Anything for Profit 2: Nothing to Lose

by Floyd, Justin Amen

  “Right. But Who… who are you?”

  “Who I am is not important. What I want is.” The waiter approached the table. Dinero dismissed him with a wave of a hand.

  “Alright, what do you want?”

  “What I want is very simple, Tom. Zulu.”

  “Zu who?”

  “Zulu. The leader of Money by Any Means, and also one of your boss’s biggest political contributors. Tell your boss I want him to set up a meeting with Zulu in a location of my choosing. Once Zulu is out of the picture, the violence will stop. The mayor will look like a hero and will also have gained a new friend. I will be more than willing to partner with your boss and help in any way I can… financially or otherwise.”

  “You’re asking for the Mayor of Greenville to become an accessory to murder!” Tom said in a heated whisper.

  “Listen. This is not up for discussion. I’m telling you that if your boss doesn’t comply with my request then the world will find out how much a 55 year old man likes to force his little pink dick down the throat of 13 year old little girls before cumming all over their faces.” Tom’s face turned beet red with embarrassment. He knew about his boss’s sexual appetite. After all, he was the one who set up these rendezvous. But hearing it spoken about in such vulgar terms almost turned his stomach.

  “Copies of that disc he’s got will be distributed to every news station interested in a nice juicy story.” Dinero got up from the table and adjusted his tie. “Please relay my message. Tell the Mayor he has exactly one week from today to respond. You have the number.” Dinero turned to go.

  “Wait. What assurances do we have that you won’t use that footage anyway?”

  “Look, Tom. It’s very simple. I am a man of business. My business is to make money. I think it benefits all parties if your boss stays in office. But Zulu must go. I need my answer by next week,” Dinero said as he walked away from the table. Two more Mexican men fell in step beside him as he exited the restaurant. Tom Fields was left sitting at the table speechless. He really hated his job.

  CHAPTER 22

  Meka woke up lying in bed next to Ant who was still knocked out, snoring. It was so early in the morning that it was still dark outside the motel room they were staying in. Not long after New Years, Meka had finally been able to convince her brother that staying at their mother’s house while his face was being broadcast all over the news wasn’t just dangerous; it was plain stupid. She mentioned getting out of Greenville altogether, but Ant quickly dismissed the idea. Despite the fact that Glo wasn’t speaking to them, she was still their mother and he wasn’t leaving her alone.

  Once the decision had finally been made to run, Meka had called up one of their uncles. She got him to drive Ant’s Corvette back to his house in Spartanburg while she followed in her pink Range. Once in the Burg, she left her Range at her uncle’s as well and rented a nondescript grey Toyota. Gloria was driving Meka’s Chrysler 300 and they needed a car to get around in that wouldn’t attract any attention. Once she got the car, Meka drove back to Greenville and got her brother. They had been on the run ever since.

  Now, Meka was lying beside her brother in a cheap motel bed staring up at the ceiling. She had just awoken from another nightmare. As usual, it was impossible to go back to sleep. All she did was toss and turn until she finally sat up, frustrated. She grabbed the half a blunt that was in the ashtray beside her on the nightstand and lit it up. No better time than now to take her “medicine,” she thought, inhaling. As the exotic weed smoke began to take affect Meka couldn’t help but to think about her estranged mother. She hadn’t spoken to Gloria since she’d walked in on Ant banging her back out on New Year’s Day. That had been a little over a month ago.

  Damn, the shit had really hit the fan after Glo had walked in on them having sex. Words were exchanged between mother and daughter, as well as blows. That definitely hadn’t been how she had wanted to kick off the New Year. Meka took a deep pull from the blunt and sighed as she exhaled. The weed always calmed her nerves and helped her see shit from a different angle. Despite the hurtful things they’d both said and done, Meka still loved Glo. She was the only mother she had. Amidst the early morning silence and the strong exotic weed smoke, Meka reflected back on the first time she met her mother…

  Growing up, Ant and Meka’s living conditions were never stable. They were always on the move from one relative’s house to another. Begrudgingly, different family members would take them in. But family or not it was always obvious they weren’t wanted wherever they ended up. After all they were two more mouths to feed and food was scarce. Oftentimes, if there were other children in the house the twins would get the scraps of whatever food was left over. As children, they couldn’t understand their situation, they just accepted it. Whenever they were alone though, Meka and Ant often talked. They wondered why they didn’t have parents like their cousins and other normal kids.

  As a child, Meka remembered always seeing pictures of this beautiful brown skinned woman in the many different homes of the family members that had taken her and her brother in. Whenever she asked about the woman she would always be met with silence or mumbled answers. This made her even more curious. She asked even more questions. Nobody answered.

  It wasn’t until a heated argument with one of her cousins over a piece of candy that Meka finally found out the truth. Upset that Meka wouldn’t share her Cry Babys with him, her cousin let the cat out of the bag. The woman in the pictures name was Gloria, she was their mother and she was a crack whore. Her cousin had gotten a severe whooping for telling her that, but it didn’t change the truth. They did have a mother, and she was alive. Later that night, Meka told Ant what she had learned. He pretended not to care, but Meka knew her brother well enough to know that he really did.

  A couple of years passed and young Tameka still hadn’t heard from her mother. She’d given up hope that she ever would and tried to put any thoughts of her to the back of her mind. She was 13 now and she still wanted to know her mama, but there was more important shit to think about. Like survival. In the hood you had to grow up fast.

  On one overcast winter day, Meka was standing on the concourse of Lakeview Middle School. School had just let out. The concourse was noisy as kids ran around, played, talked and laughed energetically as they waited to be picked up and taken home. Music from cars blasted along with the noise of the buses in the driveway. Meka was off to the side kicking it with some of her home girls from Bruton Town as they waited for their bus.

  Meka listened and um hmmed where she was supposed to, but truthfully, her mind was elsewhere. Her twin brother Anthony had just been locked up and ordered to undergo a 30 day psychiatric evaluation at Marshall Pickens for stabbing their Aunt Gladys’ boyfriend Ray Ray to death after he had attempted to rape her. Raymond’s extensive record as a sexual predator and Meka’s Testimony had kept Ant from being sent down the road. But he had stabbed Ray over 40 times so the judge had ordered the evaluation. Meka was only a teenager in the 8th grade, but she was forced to think about shit most kids didn’t have to start thinking about until they were adults. In the hood you had to grow up fast.

  Standing amongst her friends, lost in her own thoughts Meka spotted her. Across from the concourse standing on the grass was the woman from the pictures. She and the woman just stared at one another, both unsure of what to do next. When her friends noticed Meka staring in that direction they looked too. “Who that?” they asked. Meka ignored their inquiries and began walking towards the woman as her friends looked on.

  Once she finally stood in front of her, the woman pulled Meka into a tight hug and burst into tears. She hugged her for what seemed like forever. Meka allowed the contact, but she just kept her hands down by her side. When the woman realized Meka wasn’t hugging her back, she let go. Through tear filled eyes, Gloria stared at the younger version of herself. She didn’t know what to say. As mother and daughter stood so close together they couldn’t have been further apart. Meka broke the silence. “I ha
te you.”

  It was too little, too late. After so many years of not having a mother, Meka and Ant had learned to depend solely on each other. Now here she was popping up 13 years later like somebody was supposed to give a fuck about her. So while one question had finally been answered, it had opened up the door to so many others. Why had their mother just left them like that in the first place? Why hadn’t she come around before? Who was their father? Where was he at? All of these questions and feelings of abandonment were at the source of Meka’s hatred.

  It took some time and a lot of explaining, but eventually Glo got back into her children’s lives. But it would be years before Meka got the answers to all of her questions. It would take even longer for her to truly understand the answers. It wasn’t until she started running the streets herself, that Meka was able to sympathize with the hell her mother had told her she’d been through. It was a cold world…

  Suddenly, a sharp cramp jolted Meka out of her reverie. Out of the blue, she had begun to feel extremely nauseated. She hurriedly tossed the covers aside and slid her legs over the side of the bed. Unsteadily, she got to her feet. She could feel the bile rising in her throat. She put her hand to her mouth and ran for the bathroom, barely making it in time. She spent the next few minutes on her knees with her head bent over the toilet throwing up her guts. It was the third time she’d been sick that week. To make matters worse, she had missed her period. She really hoped it wasn’t what she thought it was. But there was only one way to find out. While Ant was still sleep, Meka got dressed. She went outside, hopped into the rental and drove off.

  An hour later, Meka returned to the motel room and walked in on her brother sniffing a line of coke off of the cheap nightstand beside the bed. He looked up briefly when she entered the room then took another snort. Meka looked at him and shook her head in disgust. Her brother was a cokehead. He was so far gone; he wasn’t even trying to hide it from her anymore. She started to say something, but she had more important shit on her mind. Plus, he wasn’t listening to her anyway so what was the point? She didn’t bother wasting her words.

  Meka walked into the bathroom and closed the door. She pulled out a foiled wrapper. She opened it and pulled her pants down as she sat on the toilet and tried to make herself pee. Finally after a few seconds she felt the stream of urine begin to leave her body. She placed the home pregnancy test under the stream as per the directions. After she finished, she wiped herself and got up, placing the test flat upon the sink counter. She waited anxiously for the results. “Damn, why is this shit taking so long!?” Meka wondered aloud.

  After minutes that had seemed like hours passed, the results were finally in. A single blue line appeared on the stick; positive. Her worst fears were confirmed. Meka kept looking at the blue line as if it would magically change if she stared at it hard enough. She’d had an idea that she might be pregnant, but to actually have it confirmed… Her mind was full of mixed emotions. She sat back down on the toilet and wondered how she was going to break the news to the man who had gotten her pregnant: her brother.

  CHAPTER 23

  Crack. In the late 80’s and early 90’s, the African American community was devastated by this epidemic. Families were torn apart; either through the drug usage itself or from the brutal violence that came along with its sales. Whole cities became wastelands full of zombies and the living dead. Elders became smoked out shells of their former selves, while many black kids died or went to prison over territories they didn’t own. Others became rich seemingly overnight. It wasn’t until many years later, that evidence would emerge to prove that the same government sworn to protect and serve its citizens had sacrificed blacks… for profit.

  In the late 80’s, crack cocaine spread like wildfire through the inner cities of America. U.S. Government officials and agencies such as the C.I.A. helped facilitate this wildfire. It is no longer a secret that the Central Intelligence Agency introduced, financed and distributed drugs on American soil. The profits helped to buy arms and fund covert operations in Nicaragua. These operations were intended to fight off a communist Russia backed regime in that country.

  Nobody knows just how far knowledge of these genocidal tactics extended, but it’s rumored that it reached all the way to the White House. CI.A. chief and future President George H. Bush certainly knew about it. He might not have been in the planes delivering the cocaine himself, but by turning a blind eye and condoning the illicit activity, he is guiltier than the kingpins themselves who are really nothing more than glorified pawns being manipulated on a chess board. Ironically, some of the key figures who would rise to power based upon the “war on drugs” were the same people responsible for getting it into the country to begin with!

  In 2007, due to the stiffer drug sentences that were being handed out and its growing lack of popularity, crack wasn’t booming as it had been in its heyday. Many smart hustlers had diversified their drug portfolios to include everything from heroin to pills and exotic weed. From a street perspective, crack was simply not as lucrative as before. It also involved more risk but it was still one of the quickest flips as far as money was concerned. So as long as you still had crack heads demanding it, there were always going to be niggas supplying it.

  $$$

  On a chilly evening in early February, an older woman drove into Dixie Circle. Dixie Circle was a predominately black, low income neighborhood comprised of single and doublewide trailers. It was located off of White Horse Rd. and sat off in the cut so it was the perfect location for all types of illicit activity. Not all of the residents were drug dealers or users, but since M.B.M. had set up shop, it had become a dangerous place to visit if you weren’t affiliated.

  The woman killed her headlights as she parked in the driveway of one of the trailers in the back. There were a few more cars back there and traffic was steady at the back door. Fiends would emerge from out of the darkness, get whatever drug they were looking for, then melt back into the night.

  A young kid who looked to be no more than 17 approached the car cautiously. “What you lookin’ fo’?” he asked, eyeing the woman suspiciously. After getting his answer, he reached behind him and dug into the crack of his ass and pulled out a small plastic baggy. He handed the woman two rocks and she handed him two bills with President Andrew Jackson’s face on them. The young hustler watched as the woman backed the Chrysler 300 out of the driveway and drove off. “Yo, Bam. Bam!” he hollered out. A light complexioned dude with dreads walked up.

  “Nigga, why the fuck is you callin’ my name out like that for? Goddamn nigga, you had me thinkin’ dem boys was out here or somethin’. Shit, I was finna—“

  “Man guess who just came through here!” the young hustler said excitedly.

  “Nigga, it better had been Keyshia Cole or one of them R&B bitches the way you was just hollering my name,” Bam said half jokingly.

  “Naw, that was Ant D and Meka’s mama!”

  “You bullshittin’.”

  “On everything I love nigga. I just sold that bitch two pieces.” The two members of M.B.M. looked at each other for a moment before smiling. No words were necessary. They were both thinking the same thing.

  $$$

  Glo pulled over to the side of a darkened back road and once again turned off her headlights. She turned on the interior lights and began rummaging through her purse. She pulled out a glass pipe and a piece of a Brillo pad. She stuffed the Brillo into the glass tube to act as a filter, then she took one of the beige pieces of crack and placed it into the tube as well. She went back into her purse and pulled out a red Bic lighter. Glo cut the lights inside of the car and just sat there in the dark, thinking. It had been 9 years, 4 months and 13 days since her last hit.

  As she sat there enveloped in darkness, tears began to run down her cheeks. Her hands were shaking. The silence was interrupted only by the brief flicker of the lighter. She hesitated. 9 years, 4 months and 13 days… Suddenly, the raw images of her children having sex together filled her mind. Her
hands were shaking so badly, the lighter went out. She flicked it to life again. Unsteadily she placed the flame to the bottom of the pipe where the crack was and held it there. The hardened cocaine crackled and popped from the intense heat of the flame and began to dissolve. Her cheeks sunk in and her eyes got big as quarters as she sucked on that glass dick. The glow from the lighter illuminated her face. She looked fiendish as she inhaled the acrid smoke into her lungs.

  CHAPTER 24

  It had been a week since Meka had first discovered that she was pregnant. She still hadn’t told Ant. It wasn’t like she didn’t want to. With them being on the run, their situation was extremely tense and precarious. They were constantly on the move, changing motels and getting different rental cars as they tried to stay as low key as possible. With all of this going on, the time just never seemed right. Plus she just didn’t know how her brother would respond to the news that he was going to be a father. His coke habit was getting worse, and constantly being cooped up in these rooms wasn’t helping. But Meka knew she had to tell him. She had to.