Trust No Man 3

by Cash

  “Shawdy, if you ain’t feeling this lick we can cancel it.”

  “No, bae, it’s not that. I just worry that one of these times things aren’t going to go in our favor.”

  “Hush, before you fuck around and speak that shit into existence.”

  Kamora hushed, but I was still uptight about the lick right up until it went down a few weeks later.

  The evening came when it was showtime. We were all prepared—wasn’t no turning back. I parked outside the Mexican restaurant with Criminal in the passenger seat. The two gunners that Criminal brought along were inside an electronics store next to the restaurant. Kamora and another GF dude were inside the restaurant waiting patiently for the evening to unfold.

  As soon as Solo and them walked out of the restaurant and reached their trucks, we were on them like a trained hit squad. My yoppa spoke first. I chopped Solo down in an instant. Beside me, Criminal’s four-fifth joined in and I saw the baldheaded Mexican double over and fall to his knees. Criminal ran up close to him and smashed him.

  The smaller Mexican pulled out a banger and fired off a lone shot at the two GF gunners before they blasted him over the hood of a Camry parked next to the Suburban. Solo’s man with the gray eyes ducked low and took off running in the opposite direction. I blasted after him, but the nigga got away.

  By now, Kamora and the other designated driver were out of the restaurant rambling through both Mexican’s pockets in search of the truck keys. “I got them!” announced Kamora.

  I looked on the ground and saw a second ring of keys. Solo’s man had dropped them. I pointed them out to the GF dude and he snatched them up.

  “Let’s get up out of here!” shouted Criminal.

  “Hold up,” I said. I aimed the yoppa at the large glass window of the restaurant and let loose. Nosy muthafuckas caught a face full of lead.

  I tossed the AK-47 into the backseat and then dragged Solo’s body inside.

  “Yo, what you doing, bruh?” asked Criminal. I could not see his face because like me, he wore a ski mask, but his tone told me that he was not feeling that move.

  “I got this,” I said.

  We drove off and met up with the others at the designated spot. After we found what we were searching for inside the two Suburbans, we set them both ablaze and quickly mashed out.

  At a house in Rockdale owned by the sister of one of the GF gunners, we split up the drugs and money. Kamora and I got half and Criminal got the other half. I left it to him to break bread with his Good Fellas homies.

  On the way home, Kamora asked, “Bae, why are we riding around with a dead body in the trunk?”

  “I’ma take care of that,” I promised with no further explanation.

  At home we showered together and then exalted over our score. Real talk, neither of us was in love with the money as much as we were in love with the rush that we got from deading a nigga. We lay in bed sharing a blunt and watching television. I felt Kamora’s hand encircle my dick and stroke it up and down.

  “Can I get some of my dick tonight?” she asked.

  “If you gotta ask, it ain’t yours.”

  “Oh, it’s mine. That’s for sure.” She slid down under the covers and put her lips around the head of my manhood.

  “You like the way I suck your dick?”

  “Mmm hmm.”

  “What about when I spit on it and slurp it up?” Puwt. She did exactly what she was talking about.

  “Suck this dick, baby girl. Show me you got a fool head game.”

  That’s all the encouragement Kamora needed. She put her head game down something serious. I held her by the head and tried to hold out, but she kept saying, “Give me that hot cum, nigga” in between slurps. The next thing I knew I was exploding in her mouth.

  “Mmm, you taste good, bae. Now I’ma need you to dick me down.”

  I was definitely game for that. I fucked Kamora into a deep sleep. When I awoke in the morning, she was still sleeping peacefully.

  I left a text on her phone telling her that I would be back later.

  CHAPTER 15

  I drove down to the hood to holla at Tommy Gun, a hustla whom I had known since pre-k. TG was getting to the dough real well because he was fucking with a made nigga who had stupid work on deck. I pulled up on TG in front of his baby’s mama house on Constitution Street. He was waxing his silver F-150. Rick Ross’s “Push It” was booming from the truck. TG eyed me, a bit leery as I hopped out my ride and walked up to him. He knew that I was pressing many of the d-boys. “Fam’, I come in peace,” I announced. We touched fists.

  “Nigga, we go back like noodles off the same fork. I would never press you,” I spoke sincerely.

  I could see him staring at the diamond encrusted urn that hung from my chain. “Put it on Youngblood,” he said, testing me.

  “I put it on my pop,” I vowed.

  The tenseness in his face automatically dissolved; he knew that I would not break a vow that I sealed with my father’s name.

  “Homie, you got the city shook. Po-po ain’t even gotta close a nigga’s trap down. Muthafuckas scared to open up ‘cause they fear Trouble. But fam’, you should put the toolie down and get money with me,” he proposed.

  “Nawl, I ain’t no d-boy.”

  “I hear you. So what you wanted to holla at me about?”

  “I got a proposition for you.”

  “Let me hear it.”

  “Suppose I said that I had forty-six bricks and you can get ‘em for fifteen apiece?” I tossed at him.

  I saw him doing the math in his head.

  “Well, problem number one is I don’t have that kind of stacks on deck. Problem number two is that the agreement I have with my connect is that I won’t get work from anybody but him.”

  “Who is your connect? Solo?” He didn’t have to answer; I knew what I knew.

  “Do you have any work at the moment?” I asked.

  “Nawl. My people must be out of town picking up a new shipment because I haven’t heard from him in a few days.”

  “Well, it won’t hurt you to take a look at what I got. Just take a peek. You don’t have to commit to anything.”

  TG followed me to my car. I walked around to the trunk and opened it. He stood next to me and peered inside at the bundle under the blanket. “Check it out,” I said and uncovered the bundle. Solo’s lifeless eyes stared up at us. I saw the color drain from my homie’s face.

  “You gonna fuck with me?” I smirked and shut the trunk.

  “I guess I don’t have a choice, do I?”

  “Oh, you do. I’m not coming to you on no gorilla shit. Just give me a hunnid’ fiddy stacks up front and you can pay the rest after you slang the work.”

  He nodded his agreement and we sealed it with a fist pound.

  “TG, let what you saw in my trunk be a warning to you of what will happen if you tell anyone about it,” I threatened.

  “Homie, I’m like Stevie. I ain’t seen shit.”

  I didn’t trust Tommy Gun not to ever open his mouth about what he’d seen. I believed that if he ever got bopped up on a serious drug charge he might try to bargain for his freedom with what I had shown him. Therefore, I buried Solo’s body somewhere it was unlikely to ever be found. Then I torched my ride to get rid of all forensic evidence.

  I still had ten more bricks on deck. We had struck gold when we hit Solo. I sold three of the ten blocks I had left to one of Inez’s relatives and told him to give the money to her. “That’s for being a true rider for my pop when he was alive, and for doing what you do for all of his seeds,” I told her.

  Another three bricks were sold to someone Kamora knew. I fronted the remaining four to Scarface and Manky, two partners from around my way. Then I took Kamora on a weekend cruise to Jamaica.

  Unwinding in Jamaica from our deadly escapades was exactly what Kamora needed because shawdy had been very tense lately. We spent a full week lying on the beach smoking ganja and listening to reggae.

  We hit var
ious nightclubs and, of course, we dined at different restaurants, enjoying the spicy Jamaican dishes. Hell, we even attended a soccer match.

  We both were two shades darker by the time our vacation ended.

  When I returned I collected taxes along with some of the money TG owed me. He was pushing work well and only had twenty bricks left. Manky and Scarface were another story. All of a sudden they wouldn’t even answer their cell phones. This went on for a week. “I can’t believe these niggas tryna test me,” I told my shawdy.

  “Is it time to clack up?” she asked with a slight smile and raised brows.

  “Not yet, I’ma see how it plays out.” I was trying to give them the benefit of the doubt.

  An hour later, I whipped over to Big Ma’s house. I was glad to see that Shan wasn’t over there. I hugged and kissed Big Ma, and then we sat and talked for hours. She even told me about her past drug addiction, being honest about the foul things she had done to get more crack.

  “Poochie,” I addressed her, teasingly. “I bet you was something else back in the day.” I knew about her indiscretions with my pop, but I never judged her.

  “Hmph! But the good Lord brought me through. He’ll do the same for your mother, you’ll see.”

  “The good Lord can’t bring my pop back.”

  “No, he can’t. You just have to trust that He makes no mistakes. I’ve always believed that the Lord took your father so that you could learn how not to live,” she lightly preached.

  A lot of good that did, I thought.

  Big Ma must have read my mind. “God does everything on His own time and He’s always on time, no matter what it seems. You’ll fall on your knees and turn your life over to him one day,” she prophesied.

  “Well, he better hurry ‘cause I’ma die young,” I said.

  “Boy, hush your mouth. Only God can say how long you’ll live,” she scoffed.

  “Seriously, Big Ma. My pop was just twenty-nine years old when they killed him. I’ll never see that age. But while I’m here, I’m gonna take care of and protect those I love.”

  I pulled out thirty stacks and placed them on the cocktail table in front of us. “That’s for a down payment on a new house. I want you to move to the suburbs because you stay too close to where I do dirt. I’m afraid that someone might hurt you to get back at me.”

  “God is my shield and my sword.”

  “Please, Big Ma, do it for me,” I begged.

  “Oh no!” She stood firm. “I can’t accept that. If I did, it would be condoning whatever you did to get it. The Bible teaches that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

  I wanted to argue, “Crackers wrote the Bible,” but I held my tongue.

  “Lil T, the love of money is the root of all evil. Don’t you see what the pursuit of it makes you do? But only God can judge; all I can do is love you and try to share His word with you.”

  I stood up. I had heard enough.

  “I feel you, Big Ma,” I said.

  “Take the devil’s money with you on your way out.”

  I just smiled and shook my head.

  CHAPTER 16

  The next day I was at the crib telling Kamora how Big Ma responded when I tried to give her the down payment on a new house. “At least she’s not a hypocrite,” said shawdy.

  My cell phone lit up on the dresser in the middle of the conversation. “Excuse me, shawdy, let me catch this call,” I told her.

  “It’s okay, bae.”

  “’Sup, nigga?” I grumbled at the caller.

  “I got that check for you,” replied Manky.

  “Meet me at that liquor store on Boulevard, the one that has a mural of my pop painted on the side of the building.”

  “A’ight, give me an hour. And yo, don’t kill me, man.”

  “I ain’t gonna do you dirty, nigga. Just have my ducats. Where’s Scarface?”

  “I’ma tell you ‘bout that,” he said.

  I rolled dolo because Kamora had gone to dinner with Sharena. She believed that she was close to getting ol’ girl to lead us to Byron.

  I pulled up to the liquor store and honked my horn. The owner came out and chopped it up with me for a second or two and then went back inside. Manky arrived ten minutes late. I waved the nigga over to where I stood, leaned on the hood of my car, watching everything that moved. “Where’s my dough, nigga?” My tone was cyanide, and my hand was inside my Polo jacket, gripping my banger.

  “Be easy, man. Give me a chance to pay you and explain.” He held his arms up in front of his face as though his arms could stop a bullet. “I got that in a shoe bag under my seat.”

  I followed him over to his car, watching him carefully when he reached under the seat. Had he pulled out anything other than a bag I was gonna spill his thoughts on the ground.

  I accepted the bag of money and we walked back over to where I was parked. Manky broke it down to me. “Trouble, I was gonna pay you your money off the rip because we got off all four bricks in a day and a half. But Scarface was on some sideways shit. He said ‘fuck you, we keepin’ the money.’ I tried to tell his stupid ass that you wasn’t the one to try. But after he got those bands in his pocket he started thinkin’ he was gonna be the next Big Meech.”

  I nodded.

  “I couldn’t really say shit because you hit him with the work. Shid, he chumped me off with one brick and kept the three for himself. Still, I hustled my half of what was owed for the four. I didn’t want you to come gunning for my ass.”

  “Why wouldn’t you answer my calls?”

  “Man, I didn’t want to have no excuses. So I turned my phone off until I had what I owed you.”

  I pulled my jacket closed while I considered his explanation. Winter was coming in fast and the wind was biting. My dreads blew about my head like twigs from a tree.

  “Get in the car,” I said.

  Manky hesitated. He must have feared that I would take him on one of those rides that niggas never returned from.

  “I’m not gonna slump you, man. I’m just tryna get out of the cold,” I assured him.

  We both got into my car and talked for a while. After I made myself clear, I let him bounce.

  On the way home I received a call from Tamia. Inez was in the hospital.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Bianca’s daddy jumped on her,” answered my sister.

  On the way to the hospital I couldn’t help but count the many ways my life mirrored my pops’. A nigga had beat Toi down and my pops went snap! over his sister. Inez wasn’t my sibling, but she was a surrogate mother to me. It was about to be hell to tell the preacher, as we say in the Dirty.

  I sat in the emergency room for hours until Inez was released. My blood boiled as soon as I saw her. The whole left side of her face was swollen and her left eye was black.

  “That nigga gonna pay for this. If I don’t put something on that ass, my pop was a bitch, and you know that’s not true,” I remarked while pushing her to the car in a wheelchair.

  While driving Inez home I asked why Fat Stan had jumped on her.

  “Because he’s a hater,” Inez replied. “He said that I was a fool for still being in love with a dead man. He called Youngblood a coward—said that he had given up on his appeals because he couldn’t do the bid. So I spat in that fat muthafucka’s face! I’m not going to let no nigga talk about my boo, because if he was here that bitch ass nigga wouldn’t have said it to his face.”

  “He sure wouldna’ called my pop a coward to his face, or he would’ve got the whole top of his head pushed back. My father coulda did the bid, but he showed those crackers that he wasn’t afraid of the needle either. Like he said, ‘Either let me fly or give me death!’ And that’s some real nigga shit. Something Fat Stan’s lame ass can’t understand.” I defended my pop, though I was preaching to the choir. Inez knew better than anyone that my pop feared nothing.

  “Anyway,” I said with my lip curl
ed, “where does that bitch ass nigga rest at? It’s easy for his fat ass to knock a woman around, but I’ma see if he’s so muthafuckin’ hard when the odds aren’t in his favor.”

  “He stays in one of those new lofts on Memorial Drive. You’ll see his black Tahoe parked out there or his black Impala,” she said.

  “A’ight. Let me stop at CVS and get your prescription. Then I’ma drop you off at home so you can get some rest. Don’t worry about that nigga. I’ma teach his ass about putting his hands on you. Nigga must don’t know—you’re more of a mother to me than the one that birthed me.”

  It was no more than a thirty-minute wait for Inez’s prescription to be filled. I paid for the pain pills and then drove her home and helped her in the house. “Take care of your mama,” I told Tamia.

  I said nothing at all to Bianca. I didn’t even look at her because in just a short while her father was gonna look way worse than Inez did.

  “Have Tamia call me if you need anything,” I said to Inez. I gave her a hug and then bounced.

  Back in the car, I hit up my nigga Criminal. “’Sup, bruh-bruh,” he answered.

  “What you up to, pimp?”

  “Just blowing some Kush with some of my fam’. I been on a 24/7 grind ever since we did that, so now I’m just unwinding. ‘Sup? You sound like you got some problems.”

  “In a way I do, but it’s not business. It’s personal.” I told him the deal.

  “Shid, nigga, I fuck with you the long way, so let’s go see this fat ass nigga. I’ma bring four of my homies with me, a’ight?” offered Criminal with no hesitation. I appreciated the love and it earned him more points with me.

  “That’s what’s up, bruh. Y’all meet me at that carwash on Moreland where Tay got killed.” They needed no further direction; they knew the spot well. Tay was a young nigga who was ranked the number two high school point guard in the nation. Some fool had robbed and killed him over some sneakers last year. The whole city had been torn up over Tay’s murder because he wasn’t a street dude.

  “We’re on our way,” said Criminal.

  It was dark outside the loft except for the lights that illuminated the parking lot. Fat Stan’s Impala was parked, but the Tahoe was not there. We waited patiently for almost three hours before we saw the Tahoe pull up. Criminal was ready to pounce.