by K'wan
“The man is just protecting his territory,” Prince tried to convince Daddy-O as well as himself.
“Something has got to give,” Daddy-O said, ordering two more shots.
“I hear that shit, man, but what? We gotta find a way to do our own thing without bringing them Germans down on our asses. Give me some time, and I’ll come up with something.”
“I know you will.” Daddy-O slapped him on the back. “Whatever you wanna do, I’m wit you, my dude.” Daddy-O raised one of the shots the waitress had sat down on the bar and slid the other one to Prince. “From the womb to the tomb, my nigga.”
“Cradle to the grave, baby boy.” Prince raised his glass. The two men downed their shots and slammed the empty glasses on the bar.
Back in the projects, the mood wasn’t quite as light. Things had been tense since the string of recent robberies, and no one had yet to come up with an answer as to who was behind them. But Sticks had an idea, and this was why Jay was standing alone in the very same parking lot Gene had gotten robbed in.
Jay was pissed when Sticks had hatched his plan, making him the bait for the would-be robbers. He didn’t like being used as a pawn, but he wasn’t stupid enough to argue with Sticks. Though he was the less violent of the twins, he had heard rumors about Sticks’s methods of dealing with people. The thought alone made him cringe.
“Let me get two,” a crackhead said, approaching Jay. Jay nodded and dipped into the crack of his ass, where he kept his stash. He dug into the Ziploc and filled the crackhead’s order. The crackhead thanked him and disappeared across the parking lot.
As Jay watched the crackhead shamble through the project, he thought he saw movement along the side of 825. His heart immediately began to race as he scrambled under the car, where he had a small .22 stashed. By the time he came up holding the gun, he found himself aiming at a raggedy umbrella that was blowing in the warm breeze. Jay exhaled and lowered the gun. When he turned to put the gun back in its hiding place, he found himself looking down the barrel of a Beretta.
“What the fuck was you gonna do with that?” Jimmy asked from behind his ski mask.
Jay opened his mouth, but no sound came out. His eyes darted around in the hopes that a member of his team was close by, but to his dismay he was alone. He didn’t know how the masked man had crept up on him like that, but he prayed that he would live long enough to find out.
“Run it, nigga. I want the pack, the money, and that cheap-ass chain,” Jimmy said, tapping the gold cross that Jay wore with the barrel of his gun.
“You know who you robbing, nigga?” Jay snarled. In answer to his question, Jimmy smashed the butt of his gun into Jay’s nose, breaking it. Jay was down and crying, but it didn’t slate Jimmy’s rage.
“You think I give a fuck about yo faggot-ass team? Run yo shit or get dumped on, bitch!” Jimmy snatched Jay’s pants down and retrieved the package of crack that was tucked between his ass cheeks. He held it between two fingers and made a face. “Nasty-ass niggaz,” he kicked Jay in his exposed ass. Jimmy dipped through the projects grinning, but the grin melted away when a bullet whizzed past his ear and struck the fence in front of him.
Two hours and four drinks later, the men had forgotten about Diego and focused on getting drunk and laid. The action in the Sugar Shack had started to pick up, and the women were rolling in by the score.
Prince turned around to go to the bathroom and bumped into a young lady who was trying to squeeze her way back to her friends. When they collided her Midori Sour splashed all over Prince’s black T-shirt. He started to bark on her, but when his eyes met her face he found himself speechless.
Shorty was the baddest thing he had seen in a long time. At five-five with a honey complexion and long black hair, she was definitely giving the other women in the room something to think about.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said, looking at the large wet spot on Prince’s T-shirt.
“Nah, that’s my bad. I should’ve been paying attention,” Prince said, shaking the excess liquid off his shirt. “Let me replace that for you,” he said, nodding at her now half-empty glass.
“You don’t have to do that,” she said, continuing through the crowd. Prince grabbed her arm before she could scurry off.
“I think it’s only right, seeing how I knocked that one over,” he insisted, smiling at her.
Marisol looked at the hand clutching her arm and scrunched her face as if it was something vulgar. She started to bark on him for touching her uninvited, but there was something about his rich chocolate skin and breathtaking smile that made her hesitate. “You’re awful touchy for a stranger,” she said.
“My fault, ma, but it’s not everyday that a man comes face to face with a goddess, and I was just trying to prolong the moment.”
“Well, thank you for the compliment, but I think we’ve prolonged the moment long enough. My girls are waiting for me,” she said, turning to walk away.
“At least let me replace your drink,” Prince tried one more time.
Her face said that she was considering it, but her mouth said otherwise. “I don’t let strange men buy me drinks, sorry, poppy.” She tried to walk off one more time only to have Prince stop her yet again.
“My name ain’t poppy.”
“Excuse you?” she looked at him.
“I said, my name ain’t poppy. It’s Prince,” he said as if his name should’ve meant something to her and everyone else in the room.
The girl gave the cocky young man the once-over. He was dressed very plainly in a black T-shirt and blue jeans, hardly the type of cat that she was used to dealing with, but Prince was very handsome. His smooth skin looked like a freshly dipped chocolate bar under the dim lights. Yeah, he definitely had it going on, but she wasn’t about to tell him that.
“Okay, Prince,” she said, letting his name roll sexily off her tongue.
“You got a name, ma?”
She thought on it for a minute before answering. “Marisol.”
“Beautiful,” he whispered.
“My name?” she asked.
“Nah, you.”
“Thank you,” she said, with color flushing her cheeks.
“So, now that we’re not strangers anymore, why don’t you sit down and have a drink?”
She smiled, showing perfect white teeth. “Sounds good, Prince, but I can’t leave my team like that,” she said, motioning toward one of the tables in the rear of the lounge where there were three stunning sets of eyes watching the exchange closely. Marisol’s friends were all sexy-ass shades of brown with silky hair.
“Damn, if that’s ya team we need to be over there with y’all,” Daddy-O said. He winked at one of the girls, causing her to giggle and whisper something to the other two.
Prince called the bartender over and whispered something in her ear before turning back to Marisol. “Tell you what, how ’bout if we come join y’all?”
Marisol gave him a playful smile. Her eyes said come on, but her mouth said, “Hold on a second, let me see what my girls wanna do.” Marisol told him she would return and sauntered back to the table where her girls were sitting. Feeling Prince’s eyes still on her, she made it a point to throw her ass extra hard when she walked.
Daddy-O let out a whistle. “That is one bad bitch!”
“You ain’t never lied about that,” Prince dapped him up and the two men laughed.
Sticks wanted to slap the shit out of Danny for fucking up a perfectly laid trap. Pam, who lived on the first floor of 845, had called his cell phone to tell him that Jay was being robbed, as he expected. He had given her two hundred dollars worth of crack just to sit by the window and watch for anything funny. Sure enough, the greedy-ass stickup kid was back. They were supposed to creep on the kid while he was robbing Jay and air his ass out. It was a perfect plan, but Danny had fucked it up by firing too early. Now they found themselves in a running firefight.
When the shot hit the fence, Sticks expected the masked man to immediately bolt,
but he had a surprise for him. Firing in a one-handed grip, the gunman tried to take Sticks and Danny out. Danny dove behind a car and remained there while Sticks wove and dodged through the parking lot.
“Stupid mutha fucka,” Sticks cursed under his breath as he narrowly dodged a bullet. He popped from behind the car and let off two shots from his P89. The cannon sounded like thunder as Sticks shot out two car windows, but he missed the masked man, who was now running full out toward Manhattan Avenue.
Jimmy burst from the parking lot like he had the devil on his heels. He collided with a neighborhood drunk and fell, scraping his leg something awful. Jimmy fought through the pain and was back on his feet in seconds. His partner had warned him about trying to pull another lick so soon, but he didn’t listen, and for his hardheadedness he might not live to tell him he was right. His only hope was to make it to 100th Street where there were some people barbecuing. Sticks was crazy, but not crazy enough to gun him down in front of so many witnesses. Unfortunately, Stone had no such qualms.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
At the sound of gunfire, the grill was quickly abandoned, sending people scattering for cover. Jimmy too, heard the thunderous clap, but didn’t register what he was hearing until the slug from the .357 ripped through the muscle and cartilage of his thigh before snapping the bone on impact. The force was so powerful that it flipped Jimmy in the air and dumped him on his back. The pain in Jimmy’s thigh was so intense that he just wanted to lay down and fade away, but he couldn’t. The fear from what Sticks and Stone would do to him willed strength to his arms as he tried to crawl away.
“Don’t dip off just yet, we’re just getting started,” Stone taunted, grabbing Jimmy by the back of his hoodie and dragging him. Jimmy tried to bring his gun around only to have Stone kick it from his hand. “Oh, now you wanna pop me, huh?” Stone kicked him viciously in the mouth.
“Chill,” Jimmy wheezed through his busted lips.
“Chill? Nah, man, ain’t no chill. You trying to take food off my table?” Stone stomped Jimmy’s ruined leg.
“For once your ass was on time for something.” Sticks smirked as he approached the scene.
“Fuck you, Sticks. You almost let this grease ball mutha fucka get away,” Stone shot back. Jimmy’s moans broke up their argument and brought them back to the business at hand. “Let’s see who we got here,” Sticks said, removing Jimmy’s mask. When he saw that it was Jimmy, he just shook his head. “I should’ve known. A’ight, this is what we’re gonna do…” Sticks was cut off as Jimmy’s chest exploded. He turned around furiously and glared at his brother, who was wearing a goofy smirk.
“Ashes to ashes, mutha fucka!” Stone spat on Jimmy’s corpse.
“Nigga, you shot him before I got him to squeal on his man!” Sticks shouted.
“Fuck we need him to squeal for when we already know him and Vince is thick as thieves. Who the fuck else could have been robbing our workers with him. All we gotta do is go snatch his ass next.”
“Okay genius, so where do we find him?”
“Oh, I hadn’t thought of that,” Stone admitted. They knew that Vince lived somewhere near the projects, but they didn’t know exactly where.
“Bring yo stupid ass on, man,” Sticks told his twin as he disappeared back into the projects.
Prince and Daddy-O hit it off with Marisol’s crew immediately. Lizzie seemed to take a liking to Daddy-O from the gate, so they wound up pairing off. Prince and Marisol laughed as their two drunken-ass friends hit the dance floor and were busting their two-step. Feeling like the odd ladies out, Marcy and Connie excused themselves from the table, leaving Prince and Marisol to get acquainted.
Two empty bottles of champagne sat on their table, with the third halfway there. Prince and Daddy-O had sprung for the first two, and to their surprise Marisol had copped the third. Prince tried to be chivalrous about it, but Marisol wasn’t trying to hear it. She wanted to make it clear from the gate that she held her own and didn’t need a man to do anything for her. He had no choice but to respect it.
The constant flow of champagne had them both feeling talkative. Prince told her a little bit about himself and his up-bringing. She figured him for a street cat, but he downplayed it, claiming that he only moved a few pieces here and there. Marisol told him about herself, without giving away too much. She told him that she worked for her family’s restaurant part-time and attended school three days a week. She had originally made the pilgrimage to America from Cuba when she was five years old. She, her mother, and two older brothers had stayed in Miami until their father was caught smuggling drugs and given twenty-years in federal prison. After their family had been broken up, her mother, brother, and she fled to New York.
In turn he revealed to her the events that led him to the lifestyle he had chosen, without incriminating himself or his crew. Prince admitted to Marisol that he made moves here and there, but didn’t tell her how deep in the game he was. He was tipsy, not stupid. By the end of the night they felt like they had known each other for years.
“Damn, I’ve been sitting here running my mouth all night,” Marisol looked at her watch. The dim lights caught off the tiny pink diamonds that encircled the face.
“It’s all good, I enjoy hearing you speak,” he told her.
“Quite the charmer.” She patted his hands. “You know what, I wanna propose a toast.” she raised her glass. “To good friends and good times.”
“Very good times,” Prince ran his tongue over his full lips.
“Don’t throw the pussy away before you even find out if you’re gonna get it,” she laughed good naturedly, and clicked glasses with Prince.
CHAPTER 8
I t was well after 3:00 A.M., but there were still a sprinkling of people hanging out in the projects. Most of the regular folk had called it a night, giving the hustlers and crackheads free reign over the land. Sticks, Stone, and Danny were posted up around the mouth of the 103rd Street entrance, surveying the Columbus side of the projects. They were having a deep discussion, but all fell silent when a cherry red BMW 528 pulled to a stop directly in front of them. They tried to see who was driving, but all the windows were tinted.
“Who the fuck is that?” Stone whispered to his brother, inching closer to the gun he had stashed in the grass. They had whacked Jimmy, but Vince was still missing. The back door, on the street side popped open and when the passenger emerged, the crew let out a sigh of relief.
Daddy-O stretched and rubbed his gut like he had just eaten a hardy meal. From the way he teetered, you could tell that he had been drinking. The other rear door opened and Lizzie stepped out, drawing “oh’s” from the fellas posted up. She was killing ’em in a pair of black Capris and lace-up sandals that tied around her calves. Daddy-O stepped around to the curb side and gave her a warm hug.
“Don’t forget to call me, nigga,” she pinched his gut.
“No doubt, ma. If I don’t do nothing else I’m gonna call you,” he said, drinking her in with his eyes. She kissed him gently on the cheek and went around to the passenger’s side, where Prince was stepping out. His eyes too, held a slight twinkle, but it wasn’t from the alcohol. Marisol had provided him with good company and conversation, something he didn’t get from the girls he fucked within the projects. She was someone he could definitely see himself keeping time with.
“This is your hood, huh?” Marisol rolled the driver’s side window as Prince stepped onto the curb.
“Monster Island, the only home I know,” Prince said with a smile.
“Why do they call it Monster Island?” Marisol asked.
“I’ll tell you the next time I see you,” He said, slyly.
“Who said there’s gonna be a next time?” she teased.
“Cut that out, ma. You know you’re feeling a nigga.”
“Umm, hmm. No more than you’re feeling me.”
“True,” he nodded.
“Yo, Prince, who dat?!” Stone shouted. Prince ignored him and turned his attention
back to Marisol.
“So, when can I see you again?” he asked.
“You’ve got the number, use it,” she told him.
“I’ll do that,” he tapped the car door. “So, would it be too much to ask for a kiss?”
“Being that you have to ask, yes,” she said, rolling the window partially up, then pausing. “Next time take the initiative.” She gave Prince a wink and pulled out into traffic.
“Yo, that was a bad bitch, kid. Who the fuck was that?” Sticks asked.
Prince watched the taillights until they disappeared down Columbus Avenue. “My future wife.”
“You know you was wrong for that, Marisol,” Lizzie said, peeking through the rear window at Prince, who was standing on the curb smirking.
“Can’t make it too easy, can I?” Marisol snickered. “Besides, he’ll get his chance.”
“You gonna give that buck nigga some pussy ain’t you?” Lizzie asked slyly. Marisol gave her a look, but didn’t answer. “I always knew you had a thing for chocolate,” Lizzie teased.
“He a’ight,” Marisol said nonchalantly.
“Bitch, that nigga is fine. You know I love my poppies, but you gotta call a spade a spade, and that spade has got it together!”
“Whatever, ho. Don’t act like I ain’t see you all up on his man. Shit, I thought y’all was gonna fuck on the dance floor.”
“When I felt that snake pressing against my ass, I sure as hell thought about it. Whoever said all fat niggaz had little dicks didn’t know Daddy-O!”
“Liz, your ass is crazy!” Marisol said, headed across 125th to the Tri-Borough Bridge.
“So, have you thought about what Felix is gonna say?” Lizzie asked, becoming serious.
Marisol cut her eyes at her. “Like I give a shit about what Felix is gonna say.”
“Wow, where did that come from?” Lizzie asked, knowing that her friend was head over heels in love with Felix.
“I’m tired of his shit, Liz. All Felix does is come over, fuck me, and beg for dope. That fool ain’t about shit.”
