by Rio
I nodded and took out my own pack of Newports. A million questions were bunched together in my mind like sardines in a can. Could my girlfriend, Lakisha Sanford, be trusted with so much money? And how could I have so much cash put up without spending it? I was already considering getting rims for the Chevy, maybe even another Chevy—an old-school Donk like the one Mone had driven.
The most daunting question of all surfaced as I put fire to the end of my cigarette and sucked in a mouthful of cancerous smoke:
Would Pops and I even get away with what we’d done?
“You dripped blood from that bedroom to the car,” I said, watching him toss his portion of the cash into one of the duffle bags. “You know they can trace that shit, Pops. Saw it on The First 48. It’ll only take ‘em a few days.”
“Well, you need to take care of that. Pay some niggas to burn the house down later on tonight. Give ‘em a pound of that Kush.”
“You know it’s too late for that, Pops. Detectives probably got that whole house taped off right now.” I shook my head and sighed. Pops had to leave Chicago; he knew it like I knew it.
Picking up his bag of money, Pops looked at me with the hardest expression I’d ever seen on his face. I assumed he was trying his best to conceal the pain he felt for having involved me in a murder. Or maybe he was worried about the possibility of us spending the rest of our lives in prison. I wasn’t sure.
“Let’s just celebrate this Fourth of July holiday. Don’t spend no more than a rack or two. I want you to drive me down to your brother’s house first thing in the morning,” Pops said, sounding defeated. He stared me in the eye for a brief moment. “You ask God for forgiveness?”
I nodded my head yes. “Did right before we gave him those head shots.” I went to the rest of the money and started loading it into an empty duffle bag.
“When you get a chance,” Pops said, walking to the door, “open your Bible to Job, chapter seven, verse one. If my memory serves me correctly, it reads, “The life of man upon earth is a warfare.” Don’t ever forget that.”
“I won’t,” I promised.
~Chapter 6~
By noontime I had changed into a white Armani Exchange t-shirt, black Armani Exchange jeans, and a fresh pair of black and red Jordan sneakers. I put on a black White Sox hat and banged it to the left, a testament to my undying love for the branch of Vice Lords I represented: the TVLs.
I cleaned and organized my bedroom. Then I unplugged my phone from its charger and checked the missed calls. Kisha had called twice and my ex-girlfriend, Alycia, had called once. I peeled twenty-five hundred dollars off a bundle of hundreds and dropped it in my pocket with the phone, grabbed my Glock 33 from the drawer in my nightstand, tucked it under my shirt, and picked up the three duffle bags.
Someone knocked on the bedroom door just as I was opening it and suddenly I found myself face to face with Shay Cooper, a slender-bodied, Indian girl with a caramel complexion that had been kicking it with my sister ever since they’d met at Malcolm X College a year ago.
Shay was twenty-one, same age as me, and she had on a pink and white Polo shirt with matching short-shorts and Pumas. Her soft smile made me smile.
“I smell that loud pack,” she said excitedly. “Bust that shit out Lil Mike. Let me get a blunt or two for me and Treecy.”
“Nigga,” I said, looking at her long sexy legs, “Treecy already got some weed and I gotta go somewhere right quick.” I stepped past Shay and headed up the hallway. She followed me out to the car, giggling like the weed-head she truly was.
Ignoring Shay proved to be impossible; she was sexy and slim, kinda like Rihanna, and she always smelled good enough to eat. I’d had the pleasure of fucking her several times already. But as bad as I wanted to do it again, I knew that getting the cash and drugs to a safe place had to come first.
Shay grabbed the back of my shirt as I was dropping the duffle bags in the trunk and she didn’t let go until I walked to the driver’s door and opened it.
“You make me sick,” she mumbled, angrily pushing her palm into my back.
“Why do I make you sick?” I started the engine, pulled my door shut, and then looked out at her. She had her hands on her hips.
“You know damn well why,” she snapped. “It’s the Fourth. I came over here to kick it with you. A bitch ain’t had no dick in two weeks and you wanna leave as soon as I get here. I should cuss yo’ ass out.” She rolled her pretty brown eyes and sucked her pearly white teeth. “That’s why I can’t stand your bald-headed ass now.”
Adjusting the rearview mirror, I glanced at my reflection and displayed a brief grin. I had shaved my head bald this morning before hopping in the shower and now it was shining in the searing-hot sunlight like a smooth, tan bowling ball. There was a long scar running from just above my right eyebrow down to the side of my mouth, a permanent reminder of the time I’d recently served in the Illinois juvenile prison system.
“Come on,” I finally said, opening my door and sliding my seat forward. “You gotta get in the back seat, though. Got blood all over the passenger’s seat.”
“Blood?” Shay climbed in and sat behind the passenger’s seat, pushing the barrel of the AK-47 to the floor. “How’d you get blood on your seat?”
I shrugged and drove off. My mind was still on the money I’d just gotten. The twenty-five hundred dollars in my pocket was begging to be spent. I wanted some rims for my car, some new video games for my PS3, a few pairs of Jordan’s, and I definitely needed a fifth of Hennessy to get Kisha and Shay in the mood. But first I had to stash the duffle bags.
Turning onto Roosevelt, I was nearly rear-ended by a green Tahoe; it veered to the right just in time to avoid hitting me.
“Stupid ass nigga,” I said as I watched the SUV turn left on Kedzie.
“Don’t worry about them,” Shay said, snaking her head around my seat and pressing her soft lips against the side of my neck. “I should be the only thing on your mind.”
My dick got hard instantly and I quickly forgot about the dark green Tahoe.
~Chapter 7~
“Slow the fuck down Cresha! You almost hit that car back there!”
“My bad, James, I was looking at this Google Maps app. The house should be right around this corner,” Lacresha said as she made a left turn on 13th and another left onto Troy.
She had made James drop off his friends before telling him about the identification card that she’d found on Mone’s bedroom floor. Now she and her brother were alone in his Tahoe vigilantly flicking their eyes around at the unfamiliar environment. Neither one of them had ever frequented the west side of the Windy City except for those rare occasions when they came to visit their aunt Crystal.
Cresha spotted the house first: 1248 S. Troy Street. There were two girls sitting on the porch steps rolling blunts and laughing. An older man in jeans and a t-shirt was setting up a barbecue grill in the vacant lot next to the house; while a woman who looked to be about the same age was filling a cooler with beers and sodas.
“Pull over and park right up here,” James said. He reclined in the passenger’s seat and slid a thirty-round magazine into his 9mm Ruger. His coffee-black face was calmer than usual—the calm before the storm. “Whatever happens, don’t leave me out here, a’ight?”
“Boy ain’t nobody gon leave you.” Cresha parked the SUV one house down from Michael T. Love Jr.’s address and then killed the engine. She held her Samsung Galaxy 3 in one hand and the Illinois State ID in the other, studying them both. “Yup, the address matches the one on this ID, and the ID looks brand new.” She eyed the man at the barbecue grill through her side-view mirror. “That nigga standin’ by the house kinda looks like the nigga in this picture, must be some kin to ‘im.”
“Tell me how many faces you see on this block,” James said, cocking his heavy black gun.
Far behind them on the corner to their left, Cresha counted five teenage thugs and three adults. Drug-dealers, she assumed, out serving their product to th
e early morning addicts. A small group of young girls were playing a game of hopscotch on the sidewalk behind the Tahoe, and a brown-skin teenage boy on a bike had just appeared at the corner of Roosevelt and Troy.
“Too many people, James. Too many eyes. We should leave and come back later.”
“Nuh-uh.” He sat up and peered out at 1248 South Troy Street, then sank back down in his seat and said, “Drive around to the alley behind the house. We ain’t leavin’ without that money.”
~Chapter 8~
“What’s in those duffle bags?” Shay asked.
I glanced over at her and grinned. We were climbing the stairs in the house where Kisha lived on 16th and Millard, and I was having a hard time keeping my eyes off Shay’s smooth brown thighs.
“Smells like Kush,” she muttered, returning my stare.
I ignored her and dialed Kisha’s number on my smartphone as we continued to ascend the black-carpeted staircase. Both Kisha and Shay were from the same northwest Indiana city—in fact, it had been Shay who’d introduced me to Kisha on December 28th of last year—but I was still worried about how Kisha would take to me showing up with Shay. Kisha was the most jealous girlfriend I’d ever had, and I didn’t feel like arguing; not now, anyway.
Kisha answered on the fourth ring.
“Come open the door,” I said into the phone, while my eyes wandered back to Shay’s luscious thighs.
“Nigga, why the fuck didn’t you answer the phone when I called you earlier?” Kisha snapped.
I shook my head. “Just open the muhfuckin door.”
Seconds later, Kisha unlocked and opened the door. Tall, chocolate, and slender, she looked like the Kisha character from the movie Belly. She wore a see-through white Hello Kitty shirt over a tight-fitting pair of matching sweat pants, and her hands were already planted on her hips.
She squinted at Shay for half a second, then shifted her accusatory glare back to me as she stepped back to let us in.
“Make yourself at home, Shay,” Kisha mumbled vacantly, her eyes burning a hole in the side of my head. “Lil Mike, getcho ass to the bedroom. We need to have a long talk.”
Grinning pleasantly, I headed to her bedroom and immediately dropped the duffle bags onto the foot of her bed. She slammed the door shut and crossed her arms over her chest, scowling at me. I knew why she was mad: she thought I had ignored her phone call because I’d been cheating with Shay, a notion that made no sense at all since Kisha was bisexual and would have gladly welcomed Shay into our bed.
“It’s not what you think,” I said grabbing the $2,500 from my pants pocket.
Her crabby frown flipped over instantly.
“I was busy when you called,” I said, flipping through the hundreds. “Hit a sweet-ass lick for damn near a half million and some dope. Split it wit’ my Pops.”
“Boy, are you serious?” Her tone was soft with disbelief.
“You think I’d joke about some shit like this?” I turned and opened the duffle full of cash, then dumped it all out on her Hello Kitty blanket.
Kisha’s mouth dropped open and her eyelids ran away from each other.
**********
After giving Kisha two thousand dollars and sending her and Shay out to get blunts and drinks, I sat at the small wooden kitchen table with my digital scale, a box of sandwich bags, and a pound of Kush. I dialed my older brother Darrell’s number, put it on speaker phone, and started bagging up ounces of the strong-scented weed.
“Sup lil nigga?” He answered.
“Loud pack on deck, bruh,” I said.
“Whaaaat?” He sounded enthused.
“Hell yeah, nigga. Me and Pops caught a nigga slippin’, came up on a nice ass lick. Got me on yo’ level now.”
I laughed aloud, but I was dead serious. Darrell—better known as “Scrilla Man”—was a boss in the dope game. He lived way down in Anderson, Indiana, but his drug ring spanned several states. He had once given me a half kilo of cocaine to get on with, but I’d come back empty handed after tricking off all the money on Kisha, Alycia, and a few other hood chicks, and ever since then he’d resorted to giving me a grand or two whenever I needed it. And he kept track of every dime he “loaned” me.
“Hope you got that ten racks you owe me,” he said.
“Ten racks?!” I scoffed. “Nigga, I owe you six racks.”
“Plus interest,” he joked.
“You got me fucked up, Joe. On my momma.”
“What I tell you ‘bout callin’ me “Joe”? Call me Scrilla or don’t call me nothin’. And where my old man at?”
“At the crib wit’ the OG getting’ the grill ready. We’re driving down there later on tonight.”
“Down where?” He asked.
“To yo’ house, nigga!” I said. “Pops might have to lay low for a while. I’ll talk to you about it when we get there.”
“Shit, I’m in Gary right now and I’m gettin’ a room wit’ my lil bitch in MC tonight.”
“MC?”
“Michigan City,” he elaborated. “It’s thirty minutes from Chicago. I was gon’ come through and kick it wit’ y’all today.”
I nodded, putting a bud of Kush under my nose and inhaling deeply.
“Well,” I said, “you can just take him with you when you leave. I really wanna stay in the house wit’ Kisha and Shay.”
“What?! Shay over there?!” He had a major crush on her. “I’m on my way, nigga,” he said and hung up.
Chuckling and shaking my head, I went back to bagging up the Kush while I mentally calculated the dough I’d make off the weed and cocaine.
Thirty-two thousand dollars per kilo?
Sixty-five hundred dollars per pound of Kush?
Yeah, that sounded about right.
~Chapter 9~
“Whatever you do in there, James, just make sure you don’t kill anybody, okay? I can’t be an accessory to murder,” Lacresha mumbled worriedly.
James looked over at her, gave her a square stare. Then he turned and continued his undercover surveillance of the house they were now parked behind—the Love residence.
“I’m for real, James. I told yo’ ass from the jump I didn’t want nothin’ to do with no murder. Who’s gonna take care of my baby if I get locked up? Who’s gonna look after—”
“Shut that bullshit up,” James snapped.
Cresha sucked her teeth and lit another cigarette; she had smoked eight of them since the shooting at Mone’s place. Her hands and legs were trembling uncontrollably. Half of her wanted desperately to leave without the money, but that was her scared half, the half that was still badly shaken by Mone’s brutal murder. What kept her in place was the harsh reality of her financial situation. She was flat broke. All the guys at the club made the majority of their dollars rain down on the girls with big asses and light skin, and the fact that Cresha possessed neither of those attributes put her at the bottom of the totem pole. She was averaging $500 every night she danced, but her many habits—snorting cocaine, popping Ecstasy and Molly’s, smoking Kush and cigarettes, drinking bottles of Ciroc every night—ate up nearly all of her income. What was left she used to pay bills and take care of herself, her seven year old daughter Defina, and James whenever he needed it.
‘All I need is ten thousand for those butt implants,’ she thought to herself as she watched the slender man from the barbecue grill step around the big green dumpster she was parked next to and toss two trash filled bags inside it. She immediately noticed his limp.
Fearing the man would get a glimpse of her face and realize that she was the same girl from Mone’s house; Cresha sucked in a breath and pushed her brother’s shoulder.
“Hurry up,” she whispered, nudging James toward his door.
James pushed open his door and rushed out. He had his gun against the nape of the man’s neck a second later.
“Where that muhfuckin bread at, nigga?” James’ voice sounded icier than usual. He clamped his free hand onto the side of the man’s neck. “I don’t wanna
have to murk you over this shit. I’m about to walk you into your house, you’re gonna give me those duffle bags, and then I’m leavin’, a’ight? We clear on that?”
The man didn’t answer right away. Watching from the driver’s seat, Cresha grabbed James’ chrome .38 Special from the glove compartment. She thumbed back the hammer and stepped out of the SUV, grazing her eyes around the vacant alley. The man spoke just as Cresha made it to her brother’s side.
“You must not know who you’re fucking with,” he said through clenched teeth. “Nigga, I’m Big Mike. Certified OG, lil nigga! You better take that lil pistol up the street and rob one of them lil—”
James quickly silenced the man with a pistol-slap to the side of his head. Then he roughly shoved the man around the dumpster and into a small, neatly decorated backyard.
Reluctantly, Cresha let out a sigh and followed her brother. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted the teenager she had seen on a bike a few minutes earlier, he was standing at the end of the alley with a second teenage boy, and the bike was nowhere to be seen.
The two boys were gazing at Cresha.
She pointed the revolver in their direction and opened her mouth to yell at them, but they took off running before she could get a word out.
~Chapter 10~
Lucky for me, I’d still had one White Owl cigar left in a glass bowl on the glass-top coffee table in Kisha’s living room. I was sitting on the sofa—an ugly burgundy davenport Kisha had gotten from one of her tasteless aunts—smoking a plump blunt of Kush and shopping for a set of rims on eBay when Kisha and Shay returned with the drinks and blunts.
“Let the celebrations begin,” I chimed, smiling from ear to ear.
“Look at this high-ass nigga,” Shay said with a laugh. She cracked open a bottle of Ciroc Vodka and poured equal amounts into three red plastic cups as Kisha set them on the coffee table. I caught both of them staring at me as Shay poured the liquor.
‘Thirsty hoes,’ I thought, moving my eyes back to my phone and scanning the list of Lexani rims. I had a gut feeling Kisha had told Shay about the cash I’d shown her, because both of them were unusually quiet, and Kisha kept glancing at the huge bulges in the front pockets of my jeans; I had $5,000 in hundred-dollar bills in each of my front pockets, and an ounce of the loud-smelling Kush was sitting on the table.
