by Cash
“No. She would’ve called to let me know. She was supposed to pick up a prescription for me. I’ve been sick. If she’d gone out of town, I’m sure she would’ve let me know to pick up the medicine myself.” Sounding a lot more worried than I was.
I didn’t know if my mother knew Toi’s boyfriend was a hustler, but I knew he was. Therefore, there were many reasons why him and my sister might go out of town without telling anyone first. Maybe they’d gone to pick up drugs from Glen’s supplier.
“Toi probably forgot about your prescriptions, Ma,” I said, not wanting to mention Toi’s boyfriend’s business.
I didn’t begin to share my mother’s worry until another week passed without either of us hearing from Toi. I went by Toi’s crib. Her and Glen’s whips were in the parking lot, but no one answered the door. My mother filed a Missing Person report with the police. A couple days later, the police searched my sister’s apartment. Though Mama told me they found no evidence of a disturbance inside the apartment, they suspected foul play because they’d found Glen’s keys still in the ignition, and Toi’s purse inside the truck on the floorboard.
My mother was hysterical. I was extremely worried, but I tried to convince myself that Toi would show up any day with a logical explanation.
A few days later my mother’s worst fear was confirmed. Police notified her that both Toi and Glen’s bodies had been found. The brief news article that appeared in the paper the following day said that a jogger had discovered the two decomposed bodies along a seldom used path where he sometimes went to exercise and run. The wooded area was less than two miles from Toi’s apartment. An autopsy revealed that Toi and Glen had both been shot, point-blank twice, in the back of the head. The police had no suspects. I had a prime suspect in mind, unless Glen had crossed someone in his drug dealings, someone I didn’t know.
The days leading up to my sister’s funeral, and even the funeral itself, still remained somewhat hazy in my mind. For one, Toi’s murder fucked me up so bad I stayed high on cocaine and weed. I snorted so much cocaine it’s amazing I didn’t OD. I was in such rage and grief I wanted to kill the whole world! I knew what Glen’s line of work had been, knew that any number of things could’ve led to his murder, and Toi could’ve just been unfortunate to be with him when his enemies struck. The police had found money and drugs inside Toi’s apartment, inside her purse, which was found in Glen’s truck as well as money inside Glen’s pocket. Robbery wasn’t a motive, which meant their murders had been a hit.
Rich Kid!
But why would Rich Kid have Glen murdered, too? On the other hand, if Glen was the intended target, why did Toi get murked? Of course no one knew the answers to those questions better than me. An experienced hitman left no witnesses if he could help it. Instinct screamed Rich Kid, but I’d never known him to send a message to his enemy by having someone close to them killed. He’d just have the enemy murked and be done with it. However, he would definitely know that Toi’s death would hurt me deeper than anything.
At the funeral, my mother sat in the front row, a few seats over from me. Her husband, the man who’d really caused our fallout, sat by her side trying to comfort her. But his hand on top of hers had little power over the extreme grief that was painfully evident in her loud sobs. It hurt me deep to see her so grief-stricken, which is how I knew that I still loved the woman who gave birth to me. Our estrangement had been all about anger. My sister’s death had brought us two seats from one another, dealing with our grief in two different ways. While my mother was visibly hurting, I was stoic, with no tears. No one loved that girl inside the closed soft-pink casket more than I did. No one was hurting inside more than me. Not only had I lost a sister, Toi had been my best friend, my confidant. I was convinced it was my actions that led to her death.
The church was crowded with Toi’s friends from the hood, friends she’d met through Glen, friends of Mama’s and people who were there as a gesture to me: Lonnie, Kyree, Shan, Pete, and many others. Of course Inez was there, too, but not Murder Mike; he didn’t do funerals.
“No disrespect,” Murder explained, “but funerals produce bad karma.”
I could understand his position. If it hadn’t been family, I would’ve felt the same as he did.
I got up and walked out of the church five minutes after some preacher, who hadn’t seen Toi since she was a little girl, started reading passages out of the Bible, trying to relate them to my sister. The shit he was saying had nothing to do with Toi! This holy mafucka hadn’t known my peeps! I walked out before I was tempted to pull the heater from my waist and send him to “a better place.” I couldn’t even go to the cemetery and listen to more of his bullshit.
Months after Toi was buried, I still had no clear answer as to who was responsible for murdering her. Like me, Murder Mike suspected Rich Kid, but we’d seen no sign of him back in Atlanta. All we could find out was that he checked out of the hospital in Maryland. Which meant he could’ve been responsible for my sister’s murder.
All doubts were removed and my suspicions confirmed when I got a call one day on my pager. I stopped at a payphone and called the number showing on the screen.
“Hello? Who paged Youngblood?” I asked when the phone was answered.
“Bitch nigga, you missed! But I didn’t!
All I heard next was the dial tone.
Rich Kid! I knew that voice without a doubt.
I dialed the number again, hoping he’d answer. I was going to invite his punk ass to some real cowboy shit. Me and him, face to face, guns blazin’! But his punk ass never answered. Eventually, a chick answered the phone and told me it was a payphone near GeorgiaBaptistHospital.
Crazy Nine gave me two weeks to settle the score with Rich Kid. Then he expected me to put business over personal matters. I understood that the show still had to go on but my heart wasn’t in it. I did what my role on the team required, but with even less passion for the game than I’d had before Toi was killed. Females were no distraction from what I was feeling; I wasn’t in the mood for their stupid asses. Inez tried her best to help stem my anger but it was too great.
Late one Saturday evening, I headed out the door of Inez’s crib.
“I’m going to my sister’s grave.”
“Let us go with you,” said Inez, holding Tamia on her hip. Bianca had gone to visit her father in prison with Fat Stan’s mother.
“Nah, shawdy, I’m good,” I told Inez. She could sense my head wasn’t right.
“Please, baby,” she pleaded, looking at the bottle of Henny in my hand and the burner on my waistband. I guess she was concerned about my state of mind.
“I wanna go alone,” I replied, giving her and Tamia a goodbye kiss.
“Promise us you’ll be back,” she whispered, tears dripping down her face.
“Girl, you’re trippin’.”
“Look at your daughter and promise her you’ll be back.”
Without saying a word, I kissed them both before heading out the front door.
Toi had been laid to rest at the cemetery on Martin Luther King Drive. When I reached her plot, I kneeled on the grass and laid my head against her headstone. I had the bottle of Henny clutched in my hand. I had drunk half of it on the drive over to the cemetery while listening to Faith Hill’s “Missing You”.
With teary eyes I said, “Sis, I miss you like crazy. You were always my favorite girl. No matter what, in my eyes you could do no wrong. I would give anything for you to still be here with me. With you gone, life just ain’t worth living.”
I took a gulp of Henny straight to the head.
“Really, shawdy, I’m ready to join you. Like Pac said, ‘fuck the world!’” I cried. “But I gotta get the nigga who took you away from me. Yeah, I know that fuck ass nigga Rich Kid did it. I’ma serve his ass, that’s my word! Damn, girl…,” I sobbed, cutting my words short and swallowing my pain down with another sip.
My heart ached. I knew that I was the cause of Toi’s murder. Through my tears, I
saw an old lady placing flowers on a grave nearby. Toi’s plot was decorated with lots of fresh flowers.
Mama must’ve been here recently.
I sat on the ground with my back against Toi’s headstone, and reminisced about our childhood, growing up in the projects, and every single event we shared. Amazingly, we never fought. It had always been us against the world. The pain of losing her was so intense.
“Fuck this shit!”
I downed the last bit of Henny, then pulled my burner from my waist and locked one in the chamber.
Just as I raised the gun to my head, I heard, “No, boo. We need you.”
My head snapped around towards the voice.
Inez was standing to my side with Tamia in her arms.
I let my arm fall to my side, dropping the gun on the ground. Inez sunk to her knees next to me, handed me Tamia, and then wrapped her arms around the both of us.
CHAPTER 16
Main man,” said Murder Mike. We were at one of the stash houses counting loot. “You gotta regain your focus. All of the Dreads will be in town next weekend to discuss basing you in St. Louis with Rohan.”
“Whatever, dawg.” I was tired of the game. I’d walk away before I’d moved to Missouri to help one of the Dreads do what he should’ve been able to do himself. Like I said before, my loyalty wasn’t to the Dreads. My loyalty was to Murder Mike.
A few days before the Dreads were due in town, I was chillin’ at Lonnie’s crib with him and Delina, smoking weed and drinking Courvoisier. Shotgun Pete arrived and he and I got a little rawed on some powder he had. Later Kyree showed up. We spent the whole day blazing and talking. The next day, the same shit. I didn’t snort any powder ‘cause I’d done too much of that shit lately. No matter what was on my mental plate, I wasn’t trying to become a powder head.
By noon Saturday, all four Dreads had arrived at the stash house in Lithonia. Already Murder Mike and I had been there since that morning when Crazy Nine had arrived with a van full of weed and coke packed in boxes. As always, when Crazy Nine brought our supply of drugs to one of the stash houses, he parked the van in the backyard and we unloaded the van, carrying the boxes into the house through the back door. I’d watch the street from a window while they counted the dope Crazy Nine had delivered, and then Crazy Nine would count the money Murder was turning in. It would sometimes take hours since there was so much money to be counted.
If I noticed the po-po or robbers approach the house, all I could do was yell to them because I was unarmed. Crazy Nine had patted me down to be sure, as usual, a policy the Dreads strictly enforced whenever he delivered drugs to us. He obviously didn’t trust me, because he and Murder Mike were still strapped.
By the time Rastaman arrived at the stash house, Murder and Crazy Nine had stacked all the pounds of weed and kilos of cocaine in the back rooms. The money was outside locked in the van. We all greeted one another and sat down around the kitchen table to discuss business affairs.
Around six o’clock we all got hungry. Rastaman went with me to get some KFC and sodas. My pager went off while we waited inside KFC for our large order to be filled. I used the phone in the restaurant’s doorway area to call back the number on my pager. By the time I got off the phone our order had been filled. I was so hungry I dug into one of the buckets of chicken as I drove back to the stash house.
At the kitchen table the fast food was attacked in earnest while discussions continued. An hour later Murder Mike and Crazy Nine left to go somewhere, saying they’d be back in a half hour. The rest of us moved to the front room where we fired up ganja and the three Dreads took turns battling each other at video Ninja warfare.
I unlocked the front door, opened it, and looked out into the dusk-dark evening. The secluded subdivision street was quiet and still. Except for a man and woman who strolled hand-in-hand, passing by. I nodded at the couple and they nodded back.
“Whud up, mon?” asked Rastaman, coming to the door to see who I was nodding to or what I was looking at.
“Nothing up, mon,” I said, mimicking his accent. “Just getting fresh air.”
He watched the couple’s backs as they strolled leisurely down the quiet street. Satisfied that the couple didn’t represent any threat, Rastaman put the .9mm back in the shoulder holster he was wearing. I hadn’t even seen him take the gun out.
“Close the door, mon,” he said as he returned to the video game.
I shut the door, but didn’t lock it.
“Every’ting cool?” Rohan asked.
“Everything’s cool.” I assured them.
I went into the kitchen to search for some KFC. Minutes later I heard pandemonium erupt! The front door slammed into the wall.
“DEA! Don’t fuckin’ move! Get down on the floor! Get down on the fuckin’ floor! Try it! Go ahead!”
A woman’s voice: “Spread your legs! Arms up above your head! Don’t move, buddy! I’ll blow your head off!”
“What’s going on, mon?”
“Shut up! Spread your legs! We’re Drug Enforcement Agents!”
“I’m coming out officers!” I yelled from the kitchen, not wanting to surprise them and get my head shot off. “I’m not armed. My hands are in the air.”
Four heavily armed agents stood in the front room, with DEA emblazoned across their T-shirts. The bulk of bulletproof vests were visible beneath the T-shirts. DEA was also across the caps and windbreakers in bold yellow letters. There were three men and a woman. All four of them smiled as I slowly entered the front room with my hands above my head. The woman, Delina, silently handed me her .9mm and began cuffing the Dreads, one by one.
Oh, in case you haven’t figured it out yet , Lonnie and Delina were the couple that had strolled past the house earlier. As planned, they’d gone around the corner, where Pete and Kyree waited in the car, and changed into their “DEA” gear.
“Be careful. They all have guns.” I said, then told Lonnie to stand over Rastaman while Delina cuffed his hands behind his back.
Lonnie pressed the barrel of the street-sweeper against the back of Rastaman’s head, who said something to the other Dreads in a language I couldn’t understand.
“Anybody move, kill ‘em!” I barked to discourage whatever Rastman might’ve said.
Shotgun Pete stood over Rohan, the shotgun trained down on him, daring the Dread to move. Kyree stood over Jamaican Rick, with the AK-47, which is what I usually preferred. After all three Dreads were cuffed, me and Delina taped their mouths.
“You die for this, mon!” Rohan said before I taped his mouth.
“Maybe,” I allowed. “But you die first, mon.”
I’d been planning this for awhile, which is the only reason I had made peace with Shotgun Pete. I knew that Lonnie and I couldn’t pull it off by ourselves, and Kyree wasn’t experienced enough to trust him with our lives without Shotgun Pete. Certainly Delina wasn’t. In fact, Lonnie hadn’t wanted to use her, but Shotgun Pete convinced us all that a woman’s presence would make the “DEA” disguise more legit. At least initially, which would be long enough to gain control of the house. I had told them that I wouldn’t give them the signal—stepping out the front door—until everyone inside the house was in one room.
I’d also expected Crazy Nine and Murder Mike to be there. We’d expected gun play, because Murder would recognize Lonnie, Shotgun Pete, and Delina. Our main advantage was a surprise attack. That’s what I’d hoped. It had worked out even better that Murder Mike and Crazy Nine weren’t there.
We all knew how dangerous the plan would be; one of us could get killed. I expected the Dreads and Murder Mike to buck, which is why Lonnie hadn’t wanted Delina involved, but Delina was game and said that if Lonnie got killed she wanted to die at his side. Real Bonnie and Clyde shit. Still we planned for her to enter the house last and to back out if shots were fired. Shotgun Pete was to bring along a .357 automatic. We hoped he’d get to toss it to me if there was resistance, since I already knew Crazy Nine would search me and I wouldn’t be
strapped. A reality I didn’t like but saw no way around.
Fuck it , I’d said while planning it. I was all in, do or die!
I knew Crazy Nine’s routine when he delivered drugs. I just had to wait until all four of the Dreads came to Atlanta.
I’d been the one pushing for us to go get something to eat because I had to get to a phone and let Lonnie know for sure that we were at the house in Lithonia. It hadn’t been him paging me when my pager went off at KFC. It had been Inez, but I used it as the perfect opportunity to call Lonnie and ‘em and let them know that we were at the house in Lithonia. I just told them to wait an hour or so for the sun to go down. The rest had been well-rehearsed.
Now, with the three Dreads handcuffed, duct taped, and dragged into a backroom where Shotgun Pete and Delina guarded them, me, Lonnie, and Kyree, waited for Crazy Nine and Murder Mike to return to the house.
I looked out the window, mentally hurrying Crazy Nine and Murder’s return.
“Kyree! Pull the car behind the house so they won’t see it when they return,” I said. He left the car parked at the curb.
Kyree returned from moving the car and re-joined us while we waitied. I was amazed but relieved that no neighbors had seen the “DEA agents” entering the house. If they had, they might become suspicious of the “agents” being inside for so long and would call the local police. A stash house in a quiet, remote area offered privacy but it also left dealers vulnerable.
Growing impatient, I told Kyree to begin loading some of the marijuana and cocaine into the car. “Fill up the trunk and the back seat.”
“The back seat?” he asked.
“Yeah, Don’t worry, a few of us will ride back in either the van or the truck they’re in.”
Twenty minutes later, I silently motioned Kyree to the front door as he walked back through the kitchen, having returned through the back door for another arm-load of dope. “Shhh!” I put my finger to my lips. “Here they come.” I said in a harsh whisper.
As soon as Murder Mike and Crazy Nine entered through the front door, me, Lonnie and Kyree drew down on them, pushing them to the floor and quickly closing the front door. While Lonnie and Kyree trained their heat on the two, I searched their waist and removed their weapons. We led them at gunpoint back into the room where Shotgun Pete and down-ass Delina held their comrades. Crazy Nine and Murder glared violently at me.
