Crackhead II: A Novel (5 page)

“I know that Dink is away.”

“So you know what’s up?” Smurf asked. He didn’t plan on giving any more information than he already had. Smurf felt that not everyone needed to know what was going on, but in Dirty’s case, if he and Dink were that cool, he would have already known what the deal was.

“I know it all,” Dirty confirmed, “and you got yo’ work cut out for you, but first you gotta check that goddamn attitude and get the fuckin’ bass outta yo’ voice when you dealin’ with me, son.” Dirty put his glass down on the coffee table and walked over to Smurf, who was sitting on the edge of the recliner, next to the couch. Catching Smurf off guard, Dirty grabbed him by the collar. “And if you ever point a gun at me again, I’ll kill you. Do you understand?”

Smurf didn’t answer. He wasn’t gonna get punked by Dirty, or no other man for that matter. The last man who’d gotten in his face was Buck, the nigga who fucked and beat his momma,
and Smurf blew him to pieces, but he knew he had to control his anger, so it was best he didn’t answer and stuck to the business at hand.

For the next thirty minutes, Smurf and Dirty talked about the product, price, and placement.

“You got your crew in order?” Dirty asked Smurf.

“I got some niggas I been watchin’ for a while. I don’t trust everyone.”

“That’s good,” Dirty told him. “You need to be cautious. But hey, check this out. I got somebody I want you to meet, and—”

“I choose my own people,” Smurf told Dirty seriously, cutting him off. “You know I had to clean house on some of Dink’s people.”

“Look, youngster, we on the same team here,” Dirty confirmed, beginning to get irritated with Smurf’s stubbornness. “I trust your judgment because my cuzzo trusted you, but if you let me finish, I was gonna say that I’m cool with you steppin’ in the way you did.” Dirty shook his head in disbelief about Marco and Dame. “Just meet the man and I trust your judgment. If there’s something you don’t like, just let me know and we can move on from there. Bet?”

After a momentary pause, Smurf said, “Bet.”

“Well, lil’ nigga, I’ll be back later. I been gone for a while, so I wanna see what’s up with the hoes. Ya feel me?”

Smurf smiled. Dirty was going to go find some ass and he couldn’t hate. “A’ight man,” Smurf laughed. “Handle yo’ business.”

T
HE SQUAD CARS
and spinning red lights, mixed with the blaring summer sun, made it almost impossible to see. The turn of events played out in slow motion in front of Tonette’s eyes as if it was happening right in front of her.

She looked at Crystal as the police shouted to them. The fear in Crystal’s eyes told Tonette they were both in trouble. Tonette looked back at the police, who yelled again, “Get on the fucking ground!”

This time, the glare of the sun glistened off the chrome-plated Glocks that were ready to drop their asses at any second.

“I said, drop the fucking gun, goddammit!” the cop yelled again.

In an instant, the officer who continued to yell charged like a bull toward Tonette. She tried to reach for Crystal, but was tackled to the ground. The big, heavy officer had all of his weight on her body and she couldn’t breathe.

Tonette put up a good fight, but his strength was too much for her. Next, she heard a popping noise, like something crackling. Then the smell hit her.
What the hell,
she thought to herself.

“She’s all yours,” the cop said in a distorted voice to someone behind her. Tonette tried to look in the direction of the officer but only saw Crystal standing there—her face morphing into something familiar and awful.

“What the hell is going on?” Tonette yelled. The distorted face quickly came into focus. It was one she couldn’t forget. Tonette’s blood began to boil and she shouted, “I hate you, you bitch! I fuckin’ hate you!”

The face radiated a beautiful smile, then Shirley Temple curls spiraled to her shoulders.

“I’ma kill you!” Tonette yelled as she continued to struggle against the cop. She turned her head to look at him. He was now faceless.

In one quick motion, Laci bent down next to Tonette with a crack pipe in her hand, moving it closer to her . . . urging her to take that first pull.

An annoying sound rang in Tonette’s ears. She wrestled frantically from side to side, and then sat up, gasping for breath, her heart rate going a mile a minute. She repeatedly blinked her eyes slowly until her surroundings came into focus.
It was all a dream,
she said to herself.
Just a goddamn dream. Shit!

Tonette was so geeked, she quickly rolled a fat blunt and sat cross-legged in her bed, trying to calm down. After a few tokes on the bud, she mellowed, but as she thought about the events that had gone down over the last couple of months, she became pissed again. Not only was her man, Dame, found dead with his dick cut off and his throat slit from one end to the other, her girl Crystal was killed by the police and her other girl, Monique, was wounded as well.

TONETTE HAD BEEN
shocked as hell when the police arrived at her home to deliver the news about Dame, but the conversation quickly turned into an interrogation about her high-profile drug-dealing boyfriend and weapons. This was when she realized they were just fishing for information because Dink was the man, not Dame.

When the police asked to search the apartment for drugs, Tonette didn’t bother to put up a fight. She used her angelic smile and light-gray tear-filled eyes to convince them that she was completely innocent and knew nothing of their accusations. She was merely a young woman grieving the losses of her boyfriend and a chick in her crew.

Dame had another apartment where he kept the real shit, so she knew they wouldn’t find drugs where they lived. They searched the obvious places—under the mattress, in shoe boxes, and even in their VHS tape racks—but what little stash was left, Tonette had already smoked up. In a desperate attempt to find something, the police even picked through Dame’s jackets and sneakers, but they still came up with nothing.

“Um . . . excuse me, officers?” Tonette asked, her eyes tearing to the brim.

“Yes, Ms. Thomas.” They looked at her in anticipation of what she had to say.

“Y’all come in here accusing me of stuff that I don’t know nothing about.”

“We have a report that you gave Ms. Moore the gun she was carrying when she was shot. We were also told that your boyfriend is a high-profile drug dealer.”

Tonette’s nose began to flare. “I don’t care what report you have. I don’t know nothing about no damn gun and my dead
boyfriend ain’t no damn dealer. Y’all really need to check y’all’s sources before y’all start accusing people of shit they don’t know anything about.” She paused for a moment and spoke. “I knew something like this would happen when that bougie chick wanted to be friends with us.”

“What bougie chick?” they asked, repeating her words.

“Laci, but I guess because she don’t live in the hood, y’all won’t even question her about anything. That’s fucked up.” Tonette knew that she was pushing the bar with how she was talking to the officers, but she had to do something to get the attention off her. “You accuse me of having a boyfriend who is a drug dealer and question me about guns, but she’s with the top dog. Do I look like I live the life of a drug dealer’s girl? No. I even let you go through my things, but you’re leaving with the same shit you came here with, and I still got questions.” She looked at both of the officers. “Did you find who murdered my boyfriend, and why did y’all kill Crystal?” The officers looked at one another. “Y’all can’t answer me that, can ya? All I want are answers!”

The officers knew of Tonette’s rep. As a matter of fact, they had been watching the South Bronx Bitches for some time for alleged drug sales and theft. The local police department never had anything on them other than anonymous tips that trickled in, but now after the shooting, it was the best time to investigate them all.

Tonette sat down on her bed with a tear-drenched face and red eyes. “This is just too much right now,” she cried and rocked back and forth in front of them. “Just too much.”

Her innocent look and acting was on point, because the police left not long after her outburst began.

“Thanks for your time, Ms. Thomas,” the officer spoke. “If we have any questions, we’ll be back, so don’t go too far.”

“That’s fine, but when you come back, please make sure you have answers for me. That’s all I’m asking.”

“We’ll see what we can do, Ms. Thomas. Thank you for your time.” They walked out of her apartment and closed the door.

“What you think, man?” one of the officers spoke as they left her apartment building.

“We got this information from an eyewitness, so something isn’t adding up. I’m not touching this one. Let’s turn this over to Clifton. I’m sure he’ll get to the bottom of it.”

“I agree.”

As soon as the officers left her apartment, Tonette’s anger radiated though her body. She was gonna get to the bottom of this bullshit. She really didn’t give a fuck about Dame, because a true hustler wouldn’t have slipped the way he did. His dick head was obviously so busy thinking about getting up in some raggedy-ass pussy that he couldn’t see he was about to get fucked up. “Dumb-ass nigga,” she rationalized, “that’s what the fuck you get.” Tonette got up and trod over to her mirror. “I know whoever that bitch was, she wasn’t fly like me, so fuck her ass too.”

WHAT SHE MOST
wanted to find out was who the fuck told the police that she gave Crystal the gun to deliver in the first place. She had let it rest long enough, and now it was time to find out.

Tonette picked up the receiver of her Minnie Mouse phone and dialed seven digits. After a couple of rings, a voice answered.

“Hello?”

“Hey,” Tonette spoke tiredly into the phone, a ploy to make the person on the other end think she was vulnerable. “Where you been?”

Monique paused before she answered cautiously, “How you doin’?” She ignored Tonette’s question.

“Why don’t you roll through?” Tonette asked, in her most pitiful-sounding voice. She noticed that Monique had ignored her question, so two could play that game, she figured.

“Uh . . . I don’t know.” Because she’d told the police that Tonette gave Crystal the gun, Monique thought it was best to stay away from her.

“Why?”

“With everything that went down, I think we need to lay low for a while.”

“Girl, please!” Tonette spoke, irritated. “You think they still trippin’ off that shit? Them muhfuckas done moved on. They don’t care shit about what happens in the South Bronx.”

“Well . . . I don’t know, Nette. With Crystal gone, it just don’t feel the same.”

“Regardless of what happened, we still the SBBs, baby.” Tonette gave her a pep speech. “We the baddest bitches out here.” She wasn’t going to let this shit die until she put it to rest.

Tonette heard a faint sigh. “Alright, I’ll run through.”

Just for good measure, Tonette called Shaunna, too. “Wassup bitch? What’cha doin?”

“I got yo bitch,” Shaunna laughed. “I ain’t doin’ nothin’. Just waiting for this nigga to come through. I tried to call yo’ ass earlier, you know, see what’s poppin’.”

“Who the hell you got rollin’ through?” Tonette asked. She realized that annoying sound she’d heard earlier while she was sleeping was her phone ringing.

“This dude I met at the club the other night. Shit, you know how I do.”

“Well, I take ‘bitch’ back,” Tonette laughed, “you a ho.”

“Takes one to know one,” Shaunna shot back quickly with laughter.

“Girl, I know you ain’t gonna fuck him with that big-ass stomach of yours.”

“I don’t know what kinda fuckin
you
be doin’, but my stomach ain’t got shit to do with my pussy,” Shaunna joked. “Maybe if he hit it right, he’ll knock this lil’ muthafucka in the head and tell him to get his ass outta there.”

Both girls giggled.

“Well when you done, why don’t you head over this way? Monique rollin’ through too.”

“A’ight, cool. Hang on for a minute.” Shaunna put the phone down and within seconds, Tonette heard a faint male voice. “Hey, I’m about to take care of something, but I’ll be through later.”

“A’ight, cool.” Tonette hung up.

W
EEKS AFTER THE
shooting, Detective Rodney Clifton sat looking at the report of Crystal Moore that he was given by two of his colleagues. It would have been closed as an accidental shooting; however, after questioning the other shooting victim and the alleged suspect, there was more to the case than met the eye.

Rodney Clifton was a thirty-seven-year-old, fifteen-year-veteran of the NYPD. He was a light-skinned black man, tall and slender, with short, sandy-colored hair and freckles. He didn’t look like he was capable of being a cop because of his wimpy appearance, and many underestimated him; but those who encountered him knew differently. Detective Clifton had started out like every other officer, as a rookie on the beat, but his commitment to the streets and uncanny way of getting information quickly moved him up the ranks.

He saw the growing number of hustlers on the streets, but unlike most hotheaded cops, Detective Clifton didn’t go after them immediately. He watched them long enough to see their weaknesses, their strengths, and their habits. He also noticed that they were hustling strictly in the South Bronx so he figured
as long as they stayed in their community, poisoning their own kind, it really didn’t matter.

He didn’t like black folks who tried to come up without working for it.
Niggas always wanna hustle,
he thought. As a cop, he knew that the corner hustlers couldn’t provide anything so he had to go after the big dog, but he also knew that by jumping too hastily, he could fuck up something bigger. As a man, he watched and waited for the right time to make his move.

ON A LATE-NIGHT
stroll through the South Bronx, Detective Clifton had seen a young man who caught his eye. He was a light-skinned fellow, a little rough around the edges, standing about 5 feet 8 inches with weight that was too much for his build. Watching him for a couple of weeks, the detective knew that he hustled dope. He could tell because he was always fresh and had his jewelry game tight. The young man also had a flat-top fade with a blond stripe in the front, so he was easy to spot.