Numbers (12 page)

“Roll the next blunt, Ketta. I like the way you lick it,” Jarvis quipped. Numbers laughed.

“Homo, you’ll never know how it feel, Little Dick,” she snapped back.

Jarvis was tipsy to say the least. He was sipping on his second quart, and they were about to light up their third blunt. Every time he got too buzzed, he had the tendency to become a jabber-jaws.

“That’s all right, Numbs told me you suck a good one,” he said, turning the quart up to his lips.

Numbers looked at Jarvis scathingly, wondering why he would put him out there like that.

“I ain’t never sucked Numbers’s or nobody else’s dick,” Waketta lied. She wasn’t surprised Numbers would tell Jarvis, but still she gave Numbers a dirty look.

Waketta knew Rosa-Marie was Numbers’s girl, but she didn’t care. Ever since he took up for her on the roof that time with the dirty cops, they had become very close, and she would do anything for Numbers. He always had her back and made her feel special. She loved him and Numbers felt the same for her. If not for Rosa, Waketta would have been his main chick. She had become just as close to him as Jarvis was.

“You just mad nobody want your big-head ass,” she said, wetting the cigar with her tongue, then wrapping her juicy lips around it. The sucking motion she performed on the blunt was her way of teasing Jarvis, showing him what he would never experience from her.

“Fuck you, ho!” he belted out, although he knew the only one who ever penetrated her sexy, chocolate sweet spot was Numbers.

“So are you gonna pump drugs for Coney?” Jarvis asked, changing the subject, turning his attention away from Waketta.

“I don’t know. I don’t think so, that’s not my thing,” Numbers replied after accepting the blunt Waketta passed his way. “Most likely not.” He leaned back on the bench, taking in the cool night breeze, and exhaled a circular puff of smoke.

“Numbs, you should do it. If I was you, I would. Later for that money is money,” Jarvis proclaimed.

After unsuccessfully attempting to hustle up some cash, Numbers entered his apartment to find his mother crying hysterically, doubled over the dining room table. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her cry. It was Monday afternoon. She was supposed to be at work.

“Mommy, what’s wrong?” Pause. “What’s going on? What are you doing home? Did you lose your job?”

She said nothing.

He walked up and put his arms around her, attempting to console her. She forced her head up from the table but sobbed for several moments more before she could utter two words: “It’s Ta-Ta.”

“What about her? What happened to her? Where is she?” Numbers’s heart raced, his eyes watering. Jenny wiped away the steady stream of tears from her face, her almond eyes bloodshot.

“Ta-Ta might have cancer,” she said, finally able to push the words from her throat.

“What?” Numbers was stunned. All at once, as if someone had turned on a faucet, tears cascaded down Numbers’s face. He wrapped his arms more tightly around his mother and leaned his face on the top of her permed head. She held his arms close to her heart and they cried together for a long while.

“I took Ta-Ta and La-La to their first OB/GYN visit, and the doctor found a lump under her left breast near her lung. They sent us to an oncologist at Brooklyn Hospital to run tests. The doctor said it might be cancer, but they aren’t sure.

“Where are Ta-Ta and La-La, Mommy?” Numbers asked, now sitting in a chair across from his mother.

“They went to the store and then were going upstairs to get their hair braided by Ms. Lindsay’s daughter,” she said.

“Does she know?”

“She knows she has a lump, but she doesn’t know the full extent of what it means. I didn’t want to scare her. I’m going to wait until they do more tests.”

“They’re hoping that it’s benign, but either way they may still have to operate. They have to do a biopsy of the lump, Dupree. They said my benefits may not cover everything they have to do. I will still have to come up with some money.” Her round young face drooped with sadness as she spoke.

“When will they know? How much extra money will we need?” Numbers asked, staring off into space, his mind working. He wanted to kick himself for losing his job.

“The test results won’t be back for a couple of weeks. Don’t worry, Dee, it will be okay,” she said, trying to sound positive. She knew he felt it was his duty to take care of them, and he always did.

That night Numbers lay in his bed, restlessly devising ways to hustle up loot. He would just have to start gambling and hustling every day, all day. Chuck-A-Luck, cards, selling dresses, getting another job, it didn’t matter, he would do whatever he needed to do to get money.

His family needed him. He had no choice.

Numbers needed to get the 411 on Coney, and he knew exactly who to talk to. Big John ran with all the thugs in the hood. He’d been locked down with some of the projects’ most infamous characters, so he had the skinny on most of the official and wannabe thugs.

He told Numbers that Coney wasn’t originally from Fort Greene and that he was transplanted from the Marlboro projects in Coney Island, thus his handle. Coney and his mother and two brothers had moved into the hood after their apartment went up in flames because of a defective space heater or something like that. They lived in a shelter until an apartment became available, and that’s how they ended up here in Fort Greene in building 117 up by Little
Harlem. Coney’s two older brothers were serving fifteen- and twenty-year bids for various robberies.

“Coney’s brothers’ rap sheets got him his juice, that and the fact that he looks like a gorilla,” Big John laughed.

“That nigger ain’t hard, but he act the part. He be walking hunched over bowlegged and shit trying to look muscular and tough.” Big John mimicked the way Coney walked.

“He’s just a flashy dude who keeps young boys round him, manipulating them with a few dollars or by letting them wear his dookie gold chains to do his dirt. That nigger ain’t no killer,” Big John said to Numbers. “But me, myself, I’d whip his ass if he got outta line with me. He know who to fuck with. He a shystie-ass nigger, Numbers, believe me. You know Archie got shot a while back, right?”

Numbers nodded.

“That shit happened over a basketball game. Coney, Gravy, and this big young boy named Slade were playing Archie, Archie’s boy Greg, and a little dribbling motherfucker named Hands for a hundred bucks each. Slade was good, but not nearly as nice as Archie. They about the same height, like six-something, and Hands didn’t shoot good, but he can handle the rock and pass his ass off. Archie was the scorer,” Big John recalled.

“Y’all niggers can’t hold me,” Coney said, walking back behind the foul line after scoring. “What’s that, Gravy? Twenty-eight up? Game’s thirty, right? Come on, college boy, D up,” Coney taunted Archie, bouncing the ball to him to check up.

“Next basket wins,” Gravy called out.

“Son, I be serving scrubs like you for fun, so you know I’ma crack that ass for loot,” Archie lashed back.

Archie handed the ball over to Greg, who was matched up with Coney. Coney was good, but Greg could stop him if he wasn’t intimidated.

“Get up in Coney’s ass!” Big John screamed to Greg.

“Yo! Greg, stop his ass. He can’t do shit with you, don’t let him house you!” Archie yelled at Greg, trying to motivate him too.

“I got ’im,” Greg shouted back.

Coney passed the ball to Slade. “Run it back, big man,” Coney ordered. Slade passed the ball right back to Coney, who was at the foul line. He pivoted left, holding the pill in both hands, waving it over his head in front of Greg, who was in his defensive stand.

“Yeah, boy, I’m about to take that ass to the barhar.” Coney started backing him down into the hole.

Greg tried to hold Coney off with his forearm in his back. Gravy was on Coney’s left side, and Slade on the right. Archie’s squad was playing like a man-to-man zone type D. Coney faked left and spun right, leaving Greg frozen, then drove down the middle about to lay the ball up strong. He had a clear path to the hoop—the ball came off his fingers and it looked like game. Then, out of nowhere, Archie came soaring into the picture, booyah—rejected Coney’s shot. Niggers watching went crazy and Big John could be heard laughing his ass off from the sidelines. Coney was pissed. Hands picked up the loose rock and took it back out above the key. Greg and Archie cleared out the middle.

“It’s over, y’all bitches!” Archie screamed at Coney’s squad.

“I got ya bitch,” Coney said, pushing up on Greg, denying him the ball. He didn’t want Greg to score the winning bucket on him.

Hands was at the key, dribbling between his legs and behind his back. Gravy swiped at the ball, but there was no way in hell he was going to steal it from Hands. Now Archie was on the left wing near the three-point mark. He faked right toward the middle, spun off, and ran down the baseline pointing upward toward the hoop. Hands saw Archie in his peripheral vision and heaved the ball up in the air toward the basket. Now Coney got ups like Kevin Johnson. He went up after the ball, and that was a mistake. Archie
caught it on the way up and flushed it in his face. The crowd went nuts.

Coney was heated, and to add insult to injury, Archie wouldn’t shut the fuck up. He was walking behind Coney, taunting him, steady screaming in his ear. “Yeah, baby, that how you do it! You bitch-ass niggers can’t stop the Arch. Fuck outta here.”

Coney couldn’t take it. He turned around and swung on Archie, catching his jawbone. Archie took it and let off his own blows.

Big John jumped in the middle of the fight, trying to help control it before it got outta hand. Just then the beat cops showed up, causing everyone to scatter.

“I told that nigger Archie to watch his back ’cuz Coney was a sneaky fuck, but he was like, ‘Fuck that nigger,’” Big John said to Numbers.

“So did Coney pay up?” Numbers asked, wondering what happened next.

“Hell no!” Big John answered. “And he wasn’t satisfied stiffing them for the money either. Later that night, Archie was coming out the back of his building. Some little nigger rolled up and busted a cap in his knee. The little nigger said some slick shit like ‘Let me see you dunk that’ or some shit like that. On the real I know it was Suki who put the hot one in Archie. All I’m saying is watch that fool Coney, aiight, Numbers?”

“No doubt,” Numbers replied, satisfied with the 411 he’d received.

The siren from the po-po’s squad car sounded like it was right on their heels as they ran like their asses were on fire the hundred or so yards down the Washington Park Place side of Fort Greene Park toward the PJs. In hindsight, Numbers thought this was the dumbest shit he’d ever done.

The merchant at the deli on Washington Park Place and DeKalb Avenue closed up by himself every Friday and always carried large amounts of cash in his bag to be deposited in the bank the next day—at least that’s what Chap had told him. Chap had turned out to be a two-bit thug and thief who couldn’t be trusted. Desperation has a way of making an otherwise sane man do dumb shit, but Numbers would have to work that out with himself later; right now he
was running for his freedom like Toby in
Roots.
If he could just make it to the projects, he could get lost in one of the buildings. The cops put their squad car in reverse and tried to maneuver through traffic on a one-way street to get at him and Chap. Numbers heard another cop car up ahead. They were about to be trapped.

Numbers was fast, Carl Lewis fast, and tonight he was not going to jail with Chap’s dumb ass. He had made it to the park entrance at Willoughby when he broke away from Chap. He prayed the cops didn’t see him turn in to the park. He didn’t want to split with Chap, but that was his only alternative if he didn’t want to get knocked. After sprinting up Dead Man’s Hill, Numbers hid under some bushes that smelled like dog shit. Blue and red lights were jumping and sirens wailed as he mumbled a small prayer that if Chap got pinched he wouldn’t snitch.

Chap and Numbers weren’t enemies, but they weren’t friends either. For the most part they tolerated each other because they lived in the same building. Chap was twenty-three years old and a little shorter than Numbers at five-ten, but stockier, weighing about 180. His hair was done in corn rows, and he was missing a front tooth, which had been knocked out in a jailhouse brawl. Chap had served time on Rikers Island and carried those jail stints like a badge of honor; he’d been released not even three weeks prior.