Tales from da Hood (21 page)

Antwan was silent for a moment. He just stared out the window in thought. When he finally turned from the window and looked at Rah Rah, he was smiling.

“I think I got an idea, Rah. It might sound like some cowboy shit, but Rah,” Antwan said, his smile now disappearing, “I want this muthafucka so bad that I can taste his bitch ass.”

“I'm feeling you on that, Antwan, but what's up?”

“You know Furquan is married,” Antwan began. “But he's been knocking that ho he wit’ now boots for over a year now. Her cousin
says that the nigga never spends the night. He goes home every night. That means that the nigga gon’ be leaving out of there before the morning.”

“And,” Rah Rah said, picking up on Antwan's idea but still a bit perplexed, “what the fuck does that get us? What we gon’ do? Follow the nigga home then camp out there?”

“Nah, nothin’ like that,” Antwan said. “We just wait until it gets dark, then around eleven or twelve o'clock, we'll drive back around to the complex and pull up next to his car. His parking space is down from his town house. When we get there, pop the trunk, and I'm gonna get the jack out of the trunk. I'm gonna act like I'm bending down to change the tire on his car but I'm gonna loose the lug nuts on both his front tires. When the nigga comes out we gon’ follow him. It'll still be dark out and there shouldn't be too many folks out there on the road. By the time that nigga gets on the parkway, one, maybe both, them tires gon’ fall off. When the nigga gets out the car to see what the fuck happened, all we gotta do is ride by and wet his ass up.”

“Nigga, you talking about a fuckin’ drive by. I'm a muthafuckin’ professional. I don't do that wack-ass California kinda shit,” Rah Rah spat.

“Well, nigga, you ain't got to spray,” Antwan retorted heatedly.

“I do my own work. Just drive.”

“If we gon’ ride, nigga, we rides together. I ain't on no fake shit. I'm down, my nigga, from the womb to the tomb. But you know how I like to rock a nigga to sleep then slump his ass, but if this is how the shit gotta go down, then fuck it! I'm down for whatever.”

AT FOUR
in the morning, Furquan pulled out of his parking space to start his thirty-five-minute drive from his and Shanaynay's spot to his home in South Orange. Furquan hadn't been driving ten minutes
when he noticed a hard shimmy coming from the front of his car. The car began to shimmy even more, forcing Furquan to wrestle with the steering wheel. Before he could slow down, the car fell hard to one side as his right front wheel popped off and the car skidded to the side of the road.

“What the fuck!” Furquan shouted as his car plunked down loudly, cracking the chassis. Furquan put his flashing lights on and stepped out of the car. Seconds afterward a car pulled alongside him.

“Yo, old head, you alright?” a young kid asked.

“Yeah, I'm alright. I think I just—” Furquan was about to tell the kid that he thought he had broke his chassis when the kid suddenly ducked down. Furquan was suddenly looking at the driver of the car. And the driver looked vaguely familiar, like maybe he knew him from off the block. In that instant Furquan noticed that the driver of the car was pointing a gun at him. Furquan turned to run or at least duck back into his car, but the driver in the car fired quickly and the impact of the bullet from his Glock pushed Furquan up against the side of the car.

“What the fuck!” Furquan screamed before four more bullets fired in rapid succession hit him, the last one slamming into his throat and ripping apart his larynx.

Rah Rah punched hard on the accelerator and was thirty or forty yards down the highway before he heard Antwan hollering for him to stop and back up.

“Back up, Rah. Back up for a minute,” Antwan screamed. Rah turned in the seat and looked at him as if he'd lost his mind.

“Back up for what? Nigga, are you fuckin’ crazy?” Rah Rah shouted as he slowed the car down.

“Man, back up,” Antwan said more evenly.

Rah Rah threw the car into reverse and backed down the empty strip of highway. When the car pulled even with Furquan's Benz,
Antwan hopped out, ran over to where Furquan lay slumped against the wheel of his car, bent over Furquan's lifeless body and emptied the clip of his 9mm into Furquan's face. Then he hopped back into the car and Rah Rah pulled off.

“What the fuck was that all about?” Rah Rah asked, exasperated. “The nigga was already dead.”

“That was about my brother,” Antwan replied, staring off into space as they sped down the highway. “That was about my brother.”

DUJUANNA WAS
in the Golden Comb Beauty Salon having her hair French permed when Sherrie, from the Little Brick projects, came though the door.

“Baby, did you hear about Furquan?” Sherrie asked no one in particular, but loud enough for everybody in the salon to hear her.

“Uhn-uh, girl. What Furquan and his fine ass done did now?”

Nette asked, taking the rollers from her tray and starting to curl DuJuanna's hair.

“Girl, that nigga ain't fine no mo. Somebody smoked his ass two days ago down by Shanaynay's house in Metuchen. Perry's got his body. His funeral s'pose to be Friday.”

“Get the fuck outta here. I know that bitch Shanaynay bout to pull her muthafuckin’ weave out worrying bout how the fuck she gon’ pay the rent on that house now. Her stupid ass gonna hafta move back to the projects 'cause that bitch sho can't afford to pay the rent on that fuckin’ town house,” Nette smirked, slapping five with the stylist in the station next to her.

“Somebody said that Furquan was s'pose to have paid for that house cash,” Naderia said, as she rinsed out a customer's hair in the sink.

“Oh,” Nette said, disappointed. Then she suddenly brightened.

“Shit, but if Fu's wife finds out about that house and it's in Fu's name, she gon’ get that shit from Nay's dumb ass.”

DuJuanna heard very little of what any of the girls said after Sherrie said that Furquan had gotten killed. Her stomach was suddenly queasy, and for some reason she was feeling real nervous. When Malik had gotten killed, she had marked his death up to chance. After all, Malik was a deacon in the church. Some muthafucka was probably trying to rob him and Malik must have bucked. But Malik and then Furquan back to back was looking less like a coincidence and more like a pattern. Still, she attempted to reason with herself. She was probably just being silly and paranoid. That shit was almost fifteen years ago. Besides, now everybody but her that was either part of the robbery gone bad was dead.

Then she thought about the little boy she had seen under the quilt with the big, pretty but sad eyes and a quiver ran through her body. How old would he be now, she thought as Nette put the last roller in her hair and pointed her toward the line of dryers along the wall. Shit, fifteen years ago, DuJuanna mused as she set under the dryer and Nette snapped on the hood. Damn, he might be eighteen years old by now, and I don't even know what the fuck he looks like.

Twenty minutes later, Nette tapped DuJuanna and DuJuanna jumped.

“What the fuck's wrong with you?” Nette asked. “Your ass jumped like you been hit by a car.”

“Nothin'. I'm straight,” DuJuanna said, trying to regain her composure. “I'm just tired of Newark and all this killing and kidnapping shit. I'm seriously thinking about moving to New York with my sister.”

DURING
THE NEXT
six months, between some wet work for Big Farook, Antwan and Rah Rah opened a crackhouse in the Seth Boyden projects and looked intermittently for DuJuanna. Nobody seemed to know where she lived in New Jersey. However, those that did know her were in agreement about one thing, the bitch hadn't aged since she was a teenager. She was still fine as hell, her beauty bolstered by her green eyes and a small beauty mark on her chin. She also had an ass like a Budweiser Clydesdale and lips that appeared able to suck a golf ball through a water hose. With such a detailed description, Antwan was sure he'd know her when he saw her. That and the fact that the vision of her was embedded in his head.

DUJUANNA LOOKED
at herself in the full-length mirror behind her bedroom door when her sister Katrina walked past and looked in. Six years older and perhaps thirty pounds heavier than her younger sister, Katrina was a beautiful woman, too. Katrina never regretted moving from Newark to Strivers Row, so when her baby sister had called her up and said she wanted to stay with her for a little while, Katrina welcomed her. And even though the little while had now turned into six months, Katrina cherished every day of them living together. Katrina paused, looking at her for several minutes, and DuJuanna suddenly looked up and smiled.

“What's up, Trina?” DuJuanna asked as she stepped into a hip-hugging micro-miniskirt that matched her black knee-length boots and black, calfskin waist-length North Beach leather jacket.

“Nothin', D. Where you going in your skintight ‘fuck me’ outfit?” Katrina asked, smiling.

“Probably down to the Garage Club,” DuJuanna replied as she took a bottle of White Shoulders perfume and sprayed it liberally over her arms and dabbed a little behind her ears. “Somebody said that Missy Elliot is supposed to be there to celebrate the release of
her new album. The shit is s'pose to be off the hook, girl, so you know I gotta be there.”

DuJuanna took one last glance at her profile in the mirror.

“Just be careful,” her sister warned her. “It's crazy out there. Have fun. Just be careful.”

RAH
RAH
AND ANTWAN
decided to close their dope spot for the rest of the night. Fridays generally were the fastest day of the week. Fiends couldn't seem to get enough. The spot generally did four or five ounces of dope easy, but tonight traffic was slow as hell. It wasn't just 5-0 and the usual jump-outs that had thinned the crowd out. Since Furquan had gotten smoked, homicide had been stopping niggas at random as they came out of the building, trying to shake loose some information from some of the crackheads or dope fiends.

“Yo, Rah, we might as well close this shit down for today,”

Antwan said as he counted a small stack of bills in front of him. “It's eleven o'clock, and this here ain't even fifteen hundred.”

“Bet that,” Rah Rah replied as he walked to the back of the cluttered apartment to give $50 and a few rocks to the crackhead woman who rented the apartment. “When I went downstairs earlier to get something to eat off the truck,” Rah Rah continued as he stepped back into the small living room, “I saw two homicide detectives coming out of two-twelve. Them muthafuckas had me 'noid as shit.”

“All right, let's raise,” Antwan said, tucking the small stack of cheddar into his pants pocket. “What you gon’ do, Rah?”

“I think I'm going over to baby momma's house and catch the Tyson fight tonight on Pay-Per-View. Why? What's up?” Rah Rah asked as he picked up his nine off the table and stuck it in his belt.

“Why don't you let me use the car, man? I don't feel like going
in. I think I want to go over to New York to the Garage. Missy Elliot s'pose to be having a promotional party there for her joint that bout to drop. Anyhow the shit is s'pose to be off the hizzy,” Antwan said.

“Alright,” Rah Rah agreed. “Sounds like you gon’ kick it. Should be a night to remember.”

THE
GARAGE WAS
jam-packed, and as usual, there were as many people outside the club hanging out, slinging E pills, reefer, and coke, as there seemed to be inside partying. Beemers, Benzes, and a few Bentleys were double-parked in front of the club. Most of the owners of the exotic automobiles were sitting in their cars smoking blunts and trying to cruise themselves up on a one-night flava of the night.

Inside, DMX's joint, “What You Want,” boomed from the gigantic speakers. Antwan had been in the club for a little over an hour, dancing off and on with three chickenheads from uptown, when he excused himself and started walking toward the men's room. As he walked past the bar, he heard a girl standing in front of him call out a name that made his heart nearly stop in his chest.

“DuJuanna, you done sweated your fuckin’ hair out,” she said, talking to a girl walking off the dance floor.

As Antwan turned to see who the girl's remark was directed to, he looked into the face that had haunted his dreams and nightmares for the last fifteen years. The face hadn't changed much since he last saw it from beneath the quilt on that fateful night. There were a few laugh lines now and the hair was different, but it was the same bitch—the bitch who had stood over his father and pumped four bullets into him while his mother lay handcuffed and his brother's lifeless body lay in a pool of blood.

“DuJuanna, don't look now, but there is a fine young nigga staring at you, girl. His ass is hypnotized,” the other girl said.

“Bitch, where at?” DuJuanna asked, laughing and turning in the wrong direction.

“Not over there, bitch,” she said, pointing slightly with her head to the left. When DuJuanna turned she was staring at Antwan.

“Damn, he's fine,” DuJuanna whispered, all the while never taking her eyes off the cutie pie standing across the small expanse of floor with his eyes locked on her. DuJuanna smiled at him.

Antwan felt perplexed. In each instance when he had finally caught up with the killers of his family, he was about slumping their asses. Now one of the killers stood across a dance floor smiling at him and he found himself doing everything to contain his rage. He'd waited fifteen years for this, he told himself, fighting to control the anger that was coursing through him.

I got to calm down at least long enough to rock her ass to sleep, Antwan thought, allowing a smile to slowly spread across his face, revealing even, white teeth.

“Girl, 'scuse me,” DuJuanna said as she walked away from her small knot of friends. “I'm gon’ get me some of that,” she whispered over her shoulder, walking toward Antwan.

“What's up, cutie?” DuJuanna asked, smiling.

“Nothin’ really,” Antwan responded.

“You must not come here a lot,” DuJuanna remarked, “because this is the first time I've ever seen you here and I know I would have remembered your fine ass if I had ever seen you before.” Then she flashed a playful smile.