by Glenn, Roy
“I don’t have it on me. I’ll bring it to you tomorrow, I swear to God Angelo.”
Angee turned to me and when he turned back it was with one to the gut. The guy doubled over and held his stomach. Angee hit him in the head a few times.
“Hey, fuck face. I’m fuckin’ talkin’ to you, fuck face. Where’s my fuckin money, and you better not tell no shit about it you ain’t got it.”
“Really, Angelo, I’m gonna give you your money. I just ain’t got it on me.”
“You hear this shit? You hear this shit, huh Mickey? This piece a shit don’t have my money.”
“Yeah, I hear him.”
“This fuckin’ fuck face piece a shit don’t have my money. Shoot this prick, Mikey.”
I took out his gun and shot him.
“What the fuck!” Angee screamed. “Are you out your fuckin’ mind, Mikey?”
“What? You said shoot him, so I fuckin’ shot him,” I slurred and put my gun away.
“I was fuckin’ kiddin’. I was just tryin’ to scare the bastard,” Angee said as he paced back and forth over the body. “Fuck it, let’s get outta here.”
Bobby Ray
Me and Mike were collecting for Andréand he sent us to collect from a dealer named Hector Villanueva Hector. Hector was a little slow payin’, which wasn’t any big deal, Hector was a stand up guy. When he had the money, he always paid. But Andrédidn’t like Hector and wanted me and Mike to lean on him. So we go around to this bar Hector hangs out in and have our usual you’re late conversation with Hector. Only this , another wanna-be dealer name Diego Estabon was there. His father, Gomez Estabon, was a major player in the dope game and Diego was just punk kid, fresh off the boat from Peru, trying to make reputation for himself.
So Mike is talkin shit to Hector like be always does, but Diego hears him and rolls up behind Mike.
“Why you come up in here, talkin’ shit like you all bad and shit?” Diego asked.
Mike doesn’t even look back, he just wheels and back-hands Diego to the ground. Then Mike stands over him and says, “I wasn’t talkin’ to you.” And went back to talking to Hector like it wasn’t shit.
So Diego gets up from the floor and leaves the bar.
He went to his car and got a gun and was on his way back in the club to kill Black. But the cops see him walking in the club with the gun in his hand. They stopped him and when they searched the car Diego’s carrying two ounces of cocaine. That day Diego swear that one day he would get revenge on Black.
Mike Black
With Diego out of his way, Hector was able to step up and fill the void. But André hated Puerto Ricans so he was killin’ Hector on price. All that changed one night when Hector was at my after hour spot called The late Night when Angelo came in.
Angelo talked to me for a while then he sees a woman he liked and walked off. Hector saw an opportunity. He ran up to me. “You know André is beatin’ him down on price. I can’t make any money,” Hector said.
“Yo, Hector, why are you tellin’ me all this?”
“You know Angelo, right?”
“So what are you tryin’ to say, Hector?”
“Can you introduce me to Angelo. Please?”
“Hector, let me make sure I understand you. You buy from André, who pays me. And now you want me to introduce you to Angelo, so you can stop buyin’ from André, who pays me. Is that what you’re asking me? Let me make sure I understand you. You want me to take money out of my pocket to help you. Is that what you’re sayin’, Hector?”
“Yes, Black,” Hector said.
“You owe me a favor, Hector.”
“Okay, okay, Black I owe you a favor. Just introduce me to Angelo,” Hector said.
“Come with me,” I said and Hector followed me over to where Angelo was standing.
“Yo, Angee, this is Hector Villanueva. He’s an honorable man and deserves to be taken seriously.”
“Go on get outta her, honey.” Angelo said and tapped the woman on her ass. Then he looked at me and then at Hector.
“Is he a good guy, Mikey?”
“I wouldn’t introduce him if he wasn’t,” I said and left the two of them to talk.
That same night, there was a young kid that called himself Freeze, who used to hang around the spot and had pushed up on the girlfriend of a drug dealer named Darren. When Darren noticed The Kid was at his girl, he and two of his boys grabbed The Kid and attempted to teach him a lesson.
A lesson was learned that night, but not by The Kid. Each time they put The Kid down he got right back up and went right back at them. I was impressed the way The Kid kept gettin’ up and fighting back against the three of them.
Darren hit The Kid again and he fell over a table next to me. I motioned for The Kid to stay down. As they approached I stood up and drew my weapon, and pointing it at Darren’s head.
“Yo, Darren, I think The Kid ‘s had enough. Don’t you?”
Not wanting any parts of me, Darren stopped.
“Yeah, Black, he’s had enough,” Darren said backing away. Three days later Darren and his boys were dead and The Kid was in jail for murder.
One year late, I saw Freeze on the day he got out of jail. The Kid was only sixteen years old. “Yo, Black, wait up!” Freeze yelled.
“Yo, Freeze, what’s up. I thought you were on lock down for murder?”
“I got the murder charge dropped on a tech. Cops fucked up the arrest. So I got a year for aggravated and walked. Yo, Black, so yo like, where you headin’?”
I just looked at him.
“What I really mean is, like, you know, a nigga like me could learn a lot from a nigga like you,” Freeze said, without making eye contact with me.
I laughed, “Yeah, like how to stay out of jail.”
“You never been to jail, Black?”
“Never even been cuffed,” I said confidently.
“That’s what I’m talkin’ bout, after bein’ on lock down for damn near sixteen months, I know that I never want to go back. Lock down ain’t no place for me.”
I looked at The Kid for a minute contemplating his proposition. I thought about that night at the club and how Freeze never quit fighting back.
“Okay, you come with me. You do exactly what I say. And I never, and I mean never, want to hear you say shit unless I ask you. Got that?”
Freeze nodded his head without saying a word. “
Good. Now let’s go.”
Chapter Three
Nick Simmons
Although Black made most of his money on gambling, he was always on the lookout for something he could steal. His preference was high jacking trucks. He knew a woman who worked as a waitress at a truck stop. She would feed Black information. Using her feminine charms she would find out from truckers what they were going to be carrying, and what route they were going to take. This was the most important factor in his plan. With that information, Black would set it up so the truck would have to stop and then we’d have them. His favorite was a half naked white woman in distress. You know, short shirt, titties hangin’ out all over the place. What man could resist a white woman in distress? Once the driver was out of the cab, either me, Jamaica or Bobby would come up on the driver from behind and take it him.
Once the driver was secure, Bobby would drive the truck away. Which didn’t go smoothly at first this, but it got better as Bobby learned how to handle the big rigs. Now, once Bobby was gone in the truck, Black would always ask, “Is that your rig or the companies?” If it was the driver’s rig, Black would tell the driver where he could find it, if not, he would sell the truck for parts.
Even though he didn’t like doin’ it, Black would sometimes rob warehouses. But only if it presented a tempting enough prize, and it definitely had to be minimal risk involved. Black was never one to take risks that would put himself or his organization at risk.
“Remember, no risk,” Black would say before we went on any job. “Bail ain’t cheap.”
The reason that he didn’t
like robbin’ warehouse was because; “Time waitin’ to load the truck was time waitin’ to get caught,” he’d say. And gettin’ caught was never on his list of things to do.
Black had gotten some information that there was a warehouse that offered just such an opportunity. His first thought was to wait and see if his informant could give us a target to hit, but when that didn’t happen, Black decided that it was too much money involved to pass on, so it was on.
The information came to from a woman who worked as a routing supervisor at the warehouse. Black got his hooks into her because of her favorite pass time. Gambling. She owed Black five grand, so one Sunday afternoon, around dinnertime; Black and I paid her a visit.
After a very filling meal, Ayana was a great cook; she set it out for us. “Black, look, I know I owe you some money. And to be honest with you, I just ain’t got it.”
Which caused Black to put his gun on the table. Which wasn’t any big deal, ‘cause Black would never shot a woman. If that became necessary he’d get me or Freeze to do it for him.
“But I do have something that maybe worth something to you.”
“And what might that be, Ayana?” Black asked.
“Yow know I work at a warehouse in Jersey. Well there’s a shipment full of electronic equipment comin’ in. You know, televisions, DVD’s boom-boxes and cameras, just come in from China. After the shipment passes though customs and all that shit, it’s taken to this warehouse and I schedule it to be shipped out to locations around the country. My position gives me the inside track on what’s in house, and what’s worth taking.”
After making sure that he wasn’t playing in anybody else’s backyard, Black formed a plan. He got her to draw a map of the warehouse and to identify the good stuff from the junk by marking the target pallets with a piece of black tape. This saved us a lot of time; Black simply walked around and told me, ‘cause I learned to drive the forklift, which one to pick up, while Bobby took over the security shack at the gate and Jamaica stood guard at the door.
By one o’clock the truck was half full and everything was going smoothly until the folk lift died on me. Black and I looked around for another forklift. “You find one?” Black asked.
“No,” I told him.
“Try to get this one working.” I tried everything I knew, which wasn’t much, to get it running.
“We’re wasting time, Nick, get down from there. Jamaica, come here,” Black said as he took one gun out of his pocket and took off his coat. “We’re gonna have to do this the hard way. I saw some hand jacks while I was looking for another forklift. We’ll each get one.” Black looked at his watch, “It’s a little after one. I want to be out of here by three. We got about two hours to get as much as we can and get out of here.”
We all got busy, we we’re done by two-thirty. Black and Bobby left in the truck while Jamaica and I followed in the car. We’d been driving for a half-hour maybe when we passed though a small town. Once we got a little way out town Bobby began to slow down and came to a complete stop. “What wrong now?” Jamaica asked.
After a while Black came to the car, “What’s goin’ on, Black?” Jamaica asked.
“There’s a road block. We passed a bar a little while ago, there just out here harassing drunks. I don’t think they’ll bother us, but to be on the safe side, Nick, you wait til I’m gone and make your way around though those tree just across from them. If Bobby opens his door, fire a couple of shots in the air over the truck. Then you get away from there in case they shot back. But I’m betting that these local will just take cover. That should give Bobby a chance to drive off.”
“What if they come after you?” I asked.
“Then we’ll bail,” Black said as he walked away.
Once Black was gone I got out and headed for the trees. I took up a position across from the road block and waited for Bobby to get there. The cop talked to Bobby for less than a minute before letting him drive on without incident. Jamaica and I weren’t that lucky. When it came our turn to go through the road block they made us get out. The cops searched us and looked in the car, but not closely enough to find the guns under the back seat. Then they made Jamaica take the breath test and walk a straight line, even though either of us had been drinking. After that twenty-minute ordeal, Jamaica took off and tried to catch up with Black and Bobby. What we found we’d never saw coming. About twenty miles up the road we saw Black and Bobby walking.
“What now?” Jamaica asked.
“Maybe the truck broke down,” I replied as Jamaica slowed down.
“What happened to the truck?” Jamaica asked as they got in the car.
“We got jacked, that’s what the fuck happened,” Bobby screamed.
He told us that they had to stop because a car we blocking the road. Two men were standing in the middle of the road arguing. Once they stopped two more men, one on each side, opened the truck doors and ordered Black and Bobby out of the truck at gunpoint. They took their guns and jumped in the truck and drove off. The other two returned to their cars in the road and then they drove away, too. “They ran it like clock work, just like we would have.” The whole thing was over in less than a minute.
Bobby cursed and complained the whole way back to New York. Black on the other hand, never said a word. But you knew, in his mind, he was goin’ over every minute of the robbery. And you knew he was pissed. He already had a buyer; they’d agreed on a price. Him and Bobby were supposed to meet with him in the morning and drop it off.
Once we got back to The Late Night, Black told me to drive him somewhere. I had a good idea where we were goin’, and sure as shit, I was right.
Black pounded on Ayana’s door and after a while she opened it. “Black?” a half sleep Ayana said. “What you doin’ here? Did something go wrong?”
Black didn’t say a word. He just kept walking toward her, and Ayana kept backin’ up, until she backed her way into the bedroom. Black closed the door behind him.
I propped up some pillows and made myself comfortable on the couch. Every once and a while I would hear Ayana yell, “I didn’t tell nobody! I swear, Black. I didn’t tell nobody!”
I awoke to what smelled like meatloaf cooking, “Good morning, Ayana,” I said. “Where’s Black?”
“It’s afternoon and Black’s in the bedroom. If you want to take a shower or whatever, you can use the bathroom down the hall. Lunch should be ready in a soon,” Ayana said.
I took a good look at her; she didn’t look like Black beat her down. Ayana was in her late thirties, early forties, maybe. But she was still an attractive woman. She was probably a very pretty women when she was younger.
I made my way to the bathroom and took a quick shower. When I got out, as promised, meatloaf, along with mashed potatoes, collard greens, fried okra and cornbread were on the table, but no sign of Ayana. Not wanting the food to get cold, I sat down to lunch. It wasn’t too long before Black and Ayana came out of the bedroom. She went in the kitchen and Black sat down and began eating. “Well?”
“I don’t think she crossed us,” Black replied. “But we’ll talk about that later.”
After we finished eating, I took Black home. On the way there, I asked my question again, “Well?”
“I been thinkin’ about this all night. I haven’t even been to sleep.”
“Well?” I asked a third time.
“You heard what Bobby said. They ran it like clock work, just like we would have. The bandits were organized; other than ‘get out’; they never said a word. It happened so fast, I couldn’t really tell if they were black or white, but the one that took my guns sounded like he might be black, but I shouldn’t say for sure.”
“You sure she didn’t tell anybody?”
“I just spent all night making sure she didn’t,” Black said like I had asked a stupid question. “Now if she didn’t tell anybody, somebody had to figure it out. He’s the one we’re looking for.” I drove a while longer; thinkin’ that Black had simply stated the obvious. But
I should have known better.
“I want my truck back, Nick. And I’ll have it.” Black said
That night when I got to The Late Night, The Kid was there talkin’ to Black. The Kid, that’s what we used to call Freeze back in those days. Back then, all Freeze did was run little errands for Black and hang out at the club messing with the ladies. They were seated in the back of the club; Black was doing most if not all the talking. Freeze just did a lot of nodding.
When I walked up they stopped talking and they both looked at me like I had no business there. I spoke and walked away and began doin’ my usual, which was hanging out, messing with the ladies. They sat there for most of the night, then suddenly Freeze jumped up and rushed for the door.
It was quiet for the next couple of days; nobody even mentioned the robbery, especially around Black. Then Black called me and told me to, meet him at The Late Night before it closes in the morning. We never closed before eight in the morning. I was with a girlfriend of mine and she wasn’t too happy when I rolled out of bed at, “It’s six-thirty, Nick. Where you goin’?”
“Out.”
“Out?” she pulled back the covers. “Only place you need to go is in, back in this bed. I want to feel you inside me.”
“I’ll be back,” I said and armed myself. “You’ll want to feel it even more when I get back.” I left there and was up in there about seven that morning, wondering what was goin’ on. I asked if Black was there and Sammy told me that he’d been there earlier and said that he’d be back.
Right after I got there, Bobby arrived, and Jamaica wasn’t far behind. They had got the same call from Black, and neither of them knew what was up. Which shocked the hell out of me. Bobby was in on everything.
We all took a seat, had a drink, and waited. When everyone was gone, Black came in. he went straight to the bar and poured himself a drink. He came over to where we were sitting and sat down. “So you gonna tell us what is so important to get me off some pussy at six in the morning?”
