A Gangsta's Son

by Rio

  We started smoking blunts and drinking and watching Django Unchained on the 42-inch flat-screen television. Seated between them, I listened to them talk about an engagement ring one of their girls had just received from her boyfriend. Then the topic changed to how “sexy” and “cute” Jamie Foxx looked in the movie.

  And the next thing I knew, Kisha was taking my shirt off and rubbing her hands across my chest.

  “I got my own Django,” she said, caressing my impeccably chiseled abdomen. My daily morning ritual of five hundred sit-ups and a thousand push-ups had paid off handsomely, and Kisha was fond of enjoying the fruits of my labor.

  “Can y’all please get a room?” Shay muttered as Kisha unbuckled my belt and pants and pulled out my dick.

  For some odd reason, she loved slurping on my ten-inch erection in front of other women; and I loved watching her do it. She wasn’t all that good at doing it, but she was good enough to get the job done. She’d sucked my dick twice in front of Shay. Both times I’d ended up fucking Shay a few hours later.

  I set my phone on the table and eased back on the sofa, eyeing Kisha’s tongue as it flickered across the tip of my brick-hard pole. Shay passed me a blunt, and I took four or five pulls before passing it back and asking her to hand me my cup.

  “Hope you plan on lacin’ a bitch wit’ some of this Kush,” Shay said, staring at the line of smoke that was curling up into the air from the lit end of the blunt.

  My phone started ringing on the table just as Shay was handing me my drink. I looked at the phone screen and saw that it was Tyrone, a seventeen year old gun-slinger from the hood who was always seen riding around on his bike with a big-ass pistol on his hip. I took a fiery sip of Vodka and briefly considered answering the call. But I knew he was probably just calling to check on me, and since Kisha’s lips were now jackhammering, I decided against picking up the phone. I was going to whip up a few ounces of hard to give him anyway. Better to return the call when I had the work ready for him to sell, I figured.

  I was shaken from my thoughts by Shay’s cotton-soft voice.

  “Girl you gotta suck harder than that,” she said, blowing a stream of smoke at the ceiling fan. “You suck dick like a white girl.” Shay glanced at Kisha and laughed. “Like Paris Hilton or some-damn-body. You better suck that dick like Superhead if you tryna keep yo’ man, ‘cause I can name a thousand other hoes who will.”

  Instantly, Kisha popped her sucking lips off my glistening dick and pushed it toward Shay.

  “Fine.” Kisha lifted her head from my lap. “You show me how to do it then, Ms. Pornstar. Give me a few lessons. I might learn somethin’.”

  I sipped my drink, smiling widely. My phone lit up with another call from Tyrone, but I ignored it and kept moving my eyes from Kisha to Shay and back to Kisha again.

  Shay put the blunt out in the ashtray next to my phone. Then she took a chewed up piece of gum out of her mouth and pressed it against the side of her cup.

  “I’m tellin’ you now Ki-Ki, I’m gonna have this nigga scratchin’ at my door in the mornin’, askin’ for another fix,” Shay warned as she pulled her legs up beneath her and leaned toward me.

  She wrapped her hands around the base of my love-muscle and spit on its bulging head, then lowered her mouth and went ape-shit. Shay sucked dick like she majored in fellatio and graduated summa cum laude. Her fingers squeezed as her mouth bobbed ecstatically. Kisha went to sucking and licking and kissing on my chest and abs while Shay sucked the life out of me.

  I dropped my head back and gazed up at the spinning ceiling fan, thinking, ‘These hoes is up to somethin’. Or at least Kisha is. Bitch ain’t been this nice to me since I moved out last month.’

  On the coffee table, my phone was still ringing.

  ~Chapter 11~

  Tyrone and his younger cousin Joe-Joe had run all the way to the corner of Kedzie and Douglas after the girl pointed a gun at them. Stunned and out of breath, they stood there for a moment, chests heaving, taking turns calling Lil Mike’s phone number from Tyrone’s phone—as if Lil Mike would answer for one of them and not the other.

  “Damn, Joe. This nigga ain’t even answerin’.” Tyrone dropped his phone in a pocket of his black denim MFG shorts and pulled them up around his waist; he had a belt on, but the .45-caliber Smith & Wesson on his hip and the twenty-round magazine in his rear left pocket were weighing down his shorts. “We gotta go back and make sure Big Mike a’ight. That nigga had a gun to Big Mike’s head, Joe.”

  “Nigga, you gotta go back,” Joe-Joe corrected. He was shorter and darker than his cousin, with short nappy hair and a barely noticeable overbite. He, too, wore an Armani Exchange shirt, long denim shorts, a Bulls fitted cap cocked to the left, and Jordan sneakers.

  The only real difference was that Joe-Joe didn’t have a pistol.

  “I ain’t got no banga on me,” Joe-Joe said. “You ain’t about to get me shot up tryna save Big Mike’s ass. Fuck that nigga. Ain’t he a GD from the south side? Nigga we TVLs—”

  “So muhfuckin what?!” Tyrone snapped as he turned to head back toward Lil Mike’s block. “That’s Lil Mike daddy, nigga. Go and let him know wussup. Tell the Travs too. I’m finna go try to handle this shit myself.”

  Tyrone took off in a sprint, and was halfway to Anna’s—a food and liquor store on the corner of 13th and Kedzie—when he looked back and saw his fourteen year old cousin running up behind him.

  They stopped in front of the store and Joe-Joe said, “Man, you know I cain’t let you go by yo’self.”

  Then the two young black boys rushed back into the alley.

  ~Chapter 12~

  “I’ll give you to the count of six to tell me where that bread at, nigga, and you can think I’m bullshittin’ if you want to,” James threatened. He was standing over Big Mike and Assata, both of whom were stretched out on their bellies on the linoleum kitchen floor.

  Cresha had the revolver aimed at the middle of Assata’s back and James was aiming his gun at Big Mike’s head. Assata had joined the party mere seconds ago when she happened to walk in the back door a moment after James had shoved Big Mike into the kitchen.

  “Nigga what bread?” Big Mike asked, his tone thick with anger. “Do it look like we got bread around this mothafucka?! We barely go white bread.”

  “One…” James started.

  “What is he looking for?” Assata asked.

  “Two…” said James.

  “Hell if I know!” Big Mike raged.

  “Three…” James continued.

  “Nigga, I wouldn’t give a fuck if you counted to six million!” Big Mike shouted. “What part of ‘I’m broke’ do you not understand? Me and my wife probably got forty dollars altogether, and that’s in our bedroom in the dresser. Take that lil bit of—”

  “Four…”

  “—money and get the fuck out my house ‘fore somethin’ bad happen. Carry yo’ ass down the street and rob them drug-dealers, ‘cause we ain’t got shit for you.”

  “Five…” James aimed the gun at Big Mike’s left shoulder and slipped his index finger in over the trigger. He was just about to squeeze it when Cresha stopped him.

  “Wait,” Cresha said, holding the identification card and studying it closely. “Where’s your son, Big Mike? Where’s Michael Love, Junior? Tell us now or I’m blowin’ your wife’s head off.”

  Neither Big Mike nor his woman spoke.

  “Try to find the duffle bags,” James said to Cresha as he took a seat at the kitchen table. “Somebody gon’ die if I don’t get that money.”

  Lacresha Radcliff searched all through Big Mike and Assata’s bedroom and found nothing but $42.57 on their dresser. She flipped their bed over, snatched out their dresser drawers, pulled everything from their closet, and emptied two floral-patterned suitcases.

  No duffle bags, no cash.

  But something on the dresser caught Cresha’s attention. It was a picture of the guy from the ID, wedged in the side of the dresser mirror between two pi
ctures of the girl Cresha had seen on the Love’s front porch.

  The picture that had Cresha’s attention was a club picture. Judging from the background, it seemed to have been taken at Club Adrianna’s, a popular nightclub in Markham, Illinois. Big Mike’s son was hugged up with Peaches, a dark-skinned stripper that recently started dancing at the same strip club where Cresha worked.

  Cresha took the picture and slipped it in her bra.

  “Hmm. Lakisha Sanford,” Cresha said thoughtfully as she turned to leave the bedroom.

  She didn’t even make it to the doorway.

  ~Chapter 13~

  Joe-Joe slung the pie-sized slab of brick through Big Mike’s bedroom window and watched it collide with the back of the girl’s head. She landed harder than the brick.

  “Run in there, Ty!” Joe-Joe said, yanking up his sagging shorts.

  Tyrone ran to the rear of the house and Lil Mike’s sister, Treecy, leaned around the front of the house a few seconds later.

  “Ooooooweee, Joe-Joe, I know yo’ lil bad ass ain’t just bust my daddy’s window,” she shouted disbelievingly.

  Ducking low beside the house, Joe-Joe shouted, “Hurry up and get on the ground! Ty bout to—”

  The first gunshot sounded like a canon. Joe-Joe immediately dropped flat to the concrete walkway, and Treecy and her beautiful bow-legged friend Nyomi followed suit.

  There had actually been two gunshots fired simultaneously from Tyrone’s .45 and James 9mm. Shocked by the sudden shattering of glass, James had kept his gun aimed at Big Mike’s head as he stood up to inspect the hallway. When Tyrone kicked the back door in and put a bullet in the left side of James’ neck, James instinctively squeezed the trigger of his Ruger. Then he slapped a hand onto the tingling hole in his neck and fell sideways to the floor, raising his pistol to return fire.

  But Tyrone was quick. He let off four more shots, and every one of them found James, punching three holes in his face and one in the middle of his Bears t-shirt.

  “Assata! Big Mike! Come on!” Tyrone yelled, still aiming the gun at the man he had just killed.

  Assata got to her knees and screamed, “Michael! Noooooo!”

  That’s when Tyrone glanced at Big Mike and saw that the old guy had suffered a bullet wound to the back of the head. His cheek was planted in a grotesque splash of brain and bone, and his distraught wife wouldn’t stop screaming about it.

  Then came three more gunshots.

  Stepping out of the bedroom, dazed and aching, holding the back of her bleeding head, Cresha gasped at the sight of her dead brother. She pointed the revolver at the teenager and shot him twice in his left shoulder. Her third shot missed but the first two knocked him off his feet. His gun skittered across the bloody linoleum, and he let out a painful groan.

  Cresha ran past him and out the back door.

  ~Chapter 14~

  “Damn, bae... y’all… need to do this shit more often.” I was holding on to Shay’s narrow waist and staring at the angel wings that were tattooed on her lower back while she bounced her lubricious pussy up and down the length of my condom-wrapped magic stick.

  Kisha was kissing all over the big VICE LORD tattoo that was arched across my abdomen. The pleasurable feeling of her soft pecking lips and Shay’s gushy juice box—combined with the good Kush and alcohol, and the knowledge of all the dope and money I had hidden away in Kisha’s bedroom—had me sitting on top of the world; or at least on top of the Lawndale neighborhood. I’m pretty sure I was the only nigga in the hood with seven bricks of cocaine—well, three and a half bricks, since the other half of the dope belonged to Pops. Now, sitting on the ugly sofa with two pretty, naked black women who’d been taking turns riding me for the past forty minutes, I was in the best mood ever.

  “You gon’ get me some Louboutins?” Kisha asked as she eased her head back to smile at me. “The pair I want only costs twelve hundred. They’re called the Miss Benin 160 leather sling-backs. Please get them for me.”

  I grinned, grunted and relieved myself into the condom. Shay’s snug vaginal walls pulled every drop out of me. Breathing heavily, with sweat leaking down my face, I fell back on the sofa and exhaled.

  On the table, my phone was ringing nonstop.

  “I’ll get both of y’all some Louboutins if I keep getting’ treated like this,” I said.

  Kisha sucked her teeth. “I didn’t say all that.” She snickered and slapped my chest, then handed me my phone while Shay climbed off of me.

  The call was from Treecy.

  And the news was bad; terribly bad.

  ~Chapter 15~

  My brother’s blue Escalade on chrome thirty-inch rims pulled up in front of my parents’ Troy Street home ten minutes after I did. Treecy had raced into my arms as soon as I stepped out of my Chevy and I was still holding her tightly when Scrilla walked up and wrapped his arms around the both of us.

  I had called and told him what I’d heard from Treecy.

  “It’s gon’ be okay Treecy. Everything’s gon’ be okay,” I murmured, trying my best to remain cool and level-headed.

  That’s because I had to. CPD patrol cars and SUVs were everywhere. Our front porch was blocked off in crime scene tape. Uncle Mutulu—Momma’s brother—had arrived shortly before I had. He was now doing to Momma what I was doing to Treecy, holding her while she cried and screamed her head off.

  “Damn, bruh,” Scrilla said. “What—shit, what happened?”

  “It was some black ass nigga and a girl,” Treecy told us. “I saw the girl speed off in a green Tahoe after she shot Tyrone, and I found the nigga she came with dead in the kitchen with Daddy. Lil Joe-Joe took the guns and helped Tyrone walk down the alley to Rick’s car. They just took him to the hospital.” She shook her head and sniffled. “I just wanna get away from here, Mikey. I don’t wanna see them carry Daddy out in no damn bag.”

  I rubbed her back and pulled her closer. To be honest, I didn’t want to see my father’s body being carried out, either. But I wasn’t about to leave.

  Not without my father’s duffle full of cash.

  I walked Treecy over to Uncle Mutulu’s long, black Cadillac and helped her into the backseat. Momma got in beside her. I leaned in and kissed Momma on the cheek, wondering what I could possibly say to console her. Nothing came to mind, so I gave her a hug and shut the door.

  “We’ll be at my house,” Mutulu said as he got in the driver’s seat. He had on a gray business suit, the everyday attire of a business owner. He owned two convenience stores and several houses in the Lawndale neighborhood, including the one I was now standing in front of, the one that was now swarming with police officers.

  “I’ll be over there in a lil while,” I said to Uncle Mutulu.

  Momma rolled down her window.

  “That duffle bag,” she said, “the one Michael brought in this morning. It’s in the trunk of his car. I think that’s what they came for. Here,” she said as she handed me the keys to my father’s broke-down 1989 Chevy Caprice.

  ‘They couldn’t have come for the money,’ I thought to myself as I watched the Cadillac accelerate up Troy to Roosevelt.

  And then it hit me.

  ‘The green Tahoe.’

  I had seen a green Tahoe on the corner near Mone’s house shortly before the robbery; I’d nearly crashed into a green Tahoe at the intersection of Troy and Roosevelt on my way to Kisha’s; and Treecy said she’d seen the girl speeding away in a green Tahoe.

  “Shit.” I crossed the street to where Kisha and Shay were standing behind my car. “They must’ve followed me,” I guessed out loud.

  “Who?” Kisha asked.

  I didn’t answer because I had no answer to give.

  ~Chapter 16~

  The following week seemed to pass by in slow motion. Momma was grieving too heavily to manage my father’s funeral preparations and Scrilla was too damn lazy—or “busy” as he always said—so it all fell on me and Kisha. The $10,000 life insurance policy covered all the expenses. I went out
with Kisha and Treecy and bought Pops a three thousand dollar Armani suit so he could leave us in style—and I ended up on an impromptu Michigan Avenue shopping spree that relieved me of and additional twelve thousand dollars on designer clothes for myself and the girls. I had put Pops’ raggedy old Caprice in a local detailing shop for a fifty thousand dollar makeover the day after his murder, and although I was too fucked up over his death, in the back of my mind I was anxious to see the old car’s new look.

  I awoke at 3:00 a.m. on the morning of his funeral, my head heavy with images of Pops lying dead in his casket, my eyes brimming with tears. I hadn’t cried in years, but now I did. The tears crept out of the corners of my eyes and cascaded down into my ears as I gazed up at the clean white ceiling of the Hilton Hotel suite Kisha and I had been staying in for the past two days. Kisha’s left arm was draped across my chest, and her face was buried in the crook of my neck.

  I thought of the nightmares I’d been having since the day of Pops’ murder. They had all taken place in different locations, but the situations had all played out the same way, with me being shot to death while driving my father’s Caprice past a group of young niggas in black hoodies. Twice the daunting nightmares had occurred in front of Mone’s stash house, and the others transpired in and around my hood.

  Shifting onto my side, I eyed Kisha’s beautiful chocolate-brown face and realized why those dreams were bothering me so much: I was afraid that one of them might come true, and that Kisha would be with me when it did.

  I pressed my lips against her forehead and pulled her naked body closer to mine. The warmth of her closeness comforted me, and soon I was drifting back off to sleep.