by T J Edwards
I scratched my inner arm where I was accustomed to putting my needle. For some reason, it was itching me like crazy. “Yo, I’m on some no mercy, no remorse type of shit. You niggas need to follow me and listen up closely because for the next three months, we’re going to be bound at the hip. I got love for Veeto and I can’t see him steering me wrong. Each and every last one of you were specifically picked for the type of shit that I got in mind.”
I looked around at the soldiers. They had red rags around their necks. Some of them had them covering half of their faces. The ones whose faces I could see were turned into an angry snarl. They nodded as I spoke. I could feel the presence of killers all around me and I loved it. I was ready to get the show on the road.
Veeto stood up and started to shake it up with the two hit squads of killers. “Yo, I got mad love for each and every last one of you niggas. While you’re at war with the homey, just know that I’m here for you and I got your families. Handle that bitness and stand on that rag. Suuwoo!”
The hit squads began to chant “Suuwoo” as loud as they could until they were jumping up and down in place all geeked up. I could feel the heroin rushing through my veins. I felt amped up, as well. I nodded my head and closed my eyes for a second, visualizing Eve’s face. I missed her so fucking much. And while I was doing my thing, I knew she’d be looking down on me with a mug on her face.
Veeto came over and put his arm around my neck. “Yo, kid, make sure you keep me updated with everything you’re doing. I’ll also need progress reports on my soldiers. If anyone of these niggas ain’t acting right or handling their bitness like they’tr suppose to be, you let me know and I’ll take care of them right away. I’m here for you, son. Make sure you know that what I’m doing is bigger than the money.” He grabbed me and gave me a brief hug.
I shook my head. “If a muthafucka ain’t following my orders, I’ll handle them myself. Ain’t no snitch in me, Blood. I got this. Everybody gon’ have their direct orders ahead of time. That’s the best I can do. Disregard them orders and it’s a wrap. Word is bond.” I shook up with him.
He nodded and ran his tongue across his teeth. “Yeah, a’ight. But don’t be on no lunatic type shit with my niggas, Blood. I know how you and my lil’ niece Eve got down. Y’all love killing for the sport.” He laughed and wiped his nose. “But every last one of these niggas know what they signed up for, so it is what it is. I’ma give you some more information that I found on Wisin and Chulo and everything I got on Wetto so you can annihilate these niggas as soon as possible.”
***
I watched Tori slam another outfit into her suitcase with a mug on her face. She looked over at me and rolled her eyes. “Can you tell me why the fuck I gotta go to stay in a hotel in Jersey? Shut down all of my businesses for, what did you say, three weeks?” she asked.
I stood in the doorway trying to keep my cool, but once again, Tori was testing my patience. I exhaled and flared my nostrils.
“Yo, you doing what the fuck I’m telling you to do because I said so. I can’t have you in the city right now. I’m about to go at this nigga Wetto for what he’s done to us. You already knew I wasn’t about to let that shit slide. And because I love and care about you so much, I need to know that you are safe and sound. That’s just that. Now hurry the fuck up so I can get you across the bridge before midnight.
She shook her head and slammed a pair of pants into her Gucci luggage. “You know I really don’t like the way you talk to me, Showbiz. You be coming at me like I’m one of them project hoes or something. I’ve stood by your ass for a minute now and I’m pregnant with your seed. You gotta start to respect me. I’m suppose to be your Queen. Straight up.” She sighed and opened the door to her closet wider, yanking clothes off of the hangers.
“We about to lose all of this fucking money. Then if there is a war, who’s to say that they won’t burn my shops down to the ground? Wetto is one of those dirty ass Bloods. And every nigga and bitch that follows behind him is just as dirty. I mean I hope you kill his punk ass, but then again, I would be crazy if something happened to you. I mean I love you so fucking much that I hate it.”
She stopped on her path to her luggage and placed a hand on her stomach. She closed her eyes and took five consecutive, deep breaths. Her jaws filled up with air before she blew it out.I pulled her to me and wrapped her into my arms. I could feel her tense up as if she wanted to push me away. I held her a bit tighter.
“Baby, I’m sorry. I have to do a better job with how I be coming at you because you are my Queen and I do respect you. You’re the only one out here holding me down and I honor you for that, so forgive how I be coming at you. You know that old habits die hard. Now far as the businesses go, don’t worry about the losses we’ll take. We have to get rid of this nigga because he is like a plague.
As long as he has breath in his lungs, he’s going to look to cause us a bunch of problems that will effect our income and it’ll keep our safety in jeopardy. I can’t allow that. My first priority is to make sure that you and our unborn child are safe and sound. Then secondly, that we protect our home front and keep our money flowing in by the bundles. As long as this fuck boy is alive, that ain’t no guarantee, so I gotta do what I gotta. When it’s all said and done, we’ll be good. You have my word on that.” I kissed her on the forehead.
“Okay, daddy. Well I’ma follow you and allow you to handle your business. I mean it’s my place to do so. But please be careful and get this over with. Make sure you answer texts because I’m going to be so worried about you all the time.” She wrapped her arms around me and laid the side of her face on my chest. “Daddy, it’s only eight o’clock right now. Can we just chill for a few hours? Maybe order a pizza or something. I just want to spend a little time with you before you enter into this serious war. Is that so wrong?” She looked up at me with her big brown eyes.
For some reason, that question and the way she looked at me caused me to soften a little bit. I understood that Tori really cared about me. I think underneath the surface, she was scared for my well-being. She was, after all, carrying my child and a long way from her home in Gary, Indiana. I was all that she really had out in New York, so if anything happened to me, it would surely change her life for the worst.
I could also see the strangle marks around her neck from where I choked her out. I felt guilty about that. Wish I had never done it. She was such a good woman. I brushed her curly hair out of her face and kissed her lips. “Yeah, ma. We can take a few hours and just chill. Gon’ head and order a pizza and I’ma go and get myself right. I’ll meet you in the front room. I’ma let you pick the movie and everything.”
She shook her head. “I don’t want to watch a movie. I wanna pick your brain. I’ve never gotten the chance to actually sit down and listen to you speak. I have a few questions that I want to ask you, questions that God forbid if anything happened to you and you’re not able to make it back to me, our child would at least like to know these things. And so would I, because you are a mystery and when it comes to me, you shouldn’t be. So I’m going to order a nice Meat Lover’s pizza, get out a carton of orange juice and we’re going to sit on the carpet and talk for a little while. Then you can take me out to Jersey. How does that sound?”
My only response was to laugh and nod my head. The pizza arrived thirty minutes later and we were all set up in the living room ten minutes after that. Tori grabbed a slice and took a big bite out of it. The pizza sauce oozed over her fingers and a big sausage fell on to the box, along with a chunk of ground beef. She took a napkin and dabbed at the corners of her mouth.
“Um, now that’s what you call a pizza.” I nodded for a full minute, then snapped out of it and picked up a slice, biting into it. I was high as a kite. My eyes were low and threatening to close up on me. My veins tingled and I felt numb all over.
I licked my lips and looked over at her. I could see directly down her tank top. Both of her pretty titties looked as if they were glistening. “ Tori,
you so fucking bad. You know that?” I tried to open my eyes some more but it was a heavy task.
She smiled, took another bite, and chewed it, looking into my eyes. We were in the living room with a Jhene Aiko track playing softly out of the speakers. The lights were dimmed. We had a nice white and black tablecloth over the carpet where the box of pizza and Welch’s orange juice was set up along with a nice amount of napkins. Tori wiped her mouth and took a swallow from her glass of juice.
“Okay, daddy. My first question for you is besides a dope boy, what do you want to be in life? Like when you finally decide to leave the game alone?” She bit into her pizza again.
I shrugged my shoulders. “Baby, I don’t really know. Growing up, all I’ve ever wanted to be life was my father. In my opinion, he was a supreme hustler. I remember seeing him at the kitchen table chopping chunks off of kilos of dope. He’d have a pile of crack on one side of the table and on the other, there would be bundles of cash. I used to be mad that I had to go to school because my father told me when I was only five years old that he’d never finished school. But when he told me this, I remember him having two fists full of hundreds.
I’d never understood why a person had to finish school if they could have all of that money, so I never wanted to. I hated school. It made me feel dumb when other kids got something that I didn’t. So, my whole life, all I’ve ever wanted to be like was my father. A dope boy turned King Pin with a bunch of loyal soldiers following behind me.
Tori smiled. “So even now, do you still feel the same way or have you evolved into wanting something greater than the dope game?”
I picked up my pizza again. “I just want to be rich and maybe run a few strip clubs. I haven’t thought past the ghetto spectrum of things. I think maybe once I knock this nigga off, my mind will open up a little bit. But for now, I can’t look that far into the future.
“What made you turn to heroin baby? I don’t think you was doing that shit when Punkin was alive or maybe you were. I didn’t watch you that closely. But what made you start doing this?”
She grabbed my arm and pointed at the prick marks along my inner forearm where I injected myself. I yanked my arm away.
“Damn, ma. What you got me on trial or some shit?” I snapped, looking her over distastefully.
“Baby, I didn’t mean it like that. You know I’m going to be here for you no matter what. I’m just curious is all. I’ve always wanted to ask you that. So please tell me. I need to know.”
I shrugged my shoulders again and sighed. “When I was growing up, that’s all niggas did in Harlem was tooted Percocets and Oxycodones. All of the older niggas snorted that Boy because they had the money to do so, while us teens resorted to stealing pills out of our parent’s medicine cabinets and shit like that. Every now and then, somebody would come up on a little heroin, but it was rare.
Anyway, when I got my money half way decent, I got me about a gram of it and I haven’t looked back since then. I didn’t start shooting this shit until this fuck nigga Wetto bussed this move on me. With the death of Eve, and then me losing Maine, plus ten million dollars in work, it just became way too much. I needed an escape and heroin has been my flight off of this island of pain. I wish I would have never started, but it’s too late to cry over spilled milk.”
I blew air out of my jaws. “Are we done now?” I asked, feeling some type of was. I was starting to feel too vulnerable. I didn’t like that feeling. Especially in a matter of hours, I was about to be on kill mode. I didn’t feel like being in a sappy or depressed mood. Luckily, I was high as fuck and it didn’t really break through any of my emotional walls.
“Not yet. I got a few more questions, but none more important to me than the one I’m going to ask you first. You know, I’ll just ask both and you can answer them in any order that you choose. I need your one hundred percent brutal honesty though. Please, daddy.” She reached and laid her hand on my arm.
“A’ight, I’m giving you two more questions and then this interview is over. So make them your best ones. A’ight?”
She placed her small hand inside of mine and squeezed my fingers. “Okay, daddy. Here it goes.” She took a deep breath. “Did you ever really love my sister? And what made you pursue me and turn me into your woman shortly after she died? I’ve always wanted to know this.”
I shook my head. “To be honest, nah. I never loved her like that. I had love for her, but my nose wasn’t wide open or anything. When I first started hussling, I noticed that all of the real major niggas had a woman at home that kept the house and held shit down on that front. Your sister was fine and a freak like I needed her to be. So I made her my in-house pussy. I don’t know how things progressed past that.
Well maybe after I found out that she was pregnant with Maine, but I don’t know. Me and your sister always butted heads. It didn’t take much for us to get at each other’s throat. With all of that arguing and bickering, it’s real hard to fall into something emotional with a woman, so I never got the chance. Me and her were polar opposites. All we had in common was sex.”
Tori dropped her pizza and wiped her mouth. “Wait a minute, Showbiz, because now you’re getting me a little afraid. You’ve called me your in-house pussy a few times. All you and I do is argue and you’ve never told me you loved me until you found out that I was pregnant with our child. Why shouldn’t I believe that you don’t feel the same way about me that you did her?”
I laughed and pulled at the stray hairs on my chin. “Damn, I guess that does sound a lil’ similar, huh?”
“Yeah, it does, and to be honest with you, it’s freaking me out.” She wiped her hands and stood up. “ I wish I would have never asked you that last question because now I’m feeling some type of way.”
I stood up and blocked her path from leaving the room. The Jhene Aiko track switched to a new song. I wrapped my arms around her lower waist.
“Baby, I have never loved your sister. No matter what we were going through, I’ve never told her that I loved her either. I just can’t lie about something like that. My heart is very cold for the part. There is room for only a selective few in there and you are one of those people. You come right after my mother. I love you because you are an amazing woman.
I can tell that you really care for me. And that you will do all that you can to support me even throughout my struggles. On top of that, you were great to Maine, you saved my life, and you got mad heart. I still can’t believe that you bussed my shit, but I love you for doing it.” I smiled.
“So what made you pursue me? Because you couldn’t have known what type of woman that I was. What made you go out on a limb and go after your son’s mother’s sister? Because that’s not normal. I need to know this because I don’t want to be some pawn in your game of life, Showbiz. Please be honest with me.”
I sighed. “Well, pure attraction was the first thing. I always peeped how fucking fine you were. That you were soft-spoken, maybe even a little shy around me. Even though you saw how destructive your sister and I’s relationship was, that didn’t stop you from making sure that Maine stayed in my life or you from reaching out to me and keeping me in tune with his well-being.
I took that to mean that you had your own mind. That was attractive to me. Then the day you came over and told me that you had to travel by bus and train, I felt sick to my stomach. I couldn’t believe that a female as cold as you had to travel like that. I wanted to upgrade you right away and snatch you off of the market. I wanted to make you my in-house pussy. But somewhere along the way, you became a female that I actually love and care for. I mean I can’t explain it, but that’s what it is.”
She was quiet for a short time, then she looked up at me. “I can’t really figure out right now but I love you, Showbiz. I hope that I really have a sincere place in your life because you live in my heart. I know you have to go back out to those streets. So when you go, I need you to know that I love you and I’ll be waiting on you whenever you get home.” She stepped on her tipp
y toes and kissed my lips. “Oh, and if ever I detect that I am nothing more than what my sister was to you, Showbiz, I promise you on my unborn child, I will take you out the game. I mean that.” She smiled, held the side of my face, then walked off and sat back in front of the box of pizza.
I laughed to myself. I ain’t think for one second that she was serious about last part. She was pregnant and had a lot of emotional shit going on with her. I chopped her threats up to hormones and didn’t take them seriously. I’d only met one female killer before in my life and that was Eve. Tori couldn’t possibly have that G-shit in her.
Chapter 9
While I’d been the plug for Wetto, he’d been the plug for his cousin, Kam. Kam was a major nigga on the black side of Harlem. Like us, he was a Blood nigga. I’d never met him face to face. I’d only heard about hit through Wetto. However, part of the information that Veeto had given me in regards to Wetto circled around Kam. He said that if I was looking to knock off and annihilate Wetto, it’d be smart for me to slump his cousin Kam as well, because even though they were on two different parts of Harlem, they ran it as one unit. He’d also heard that Wetto had given Kam half of the dope he’d robbed me for. It was all I needed to hear to get vexed. I made up my mind as soon as he gave me that information that both of them had to die.
Kam owned a furniture store on West One Fifty Third and Seventh Avenue. He was one of those hustlers that was trying to venture out into legit businesses. He had a few establishments all over Harlem and the Bronx. But I was told by Veeto that when it came down to him doing his books, he spent the most time at his furniture store out in Harlem. That’s where I’d able to catch his ass slipping.
