by Leo Sullivan
major. It was like the dope god had shined on a nigga. To this day,
175
L i f e
I still don’t know how my name came up in the echelons of such
esteemed drug lords. I do recall when Trina and I went back to her
cousin to re-up on dope, she introduced him to me. He drilled me
with the one thousand question routine. Mainly he was interested
in knowing how in the hell Trina and I flipped two birds and
made over three hundred G’s and were back wanting twenty more.
I wanted to tell him to ask Trina. She was the one that knew how
to stretch the coke, whipping it and then breaking it down into
dime rocks, but I took the credit and wore it like all thugs do.
Now word spread, young nigga on the come up, and I had their
attention. I was in the minor league, and Willie Falcon wanted to
draft me into the pros. Willie was a Colombian. He was also into
“Boy”–heroin. He had the best heroin known to mankind, China
White. A key went for four hundred G’s. You could step on it thir-
ty times, meaning, you could cut the dope and make thirty keys
off of it. I did not know what the fuck I was into. You really had
to know what you were doing when cutting up the dope, or you
could run the risk of fucking up the product, or worse, killing nig-
gas like roaches.
The morning I came back to the hotel it was thundering and
lightning in a tempestuous storm. The canvas of the sky was black
like smoke billowing. That day it rained so hard, I wondered if
God was mad at the world and he was cr ying, pounding his
mighty fist. The day before, I bought an antique ‘73 conver tible
Caddy, black with red interior. The car was in good condition. I
hadn’t had a chance to buy any shoes for it yet, because the roof
leaked, the air conditioner was broke and some mo’ shit. I pulled
up in the parking lot, sweating like a nigga sitting in the electric
chair. The windows were fogged. I had a shopping bag full of
money lying on the passenger seat. This was perfect weather for
touching a nigga, so after I sur veyed the scene, the only thing I
noticed out of place were a few cars. A real hustler is always going
to know his surroundings. That is if he’s on point. In the shopping
bag I had eighty grand.
Once I entered my room, Trina’s clothes were cluttered every-
176
L i f e
where. She refused to cook or clean. She told me that’s what maids
were for. She and Black Pearl attended school in the mornings,
and the two kleptomaniacs, Tomica and Evette, were still going
about their business of five-finger discounting. For me, that morn-
ing was my quiet time, a time for me to be alone and ruminate on
past events.
I took off my wet clothes, along with my gun, and placed
them on the dresser. Walking over to the table, I fixed myself a
strong drink and lit cigarette. I sat on the bed in only my boxer
shorts and began to count money. In the back of my mind certain
things about Trina were starting to gnaw me raw. Things that a
man cannot escape. I was following her meticulous plan to the let-
ter. In a sense, she was the real mastermind, and we both knew it.
My male ego was killing me. Once again I thought about what she
said when we first met,
to keep the federalies off your ass, they’re only
looking for weight. Ain’t no longevity in the dope game. Stick and
move, get out within a year.
So far what she was saying was tr ue, with her whip game plus
breaking the coke down to its lowest terms, we were making a
killing. I was scheduled to meet with Willie. He was going to front
me a key of Boy thanks to Trina’s persuasion. I did not have a clue
as to how to cut up heroin but Trina did. This was around the
time she seriously started nagging me about retiring. Hell, I just
got started. I hadn’t been in the game a hot month yet, but I knew
what she was talking about. Willie would escalate profits so much;
he was the kind of man who, if you made a few nice moves with
him, you could retire. A year before, they found a shitload of coke
in Tampa. It was estimated to be over one hundred million dol-
lars. Everyone knew whose dope it was, including the feds. I think
that’s what Trina was most worried about. I propped my feet up
on a chair, went a little deeper into my thoughts and inhaled nico-
tine like I was a fiend. I thought about the calls that Trina had
asked me if she could she push “five” for. Calls from a federal
prison. Her ex-boyfriend, Mike, was doing life in the joint in
Atlanta. In hushed tones they would talk. With every fiber in my
177
L i f e
body, I tried not to listen to their conversations, but out of respect,
she always talked to him in front of me. She told me she had no
secrets, had nothing to hide. Honesty was the best policy and all
that bull crap. I made the mistake of asking her if she still loved
him. She shrugged her shoulders and told me she did not know.
In a woman’s language, that meant, “Yes, but I don’t want to hurt
your feelings.” Damn, I hated to admit, but I was jealous. I won-
dered if he asked her for phone sex. Tell her to play in her pussy
and moan in his ear. I was powerless. I had to respect the game,
that is, if I was real. Hustlers are abnormally superstitious people.
That’s where a nigga’s blessings come from–honor amongst playas.
I knew that it could have been me on the other end of the phone.
As I sat there thinking, raking my mind, I detected some move-
ment in my peripheral version. Something caught my eye. I was
not alone in the hotel room. Then I heard the all too familiar
sound of a bullet being engaged into a semi automatic. For some
strange reason, I held my breath and waited for the inevitable, my
brains to be spattered across the wall. The sound of thunder res-
onated outside and in the dark crevice of my mind, Blazack’s face
flashed like some evil troll, he was here to do me. My gun was out
of reach on the dresser. I got caught slipping.
“Place your hands were I can see ‘em!” a hoarse voice com-
manded. I raised my hands fully prepared to accept the conse-
quences of my blunder as I thought about all the cars in the park-
ing lot that I should have paid more attention to.
“So we finally meet, boy,” a voice said, dripping with all the
Southern hospitality of a Klan redneck. From the corner of my
eye, I watched as the white man stepped from the shadows of the
closet. His complexion was a sickly pale white. He had a long beak
nose that pointed downward like a hook. His beady eyes were set
far in the back of his head, and appeared to sit too close together.
His hair was dirty blond.
I could feel my heart racing in my chest as something stirred
in the pit of my gut–fear. I knew his face from somewhere, then it
hit me, Spitler! The crooked cop that Nina tried to warn me
178
L i f e
about. Damn, how could I have been so fuckin�
�� blind? It sudden-
ly occurred to me that I saw his face in different places, just never
took the time to focus on him. He always blended in perfectly
with all the white folks. The police always get credit for being
clever whenever they capture a criminal, but nine times out of ten,
it’s a hustler’s fault for thinking too slow and moving too fast.
“Life Thugstin.” He called my name. Like in all the cops and
robbers games, he was letting me know that he did his homework
on me. He probably got my prints off the car and ran them
through NCIC, the National Crime Information Center.
“In my eighteen years on the force, I have never seen one boy
cause so much havoc in this town as you son,” he said and walked
so that he was standing in front of me. His Southern drawl made
the hair on my neck stand up. Florida crackas are the most evil,
treacherous men the United States had ever bred. In fact, that’s
where the name “cracka” came from. The hot Florida sun bakes
their white skin making it look like old cracked leather. When I
was a little boy, my stepmother told me stories about how the slave
masters used to hang pregnant women upside down and took a
knife and butchered the baby out of their stomachs and when it
hit the ground, they would stomp it. She told me this was done to
implant fear in all the slaves. And even after Lincoln had so called
freed the slaves, Florida crackas would rather kill theirs than let
them be free.
I had no intention of ever going back to prison. As he talked,
I measured the distance to my gun. Desperation will make a man
do some suicidal shit, like leap for a gun when he really doesn’t
have much of a chance.
“You shot that boy in Frenchtown and robbed him after he
wouldn’t buy your fake drugs.”
“That wasn’t me!” I quipped, easing closer to my gun. I could
feel my palms sweating.
“Shut up! And keep your hands where I can see them,” he
snorted, as he continued to brag about himself, how brilliant of a
cop he was to be telling me of my track record in his town.
179
L i f e
“You robbed that jewelry store and knocked the snot out of
the security guard.” Someone once said that ignorance is bliss, so
I did what Black folks are famous for whenever they were caught,
cold busted. I played dumb and looked at that white man like he
was speaking a foreign language.
“Where did you get the money from?” he asked, nodding at
the pile of money on the bed.
I didn’t ever answer, just looked him in his eyes, and thought
about prison bars and caged cells not big enough for dogs much
less a human being. That desperate voice in my head was telling
me,
Try him! Go for your gun
. Then something dawned on me,
where was his back up? Something was out of place.
“Today’s your lucky day boy,” he said mockingly. “I’m not
going to turn you in, but I am going to help myself to some of this
money here. He started stuffing his pockets with my money. He
was robbing me. I jumped up from the bed taking a step forward.
“Wha da fuck you doin’?!” I was enraged. This is why you
only see white cops killing Black men in cold blood. In their eyes
Black men were powerless against the system.
“You make a move like that again, and I promise you boy, I’ll
blow your goddamn brains out.” There was no doubt in my mind
that he meant what he said.
“Sit down!” he barked. My eyes shown optic slants of hate that
back in the days of the slavery of my ancestors, he would have had
me lynched for. Reluctantly I sat back down. My breathing was
labored and I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. I was sick
and tired of white men constantly taking from me. If it wasn’t my
freedom, it was my money, and as I looked at that white man with
blood in my eyes, I realized that it was just the principle of the
thing. Even so-called criminals respect each other.
“I’m here for a good reason,” he said.
“What, to take my muthafuckin’ money?”
“No, to make you money.”
“Huh?”
“As long as you’re selling drugs and killin’ each other in that
180
L i f e
jungle ya’ll call Frenchtown, I ain’t got no problem with that.”
“I can’t muthafuckin tell! You come in here actin like John
Wayne takin’ my muthafuckin money!”
“That’s because crime does pay. It pays the judges, the lawyers,
the FBI, CIA, the DEA and you just paid me.” With that, he
smiled like Lucifer in the flesh. My blood boiled in my veins. Only
history knows best the relationship of the white man stealing from
Blacks in the name of the law. He continued, “America has built
illegal drugs into the most power ful institution the world has ever
known. Like the prisons, legalized slavery, check the stock mar-
ket.” As he talked, I had no idea what the hell he was talking
about, and didn’t care neither.
“But on the other hand, I like you, you remind me of your so-
called black leaders of today. You’re in it for the money, them boys
back in the day …” Spitler stopped to think, and suddenly
snapped his finger like he had a bright idea. “Martin and Malcolm
X, all they did was stir up trouble, wasn’t no good to black folks.
Now you, you think like a white man. You know how to take
advantage of your race. From here on out you can sell all the drugs
you like, just keep it out the white folks’ neighborhood. Them
white kids is America’s future. You hear me?” He raised his voice.
Something about what he said hurt me to the core, made me feel
less than a man, less than human. White people have this uncan-
ny way of making Black people feel awkward in their presence and
all the time he talked, smiled, looking like a Catholic priest.
“This is my cut,” he said stuffing more money into his pock-
ets.
“HELL NAW! FUCK DAT!” I stood up fast, stiff like a
human rocket. “Listen, cracka, I don’t fuck wit no muthafuckin
police, period!”
“Sit down!” he commanded, pointing the gun at my head.
I guess this is the way Black men get shot, because all I could
see was red. Spitler provoked me, pushing me over the edge.
“If you’re gonna shoot me, shoot me now! You ain’t finna
come in here, take my muthafuckin money, telling me how to r un
181
L i f e
shit!” I said, standing my ground, fists clinched at my side. We
stared each other down. I knew it was foolish of me to do what I
was doing.
“For two thousand dollars a week you can sell all the dope you
want. Just keep it out the white neighborhood. Hell, it would be
like you have a license. I can make sure you and your people never
get caught, as long as you’re working out of a house.” Spitler was
talking a mile a minute, non-stop. “I’ll actually be working for
you.”
I sat back down on the bed, rubbed the waves in my head,
thinking about what he said. I knew I had no out with him; I was
in a no-win situation in this deadly game of crooked cops. One
thing was for certain, once a hustler had a cop in his pocket, that
changed the whole game. Things could turn from sugar to shit. I
took a chance and tossed a gambit at him. “OK cop you work for
me now.” He smiled like he had just sold me a comfortable cell in
Sing Sing prison. “That money that you just took off the bed, that
was your first month salary and I’m payin ya one grand a week,
not two,” I said as the smile died on his face.
“I’ll take fifteen hundred a week or I’m taking your black ass
down to the station.”
He took the bait
, I thought as I tried to my best to look disap-
pointed, frowned like he was taking advantage of me. I looked at
him, saw all the greed of his ancestors in his little beady eyes. I
went for the evident, this white man wasn’t no earthly good.
“You got a deal,” I said, and looked at the bed at the pile of
cash. For some reason he did not take all of it; that only meant
that he was serious about wanting to be on my payroll.
There was a knock at the door. Startled, he flinched.
Scary-ass
cracka
, I thought to myself as he waved his gun and told me to
answer the door. I walked to the door, and while I tried to keep
my eyes on him, he picked up my gun emptying the bullets out
on the rug. I looked out the peephole and saw Black Pearl stand-
ing there. She looked worried, and continued to glance over her
shoulder. I opened the door. Spitler rushed by me out the door,
182
L i f e
damn near knocking Black Pearl down. That white man scared the
hell out of her. She walked with one hand on her stomach, the
other over her hear t. She grabbed my hand holding it tightly.
“Lawd have mercy! Pah-leez tell me that was not that nasty-ass
cracka police, Spitler,” she said, exasperated. I could feel her hand
trembling. “Look outside the window,” she said. Her voice was
barely above a whisper as her starry eyes searched mine asking me
what was going on. I pulled the curtains back in the window just
