Against the Grain (14 page)

“Are you ready?”

“Let’s do this,” he said. Kay put the black bag over his shoulder as they left the room. He turned to make sure they hadn’t left anything. When the valet brought the car around, Shu-Shu drove because she had a driver’s license. If the police stopped Kay and found that he didn’t have his license that would give them probable cause to search the car, and they definitely didn’t need that with all the money they had in the car.

“Where we going?” she asked as they pulled into traffic.

“L.A. We’ve got to get on the 101 and it should take us straight to Chinatown.” They got lost a few times, but after an hour of driving around, they finally found what they were looking for.

“Pull over right there,” Kay said as he pointed to a small Thai restaurant. They went in and waited to be seated. Although the place was small, it was nice. It was just as Yang said it was. The waitress seated them at a little table not far from the bar. It was still early, so the lunch hour crowd hadn’t arrived yet. They had eaten earlier at the hotel, so neither Shu-Shu nor Kay were hungry. Shu-Shu ordered two virgin strawberry daiquiris. When the waitress returned with their drinks, Kay slid the picture of Yang and him across the table. She smiled and picked it up. Once she noticed who the other man was, her smile was gone. She dropped the picture and covered her mouth. Tears filled her eyes. She turned and left. Moments later she returned with an elderly woman. She picked up the picture and the older woman’s response was the same. She held the photo close to her heart as she cried. Shu-Shu reached across the table and touched Kay’s hand, catching him off guard. He saw tears in her eyes. This moment was touching. Kay had told her about the significance of the picture on the way there. It was the first time in twenty years that Yang’s family had laid eyes on him. He felt that he shamed his family by going to prison and cut off almost all ties with them. No pictures, no visits, only an occasional letter and phone call.

“You come!” The old woman said to Kay. “You come!”

Kay took Shu-Shu’s hand and led her as he followed the women. While they walked through the kitchen the old woman stopped to show everyone the picture. They all smiled and patted Kay on the back as he passed them. They spoke to him in Thai but he didn’t understand, so he smiled, nodded his head and kept going. Once they passed through the kitchen, they entered an office that contained all the latest in modern furniture and electronic gadgets, while the rest of the restaurant looked traditional. This was the only room that looked like something from the future.

“Make you-self comfortable. My son be here soon,” the old woman said to Kay. She looked down at the picture in her hand once more and handed it to Kay. Kay closed both her hands around the picture.

“It’s a gift to you. I want you to have it.” Kay finally understood that she was Yang’s wife. She bowed.

“Thank you,” she said as she left. Ten minutes later the office door flew open and a happy-looking young man dressed in baggy jeans, a T-shirt with a V-neck sleeveless sweater over it, a baseball cap turned to the back, and a backpack walked in with another guy dressed similar to him. You could tell they had flava. The first guy looked no older than sixteen years old, but Kay would learn that he was actually twenty-four. Kay recognized him right away from the many pictures he saw of him growing up. Kay stood up and the two men greeted each other with a pound and a hug.

“Mr. Frost,” the young man said.

“Call me Kay.”

“Sorry. Respect is a habit in my family. I’m Joey. I’ve heard so much about you. My father speaks highly of you. You saved his life and I could never repay you for that. So whatever I have, you have. I’m instructed to treat you like family,” Joey said as he walked around the desk and sat down.

“Your father owes me nothing. How is he doing anyway?” Kay asked.

“He’s doing fine. He calls a little more now that you’re gone. We spoke a week ago and he told me to be expecting you,” Joey said as he looked at Shu-Shu. Joey snapped his fingers at the guy that came in with him. He was standing by the door. He walked over and put his backpack on the desk in front of Joey. Joey opened it and took out a kilo of heroin. He slid it across the desk to Kay.

“This is from my father. I’m not a drug dealer. I’m a student at UCLA but my family is well connected so you can put whatever label on me that you like. I can get you whatever you want and I guarantee you can step all over it twenty different ways,” Joey said. Kay, liking those numbers, looked at Shu-Shu, picked up the black shoulder bag, and slid it across the desk to Joey.

“What’s this?” Joey asked.

“It’s a hundred and ten grand.”

“Don’t insult me, Kay. This is a gift.”

“Aiight, well accept a hundred grand of this as an offering. A token of my gratitude. Then take the other ten grand and get me a nice little one bedroom apartment. Furnish it for me, since I’ll be spending a lot of time out here.”

Joey smiled. “Anywhere specific?” he asked.

“Yeah, I like Beverly Hills.”

“Done,” Joey said. He slid the bag back to Kay. “I’ll put another forty grand with this if you leave the girl with me.” The room was quiet for a moment. Shu-Shu’s mouth dropped. She couldn’t believe what she’d just heard. She looked at Kay, who shook his head and laughed a little.

“Don’t ever disrespect me like that again, Joey,” he said as he slid both the kilo and the money back to him. Joey laughed out loud.

“I like you, Kay. It was just a test. I see that money don’t make you.” Joey slid the kilo back to Kay. Kay smiled as he put the kilo in Shu-Shu’s bag.

“Look around you, Kay. I am my father’s son, but I am not my father. If you ever cross me, no matter what my father says, I will kill you,” Joey said as he got up and walked around the desk. Kay stood up and the two men hugged.

“There’s a flip side to that coin. ’Cause if you ever cross me, no matter how I feel for your father, I will kill you,” Kay told him.

The two men smiled in understanding. Joey gave Kay a card. “Call me in a week and I’ll FedEx you the key to your apartment.”

“Aiight, yo, I’m out,” Kay said. He gave Joey a pound and left. On their way back through the kitchen, Yang’s wife stopped Kay.

“This from me to you,” she said. Kay looked down. It was another kilo of heroin. The little woman stood on her tiptoes and kissed Kay on the cheek, then she turned and walked away. Kay noticed the picture was still in her hand. He put that kilo in Shu-Shu’s bag also and they headed back to the hotel.

•         •         •

They landed safely at the BWI Airport late that night. Dre had come and gotten his car and left an old Toyota Cressida in the same spot. That was part of their plan. They didn’t want to bring any attention to Kay as he returned to the city. Kay reached under the rear bumper and got the key. He handed it to Shu-Shu. She didn’t know what was going on, and she didn’t ask any questions either. They got in the car and headed home.

The sound of a car horn brings the woman out of her daze. She stands up and smooths out her clothes as she takes one last look at herself in the wall mirror. “Perfect,” she says out loud. She picks up her bag and fox cape. She takes one more look around to make sure she hasn’t forgotten anything. She sets the alarm, shuts and locks the door behind her. Once she gets in the car, she turns to look at her kids in the backseat. Her stepson is almost twenty-four years old and just as handsome as his father, she thinks. Her stepdaughter is almost twenty-four years old, too, and her best friend. They do everything together. Then there is her biological son, who is five years old and the youngest. She can’t understand how he can be Mommy’s little baby one minute, then turn bad as shit the next minute.

“Did everybody use the bathroom?” she asks as her husband backs the car out of the garage. They look at her like she’s crazy. “You better behave yourself tonight. Don’t make me spank your ass, hear me?” she says to the little boy. He shakes his head. She turns around and puts on her seat belt. She reaches over and puts her left hand behind her husband’s head. She likes playing in his hair when he drives. It is soft and curly and he always keeps it cut neat. She turns on the radio with her right hand. There’s an old song on by D’Angelo, “How Does It Feel.”

“Oooh, baby, you remember this song?” She stares out the window and begins to reminisce again. . . .

15

2000

Ms. Pricilla and Ms. Wendy both pulled into the parking lot of Lexington Market at the same time. “I see you got that new Lincoln you wanted, girl,” Ms. Wendy said to Ms. Pricilla.

“Yeah, girl, it’s nice on the inside, too. Leather and wood grain. I’ll take you for a ride when we get off work.” They walked into the market on the Eutaw Street side, got something to eat, and came out on the Paca Street side. They crossed the street and got into a waiting van that had eight other elderly women who greeted the two women as the van took them to work. This was the same routine that they had followed for the past five years. The van took them to a house on Scott Street in South Baltimore, which sat on the corner. They all went down to the basement where they went through a secret entrance cut into the wall that led to the house next door. The same thing was done in that house, which led to the house next to that one and so on. Every house on that side of the block had the same secret entrance in case the cops came with a search warrant for the house on the corner. No one would ever be there besides the people that lived there. Each family was getting five hundred dollars a week to use their house. The old women would split up in pairs per house, where armed guards were waiting. There they would cut the heroin with quinine and morphine base. The dope had to be cut a few times to keep the fiends from OD’ing. For this job, the old women were paid a hundred dollars a day. There were also a few young girls that got paid seventy-five dollars a day to bag the heroin in thousands and thousands of glassine envelopes that were pre-stamped this is it. The envelopes were packaged in bundles of twenty-five ten-dollar bags. The bundles were put in bags of five hundred. Each bag was put in a backpack and taken to the last house on the block, where several young boys, ages twelve to fourteen, would be waiting for them. The young boys would go out the back door and into the alley where they had their bikes waiting and take the backpacks to the McDonald’s on Washington Blvd., where couriers waited for them. Then the young boys would return to the same house and wait on the next delivery. They were each paid three hundred and fifty dollars a week. This was more than cool with them. They just wanted to go to the mall every Saturday.

Once the couriers got the backpacks, they would take them to different dope spots throughout the city. Each courier was paid a thousand dollars a week. All spot managers generally made thirty percent of everything they sold that week and they were responsible for paying the lookouts and runners out of their pockets. Top Lieutenants made $15,000 a week. Lieutenants made $4,000 a week. No one knew that they were working for Kay. Some of them had their suspicions, but they didn’t know for sure. Only the Top Lieutenants knew about each other and were allowed to come to meetings. Scatter oversaw everything. He made sure everyone got paid on Fridays, even the cops he had on the payroll. Scatter made $25,000 a week. This was the way Kay had run his business for the past five years. He, Shu-Shu, and Dre made millions. Kay made so much money that his biggest problem was hiding it. Employing over a hundred and fifty people, he grossed about five million dollars a week, which he split three ways. Kay kept loyalty strong among his people by showing love.

He had Scatter throw them the wildest parties. He gave them cash bonuses when they had a good week. He gave away gifts and furnished whole houses for the lower-level hustlers on their team. He’d give away all-expense-paid vacations to exotic locations. And Scatter had one golden rule: Everyone took Sundays off. That was the day to relax and spend with your family.

Shu-Shu had her lawyer hook up some phony paperwork to make it look like her mother had invested in a company overseas leaving Shu-Shu millions when she died. And since Shu-Shu got her money the old-fashioned way, by inheriting it, no one asked questions when she and Kay bought a 6.3-million-dollar mini-mansion in Montgomery County, right outside of Washington, D.C., where a lot of politicians lived. Shu-Shu did her thing decorating it with Versace- and Christian Dior–inspired designer perfection throughout. There was a twelve-foot security gate surrounding the property, an extended driveway, state-of-the-art security team, and cameras everywhere. They even had a live-in cook, housekeeper, and landscaper.

Shu-Shu opened an exotic car dealership outside D.C. Whatever you wanted, she could get it for you. She sold cars to politicians, football players, and basketball players. She even sold Michael Jordan a Benz once he took over the Wizards.

Kay and Shu-Shu registered the cars to one of their corporate fronts. They owned a restaurant and real estate all around B-More. But Kay was bored so he decided to open his own club. He named it The Raven after the NFL team. The building was downtown and used to be an old warehouse. Kay completely remodeled the building, which now had two floors and could hold up to fifteen hundred people easily. Kay spared no expense putting it together. Kay’s little brother Caleek was the house DJ and in charge of all entertainment.

He kept everything on the hush with the rest of the crew. The only person that was allowed to see the inside of the club before opening day was Dre, who wouldn’t say shit anyway. The grand opening of The Raven was three days away.

Shu-Shu had planned a shopping spree in New York for her and Kay to make sure they had on the flyest shit the night of the grand opening. Kay was alright with that since he’d hired this white broad named Jessica from New York to handle the grand opening whose name was buzzing as being one of the hottest promoters out. He left everything in her hands and he bounced to N.Y. with Shu-Shu and Lil ‘C’. Lil ‘C’ had a window seat on the plane, and Shu-Shu sat next to him. Kay sat across from them in the aisle seat. They were in first class, of course. Kay was listening to Jay-Z’s
Reasonable Doubt
on his portable discman. Lil ‘C’ was listening to the Hot Boys on his. Shu-Shu was reading
The Coldest Winter Ever
by Sister Souljah. She looked over at ‘C’ and thought to herself how much she loved him and how handsome he was. The two of them had grown close and he was like a son to her. Then she looked at Kay. She had to wave her hand to him to get his attention. He took the headphones off his head.

“Baby, why did you and Sonia name him C-Allah? All this time I’ve never known that,” she said.

“When I was a little kid, you know the house next door to Mama, where Mrs. Miller lives? Before ya’ll moved around, there was this other family that use to live there. They were from New York. I played with their only son. He used to be my best friend before I met Mike. His name was C-Allah Mysun. His family studied under the Nation of Gods and Earths. You know, the Five Percenters. A Five Percenter is someone that teaches the truth. I was around him so much that his father began teaching me lessons and giving me the one hundred twenty degrees. That’s when I stopped eating pork. My friend moved back to New York when his grandmother died and I never saw him again. I always said that if I ever had a son, I’d name him C-Allah as a reminder of my old friend. And even though I’m not living right and exact anymore, I still want my son to follow those same teachings. Tap him for me.” She touched Lil ‘C’ on the arm, he looked at her and she pointed to his dad. He took off his headphones. “Peace, God,” Kay said.

“Peace.” His son returned the universal greeting.

“Yo, tell her why you’re called C-Allah,” Kay told him. Lil ‘C’ turned in his seat to face Shu-Shu and began to speak.

“To ‘C’ means to understand things clearly with the third eye, which is the mind. It’s to see things exactly as they are and not just how they appear to be. And ‘Allah’ is the most high. Allah is God.”

Shu-Shu was slightly confused. “But I was taught that Jesus is God,” she said.

“If you read Romans 1, it tells you that Jesus was the seed of David according to the flesh and the son of God according to divine spirit. Divine means beautiful. The Black man is beautiful. The nature of the Black man is to be divine or it shall be destroyed.”

“So why do you use God’s name as your own?” she asked with a puzzled look on her face.

“Because, I am God,” he said. From the look on her face, ‘C’ could tell that she didn’t understand.

“Please explain to me why you say you are God,” she said, even more confused.

“If the first man was made in the image and likeness of God and the original people of this planet were black, which science has proven to be fact, then who am I but God? Do you believe in the Bible?” Lil ‘C’ asked her.

“Yeah, I do,” she said as she reached into her bag and pulled out a pocket Bible.

“That’s why I’m having a hard time with what you are saying,” she said.

Lil ‘C’ took the Bible and turned to Psalms 82:5 and began to read out loud, “ ‘They do not know, nor do they understand; They walk in darkness; All the foundations of the Earth are unstable. I said, You are Gods; all of you are children of the most high. But you shall die like men and fall like princes. Arise, O God, judge the Earth; for you shall inherit all nations.’ ”

“Yeah, but this is the Old Testament. I follow Jesus and the New Testament,” she said. Lil ‘C’ turned to John 10:31 in the New Testament and handed it to her. She began to read.

“ ‘Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them, Many good works I have shown you from my father; for which of those works do you stone me? The Jews answered him saying, For a good work we do not stone you, but for blasphemy, and because you, being a man, make yourself God. Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, You are Gods?’ ” ‘C’ stopped her.

“Do you see?”

“I see your argument, but I still don’t fully understand.”

“Understanding comes with time,” he said.

“So, is C-Allah more of a Godly talent or a Godly state?”

“You can’t separate them. Like Heaven and Earth, it’s the same thing.” Shu-Shu was silent for a moment as she took in all that he’d said. She was impressed that he was so young and yet so knowledgeable.

“Who taught you all of this?” she asked him.

“My father.”

She looked at Kay. “Why you never talked about this with me?”

“I don’t know. I guess it’s because it never came up until now.”

•         •         •

When the plane finally landed at LaGuardia Airport, there was a black Lincoln Town Car waiting for them. Dave was Shu-Shu’s driver every time she came to New York. Everyone was hungry so Shu-Shu told Dave to take them to Bobby Flay’s Mesa Grill on Fifth Avenue. After eating lunch, they headed to the Flatotel to check in. Shu-Shu loved this spot. Each room was actually a fully furnished apartment with one or two bedrooms and a full kitchen. Once they were settled in, Shu-Shu called her girl Misha, who was a personal stylist for the rich and famous. From their conversation on the phone, Kay could tell that Misha had a full day of shopping planned. The first place Misha took them was Bergdorf Goodman. From there it was nonstop shopping. Shu-Shu bought so many clothes, they had to make two trips back to the hotel, just to drop off bags and make room for more bags. When they went to Nija Furs, Nija assisted them personally. They went to Jacob & Co. where she bought diamond jewelry for herself and a watch for her man. Kay decided to do something for his whole crew and ordered identical Rolex watches for his family, Dre, Mike, Scatter, Tank, Gee, Big Duke, and himself. He had his iced out. Shu-Shu picked out most of Kay’s clothes from such designers as Missoni, Kenzo, Antonio Fusco, and other shit that he couldn’t even pronounce. It was alright, but he wasn’t happy until he picked out shit he and Lil ‘C’ liked; they preferred urban gear. He bought a red and white leather Ducati motorcycle jacket for himself and a yellow and black one for Dre. Kay and Lil ‘C’ found a spot that sold every pair of Jordans that ever came out. He got all of them in both his and Lil ‘C’s size. Kay bought Kaneeka, Kelli, and T-Kie Louis Vuitton scooters with monogram bags and his mother a fourteen-carat gold bracelet with charms for each of her kids and grandkids. Shu-Shu also bought clothes and gifts for Lyniece, Mama, Lady, T-Kie, Kaneeka, and Kelli.

Misha’s phone rang. It was her girl Linda, who was at Marcy’s Images waiting for them. They were twenty minutes late. Misha handed the phone to Shu-Shu. “What up, girl? I know, you should see all the shit we got. Tell Marcy that I’m on my way. Bye.” Marcy Williams was one of the top hairstylists on the east coast, and Shu-Shu always got her to do her hair when she came to New York.

The next morning Kay and Lil ‘C’ flew back to B-More. Shu-Shu stayed behind to ride down with Misha and Linda, who were also coming to the opening. On the flight home Kay looked at Lil ‘C’. He noticed his father’s stare so he took his headphones off.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

Lil ‘C’ smiled and said, “I want to get paid just like you.”

“How do you think I get paid?” Kay asked his son.

‘C’ whispered, “You got the city on lock with the di-dope.”

Kay was surprised to hear his son say that. “You’re smart enough to know what I’m doing is wrong. I’m killin’ my own people, but I’m so caught up that I don’t know what to do. This game is some bullshit. Straight up! I be stressed the fuck out sometimes trying to keep up with so much shit. I better not ever hear of you fuckin’ with drugs! You hear me?! I’m gonna fuck you up if I do. You’re going to be a doctor, a lawyer, or something. You, T-Kie, Kaneeka, and Kelli are going to college if I have anything to say about it so you might as well get it in your mind.”

“Pop-Pop Scatter told me that he told you the same thing when you were my age and look at you now,” Lil ‘C’ shot back.

“I fucked up. You’re s’pose to learn from your mistakes, but it’s much better to learn from the mistakes of others because their mistakes are free to you. Feel me?”

Lil ‘C’ thought for a moment then said, “Yeah, I feel you. But I don’t think I could be a doctor, man.”

“Why not? Remember my friend in prison that I told you about? He once told me that a wise man knows his limits. A great man knows he has none. You can do anything you set your mind to. So give me your word that you’ll at least try.”