by Mark Anthony
“Yo, Randy, you are a wild cat, yo!” I said when all of us had caught our breath. “Kid, you just murdered two pohleeces!”
“Yeah, I just killed two rednecks!” Randy said, sounding both nervous and proud. “I guess I’m a racist now. But you know what? I don’t care, ’cause every black person in America has to be a racist, you know?
“Police ain’t nobody! They ain’t God, but they be trying to play like they God. So I just made sure that we had no other gods before our God. ’cause see, you know that they was about to make us bow down to them, word! And yo, I ain’t bowing down to no other gods. Matter of fact, what y’all just witnessed is called reverse brutality. I call it homeboy brutality.”
We all burst out into laughter and dance as we started reciting the rap songs “F—Tha Police” and “911 Is A Joke.”
“Holz, you ducked in the nick of time, ’cause if you had waited one more second, Randy would have popped a cap in your back,” Latiefe said, sounding slightly nervous but also relieved and excited. “Word! But, yo, I can’t front. At first I thought that he had shot you.”
“Yo, word is bond! Randy, are you crazy, nigga?” I asked. “That Calico ain’t no joke! It seems like it be spitting out like three or four rounds per second. It’s much iller than an AK-47.”
“You saw how I maimed those white cops?” Randy bragged. “I col’ snuffed the life right out of them! Now that’s what you call a ten-thirteen.”
Ten-thirteen is a code used by the cops to relay on their radios and walkie-talkies that they need immediate assistance because they are either getting their butt kicked or they are hurt real bad and in serious trouble and danger.
“Yo Holz, right after I made that hissing sound, both of the detectives turned around and they were staring right at the Calico,” Latiefe informed me. “Yo, you should have seen the look on their faces! They looked as pale as ghosts, and as shook as I don’t know what!”
“Yes! So they saw it coming, right? They knew that they were about to die, right?” I asked.
“You damn right they saw it coming,” Randy said in a classic ganster tone. “I don’t know if you heard me, but right before I pulled the trigger, I yelled ‘surprise!’ And then I let them have it. Ha!”
“Randy, you are definitely the wildest and illest nigga that I know! Do you know what you just did?”
“Hell, yeah, I know what I just did!” Randy proclaimed with conviction. “I just took two lives—two police officers’ lives.”
“But, yo, on the serious tip, all jokes aside, I don’t know about y’all, but I’m outta here tomorrow,” Randy said in a more serious tone after a slight pause. “I’m going down to Virginia for a while and I’ma just chill until things calm down. I gotta hide out.”
“Hide out for what?” I asked.
“What do you mean for what?” Randy said. “I’m sayin’! I’m outta here until everything calms down. ’cause when New York City finds out that two detectives were murdered, man listen, there will be cops everywhere. They won’t stop paying all of Five-O overtime until they catch me. Y’all know that whenever a cop gets shot, they always catch the person that pulled the trigger. So imagine what they’ll do now, and think about how hard they are gonna come after me. Man, I whacked two pohleeces, Mafia style at that. I basically left two DTs lying dead on the curb and full of bullet holes. They got better laws to protect animals from that type of treatment, so can you imagine what they’ll do now that two cops have been treated like that? Man, when you kill a cop, they hunt you down forever if they have to. But eventually they get you. Killing a cop to them is like someone killing our moms. It’s like breaking a rule of the street.”
“We’re not gonna get caught, so we don’t even have to worry about that or think along those lines,” Latiefe told Randy. “But, Randy, if you leave town we all would have to leave town. Just because you pulled the trigger, that doesn’t mean that me and Holz are innocent. If I get caught, I’m going up for murder one, and it’s the same deal for Holz if he gets bagged, because we’re both accomplices to the crime.”
“Yo, kill all of that ‘going up for murder one’ garbage! We ain’t getting locked up—point blank, end of discussion,” I assured everyone.
“Y’all sounding all confident, but how do y’all really know that we won’t get bagged?’ Randy asked. “Come on, I’m telling y’all, let’s just go to Hampton, Virginia for a minute and we’ll bounce back to New York after the storm clouds pass. I’m telling y’all, there will be cops everywhere in New York searching for us, and eventually they’ll get us.”
“Randy! The only way that we can get caught is if we start opening our mouths and telling everybody what we did,” I yelled, getting annoyed with Randy’s fears. “Hell, the cops ain’t God! You be seeing on the news how they caught this person or that person. But unless they see you doing the crime, the only way that they can catch anybody is through tips. And they get those tips from people that overheard cats running their mouths about the crime. Think about it. How the hell else can they catch a person? The only other way that they can catch a person is if the fugitive turns himself in, or if there were witnesses to the crime.
“Randy, I’m not gonna rat you out, because if I do then I’ll also get locked up. Tee ain’t saying nothing. You’re not gonna turn yourself in, and nobody but the three of us knows what happened. The boulevard was empty, there were no witnesses, and the cops can’t trace the car back to us because it was stolen. We got all the bases covered, kid! You see what I’m sayin’, Randy?”
“Yeah, I hear you, Holz, but yo, don’t nobody open their mouth about this!” Randy said, sounding a bit more sure about the situation. “When everybody starts talking about it just play along with the conversation. Don’t be saying that we did this and that. We ain’t trying to big ourselves up on this. I hope y’all understand me! I mean don’t y’all say nothing! N-o-t-h-i-ng! Don’t tell nobody, not even the people in our crew. Till the day we die, only us and God will know who killed those two pigs.”
We all agreed to stay tightlipped.
“A’ight, bet. Let’s put our hands together on this,” Latiefe said.
So as our hands touched one another’s, I instructed everyone to first slowly look into each other’s eyes. And then I instructed everyone to close their eyes. We all closed our eyes.
“Fourth Crew till the day we die.” That phrase was symbolic of an oath to confirm our faithfulness to secrecy.
After a slight pause, our eyes reopened. I then advised the fellas, Latiefe in particular, that it would be best if we all slept at Randy’s crib, and in the morning we would jet over to the apartment.
“Hey, listen,” Latiefe said. “We were out at Long Beach boardwalk by ourselves tonight from one A.M. until six this morning, OK?”
“OK,” Randy and I both replied.
“Just the three of us,” Latiefe told us. “We went there to just talk and chill.”
“No doubt,” Randy and I responded. Then we all went inside Randy’s crib to get some much needed sleep.
Stool Pigeon
“Oh man! What the hell is that smell? Randy, did you break wind?”
“Holz, that’s probably the toe jam on your smelly feet,” Latiefe interjected.
I was pissed off because Randy was always farting in his sleep. And when I say fart, I am not talking about no ordinary fart. His farts were always lethal. Whenever he farted, it was always time to open up all of the windows and doors and turn on the fan to push the smell out.
Unfortunately, it was Randy’s smelly fart that woke us up from some well-needed sleep. Not to mention the fact that the phone had been ringing off the hook all morning long, which in fact it was doing as I wiped the cold out of my eyes.
“Randy, get up and answer the phone! And go wipe your butt when you’re done! You probably stained your underwear with that fart,” I said grouchily.
“Nah, man, you get up and answer it,” Randy said, sounding a bit nervous.
I m
ade my way across the room to answer the phone.
“Hello!” I yelled sharply.
“Yo, who is this? Is this Holz?” the voice on the other end asked.
“Yeah, this is Holz. What’s up? Whooz this? Oh, yo, this is you, Dwight?”
“Yeah. Yo, Holz, where the hell y’all niggas been at? I’ve been callin’ there all morning. But, yo, did y’all hear about the two DTs that got killed on Springfield last night?”
“What!? Nah! Where did you hear that?”
“Yo, I don’t think it’s in the newspaper, but it was on like every TV channel and every radio station this morning. You know, it was one of those ‘We interrupt this program to bring you this special report’ Things.”
“Yo Randy, yo Tee! Dwight just told me that two DTs got killed on Springfield last night!” I yelled in an attempt to come across surprised at this news.
“Yo, Dee, that’s ill man!” I said, returning my ear to the phone.
“Yeah, I know. Now our business is gonna be hurtin’ big time! Man, why the hell did they have to kill those cops around here? That’s the last thing we needed. Now there’s gonna be swarms of cops everywhere on the street. The TNT narcotics cops ain’t gonna let us sleep until they catch who murdered those cops.”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s true, Dwight. Yo, listen, I’ma go buy the newspaper and see if the story is in there, and we’ll be at the apartment later on today, a’ight? So I’ll check you later.”
“A’ight, Holz, chill.”
“Damn! Dee heard about it already!?” Randy asked as soon as I hung up the phone.
“Yeah, what did you expect?”
“Man, I don’t know,” Randy replied. “I really don’t know, y’all.”
In an attempt to resume easing the fears in the room, I reassured everyone that we wasn’t gonna get caught. I let them know that we couldn’t go tiptoeing around and acting all nervous and scared. We just had to be ourselves.
“We can’t be constantly watching our backs and always looking over our shoulders for the police. If someone knocks on our door, we can’t be getting all nervous and peeking out of the window and all of that, ’cause it won’t be the police. We ain’t getting caught.”
“Yeah, OK, Holz. We know that we’re not getting caught,” Latiefe said, sounding as if he was tired of being lectured. “Now what exactly did Dwight say to you?”
“Nothing really,” I replied. “He just asked me if I had heard about what had happened to the two detectives. He told me that it was on every news channel and every radio station. I played it off like I hadn’t heard about it, and yo, I played it off good, ’cause I told him that I was gonna go buy the paper so that I could read about it. But I know that it won’t be in the paper until tomorrow. Yeah, and he was telling me how he thinks that the Tactical Narcotics Task Force will be breathing on all of Laurelton’s neck, so we won’t be able to make any money until this thing cools down.”
Latiefe and Randy sat and thought about what I had told them, but they didn’t say anything at first. Then Latiefe broke the silence.
“I don’t know about y’all, but I really don’t care about this whole cop killing thing and I ain’t even trying to think about it no more. I mean, all I know is that in a minute, I’m gonna get so high and blunted and drunk and do whateva. Word!”
Latiefe had a good idea in terms of his plans to get blunted, as for me, though, I was just tired. I was tired for good reason. Killing two cops in the wee hours of the night would drain most people. And I guess that I was probably more mentally drained as opposed to being physically drained. So I decided to go back to the apartment and just chill for the day. Randy decided to do the same at his spot. I guess that we were all mentally drained after the grotesquely grueling night, and we all needed some quiet time by ourselves.
Later that day as I lay in my bed at the apartment, I didn’t know if I was slipping into a depression or what. I was trying to get some sleep, but I just couldn’t fall into a deep sleep. Being that I was tossing and turning, I kept waking up like every ten minutes. I finally decided to do something that I hadn’t done in weeks, which was pray.
Dear Lord, please let me, my mother, my brother, my father, my sister, Sabine, and those that are still alive in Fourth Crew be all right. Look after us, Lord. Please, Lord, forgive me for all of the wrongs that I have done. God, you are all knowing, so you know all that I know. Lord, please understand that evil is not truly in my heart. Please forgive me, Lord. God, what is up with my life? Why all the nonsense? Lord, please lead me away from this. Without you, without your help, I’m lost and I know that. Lord, please help me. In your Son’s name, I pray. Amen.
After that prayer I was out like a light. When I woke up later in the day, all I did was watch movies and talk on the phone. I was also waiting for Latiefe to bring my money to me.
The next couple of days went by in pretty much the same way. I just stayed home watching television and talking on the phone. I spoke to my sister and promised her that I would come by the house and see her that upcoming Saturday.
Wednesday night, the crew visited the Apollo as usual. Also, Latiefe had paid all of us that Wednesday. We each received seven thousand dollars in cash. I personally was surprised to have received so much money, especially with the increase in narcotics cops that had been on the street during the past four days. I decided that I was going to hold on to the loot that I had, just in case things got real shaky and slow, or if we abruptly went out of business.
It was Thursday, August 15 when I got a beep on my pager from Dwight. He beeped me to tell me that we were all going to meet at the Red Zone later that night. He also informed me that the crew had to have a meeting in order to discuss and examine our goings on, and that we would discuss everything at the club, in the VIP section.
The day flew by, and before I knew it I was preparing to go to the club. I had made plans to arrive there early. But as usual, my plans fell through and I wound up getting to the Red Zone pretty late—11:30 P.M. to be exact. The line to get in the club was so long that it stretched and wrapped around the corner of the building. Fortunately, I knew someone that was already on the line and they were pretty close to the entrance. I knew that cutting them on the line would save me at least an hour of waiting time, so I paid them in order to let me skip in front of them.
As I waited to get frisked, I saw cops everywhere. I giggled to myself as I thought, If they only knew who I was and what I had done. Only if they knew, ha, but they don’t have a clue. And just to amuse myself, I rubbed up as close to cops as I could, and the amazing thing was that they didn’t even arrest me.
When I finally made my way inside the club, I searched frantically for Fourth Crew. I searched high and low throughout the crowded club. DJ Funkmaster Flex was on the turn tables and the music was bangin’. Everyone in the house was rockin’. The place was deafening. Brand Nubians, a hot rap group was slated to perform. Luckily, I’d made it inside the club in time to see them perform.
As they got ready to come on stage, I spotted Latiefe. He was with the rest of the crew, and they were all at the bar looking real expensive and sippin’ on drinks.
“Fourth Crew’s in the howze!” I yelled. “Hey, yo, what up!?”
“Yo, big Holz, what’s up, my nigga? Where the hell you been?” Latiefe asked.
“I’m sayin’, I had some personal business to take care. Plus, I thought that y’all told me that y’all would be in the VIP section, and now I find y’all at the bar. Man, look! Don’t question me!”
All of a sudden there was a big roar from the crowd as Brand Nubians came to the stage. The crowd went into a frenzy. Brand Nubians performed their hit song called “Slow Down.”
As I, along with the whole crowd, sand the song with Brand Nubians, Randy grabbed me by my shoulder and stopped me from dancing.
“Yo, Holz . . .”
“Yeah, what’s up?” I yelled, trying to speak over the loud music.
It was like a zoo inside the club,
so Randy and I were forced to almost scream directly into each other’s ears.
“Yo, Latiefe paid you yesterday, right?”
“Yeah, why? What’s up?”
“I wanna know how much you got!”
“He gave me seven Gs. That’s what everybody got!” Randy’s light-skinned face turned blood red.
“Oh, word? That’s how much all of y’all got? Yo, I’ma kill that short little snake!”
“Whoa, whoa! Randy, what’s up? What happened?”
“He only gave me two Gs! That’s what happened! He told me that things were going slow because of too many undercovers on the street.”
“Yo, I don’t know. All I know is that he gave me seven thousand dollars. But, Randy, whateva you do, don’t confront Latiefe in a hostile manner, ’cause you know how his temper is, and how vexed he gets.”
“I don’t give a damn about his temper! He’s gonna see my temper! I’ma handle my binis right now! He owes me five Gs, and he better have it on him tonight or I’ma be all up in his butt right in this club!”
After saying that, Randy walked over to Latiefe.
I was praying that Randy wouldn’t start a commotion. I followed right behind Randy, and when he reached Latiefe, he didn’t waste any time.
“Yo, Tee, why you trying to play me like I’ma herb or something!?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Latiefe asked, looking surprised.
“Don’t play stupid, Latiefe! You know exactly what I’m talking about! You tryin’ to herb me! You gave Holz and everybody else seven Gs, and you only gave me two Gs, and you tried to tell me some garbage about business is slow! What’s the deal, kid? What’s up with that? Latiefe, you know I ain’t no sucka. Now give me my gotdamn loot, or I’ll murder you right now! Word is bond!”
Latiefe’s fuse had been lit. His war juices immediately started flowing out of his mouth.
“What! Yo, hol’ up! Hol’ the hell up! First of all, who are you raising your voice to? That’s number one! And number two, I wanna see you murder me!”
