Backstage: Street Chronicles (12 page)

Slim threw his hands up, showing he didn’t have any weapons.

“Officers, if you wanted a good table, all you had to do is ask,” Slim said jokingly, trying to lighten the mood.

The officer approached Slim and then punched him in his stomach, causing him to drop to his knees.

“We’ve finally got your smart ass and there is nothing that high-priced fancy lawyer can do about it.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Slim said as he was trying to catch his breath.

As the officer started to laugh, his partner walked in with a duffel bag. The police knew exactly where it was. Slim knew this wasn’t boding well for him.

“Is that right?” the officer asked. “Then what is this?” he asked as he opened the bag.

“That shit isn’t mine. I run a respectable business now, I’m no longer in the drug game. I swear! That shit isn’t mine! I’m being fucking set up.”

“Come on, Slim, you can do better than that. Set up, huh? Okay explain it to me, who is setting you up? You are a respectable business man, why would anyone want to set you up?”

“Fuck if I know and I don’t care.”

“Exactly, and fuck if I care, too, because even if this isn’t yours, it makes up for all the times when it was.” The officer turned to his counterpart. “Someone please slap the cuffs on this piece of shit and get him out of here.”

The officers cuffed Slim and took him away.

The minute Trey took the court in Dallas, the fire burning in his eyes was proof this night’s outcome would be a lot different than the last. He was determined to fix the wrong he committed. This was the only way he’d be at peace with himself and with what he did. No matter what Dallas tried to do, they couldn’t stop him. Every time they would make a run to get in the game, Trey would take matters into his own hands and give his team a cushion. At the end of it all, Trey went off for forty-seven points, sixteen assists, and twelve rebounds, and captured the championship he’d been chasing his entire career. The triple-double was just the icing on the cake and made the victory all the more sweet. Trey was on top of the world.

As his teammates were in the locker room showering themselves with champagne, the reporters all tried to talk to the newly crowned MVP.

“Trey, Trey, how does it feel?” one of the reporters asked.

“Oh my God! I can’t even explain it. We did it!” Trey said as he started shaking the champagne bottle; it exploded out. Trey broke away from the reporters and searched for Susan. She was the only one who believed in him. She was the one who he wanted to share this moment with the most.

The locker room was a madhouse. Every time Trey tried to make his way through, someone would either stop him to celebrate with them or a reporter would try to stop him to get an interview. All he wanted was Susan. This was their moment to share together. Without her, he couldn’t have done it. She was his inspiration and motivation. Trey continued to make his way through the locker room until finally he saw her colleague at
The Washington Post
.

“Hey, have you seen Susan?” Trey asked.

“She is on vacation. She had something urgent that came up and had to leave. I’m here in her place. Do you mind if I get an interview with you?” the reporter replied.

“Sure, but not right now, though. Let me just enjoy this moment for a while,” Trey said with a smile, but now concern filled him.

The reporter agreed. Trey needed his phone. He made his way to his locker and got his phone, then went into the coach’s office. Before he could call Susan, his phone rang.

“Hello.”

“Yo, I know I’m probably the last person you want to talk to right now but I really need you.”

“Slim?”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“Look, I can’t even be mad at you. At the end of the day, I made the choice to do it. If there was anyone I needed to be mad at, it was myself. Consider everything water under the bridge. We are cool. We’ve been through too much to end our friendship over this.”

“You don’t know how happy I am to hear you say that because I need you right now,” Slim said.

Trey misheard him. “Yeah, I wish you were here to celebrate with me, too. I finally fucking did it!”

“Huh, what are you talking about?” Slim asked.

“I finally got my ring. I finally did it. I got the ring,” Trey said.

“Oh shit!”

“What?” Trey questioned.

“Trey, I’m in jail. I think that bitch Candi set me up.”

“What!”

“Yes, that is why I need your help. I need you to get me out of here.”

“What happened?” Trey asked.

“You know how I turned all that street shit over to Ricky and
Larry? Well they had a shipment that came in last week. Anyway, long story short, the shit somehow ended up in my damn club.”

“And you think Candi had something to do with that?”

“She went with them when they went to pick up the shipment and drop it off at the stash house. She knew the whole operation and had access to put this thing in motion. It had to be her. I know it was.”

“Okay, but even so, it’s still not making any sense. Why would she want to set you up?”

Slim started to chuckle. “The money.”

“What are you talking about?”

“She has the money. Her ass is in the wind with all the money. I didn’t want anything coming back to you, so I had her get one of her girlfriends to place the bet and bring the cash back. Candi went with her girlfriend Karen to Vegas. They never came back, now this bitch cellphone is disconnected and she’s in the wind.”

“Okay, okay, just sit tight. I’ll get on the phone with my lawyer and see what he can do. I’m coming home tonight so I’ll come see you then and we will get to the bottom of it.”

“All right, what choice do I have?”

“I have to know, how much did she get away with?” Trey asked.

“A little over seventeen million.”

“What!”

“Please don’t rub it in,” Slim replied.

“My bad, my bad! I didn’t mean to but damn, seventeen million is a lot. Can you blame her?”

“Trey!”

“Shit, I did it again, huh? My bad. Look I’ll be home tonight. Let me go before they start looking for me.”

They both hung up the phone. Trey then dialed Susan’s number.

“Hello,” she answered.

“Baby, I fucking did it. I did.”

“I know, I heard. Congratulations! I heard. I’m so proud of you.”

“Why aren’t you here with me? This doesn’t seem right. What happened? It’s not like you to miss work and you never miss one of my games. For you to miss this one out of all games, it must have been something important.”

“I just needed to get away,” she replied.

Trey could detect something was troubling Susan. “Is something wrong?”

“Nothing, I’m fine,” Susan replied.

“Susan, come on. I know you better than that. What is going on?”

“‘I just want you to look and watch my actions. Allow them to show you what I’m about and how serious I am.’ Do you remember saying that to me?”

“Yes and I meant every word of it.”

Susan started to laugh. “You can’t be serious.”

“Susan, what is going on? What are you getting at?”

“Does the name Candi ring a bell? I’m a fucking reporter! Did you think I wouldn’t find out? It’s obvious you did because you damn sure left out the part about how you fucked her. Instead, you tell me some bullshit-ass story about Slim, knowing I’d be pissed, but also knowing it was small enough for me to forgive you, and you wiggle your way out of it.”

Trey was speechless. He knew he was caught.

“What, you don’t have anything to say? You don’t want to defend yourself? No, instead all I hear now is fucking crickets, crickets. You can hear a damn pen drop, your ass is so quiet. ‘I just want you to look and watch my actions. Allow them to show you what I’m about and how serious I am.’ Yeah, I see exactly how serious you are. Your ass hasn’t changed. You are still the same selfish bastard who only thinks about himself, only difference is I knew it. I knew you would be, so this time, I’m not the one hurt.”

“Susan, please can we just talk about this?”

“What is there to talk about? I don’t have shit to say to you, Trey. I’m glad you finally got your championship. I’m glad you finally got your ring because that is the only thing that ever mattered to you.”

“How can you say that? You know how much you mean to me.”

“Is that right? You were willing to lose your career and tarnish your name by point shaving all to avoid getting suspended for the play-offs chasing that ring. But yet, you couldn’t even come clean and be honest with me. Again; and you say, ‘I just want you to look and watch my actions. Allow them to show you what I’m about and how serious I am.’ Well guess what, I watched and they showed me. It’s cool though, no hard feelings. You got what you wanted and so did I.”

“And what is that?” Trey asked.

“I got the proof I needed to get you out of my life and you fell for it. At least this time I got paid doing it.”

Everything started to make sense to Trey now.

“It was you. You set this whole thing up. You set up Slim and me in the process.”

“I damn sure did and just like the asses you are, the both of you fell for it. I knew Slim wouldn’t be able to resist a quick score. So I had Candi plant the seed in his head. He would sell his mother for enough money. And you, I knew the minute she threw the pussy your way you’d jump. Both of you did exactly as I predicted.”

“Now boarding flight three seventy-two to Costa Rica,” Trey heard over the phone.

“Well that’s my cue, ‘bye, Trey,” Susan said and hung up the phone.

Trey just sat back and stared at the wall. He didn’t even have the capability to celebrate. He’d lost all the energy to.

he tour bus drove down a desolate Midwestern road. Platinum-selling rap artist Trapp was completing a thirty-city rap tour. Trapp had become a huge success in the rap game, and his first album went platinum in a week. He had the hottest rap album out, hands down. Trapp was riding a wave of success that many could only dream of. He was living the life.

“Pass that kush over here! I didn’t pay all that money to watch you all get high,” Trapp arrogantly demanded of one of his crew.

The man passed him a pregnant blunt of the finest marijuana on earth. Trapp took a deep pull of the potent substance and closed his eyes. He thought about his road to success and what he had to do to get to this point in his life. He thought about his former friends and his former lifestyle. Trapp wasn’t the most popular guy in his Brentwood, Long Island, neighborhood. All his life he was treated like a stepchild. Trapp never knew his real parents,
he was raised in foster homes all his life. Now he was the biggest rap star in the country.

Trapp’s mind started to drift as he thought back to how it all got started.

The music blasted from the twelve-inch speakers in the back of the midnight-black Chevy Tahoe. The three young Black men in the vehicle nodded their heads to the melodic beat as if they were in a trance. You would think that the young men were deaf or would be compelled to turn the extremely loud music down, but instead, the loud rap music fueled their adrenaline and thoughts of getting paid.

The driver, Jamal Jenkins, aka JJ Gates, was the rap artist the men were listening to. JJ was also the biggest drug dealer in his Brentwood, Long Island, neighborhood. His right-hand man, Dee, was always in the passenger seat of JJ’s Tahoe, he was second in command of JJ’s drug operation. The youngest of the crew was Trapp; he sat in the back rolling up a blunt of the stickiest haze on earth.

JJ was feeling himself. He was only twenty-three and he managed to stack over $100,000 selling drugs in less than two years. He considered himself Hood Rich. “If you have $100,000 or more in the hood you are considered Hood Rich, my nig. I am officially a Hood Rich nigga, ya dig,” JJ said to his underlings.

“That’s what I’m talking about. I’m trying to get my paper up, too,” Dee replied.