The Cook Up

by D. Watkins

  “I’m done for the night, cash my $75 out! Des machine whipped my ass tonight!” she said to me. I told her she’d get them the next time. “Boy, I work eighty-two hours last period and about sixty of those hours went into these damn machines! I better get them back!”

  I had LaShay pull her a free drink. I felt obligated to do something. At least you got a feeling with drugs; she was just aimlessly dumping money. Everyone knows that slots don’t pay. After she finished her drink, she went and put the rest of her money into the machine. The payout logs said that we spent roughly $7,000 on jackpots. Ron had called me earlier that week and said he was sending out one of his collectors to settle up on Friday.

  The next day I made a ton of Home Depot runs. I hate Home Depot because the parking sucks and you always end up coming out of the opposite side of the store. Plus I’m not what you would call a traditional “Do-it-yourselfer.” I don’t get excited about building cabinets or hanging drywall. I’m actually a “Pay-somebody-elser,” and that’s exactly what I was doing. I had to fix some small issues for Mrs. Yancey. And I’m from the hood which means I didn’t pay attention to pedestrian things like permits or zoning and I never heard of a licensed contractor.

  We normally get the most talented junkies from around the way to rehab properties. The good thing about that is they can do the same quality of work as a professional for a fraction of the price and the down payment is normally a blast. The bad side is that they always forget something and you end up going to Home Depot ten thousand times in a day.

  Nick was on the steps of the bar after my last store run. Soni had texted me earlier, saying that he’s been past like two or three times already—we just kept missing each other. He wore the same dry-rotted look as the dope fiends I’d been lugging around all day.

  “Brudda I need you. We ’bout to be back!” he yelled, like he hadn’t seen me in years. It’d only been a few months, but that’s a decade in the streets. I let the fiends into the apartment and told Nick that we could take a ride. He stunk my car up as we whipped down Lombard. I cracked every window and stuck my head out of the sunroof even though it was freezing out.

  “I stink bro bro. I stink cuz I been on the block like old times. We gonna get right tho, you wanna dope?” he said aiming a fistfull of Percs at me. “These dem big ass 30’s baby!”

  “I don’t pop Percs anymore man. And you should stop man. It’s time to stop all that dumb shit. We are getting older man, lucky to be here, just chill man.”

  Nick shook his head and said, “Run down the projects right quick, gotta drop some money to my shorty I’m havin a li’l son.”

  “Congrats man! That’s the news I want to hear! Tell me stuff like that man, and get off the pills, you don’t want your son have a pilled-out pops!”

  I paralleled on Caroline Street. Nick exited and made a right through Douglass Court. He’s really having a baby, that’s crazy. I think I want kids one day but only if I’m stable. I don’t want to be a dad that has to figure things out—I want money and time stacked up. I want to be able to take my child on trips and expose them to something more than Baltimore and my crazy mentality. Can’t have my kids knowing about selling drugs, shootouts, and the rest of the wild stuff I battled through. Nick hopped back in the car. “Yo I wanna holler at Miss Angie, and drop her a few dollars. Let’s ride down the block,” I said.

  “So Dee. I need some money my nigga. We finna be back like I said bro, Nick and Dee, just like it was.”

  “Back like what?”

  Nick told me that he hooked up with some dudes and was ready to build Madeira Street back up. He said some bodies had to fall but we were going to get the block back. I told him that maybe he should rock with Troy and Tyler because the block-game was dead. People don’t even sell drugs in alleys anymore, it’s all about cell phones.

  “Naw, fuck Troy horny ass, and Tyler look like a snitch.” We pulled up in front of Angie’s. Some young kids struggled for loose sales. It’s like it was more dealers than customers. Angie wasn’t home and I really wasn’t feeling the stuff that Nick was talking so I told him, “Sober up and holler at me in the a.m.”

  He said cool and we split. I drove back over to the bar. The machine guy Ron had called, and said that he was on his way. We arrived around the same time. First we verified the payout logs and mine matched exactly what he said—then we split the money up.

  We counted up the $7,000 I spent in payouts and he gave me that. Then we split up another $15K—$7,500 for them and $7,500 for me. It blew my mind. Who knew these rusty junk boxes would be so lucrative! I felt like I was selling dope again! But in a much safer way. My first thought was why should I be splitting the money with these clowns when I could just buy my own machines, but I figured that I’d give it a few months before I cut them out.

  Dude bagged his cash and slid. I tucked mine and called my lady. “Baby, we buying that house!” The phone dropped and she screamed loud enough to rupture something. I knew she wanted that house as bad as I did.

  I hung up on her scream and dance routine and hopped on the horn with Joan. She set everything up. Same deal, same title spot, except I brought a cashier’s check for $35K. This down payment was cheaper than the other because it was residential. My mortgage would be $4,000 a month and the machines paid that plus more.

  BOLTON BUBBLE

  My first year running Stadium Hideaway breezed. The money wasn’t great but it was steady. Steady enough to sustain my vacuum of a mortgage. And I didn’t care that the house sucked up every nickel as I watched my profits leave the register and go straight to my mortgage, second mortgage, and property tax, because I loved living in Bolton Hill.

  I liked walking over those clean streets to the park on Park Avenue. Art students walked past with easels and patched jackets and backpacks, my neighbors looked happy—in the mist of all the craziness in Baltimore city, they looked happy. I even saw a woman sitting on her front playing a harp one day. It felt like I was living in a bubble—and the bubble was called high property tax.

  I still had some drug money put up. Enough to not know how low my cash flow really was. My new legit stash was tucked next to my old street stash creating the illusion of me experiencing success. To celebrate, I traded my 500 in at R & H Motors and bought a hundred-thousand-dollar car—a silver CL600 with a V12 engine. That car made me lots of friends. I felt like people wanted autographs. Cops pulled me over—over and over again—and it was nothing they could do because I was cool, my papers were straight, and I wasn’t in the drug game. “You should come to the happy hour at my bar, Stadium Hideaway on Lombard Street!” I’d tell them. “A lot of girls are there and our drinks are cheap enough for you to afford!”

  I had the hottest car in the city and nowhere to go so I ended up going back on Madeira Street. Nick built a little crew up. The only guy who was around from my day was Fat Tay—still funky and still chasing those little girls. Dog Boy was sitting for a gun charge. He and Hurk turned the neighborhood to the Wild Wild West, shooting at each other every time they crossed paths. Mac kept his promise and kept LT from killing Hurk but Dog Boy was a different story. Nobody could control Dog Boy.

  Mac and I begin to develop a close relationship. We hooped every day, doubled dated, and bought all of the same Jordans and Nike Uptempos. He was also one of my only east side friends who came to my bar every day. Mac was still in the street and I was on a mission to pull him out. I gave him money for trade school, got him a job selling cars, and even tried to find a business that we could do together, but no dice. It started feeling like the street fame was more important to Mac than the money that came with it.

  We sat in the bar after the after-hours one night and I tried to teach him how life gives out rules, and it was up to us to master these rules, benefit from the ones that played in our favor and then break the ones that we could get away with.

  “For example,” I said, “we are street niggas. We start out in the hood that’s full of junkies and dealers. The co
ps are racist and the teachers only show up to get paid so they don’t care if we make it or not. That’s the hand we start with!”

  “So you saying that we ain’t gonna be shit anyway?”

  “No, man, I’m saying that once we acknowledge that these are our hurdles, and that the goal is for us to die or go to jail, only then can we make a plan to beat those odds. I got off the block and switched to wholesale because everybody on the block falls off. It’s a failed system. I stopped selling drugs because everybody gets caught. And when I notice another obstacle, I’ll switch it up again.”

  “You talk all that shit, Dee, cuz you ain’t gotta record. I got charges, kids and some other shit you don’t know about!” he said with wet red eyes, guzzling his big red plastic cup of gin and pouring another.

  “Yeah, I don’t know your whole life, but I know games, and this is a game. When selling drugs, my goal was to wake up, hit my quotas, duck cops, duck haters, keep my life, and stay out of jail. That was the game and I approached it just like that. That’s why I’m not dead and that’s why I don’t have any real enemies except the dudes who didn’t like me anyway.”

  “And what game are you playing now, Dee? What’s this game?”

  “This game is about hitting my quotas, ducking cops, ducking haters, keeping my life, and staying out of jail. The cops are still racist and I guess I approach it the same, except alcohol is a legal drug. Legal drugs, same bullshit.”

  We toasted our cold cups and laughed.

  “On some real shit, Dee, you can’t relate to my situation cuz you speak different. Nigga. you probably gonna be a millionaire off of some legal shit anyway and you don’t even know it. You like a real-life genius nigga and you don’t even know it.”

  I looked down at my phone and saw that LT was blowing it up—I missed like fifteen calls from him so I hit him back.

  Ring ring ring…

  “Yo, Dee, you good?”

  “Yeah, LT, wassup?”

  “Yo, they murdered Uncle Gee, man, he got killed at the club tonight!”

  REMEMBER UNCLE GEE

  Bucket Head spotted me sitting by myself on east Fayette Street by the courtyard. He threw his hazards on and jumped out the driver’s side.

  “Ain’t you Gee, young boy?” he asked as he staggered over. He walked and sounded like a war vet with stiff joints. He stood about five-foot-nothing with a face made of eyes and patchy stubble.

  “Yeah, Bucket, I remember you!” I said, reaching for a handshake, but he pulled me in deep for a hug—an uncomfortable one, the hugs where two people lock, exchange smells and rock back and forth and back and forth.

  “You just got out?” I said.

  “Five minutes ago! How you know?” Ignoring the fact he smelled like a cellblock, we both looked down at the huge DOC logo on his shirt and laughed.

  “This my last time going in! I’m staying home this time, but boy, your uncle Gee sure did make jail fun back in the day! I miss him!”

  Gee’s big face eclipsed the clouds as Bucket spoke, and I swear he saw it too because he let out a huge chuckle and said, “I remember when Gee had the jail on lock! We were co-dees on a shooting and sat for two years. Gee was running the jail two weeks into our bid. He had gangstas rolling his socks and folding his clothes into triangles, making him jelly sandwiches, and peeling the edges off of the bread—he’ll beat your ass if you don’t take them edges off. COs stuck heroin balloons up their asses and smuggled them in for Gee and he sold it all. He had me selling it and I even made enough to pay for my daughter’s everything, from jail! We were getting money. Gee made five thousand dollars a week in jail! No, Gee made ten thousand, actually Gee made ten thousand every time he tried to make money even if he didn’t really try. I’m telling you boy, the warden had to really, really rely on your uncle to end prison riots. Gee had that jail on lock!”

  I remember when he came home from that stretch back when I was eleven. He told us that he owned that jail and showed us the cash. He gave a fist full to me and bought me a new PW50 for my birthday. That was my first dirt bike, my baby. I washed it every day, even in the winter, until my hands ashed and bled.

  Gee taught me how to wheelie and how to stop traffic and how to fuck traffic up and how to never get caught. He rode a big CR250. I was too small to ride it, but he let me sit on it and told me I could be the best one day, even better than him if I tried.

  Bucket Head rambled on like, “One real thing about your uncle is that he never forgot about the dudes on lockdown. Yo! After Gee came home he always sent us pictures over the jail of him wheeling bikes past a zillion people in awe. Wish I was home, man, wish I could’ve saw that, I would’ve rode too. I heard he got drunk one time and rode the bike butt naked with a mink on and some gators and some Chanel frames with the lenses poked out in the middle of the summer during a heat wave. They say he fell off and scarred his belly. I heard he popped up, did the running man and then pissed on a cop in a cop car!”

  We laughed. I remembered that for sure, I told him I was right there; we rode forty bikes deep every day that summer. That’s when I honed my skills. I fell more times than him as a sober kid. He pissed on the cop car, but the cop wasn’t in there. He pissed on everything but toilet water that summer—his girlfriends, cop cars, park benches, the door at Hecht Company, the chip section at Unz Market, floral arrangements, nodding fiends…

  Bucket said, “I remember he pissed a lot. He had a big heart and a little bladder or something like that. But he definitely violated parole for pissing on that cop. I remember. We were rotting in Jessup where they tried to feed us bags of white rice mixed with white roaches—weebles is what we called them. Fucking weebles.”

  “It wasn’t a cop car though, Bucket,” I said. I was there, I remember. It was for assaulting a DJ at this club called The Paradise Lounge. I was fifteen, so I paid a hundred dollars to get in. Every night was ladies night. Gee wanted to hear some DMX, actually we all did. So Gee yelled, “Yo, cut some X on!” to the DJ. The DJ waved in disapproval. He was playing R. Kelly or something like that, I didn’t care—I was young and ass watching. Gee said, “Yo, cut some DMX on, where ma dawgs at! Come on!” The DJ pointed to his tag that read “DJ” and waved Gee off again.

  Gee laughed, climbed to the top of the booth, pistol-slapped the DJ, ripped his DJ tag off and threw him into the crowd. Then Gee pumped DMX at the highest level; the club shook and cracked the Richter scale as he yelled, “DJ Gee in the house! Where my dawgs at!” Everyone barked just like DMX. Gee transformed the club into a kennel. The DJ slipped out the front door with a blood-leaking dome. He and the cops were out front waiting for DJ Uncle Gee when the club closed.

  “You right, shorty,” said Bucket “I remember now because he sat for minute and his li’l man Bip was murdered. He was fucked up over that. I remember he stomped on a dude until his chest caved in; it took seven COs to pull him off of that kid. He did his bid in the hole and had that accident right after he came home.”

  I told him that I’ll never forget that because Bip was my brother.

  Bucket shouted, “RIP Bip! But nothing could stop Gee. I remember he started to tell a white man, black man, Chinese man joke and stopped in the middle to shoot somebody!”

  I remembered that too because he dragged the body off into the alley, came back out and finished the joke. And that’s Gee.

  Extra flashy and would shoot you in a second always yelling, “Yay Down the Hill! Yay Down the Hill!” Even tatted it on his chest. Even made into a song and sang it while waving his arms like a victory flag—stomping a kid down in Club Choices.

  He stomped a coma into that kid’s future.

  I dipped into my pocket and pulled out a jay. It was stuffed with buds spilling from both ends.

  “If you pass that, I’m blow it with you,” said Bucket. I sparked, puffed twice, and passed.

  “Can’t believe one shot took your uncle, man.”

  I told him that Gee was murdered at Strawberry’s 5000. They say he
threw money at some girls hanging by the bar—literally. They weren’t strippers; they were working women, probably underpaid assistant nurses or something. Everyone watched him, like they always did. Gee took his shirt off and ran around the club with two Cristal bottles. He liked to walk around drinking them like they were bottled waters. They say he bumped bouncers who were too scared to react and knocked around gangsters who knew he was an ass when drunk. No one stopped him because no one could, that was Gee being Gee. Twenty or more of his close friends and family members around and no one stopped him.

  Gee knocked a kid named Chip down. Chip said, “Damn, Gee! Chill the fuck out!” They say Chip had no real beef but you couldn’t just tell Gee to chill the fuck out.

  Right, right, and a strong overhand right to Chip’s nose. Heard he deflated like a broken air mattress. Stomps came next, heavy Timberland boots rained on Chip’s body.

  The police rushed in and broke everything up.

  They say it was over. Chip was all bloody and could barely walk to his truck, Gee called him, knife in hand: “Come here, bitch!” Chip spun around and gave Gee one chest shot in front of the cops. The ambulance stayed away just long enough for Gee to die.

  “We had a little memorial for him over the jail. RIP Gee,” said Bucket, shaking his head in despair.

  “Welcome home, Bucket,” I replied, giving him another dap.

  I’M IN THE NBA

  Our Bose speaker box linked up with Kanye West and yelled, “I graduated and you can live through anything if Magic made it!” I cranked it on the highest level and sat it next to Soni’s ear.

  “Stopppppppppp! I’m asleep! Get away from me!” she yelled, swinging at me with a right and then a left hook.

  I cut the music off, snatched the half blunt off of my dresser and went downstairs to pour a big cup of vodka and ice. Soni could sleep late all she wanted, I was going to celebrate for her. She had passed her last final and was graduating from Johns Hopkins University. The first college graduate that I had ever met was sleeping upstairs in my bed. I was inspired by her. The Gee news and his funeral had me in the dumps but her excellence shot my spirits right back up as her accomplishment and insight normally do. Her graduating was a landmark in her life and mine, so we had to celebrate this the right way.