Anything for Profit 2: Nothing to Lose

by Floyd, Justin Amen

  “There’s really no need for you to swear on the lives of your children,” said Zulu. He had been living in Greenville for years, but his accent was still distinctly South Side, Jamaica Queens. There wasn’t a hint of emotion in his voice. Fluent in many languages, he had understood every word the man had just cried out. “And there’s no information that you can provide me that I don’t already have. No… today your worthless body will be used to send a message to your amigos that their presence is no longer welcome.”

  Greenville, like many other southern cities was experiencing a large influx of Mexicans and along with their illegal status came illegal drugs and extremely violent gangs. Many of these immigrants were just poor people who migrated to the U.S. like so many other nationalities had done for hundreds of years, in search of a better life and the fabled ‘American Dream’. Zulu’s own parents had emigrated from Africa with those same hopes.

  He had nothing against people who wanted a better standard of living. But when gangs such as the notorious Mexican Mafia and other Mexican cartels began to blatantly encroach upon his territory? It was like they were spitting in his face. Not only was it extremely disrespectful, but it also affected his bottom line and undermined his authority. So an example had to be made; not only to the Mexicans, but also to the members of his own organization who might have been starting to think shit was sweet. You never knew what went on in the minds of men. But as long as they feared you, they would always think twice before they crossed you. Fear was a currency that one could never have enough of in this business.

  Zulu had assembled the top fifteen members of his organization, M.B.M. (Money by Any Means), for a meeting. If his nephew Twan had still been alive, he’d have been there as well. Unfortunately, if can be a very big two letter word. Zulu still silently mourned the loss of his sister’s only son, who’d been set up and brutally murdered only a few months back. In vengeance, he had ordered the execution of any and everybody who’d had anything to do with his nephew’s death.

  So the broad daylight hit that transpired yesterday had been a well thought-out move of retaliation. Of course, Zulu hadn’t anticipated a pregnant woman being in the truck when he gave the order but… oh well. Fuck her. In war, there was always a little collateral damage. And there were two other names that kept coming up whenever the murder of his nephew was mentioned. He definitely planned on dealing with them as well, but for now, there were more pressing issues that needed to be attended to. Like these fucking Mexican ‘wet backs’ that seemed to be popping up like roaches. It was definitely time to send them a message as well.

  “Aaaaaaaah!!!!” the naked man screamed out again at the top of his lungs. Another piece of his skin had just been slowly peeled from his body with a razor sharp Swedish hunting knife. Blood was everywhere and the muscles on his lower leg were now fully exposed. You could actually see the muscles on his leg move as he tried to free himself. He bucked and struggled wildly to break free of the restraints that kept his body strapped to the cement slab. His efforts were in vain and he only further weakened himself in the process. Zulu laughed. He took great pleasure in the torture of other human beings. It was one of his favorite pastimes. When he purchased this house, he’d had the basement made specifically for that purpose.

  He loved to hear the pathetic cries and pleas of his victims as they begged for mercy. He’d reduced even the toughest of tough guys to nothing more than babbling, crying bitches by the time he was done with them. This man was no different. His screams were piercing, but they fell on deaf ears. Zulu grinned as he continued to skin alive the high ranking member of the Mexican Mafia. The fifteen men he had assembled looked on. Some in disgust, others in complete shock and disbelief at the utter savagery they were witnessing. The screams suddenly stopped. Even after the man was clearly dead from the severe blood he’d lost, Zulu kept peeling away with the hunting knife until the man’s entire muscular system was exposed. Pieces of flesh and blood littered the basement’s cement floor. Zulu let the bloody knife fall to the floor and looked up. What he saw in the eyes of his lieutenants was exactly what he wanted to see: fear; unadulterated fear. He smiled.

  $$$

  Meka came to a screeching halt in front of her mama’s house in Bellmeade. Bellmeade was one of the many hoods that made up the infamous District 25. She hopped out of the Range and ran to the front door. Just as she was getting ready to put her keys in the lock, the door flew open. Standing in the doorway with a chopper (AK-47) resting on his shoulder was her brother. “Goddamn girl, I ain’t know who the fuck you was at first, pullin’ up all crazy like that,” he exclaimed with a slight chuckle.

  “Yeah it’s me, Ant,” she said as she gave her brother a hug and planted a quick kiss on his lips. “Where mama at? You said anything to her?”

  “Naw, I ain’t told her shit. She in the living room watching T.V.,” he responded, sniffing.

  “Ant…” Meka looked into her brother’s eyes. She couldn’t get the words out. She didn’t have to. They’d been through so much together and the fact that they were twins had made their bond so strong that sometimes a look was all that was needed.

  “Mike’s dead ain’t it?” he asked rhetorically. Meka didn’t want to acknowledge the truth with words so she simply nodded her head yes. “Fuck!” Ant exploded. “Fuuuck!” He punched the door repeatedly in frustration and anger. He’d taken many lives, been in countless shootouts and had attended numerous funerals but he had never for a second entertained the possibility of his closest homey getting killed. Despite all the crazy ass shit they had done in the streets. Or maybe because of all the crazy ass shit they’d done and gotten away with, he’d always felt they were invincible…

  Ant and Meka had known Mike since they were thirteen. He was fourteen and living in a group home. He was about to be jumped by some other kids in West Greenville when they had stepped in and helped. They became inseparable. Eventually, he ran away from the group home and moved in with the twins and Glo, who took him in and treated him just like one of her own. Now somebody had to tell Glo that he was gone. Ant was beyond angry. He wanted to kill somebody... preferably that fuck nigga Zulu.

  Glo heard all the noise and commotion and came out of the living and walked into the kitchen. “What’s all that noise in here? What’s going on?” Glo spotted the gun in her son’s hand and the expression on her daughter’s face. “Oh lawd. Somebody wanna tell me what’s going on?” The silence was deafening. “Well?” asked Glo, expectantly with a hand on her hip.

  “Mike’s dead,” Ant spit out.

  “No. No, nooooo!” Gloria half moaned, half screamed as she slumped to the ground crying. “Nooooo!” This was a devastating blow to a woman who had come very close to losing her only daughter just a few months ago to the streets. Now a young boy that she had taken in and fed and loved like her own was gone way too soon. And she didn’t have to know the details to know it was a violent death. Though she often turned a blind eye to her children’s activities, she was far from naive.

  Ant and Meka looked on as their mother just sat on the kitchen’s linoleum floor, sobbing into her hands. Meka came all the way into the kitchen and closed the door behind her, locking it. The twins picked their mother up off the ground and held her as she relieved her grief. “It’s gonna be okay mama,” said Meka, on the verge of tears herself. It wasn’t going to be okay, but she couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  Suddenly there was a loud screeching sound outside as a car came to an abrupt stop. The kitchen windows that faced the road simultaneously imploded with gunfire. “Get down!” Ant yelled at his mama and sister as he ran to the door and unlocked it. He cocked the chopper back, threw the door open and ran outside firing at the assailants that were idling at the curb in a dark blue Crown Victoria. The adrenaline running through his veins along with a couple of grams of coke had Ant not giving a fuck about anything but seeing one of these bitch niggas dead. “Muthafuckaaaaas!” he yelled out as he kept advancing towards the car, firing
.

  Meka got up off the kitchen floor sweating and frantically reached into her Louis Vuitton handbag. Bullets were still flying and Glo yelled at her daughter to get down, but after retrieving her Glock 9mm she ran to the door and also began shooting back at the would be assassins. Ant was still running towards the car, letting off shots from the chopper when he heard one of the passengers scream out in pain. He couldn’t tell who it was, but from the way the car swerved erratically from the curb he assumed he had hit the driver. He stood in the middle of the road and continued to squeeze the trigger until the magazine was empty and the car was gone.

  The whole episode was over in less than a couple of minutes. To most civilians, what had just transpired would seem like a scene from a movie. But for the combatants who were knee deep in the streets, this was the norm. If you lived the type of life where even the most banal disputes were settled over the barrel of a gun, violence had the tendency to pop off at any given moment. And when it did, how you reacted to that violence often determined whether you lived or died. After a while you just said ‘fuck it’ and became accustomed to it.

  Ant stood in the center of the road where the car had been, still holding the AK in his hands. The smell of burnt rubber and cordite was heavy in the air. His chest was heaving from the physical exertion and his heart was racing. “Ant!” Meka screamed out as she ran from the house to where her brother stood. “You alright?”

  “Yeah… I’m straight,” he replied between breaths. “We gotta get mama up outta here though. Shit gettin’ crazy out this bitch.” He sniffed.

  “I know, I know. Who do you think it was? Zulu and them M.B.M niggas?”

  “Shiiit, I can’t even call it Meka. I ain’t even sure.” And he wasn’t. Over the past few years, he and Mike had done so much shit to so many people that right about now, it was impossible to put anything past anyone. “I know one thang though. If muhfuckas plan on killin’ me then they gon’ have to get better shooters than them non-aiming ass niggas!” He broke out into a hysterical fit of laughter at his would be killers’ ineptitude. Meka just looked at her brother like he was crazy.

  After hearing the barrage of gunfire and all of the commotion, people began to cautiously emerge from their houses to see what the hell was going on. The more courageous of them actually came out of their houses while others stood in their doorways and peeked out from behind their curtains and blinds. Neighbors were appalled. Bellmeade was a predominately black, working class neighborhood. They weren’t used to hearing the sound of automatic weapons interrupting their afternoon court shows. They looked wide-eyed at the twins as they stood in the street still holding their guns. Meka noticed, and began pulling her brother by the arm. “Let’s go in the house Ant before one of these nosey ass muh’fuckas call the police.”

  “Fuck y’all lookin’ at?!” Ant yelled out as his sister led him into the house.

  Once inside with the door closed, they noticed Gloria sitting at the kitchen table amongst the ruin, trembling in shock. The windows were shot out, glass was scattered everywhere and there were countless bullet holes in the walls. Christmas decorations littered the floor. Glo looked up at her children through tear filled eyes and said “My God Almighty in Heaven. What’s going on? What’s happened to my babies?” she sobbed. The twins just stood there quietly, as neither one of them had an answer to their mother’s question.

  CHAPTER 7

  “I’m tellin’ y’all, I seen the whole thang go down! The whole goddamn thang! Wit’ my own two eyes!” said Dot as she pointed at her eyes, animatedly. She broke out into her ‘crack head shuffle’. Dot was a fiend who was notorious for two things: her willingness to do absolutely anything for a hit (she had once sucked a dog’s dick for a piece of hard). The other thing she was notorious for was her unbelievably unbelievable stories.

  Dot was tall, sported a Jheri Curl and walked around with a plastic bag full of change that she used to try to buy crack with. A lot of the hustlers showed her love, just because she had been around so long. They saw her as kind of like the hood mascot. Her brown skinned face showed the signs of a hard life and many years of drug abuse. In fact she had taken a blast only seconds before, crouched down behind a dumpster. Though it was a cool December evening, her face was sweating profusely. Her eyes were bulging as she rambled on outside of the Lil’ Cricket gas station on Augusta Road.

  “Some niggas pulled up in front of Ant and nem house and started shootin’ like pow, pow, pow!” Dot made her hand into a gun and imitated the sounds for her audience. “Then… that nigga Ant D came out the fuckin’ house like he was Rambo or some shit!” The crowd that had gathered around Dot broke out laughing at her theatrics as she re-enacted the scene, complete with sound effects and all. “He had a bandana tied around his head and two machine guns with that grenade launcher shit at the bottom! He started bussin’ on them niggas! Boom, boom, BOOM! Them other niggas was shootin’ back, but that nigga Ant kept bussin’ on em, just like Scarface!” As her audience grew, so did her story. “Ok, so then Meka—y’all know Meka his twin right?! She came out the house dressed in all black wit’ a gun in both hands, dodging bullets like she was in… what’s the name of that fuckin’ movie?” She mumbled something to herself. She cocked her head to the side and thought for a second. “Ummm, y’all know what I’m talkin’ ‘bout! The Matrix! She was bussin’ on them niggas and dodgin’ bullets like she was in the Matrix!”

  Dot continued on with her story until somebody interrupted her. “Dot… now how the fuck you seen alla that and yo’ ass been out here suckin’ on that glass dick all damn day?!” asked one woman. The crowd erupted into laughter at the heckler’s comment.

  “What? Oh, y’all thinkin’ just ‘cause Dot gets high that Dot don’t be seein’ shit, Huh? I’m tellin’ y’all muh’fuckas I seen that whole shit wit’ my own two eyes!” she shouted out over the laughs. She pointed at her bulging eyes again for emphasis.

  Suddenly, the thumping bass line from UGK and Outkast’s hit song International Players Anthem was heard pounding from a 2007 pearl white, customized Cadillac DTS trimmed in gold. The Caddy pulled into the gas station sitting high on twenty-six inch chrome rims, wrapped in low profile Pirelli tires. The windows were darkly tinted. The music was so loud that the thick Texas drawl of rap legend Pimp C could be heard outside of the car: “My bitch a choosy lover, never fuck without a rubber/ never in the sheets, like it on top of the cover/ money on the dresser, drive a kompressor/ top notch hoes, get the most not the lesser…”

  As the music continued to vibrate the pavement, the driver’s window rolled down and revealed the face of Devon Simms, better known as Fat Mack. A cloud of fragrant weed smoke drifted into the air. Fat Mack was 6’1, and weighed over three hundred pounds. He was dark skinned, had a lazy eye and would definitely never ever be considered for the cover of GQ. But he didn’t need to be. Despite being cosmetically challenged, Fat Mack had swag, confidence, and enough game to talk the drawers off a nun. He kept a stable full of bad bitches that kept his pockets almost as fat as his rotund stomach. He had his girls charge a hundred an hour to fuck, fifty to suck, and two hundred for anal. Pissing, shitting, or any of that other freak shit was extra.

  Devon had first realized he had the gift, as he liked to call it, when he was still a freshman at Carolina High School. There was a girl in his homeroom class by the name of Africa who after years of being teased; despised her name, her looks, and herself. Africa was a sweet girl with a beautiful heart but she’d been told for so long that she was ugly, that sadly she’d begun to believe it. Devon used to sit in the back of the class with Africa and kick it with her. She was extremely shy and suspicious at first, but after a while, she opened up to him and they became good friends. In fact he might’ve been her only friend. So one day when Devon had asked her to do him a favor, Africa had readily agreed, without even knowing what it was.

  After hearing what Devon wanted her to do, Africa became extremely apprehensive and wanted to refuse. But how
would she look if she said no? Maybe Devon wouldn’t want to be cool with her anymore. Somehow she just couldn’t find the words to deny her only real friend. So later that day, during the lunch period, Africa found herself on her knees in a dirty bathroom stall in the boy’s bathroom with some random teenager’s dick in her mouth. It didn’t take him long to get off, and just when Africa was about to get up, another boy entered the stall with his dick in his hand. Already degraded by doing it once, she figured doing it again wouldn’t be that big of a deal. She closed her eyes and sucked, as tears silently streamed from the corners of her closed lids, down her innocent brown cheeks.

  After the tenth boy had finished, Africa turned around and threw up a stomach full of semen into the toilet. Devon, who was already big for his age had stood at the entrance and made sure he collected ten dollars from every dude that had entered the bathroom. Devon heard Africa throwing her guts up and crying her eyes out in the bathroom. Far from the coldhearted pimp he would later become, young Devon wanted to console his friend. He really felt sorry for her… until he counted the hundred dollars he’d just made in less than an hour.

  Fat Mack turned the music down and acknowledged the crowd with a slight nod of his head. Slowly, he raised his blunt to his lips and took a long pull, making sure everybody caught a glimpse of the huge rock on his pinky finger. All eyes were on him. His every move was calculated to place him at the center of attention. In Fat Mack’s mind, the entire world was a stage and he needed the spotlight on him wherever he went. He had his hoes convinced that they were privileged to be a supporting cast in the movie he was living. Young, naïve, and caught up in the smoke and mirrors of the fast life… they believed him.