by Cash
A gun pointed down at her.
My son was crying. He was scared.
“Get that fucking gun out of my girl’s face!” I screamed.
“Shut up! Hands in the air! Now!”
I followed their instructions, and then I thought about the two burners stashed under the couch cushion beneath me. My hand was itching to reach for my heaters.
Fuck going to prison!
But I didn’t want my son to get shot. I had promised myself when this day came I was going out, guns blazing, but the mafuckaz had caught me in a situation where I couldn’t buck, not without getting Justice and Juanita killed.
They pushed my son off my chest, pushed me to the floor, mashing my face in the carpet, handcuffed me and kicked me in the face.
They started reading me my rights. “You’re under arrest for murder, armed robbery and unlawful flight to avoid persecution! You have the right to remain silent, anything…”
“Don’t put them handcuffs on her!” I spat, ignoring the pig who was cuffin’ me.
Why the fuck were they cuffin’ Juanita?
“Ma’am. You’re under arrest for harboring a fugitive.” a cop was saying.
“Sarge, I found two weapons. We’ll charge ‘em both for these two beauties.
“Where are you taking my baby?” Juanita cried when she saw Justice being taken out the front door.
“The child will be in the custody of Family and Children Services.”
“Lieutenant, there’s a street full of television cameras outside.”
“Well, he is a mass murderer. Enjoy your fifteen minutes of fame.”
Juanita was crying and begging the cops to let her take Justice with her. She questioned why did they have to handle me so rough? Justice was wailing at the top of his lungs, frightened by all the commotion. I was concerned for my family, but I was stoic in the face of the cameras. If the world was watching, they wasn’t gonna see me acting punked out. My situation was grave, no doubt, but what could I do now? The bastards had me cuffed and surrounded by dozens of FBI agents and local police.
Just as I was being pushed into the back of an unmarked police car, I saw Wise Professor and the other gods in our cipher trying to push their way past police and the throng of news people. I had two immediate thoughts: One, I’d never be free again. Two…Inez! It had to be her that dropped a dime on me. Bitches!
I didn’t fight extradition back to Atlanta to face a litany of charges, including seven counts of malice murder with special circumstances. Which meant the prosecutor could seek the death penalty against me.
I was extradited to DeKalb County Jail and kept under maximum security. Juanita was out on bond, and received permission from a Las Vegas judge to come to Atlanta and assist me in hiring an attorney. She had to use the money from her personal savings account because the FBI had confiscated and filed a seizure claim on the loot I had at the crib when they busted in and arrested us. I was pissed that those mafuckaz got my loot and had the audacity to wanna keep it! On what grounds? How could they prove the money was obtained illegally?
The prominent attorney hired to represent me explained that if nothing else, the government would seize the money on tax evasion charges. A’ight. They were playing like dat, huh? I determined right then that they would never get their hands on the rest of my stash.
I was hot about that, but my anger was elevated to an all-time high when I learned from my attorney how the FBI had tracked me down. Inez hadn’t been the guilty rat. Nor had it been one of the gods in our cipher, as I had sort of thought. Instead, the rat mafucka who’d tipped them off to my whereabouts was the one person I trusted most with my life.
Lonnie!
“You’re a goddamn lie!” I’d spat at my attorney when he told me my dawg, my tightman, had snitched me out. But it was true.
Turns out that Lonnie and Delina had got popped in Long Island, New York by undercover DEA agents they had sold ten kilos to. After they were arrested and their fingerprints were put into the national data base, the DEA agents realized who they had in custody. Two of the three fugitives most wanted for the mass murder in Georgia. The FBI had kept Lonnie and Delina’s capture from the media, hoping to pressure Lonnie into leading them to me. In exchange for the government promising Delina leniency, and not seeking the death penalty against him, Lonnie had told them I was in Nevada with Juanita. They’d tracked her through school records. He also agreed to testify that I had planned the Lithonia robbery and murders. If that didn’t make him a big enough rat, Lonnie agreed to testify about any and all crimes we’d committed together. And he told them about me and Inez robbing and murking King in Kentucky.
The Rat Bastard! He had sunk to the lowest form of life—a snitch!
I found out that Lonnie was being housed in Dekalb County Jail, too. The rat bastard was in protective custody in a cellblock on a different floor from where I was being kept. Through a guard, he sent me a jive saying that he hadn’t wanted to snitch me out, but the feds had his nuts in a vise-grip. He and Delina’s blood had been found inside the house in Lithonia, and they’d had one of the weapons used in the murders with them the day they’d been busted by the undercover DEA agents. The rat mafucka claimed he could’ve taken his medicine like a man, but it was his “love and concern for Delina” that had made him turn me in.
What about your “love and concern” for your dawg!? Huh!? I wrote him back. And why did he have to drop a dime on Inez?
My attorney said Lonnie was giving them the goods, trying to get Delina the best deal he could. So, fuck me and mine, huh?
After Inez was arrested, we were both extradited to Kentucky and charged with murder. The strongest evidence they had against her was hair samples found on the bed sheets where King had been killed, and a fingerprint in the bathroom.
Damn!
We had forgotten the sheets that night! Also, the teeth marks on King’s arm would match Inez’s. The only evidence that could incriminate me of King’s murder, unless Inez flipped, was Lonnie’s testimony. His bitch ass was singing like a fuckin’ canary!
In Kentucky, Inez’s bond was set at three hundred grand. I was, of course, denied bond due to the multiple murder charges I was facing back in ATL.
Keisha came through for Inez, putting up ten percent of the three hundred grand with a bondsman. So, shawdy was released while I was returned to Georgia, back to Dekalb County Jail to await the inevitable.
One day the guards took me to the yard, inside a fenced in cubicle, and I walked right past Lonnie, who was inside a separate one. He had the nerve to not only look at me, but to say: “It’s every man for himself, dawg.”
I spat in his face when the guards had to walk him pass my cubicle to take him off the yard.
“Bitch ass nigga! I shoulda slumped you too!” I hurled at his back before getting pulled away by the guards.
CHAPTER 23
The DA decided to seek the death penalty against me in DekalbCounty.
I wasn’t trippin’ that shit. In fact, I told Juanita that if I was found guilty, I’d rather get the needle than a sentence of life with no parole, which is a slow death. Like DMX said, either let me fly or give me death.
I was housed alone in a cell on the eighth floor of the jail. This was protocol for inmates in my predicament. The solitude allowed me to think over all my mistakes. I hadn’t made many, but the ones I made were huge. Murder Mike had always tried to tell me that Lonnie was flawed. I just couldn’t peep it. Still, I shoulda adhered to the code of the streets: Trust No Man.
Every time I thought about Lonnie’s betrayal, that shit twisted my face! A guard named Lumpkin approached my cell. He’d come to take me to my visit.
“You ready?” asked Lumpkin, peeking through the small rectangular window in the center of the metal cell door.
“Yeah.”
He unlocked the tray flap and I stuck my hands through the hole to cuff up.
Lumpkin pretended to be cool, and maybe he really was, but he still wor
e a badge, so I never had much to say to him. I assumed he was tryna play me into telling him something he could later use against me in court.
“How you doin’ today, dawg?” he asked as he escorted me to my visit.
“I ain’t ya dawg. But I’m a’ight,” I replied.
In visitation, I sat on an iron stool that was bolted to the wall in a small cubicle. Juanita was on the other side of the wire-mesh Plexiglas. We both picked up the phones through which we’d have to converse.
“Peace, god,” she said, placing her palm against the Plexiglas.
“Peace, black woman,” I replied, placing my palm against the Plexiglas too. “How’s my seed?”
“He’s fine, getting bigger by the day.”
“What about you? How you be, baby girl?”
Juanita got teary-eyed.
“I can’t believe those devils are going to seek the death penalty against you!” she said bitterly.
“Why not? You know how those crackers get down.”
“Still, boo,” she replied.
“Don’t sweat that shit, Queen. They can’t kill me. They can only kill my body. But I’ll live on through you, Inez, Ma Duke, my seeds, and everything in existence. You know the science. Can those crackers kill your love for me?”
“Never, baby,” she vowed, tears falling.
“Can they erase my whole bloodline by puttin’ me to sleep?”
“No, they can’t.”
“A’ight then. Dry those tears, girl. I’m at peace, however it goes.”
For the rest of the hour long visit we talked about Justice and about Juanita’s schooling. Against my wishes, she had taken a leave from school until my trial was over.
The next day, I received a visit from an author who wanted to write a book about my life. I told him I’d give it some thought, and then sent him on his way. My upcoming trial was receiving a lot of press coverage and was scheduled to be broadcasted on Court TV. Somehow, the media had gotten a hold of the CDs I’d made in my home studio. They played excerpts from certain tracks every time they reported on my upcoming trail, particularly the lyrics from “Young Gun” where I spit, “While y’all was out rockin’ a party/I was clockin’ my first body.”
They also played lyrics from the B-side of the CD, which I recorded after my evolution to God body.
Pay attention while I spit on the level/Expose you to the devil/The white man/ That’s his hand on that Glock/His dope on your block/His conspiracy that killed Pac/His fake religion that ya mama taught you/Check the name on the gear your shawdy bought you/It ain’t made by us/In whose God should we trust/A spook in the sky/Or the gods that can be seen with the naked eye/Fuck beefin’ over turf/We control the whole universe/Black man, do the knowledge so you’ll overstand the devil’s plan.
The news media used my lyrics to paint a picture of a young remorseless killer, a racist, and atheist.
Whatever.
The CD, of which I’d dubbed several copies, was a hot commodity. With the help of Keisha and Swag, the up-North dude whom I had cut up in a battle rap in Englewood, we took the CD underground and it blew up.
Swag had just signed with a major label, and I had recorded a coupla verses for his CD over the phone in jail. The streets were anxious for Swag’s joint to drop.
After several months of wrestling with Dekalb County Jail officials, my attorney was able to get a court order that allowed Inez to visit me. She was my co-defendant on the case in Kentucky, so jail officials had been denying her visitation requests. My attorney had successfully argued in court, that because she was the mother of my child, she had the right to see me.
Now, as I looked at Inez through the Plexiglas, my heart went out to her. She was a true thoroughbred.
Her hair was in a long bob, her nails were done, and her neck and wrist were froze. Shawdy looked so damn jazzy and fine. If she was stressing over the murder charge in Kentucky, it didn’t show on her face.
“Hey, playgirl,” I said into the phone. “You lookin’ like you belong in Black Tail.”
“Thanks.” She stood up and turned around so that I could get a good view of her Apple Bottom.
“I wish I could hit that right about now.”
“Me too,” she smiled, sitting back down.
Although we spoke on the phone every day, I still asked how she was doing.
I’m straight,” she said.
“Check it, shawdy. I’ve been thinkin’. With Lonnie’s and his rat bitch’s testimony, these crackers gon’ convict me here in Georgia. You know how they do. So, the shit in Kentucky ain’t gonna matter. I want you to tell your lawyer to work out a plea for you.”
“I told you, they don’t want to talk about a plea unless I agree to testify against you.”
“I know. That’s what I’m getting’ at. I’m going down anyway. I ain’t tryna see you fall with me. I want you out on the streets to raise Tamia and Bianca.”
“So what are you saying?” Her eyes glared into mine through the Plexiglas.
“Go ‘head and testify against me, shawdy. It’s all good.”
“Nigga, how the fuck you gonna ask me to do some fucked up shit like that?”
“It’s for the best, boo.”
“Man, you got me confused with Shan and Cheryl! I wouldn’t care if those crackers offer me immunity and everlasting life; I’m still not flippin’ on you.”
“Listen, Inez—”
“No, you listen, mafucka! I was down with you when the shit was good, and I’m down with you now. Ain’t no bitch ever loved you as much as me, including Juanita. Now what the fuck don’t you understand about that?” She slammed the phone down on the receiver and stood up to go.
“Sit back down, shawdy,” I said.
Maybe she couldn’t hear me through the Plexiglas or maybe she could, but she didn’t do as I asked.
When I called her collect that night she said, “I’ll be back down there to see you when you got your mind right.”
She hung up before I could get a word in. I grabbed a pen and paper and wrote shawdy a letter.
Dear Inez,
Shawdy, I know you ain’t feelin’ me on what I told you to do. Fa real, girl. I appreciate your loyalty. If only that rat nigga I fucked with was built like you, this shit wouldn’t be going down. But now that it is what it is, I don’t wanna see you caught up in one of these devil’s cages. Feel me?
See, I’m stronger than a whole nation of those devils. Put the weight on my shoulders, boo, I’ll bear it. You’ve proven that you love me, that’s enough for me. I’ve never told you this ’cause I really didn’t realize it until circumstances separated us, but I love you too.
Love,
Youngblood.
Two days later I received Inez’s response. A familiar scent escaped the envelope when I opened her letter.
Youngblood,
Nigga, miss me with that pity shit. Like I told you, I was down when shit was peaches and cream, and I’ll be down until the end! Our daughter will never have to grow up hearing that her mother testified against her daddy. I’m not doing it! So let’s move on, please.
Baby, they’re bumpin’ your CD everywhere I go. I stay listening to it. I never even knew that you could rap. Boy, are you full of surprises! I love you so damn much, nigga.
Me and Juanita kicked it the other day. She’s down to earth. I wanted to dislike her because, no matter what she says, she stole my man. But I like her and I know that she really loves you. I’m not mad at that; it’s cool, we love the same man. Shit happens.
Boo, I’ll be back to visit you again this weekend. Please don’t be on any pity shit. Know that my heart is yours, always.
Love,
Inez
Shawdy was down like four flat tires.
I had the guard bring the telephone to my cell so I could call and hear her voice. After accepting my collect call she asked, “Did you get my letter?”
“Yeah, I got it.”
“Did you smell the perfume I sprayed on
it?”
“Yeah, that shit smelled lovely. Did you used to spray perfume on letters you wrote to Fat Stan?” I asked, fuckin’ with her.
“No. I. Did. Not,” she replied, emphasizing each word. “It wasn’t like that with him. I appreciated him, but I never loved him. You’re the only nigga I’ve ever loved.”
“Is that right?”
“Yep.”
“You heard from Fat Stan lately?”
“Yeah, he wrote me talkin’ about the situation I’m in—that’s what I get for fuckin’ with you. I wrote his fat ass back and told him to keep your name out his fuckin’ mouth.”
I just laughed. Fuck that hater.
“You talked to Keisha?” I asked.
“Uh-huh. Oh! She told me to tell you she would be down to see you Wednesday.”
When I hung up from Inez I called Juanita. She had gotten an apartment in Atlanta.
“Peace, God,” she said.
“Peace. Where Justice at?”
“He’s right here. Let me put the phone to his ear so you can talk to him.”
Justice was eight months old now. He couldn’t talk yet, but he could say, “Dada,” which he kept repeating as I talked to him.
I hadn’t seen any of my children since my arrest. Children under the age of sixteen weren’t allowed in the county jail.
After talking to Justice, I asked Juanita to call Poochie’s house for me. I was hoping Lil’ T would be over there. I had received a letter from Poochie that worried me. It read:
Terrence,
As I write this letter, I pray that God is keeping you safely in His grace. I know you don’t believe in my God, but He is real. And there is no other God. I know He is real because He has worked miracles for me. He delivered me from the hell of drug addiction.
I praise His name.
I pray for you every day and every night. I know that you are not the monster they portray you to be in the media. Regardless of what you did or didn’t do, you are God’s child.
Lil’ T spent the weekend with me. He is so full of questions about what’s going on with you. He sees you on the news and in the papers and kids talk about you at his school. I don’t know what to tell him, he is so angry. Shan is a mess! I wish she would give her life to the Lord. She is so messed up on drugs; I can’t even trust her in my house.
