by D
You think of calling Meechie, but what’s he going to tell you? He and Jamar are looking to you as their interim leader. They’re waiting for you to call the shots. But you don’t exactly know what you’re supposed to do. Your lucky break almost turned into a romantic getaway to some drawer in the coroner’s office.
You pull into Dugan’s, which is still open and packed. Boys and girls playing the “game” game. You order three shots of tequila, a Corona, and a basket of hot wings. The bartender announces last call. You avoid the clock, afraid of what time it is. You haven’t slept in two days now. It’s all starting to wear on you.
There’s a tall girl with skin the color of milk chocolate who keeps looking over at you. She plays with her fries, whirling them in the air between her thumb and index finger. But just as you think of saying something, her man, some Michael Vick reject without the canine problem takes her by the arm and leads her out, most likely so that he can spend the next few hours rearranging her vertebrae. Some dudes have all the luck.
The liquor winds you down far enough to get a handle on things. You’ll have to dump that Glock someplace where it’ll take weeks for it to wash up. And you need to dump it soon. Frank will be all over the news by morning and the Chicago twins must already know that you’re onto them. They probably think Frank told you more than he did. That’s a card you’ll need to play a little closer to the finish line.
You make your way out of the bar and across the parking lot. There’s an old train bridge running behind an apartment complex. You scale a deep hill and wander around in the darkness. You pass a group of homeless men playing chess with flashlights so that they can see the board. There’s a junkie shooting up off to the side. You come upon a huge pit filled with nothing but old bottles, cans, and trash floating in about four inches of stale water.
You wipe the gun down and toss it into the pit. Any descriptions the concierge or other witnesses provide will be vague. You didn’t park in the garage so there’s no footage of you coming or leaving. Or maybe there is. According to the hunch that just started forming in your head, it may not matter either way.
You don’t know where to go from the Dugan’s lot. It feels like the sun will be up soon. You should go home and sleep. But you’re not really sure if your house is even safe. For all you know, Frank has told them everything. You still can’t figure out what it is they want. This can’t be just about Duronté. If it was, they wouldn’t have gone after you. But it can’t be about you either. No one knows you here. This is the place you came to for a clean slate.
You think back through everything you’ve done since you arrived. It all started with Duronté, the night you went with him to sell that weed and found bodies in a dumpster. Alonzo died two nights later. The next day, Frank tries to whack you in a hotel elevator.
You take 20 to the AUC exit and cut down to Ashby and then past the block where Duronté’s crib is nothing but rubble and ash. You just hope that she’s awake. You hope that she’ll let you in.
“You want some?” she asks, offering you what’s left of her joint.
“Nah, can’t fuck with that just now.”
“And why’s that?” she asks.
“I need all my brain cells.”
“Oh, so it’s thinkin’ cap time?”
“Sumthin’ like that.”
“And what you thinkin’ about?” She runs her nails along your scalp. It tickles.
“Business I gotta handle.”
“Good or bad?”
“Getting badder by the minute,” you say.
She thinks on this for a moment, as if you’ve told her your problems in full, as if she could possibly understand what you’re caught in the middle of. You kiss her and she gives you her full lips to play with. Her hands stroke you through your jeans. You want to use your erection to explore the places she only let you touch with your fingers on date number one.
“You want my pussy?” she asks, pulling her Akademiks T-shirt up over her head. Her bra is the prettiest shade of purple, and it slides down to reveal big areolas with thick nipples to match. You bring your mouth down to them, sucking like they hold your last meal.
You run your fingers up the inside of her thighs, spreading them open. You can feel the heat coming from her pussy. No panties. Her shorts are already on the floor. You’re pulling down your jeans when she starts playing with your zipper. The next thing you know, she’s reaching inside. Then she’s bringing you to her lips, taking you into her mouth.
You thicken and lengthen as she places the condom between your fingers. You roll it on and push slowly into her moist slit, feeling it throb all around you. Each thrust is like falling into heaven as she clamps her thighs around your waist.
She begins sucking on your neck and you forget all about Frank. You smell perfume and oil sheen and pussy all at once. She’s so wet that your balls splash against her as you hit it from the back, sliding in and out, wishing that you could live in this place forever.
Your nut comes out of nowhere, a bigger one than when you came in her mouth the last time. You roll off her and onto the couch, where you try and catch your breath. Next thing you know, you’re looking at the backs of your eyelids and then what’s beyond. How the fuck did this day go to hell? There’s an answer somewhere inside yourself. But you don’t stay conscious long enough to find it.
You wake up alone on the couch, the room lit only by the bulb from the small fish tank in the corner. You don’t know who she lives with or what she does. But Jenny makes you feel normal, that kind of normal you came here to find. You wish you had the time and the space to tell her. But right now those are luxuries you can’t afford.
You lock the bottom lock on the front door as you head out to your car. The sun is coming up outside and birds are singing those numbers they only do at the beginning of each day. Your tank is almost on E, so you head up the hill to the Amoco for gas, orange juice, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
There’s a picture of Frank on the front page. It looks like a mugshot. According to the article, they’re looking for a black male of about your height and build. But there are no other distinguishing features—no name, no face for the APD to make you with. You are luckier than you thought.
The cops will be all over Frank’s hood asking question that the locals won’t be able to answer. After that, the cops will have nowhere to go and Frank’s sheet will mostly speak for itself, an open file the boys in dark blue can probably live with. The trail will go cold and that will be all. But now you still have to make it make sense.
So how do you find the man who must now know you’re looking for him? And even if you do find him, are you supposed to just ask him to sit down for coffee and that will be that? Hell nah. But you can’t cap him either, because then you couldn’t see who’s at the top of this crazy pyramid. If you pull a trigger two more times, there’s no way to find your truth. You become a loose end living on borrowed time by default.
The solution requires that you get lucky one more time, that you find the twins and follow them to someplace where you can control all the variables, where you can corner them and make them talk. Once you have a face, you’ll know where you can’t go. Once you see your enemy, you can figure out how to disappear … again.
You want to cry out that none of this shit is fair. But you already said it yourself: Taking lives will have God throwing everything but the kitchen sink in your direction. You just hope that you can dodge most of it.
You barely have the strength to pull the emergency brake when you park in front of your crib. It’s even harder to get your key in the lock. It feels like you’re carrying Frank on your back with the bodies from the dumpster tied to both of your legs. How come you have to take this weight all on your own? How come there’s never another person with an ounce of fucking sense to help you figure it out? You guess that it’s just not your lot in this life.
You’ll have to be careful. You’ll have to watch your step. No mistakes. But most importantly, yo
u really have to get more sleep.
8.
You havea dream about running through the woods. Something’s chasing you but you can’t see what it is. You just know that it’s moving faster than you, coming up on your tail. Your feet slow beneath you no matter how much you urge them to keep moving. Whatever it is, you can’t get away from it. Whatever it is, you’re going to have to face it.
You hear someone coughing on the other side of your eyelids and you pop them open. There are at least ten men surrounding your bed. The twins are standing right there, this time dressed in Adidas tracksuits instead of business attire.
“You sleep well?” Darker asks.
You don’t answer. A small part of you holds onto the idea that this is a dream. The rest of you wants to slap your own face for laying your head in a place this obvious. Your only gun is back in that hole by the train tracks in midtown. You’re fucked.
“Killin’ a nigga can take a whole lot outta ya,” Almond laughs. You imagine shooting his lips off and the kind of blood it would bring forth. It makes you smile, but a smile isn’t good in this situation.
Somebody hits you with a hard left that nearly takes your head off.
“This isn’t funny,” Darker adds. “This is serious business.”
If they were going to kill you, there wouldn’t be this much talking. If they wanted to know something, they’d start asking. Right now they just want to scare, just want to make you feel like they have you in check. As you lay there in boxers without a real weapon in sight, you accept the fact that they’re doing a pretty good job.
“I mean, on one hand, we gotta respect your gangsta,” Almond says. “You caught Frank slippin’, and that ain’t some easy shit to do. Beatin’ the piss out of him might have had somethin’ to do with it, but that gets you bonus points with us. It says you ain’t fulla shit like the rest of that crew you with. Duronté runs out of town right after we bring him in. Your boy Alonzo tries to pull out on us when we just wanted to ask some questions. He ain’t leave us no choice.”
“But why the fuck did you put him on in the first place?” you ask. “How come you ain’t just do us that first night at D’s crib?”
“Because it ain’t on us. We got somebody to answer to.”
“Who?”
“That ain’t for you to know,” Almond says.
You take a moment to scan the faces of all the men and boys surrounding you. Most of them are barely old enough to vote, much less drink. You ask yourself what it takes to get people to follow you. It’s not your rep. It’s not even your brains. It’s having the power to make them think you know something that they don’t. They’re not here to kill you. They’re here to ask you to join the team.
“What you gotta know is that the boss is impressed with you, that he wants you to take over for your cousin, even though you already been doing it. Now you got the power on your real estate. Now you get to play by your own rules.”
“What if I ain’t interested?” you ask.
“Then you go on permanent bed rest,” one of the henchman in the background says, his hat pulled down so far over his eyes that he looks silly.
“It sounds like I don’t have much of a choice,” you say.
Darker smiles. “You don’t. Pick up that work and get it out on the street. Your cousin’s boys don’t need to know about the change in management.”
You nod, proof that you’ve got no secret plans to rock the boat, or at least none that they know about.
There’s a long silence, as if everybody is processing what’s just happened. You let the moment linger. You’re not going to show them any cards that you don’t have to.
“I need to know how to reach you.”
“We already put the number in your phone,” Almond says. “You need re-ups, you dial the digits. Anything else, you’re on your own.”
“Split the same?”
“Split’s the name,” both twins say in unison.
“Then I guess I better get to work.”
“You should,” Almond says as he starts toward the door. Most of the crew follows him, but Darker stays behind, most likely to bring up the rear.
“I got one question for you,” you say to Darker. “Ask the boss why he picked me.”
He smiles, obviously knowing something you don’t. “So you know who you are and who you ain’t.”
Those words stay with you long after the crew is gone. As long as you stay in bed, you can still dismiss this as a dream, some figment of your imagination. Somebody’s trying to make you sell their product. It reminds you of Snoop’s verse on “Deep Cover.” Except you couldn’t pop eleven men at one time without ending up looking like a screen door. All of this and you don’t really even have product out on the street.
You call Meechie, who you have call Jamar. You tell them to pick up the product. With so much up in the air, it looks like you might have to do the bagging yourself.
It’s rush hour when Meechie and Jamar meet you at your crib. By then you have the dining room table and two chairs hooked up. The good thing is that you only have to bag it, that if Jamar’s boy did it right you’ve got street-ready product and no more hassles, or at least not as many as there could be. Your little operation is waiting to get under way.
Even with three people, however, it seems to take hours. In the movies there are always people to do this shit for you, ones with the shower caps and masks and all that. But you ain’t runnin’ no Carter. In truth, what you have is a thirdrate slacker operation. You had to kill your main muscle man (something you have yet to explain to your boys here), so if shit jumps off there’s no one to protect you but you.
That bag of pistols at the car wash isn’t going to be enough for the long run. If you make a dent with this thing, you’ve got to deal with everything from cops to jackers to snitches to rival dealers who don’t wanna share their cake with nobody. It’s like it only gets bigger. The hole only gets deeper, no matter how smart you are, no matter how good a plan you put together. They call it the trap because there are only two ways out, and neither of them are anywhere near as live as they sound in the songs on the radio.
It’s kissing midnight when you’re finally done. You break up the goods into loads for all of your different outlets and put them in Meechie’s trunk, packed into gym bags with the product surrounded by 99-cent T-shirts, a good enough camouflage at first glance. They’ll make the drops. You, on the other hand, have a very different assignment.
You would be a fool to blindly go to work for men you don’t know, especially men who have been two steps ahead of you since this whole thing started. It just doesn’t make sense from a business standpoint to unload that kind of coke to some newcomers and then whack the head of the household. They kill Alonzo and then send Frank to kill you. But why? You’re fucking amateurs after all.
You drive out to the car wash and grab the bag of guns. You pick out the Sig Sauer P226 for yourself. Everything else goes in the trunk. After you lock up, you sit in the darkness of the car wash parking lot trying to figure out what your next move is going to be.
Your only shot is to try to find the twins again, on their own. You can’t be sure if your stakeout with Frank was a planned thing, but you can imagine that ballers like these dudes love to blow dough to have some ass shaking in front of them. And there’s a car you remember, a car that not just everybody has. Cruising the local gentlemen’s clubs is a good start.
You’ve only been here a matter of days and yet you already know the main spots like the back of your hand. The D-boys own Magic City. On the weekend you can barely get a dance since they keep the best girls in the VIP, the best ass to themselves all night long. But if Almond is at the Flame, he’s a cheapskate or a baller on a budget, which means you have to think smaller, more frugal, more average Joe.
Shooter Alley is way out in Doraville, a little off-the-beaten-path from where your boys have generally been moving. There’s Pleasers and Body Tap and places far more grimy, places where fourtee
n-year-olds take the stage like it’s a high school talent show. But this isn’t their speed. The car says that they’re into the finer things, or at least just fine enough. Mid-shelf broads for midshelf prices.
You travel from club to club, checking the parking lots and then going inside to try and match some familiar faces. You wear your cap low and one of the shirts you just bought from the mall, as all your clothes burned up with Duronté’s.
At Pleasers you buy three songs from a tall chocolate thing with big eyes and a weave down her back. Large nipples on flat, floppy breasts. She could be in her mid-thirties but the ass has been preserved perfectly. No stretch marks, no cellulite. She grinds her ass into you, searching for the erection she knows is there. She teases it with thighs she moves back and forth between your legs. Then she grinds again, making you so hard that you’re throbbing. She makes you want to buy her for the night but you resist the temptation. You’re there on business after all. Another shot of Corzo later and you’re back on the move.
Shooter Alley is surprisingly empty for this time of week. All colors of ass are united in the pursuit of pleasure and the patrons’ money.
“What you doin’ up in heah?” a fine-ass Asian girls asks, the curves in her legs sharp enough to split a hair in half.
“Lookin’ for you.”
She leads you to a chair where she jumps into a handstand that puts her top on bottom and her bottom on top. Her crystal-blue heels are above your head as she winds her body in front of you. The muscles in her arms don’t show how much of an effort they’re making. But it is when she spreads her legs that you see the true prize. And it’s not the one between her thighs. Darker has just taken a seat at the bar.
You weren’t expecting to see the other twin at a joint like this. Hell, for all you know they could really be twin brothers, subject to the same tendencies, attractions, or even addictions. And while his lighter-skinned brother prefers the Flame, he’s way the fuck out here, drinking MGD and flirting with some blonde who has the worst tit job since Dominique Simone’s.
