Baby Huey: A Cautionary Tale of Addiction (16 page)

That made me curious, made me ask, “We under surveillance, or
you
sent him a signal?” before thinking about it.

After a snotty glance my way, the man turned to Fifty and said, “What is that?”

Fifty said, “My cousin.” Nervousness in his voice. “Third cousin, on my daddy side. He’s the ramrod in my new crew. That’s if Spanky ain’t up for it. You seen him lately?”

Judge Hatchett
came back on, the man giving it his full attention. He said, “How’s Cindy?”

“Cindy’s fine,” Fifty said, “just fine.”

“Tell her stop by see me sometime. Haven’t seen her in a while.”

“Yeah,” Fifty said, moving toward the door.

We were leaving when the man said, “One other thing, Fifty,” and Fifty stopped and said What’s that? “Don’t bring that snaggle-toothed sumbitch here again.”

Two blocks away I said, “Who the hell he calling snaggle-toothed? He hasn’t looked in a mirror lately. Came that close to kicking his short ass. That close!”

“You think Batman wrestle with you, let you put him in a headlock? ‘We under surveillance,’ I can’t believe you said that.”

“Man, you acting like you scared of him.”

“Acting? I wasn’t acting. You don’t get it, Sherlock. Batman is a killer. His bodyguard, his bitch, killers. Hell, those fools hanging round kill you just to get a crumb from Batman.”

After a silence I said, “I still think I can kick his ass.”

* * * * *

An ugly woman wearing a bronze-colored satin robe came out of the apartment Fifty had entered twenty minutes ago. She took a red lollipop out her mouth and waved it at me to come inside.

I rolled the window down and heard her say, “Come inside. It’s against the rules to sit in a car here.”

Hearing her voice, manly, I took another look at the bleach-blonde wig that fell to her shoulders; it looked ridiculous considering her dark-chocolate complexion. Looked at her chest, flat as an ironing board. And decided to stay in the car.

She sashayed across the sidewalk to the car, put her hands on her hips, and rolled her head, saying, “Do I have to pull you outta that car? I said it’s against the rules to sit in a car here. Come inside.”

A large goiter accompanied that manly voice.

A flaming fag, I thought as I got out of the car. Inside the apartment, overly decorated with stuffed animals and pillows, Fifty sat on a sofa smoking a joint. Jazz music played from two Bose speakers in an entertainment center.

“You ready to go?” I asked Fifty. Standing in the center of the living room, I heard the lollipop working behind me, smelled too much perfume.

The man in women’s clothing said, “Boy, you better get somewhere and sit down. Where’s your manners? Lewis isn’t ready to go, he just got here. Sit down, I won’t bite.”

I sat down on the edge of a burgundy loveseat. Fifty motioned the joint my way and I said, “Uh-uh. Lewis? That’s your real name?”

Fifty nodded, studied the joint before stubbing it out in a ceramic ashtray of a supine black woman with big breasts.

The robe brushed against my knee as the man walked past and sat down on the sofa beside Fifty.

To Fifty he said, “This cat doesn’t even know your name and he’s green as a cucumber. Why you putting him on a crew?”

Fifty didn’t answer.

The man turned toward me, his big lips as red as the lollipop in his hand. “My name’s Delano, but everybody call me Spanky. What’s your name?” I told him and he said, “You just started getting high, didn’t you?”

I ignored him and again asked Fifty was he ready to go.

Fifty said, “Spanky, show him one of your tricks.”

“Which one?” Spanky said, and I stood up and moved to the door. Told Fifty I’d wait outside. “A magic trick,” Spanky said. “Who you think I am?”

A fag, I thought, and walked out.

Fifty came out a minute or two later and we drove off, Spanky standing in the doorway looking, still sucking on the lollipop.

“Spanky likes you,” Fifty said as we rode down Twelfth Street, a liquor store on every third block, blighted lots interspersed with run-down homes built decades ago. “He didn’t, you did what you did--disrespect him in his house--he woulda hurt you.”

“You mighta not noticed, but Span
ky
has a package underneath the robe.”

“You got a problem with that?”

“Hell yeah! He’s giving me funny looks, smacking on a damn lollipop, and you tell him show me a trick--hell yeah, I got a problem with that!”

“Why?”

“Figure it out, man, you intelligent enough.”

Fifty turned on Fair Park, rode past Doreen’s mother’s house, slowed down a bit. Not a single car in the driveway.

“Spanky’s not gay,” Fifty said. “Most transvestites aren’t, but you can’t tell black folks that.”

“What?”

“Men with little dicks always use the stall, never the urinal, ‘cause they worried what somebody might think. Spanky lays his out for all to see.”

“What!”

Fifty drove onto the on-ramp, merged into heavy traffic. “In Cummins I see cats I knew on the street as thugs wearing bras and panties. Not my type of party, but it didn’t bother me none. Cat like you, get all agitated and shit, says, ‘Yo, dawg, what’s up with the lingerie?’ Guess what happens to him?”

I stared at him, knowing what he would say.

“He gets fucked!” Fifty said, and then explained how
we
needed Spanky, who was Batman’s younger brother, and who could move more dope in a day than a ten-man crew. “You and I have to pay a cat to move dope on his turf. Spanky moves on a cat’s turf, cat don’t like it, Spanky tell him to go see Batman. Last cat complained about Spanky nobody has seen no more.”

“That’s fine and dandy,” I said, “but I’m not doing anything with that guy back there. Not a damn thing! Another thing. This talk about a crew, to me that sounds synonymous with going to prison, where I’ve no intention of going. The trip to Houston, that’s as far as I go with the crimnal shit.”

Fifty said, “Tell me if I got this straight. Transvestites, selling drugs, you don’t want no part of that, right?”

“Right.”

“Chillin’ in my apartment, paying no rent or utilities, eating free, staring up my old gal’s ass, and smoking as much dope as you want--which, by the way, falls under criminal shit--all that’s copasetic, right?”

“Who says I’m staring up your lady’s ass?”

“Yesterday? Remember I asked you what you looking at?”

Yeah, I remembered. Fifty went to the bathroom while Cindy was halfway under the couch searching for microscopic crack crumbs, her legs splayed, bottom showing, no underwear on, me not able to look away, not excited by the sight but curious, still looking when Fifty came out.

“Bottom line,” Fifty said, “my way…or hit the motherfucking highway!”

I wondered if I’d bitten into something too big to chew. Sitting next to me was this slimy drip of snot telling me his way or the highway, in his snotty shades and snotty silk shirt and pants, acting like he was angry. It shouldn’t have been an issue: tell him to fuck hisself before getting out of his car. One thing stopped me from doing that, had me thinking about working on a dope-selling crew.

This slimy drip of snot still had at least half a turkey in the oven.

* * * * *

The way it worked, a dealer would beep Fifty’s pager and then he would call Spanky, who would call the number from a pay phone and take the order and then call Fifty back on a hot phone (an unregistered cell phone). Cindy took over then, performing the arduous task of putting the dope in cellophane bags.

High as a kite and extremely concerned about body parts swelling up, I still noticed that Fifty only touched dope he intended to smoke, and made of point of getting lost a few minutes before I headed out the door with dope in hand.

The first two deliveries were simple enough: guy came out, looked at the bag, nodded, gave me the money, and got out of the car. But the third delivery, man…Afterward, I would not sell or deliver dope again.

Three in the morning, the Caddy bouncing on an unpaved road in College Station, a small town
a few miles south of Little Rock, infamous for the so-called Blue Hole, a rain-pooled bauxite pit in which several boys had drowned.

Streetlights nonexistent, street names on canted four-foot concrete poles barely visible among weeds, I drove around an hour before finding a green prefabricated house in the middle of nowhere, with an above-ground pool on the right side, a distinction Cindy said made finding it easier.

There were several cars parked in front, including a black Escalade and a silver Jaguar. All the lights were on inside. Jo-Bo, the contact, was supposed to come out to the car and pay for the dope. Two more cars drove up and people went in and out, but no one walked up to the Caddy.

Tired of waiting I got out and walked up to the door, knocked, was told to come in. Sitting in expensive leather furniture before a theater-size television, four men and six women looked at me when I said, “Jo-Bo?”

All heads turned to a bubble-forehead short guy in a LeBron James jersey tucked in boxer shorts, holding a gold diamond-studded chalice.

“Jo-Bo?”

First thing out of his mouth, “You the police?” I told him I wasn’t and he said, “Sit your ass down then,” and everyone laughed.

I didn’t get it and didn’t sit down, worried that the police might barge in at any second.

On the television a video was playing, the BET logo on the bottom right side of the screen, a young guy gesticulating better than rapping, surrounded by a bevy of beautiful string bikini-clad women bending over and shaking their butts at the camera.

A commercial came on, a rapper looking somber, talking about HIV prevalence in the African-American commuity, ending it with “Wrap it up.”

I stared at Jo-Bo, gave him a let’s-get-this-shit-over look.

He said, “You in a hurry?”

Thinking, naw, fool, I want to stay here all morning with a bag of dope in my car, I nodded.

Jo-Bo in his underwear followed me outside, still holding the chalice, then made a show of opening the Escalade with a remote, horn and whistles squawking, before getting what I presumed was money out of it. The temp was cool but bearable.

A skinny teenaged girl appeared out of the darkness as we were walking toward the Caddy and asked Jo-Bo if she could speak with him for a minute.

Jo-Bo said, “The fuck you want?” before telling me to give him a sec.

They walked a few feet away, in shadow now under a large tree, and I heard the girl tell Jo-Bo, “You ain’t right, Jo-Bo, shit you gave me soap. You do
me
like that! Why? I’ain’t never--Oooomf!”

I looked up to see one shadow beating the ground, heard Jo-Bo say, “Crackhead bitch, don’t…ever…come…to…me…with this bullshit!” swinging with each pause, the girl screaming, pleading, “You killing me, Jo-Bo!”

Two shadows now, and then suddenly the girl was on me, clutching my clothes to support herself, blood streaming down her face, her eyes wide with fear and desperation.

“Help me!” she cried. “He’s gonna kill me!”

Jo-Bo appeared behind her, the chalice raised to hit her again when she pushed off me and stumbled away, disappearing into the darkness, Jo-Bo calling after her, “Don’t bring yo ass back round here!”

A long moment Jo-Bo and I stared at each other, my heart beating like I’d just inhaled a good hit, legs wobbly, shocked at what I’d just witnessed, wondering if the girl was out there dying like a wounded deer, wondering if Jo-Bo was thinking to use the bloody chalice on me.

Jo-Bo broke the tension with a laugh, a hearty laugh, like something was truly funny. Large splotches of blood, rust-colored in the moonlight, covered his jersey and underwear.

“You see that?” he said. “Almost had her solid when she took off. Lucky bitch.” He laughed again. “Talkin’ ’bout I sold her soap. That wasn’t soap, that was rock salt.”

Mouth wide open, I stared at him for a few seconds before saying, “Wait a minute, will ya?” then got inside the Caddy and drove off. Bright lights on, rabbits darting across the dirt road, I drove slowly, looking for the girl, thinking about the look in her eyes, the same look Doreen had when I hit her.

Chapter 16

Spanky came by that afternoon, keeping the flame alive in a light-blue woman’s jogging suit, white tennis shoes, and a shoulder-length silver wig, and told Fifty right there in front of me that I’d reamed Jo-Bo.

Reamed?

Fifty arched an eyebrow my way and I pointed at the cellophane bag on the table.

“Not selling or delivering no more dope,” I said. “Not open for discusssion.”

Fifty and Spanky exchanged looks and Fifty said, “Middle a dope deal you decide a career change?”

Spanky said to Fifty, “Something else happened--Jo-Bo didn’t go into details. Your boy witnessed it. Jo-Bo talking retaliation if there’s an allegation.”

Check that out, Johnny Cochran in drag.

Fifty turned to me. “What happened?”

“Ask Jo-Bo.”

“See there?” Fifty said to Spanky. “Try to help a cat, next thing ya know you’re getting pimped inside your own home.”

“An hour or so,” I told Fifty, “I’m heading out. Try my luck on that highway you told me about.”

Fifty didn’t comment, and then Spanky suggested that he and Fifty pay Jo-Bo a visit to assure him he had nothing to worry about. Before following Spanky out the door, Fifty said, “Wanna show you something ’fore you go,” and put a rock on the table.

It was hard to believe that something so small, so insignificant, held so much power. A rerun of the
Cosby Show
was on the television: the quintessential happy African American family; not one misfit in the entire group. So much fucking power, I thought, returning my attention to the rock.

Shut up and smoke the damn thing!

Twice I reached for the rock and changed my mind. Movement caught my eye and I turned to see Cindy standing in the hallway, staring at me. How long had she been there? Blue jeans, white shirt, she came and sat down next to me on the couch.

Uncomfortable with the seating arrangement, I said, “Fifty said he’ll be back in a few minutes.”