Introduction To Hard 2 Da Kore (Hard2daKore Book 1) (3 page)

Even though I knew she had to lay in the bed she made. I kinda felt sorry for Roxanne, and feeling sorry for anybody is rare for me. If she didn’t remind me so much of my mother, I probably wouldn’t have even looked her way more or less stopped my car for her. Roxanne used to make a lot of money trickin for Dickey back then. That was until she got hooked on pills and smack. That’s when her life started going downhill. Drugs had her all messed up and she started stealing from him. So Dickey cut her loose.

I heard now all she does is trick from state to state pickin up part time pimps, steady johns and lining the pockets of dealers with her drug habit. I might see her every so often and give her a few bucks so she didn’t have to be out here lookin’ all fucked up like she do right now. “Now look, I’m gonna give you this money, but you gotta get out of here, and don’t come back out here for a while?” I said. “I promise I won’t Po’, I promise.” She said.

I opened my armrest and gave her a few hundred dollar bills. “You lookin fucked up Roxy, here, go clean yourself up.” I told her in disgust. “I know Po’, but you know how it is out here. Ain’t no hope for some of us.” She said sadly. “I’m gettin too old for this shit. Thanks Po’.” She said, and walked away.

As I drove away, I realized that it’s been about thirty years that I’ve known Roxy. That was about the time I started in this game. I was seventeen, and back then it was hard growing up in them slums. My parents worked hard, but we were still poor. I’m talkin’ Po mans poor, and my father constantly reminded us of just how poor we were. When it was time to pay the bills I would always hear him screaming out. “We po’ folk woman can’t you see that?” whenever he and my mother argued over money.

As time went on things only got worse, first my mom lost her job, and when they both lost their jobs, it was out to the streets we went. Selling off all of our furniture and staying with friends and relatives here and there. My father tried his best to keep us together, but when the money and opportunities dried up, he left. So my mother and I were at the mercy of the streets. I still remember that look he had in his eye as he was about to leave out the door for the last time. He turned to us and said, “Hey, I’ll be back in a few” and gave me that usual smirk and wink, but that smirk, didn’t seem like the one he usually did, and his wink seemed more like a long sad blink rather than his usual playful one. We never saw my dad again after he left that day.

A few days later my mother found out that my father had skipped town with another woman he was seeing. My mother was devastated, and not too long after, she started mingling with some of the other women that were in the streets. She would leave me with some of the women who watched all the kids. Every day that went by, and I saw my mom leave. I wondered if I would ever see her again. Even though it was like I had a few mothers, there was nothing like looking into my mom’s eyes and feeling her hugs and kisses. Her friends treated me like I was their own son, all of her friends did. There were plenty of toys to play with and televisions to watch all of our favorite cartoons on.

What I didn’t like was that every time when my mother came home, she seemed a little different than when she left. But the one thing that I was 100% sure of, was that my mother loved me with every ounce of her soul, because she would tell me every chance she got. I never went to school, so I never learned how to do a lot of the basic things like read and write like the normal kids did. While all the other kids sat up in those stuffy classrooms for hours we had Miss Maysie.

She was one of the women who watched us sometimes. She would read stories to us and showed us how to do simple math problems. She taught us about the presidents, about slavery and about just about everthing she could think of. Sometimes she made us repeat after her just like how they would do in a real classroom. To us, Miss Maysie was a teacher. She’d ask some of the older kids who went to school to show us some of the things that they had learned in school as well. It was like we were like a little outcasted community living within a regular community. As the months, days and years crept by, I began to notice all of the drama that went on in the streets more and more. Whatever went on out in the streets, one of the other kid’s parents would talk about it right in front of all of us, and it only made me want to see what was going out there in the streets.

All of the whos whats wheres whens whys and how’s was starting to click inside my head. I wanted answers to questions that I didn’t know how to ask, but was determined, even destined to find out. When I got old enough to venture out on my own, my first plan was to start contributing to my household and make things easier for my mother. I knew that making money would solve a lot of the problems we were having back then. I started hanging with the older kids who shuffled and hustled on the low. They sold anything they got their hands on, or should I say anything that they stole, but all of that changed once I met Owee. Owee sold smack for some of the older heads in the neighborhood. He paid me a few cents to watch his stash as he ventured around the neighborhood making his transactions to fiends. He even sold to the uppity white folks that seemed to need to have the product he sold.

Owee hung out with Paris, Nut Nut and Man Bee, who all did the same thing. They would swap me to each other to watch their backs while they made their moves. From the very start I was fascinated by it all. I was young, but big for my age. I was just as tall as most of the older guys back then, if not taller. I was ready to get my hands on some of that stuff they were selling, and making some of that fast money they were making. When that day finally came, and Owee gave me my first package of some packaged white powder to sell, it was off to the races for me. I was out making money selling $5 bags of smack. I felt like I was on my way to being just as big and just as paid as the rest of those that were making big money. Even though I had to turn all of my money in to Owee after I was done, making my first hustle felt better than anything that I had ever done before.

My first cut off of my first package sold was only about $25, but it felt like a million. I felt I was on my way to getting rich, but deep down I knew that $25 a day was nothing compared to what I could make if I applied myself more. As bad as I wanted to run out and spend it, I knew that wouldn’t be smart because I would be right back broke again. I remembered how much my father would say how much of “Po’ Folk” we was. So in my mind, I convinced myself that no matter how much money I made, I was still a Po’ Boy, and that’s when I became the Po’ Boy, and nothing, and nobody was gonna stop this Po’ Boy from getting rich. As long as I kept reminding myself that I was just a Po’ Boy, and not spend my money stupidly. Getting rich shouldn’t be a problem. After I got my first taste of a few dollars, my next step was to take a bigger bite, and then an even bigger one. I began to run hard and fast and faster and harder than everbody else, and my clientale grew just as fast.

When my crew slept I was making money, and when my crew was making money, I was right out there making money right along with them. Near or far, and sleep became a luxury that I couldn’t afford, so I slept less. I was hardly tired anyway. I had gotten so tired of being poor and hungry, and seeing my mother struggle so hard. I was letting nothing or no one stop me from climbing the ladder of success on these streets. I started out as nobody with nothing, but with all the eager and determination I had. I had positioning myself to be one of the most powerful pushers in the history of downtown Detroit.

After the boys I rode up with introduced me to the dealing game, I became willing to
do
, or how these young boys say these days, I was
down for whatever
to get the job done. I started out as just a runner, but I moved up fast. When I finally got that chance to meet our boss, I was ready to let him know he had a loyal dude right here, and I was ready to prove it. My boss was a guy named Crosstown Dickey, a slick haired, spats wearing, chubby guy. When I first saw him I thought that he was some kind of math teacher or something. He didn’t look like a big time kingpin type of guy. Not to me anyway. Dickey was always on the move. The first time I saw him it was real quick, and all I got was a “hey what’s good lil man” and a fist bump.

Not what I kinda had in mind, but “he’ll see my work soon” that’s what I told myself. He and I got along good in the beginning. He seemed to admire my fearlessness to learn about the game. Dickey was easily running about sixty percent of the city’s heroin back then. He paid me $200 hundred dollars a day to make drug runs, count his money and then double count the money. When I tell you that there was lots of it to count, you can take my word on that.

I found out later that he had a few nightclubs, a stable of hoes and about 5 or 6 gambling joints spread out over town. Dickey was a businessman, not just some big time kingpin who looked like a math teacher. At first I didn’t notice it, but one day it came to me that I never saw Dickey with a right hand man, or someone who followed him around taking orders. He always said “
the right hand could kill you quicker than the left hand could”
so he would just up and disappear whenever he felt like it, and pop up unexpectedly whenever he felt like it. He’d come and collect whatever he wanted and then, he was gone. Like a ghost. He had so many people working for him, but never trusted anyone enough to get close to him, with the exception of me of course.

I liked how smooth Dickey moved. He never announced himself whenever he arrived and never let it be known when he was going to leave. That kept his crew off balanced, and they didn’t know how to come at him. So we all just did as we were told with no questions asked, and everthing worked out fine. Behind the scenes, Dickey’s weakness soon revealed that he loved to drink, gamble, and fuck as many women as he could. After him letting me get in so closely it didn’t take long for me to see that Dickey was gettin’ high, and on his own supply.

I’d hear him in his bedroom and sometimes in his bathroom sniffling real hard and real fast. You know that sound like somebody is sniffing something up their nose? I’d catch him nodding off and then snap back to consciousness like nothing ever happened. He’d say some shit like he was tired from all the time and work he put in, and hey, if that’s what Dickey said, then that’s what it was. No questions asked or you‘d wind up disappearing just as fast as he could sometimes, because well, just because.                                                                                          

Months went by as I grew closer to Dickey. He began taking me everywhere he went, so I got to see a lot. I guess he kinda saw me like that son he never had. I got to stay in some really nice places and saw some real pretty women. I also got to see some of the things that some of the women did to some of the men that they would trick with as well. He had me collect money from them from time to time too. After about a year, he started leaving me in charge of tens and sometimes even hundreds of thousands of dollars while he met with clients and customers. I must have became his first right hand man ever, because I started running everything and everybody when he left, and ran it I did, but a little different from how he ran things. I began enforcing my new powerful role by dishing out brutal beatings to users, would be turf snatchers and anyone who acted like they wanted to get out of line. I needed to show Dickey how loyal I was, with no instructions needed.

I loved the power that he bestilled upon me, so I began to master the art of being a
not-so
subtle threat, to
a so-so
subtle threat. It was about becoming bigger, and expanding our territory. If money was power, then that’s exactly what we wanted, power. We wasn’t concerned about respect, we didn’t care if you didn’t respect us, just don’t
dis
respect us, because then we had a reason to come and see about you. Dickey trusted, took care of me and schooled me well, and in return I made sure that business was handled and money flowing.  My power moves were enough to make me the most feared member of Crosstown Dickey’s crew. Quiet as kept, I was responsible for his organization moving from 60% to 85% of the city’s heroin. Dickey made sure that I was always around, safe and protected. After about 2 years of running things, I became top dog in his organization, and not much longer after that, I grew bold enough to strike out on my own, and that’s exactly what I did.

So now I’m out here on the East Coast. I got a serious crew working for me, I’m rich, running businesses, nice homes and still well connected. So I figured I’d recruit up a couple new jacks out here, and train these young youngstas on how to get money a new way... a different way. How to avoid the police and stay low key, how to basically be invisible, like a ghost; undetected by those unwanted authoritative forces. Like me, the Po’ Boy, an old school hustler with a new school attitude. I came up with some of the best of them, and now it’s time to pass the rock and teach these young cats how to play the game right and get rich.

This drug game thing is not that hard. Some cats just make it hard. I always knew that this money game was much bigger than I was, always has been and always will be, but with all the power moves i‘ve made over the years, it’s real easy to see that this game is not that much bigger than than I thought. Not much bigger than me at all. I thought hard and long as I drove down the New Jersey Turnpike heading over to the projects. I got some new recruits that need a little schooling, but mostly I just want to see what was going on with this housing project that Cee says has some potential to be a gold mine, and some package he said he had for me. Normally I wouldn’t be caught in these streets because I got bigger and better things to do, but I like to take it back here sometimes. It keeps me sharp and aware of the changing times of this game. Sometimes it’s hard to understand what these youngeons are talking about because their slang is different from my time.