Blow

by K'wan

  “You really pulled it off,” Daddy-O said, sipping a glass of Crown Royal.

  “I told you I would,” Prince grinned from behind his Corona. “From day one I told you niggaz that I was gonna get us where we needed to be, and we’re finally here. No more small-time for us, my niggaz.”

  “Yo, we about to be some rich niggaz!” Jay said, nudging Danny. Danny just gave him a halfhearted smile.

  Danny had been acting strange since he had come home from the Island, and it didn’t go unnoticed by Prince. He reasoned that the young man must’ve been stressing about his upcoming trial. Prince told him not to worry, because they were going to get him the best lawyer possible. But in his heart he knew that Danny still might have to do some time. He had always warned his men about being careless, but Danny was hardheaded.

  “Yo, kid, them niggaz in Binghamton went crazy over that new shit, Prince,” E said from where he was seated. Prince had met heavy opposition when he broke it to his crew that he was putting E down, but he wasn’t trying to hear it. Prince wasn’t a greedy dude and believed that everyone deserved a chance to eat, even if E wasn’t proven. Prince had a good heart like that. Daddy-O would always tell him that his good heart was going to get him into trouble, but Prince wasn’t trying to hear it.

  “As they should. We got the best dope in the city,” Prince gave E a pound.

  “Fuck the city; we got the best dope on the coast!” Daddy-O corrected him. Since they had started popping fulltime, people were coming from as far as Yonkers to buy weight from them. They officially became the niggaz to see, and none of them were over twenty-three.

  “Yo, I heard Diego ain’t too happy about us going independent,” Jay said. He looked like a little kid sitting there in an oversized football jersey and a fitted cap.

  “If he’s mad, he better scratch his ass and get glad. I made him an offer, but he wanted more, so fuck him,” Prince said finally.

  “Yeah, but a nigga is gonna miss that crack money, man. Not every fiend is a dope head in the projects,” Stone pointed out.

  Prince moved around the table and draped his arm over Stone’s shoulder. “My dude, didn’t I tell you I was gonna take care of you? I’m working on something with my connect to get us a brick of that white too.”

  “Damn, these niggaz got everything! When are we gonna get to meet him?” E asked.

  “You ain’t,” Prince said flatly. “This is a business arrangement not a social group. I’ll continue to deal with the connect directly.”

  “Yeah, but God forbid if something were to happen to you, we’d be cut off,” E said.

  “Don’t trip off that, cause I don’t plan on going nowhere. Even if I do get caught up, Daddy-O knows how to contact who needs to be contacted.”

  “I see,” E said, clearly feeling slighted.

  Daddy-O didn’t make it obvious, but he was watching E. There was something about the kid that didn’t sit right, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Daddy-O didn’t give a fuck what Prince said, if E tried some funny shit he was going to lay him down.

  “Yo, I wanna propose a toast,” Sticks said. “To the team!”

  “Word, B, to the team,” Daddy-O echoed.

  Prince stood and raised his glass. “Let no man here place himself above this union, lest they be consumed by this union.” Everyone nodded in agreement and touched glasses.

  The crew drank and partied well into the wee hours of the night. The strippers peeped their style and paid extra special attention to the balling young cats in the cut. Even little Danny had managed to come out of his funk long enough to get some head from a big-butt Spanish chick in the corner. It was all good until Prince’s phone rang.

  “Keish, what up?” he spoke into the phone.

  “P, where you at?” she asked frantically.

  “Me and my niggaz is in the BX, what’s good?” He tried to stay calm but her tone was making him nervous.

  “Yo, y’all need to get back here, now!”

  “Keisha, tell me what’s going down?”

  “Man, the spot just got hit.”

  “Hit, damn! How did the police know where to rush?” he asked thinking about what he was going to tell Cano about the product they had lost. He didn’t have all of the drugs in the spot, but most of them were up there. At least a quarter-kilo of blow and two hundred grams of coke they had left over from Diego’s stash.

  “Nah, these weren’t the police. These was stickup kids.” She went on to tell Prince how she had seen the boy Vince lingering around on their side of the projects. Being that she didn’t know what had gone down with Jimmy, she didn’t think anything of it. But when she saw him rush up in the building with two Spanish kids, she knew something was wrong.

  “Fuck!” he yelled into the phone. “What about them niggaz I had out there?”

  Keisha sucked her teeth. “Them bitch-ass niggaz ran when it popped off. The only one who tried to hold it down was little Gene.”

  “Where is he now?” Prince asked. Keisha was silent. “Keisha, where is Gene?”

  “Prince, that nigga gone,” she said, just above a whisper.

  “Fuck you mean gone?”

  “Gone, P,” she let out the sob that she had been trying to hold back. “The little nigga’s body is still in the lobby.”

  Hearing this, Prince’s heart sunk. Gene was just a baby trying to make his way in the world. Prince thought he was doing something noble by giving him a job, but only ended up sending him to his death. Gene had come from a good home with a cool-ass mother whom Prince knew very well. How was he going to tell her that her little boy was gone?

  “Prince, you still there?”

  “Yeah, I’m here,” Prince said in a choked-up voice.

  “Yo, I’m gonna stay out here and see what I can find out, but y’all need to get back here ASAP.”

  “A’ight, we’ll be there in a second. Thanks, Keish.” Prince hung up.

  “What’s good?” Sticks asked, noticing the change in Prince’s expression.

  “We got hit, man.” Prince recounted the story Keisha had told him to his crew.

  “Yo, that’s some bullshit!” Jay said. “That was my nigga, B. It ain’t going down like that.” Jay and Gene had been school chums, so his murder hit him the hardest.

  “Oh, don’t worry we ain’t letting this shit ride.” Stone patted Jay on the back. “Who did it, P?

  “Keish said it was Vince from the other side.”

  “What? That pussy-ass nigga ain’t poked his head out since we laid his homeboy down. He’s a thieving-ass nigga, but he ain’t no killer. Someone had to put the battery in him for him to jump out the window like that,” Sticks said.

  “She said he had two Spanish niggaz with him, but she didn’t know their faces,” Prince added.

  “Let me take a stab in the dark on this one,” Daddy-O put his elbows on the table. “Right after you cut Diego out of the picture, Vince, backed by two unknown Spanish cats, runs up in the spot and robs us. It don’t take a rocket scientist to see that Diego was behind this shit. But why kill Gene?”

  “To send us a message,” Prince said. “He knew Gene was our family, and he was showing us that he could hurt us. It’s a lesson that I only need to learn once.”

  “What you wanna do, my nigga? I’m ready to ride on this nigga once and for all,” Stone snarled.

  “I’m with you on that shit. I still owe that faggot-ass nigga Manny for what he did at the liquor store,” E said.

  “You know if we go to war with Diego we gotta pull out all the stops,” Sticks said.

  Daddy-O looked at Prince. “I think this reckoning is long overdue. What you wanna do, P?”

  Prince sat in silence for a moment. His eyes were glassy but no tears came. He had tried to offer Diego a compromise, and in return his one-time mentor had spit in his face. If Prince didn’t do something, not only would he lose points in the hood, but Diego might come at another one of his people. It had to end.

  “We gonna hand
Diego his fucking head is what we’re gonna do,” Prince downed his shot of liquor. “Lets get this nigga for Gene.”

  E excused himself from the table while Prince and his crew plotted the demise of the former cocaine king of the Westside. Of all them, he probably hated Diego the most and would be glad to see him gone. After the hit was made, the police would be riding down on every known drug crew in a ten-block radius. E was going to make sure that when the shit hit the fan, his money wouldn’t be fucked with.

  He thumbed through his cell phone and scrolled through it until he found the number he was searching for. Using the banged up pay phone near the bathroom, he punched in the number. After the fifth ring a sleep-laden voice answered the phone.

  “Lutz, this is E,” E said into the phone. The music was so loud that he wasn’t worried about anyone hearing him speaking to his lawyer. “Look, I know you’re sleeping, but I need to see you like yesterday. Something big is about to go down in the projects.”

  CHAPTER 18

  “Y o, I ran up in the spot and had them niggaz shitting in they pants,” Vince bragged to the young wolves around him.

  “Fuck outta here. Prince and them is the hardest niggaz out. You lying,” one young man accused.

  “Word to mine, kid. Yo, but them Spanish niggaz was extra with theirs. I felt kinda bad when son split shorty, shit,” he said referring to Gene.

  “Dawg, ain’t you worried about that shit coming back to you?” another young man asked.

  Vince looked at him as if he couldn’t be serious. “Hardly, son. Diego got my back. He said when Prince is gone, I can take over the other side of the projects. I’m ’bout to be that nigga!”

  “Yo, you better make me one of your lieutenants,” the first young man said “Play ya cards right and I might let you rock,” Vince teased. His bragging session was broken up by the sight of a sexy young lady approaching where they were standing. She was dressed in cut-off denim shorts and a tube top, with baby oil glistening over her body.

  “What’s up, Vince?” Keisha asked in her sexiest voice.

  “Keish? Damn I almost ain’t recognize you,” Vince said, openly admiring her full breasts. “What’s good?”

  “You,” Keisha said, licking her lips. “I’m trying to get high, where it’s at?”

  “I got some of that Cali back at the crib,” he said.

  “So what we still doing here?” she ran her hand down his chest.

  “I’ll see y’all niggaz in a minute,” Vince said to the wolves.

  “I see you, big dawg!” the first youngster said.

  “Word, we can’t come with you?” said the second young man.

  “Nah, I’m gonna have to catch you on the come around,” he said, watching Keisha’s big ass as she walked ahead of him. He had been trying to fuck her for the longest, but she had never given him any rhythm. I guess the word was out that he was going to be the next man in the hood, and she was trying to get in on the ground floor. He rubbed his hands together and fantasized about what her lips would feel like wrapped around his dick.

  Danny sat in the living room of his mother’s house trying to suck the life out of the blunt he was smoking. There was so much going on that he felt like his head was spinning. He had spoken to the lawyer that Prince had secured for him, and the conversation wasn’t quite what he wanted to hear. The lawyer advised him that he could probably get the charges lessened but doubted if he could make them disappear. Danny was definitely going to have to do some time, but how much depended on him.

  He thought back to the meeting with Stern and the offer to set him free, and it seemed more tempting. He had been thinking long and hard about giving Diego up and saving his own ass. The DA said that all he would have to do is tell the grand jury how the man had distributed crack and cocaine throughout the projects. It seemed simple enough, but Prince’s plan to murder Diego complicated that. If Diego died, then he would lose his bargaining chip and his ass was going to be shipped upstate to God only knew what kind of hell. He loved Prince and the crew like brothers, but the state was about to take a huge chunk out of his life, and he didn’t know how comfortable he was with that.

  Danny picked up his chrome .25 off the table and stared at it. He had contemplated killing himself, but didn’t have the nerve to pull the trigger. That seemed to be the story of his life.

  “I ain’t no snitch!” Danny sobbed, while rocking back and forth with the gun.

  Never in a million years would he have thought he would even be considering becoming an informant, but his back was against the wall. Though he loved Prince, it was absurd for him to think that his boss could beat Diego. Even if they did manage to kill him, his minions would surely hound Prince until he joined Diego. In his mind, sending Prince to jail would be like saving his life. At least that’s what he told himself so he wouldn’t feel like a total piece of shit. Either way Prince or Diego would have to be the sacrificial lamb. Danny pulled the business card that his lawyer had given him from his pocket and placed a call.

  Vince lay back on his couch, moaning softly. Keisha was on her knees between his legs, giving him the best head he had ever had. She sucked him slow, then fast before relaxing her muscles and letting him fuck her throat.

  Keisha took a breath and jacked his dick. “You like this shit, huh?”

  “Oh, you know I do!” he almost shrieked as she went back to sucking him off. Vince felt himself about to cum when Keisha abruptly stopped. He opened his eyes to see what she was doing and his jaw dropped.

  “What’s popping?” Daddy-O stood over him, holding a sawed-off. Sticks was to his right holding a smaller gun in one hand and a hunting knife in the other. Both men wore wicked grins. Vince reached for the .22 that he kept stashed under the couch, but at some point Keisha had removed it and was now pointing it at him.

  “What the fuck is going on?” Vince looked from Keisha to the two men.

  “Retribution, my nigga,” Sticks moved closer to him. “I’ll bet you felt like a real man when y’all killed that little boy.”

  “What you talking about? I…” Daddy-O cut him off with a vicious slap to the face. Vince almost blacked out from the impact. He had heard stories about the brute force of Daddy-O’s hands, but it was something else altogether to feel it firsthand.

  “You picked the wrong mutha fuckas to rob.” Daddy-O cocked the slide on the shotgun.

  “Man, it was all Diego!” Vince tried to bargain.

  “Oh, we know that. And we’ll deal with that piece of shit soon enough.” Daddy-O said, pressing the shotgun against Vince’s face.

  “Come on, man. Don’t send me out like this.” Vince was bawling like a child.

  Daddy-O looked at him with compassionate eyes. “Nah,” he lowered the shotgun. “I ain’t gonna kill you, man.”

  “Thank you,” Vince said, with tears in his eyes. “I promise, I’m gonna pack my shit and disappear. You won’t ever see me again.”

  “I’m sure I won’t.” Daddy-O stepped back. “Sticks, rock this nigga!”

  Vince’s eyes go wide as Sticks advanced on him. He opened his mouth to scream but the sound was cut off when Sticks plunged the hunting knife into his gut. Wearing a smile like a kid on Christmas, Sticks pulled the knife across his gut and up to his neck. He wiped his hands on Vince’s couch and stepped back. The last thing Vince saw before he left this world for the next was Keisha smiling as she placed her foot on the knife and forced it deeper.

  A few blocks away, an equally gruesome scene was about to unfold.

  Benny woke up feeling like he had gone five rounds with Mike Tyson. He had had the fortune of meeting a fine little freak the night before and they had fucked and snorted coke until sometime that afternoon. Shorty was still sleeping in the bedroom, but Benny’s monkey had him up.

  He was just about to sit down and get his sniff on when there was a banging at the front door. He was about to ignore it, but the banging just got more urgent. “Hold the fuck on!” Benny shouted, pushing away from the
table. He had made it halfway to the door when it shook violently, then flew open.

  When Benny saw the battering ram he had assumed it was the police, but these were familiar faces spilling into the apartment. Stone led the charge, as Benny tried to run for one of the many guns that were spread throughout the apartment. He was grabbed by a pair of hands and thrown to the ground. Benny looked on helplessly as Prince came through the door looking like the devil himself.

  The girl must’ve been awakened by all the commotion, because she came into the living room rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “Benny, what the hell are you…” the words died in her throat when she saw the living room full of armed men.

  Naturally everyone expected her to scream, but to everyone’s surprise she snuffed the closest man to her, which happened to be Stone, and bolted for the door. She had almost made a clean getaway when she ran smack into Jay, who was bringing up the rear. She tried to break fly and swing, which turned out to be a bad move. He blocked her punch and threw two of his own, landing them square on her chin. The girl’s eyes rolled up in her head and she was out before she hit the ground.

  “You niggaz got a lot of balls coming up in here!” Benny said, struggling against the two soldiers who had him thoroughly pinned to the ground.

  “Shut the fuck up.” Prince stomped him in the midsection as he passed over him on his way to the living room. “Drag that mutha fucka out here!” he called over his shoulder, and the two soldiers did so with pleasure.

  “You mutha fuckas are going down,” Benny threatened as he was tossed roughly to the floor at Prince’s feet.