by K'wan
“Like I give a fuck,” Spooky snickered, cutting loose with a barrage from the automatic. Ronny’s body flapped on the ground like a wounded fish before eventually going still. To be sure that he was dead, Spooky placed the Glock in Ronny’s mouth and pulled the trigger twice. Killing the men wouldn’t bring his brother or Yvette back, but he’d sleep better that night knowing that the gunmen’s families would be grieving right along with him.
Out of nowhere, several police cars converged on Spooky, who was still kneeling over Ronny holding a smoking gun. Even if he wanted to run, he couldn’t, because they had him boxed in. Seeing the curtain about to fall on the last act of his street run, Spooky stood up to meet his end with dignity.
“Drop the fucking guns!” a pale officer with red hair barked. His, as well as several of his fellow officer’s guns, were aimed at Spooky, all ready to blast.
Spooky took a deep breath and lowered his guns to his sides—but didn’t put them down. Looking around at the carnage he had helped to create, he felt a bit of sadness in his heart and what had become of his life, and the legacy he would pass on to his seed. Nobody wakes up and says they want to be a killer, stick-up kid, or dope boy, but they play the hands they are dealt—as Spooky had done all his life, and as his son would probably do with his, unless someone showed him better. It was a bitter pill, but he had to swallow it. He knew the rules of the game before he played, and if he had it to do all over again, he wouldn’t change a thing.
“Son, nobody else has to get hurt. Put the guns down and let us take you in. Better in cuffs than a bag, so let’s do the right thing.” This was from a Black officer who sounded strangely sincere.
Spooky looked at the officer and nodded sadly—before a grin spread across his face. “You can’t be fucking serious,” he laughed, then hit the Black officer full in the chest and face with a burst from the Tech-9.
He had managed to kill three of the officers and wound four more before going down in a blaze of gunfire. Nobody knew for sure how many shots were fired, but when the smoke cleared Spooky had more holes in his body than a noodle strainer. Jason “Spooky” Benjamin died alone and in the gutter on the corner of Jefferson and Throop at the hands of the NYPD, ten minutes after his older brother, Nate. And so ended the chapter of the Benjamin brothers, whose only real crime was being born into the life.
MO SAT IN THE EMERGENCY room of St. Vincent’s hospital, impatiently looking at her watch. She had already been there for three hours and the staff was still moving as slow as molasses. Just another example of how the city treated you when you didn’t have the proper insurance.
Several hours prior, she had gotten a frantic call from her girl Sharon, stating that she needed her and Dena to get to Fourteenth Street and Tenth Avenue immediately because it was about to go down. Apparently, the wife of some old nigga she was fucking with had found out about them and wasn’t too happy about it. She and a few of her girlfriends had tracked them down at the Liberty Inn and started lunching, threatening to kill her and him if they came out. Not wanting her sister to find out what she was up to, she called her girls to come get her back.
Mo had tried to call Dena, but she still wasn’t taking any calls, which was starting to concern her. With Dena or not, Mo couldn’t let her girl go out like that, so she snatched her Rambo knife and headed into Manhattan. When she got there, the scene in front of the Liberty looked like something out of a movie. There were police everywhere and the man’s wife was in handcuffs. Apparently, Sharon tried to slip out of the Inn and got caught up. The girl had beaten the hell out of her and scratched her face pretty bad. She even managed to bite a small chunk out of Sharon’s shoulder as the police were trying to break it up. Mo and Dena had warned her about tampering with other people’s men, especially the married ones, but her hot ass didn’t listen. Now Mo had to sit in the crowded-ass emergency room waiting for the doctors to finish treating Sharon.
Mo’s cell phone rang, breaking her train of thought. The security guard shot Mo a nasty look, motioning towards the NO CELL PHONE sign, but Mo ignored him and answered anyhow. “Yeah?” she answered in a stink tone.
“What’s popping, hussy?” Dena capped on the other end.
“Dena? Girl, where the hell have you been? Shannon and your moms are worried sick about you.”
“I’ll bet. I ain’t stunting that shit. I spent the night with Ice,” Dena said proudly.
“That pimp-ass nigga from the other night? Dena, I know you must’ve fell and bumped ya damn head,” Mo accused.
“Bitch, cut it out, Ice ain’t no damn pimp, he’s a manager. And furthermore, he’s been treating me like royalty ever since I’ve been with him. Shit, I’m uptown with Wendy and Lisa right now getting my wig tightened up. Ice wants me to look good on his arm tonight at the party. Mo, this nigga is balling with a capital B!” Dena went on to tell Mo about the last two days she’d spent with Ice and how he’d tricked off a good amount of his dough on her. She expected her friend to be happy for her, but Mo was unmoved.
“Dena, I don’t know about that nigga. Ice is cool and all, but I ain’t under no illusions about what time it is with Mr. Black Ice.”
Dena sucked her teeth. “Mo, why you hating cause I finally found an official nigga?”
“Dena, I could never hate on my girl, but I’m trying to tell you to be careful.”
“Trust that ya girl got this. Anyway, what’re you doing tonight?” Dena asked.
“From the looks of this shit, I’ll probably be sitting up in this fucking, nasty-ass emergency room.”
“Emergency room? Is everything okay?” Dena asked, concerned about her friend.
“Yeah, but Sharon’s ass is in some shit as usual.” She went on to tell Dena about Sharon’s run-in with Scooter’s wife, and the two girls shared a laugh.
“That girl is always in some shit,” Dena said.
“Tell me about it. I hope this ass-whipping will finally slow her ass down.”
“I doubt it. You know how Sharon is. But check it: Since you’re already in Manhattan, why don’t you come through tonight? I know it’s gonna be some heavyweight niggaz up in there, cause that’s all Ice fucks with,” Dena boasted.
“I don’t think so, girl. As soon as I get finished with this dizzy ho, I’m heading back to BK. I got a nine-inch piece of meat on hold for me that I can’t wait to taste!”
“Nasty ass,” Dena laughed. “A’ight, but if you change ya mind, hit my phone and I’ll make sure you’re good at the door. I’ll talk to you later, Mo.” Dena was about to end the call, but Mo stopped her.
“D, you make sure you’re careful around them Harlem niggaz. I got a bad feeling about this whole situation.”
“Mo, I told you I got this,” Dena said, clearly not wanting to be lectured anymore. “I gotta go cause I’m next under the dryer, but if I don’t see you tonight I’ll call you in the morning.”
“Make sure you do, D,” Mo said, and ended the call. She was glad to hear that her friend was alright, but didn’t know how she felt about the situation. Dena could say what she wanted about Black Ice, but Mo saw right through his slick-talking persona. For as sweet as his words were, she knew he had a poisonous tongue. Mo couldn’t fault Dena for milking him, but hooking up with the man was an accident waiting to happen. And since Dena was grown and would have to see the light on her own, all Mo could do was be there for her when it happened.
A few minutes after Mo hung up with Dena, Sharon came out of the back. Aside from a few scratches on her face and a bruise under her eye, Sharon was good. But Mo could see the bandage they had applied to her shoulder peeking out from her neckline.
“I can’t stand fucking hospitals!” Sharon said with a major attitude.
“How’d it go?” Mo asked.
“They had me back there all this fucking time to take some blood and give me a prescription for antibiotics.”
“What? They think the bitch gave you rabies or something?” Mo joked.
“I don’t f
ucking know, they claim the shit is routine when dealing with bites or scratches. I swear to God, when I see that bitch uptown it’s on!”
“Sharon, you need to leave that shit alone,” Mo told her.
“Fuck you mean, I need to leave it alone? You see what that bitch did to my face?” Sharon pointed to her scratches.
“Well, you were fucking her man,” Mo pointed out.
“That’s beside the point. If her old-ass pussy wasn’t so trash he wouldn’t keep coming back for this young shot. She ain’t nothing but a hating-ass bitch.”
“Whatever,” Mo said. “Oh, I spoke to Dena.”
“Ms. Prissy finally poked her head out? Where the fuck she been?”
“Catting around with that nigga Ice.”
“That is one lucky bitch,” Sharon said scornfully. “If she hadn’t been all up his ass, I could’ve bagged him.”
“Sharon, he’s a pimp. Why the fuck would you want him?” Mo asked, not really understanding Sharon or Dena’s thinking.
Sharon looked at her as if the answer to the question should’ve been obvious. “Mo, I wouldn’t give a fuck if a nigga sold pussy or vacuums for a living, as long as he had long enough dough to keep me fly, I’m good.” With that, Sharon left the emergency room.
Chapter 41
THE MOMENT THE SUN DIPPED BEHIND THE horizon Jah’s eyes snapped open. An eerie feeling crept over him that he couldn’t quite explain. After leaving the studio he came home to spend some time with Yoshi before he had to get ready for the locked-door party. Though he had been sleeping for almost five hours, he still felt drained.
Sliding off the bed as carefully as he could so as not to wake Yoshi, Jah went into the bathroom and took a five-minute shower before he began the process of selecting an outfit to wear for the night. Jah had never been big on fashion, so it wasn’t like he had a very wide selection of things to choose from. Most of the stuff on his side of the closet consisted of hoodies and jeans, but Yoshi had picked him up a few pieces that were suitable for the occasion. Jah selected a pair of black jeans and an oversize black button-up shirt that he’d never gotten a chance to exchange. It was a good thing that he hadn’t, because nothing short of a hoodie would’ve concealed the thin bulletproof vest he would be wearing.
As he was slipping into his pants his cell phone started vibrating. Slipping back into the bathroom, he answered it. “Yo?”
“You about ready to roll?” True asked on the other end.
“I will be, in a hot minute.”
“That’s what’s up. We’re meeting Stacks and his crew on 125th and Broadway in the McDonald’s parking lot so we can roll through the spot mad thick.”
“True, you think it’s a good idea to have a mass meeting in the parking lot, with a nigga trying to kill you?” Jah asked. His strategy was to have True keep a low profile, but it was proving to be a near-impossible task.
“Man, its gonna be like twenty of us out there, so I doubt if a nigga is gonna be stupid enough to try something. Besides, I got the Terminator watching my back,” True joked.
“Youz a funny nigga,” Jah said in a flat tone.
“Nah, but on the real, I appreciate you holding me down like this, fam. Don B and them niggaz don’t really understand what I’m going through. They want me to run around town with two big-ass bodyguards, like I’m soft or some shit. That kind of thing can make a nigga look bad.”
“Don’t worry about it, True. Look, y’all niggaz just call me when you’re close and I’ll meet you downstairs.”
“A’ight, my nigga. One.” True ended the call.
Jah flipped his phone closed and eased it back into his pocket. When he came out of the bathroom, Yoshi was sitting up on the bed looking at him.
“Who was you on the phone with, Jah?” she asked suspiciously.
“That nigga, True. I took it in the bathroom so I wouldn’t wake you,” he told her, beginning the task of slipping into the bulletproof vest.
“Since when did you start wearing that?”
“Since I started running around with a bunch of knuckleheads who don’t know how to stay out of trouble.”
“Which club are you guys hitting tonight, so me and my girls can crash?” she said playfully.
“I don’t think y’all will be crashing this one. It ain’t exactly a club,” Jah said.
“Well, if y’all ain’t doing the club what’s with the button-up?”
Jah stared at her for a minute as if he didn’t know how to answer. Several decent lies raced through his mind, but in the end he decided to be honest. “Black Ice is having a locked-door tonight.”
All the humor suddenly drained from Yoshi’s eyes. She had been on the circuit for a good number of years, so she knew just what a locked-door was and the things that went on. Whereas, at a strip club there were certain rules and etiquette that were followed, a locked-door wasn’t the same. Within the walls of the roving orgies, anything went, and she knew this for a fact from having attended several of them in the past.
“I don’t know about this, Jah,” she said.
“What you mean, you don’t know? What is there to know? I’m supposed to be guarding True, so that’s what I’m gonna do,” he told her.
“Jah, I know what goes on at these kinds of things. There’s gonna be a bunch of nasty pussy bitches throwing their stinking asses in your face!” she said heatedly.
“Yoshi, you know a nigga ain’t moved by no flesh but yours. I’ll be too busy watching True to even look at another bitch.”
“Tell me anything.” Yoshi was laying on her stomach, looking away from Jah.
Jah stopped fumbling with the buckles of his gun holster and went to the bed. Gently, he ran his hand over Yoshi’s back. “Baby, you know me better than that. When I gave my heart to you, I meant it. Trust me when I say, if I hadn’t committed to doing this job, then I wouldn’t be going. Besides, you’re the one that told me that doing security for rappers was easy money.”
She turned to face him. “Yes, rappers being the key word. Most of the guys you’ve worked with are playing the role, but Don B and True are living it out. They’re gangsters, and anything could happen to you fucking with them.”
“So, I guess ya man Stacks is a boy scout?” Jah asked sarcastically.
“Jah, you and I both know that’s not the same thing. Stacks is a bastard, too, but he isn’t local. You’d be on him for two to three days tops before he was back on a plane to Texas. Any enemies you make with guarding True could be long-term.”
Jah sighed heavily. “Yoshi, how long I been in the streets? I can handle myself in any situation, boo. I’m the hardest nigga out. I can’t be killed!” he playfully boasted.
“Yeah, that shit is funny now, but how funny will it be when I get that phone call in the middle of the night?”
“Yoshi, that ain’t gonna be me,” he said seriously.
“Jah, nobody ever thinks it’s gonna happen to them until they’re on that gurney fighting for their lives,” she said emotionally. “I’ve seen this shit play out time and time again, where the good nigga catches the bullet and the piece of shit it was meant for skates without a scratch. I don’t think I could take it.”
Yoshi rolled over to face him. He leaned in so close that their foreheads were touching. “Do you love me?”
“Of course I do,” she said.
“Then that’s all I need to bring me home,” he said, and kissed her gently on the lips. “I’ll be fine, ma.” He headed to the door. Before exiting the bedroom he turned back to Yoshi. “I love you, baby.”
“I love you too,” she whispered to the closing bedroom door. The moment Jah left a cold chill swept through the bedroom. She knew that Jah was a street soldier and could handle himself, but a sense of dread filled her. She knew nothing positive could come from hanging with Don B and True, but Jah insisted on keeping his word. Sometimes she hated that he was like that, but it didn’t change anything. Yoshi clicked on the television and settled in to wait up for Jah to
come home.
“I’M TELLING YOU NOW, MARCUS, if yo ass go in there acting like you ain’t got no sense, it’s on and popping!” Billy warned him. Her arms were folded firmly against her chest, which she tended to do when she was heated.
“Billy, why you acting like that, ma?” he asked, slipping his diamond chain over his head. He knew damn well why she was acting like that, but he asked the question just to irritate her. Seeing her uptight reminded him of when he was courting her. Billy made him move heaven and earth for her affection, but at the end of the day it was well worth it.
“Don’t play with me, Marcus, you know damn well why I’m acting like this. I don’t want none of them stinking-ass hos all up on my piece!”
“Billy, I’m around pussy damn near every night of the week, and if I ain’t strayed yet, I ain’t gonna stray.” He pulled her close to him. She tried to push him away, but he held her tight. “Baby, I’d rather go blind than look at a woman other than you.” He kissed her.
“And you sure would, cause I’d cut your damn eyes out of your head.” She nicked his bottom lip. “And you better not be in there tipping them hos.”
“Billy, it ain’t even that type of party. I’m rolling with Shooter to check out some new girls for the club.”
“Oh, and that’s supposed to make me feel secure. That old-ass man is hornier than the damn kids I coach.”
“That Viagra is a muthafucka!” Marcus laughed. “But on the real, I’m gonna behave myself.” He kissed her once more and then broke their embrace. Shooter and Raheem were downstairs waiting for him, so he had to go.
“You better, nigga! I love you, Marcus.” She patted him playfully on the ass as he passed.
“I love you too, Willamina,” he snickered, and closed the door behind him.
“Asshole!”
Chapter 42
WITH THE DARKNESS SWEEPING OVER THE ROTTEN Apple like the shadow of death over Egypt, the children of the night began to stir. The normally quiet block of 128th Street, between Fifth and Lenox avenues, was abuzz with activity. Luxury cars slow-coasted down the block in a futile attempt to find parking, or to see who was at the set. Nobody wanted to miss out on Ice’s party.
