Unlikely Brothers

by John Prendergast

  The uptown niggers would try to cut into what we were doing. Or they’d want us to sell to them. One day they started some shit, and James took the seat off his bike and beat three of them half to death with it. That set off two days of gunfights. First they shot up the back of my mom’s house. Then James went over by their corner with two guns and shot the place to pieces but didn’t hit anybody. Then they tried to kill a friend of ours while he was in his car with his wife, and they put so many bullets all over that car I don’t know how nobody got killed that time. Then James goes over a second time, and from where I was, it sounded like a damned war. Bam-bam-bam-bam-bam-bam-bam! Lots and lots of shooting, and here comes James, running back with this big old smile on his face, yelling, “I fucked them niggers up!”

  The police pretty much left us alone, but that time they came round and were actually pretty nice about it. They explained that there’d been too many complaints, and that if somebody got killed, they were going to lock up the lot of us for murder.

  I loved James, but there were times when he even scared me. Something in him just went off. It became a little bit of a problem in the neighborhood, actually. Niggers used to come to me and say, “Your brother is shooting at us too much,” and I’d have to tell him, “Man, you can’t do that shit.” It was nonstop.

  I’d get drawn in, because he was my little brother. One time, this dude named Money was trying to shoot James. Luckily, Money’s three middle fingers was gone, and he couldn’t get the little stub onto the trigger. I don’t even know why James was beefing with this dude, but I couldn’t have him trying to bust one in my brother. So I got Sabrina’s .357—she loved that gun—and shot it at Money six times. I was on one corner of a side street right off Georgia Avenue, and he was diagonally across on the other. Man, a .357 Magnum is a loud goddamned gun. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! Lit that whole street up. I wasn’t really trying to kill Money; I was just talking to him. I wanted him to know James had a brother, and that we had the power. He left James the fuck alone after that, I can tell you. Somebody shoots a .357 Magnum at you six times from like thirty feet away, you know you’ve been shot at.

  I could never get over that though; I brought him into the life, and all his darkness found a way out.

  JOHN PRENDERGAST

  At some point I had to venture out and speak in public. I had emerged as a socially shy young man, after spending my formative years trying to be invisible. I was therefore petrified of the idea of talking in front of an audience. My first talk was on a panel at a Michigan State University conference, and a very senior academic in the audience tore my argument to shreds. It was humiliating, but it helped prepare me for much worse in later years. My second talk was a speech at a little conference in Chicago. Jean came with me, and she told me afterward I was visibly shaking with nerves, but that I did well and got my points across. I felt such relief, and I started to see the potential for these opportunities to communicate ideas to audiences who really wanted to learn and to do something to help.

  It wasn’t going to be enough, I now knew, for senators and representatives to hear about Africa from people like me on Capitol Hill in D.C.; they were going to have to hear about it from voters. They were going to have to believe that a significant subset of their constituents wanted them to do the right thing for Africa and would hold them to account. So in addition to traveling to Africa and lobbying members of Congress, I also would occasionally do talks around the U.S., to colleges, churches, conferences—whoever would have me. I’m sure I wasn’t very good at it. But then again, I had some pretty compelling material to work with. I’d seen, with my own eyes, the starvation in Ethiopia, the anarchic mayhem in Somalia, the child soldiers in Uganda, the slave raiding in Sudan, and the genocide in Rwanda.

  In 1996, I was invited to be part of a conference at Princeton University. Just after I made my remarks, someone whispered in my ear that Susan Rice was in the audience.

  Susan Rice? She was President Clinton’s White House Senior Director for Africa. I’d just delivered a blistering attack on the Clinton administration for doing nothing during the Rwanda genocide, and for its deadly miscalculations in Somalia. I had just delivered my message directly to America’s top Africa official, and I hadn’t even known it at the time.

  After the conference, I took a cab to the Princeton Amtrak station for the trip back to Washington. I was settling into my seat, hoisting a thick folder of reports onto my lap, when I saw Susan coming down the aisle with my friend Ted “the Emperor” Dagne, an Africa expert on Capitol Hill. The three of us ended up discussing and debating U.S. policy all the way down to D.C. I sensed in Susan a kindred spirit, someone who was totally committed to a better future for the people of Africa. And she was on the inside, working furiously within the system to try and change the policies and attitudes necessary for that better future.

  My more and more frequent travel to and work in Africa came at the expense of the time I could spend with the boys. Michael was nearly twenty by this time, and he was pretty much lost to me by now. James too. But I was still taking their fourteen-year-old brother David out, and occasionally the youngest brother, Tyrell. Mostly I was just sad when I thought about it; I missed Michael and James, but my Africa vocation was calling me with ever increasing intensity.

  13. “All About the Money”

  MICHAEL MATTOCKS

  I was going real wrong. I had the respect, the power, and the money. I was like Wesley Snipes in New Jack City. Cold, man. Cold. I was making $3,000 a day Fridays and Saturdays, and almost that much the other days. A crackhead can’t go a whole day without smoking crack, so sooner or later he’s going to bring me his money. And you’d be surprised at some of the people I was selling to. Sure, some were lowlifes, like this dude named Shitbag. He had a colostomy bag from the time he was fucked up on PCP and thought there was something crawling around inside him. He stuck a stick up his ass and tore himself all apart in there. Shitbag was a good dude. He got a veteran’s check every month—he was probably around fifty years old—and had money, and he came to see me every day. But so did accountants, and dentists, and lawyers. I even had a musician from the Kennedy Center. All of them were black; I didn’t like selling to white people because I didn’t know who was an undercover agent. A lot of these people had money. Like, I mean, money. I’d serve some of these people at the window of their BMWs.

  I’d get an eighth every three days, and I’d make about $3,000 off of that. I was good. Instead of giving people two for twenty, I’d give three. Instead of three for twenty-five, I’d give four. So people would come looking for me. There were days I’d be selling so much drugs I’d actually get scared. We started selling dubs—double the amount in each bag—to reduce the traffic. And damn, it produced more traffic.

  I used to feel like I was on top of the world. I got to be like John Gotti in that neighborhood. It got to where people would come to me with problems that weren’t drug related. I’d lend people money for no interest. I’d give people a few dollars here and there when they were in a spot. I paid my mom’s bills, and I bought clothes for my little brothers and sisters. I got my people to shovel the snow, rake up the leaves, keep the street clean. And there ain’t nobody robbing or grabbing no purses on my blocks. I was the godfather up there, man.

  So I’m looking after James, and my mom, and my other brothers and sisters. I’m looking out for the old lady who lives up the block and the couple with the little kid who lives the other way. I’m looking after my violinist crackhead and my dentist crackhead and all my buddies who are selling for me and watching my back. I’m looking out for the neighborhood, making sure the leaves are raked and the snow is shoveled and the garbage is picked up. I’m even looking out for Shitbag. The one person I wasn’t looking out for was the one person who I should have been putting all my heart into, and that was Nikki. There were times when she’d ask me for money, for something simple. And for no reason at all, I’d get stingy with her. Me, who’d peel off a ten
for any crackhead on the street that needed something to eat. Nikki would ask me for $100 for something simple—some shoes, or a haircut—and I’d say, “What the fuck you want? We got everything!” I had an asshole full of money; I could have bought her the damn world. But I wouldn’t do it, and I still don’t know why.

  Once on her birthday, me and her were supposed to be going out. She was working then with disabled people—hard, hard work—and she’d been looking forward all week to us going out. She’s all dressed up fine, and she’s like, “Michael, you ready?” And I said, “Look here, I got to wait for a guy to bring me $200. You go ahead, and I’ll catch up with y’all.” She went out with her sister, and I never did go meet her. I was cold, man. Ice cold.

  All this time, J.P. would come and pick up my brother David, who was about thirteen, and Tyrell sometimes, and they’d go a bunch of places. When I was at my mom’s, I would duck out when J.P. showed up; I didn’t want him to see me. I didn’t want to be judged. I’d run around the back of the house and up the alley, half expecting J.P. to come find me, but he never did. He’d put David and Tyrell in the car, and off they’d go.

  I used to wonder if J.P. felt guilty about me in those days. I expect he did.

  JOHN PRENDERGAST

  I was already spending precious little time with the boys, but then it suddenly got a whole lot more challenging to steal even a few hours here and there with them.

  My big break came when the U.S. Institute for Peace and my friend there David Smock created in 1996 an unusual fellowship. They wanted to place a peace activist or researcher in a federal government executive branch office that didn’t have the budget for another person. The institute would pay the salary for six months, and it had the clout and connections to get the person placed. There was only one opening, and I got the spot.

  I knew immediately where I wanted to work: alongside Susan Rice. She had me into her office—in the building right next to the White House—for an interview. I admit it; I was a little bit intimidated. The walls and floors there practically vibrate with power. I passed through the security checkpoint, feeling as though I was approaching the summit of Mount Olympus. Finally, my visitor ID hanging around my neck like a cow bell, I found Susan in her office at the National Security Council.

  She fixed me with that same level stare she’d used on the train and began firing questions about Africa at me. What did I think the prospects were for a peace agreement in Zaire? (Possible, but would take a lot deeper involvement in peacemaking.) What did I think of the effectiveness of the United Nations in Africa? (The United Nations is one of the most troubled organizations I’ve ever seen, and yet it is absolutely essential if we are going to solve some of the world’s biggest problems.) What should we do about Somalia? (Start at ground zero and help rebuild a government from the bottom up, involving the people in each region and sidelining the warlords.) Her questions were pointed and detailed and very well informed. She listened intently as I answered, and I could almost see the pistons firing between her ears.

  As we were wrapping up, she said she had one more question: Is the government of Sudan incorrigible?

  A strange tension crackled between us. I knew the “correct” answer. In international diplomacy, conventional wisdom holds that no government is beyond hope. In hard political terms, you have to deal with the government of the day, no matter how heinous, and work to reform it. In the era of the nation-state, governments recognize and work with other governments. That is the reality. But in this case, the Sudanese government had been responsible for nearly 2 million deaths in the south of that country, and it hadn’t yet perpetrated the genocide in Darfur. Despite all that, “incorrigible” might well be a forbidden word among diplomats. Sitting there in the Old Executive Office Building, with the White House right there out the window, I knew what I was supposed to say: Not at all. We can explore a number of avenues of influence, and we can help reform that government or modify its behavior, blah blah blah.

  Instead, I heard myself saying, “Absolutely. The government of Sudan is incorrigible, and it ought to be changed before another million people die. Too deformed to be reformed.”

  Susan nodded. I couldn’t read her face at all. She stood, I stood, we shook hands, and I made my way back out onto Pennsylvania Avenue.

  The White House called that night: I had the job.

  14. “Because I Know You Are Going to Change”

  MICHAEL MATTOCKS

  We weren’t seeing a whole lot of J.P. He was in Africa most of the time, and then he got some big-ass job in government and worked all hours. But he’d show up out of nowhere at my mom’s house from time to time and take David and Tyrell with him. I’d still hide sometimes when he came, so he wouldn’t see me. Other times I’d be out when he came by, and I’d be pissed that I missed him. I didn’t know what I wanted from J.P. I loved the life I was living, but on some secret level I wished for J.P. to reach down and lift me out of it. He was our big brother and our father all rolled in one, and I know he wanted better for me, even if he didn’t say it.

  Aside from J.P., the only real role model I had was Nikki’s father, Cleo. He had what I always wanted; I just didn’t know how to get there. On one level, I wanted the drug-dealing money to build a life and a family. But I think I always knew, on another level, that drug-dealing money wasn’t real money—wasn’t life-building money. It’s flash money, play money, women-and-cars money. It’s not the kind of money you can raise children on. It’s funny how a hundred-dollar bill, earned one way, can do things that the same hundred-dollar bill can’t do if you get it another way. In any case, I didn’t spend a lot of time with Nikki’s father after that first long talk. He didn’t approve of what I was doing, even though he appreciated that I loved his daughter. But I’d see him from time to time, and it meant a lot to me that he was out there, that he was part of my world.

  Me and Nikki got into a big motherfucking argument one day; I can’t even remember what it was about. She jumped in the car and roared off, and I’m like, good, then go. Little while later, her cousin Clock calls me. “Where’s Nikki?” he says.

  “I don’t give a fuck,” I say. Mr. Big Shot. Mr. Tough Guy.

  “You need to find her, Michael,” Clock says. “You need to find her right now.”

  “What she needs to do is find me,” I say. “She’s the one needs to do the apologizing and the crawling.”

  “Michael,” Clock says, and I can hear he’s choking up. “Nikki’s father just got killed. I mean it man. Shot down in the street. You got to find her.”

  I went cold all over. The one person in my life, besides J.P., who had nothing at all to do with the life—who didn’t sell drugs, didn’t take drugs, didn’t profit in any way from the drugs—and he’s the one who catches a bullet? The man I was holding up as the way a black man can live in this world? I couldn’t believe it. Clock said Cleo had been walking home from church—from church!—and stopped at a grocery store for something. Two guys outside were beefing about something, one of them ran up an alley, and when he came back, he had him an AK. Way Clock told it, the dude cut loose from across the street and shot up everybody who happened to be near the guy he wanted to kill. Cleo walked out the store at that moment, caught a bullet in the throat, and died right there.

  I got in my car and started driving around looking for Nikki. All the shooting I’d done, I’d never hit anybody except for the time I put two in my cousin Glen’s leg when he was choking me out. That time I shot that .357 at Boo, all that shooting we did on North Capitol.… I never knew where all those bullets went when they left my gun. The important thing was to shoot, to make that flash and boom and see those other motherfuckers duck and run. But the bullets—I never thought about the bullets before, or where they come down. I remember J.P. telling James and me once that in some African country—Somalia I think—the militia dudes called their bullets “To Whom It May Concern.”

  I was driving past Takoma School, and I spotted someone kneeli
ng in the middle of the playground. It was Nikki. Somebody had already told her about her dad, and she was crying so hard out there, alone, she was about to make herself sick. I took her to her parents’ house, and then I acted like a real asshole; I didn’t go inside with her. I dropped her there, and she went off to the hospital with her sisters. I went back to the street. Then came the funeral, and instead of standing beside Nikki and being a source of strength and help for her, I played Mr. Kingpin. I came in all stiff and proud, with my guys behind me, leaned over the coffin to look inside, sat down for five minutes like everybody was going to kiss my goddamn ring, and then got up and left. Instead of comforting Nikki, I’m back out on the street selling my drugs.

  I don’t know why I acted that way. I was so drunk on the respect I’d earned on those streets that I thought if I wasn’t watching out for my interests out there, I could lose all that. I was like a celebrity in my neighborhood. I loved the respect I got up there. I thought I always had to be on my block in order to maintain control. But I wasn’t taking care of Nikki. I don’t know why she didn’t leave me then. I asked her once, and all she said was: “Because I know you are going to change.”

  JOHN PRENDERGAST

  I draped my brand new White House credential around my neck and passed through the doors of the Old Executive Office Building on my first day of work. I’d hoped to become some anonymous State Department desk officer by the time I was fifty, and here I was working on the White House staff at age thirty-three. I could scarcely believe it. Every night for the first couple months I worked there, my buddy and colleague Shawn McCormick and I would leave the office together late at night, and we’d walk across the front driveway of the White House, twenty feet from the front door. We’d just stop for a minute and stare reverentially at that symbol of so many things. The ever-present guy with the machine gun in his duffel bag, the Secret Service agent, eventually relaxed as he got used to our nightly ritual.