Hood (16 page)

Them cowards gone pay dearly for what they did,

I’m focused and I can see shit clearly for what it is!

SACKIE WAS DAMN
good with numbers, but no matter how he added shit up Hood getting knocked and the assassination of Xanbar just didn’t compute. The streets were in a state of turmoil and news of Chaos’s arrest had gone out on the wire as well.

Pulling a fitted cap down on his head, Sackie pushed his hands in the pockets of his hoody and continued his walk down Rockaway Avenue. He’d been working the streets moving vials all night, and even though the sun was up going back to the crib didn’t appeal to him. Because Egypt was up there, and his guilt made it hard for him to be in the same space with her.

Sackie walked on, tossing shit around in his head. Cats were acting flaky, choosing teams, and trying to save their own asses. Lil Jay had abandoned their corner for a minute, but when he came back he walked up on the block with a whole different game plan.

“Xan is out the picture and from now on Dreko is the man. I’m running shit in this sector and now you
my
boy.” He looked at Sackie with beef in his hooded eyes. “Problem?”

Sackie had grinned and shook his head. Lil Jay was walking around like he was blind to the shit that was going down. Dreko had pulled a coup on Xan, and yeah that shit was real smelly. But who was next? Besides Sackie and Lil Jay, every other cat who had sat on Fat Daddy’s death council and heard Xan say Dreko dipped with his product had already been smoked. There was nobody else left who could have verified Dreko’s treachery but them. Even Riff had taken a round. Less than a month had gone by after Chaos’s arrest when Riff was found executed, his body propped up in an abandoned car.

Dreko had killed off anybody else who might tie him to that robbery, and surrounded himself with a whole new crew of come ups. Sackie wasn’t sure why him and Lil Jay had been left standing, but he kept his guard up and his strap on. He wasn’t taking no chances.

And now Lil Jay was beefing in his face.

“I said do you got a problem?”

“Nah,” Sackie told him, dapping his partner with fake love. There was a time when Jay wouldn’t have spoken to Sackie with nothing but adoration, but he was feeling large these days. Real large. Sackie shrugged. He could have stomped Jay’s fragile ass four feet into the ground, but Dreko had left them both alive for a reason so he checked himself. “I ain’t got no problems with you, Lil Jay. It’s all love.”

Late on the night of Xan’s murder Dreko had held a meeting with his new crew up in Baller’s Paradise.

“Xanbar got deaded. His niggas and his old way of doing shit is now deaded too. Anybody got some beef with me driving this train, speak out on that shit right now. Let the most vocal man in here go head-up with my gat and stand up and be heard.”

Nobody had moved.

“Good. Now if this shit is just too juicy for y’all niggas, here’s ya chance to bounce with no problems following you out the door. Get up right now and scat, because this gone be your one and only chance to step outside of my circle, ya dig?”

Again, nobody moved. Nobody wanted to get shot in the back.

“Aiight. Cool. If you still here, then you in it with me and I mean all the way in it. We about to make this shit grand and high post. Ten times bigger than that flimsy operation that small-minded, small-dicked Xanbar was running. Stick with me, my niggas. Ya man Dreko is both a sinner and a winner.”

Zena had never gone head-up against Dreko and she wasn’t about to start now. Ever since he had taken over the Brownsville drug trade six months earlier, he’d been coming by the apartment almost every day, and not because he gave a damn about her or his daughter neither.

“Where’s Egypt?” he demanded one morning entering the apartment with a key. Sackie had changed the locks, but Dreko had taken Zena’s key away from her. She didn’t want no static between them, so she was reluctant to tell her brother about the key or to ask him to make her another one.

Zena was in the kitchen frying bacon and her first thought was of grabbing the pan of meat and hot grease and just throwing it at him.

But if the grease didn’t kill him, he would damn sure kill her.

She nodded toward a closed door off the living room. “I guess she’s back there in the room.”

Dreko reached into his pocket and tossed her a vial, then walked into the bedroom and closed the door behind him.

Zena turned off the frying pan real quick and moved it to a cold eye. She’d gone right back to drugging after having Andreka, and once Egypt moved in and started getting high too, there had been no holding back. They both hit the pipe with mad intensity every chance they got.

The vial of crack seemed to be throbbing in her hand, and she wished Dreko would have passed her at least two. With Egypt around he was being real generous with his product, tearing them off as much as they wanted whenever they wanted it. Zena knew his charity wouldn’t last long so she took advantage of that shit and made sure she smoked as much rock as she could, even if it meant passing out with the pipe in her hand.

But even as she searched the kitchen drawer for a fresh stem Zena’s guilt crept up on her. She’d stayed clean for almost her entire pregnancy and now she was right back in the same predicament. The only difference was that she’d had some real good company ever since Dreko had turned Egypt out on the rock too.

The tragic transformation that her friend was going through was all too familiar to Zena. After all, Dreko had done her almost exactly the same way. First the sweet talk, then the comfort, and then he went in for the kill. Before she knew it, she was dreaming about crack in her sleep and begging him for even more when she was awake.

And that’s just the way Dreko had wanted her. He was even willing to keep passing her off vials while she was pregnant, just as long as she kept doing all the nasty shit he wanted her to do.

That part bothered Zena most of all. Dreko’s heart seemed to be totally cold when it came to their child, and not even the ass-whippings he put on Zena hurt her that bad. Really, a beating was the kind of shit you expected out of a gangsta in these parts, and every now and then a bitch had to take a beat-down just to keep her man feeling like a man. Zena wasn’t mad about that. But a daddy was supposed to love his little girl to death, and Zena had a big problem with the way Dreko seemed to be emotionless when it came to their daughter.

While everybody else always had mad compliments about Andreka’s sweet nature, curly hair, and pretty eyes, her own father could give less than a damn about her, and couldn’t stand being around her at all when she cried or got cranky the way most babies did.

Zena scraped the screen on her stem and sparked it up. The first hit killed all of her anxiety and quieted the misgivings in her head. By the time the vial was empty she was way up there, giddy and free.

Setting the hot pipe on the counter to cool off, Zena gazed down the short hall and eyed the doorway that Dreko had entered. It was quiet in the room and she wondered whether Dreko had the girl in there sucking a pipe, or sucking a piper.

Listening close, she could have sworn she heard moans coming from her bedroom. She knew that motherfucka wasn’t crazy enough to be trying nothing right there in her bed.

Stomping past the couch where her young daughter slept, Zena twisted the knob and pushed the door open wide.

Dreko was in a position she had never seen him in before.

On his hands and knees.

Egypt lay naked on her back in Zena’s bed. Her long, elegant legs were open in a wide
V
as Dreko licked her pussy out with deep hungry strokes. Zena watched as her man’s hands dug into Egypt’s toned thighs, her shapely brown ass quivering on the sheets. She had never seen a black pussy before, and the way Dreko ate that shit out told her it must have tasted good.

Egypt moaned, tossing her head back and forth. Her pubic hair was dark and curly, and her clit looked like a baked bean as Dreko slobbered on it, sucking it between his juicy lips. Egypt’s insides were a pretty pink silk, her cum off-white and thick as it slipped from her folds only to be quickly lapped up by Zena’s man.

Zena pouted, her mind racing. She could smell Egypt’s pussy from where she stood. Dreko had never eaten her out like that. He’d never tasted her at all, which was why it was so hard for her to watch him devouring another chick’s yummy.

Zena made a noise and Dreko turned around. His goatee was wet with cum, his lips glossed and sticky looking.

“C’mere,” he told her, and even though his tone was calm she knew he was dead serious. At the sound of his voice Egypt’s eyes flew open. Zena could tell she was smoked up too as she tried to close her legs and cover her naked titties.

Dreko shook his head. “Uh-uh,” he told Egypt, pushing her back down into Zena’s pillows. Then he motioned to his woman and when she was standing by the bed he nodded his head, urging her on.

“Taste this,” he told her. “This the best pussy I ever tasted, yo. Come get you some.”

The look in his eyes was enough to make Zena do anything he said, even if it meant jumping off a roof. She glanced at Egypt, who shook her head no, and tried to twist from Dreko’s grasp.

“Bitch hold still,” he told her, prying her legs open again. He swiped her pussy with two long fingers, then held them out to Zena. “Taste,” he demanded.

Zena lowered her head and touched her tongue to his fingers. Dreko laughed, then snatched her by the hair and shoved his fingers deep into her mouth. “Taste,” he demanded again, and this time she did.

Egypt’s pussy tasted like nothing Zena had ever known. It wasn’t bad and it wasn’t good. She just didn’t have anything to compare it to.

But minutes later it was no longer just a snack. It was a full course meal.

“Yeah,” Dreko told her as he watched Zena lick Egypt’s pretty brown pussy meat. Zena held her breath at first, refusing to let herself think about what she was doing. Instead of feeling nasty or clammy, Egypt’s pussy was hot and sweet, and the harder Zena licked her knob, the more creamy juice squirted from between her swollen lips.

On the bed, Egypt moaned, trying not to like it. She’d never had the slightest sexual attraction to Zena or to any bitch, but right now her pussy didn’t care if there was a woman down there licking it into a foamy frenzy. She raised her hips off the bed, arching her back to get closer to that probing, licking, and flicking tongue.

“Y’all done partied before?” Dreko asked with a laugh. Egypt twirled her dark fingers in Zena’s hair, and Zena had reached up to fondle Egypt’s full breasts and rigid nipples. Dreko got behind Zena and cupped her small titties, then touched her clit and dragged his fingers along her sopping pussy.

“You don’t get this fuckin wet for me,” he muttered, but Zena never heard him.

Using her thumb and forefinger, she spread Egypt’s lips wide and inserted her tongue as deeply inside her gaping pussy as she could get it. Keeping her tongue stiff, she fucked Egypt with it as Egypt whimpered and ground her hips up to meet her. Pussy juice was flowing like water. From Egypt and from Zena. And when Dreko plunged his hard dick into Zena from behind, her juices were so plentiful that they dripped from his balls.

“Oh shit,” Egypt began to whisper sweetly. Her eyes were squeezed tight and the sheets were in her grip. “I’m about to come. Yes…oh damn, I’m gonna cum.”

Zena licked that pussy out deeper and faster, sucking on the clit with gentle pulls. She was getting that good dick from behind, but what she really wanted to do was rub her pussy on Egypt’s and get her own clit as wet as her lips were. Instead, she slid her hands under Egypt’s curved ass and gulped. If she’d known pussy was this good she would have been licking this shit for years. She inserted one finger into Egypt’s hole and felt her muscles contract as she nutted, grabbing Zena’s hair and moaning from deep in her chest.

To Zena’s surprise, the minute Egypt came Dreko snatched his dick out of her and pushed her aside. He positioned himself over Egypt and plunged into her gaping wet pussy, driving that dick home with long hard strokes until Egypt screamed out another climax and Dreko grunted, plunged, shuddered, withdrew, plunged, and then banged that pussy five times real hard until he spurted too, withdrawing his wet black dick and letting it jerk and spit on Egypt’s flat stomach.

Suddenly Zena felt like the odd chick out in their little threesome.

It wouldn’t be the last time.

I hear that loud talk

I hear that whisperin

I hear that bullshit,

Think I ain’t listenin?

IF LIFE WASN’T
fuckin grand, then Dreko didn’t know what it was.

Time was flying and he was damn sure having fun.

Six months had passed since he took over the Brownsville drug trade, and he’d done more crazy shit than a little bit. Dreko was a shrewd nigga, constantly in schememode, and he commanded loyalty from his team by striking cold fear in their hearts. One by one he cut down any nigga whose complete and total allegiance to his regime was questionable. If he even thought he smelled anything fishy on they lips, he busted one on ’em right where they stood.

Same shit went for them cats in Ocean Hill. It was nothing for Dreko to jump out of a whip and walk up on a nigga and press a barrel to his forehead.
Bak! Bak! Bak!
He cracked plenty of grills and he delivered his heat rounds personally and did that shit in public too. He wanted niggas to know, not to wonder. It had been easy to flip Xan’s men and Chaos’s too, so Dreko knew all it took was one hungry come-up nigga just like him to start eyeballing his own lil slice of the pie and determining that it wasn’t enough. If Dreko could figure out how to grab that whole fuckin pie, so could somebody else. The difference was, he was ten times more ruthless than Xan and them niggas had been and he would stick his metal dick in a nigga’s mouth and blow his brains out the back of his head in public, no questions asked.

Image was a big part of the package in this game, and Dreko made sure his was impeccable. Whips, jewels, a hundred pairs of sneakers, he got all that. He took over twin apartment buildings called Cypress Arms and set up shop inside both. He found a Puerto Rican connect who had ties to some come-up Colombians and cut a sweet new deal for both Brownsville and Ocean Hill that amped up his profits. And in the middle of all this, Dreko also found time to pay a little visit to that mule who had caught a hot one in the neck the night him and Hood pulled that lick too. He actually sat down at the table with dude and his moms, and explained to her why her son wasn’t gone remember shit that happened that night when them DA’s put him up on that witness stand.

“So you see, Miss Barnes,” Dreko said as he rubbed his pistol along the side of her terrified face, “Your son got a role to play when he get in that courthouse, ya dig? You real pretty for an old lady too. I bet he’s gonna make sure don’t nothing happen to you. He a real good son, ain’t he?”

After eating the last two pieces of chicken from Miss Barnes’s stove and calmly strolling out of her house licking his fingers, Dreko was damn sure his boy would be walking free after his court date.

He grinned. That nigga Xanbar had been dead wrong about him. He didn’t roll second behind no fuckin body. Dreko had mad discipline and had proven that shit in a large way. He couldn’t wait to show his boy Hood what kinda empire he had built on his own, with nothing but his metal and his mind. He’d shown the world that he was the number one gangsta on these streets, and he had all of Brownsville under his command to prove it.

Yeah. It was almost time for the Hoodsta to get back out on the streets of Brooklyn so Dreko could show that nigga how his right-hand man had played leap frog with a couple of big-time ballers and landed his ass square on the number one spot.

Time passes quickly when you’re on a mission.

Six months after her father died Egypt was no longer the same tender young girl she had once been. She’d done a lot of dirt in a short period of time and it was beginning to show on her.

For the first month of Hood’s lockdown she had made a couple of visits to see him on Rikers Island. After the first time she didn’t cry anymore, but she did sit across from him wanting a hit and feeling guilty as hell as she tried not to let him peek inside her soul and see how foul and dirty it had become.

“If you need anything just get with Dreko,” Hood told her time and time again. “I stacked my chips real proper, baby, and there’s enough in the safe to see you clear.”

Egypt would nod and lower her head and wonder how hard he would hit her if he knew his best friend was a snake and that she’d already smoked up almost every dime he’d left behind.

She’d stopped going up on visits altogether after a minute because the grime on her soul had started showing on the outside of her too. It was magnified even more each time she ran into Mont’s mother, Marjay, on the streets. They were looking a whole lot alike these days, and when Egypt wasn’t high that thought depressed the hell out of her. What Marjay had done to her son was unforgiveable, and he carried her scars deep in his heart. But what made Egypt any better? Mont loved her too. He would die for her too. And here she was shitting on him the exact same way his mother had. Dumping dirt in his game like the world hadn’t done enough of that already.

But not even the pipe was dirtier than the depraved shit Dreko had been putting her through.

“Hold ya fuckin hair back so I can see what you doing,” he would demand when Egypt tried to fake the funk when she was in bed with Zena. Yeah, Egypt got off when Zena licked
her
down there, but she felt absolutely no attraction to her friend’s clammy pink pussy. The only way she was able to get through the act was by concentrating on the prize waiting for her at the end: that first heavenly cocaine smoke blast that would fill her chest and ignite an explosive orgasm in her mind.

Dreko was sexually sadistic and made her go places that no woman in her right mind would willingly go. But Egypt was beginning to realize that she
wasn’t
in her right mind. She was a crackhead, straight up. No different than Mont’s mother, or a chaser on the avenue who stopped cars and sucked strange dicks for a hit. The only thing different was, she was getting her crack in-house, but even still she had to perform for it. She had to do some shit for Dreko that he didn’t want none of his boys to know about.

Like that asshole thing he had going. No real man could even think up the shit Dreko forced her to do. The first time he made her do it she almost couldn’t take it and her skin damn near crawled.

“Show her how I like my back done,” he’d told Zena. He was standing naked and wide legged in Zena’s bedroom. His hand was covered in a thick coat of Vaseline and making squishy noises as he slid it up and down his shaft, pumping his erect dick.

Zena slid behind him and got down on her knees. She placed her small white fingers on his muscular brown ass cheeks, then spread them wide open. Dreko moaned and jerked his dick harder. Egypt almost threw up as Zena stuck her tongue out, stiffening it, then bent her head and inserted her tongue straight up Dreko’s ass, moving her whole head back and forth as she tongue-fucked him in his hole.

Egypt had gagged and almost thrown up in her hand.

Dreko groaned and his whole body shuddered.

“Yeah, get deeper baby,” he growled, his head flung back and his hand moving faster. He bent his knees and pushed his ass backward. “Fuck me deeper.”

Zena kept the motion going as Egypt pulled her knees to her chest and hugged herself, beyond disgusted. But moments later Dreko had another demand.

“Let E take your spot,” he instructed Zena. “And you come around in front and suck my dick.”

“I’ll suck your dick!” Egypt blurted, jumping from the bed before Zena could move. She positioned herself between Dreko and the wall, sliding down to her knees in front of him as she reached for his greasy dick.

But he shook his head and held that shit to the side, away from her.

“I don’t want you to suck my dick. I want that bitch back there to suck it. You got a problem taking over her spot?”

Egypt trembled. Her eyes slid over to the dresser where her reward waited. Three vials worth. She looked at Zena, whose reddening face was filled with resignation. Then she looked up at Dreko, whose dark eyes dared her to refuse him.

Egypt crawled behind him, switching place with Zena.

“It’s not that bad,” Zena whispered as Egypt went past.

She swallowed hard, then gripped Dreko’s sweaty ass and parted it the way she’d seen Zena do it. His asshole was puckered wide open and she wanted so bad to stick her whole damn foot up in it. Instead, with one last glance toward the fish scales waiting for her on the dresser, Egypt held her breath and delved inside of him with a stiff tongue, the sweat that was beading on his ass mingling with the tears falling from her eyes.

She plunged deeply inside of him, then eased out. It was worse than anything she had ever imagined. His ass muscles gripped down tightly on her tongue each time she withdrew, like he was squeezing it and trying to suck it back in. Egypt had heard of tossing a damn salad but this was a disgusting oral ass-fuck, which was ten times more depraved.

“Oh shit…” Dreko shrieked, fucking back toward her face. His hole was soft and wet. “Ummmmm, yeah baby. That tongue is so damn good!”

Egypt figured she must have been doing it right because it wasn’t long before Dreko lost his head. He grabbed his own ass cheeks and bent over at the waist and almost knocked her down as he bucked his sweaty behind backward.

“Get up in there,” he yelled. “Get up in that shit!”

And she did. Egypt fucked him until her tongue was sore, and moments later Zena caught his spillage in her mouth as he busted a hard one, gripping his own ass and slobbering as he came.

The fact that she participated in these sexual nightmares disgusted Egypt. She dogged herself half to death in her lucid moments. She hated everything about her life and needed to stay high just to keep from killing herself.

But no matter how bad Egypt felt about what she was doing with Dreko or doing to Lamont, she couldn’t stop smoking. The crack jones was on her and she needed those rocks like she needed water and air.

Sackie had been shocked to find her rolling around in bed with Dreko and his sister. When he found out they were getting high together he was furious and disgusted with both her and Zena. He was the one who stayed in closest contact with Mont, and Egypt had been beyond embarrassed when she broke down and got on her knees and begged Sackie not to bust her out. “What purpose could it serve?” she had asked him. The only thing telling on her would do was weaken Mont and hurt him real bad. How much shit did he think one man could take?

“Sackie said Hood is going to court in about two weeks,” Zena said one morning. “You gone be there for the trial?”

They had been up trading favors with Dreko all night long, and Egypt still had the aftertaste of his sex-slick body coating her tongue. She hunched her shoulders and frowned. “I don’t know. Maybe. He might not even want me there. I ain’t wrote a letter or been on a visit in like five months, Zena. Mont probably so mad he don’t even wanna see me right now.”

“He wants to see you, girl. He loves you. It could be five years and he would still wanna see you.”

Egypt gave her a doubtful look. “I don’t know about all that. What inmate you know ain’t gone be crazy mad after not hearing from his chick in five months? Damn! I can’t even believe it’s been that long! It seems like I was just up there with him yesterday…” She rubbed her nose and sniffed. Mont wouldn’t even recognize her if he walked through the door right now. She’d done a whole lot of crackhead shit while he was gone. She’d hit a desperate phase when Dreko first started withholding vials from her, and one night Egypt found herself feening so hard that she’d gotten in the car with an old white man looking for a trick. She had been out on the street getting blasted for three days straight, and when she realized the white man didn’t wanna fuck her, she was happy to climb in the backseat and let him eat her stank, cheesy pussy until he was satisfied.

It was amazing, even to her, the kind of twisted spin that drugs had put on her life. A life that had once held so much promise. Just thinking about the possibility of Mont finding out had her shook and craving another high.

“Well whatever you do,” Zena told her, “just be on your game if he gets out. Don’t let this pipe fuck up what y’all got.”

Egypt sat back on the bed and crossed her legs. The sheets they had just tumbled in were so filthy it was hard to make out the original color.

“I don’t even know what we got no more, Zena. Maybe all them years we were loving each other were just a kiddie lie. Mont wouldn’t even want me like this, and I know it. I gotta get straight for me and for him too. I can stop smoking, no problem. I just need a little more time.”

Zena looked at her friend with a load of guilt in her heart. She felt so bad about what her and Dreko had done to this girl. Both of them with their greed and their lies…all the unprotected sex and the drugs, the whole disease thing that had never been spoken about…they were killing her.

But no matter how much guilt Zena felt, her denial was far stronger. To confess that she had something so foul crawling through her body was more than she could do for anyone. She just couldn’t admit to that thing she carried in her blood and had passed on to her little girl. She’d taken Andreka back to the hospital to be retested like they told her to, but she’d never gone back to get the results. It just wasn’t something she was ready to claim or even to speak on. Not to Sackie, not to Dreko, not to Egypt…not even to herself.