarasota, my stomping ground, or theirs in Miami. Basically we

were tight, but it dawned on me, they could be here to kill me.

The last time we were all together like this was at a strip club down

in Miami called The Rollez. Coming out of the club, the police

took a combined $98,000 from us and we couldn’t say shit.

Charge it to the game and they label us crooks.

“
What the fuck you doin wit dat?” Blazack asked, pointing to

the gun at my side. “We ain’t drive all this way for you to be

stuntin’ wit your gun, wearing that Sunday School suit. What, you

preachin’ now too?” he joked, showing a grill full of platinum and

diamonds worth enough money to buy poor folks a home. His

hair was uncombed and nappy, however he wore it like the urban

trend. Short and stocky, with broad shoulders the size of large

watermelons, Blazack was a diminutive tank of a man. The kind

of man that never accepted defeat under any kind of circum-

stances. He possessed the uncanny ability to display human kind-

ness. And like all leaders, he could be very persuasive when need

be. Mar vin Johnson, a.k.a. Blazack, was a cold-blooded killer, at

least by metro’s Dade police department standards. He was

rumored to have taken part in at least twenty gangland slayings of

rival drug dealers and was currently the number one suspect in a

double homicide of his baby’s mother and her boyfriend over a

dispute over custody of the child. The only evidence the police

could find was spattered blood, no sign of a struggle, no bodies,

no witnesses. That was Blazack’s MO. Currently, Blazack’s moth-

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er had custody of his three year old child.

“
If I was comin’ for you, you wouldn’t know it until you was

all wet up,” Blazack said, continuing to berate me as he pulled up

the towel in his hands showing me the eighteen inch double bar-

rel shotgun pointed at my nuts. They all erupted in laughter at the

dumb expression on my face as I stepped to the side, moving my

balls out of the line of fire if he happened to shoot.

Dirty was the first to greet me. He was the baby of the crew,

18 years old, and had a heart as big as the Atlantic Ocean. He still

had that youthful smile of innocence that the ghetto had not yet

stolen from him. Next was Gucci, a fat boy. He loved to dress and

eat. He was the kind of man that looked good in his clothes and

ladies found him attractive. His loyalty was priceless. He once

took seven shots from the police using his body as a barricade on

the door during a bust, just so that the rest of the crew could get

away. We did. The doctors later said the only thing that saved his

life was the fact that he was overweight. Next was Mad Ball and

Twine. They fam for real. The last time we were together, they

were in the back seat asleep while I drove ten hours in the wrong

direction trying to find a town called Stone Mountain, Georgia.

When they awoke that morning to find out I was lost, we argued

the entire trip. We exchanged dap. Twine grinned at me and asked,

“
Nigga you find Stone Mountain yet?” We erupted in laughter at

our own personal joke. Blazack quickly seized the conversation.

He wanted to talk about the snitch Dre’ and then he added, “I got

somethin’ I want t’show ya in the van.”

“
Van?” I repeated. “I sent you money to catch a plane,” I said

as I followed them to the parking lot to a brand new customized

black Chevy van.

“
I had a change of plans at the last moment,” Blazack said to

me as he opened the back door to the van. The doors were the

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