by CJ Hudson
“Y’all got the dough?” Red asked.
“Yep, right here.” One of the men reached into the black duffle bag, but before he got the chance to pull the pistol that was hiding inside of it, his head exploded like a watermelon.
“Shit,” one of the men screamed when he saw his partner’s brain hanging out of the side of his head. The two surviving men took off running. A hail of bullets followed them as they scrambled to get to their vehicle. The man who was the driver took two in the back as he tried to jump in the driver’s seat. The other man dove inside the back of the whip. He didn’t know that his man behind the driver’s seat was shot until he looked up and saw the agony on his face and the blood pouring onto the seat from his back. As fast as he could, he tried to crawl over the seat so he could get away.
Meanwhile, Red, Bobby, and the man they had stationed behind the bleachers, whose name was Ray-Ray, descended upon the car like vultures. By the time the man was able to push his dying partner out of the way in order to execute a getaway, the three killers were upon him. In a matter of seconds, the car resembled Swiss cheese.
Bobby and Red had done their homework and learned that the three dudes they were going to do business with were setting them up. In fact, they had set up the last three crews they were supposed to do business with. They had also learned that they carried a black duffle bag, and when the exchange was supposed to be made, they pulled out guns, wet the crew up like a car wash, and robbed them. Red and Bobby were ready for it.
Chapter 7
When Tammy left work, she was as tired as she had been in a long time. She was also agitated that Nancy wasn’t much help. All she did all day was brag about how their boss entrusted her with overseeing the company picnic. Tammy was glad that she wasn’t asked, but she did wonder why Nancy was given the responsibility. She wasn’t the most organized person in the world. If she didn’t know any better, she would think that Nancy and the boss were screwing around.
She quickly shook it off and started thinking about her mother. She still hadn’t had a chance to tell her that she’d filled out the enrollment application for school. She’d meant to tell her at breakfast, but the incident between her and Hakim had ruined the moment.
After about ten minutes of waiting for the bus, Tammy figured that she had time to run across the street to Arthur Treacher’s and get something to eat. She was so busy at work that she hadn’t had time to eat anything. Taking her chances and running across the street on a red light, Tammy hurriedly dodged the vehicles coming from both directions and made her way into the restaurant. By the time she ordered her food and walked out, the bus was fast approaching the bus stop. “Shit,” she yelled as she started an all-out sprint. The bus’s doors were closing just as she arrived at the steps.
“Wait! Hold up!”
The bus driver rolled her eyes as she opened the door and allowed Tammy to get on. After paying her fare, Tammy ignored the mean-mugging she received from the driver and walked to the back. Not feeling like hearing the lies and uninteresting conversations of the other patrons on the bus, Tammy slapped her headphones on and tuned in to iTunes.
As the soulful sounds of H.E.R. massaged her ears, Tammy drifted to her own world, which consisted of a white picket fence, a husband, two children, and a dog. Although she rarely saw any semblance of this in the real world, Tammy still believed that, outside of the hood, it existed.
She was so lost in her thoughts that she almost missed her stop. Tammy hopped off the bus and walked toward her house at a fast pace. She felt bad about not telling her mother that she had filled out the college application. After all, it was one of her mother’s dreams to see one, if not both, of her children go to college. She had meant to tell her when she got home from Ivory’s house the other night, but it was so late when she got in that her mother was already in a deep sleep.
The closer Tammy got to her house, a strange feeling started to come over her. She almost felt like she was walking into some kind of trap. When Tammy reached her house, she noticed a car in the driveway that she had never seen before. Thinking that it was probably just one of her mom’s friends with a new whip, Tammy didn’t think anything of it. She just shrugged her shoulders and walked up on the porch. Tammy was so tired and worn out that she dropped her keys twice.
After almost dropping them a third time, she finally managed to slide them into the lock. Just as she was about to yell out and alert her mother that she was home, she walked into the house and stopped dead in her tracks.
First, she listened. Then she shook her head vigorously from side to side. Her ears had to be deceiving her. Tammy eased through the living room and stopped short of the kitchen. Her heart pounded as she leaned her head into it. Her eyes almost popped out of her head at what she saw. There her mother was, bent over the kitchen table, getting hit doggie style by a man she had never seen before.
As fast as she could, Tammy ran back out the front door, holding her stomach. She didn’t know or care if her mother heard her slam the door when she left. She just wanted to get as far away from the scene as possible. She made it one block before throwing up all over the concrete. The image of her mother getting her freak on was too much for her to wrap her mind around. After wiping her mouth with the back of her sleeve, Tammy took out her cell phone and called Ivory.
“Hello,” Ivory sleepily answered the phone.
“Girl, wake yo’ ass up! I’m on my way over there, and please roll a blunt, ’cause I just saw some shit that’s got me all fucked up!”
Before Ivory could get any details from her, Tammy had hung up.
* * *
Hakim walked out of Foot Locker with mixed feelings. Although he was happy about Red buying so many shoes, thus ensuring that his commission would be large, he also envied the wealth that enabled Red to do it. Hakim knew that the college route his sister chose would never work for him. He simply couldn’t see himself holding down a regular nine-to-five gig. He liked fast money. The only reason he even got a job in the first place was to keep his mother and sister off his back. He’d always promised himself that, the first chance he got, he was going to enter the dope game. He also knew that if his mother ever found out, she would not hesitate to throw him out of the house. Still, he didn’t care. Hakim was more than willing to live on the streets and hustle if that meant becoming the modern-day Nino Brown.
Hakim walked to the bus stop and plopped down on the bench, shaking his head. He hated the fact that none of them—he, his sister, nor his mother—had a car.
“This some bullshit,” he mumbled to himself. Before he could get too comfortable, a shiny black Dodge Charger pulled up to the bus stop and blew the horn. When the passenger’s side window rolled down, the sounds of Lil Wayne boomed throughout. Hakim squinted to see who was in the car.
“Hakim! What the fuck you doing at a bus stop?”
“Oh, shit, is that my nigga Rick?”
“The one and only! Where the fuck you headed?”
“I’m headed to the house! I just got off of work, and a nigga tired as fuck!”
“Shit, nigga, hop in! I’ll give you a ride to the house!”
It only took Hakim a split second to decide whether to roll with Rick. For right now, this was as close as he could get to being a real baller. He laughed at the thought of his mother, knowing that she would have a fit if she knew that he was riding around with a known drug dealer. Rick wasn’t big time yet, but he was definitely on his way. Right now, he was playing the block and copping product from Red, but he had bigger aspirations.
The minute Hakim’s ass touched the black leather seats, a charge went through his entire body. Goosebumps rose up on his body as he stared at the walnut-grain dashboard and navigation system. A blunt burned in the ashtray as Rick noticed how Hakim was admiring his whip. “You getting it in, huh?”
“I’m eating,” Rick said with a shrug of his shoulders.
“It look like you doing more than eating to me.”
Sensing the e
nvy in his friend’s voice, Rick smiled. From the time they were in junior high school, Rick and Hakim had always had a friendly rivalry. They competed in sports, getting girls, and everything in between. Now that Rick was getting it in the trap, he was a step ahead of Hakim and was savoring the moment.
“What you been up to?” Rick asked.
“Just chilling, wondering what the fuck a nigga gon’ do after I graduate next year. I got a li’l job at Foot Locker, but that’s short money. I’m trying to figure out how to make some long paper.”
Rick picked up the blunt, took a pull, and passed it to Hakim. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out where Hakim was going with his statements. But Rick was selfish. He had no intention of putting Hakim up on the dope game for fear that he might start making more paper than he was.
Seeing that Rick wasn’t going to throw him a lifeline, Hakim reached for one on his own. “You think you can plug a nigga in?”
When Rick didn’t answer, Hakim grabbed the volume knob in the car and turned the music down.
“Yo, nigga, what the hell wrong wit’ you? That cut was the shit.”
“I asked you if you could plug me in,” Hakim said. He strongly suspected that Rick had heard him the first time, but he didn’t want to accuse his buddy of ignoring him.
“Into what? The dope game? I don’t know about that one. I don’t know if you cut out for this hustle.”
Hakim instantly developed an attitude. With his butter light skin turning red and his hazel eyes glaring fire, Hakim turned and looked Rick directly in his face. “What you saying, huh? You think I’m some kind of pussy or something?”
“It ain’t nothing like that. And I definitely don’t mean no disrespect, but this game here is for the treacherous at heart, for the larcenous type of muthafucka, and you just don’t strike me as that type.”
Hakim was pissed. Beneath Rick’s words, what he was really saying was that he thought Hakim was soft. At least, that’s the way Hakim took it. What he didn’t know was that Rick’s reluctance to put him on had nothing to do with him being soft. The truth of the matter was that Rick feared the competition. He was a greedy, selfish individual who wanted to make every dime he could for himself. He was terrified that if he did pass Hakim the hustle torch, Hakim would pass him in the dope game, and he wasn’t trying to take that chance.
“Nigga, listen,” Hakim said, continuing to state his case, “I can be any type of nigga when it comes to getting paper.”
Rick ran his hand across his goatee as if he were in deep thought. “Let me holla at the dude who plugged me in and see what he has to say, a’ight?”
“Yeah, a’ight. Good looking out on that,” Hakim said with a half-smile. From Rick’s body language, Hakim knew that he had less than a snowball’s chance in hell of getting put on by him.
After letting Hakim hit the blunt for the second time, Rick dropped him off at home. As soon as he pulled off, the conversation that had gone on between them about putting Hakim on would pass through him like gas through the ass. He had no intention of putting Hakim on, at least not with his connect. The only way Hakim was going to ever get into the dope game by his hand would be when he was running his own operation. Rick had desires to be the next big thing in the drug industry. His ambitions had him making moves from Cleveland to New York. Unfortunately, the power move that he had researched so hard to set up was against seasoned professionals.
As Hakim hopped out of Rick’s whip, he threw up the peace sign. At that moment, Hakim knew there was little hope that Rick would put him in the game.
Hakim walked through the living room and straight into the kitchen. With his arms outstretched over his head and his eyes closed, he yawned a tired yawn. He’d lived in this house for so long that he didn’t even need his eyes to be open when he walked through certain parts of it. Hakim knew that Rick was probably bullshitting him, but the hustler in him was desperately hoping that he wasn’t being sold a dream.
Hakim was hungry as hell. The blunt he smoked with Rick had given him a severe case of the munchies. He walked toward the refrigerator and made it as far as the table when he suddenly stopped in his tracks. His nose wrinkled up as he sniffed the air twice.
“Ah, hell nah. I know damn well Tammy ain’t been fucking in here!”
Reaching on the side of his hip to retrieve his cell phone, Hakim walked back into the living room. He did a double-take as he saw a strange man leaned back against the couch, asleep. A light snore emitted from his nostrils as Hakim stood there stunned for a minute. Thinking that he was there for Tammy, Hakim’s blood started to boil. The fuck this ancient-ass nigga doing fucking around with my sister?
“Yo, nigga, who the fuck is you?”
The man was so startled that he sat straight up. His face was a mask of confusion as he wondered who the angry young man was who stood before him. Groggily and sleepily, he looked around the house. The last thing that he remembered was Janice telling him that she was going to run to the store right quick and asking him if he wanted something back.
“You betta start coughing up some info! Is yo’ old ass up in here fucking my sister?”
Before the man could answer, Hakim started yelling for Tammy. With his six-foot, 200-pound frame serving as an intimidator, Hakim stared the much smaller man down.
“I’m gonna ask you one more time, and after that, I’m gonna commence cracking yo’ muthafucking head! What the fuck you doing in my house?”
The man was a shade under five nine and was clearly frightened by Hakim’s threat. Much to his delight, Janice came walking through the door.
“Ma, who is this old dude Tammy got lounged up in here? And I think she left him in the house by himself, too, ’cause I don’t think she here.”
“He’s not here for Tammy. He’s here for me.”
“You?”
“Yeah, me,” she said, offended at the way Hakim was looking at her. Janice walked over to the couch and handed the man a pack of Newports. “Sorry it took me so long, Steve, but the line was out the door.”
Hakim just stood there with an amazed look on his face.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Where are my manners? Steve, this is my son, Hakim. Hakim, this is my friend Steve.”
As Steve got up to shake Hakim’s hand, Hakim suddenly remembered the smell that he’d experienced in the kitchen. At that moment, it occurred to him that it had been his mother in the kitchen screwing and not his sister. He immediately got sick at the thought of his mother having sex. Backing up from Steve like he had the plague, Hakim ran up to his room and slammed the door.
* * *
“You are lying! You are fucking lying! I know damn well that you didn’t catch your old-ass mother getting her back blown out,” Ivory yelled.
“Yes, the fuck I did, and that shit was disgusting as hell!”
Ivory doubled over on her couch in laughter. Tears rolled down her face. When she looked up, she saw that Tammy wasn’t smiling. “Please don’t get brand new! You know good and damn well if this shit were the other way around, you wouldn’t let me live it down.”
Tammy started to smile a little. “Yeah, you’re right. But the shit was just so disgusting. I told you that shit made me throw the fuck up!”
“Whatever,” Ivory said, still laughing. “How the fuck you think yo’ ass got here?”
“I know that! That doesn’t mean I want to see that shit, though!”
“Here ya go, homegirl,” Ivory said, passing her an unlit blunt. “You need this shit right here.”
Tammy took the weed-filled cigar paper, grabbed a lighter from the table, and set fire to the tip. After holding it in for a longer period of time than usual, she blew a cloud of thick smoke into the air.
“Girl, does yo’ mom know that you smoke weed yet?”
“Hell no, and I want to keep it that way.”
“Yo’ ass betta. Remember how the fuck she looked at me when that dime bag dropped out of my pocket that time?”
“I remember.
” Tammy then looked at Ivory strangely.
“What the hell you looking at me like that for?”
“Because it just occurred to me that it’s your fault I started smoking this shit in the first damn place.”
“My fault? How the fuck is it my fault?”
“Don’t you remember when we snuck out of the house and went to that party? You were messing around with that nigga Donnie at the time, and he gave us a ride. Y’all was smoking weed on the way there, and because I didn’t want to try it, you said that when we got to the party, you were going to tell everybody in that piece that I was a square.”
“Well, shit, yo’ ass was a square,” Ivory shot back. “But I wasn’t gonna say nothing to nobody. I just said that to scare you into doing it,” Ivory admitted as she took the blunt from Tammy and took a hit.
“Conniving-ass bitch,” Tammy said, shaking her head. Before she could cuss Ivory out for her deceitful ways, her cell phone went off. Looking at the screen, she saw that it was Hakim. She started not to answer it, but something in her gut told her to do so.
“Yeah, what’s up, Hakim?”
“Yo, sis, where you at? You not gonna believe what the fuck I ran up on when I got to the house today.”
Tammy’s mouth almost dropped to the floor. I know damn well that my mother is not being so reckless that she is getting caught by her son. It’s bad enough that I walked in on that shit.
“What happened?” she asked, playing dumb.
“When I got home from work today, some old muthafucka was leaned the fuck back on our couch asleep and shit. At first, I thought that he was some sugar daddy yo’ ass was seeing. But just when I was about to put the heat to his ass, Mama showed up talking about he was there to see her.”
Tammy was speechless. She was still stuck on the fact that Hakim thought the man was there to see her. “Hold up. Did you say that you thought that old-ass dude was there to see me? What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Well, shit, I didn’t know.”
Tammy looked over at Ivory, who had been eavesdropping on the entire conversation. Ivory covered her mouth in a lame attempt to conceal her laughter. “What are you laughing at?”
