by Teri Woods
“No deal. I want all the drugs out of Newark. Anything less, I won’t accept. You wanna pick up where Roll left off, then you inherit his beef,” Rahman said calmly.
“I remember a time when your beef was mine, yo. Now the same vow means the exact opposite.”
Rahman closed his eyes tight against his emotions before speaking evenly and firmly. “The next time we meet, we meet as enemies.”
Silence filled the air for a moment.
“I… I know there’s no way we can avoid that now. Either you gonna kill me or I’ma kill you. But regardless, we both lose. But know this, Roc. Whatever happens, I love you.”
His heart silently returned the sentiment.
“Salaam.”
“Siempre.”
Angel sat on the couch in Capo’s safe house, staring at the money counters. The machines counted endlessly until the rickety sound became meaningless to her. With the money coming in since Roll’s death, they didn’t count it as often as they weighed it. They had calculated that a million dollars in small bills filled a duffel bag made to hold two basketballs.
Capo sat across the room with headphones strapped to his head, feeding the machine then taping the stacks and depositing them in bags.
Angel looked into his eighteen-year-old face. He was a brown-skinned Puerto Rican but his features were clearly Latino right down to his curly brown hair and bushy eyebrows. She watched him, wondering how long he would live before the life took him under.
Goldilocks came out of the kitchen with a glass of water for Angel. Her shapely figure swayed as she walked. She smiled when she noticed Angel watching her.
“Here you go, boo,” Goldilocks said, handing her the glass, then curling up on the couch next to her.
Angel didn’t respond. She just sipped her water and wondered when Goldilocks’s love for her would make Angel kill her, too. She wondered when love would cloud her vision, blind her judgment, and cause her to make emotional mistakes. In the high-stakes game of street survival, Angel could not afford any mistakes.
Angel remembered a time when Dutch, Craze, Zoom, and Roc occupied a room like this. There used to be laughter and arguments, love and trust, and nobody’s mind was exclusively on the money. But with Dutch, Craze, and Zoom gone and Roc her sworn enemy, the taste of success curdled in her mouth like spoiled milk.
“Fuck!” she bellowed so loudly that Capo heard her over his music. She stood up angrily.
“Shut that fuckin’ machine off! It’s drivin’ me crazy!” she exclaimed, holding her hands over her ears.
Goldilocks stood and wiggled up to her. “Baby, you…” but Angel’s eyes silenced her.
Capo saw the abrupt change in her demeanor and quickly shut the machine off.
“What… what is we doin’? What are we here for?” Angel wanted to know, looking from face to face.
Capo was puzzled. “Countin’ paper like we always do?” he replied.
“No,” Angel retorted, Dutch’s dragon chain swinging with her movements. “What are we doing here? In this position, huh? Where we at, who we are?”
Neither could understand what she meant so they didn’t say anything. Capo thought Angel was losing it, and Goldilocks tried to soothe her.
“Baby, sit down and relax. You just have a lot on your mind. Let me give you a massage,” she offered, but Angel yanked away.
“Relax? Relax?! Bitch is you crazy? Don’t you know right now there’s a hungry muthafucka out there goin’ all out to come to get what we got, and you want me to relax?!”
Angel appeared hysterical yet her mind was totally clear.
“When they come, we got ’nuff guns to go around!” Capo boasted.
Angel snatched the headphones off his head.
“You dumb fuck! You think we the only ones wit’ guns? Huh? Kazami had guns, and Dutch took him out. Dutch had guns, and the mob pushed him out. Young World had guns, Roll slumped ’im. And we slumped Roll. Do you think that’s it? You think one day you won’t get slumped?” she asked him, staring into his eyes until he looked away.
“Do you? Digame!” Angel screamed. “Do you think I could be slumped, Capo? Would you slump me, Capo?”
Capo knew Angel was crazy, but he had never seen her like this before. “Naw, yo. We family, la familia, remember?” he replied, shifting in his chair.
Angel laughed in his face. “You lyin’, Cap. You lyin’ and you know it.”
Capo hated to be called a liar, but he feared the consequences of being judged one even more.
“My word, Angel. Death before dishonor, you know that,” he vowed.
“That ain’t got shit to do wit’ what I asked,” Angel retorted. “Push come to shove, you better slump me because I won’t hesitate to slump you,” she hissed, then looked at Goldilocks. “Or you.”
Goldilocks’s heart jumped. “I would never do anything to hurt you, lover, you know that.”
“Do I?” Angel asked, then again to Capo, “Do I?”
“Let’s hope it never comes to that,” Capo replied.
“Fuck hope! It better not come to that because I promise you all, I won’t lose,” Angel replied, sitting back down, laying her head back and closing her eyes.
“Count the money.”
CHAPTER NINE
In the next days after Sal’s funeral, Rahman made it a point to spend more time at home with his family. He didn’t neglect his responsibilities on the streets, but he kept his word to Ayesha. His home was like another world. He cut the grass, went to his son’s Little League games, and cooked dinners with Ayesha. Despite the turmoil in the cities of New Jersey, home was his sanctuary, his shelter in the storm.
Rahman sat on the sofa in the living room, watching Ali and Aminah play while Anisa slept peacefully in his lap. He looked at his children and understood what it was all about. Everything he was trying to accomplish revolved around them.
Peace.
To be able to raise his children in a safe neighborhood and to send them to good schools was what it was all about. Creating a legacy that could be passed down through the bloodline of establishing an economically, socially, and morally sound community was what it was all about. Rahman didn’t want only for his children. He wanted for all ghetto children everywhere. Not everyone was fortunate enough to make it out of the ghetto. People became doctors, lawyers, stars, and politicians, but instead of staying in the community and using its resources, they took their talents and finances to the sanitized suburbs and left their old neighborhoods to wallow in the mire.
If it wasn’t for the imminent threat to his family, Rahman would have moved them back to Newark. But he was street enemy number one and the risk was too great.
He prayed he would see the day when Newark would be cleaned up and safe, a place where old people didn’t have to worry about being robbed or assaulted and where women didn’t have to exploit themselves to get by. His mission was to change things for the better, and he was willing to kill and die to make it happen.
“Abu, are you goin’ back to jail?” Ali asked as he looked up into his father’s face with the questioning eyes of a puppy.
Ali’s question took Rahman by surprise. But before he could respond, Aminah sucked her teeth and said, “You stupid boy. Abu ain’t leavin’, are you Abu?”
“Don’t call your brother stupid, Minah,” he gently scolded. Then he turned to his son, “What made you say that, Ali?”
Ali shrugged his shoulders, afraid that he had said the wrong thing.
“Ali, are you lying to me? You do know what made you ask.”
He hesitated for a second before replying. “Mommy. I heard her praying to Allah that you don’t go back to jail.”
Rahman didn’t know what to say or how to respond. Of course going back to prison had crossed his mind. Every time he grabbed his guns, he took his chances with the law. He had killed in spite of the cause he claimed, and in court it would be called one thing… murder. The judgment would be life without parole, or worse, the death pen
alty.
“Ali, do you know how much I love you and Mommy and your sisters?”
“A lot?” Ali smiled.
Rahman smiled back. “A whole lot. With all my heart. I’ll do anything to protect you. I’d die for you. And yes, I’d even go back to prison.”
“But I don’t want you to die, Abu! And I don’t want you to go to prison,” Ali begged. “Allah will protect us, right?”
How do you explain to a child that sometimes in life people have to die to be free, that sacrifices must be made, and sometimes that means giving up everything?
Rahman picked Ali up off the floor and put him on the couch beside him.
“I don’t want to die either, Ali, and I don’t want to go to prison, but… what if somebody tried to hurt us? What would you do?”
“Fight,” Ali barked, balling up his little fists.
“Even if you got hurt, too?” Rahman asked.
Ali nodded vigorously.
“I’ma fight, too, Abu,” Aminah added, swinging at an imaginary opponent, making Rahman chuckle.
“I know you would, baby girl. But sometimes when we fight, we don’t always win, do we? But does that mean we stop fightin’?”
“No,” Ali and Aminah said in unison.
“That’s right. We keep fightin’. You can never give up.” Rahman paused to consider the consequences of losing. “I have to keep fighting. You understand?”
They both nodded their little heads.
“But you won’t lose, will you Abu?” Ali asked, looking up to his superhero, the master of his universe.
Rahman smiled, but inside, he trembled.
“Insha Allah. I won’t.”
While Rahman savored his time at home, the summer blazed in the inner city for more than the obvious reasons. A sweltering heat wave had blanketed Jersey along with a heat wave of gunplay.
Bodies piled up on all sides, both Muslims and gangstas. From Newark to Atlantic City, niggas died or came up missing as the two opposing forces waged war for control of the streets. Bombs were planted and people were kidnapped in retribution. The Muslims fought for peace in the hood, and the gangstas fought for a piece of the hood. The police had their hands full but understood very little of the underlying causes. They could clearly see, however, the effects of the war being waged.
The Muslims were determined to stop the flow of drug money, so Angel decided to stop the flow of their money as well. They want to fuck with my paper, let’s see how they like it when I fuck with theirs.
Angel and her gang broke up vendors and pushed them off their street corners, making it just as hard to sell oils as it was to sell drugs.
Both sides took losses. It came down to who would break first. Angel was relentless and Rahman was resistant, both keeping it hot but avoiding the obvious target.
Each other.
“Ock, if you kill the head, the body will die,” Hanif tried to tell Rahman one Friday after Jum’ah prayer service. They were standing outside the masjid on Branford Place. “If anybody knows how to hit her, it’s you,” Hanif concluded.
Rahman had been thinking the same thing, but he knew it wouldn’t be easy. Angel had the same thoroughbred instincts he did. Too many Muslims had been hurt and killed, so the time had come to strike at the top. With Angel out of the way, Rahman knew he could squash the petty wannabe gangstas like roaches.
Yet Rahman couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable for thinking about murdering someone who had been so close to his heart. He looked at Hanif and asked him the question that had been heavy on his mind since the Timberland hit.
“Hanif, I know our cause is just. But do you think we’re serving it justly?”
“I remind you of the people in the boat, some on the top, some on the bottom. If the people on the top don’t stop the fools then everyone will drown.”
Rahman knew the story well.
“They are sinkin’ our society, Rah. How else can we stop them?”
“Set it up,” Rahman ordered without another thought. “But I gotta be the one to do it,” he added, knowing to send someone else would be cowardly.
Hanif had already figured as much.
Angel had one weakness, her love of shoes. She had always been a sneaker fanatic. Her favorite spot to shop was the Newport Center Mall in Jersey City. Rahman knew this and planned to use it against her. When people indulge their desires, their defenses are down.
It took several days of surveillance before he received the call.
“She’s here.”
He had been staying in Jersey City, a few blocks from the mall, waiting for his team to call.
Angel, Goldilocks, and Capo pulled up in Capo’s chrome 745. The mall was moderately crowded but the two gorgeous killers still managed to turn heads in their short shorts and multicolored tanks. Angel both hated and loved the attention. She hated it because she’d rather be who she really was, but she needed the attention. The clothes were the bait, or at least that’s how she wore them.
Since her conversation with Rahman, Angel’s demeanor had changed, and Goldilocks was worried. Everything became strictly business and money. She took no shorts from her team, and Goldilocks was no exception. Any little thing set her off. Angel was like a walking time bomb. Goldilocks didn’t understand why.
For Angel, all she had ever loved was Dutch and the family. Rahman had come to represent all that to her since everyone else was gone. True, they had irreconcilable differences, which she understood, but for Roc to tell her they were enemies extinguished whatever feelings of love she held in her being. For Angel, there was no more loyalty, therefore no more trust. So she trusted no one, nor could she be trusted. All she had left was the money, power, and respect she extorted from the streets, and she held it all down with an iron fist.
Goldilocks had watched in horror one night as Angel made Capo beat a nigga to a bloody death with a lead pipe because he had fucked up fifty grand, peanuts in their operation. It was then Goldi realized that Angel was walking a very dangerous edge.
“Baby, I’ve been thinking,” Goldilocks said as they walked through the mall. “Why don’t we go away for a while. Take a trip somewhere. Anywhere. Just you and me.”
“Maybe in a couple of months, ma. Shit is too hectic right now for me to get away,” Angel replied.
“Which is exactly why you need to go. Capo can handle things, right, Capo?”
“No doubt. There’s nothin’ I can’t handle,” he confirmed, trying to convince a leery Angel. Angel grinned slightly, but her eyes remained stone.
“Callete, okay?” She spoke calmly.
Capo and Goldi knew not to push the point so the conversation was over.
Angel looked at Capo, then at Goldilocks. She just couldn’t figure it out. Goldi never thinks about the paper. Capo’s a thirstball but Goldi acts like the money is nothing. Angel didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. If she took the “love” issue out of the equation, then what was Goldi doing with her?
Angel no longer believed in love, so she doubted the authenticity of Goldi’s. If Roc could turn against her, then anybody could. Angel decided to let the relationship run its course. She was on point, now more than ever, and even Goldi would fall under her magnifying glass.
They entered Angel’s favorite sneaker spot in the Newport mall and began to browse. The walls were covered on all four sides with the newest editions and retro throwback styles. Angel came to spend even though she already had over a hundred pairs of sneakers and hadn’t worn even half of them.
“Good afternoon, Ms. Alvarez,” said a white guy in a referee-striped shirt. He welcomed her like the regular she was. “Glad you dropped by. That special order of Air Force Ones arrived two days ago.” He smiled, then disappeared into the back to get them.
“Now, these are hot,” Goldilocks remarked, removing the silver-and-black T-Macs from the display. “You like ’em, boo? You gonna cop ’em for me?” she chimed.
“Why? So you can walk away from me in ’em?”
Angel retorted sourly.
Sourpuss, sourpuss, Goldi thought. “Yo, what the fuck is wrong with you? You got a real fucked-up attitude.”
The man returned with four boxes of sneakers and set them on the counter. “Here you are, Ms. Alvarez.”
“Yo, Duke! What color you got these in?” Capo asked the salesman across the floor as he held up a pair of shell-top Adidas.
The man squinted and replied, “I’ll have to check.”
“Just give me every color you got in a size ten,” Capo ordered. He loved shopping ’cause he was able to order around the salespeople.
Just as the clerk started off for the back, a loud, irrationally high-pitched alarm filled the mall, startling everyone.
“What is that?” Goldilocks cringed, covering her ears.
The clerk rushed over to the register and picked up the phone.
The PA announcer came over the system.
“Mall shoppers, may I have your attention, please. At this time, we ask that you calmly move toward the exit nearest you. There is no need for alarm but we do request your immediate cooperation. Thank you.”
The alarm continued to scream. Despite the calm announcement, shoppers moved at a rapid pace, bordering on panic. On the way out, Goldilocks commented to Capo, “What the hell is going on? Terrorists attacking the malls now?”
Her comment sparked a déjà vu in Angel, stopping her dead in her tracks. During the Month of Murder, Roc and Zoom had used the same tactic. Create confusion, murder, and then escape in the chaos. It was a timely thought that made her instantly aware of her surroundings. She felt her life was in danger, saw it coming for a split second, and then all hell broke loose as the mall erupted in gunfire and screams. The first shot from Rahman grazed her in the upper arm as she pushed people out of her way. The second shot shattered the window behind her as she dove for cover.
“Fuck!” Angel cursed at the sight of her own blood, adrenaline pumping too fast for her to feel the pain.
