by Leo Sullivan
“Ya’ll leave ‘em alone! Leave ‘em alone!” she screamed. For
some reason they obeyed her. She helped the white boy up and
brushed off his pants. Someone threw a bottle that whistled past
his head. Punched, drunk and bleeding, he staggered around like
he just went a round with Mike Tyson and miraculously survived.
The woman found his glasses and gave them to him. They had
been stomped on and were badly cracked. Staggering, he placed
them on upside down. He went into his mouth and took out a wet
and bloody twenty dollar bill. “Here, Nina Brown, all I wanted
was a rock,” he whined. Crackheads never cease to amaze me. This
white man risked his life just for a rock, and now he acted like it
was just another day in the death defying life of a rock star. The
lady dug into her bosom, retrieving a matchbox, and gave him a
small rock. His tongue moved around his cheek like it was search-
ing for something, then he spit out a tooth, smiled gleefully
through swollen lips and took off into a trot, only the trot resem-
bled a hobble like he had just been hit by an eighteen wheeler.
I recognized the woman they called Nina Brown. The other
cats were checking me out now, especially them youngsters. I
played it off and called Nina Brown’s name like I knew her all my
life. “Yo Nina! I got eighteen dollars.” I patted my pockets.
“Where can I get a dime bag of weed at?” Actually, I was letting
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niggas know, I ain’t got no money. As Nina entered the store she
shot me a look like she was trying to figure out where she knew
me from. The air conditioning in the old run down place felt cool
on my face. My shirt was sticking to my back. The tile floor
cracked under my feet. I noticed a nice looking pecan woman
with breasts so large they made me smile. She was older than me.
Something about her hair reminded me of a straightening comb,
it shined like the little girls’ hair that I used to see when I was in
grade school. I requested a quart of beer, Olde English 800 and a
pack of Newport cigarettes.
Nina Brown counted her money and watched me. She had a
Bulls cap on her head cocked to the side. Her skin was dark. I
guessed her age to be anywhere between twenty-nine and forty-
nine. As hot as it was, she had on a black jacket with what looked
like a hundred zippers on it. She walked right up to me, smelling
like a small mountain goat. From the look of her weary, blood
cracked eyes, she had been up for days, possibly weeks. She craned
her neck at me, popped her lips, a prologue to speak. For some
strange reason almost all rock stars do this.
“Whoisyou?” she asked, frowning at me. I took a step back
and tried not to smile. Rock stars have this thing they do with
their necks. It’s sort of like a curious rooster.
“They call me L,” I said as I smirked at her.
“How did you know my name?” she asked, placing some
crumbled bills in her worn out jeans.
“Hi, Nina Brown,” the cashier said, passing me my change.
“Hi, Ms. Atkins,” Nina Brown responded politely.
The bell above the door chimed, as a runt of a woman walked
in. She looked to be about 22 years old or so. She wore a hair
weave that looked like she had cut it off of some poor poodle dog,
and red lipstick that would have shamed a clown. The woman
looked like a misfit, which is something ver y hard to do in the
ghetto.
She walked right up to Nina and star ted whispering in con-
spiratorial tones. I eavesdropped.
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The girl’s name was Shannon. She was known in the hood as
what is called a Regulator. They are hustlers that can skillfully
break down a cocaine rock to its lowest form if need be, to make
a profit. They hang around junkies religiously, like a vulture that
waits on its dying prey. No matter how much dope you give them
they’ll find a way to go bad. Get them in the back of a police car,
and somebody is going to jail, and it won’t be them.
“Ain’t nobody got none,” Shannon was saying, panic stricken,
like she was going to cry. Nina thought for a minute at whatever
the riddle was.
“Tell them to go around the block, I think I know where we
can find some at.” That’s why Regulators like to hang around rock
stars. In theor y, a rock star was a genius, at least at plotting to get
money and finding a cot in jail. Nina Brown still commanded
authority. You have some rock stars like that. Always a reflection
of their former selves, the last thing an unsuspecting victim should
do is listen to them talk. A real junkie can talk a star ved cat off a
fish truck if that’s what he has to do to get high.
She turned to me. Looked me in the eye with a “man don’t lie
to me” expression.
“You got some dope?” she asked.
“I don’t sell dope.” I lied.
Her experienced eyes were looking at my two hundred dollar
pair of Jordans. She sized me up.
“Look, boy, you either got some dope or you’re the Po-Po.”
Nina Brown was a true street veteran. My shoes gave me away.
Plus, the expression I wore on my face did not help none. Some
junkies are just a ball of fun. I kind of liked Nina Brown from the
start.
I walked out with her on my heels. She was onto my scent like
a camel to water. As soon as I stepped onto the sidewalk, it was
pure pandemonium. The police had people like they called in the
riot control. Vans, cars, dogs. I had the .380 in my pocket. The
one that I took from the police at the motel. Dumb.
“You!”
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A policeman pointed at me. “Get your ass over here!” He was
talking to me. I had no place to run. I was trapped. For some rea-
son, Hope’s face flashed before my eyes and I heard her voice,
you’ll end up dead or in prison
. Nina Brown grabbed the back of my
pants and snatched me back in the store.
“Hurry! Give me everything you got, I’ll keep it for you.”
That was the oldest junkie ploy in the world, but very effec-
tive. If I would have deposited all my dope and money to her in
order to be saved from the police, her and her rock star friends
would have had the great smoke out, smoking all my dope and
spending money like it grew on trees.
I passed her the gun. She took one look at it like that was the
last thing in the world she wanted to trick me out of. She tossed
it into the trashcan like it was a hot potato. The police came in the
store, snatched my ass out of line, and lined me up with the other
fellows. I gave him a phony name and address and prayed like hell
that the computer didn’t find anything wrong. Once before I had
done that and the name I gave them came back with a warrant on
it and they took me to jail.
One by one, they locked some up, let some go. When they got
to me, they let me go. The cop poured out my beer, faked like he
w
as going to kick me in the ass. I walked off into the ardent sun
feeling like someone somewhere was praying for me.
Nina Brown followed me like a lost stray dog.
“Well, you ain’t the police, that’s for damn sure.”
I thought I heard her snicker. She saw my fear and somehow
found it humorous how I stumbled around back there. The police
have a way of scaring the shit out of a nigga, especially when you’re
on the run.
She ran to catch up to me. I was trying to distance myself from
the police as quick as possible.
“Here.” She passed me a brown bag. “You owe me big time.”
“Nigga, I know you was servin’, cause I can tell. What you car-
rin a gun fo?” She had to struggle to keep pace with me. Once
again I was thinking, hot as it is this woman got on a jacket. “I
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ain’t stupid.” A police cruiser was headed our way and I was car-
rying this gun in a brown paper bag like a loaf of bread. The police
cruiser slowed. I already made up my mind to r un like hell if they
tried to pull me over.
“Nina Brown! Take your skinny ass home before I lock you
up!” the police bellowed over the loud speaker in the patrol car.
He laughed at her and she threw up the finger at him. The officer
laughed and drove off.
“Asshole! His name is Spitler. I went to school with his punk
ass. We were on the same track and field team. He works in the
Vice Squad now. You got to watch him, he’s dirty.”
We continued to walk. Frenchtown reminded me of the old
days. Some of the houses were set up on bricks, mingled with a
few modern homes. There were a few vacant lots, worn pavements
and dusty roads, like Black folks in poverty trying to survive.
“Look, man, ‘L’, where you from?” The tone of her voice was
agitated.
“Miami.” I lied.
Her bloodshot eyes lit up like Vegas slot machines. Ever ybody
knows that niggas from the bottom are considered as having been
born with a silver coke spoon in their mouths. Like a cocaine cow-
boy.
Now Nina Brown was talking a mile a minute about a cocaine
drought, how there wasn’t no coke nowhere in town and how she
just sold a white boy a piece of soap. “The white boy that was get-
ting his ass whooped back there?” I asked.
“Yep,” she answered somberly nodding her head like one of
them bobblehead dogs that people keep in their car on the dash-
board. I erupted in jubilate laughter. She continued like it was her
sales pitch. “Ever ybody waiting on Stevey D to come back from
Miami, they went to cop some dope. Just let me hold something.”
Just then a blue BMW on dubs pulled up with three people sit-
ting inside, including the girl that Nina was talking to in the store,
Shannon, the Regulator.
“They from Carolina and they want to buy some dope,” Nina
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whispered. I guess these were the dudes they were whispering
about in the store.
“Yo, Nina! Stevey D and them ain’t showed up yet?” the driv-
er asked.
“Wuz up playa?” I said, ducking down talking to the driver.
He gave Nina a look, like who the fuck is this nigga. I continued,
“I’m Stevey D’s people. I’m from Miami.” Nina took one look at
me and caught on. That’s the brilliance of working with a junkie,
they got more game than Toys R’ Us.
“What ya’ll looking for, he got it.” She was the sales represen-
tative. The Regulator was in the back seat squirming around like
she was going to blow up at any minute, seeing Nina Brown steal
her sales commission. I detected trouble from her as she cut her
eyes into slants of optic disdain at us.
“How much you charge for an ounce?” the driver questioned
placing his arm out the window showing off his Rolex. He was
young, barely into his twenties. Light skinned. I could tell he was
a ladies’ man. He had diamonds on his fingers.
“I charge a grand a piece,” I said and looked around like I was
into big things and wasn’t trying to get caught. I continued, “I’ll
give you six ounces for five grand.”
The Regulator in the back seat started nodding her head like
she was going to try to blow the whole thing.
“Is the dope good?” the driver asked.
“I dropped twenty eight ounces in the water, got back twenty
seven.”
Someone in the car droned, “Damn!” in approval.
“You sho this Stevey D dope?” the driver asked. For the first
time I could see the youth in his face.
“Look man, I ain’t got all day. All I got is six O’s left. You want
them or not?” I said like he was starting to get on my ner ves.
“Lemme see.”
“Meet me back here in an hour. The spot is hot.”
He placed the car in gear and looked at his watch. I pointed
my finger at the runt in the back seat. “Shouty, let me holla at you
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for a minute, I got something for ya,” I said digging into my
empty pocket. She got out of the car like it was on fire. Thus went
her allegiance to them Carolina niggas. As the car drove off, my
mind was formulating a plan, mind racing in meticulous thought
how I was going to relieve these busters of their bankrolls. I looked
up to see Nina Brown, and the runt Regulator, watching me like
I was about to perform some great feat, like go into my pocket and
break them off something. I hadn’t been in town a minute, and
here I was plotting like a disbarred member of the For ty Thieves.
The sun suddenly felt hotter on my face, or was it the two pair or
beady eyes staring at me?
“Like, I’ll give ya’ll an ounce to split when I get back,” I said,
not knowing where I was going to get dope from.
“Naw you ain’t!” Nina Brown said with an attitude looking at
the runt making her intentions known. “You gonna give me the
dope and I’ma give her what I think she should have. Them my
customers.”
“Ninaaa!” the runt shrieked indignantly stomping her feet.
Nina balled up her fists. The expression on her face was “take it or
leave it.” The runt had no choice.
I know that if Stevey D and his crew showed up I was as good
as dead. Here I was, breaking the law of the land, at least the ghet-
to’s code of ethics. And believe it or not, the ghetto has one. Never
sell dope on someone else’s turf. Not only was I selling dope on
someone’s tur f, I was using his name. Talk about being on a mis-
sion. I loved doing this kind of shit but to make matters worse, I
didn’t even have any dope.
“Meet me here in forty minutes,” I yelled to Nina Brown as I
took off walking.
The Regulator answered “OK” like I was talking to her.
I remembered seeing a drug store at the corner. I went in and
bought six tubes of Oral Gel, some sandwich bags and some can-
dles. I also bought one of them five-dollar scales. They did not
have any cooking
flour so I found some at the Winn Dixie down
the street from my hotel. By then, twenty minutes had already
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passed. Shit! I was behind schedule.
In the hotel, I mixed up the ingredients. Melted down the
candle wax, carefully blending it with the flour to give it that
cocaine texture and added the Oral Gel that would numb the
mouth, just like cocaine, if someone wanted to taste the dope.
However with a large amount of fake dope like this, there was risk
involved. It was too big to stand a taste test.
Maybe
, I thought. I
knew cats that sold keys of this stuff to the feds for major money.
I liked the fake dope, better known as Dream. It looked good.
Good enough to sell these suckers a Dream.
I changed clothes. Played the part for the occasion. Put on a
pair of jeans, and a Tommy Hilfiger shirt, dug into the mattress
and removed five hundred dollars. I put on the big platinum chain
I took from the cockeyed Suge Knight-looking lame and looked
into the mirror. I felt my heart racing in my chest and heard one
of the voices in my head pleading with me not to do this. I smiled
and called myself a coward and raced out of the door. I was run-
ning late by five minutes.
As soon as I stepped out into the hotel lobby, I was fortunate
a cab was waiting at the entrance. I told the driver to take me to
Frenchtown. He turned up his nose, and was about to complain
until I shoved a hundred dollar bill in his face and told him all he
had to do was drop me off at the gas station and wait for me. If I
was not back in fifteen minutes he could keep the money, but if I
did come back, there would be more where that came from. He
nodded his head like my new partner in crime. Money has a way
of doing that to people.
My palms were sweating, I had the jitters and for a moment I
thought about the dangers of what I was doing. You normally do
this kind of shit on your own turf, so in the event if something
went wrong, you had back up, or at least knew where to run. I was
completely alone. My only back up would be my wits and the
ability to talk fast and stay calm.
The cab driver dropped me off. I believe that old white man
