Trust No Man 2

by Cash

  “Be gentle with me,” she whispered. “I’m not that big.”

  I’ve had my share of women and sexual escapades, but nothing could ever equal up to the thug passion I shared with Juanita that night. We didn’t make love over and over again, all night long. In fact, we only did it once, then fell asleep holding each other. But the shit was right, and it was something more than sex. There was silent crying coming from somewhere deep down inside of her as she held on to me, and I felt the wetness of her tears on my shoulder.

  I wanted to tell her I’d leave with her, just up and say, “Fuck the streets!” But deep down I didn’t believe that I could succeed at anything else. I didn’t know how to make “it” happen, unless it was with my heater.

  Juanita was running away from the very thing that I loved and craved, the streets. We just weren’t meant to be, I convinced myself that night.

  The morning brought its ugly ass around too goddamn soon.

  I watched Juanita pack her few remaining personal belongings into a single suit case. A dozen, or so, pairs of matching plain panties and bras, socks, toiletries. A few sweaters and a pair of jeans. A battered photo album and a folder with the words Supreme Mathematics and Alphabets written across it. She closed and locked the suitcase, and I picked it up to carry it out to the car for her.

  She was carrying the teddy bear I’d given her the first time she’d invited me to her house for lunch. She locked the front door and dropped the door key inside a locked box that sat on the porch. She had on old faded jeans and a baggy sweater was covered by a patched jean jacket. Her hair was in a simple ponytail and she wore no makeup or lipstick. Juanita was definitely leaving the past behind.

  Still, she looked beautiful, sexy, and divine.

  She kissed me on the lips and I tasted her tears.

  “I’m not good at saying goodbye,” she cried. Then she handed me a small gift bag.

  “If you ever wish to find me, my mother will know how to contact me,” Juanita sniffled.

  I watched her get in the used Cressida and drive away to a new life. I got inside my whip, started the engine, I opened the gift bag Juanita had just given me. Inside was five thousand in cash, with a Jill Scott CD, the single, “Do You Remember Me?”

  CHAPTER 4

  I was hunting for that white bitch, Blondie, and her nigga night and day. Casing out the burned down sports bar, in case Little Gotti had to meet there with insurance agents, and the strip club where I’d first saw the white tramp.

  I also kept tabs on Cheryl’s mother. A few times a week I’d steal the mail out of her mailbox, thinking Cheryl might slip-up and write or send a postcard. But after three months of fruitless searches, I cut back to stealing her mail once a week.

  Glen had been easy to find. Matter of fact, he would’ve already been dead but I was letting time pass so when I “did” him, my sister Toi, wouldn’t automatically suspect me. Lonnie was being the true nigga I knew him to be, riding shotgun on every turn. We had touched a nigga from the Westside for a little flow, but nothing a nigga could retire or live long on. Inez was back staying at her crib, back pushing ‘dro. We were still tight like thieves, trying to stack cheddar in our separate hustles. My seed was beginning to push her stomach out, but she was still looking fly.

  I had gone by Poochie’s crib when she called to let me know Shan had dropped Lil’ T off over there. He’d asked me why I couldn’t open my mouth, and I’d told him the truth, “I got caught slippin’.”

  Fuck it. I wasn’t gon’ lie to my lil’ man.

  He said, “My mama’s boyfriend, Pete, said you got beat up.” Yeah, Pete would put it out there like that.

  I had whipped through Englewood looking for Murder Mike a week ago and learned he was out of town, so I had no reason to hang around. I felt like niggaz were looking down on me. But, then again, maybe I was just trippin’. Mafuckaz knew I wasn’t a pussy!

  I ran into an old head from the hood and he told me that the streets were saying a bitch had run off with two hundred grand of mine. I had to laugh at that. Shit! The streets didn’t know the half! I wish Cheryl had dipped with two hundred grand. I’d still be sitting on eight and some change.

  Murder Mike paged me and asked to meet him in Englewood, in the horseshoe.

  I told him I was tied up at the clinic, but I could get with him by seven o’clock. He said that was a bet.

  When I pulled into the horseshoe and parked, it was past seven and dark outside. Not many niggaz were used to seeing the Nissan; the young dope slangers eyed the car with suspicion, trying to figure out whether I was Five-0, or somebody looking to buy crack. Or someone looking to do something more ominous, robbery perhaps.

  A brave heart approached the Nissan.

  “I got those double-up sacks. The…oh! Youngblood!” he shrieked after recognizing me. “Damn, nigga!” he asked, “You rollin’ on the creep tip?”

  I asked him if he’d seen Murder Mike, but before he could come up with a reply, I saw Murder’s black Navigator whip up. I got out the Nissan and walked over to where Murder Mike was parked. He was talking to a couple of his workers who stood a foot from his truck listening attentively.

  “If them suckaz want drama, give it to ‘em!” I heard him tell the boys, who nodded and walked away, ready to do just that.

  Murder Mike was opening his door to get out the truck when he saw me. “Whud up, main man?” he beamed our customary greeting. “Hop in, we need to rap.”

  I walked around to the passenger door and climbed in. He honked his horn at his worker and drove off.

  Murder Mike said we were headed to one of his cribs in Lithonia to talk. He said “one of,” like he had several cribs. Damn!

  Main man must be stronger than the streets realized.

  I left the thought silent as we drove east on I-20. I was guessing that Murder Mike had found out who had banged me up, and we were headed to one of his houses to discuss what I wanted to do about it. Or maybe he just wanted to show off his crib?

  It was all good. Murder was my dawg. My main man from the hood.

  The inside of the house was barely furnished, just a couch, and big plasma television in the front room. The windows were covered with dark colored sheets, not curtains. Either Murder was just moving in or it was a stash house.

  When we got to the kitchen and he turned on the light, I saw that I was right. Ten kilos were stacked on the counter and another five were on the kitchen table surrounded by a pile of crack cookies. Murder took the kilos off the table and put them on the counter with the others; he put the crack inside large Ziploc bags and stacked them in a cardboard box on top of the refrigerator. He pulled another box down from atop the refrigerator and dumped its contents out on the table, revealing a huge pile of loose bills, of varying denominations and a bag of assorted color rubber bands.

  “Have a seat, main man,” he said, and sat down across from me. He began separating the pile of money into thousand-dollar stacks, mixing the denominations at random.

  I was packing heat, but the thought of jacking Murder Mike never entered my mind. Just like Lonnie was my “tightman,” my partner in crime, Murder was my “main man,” my nigga, my dawg. We were the same age, give or take a couple of months, and had grown up in Englewood playing everything together from stickball to truth-or-dare, elevating to stealing out of stores to stealing cars. I’d gotten caught a few times and was sent to YDC. Murder had gotten caught once and switched over to slangin’ rocks. We didn’t hang together when I came home from juvie, or even later, because he was always in the trap, on the grind. While I was out to get mine much faster, the ski mask way.

  Still, the love and respect was mutual; we were just doing our own things. Even though I was no longer sitting on grownup money, with my heater just a reach away, I wasn’t tempted to take what he had just exposed to me.

  He said, “Main man. I’m about to do major things. If shit goes as planned, the city is mine! I’ma take over the whole mafucka, whoady!” He paused; I gu
ess he was giving his words time to register with me. He was still counting thousand dollar stacks. I was silent, listening.

  Murder claimed to have people behind him that were “dead serious” about taking over the drug game, and not only in the ATL. He was talking big, like some coast-to-coast shit. The plan, he said, was for him to start in Atlanta while “his people” would be doing the same in other major cities spaced out all the way to the West Coast.

  “I want you on my team, main man,” he said.

  I replied, “I wish you luck, dawg, but you know selling dope ain’t my expertise.”

  “Naw, nigga.” Murder laughed, “You got the game twisted. I ain’t talking about putting you in no trap, or even having you driving dope from here to there. I want you to be my right hand, my eyes in the back of my head. Oversee everything I put together.”

  I was listening. My interest piqued.

  “You know,” Murder continued, “for us to rise, other niggaz gotta fall. We gotta take ‘em out the game. I know you ain’t scared to get a body, nigga?”

  I smiled. He didn’t know the half.

  Then he started naming mafuckaz we’d have to take off the shelf. Some of them I didn’t know. Some I knew well.

  “The first head to roll is Rich Kid’s,” he said.

  I knew he was challenging me.

  “His time is up! I’m the new kid on the block!”

  Rich Kid was major and I questioned whether Murder Mike had the guns to go to war against him. Or the guile to catch Rich Kid slippin’.

  “Yeah, well, Hannibalwas major, too,” he reminded me. “Still, him and his right hand man turned up floating face-down in a lake.”

  As I was recalling reading about the incident months ago, he flashed his right hand inches from my eyes, the two platinum fingernails making his point loud and clear. Murder Mike had somehow caught Hannibal and his man slippin’ and took ‘em off the shelf. His point: Rich Kid could be gotten too.

  Platinum nails stood for bodies with Murder Mike.

  He said, “I know you say you’re not down with Rich Kid, but, if you are, you’re on the losing team.”

  Like a well-rehearsed play, four dreadlock-wearing mafuckaz came into the kitchen and surrounded the table; each of them packing sawed-offs. Murder didn’t flinch or stop counting and separating the pile of money, so I knew it wasn’t a stickup. They had to be part of his team. I looked to my right and saw the big Dread who’d thrown me inside the van, and had delivered most of the punishment to my jaw and ribs. To my left was the one who’d scooped up my burner and had helped toss me out the moving van. Next to him was a real skinny, pocked-faced Dread. Directly in front of me, and at Murder’s side, was the mafucka who’d pointed the sawed-off at me from inside the van.

  Again he had a shotgun pointed squarely at my chest. Once again he barked, “Don’t be stoopid, mon!”

  I looked across the table at Murder Mike, my main man. My nigga. My dawg. I couldn’t believe it! I had never even suspected him. It didn’t make sense, but now I understood; he hadn’t believed me when I’d told him I wasn’t pushing weight for Rich Kid. He’d also been in Englewood the night the Dreads had snatched me up from outside the music store; it was he who’d let them know when I had left the horseshoe. Perhaps they’d been waiting somewhere close by. He would have known I was holding down Inez and where she lived.

  He was smiling at me from across the table. “It was business, main man,” he said. “Nothing personal.”

  My hand was itching. I wanted to reach for my heater so mafuckin’ bad! How wasn’t it personal, when he had ordered me banged up? Or at least went along with the plan? I was so mad, my face started twitching.

  Don’t be stoopid, mon! kept reverberating in my mind.

  I knew the odds were against me. It would’ve been nearly impossible to pull my burner and kill four crazy, shotgun packing Dreads and Murder Mike, without getting slumped myself. This wasn’t a Hollywood movie. This shit was real! And Murder must’ve known I wouldn’t try to buck on those odds, which is probably why he hadn’t bothered to search me for a weapon. I was mad as hell, but I had to respect his gangsta. Now things made sense to me, even his strong bond with Cita. I recalled that Cita had an aunt who was married to a Dread. If my memory was correct, it was the Dread with the pocked-marked face. I’d seen them together once.

  “So what you say, mon? You join da winning team?” the big Dread asked. Like I was stupid enough to say no, and get splattered all over the kitchen walls.

  “I’m down,” I said, because a different answer would’ve ended my life, I was just buying some time.

  Murder smiled platinum, then reached across the table to dap hands with me. “I know you stay strapped, main man,” he said all of a sudden. “Let me put your gun up until you calm down and hear the rest of our plans.”

  Yeah, nigga, you bet’ not slip! I thought.

  Four shotguns remained trained on me until Murder Mike picked my heater up off the table, where I’d just placed it. I stood up and lifted my sweat shirt, proving to them that I wasn’t packing more heat. Still the big Dread patted me down.

  Murder clasped his hands together behind his head—I focused on his short dreadlocks—and leaned back in his chair.

  “Sorry about that lil’ beat down. They weren’t gonna kill you, though. I told them you’re my dawg, and we could use you on our team,” he explained.

  One of the Dreads had fired up some ganja and passed it to me. I put the fat joint to my lips and sucked in the smoke through my teeth. I hit the joint a few times and passed it to Murder, who shook his head, so I passed it back to the Dread who’d passed it to me.

  The big Dread was called Rastaman. The one who’d scooped up my burner the night they’d snatched me was called Jamaican Rick. Cita’s aunt’s husband, the Dread with the pocked-marks, was Rohan, and the one I interpreted as the leader was called Crazy Nine.

  Now that I knew who banged me up, I was no longer worried about the enemy kicking in Inez’s door and bringing the ruckus. I had told them I was “down” with their team, and I couldn’t see a way to reverse my decision. They knew where I laid my head, while all I knew was where “one of” Murder’s stash houses were at, and that he had workers in Englewood. I could warn Rich Kid that they were about to come after him, join teams with him and go after them. But I was no longer sure how to read Rich Kid after what my sister had told me.

  Glen had caught Toi with Rich Kid twice; once having dinner at a restaurant and the second time getting out of Rich Kid’s car in the parking lot of her condo. Rich Kid had been fucking my sister all along, had even known why Glen had jumped on her. Yet he’d left me in the blind. The day he’d taken me to the hospital to pick up Toi, he’d acted like nothing had ever existed between my sister and him. They’d played me for a fool!

  Did that mean I couldn’t trust Rich Kid? I wasn’t sure. It certainly meant he wasn’t on the up-and-up with me. Why hadn’t he checked Glen for beating up my sister? His indifference showed that he thought my sister was just another bitch. If my peeps was “just another bitch” to him, then I couldn’t be more than “just another nigga.” ‘Cause if he had respect for me, it should’ve extended to my blood, Toi.

  Yet, Rich Kid had always played fair with me concerning business. I wasn’t sure I could take him off the shelf just ‘cause he’d been fucking my sister without telling me. On the other hand, I’d have to do Murder Mike if I didn’t slump Rich Kid. Or I could go wherever Juanita had gone to escape from the streets. But that would be like tucking my tail and running. I’m a dog, not a mutt!

  I wanted to holla at Lonnie and see what he thought of my options, but Murder Mike had made it clear that he didn’t trust Lonnie. He didn’t want him in his business. He said that he had a gut feeling that Lonnie wasn’t as solid as niggaz thought. I hadn’t debated with him about it, but I couldn’t think of another nigga in the world who felt that way about my tightman. Lonnie had never shown me any sign that he wasn’t the soli
d nigga he claimed to be. Like me, he was a stickup kid, but he never targeted those he swore loyalty to. Nor did he have loose lips.

  My dilemma was real, ’cause I’d sworn loyalty to Rich Kid. At least, I’d sort of implied it when I told him I never did work against those I’d done work for. That was the code I lived by. Murder Mike was asking me to break it, but how real would I be if I didn’t honor the codes I believed in? I’d be no better than Shotgun Pete, who let pussy make him violate the code between partners, an unspoken code that was supposed to be respected.

  The only question was whether Rich Kid had surrendered his immunity from my gun when he started fucking my sister and keeping me blind to it, Toi wasn’t “hands off,” but out of respect for me, Rich Kid should’ve respected her. He wasn’t respecting her by fucking her behind her man’s back, like she was nothing more than a jump off. The same way I treated hos like Fiona. He couldn’t have love for my sister, if he knew her nigga had fractured her jaw and he didn’t do anything about it. In fact, he sat back and let me go out on the limb over some shit he helped create. Why should I have more concern for his welfare than he had for Toi’s? Or was I just looking for justification to go along with Murder’s plan?

  The plan was for me to “hit” Rich Kid on a certain day, at a specific time. At the same time, Murder’s Englewood crew would be hitting Rich Kid’s peeps, who worked by the basketball court in Englewood, while the Dreads would be down in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, hitting Rich Kid’s Cuban supplier. Murder even knew about Rich Kid’s Kentucky crew, who were regulating their hood since King’s demise. A plan was devised to have them blasted at the same time the other hits were taking place. Murder was taking a crew up to Kentucky himself.

  He told me: “Main man, it’s gonna be just like that Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre shit that the mob pulled off!”

  The stakes were definitely sky high.

  Deep down, though, I wanted to warn Rich Kid. I just liked the nigga. I simply had to decide what my next move would be after I warned him.