by Kiki Swinson
What Mike said kind of made sense, but if those narcs wanted to run up in Melody’s crib bad enough, they’d find a way. I knew from experience how they operated. They’d send two undercover police, looking just like dopefiends, to the spot and would have those young boys down on their faces before they saw it coming. I listened to Mike run his mouth about how we had shit around the way locked down, but like I said before, anything you built up could be knocked down. In other words, I was gonna need to be on my p’s and q’s from this point on. After our conversation was over, Mike asked me if I would do a job for him. I looked at him with a curious expression and asked him what kind of job did he want me to do. When he told me that he wanted me to get rid of Jay, I was at a loss for words.
“Whatchu mean, you want me to get rid of him?” I asked.
“I want you to kill him.”
Caught off guard by his abrupt decision to end Jay’s life, I hesitated for a moment and then I looked at him in a bizarre kind of way. “Damn, son, what’s going on? You and that nigga beefing or something?”
“Nah, we ain’t been beefing but for the last week or so, my dough has been coming up short. And when I asked that nigga where my money was, he gave me some ol’ bogus-ass excuse about how he had to take a lot of shorts off each pill of dope, so that’s why the count was off. But I know that’s bullshit because I’ve got this young nigga over there at the spot telling me that Jay is taking straight money and he’s beating the head off every pill he sells.”
“Word?”
“Come on now, son, you know I don’t play about shit like that.”
“How much did he say he was losing off every pill?”
“He told me he was taking two-dollars shorts.”
“Damn! That’s a lot of dough to be losing on a daily basis, especially if you’re giving him two to three thousand pills. Shit, that nigga got to be pocketing anywhere between four to six grand, plus whatever he’s making from the dope he’s taking out of the pills you give him.”
“I know, and the thought of it makes me wanna put a bullet right in that motherfucker’s dome!”
“So, why don’t you just step to him and tell him to give you your motherfucking dough?”
“Because I know the nigga is going to stand right in my face and lie to me.”
“But what if he doesn’t, and fucks around and gives you your dough?”
“It still isn’t going to matter. I can’t have that nigga on my payroll anymore. Once you betray my trust, I can’t have you around me anymore. That’s why if you hurry up and get rid of his ass for me, I’ll give you a third of everything he took from me.”
“When do you want this done?”
“The sooner the better.”
“A’ight. Well, give me a couple of days and I’ll have it done.”
“You think you’re gonna need a couple of burners?”
“Nah, I’m straight. I do need to know where you want me to clip him. I mean, I know you don’t want me bringing any heat to the spot.”
“Yeah, I was going to tell you that the best way to get him is when he leaves the spot because he always stops by the smoke spot on Reservoir Avenue before he goes to the crib. Out there it is very dark because the niggas ’round there knocked out all the streetlights to keep the narcs from running up on them at any given moment. So if you can run up on him and put a couple slugs in his head right after he comes back out of the spot, niggas is going to think that he’s either getting robbed or he’s got beef, so they’re gonna run for cover and you ain’t gonna have to worry about any witnesses.”
“What about the dough he’s going to have after he closes down the shop?”
“Don’t worry about that because I am going to get Trina to pick it up before he leaves.”
“Well, have you thought about how you are going to get your other dough back?”
“Yeah, I’ve got that covered. I’m gonna have somebody kick up in his girl’s spot where he keeps his stash, while you got him trapped on Reservoir.”
I took a deep breath after Mike laid down this plans to have Jay robbed and killed. It was obvious that his mind was made up, so I didn’t question him any further. After I gave him a nod to indicate that I was down for whatever, he ran down a few more details about what time I could be expecting Jay to leave the spot. He gave me some vital information about Jay’s most vulnerable spot on his body. I took mental notes of everything, and afterwards gave Mike the proper handshake and hopped back into my whip. As I was about to leave Mike said, “Ay yo, is everything a’ight over at the spot?”
I hesitated for a minute because I was beginning to think that this nigga was asking me a trick question. But then it dawned on me that if Melody had already called him and told him about that little altercation we had this morning, that would had probably be the first thing he wanted to talk about. Then again, this nigga was kind of strange, so you couldn’t ever tell with him. I mean, look at the situation with Jay beating Mike for his dough. Now, Mike was walking around and acting like everything was OK around Jay. Jay was walking around, going on about his business, not even knowing that tomorrow night was going to be his last night getting a piece of pussy. After I ran that whole scenario through my mind I took a deep breath and said, “Everything is cool! Why? What’s up?”
“Nothing. I was just asking since I hadn’t been over there in a few days.”
“Oh yeah, everything is straight.”
“A’ight. Well, hit me up later after you shut the shop down.”
“A’ight,” I said and pulled off.
I headed back over to Melody’s crib. She was in her bedroom when I walked in the house, so I went straight into the kitchen and broke down the package into bundles of one hundred pills. After I did that, I called my street team and told them to come to the spot. They got there in less than thirty minutes, so we suited up and got busy. Everything was going good until I heard one of the fiends standing outside of the spot complaining that we sold her some bad dope. I opened up the front door and stepped outside on the porch. The young’un Bishop stood before the old-looking fiend with his burner pointed directly at her head. “Didn’t I tell your motherfucking ass not to come back ’round here with that bullshit? Do you want me to blow your motherfucking head off right now?” he roared at her.
“Come on now, Bishop, let her go,” I yelled from where I stood.
“Nah, son, this bitch has been trying to get over on us for these past couple of days. And she just threatened to call the police on us, too!”
“Let her go, dawg! You know we don’t need no heat ’round here, especially with all this shit we got to move,” I reminded him.
Bishop hesitated for a moment, as if he had to contemplate on whether or not it would be beneficial to take my advice. I became angry and wasted no time in showing it. “What the fuck you doing, thinking about it or something?” I snapped.
“Nah,” he said and pulled the gun back from the lady’s head and released his grip from around her neck.
“Well, what the fuck were you waiting for?” Frustration and rage were written all over my face.
“I was just waiting for her ass to say something else,” Bishop explained.
Meanwhile, the woman had walked away, but before she got too far, I sent Hakeem behind her so he could hand her another pill of dope. I did this to keep her mouth closed. I didn’t need the police running up on us right now. We had too much dope we had to get rid of. Not only that, my baby Samantha was coming home in less than a week, so I definitely wanted to be out there to see her. Shit, we had too much stuff we had to catch up on, and I wasn’t gonna let no knucklehead-ass nigga fuck that up for me. And I meant that shit from the bottom of my heart.
Once Hakeem straightened the lady out and blessed her with a freebie, I laid a few words of wisdom on Bishop. “Yo, man, what the fuck is wrong with you? You can’t be sticking burners in motherfucker’s heads like that. Whatchu trying to do, set it off ’round here or something?”
&
nbsp; “Nah, dawg,” Bishop sighed. “See, that bitch been popping shit to me and Hakeem for the last couple of days, talking about we keep selling her bad dope and that if we don’t give her a refund or another pill, she was gon’ call the police on us. I got tired of her running her fucking mouth, and that’s why I pulled my burner out and buried it in her head.”
“Look, I understand all of that, but you can’t be walking around here pulling out your piece every time one of these motherfucker’s threatens to call the police.”
“All I was trying to do was scare her stupid ass!”
“I know that, but this is not the place or the time to be doing that. Mike hit me off with a huge bundle of dope, so he expects us to get rid of that shit without any interruptions. You got me?”
“Yeah, I gotcha,” Bishop assured me.
“A’ight. Well, get back to work. And if you have any more problems with these fiends, just come and get me so I can handle it.”
“A’ight,” he replied and headed back to his post, which was the front right side of the apartment building. When I looked around for my other three street soldiers, they were standing at their assigned spots too. I looked at every last one of them and asked them if they were all right and they all nodded their heads or said, “Yeah, I’m straight.”
“A’ight. Well, keep y’all’s heads up, because we gon’ have a long day.” I went back inside.
“What the hell was all the commotion about out there?” Melody asked the moment I stepped back into the house. Dressed in her usual booty shorts and T-shirt, she stood in the entranceway of the living room and waited for me to answer her.
I was short and to the point. “One of the young’uns had some problems with one your dopefiend friends, but I straightened everything out.” I walked right by her.
“What dopefiend friends? I don’t fuck with none of these motherfucker’s out here, and you know that!” she yelled, walking behind me.
“If you keep trying to get high, then there’s no doubt in my mind that you and all them fiends out there are going to start hanging out and getting high together.”
“Shit, no I’m not! Trust me, I can control this shit.”
“Yeah, a’ight.” I brushed her ass off. After I grabbed my bottle of sweet tea out of the refrigerator, I walked right by her ass again and went back into the living room. I guess Melody got the hint that I didn’t want to be bothered because it sounded like she was going to come behind me but once she got into the hallway, she turned right and headed back into her bedroom. Thank God. Now I could get a little me time. Block out all this bullshit and think about what I was gonna do when my baby came home and how we were going to spend all that dough I was stacking. Good times were definitely ahead. Too bad Maxine wasn’t going to be a part of that equation. She’d be all right, though. I was gonna make sure of that.
SETH
Killing Two Birds With One Stone
It was unbelievable, but me and my soldiers got rid of every pill of dope Mike laid on us. We didn’t finish until after midnight, but hey, we got it done. Soon afterward, I headed on over to meet Mike so I could give him his dough. He was happy as hell to know that I had gotten rid of all that dope. It seemed like that was all he talked about throughout our entire conversation. It felt good to know that I did my thing and that he recognized it. Right before I hopped back into my whip, he asked me had I thought about how I was going to execute Jay. I told him that a few things had ran though my mind, but I wasn’t quite sure about how I was going to get it done.
“I’ll let you know either way I go,” I assured him.
“Well, you know he’s still at his spot, just in case you want to scope him out,” Mike said.
“A’ight,” I replied, and then I pulled off.
As soon as I got through the downtown Portsmouth tunnel and back onto the Norfolk side, I drove across the Berkley Bridge. Instead of taking Highway I-264 so I could head on down to my mother’s crib, I made a detour and jumped off the Tidewater Drive exit. It only took me two minutes from the exit to get to Jay’s spot in Tidewater Park. That part of Norfolk was known for niggas getting murdered. The last time I heard, at least ten niggas got shot out there every week. If Jay became one of those statistics, the Chief of Police would probably write it off as another nigga involved in a drug deal gone bad.
“Got them red tops!” I heard a young boy yell toward my car as I cruised down Golf Street.
I ignored homeboy and kept it moving. I drove into the next block and made a right onto Church Street. By the time I got close enough to get a good look at Jay’s spot, and the surrounding area, he was standing next to his car, talking to some skeezer-looking chick. I tried to speed up to avoid being seen, but it was too late. My cover was blown.
Jay’s full attention was off homegirl and he turned to face my car.
“Ay yo, Seth,” I heard him yell.
I pumped my brakes, rolled down my window, and poked my head out. “Who that?” I asked, as if I wasn’t sure who had called my name.
“It’s me, Jay, nigga,” he announced and walked toward my car.
While I watched him approach me, I didn’t know what the fuck to do. I knew right off the jump he was going to ask me why I was out there, so I knew I was going to have something convincing to tell him. I mean, I couldn’t tell him that I came out there to check him, because then he would know that that was a lie. I had never come out there before so, why now? Besides, we weren’t like that, so there was no reason for me to be coming out there. As a matter-of-fact, we didn’t fuck with each other at all. Some of it had to do with Melody, and the other part had something to do with me getting real close to Mike. Yeah, I knew Jay didn’t like that shit, especially since Mike put me in charge of the whole scene out in Dales Homes. But in this game, rules changed all the time. The moment you thought everything was lovely and money was rolling in and you had plenty of bitches you could fuck, another nigga was going to come right behind you. In a split second, they could take it all away from your dumb ass. I knew this because I was just the nigga who’d do it to you. Then when it was my time, a nigga was going to do it to me. That was just how the dice rolled.
“What’s good, son?” Jay asked as he shook my hand.
“Everything is lovely. I’m out here looking for this bitch name Dana,” I told him before he made an attempt to ask.
“Dana,” Jay said, as if he was trying to figure out who I was talking about. “How does she look?”
“She’s a brown-skinned, short, thick chick with a big-ass mole over her lip. The shit is so big, you can’t miss it.” I laughed.
“Did she tell you where she lived at?”
“Nah. She told me she was going to be standing out on Washington Street, but I don’t see her ass ’round here nowhere.” I turned my head around to look at the other side of the street, as if I was looking for her.
Jay stood back from my car and glanced down both ends of the street. “Shit, I don’t see her either.”
“She told me she was wearing a red and white vest jacket, but I didn’t see nobody out here with that shit on.”
“Me either,” Jay said.
“I know one thing, she better bring her ass out here in the next ten seconds because if she doesn’t, I’m gone and I ain’t coming back.”
“Call her.”
“I just tried to, but she didn’t answer her phone,” I lied.
“You sure that bitch is on the up and up? ’Cause it sounds like she’s trying to set your ass up to get robbed or something.”
“A bitch ain’t got enough heart to set me up.” I laughed, but I was dead serious.
“Well, these bitches out here got plenty of heart, so you better watch your back.”
“Oh, I’m straight! But, I’m gon holler at you!” I eased my feet off the brake. My car started rolling away real slow.
“A’ight,” Jay said and stepped back from my car.
The moment I pulled off, it felt like a burden was lifted from my s
houlders. I laughed out loud as I thought about how predictable Jay was. He was also very vulnerable when it came to chicks. I saw that he let his guard down when he was entertaining one of his whores. If I wanted to, I could’ve lit his ass up while he was talking to homegirl, but I knew that would not have been the right move and besides, it was too many motherfucker’s out on the streets, which meant a whole lot of witnesses. I saw what I needed to see, so I was straight, and now I was gonna carry my ass to the crib. I’d think about how I was gonna run up on Jay’s ass after I got me a good night’s sleep.
The next morning I got up with a clear head. My moms made me a BLT, and after I chased the sandwich down with a cold glass of orange juice, I grabbed my car keys off the kitchen table. When I attempted to leave the kitchen, my mother sparked up a conversation about Maxine.
“What’s going on with you and Maxine?” she asked.
“What do you mean, Ma?”
“She’s been ringing this phone off the hook, and I am sick and tired of it.”
“Tell her to stop calling here!”
“Why don’t you tell her?”
“I ain’t got nothing to say. I’m done with her.”
“Does she know that?” My mom stood with her back against the countertop, sipping on a cup of hot tea.
“Yeah, she knows it.”
“Well, I find that hard to believe because I had a long talk with her today, and she gave me an earful.”
“What did she say?” I couldn’t wait to hear what Maxine said to my mother.
My mother sighed heavily. “I think she’s going to violate you.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Well first off, she doesn’t like the fact that you’re spending a lot of time away from her, and second, you won’t return any of her calls. Now, you know how crazy that girl is, so why are you playing with her emotions? Don’t you know that woman has your life in the palm of her hands? She can send your butt back to prison in a heartbeat and there won’t be nothing you could do about it.”
I was frustrated. “Momma, don’t you think I already know all that?”
