Fuck! I knew the night was going too perfectly. I wanted to say no, but I didn’t because, if the tables were turned, Jason would have done it for me without a question. Plus, he didn’t seem too worried about it, so I didn’t either. It’ll be quick and easy.
“Text me the address,” I said.
* * *
“If I don’t come out in fifteen minutes, Chauncey,” I said, slinging the backpack over my shoulder as I leaned into his window, “leave and don’t look back. Okay?”
He laughed. “What are you talking about, Buck?” He shook his index finger at me. “Are you trying to get out of dinner tonight? We can always do it another time.”
“No. There’s nothing I want more than some of Fatou’s food, but seriously, if I’m not out in fifteen minutes, leave. Okay?”
The light in his face went out. He bit his lower lip and shook his head. “I do not understand, Buck.”
I extended my hand through the window. “Promise me, Chauncey. Promise me that you’ll leave.”
He looked at my hand for a minute, as if he didn’t know what to do, then shook it. “I promise, Buck.”
The building, on Twenty-Third and Tenth, was like others in the area: tall as hell, made out of brick, and sitting in front of trees with low black fences that dogs love to piss on. I buzzed 818 and the door clicked open.
I found the elevator and entered the room number on some high-tech digital display. The doors opened directly into the apartment, like at my place. I stepped out into an empty hallway and saw the little table Jason mentioned, with a white envelope on top. I picked it up, counted the bills inside, then put the bag down.
So far, so good. Sweat poured down my brow. I quickly turned and pressed the elevator button, wondering if the guy was in the house or if he was somehow watching me from a hidden camera. A bell rang, the elevator doors opened, and as I stepped in, something heavy crashed into my head.
“Fuck,” I whispered.
Everything went black.
When I woke up, I was in what I guessed was the living room, tied to a chair with dried blood sticking to my head, hands, and clothes.
“Yo!” I shouted, struggling with the ropes on my wrists and ankles. “What the fuck!”
“Calm down,” a voice said from behind me.
“Who the fuck are you?” I tried to turn around. “What do you want?”
“That’s a good question,” the voice said. “What will you give me?”
“Money, you want money?”
The voice laughed and punched me in the back of my head. My wrists and ankles burned against the fibrous ropes. The voice forced a plastic bag over my head. As I coughed, the bag became tighter to the point where I was only sucking in plastic. No air. My mind went blank. I was certain that I was going to die.
By the time this had begun to sink in, the voice yanked the bag off, and I was left gasping like I’d been brought back to life. The voice just laughed, and laughed, and laughed.
“Please,” I said, my throat feeling like someone poured hot gravel down it. “Please stop.” I hated the desperation in my voice, how I was begging whomever, whatever, this was, but I had no choice. I didn’t even know where I was. There was just a nondescript hardwood floor beneath me and a white wall in front of me.
“Fine,” the voice said. “As you wish.” A white hand dangled a knife in front of me.
“FUCK!” I shouted, twisting in the chair, trying to break free.
“Relax,” the voice said, turning the knife in front of me. “Or I will drive this through your fucking eyeball faster than you can say Harriet Tubman.”
The voice brought the knife to my ankles, cutting the rope. Then my wrists. Even though I was now free, or at least thought I was, I stayed glued to the seat, afraid of what the voice would do next.
“Go ahead,” it said. “Stand up and face me.”
Trembling, I slowly rose, my eyes fixed on the wall in front of me, then quickly turned around.
“Hello, Buck,” Clyde said, grinning from ear to ear. “Welcome to my home.”
* * *
“You?” I said, wondering how the fuck Clyde had become Jason’s customer without him ever knowing, how any of this added up. Did Jason set me up?
“Me,” he replied, walking to his kitchen. “Drink?”
“No, thanks. What the fuck are you doing, man? You’re crossing a line, over what? This white-salespeople shit? C’mon, Clyde.”
He grabbed a bottle of white wine out of the fridge and poured himself a glass, slowly smelled it, brought it to his lips, sipped, and let out a sigh of satisfaction before sitting down at a dining table. “Sure you don’t want any? It’s expensive.”
I stayed where I was, deciding when to knock the shit out of him or worse. He had left the knife in the living room, so I could just grab it and force him to let me leave.
“Fine.” He shrugged. “Suit yourself. But if you want to talk about crossing lines, I think you and your friends crossed a line when you waterboarded me. But that’s just my opinion.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He poured himself another glass. “You don’t? C’mon, Buck. That dyke Rose and your drug-dealing friend Jason? That cute stunt where you tried to hack me. I gotta say, you all are creative, but not smart.”
Kujoe. It had to be him. How else would Clyde know all of these details?
“I don’t know what you promised Kujoe,” I said, walking toward him. “But it had to be good for him to turn his back on us. You fucking asshole.”
Clyde looked up, confused. “I don’t know a Kujoe, but if you’re wondering how you got here, I’ll let him tell you himself.”
“Him?”
Clyde turned toward the hallway. “You can come out now.”
I couldn’t believe my eyes. I stepped backward, tripped over a chair, and looked up from the floor. He stood in the kitchen, staring at me with fire in his eyes.
“Trey?”
“In the flesh,” he said.
“But you’re—”
“D-d-d-dead?” he said, laughing. “Looks like I’m pretty alive, Buck.”
He walked over and extended a hand to help me up, but when I grabbed it, he brought his other one around and slammed a cane into my face.
“What the fuck, Trey!”
“That must’ve felt good,” Clyde said, looking up from his wine.
Trey turned to Clyde. “You know what? It did. It felt so good.”
Trey. Clyde. They knew each other. And the truth of everything started to unfold. Kujoe wasn’t the snitch—it was Trey. The whole time. But how?
Trey stood over me, still laughing. “You seem confused, Buck, so I’ll help you out. You see, it was you who actually did this to yourself. When I first joined the Happy Campers, all you’d talk about was that—what did you call him?—‘pigment-deficient pussy, Clyde.’ Yeah. So I figured if you hated someone that much, he and I would get along. When we met, it was obvious we shared the same goal, so we hatched a plan to”—he stretched his hand toward me—“put you on your ass, so to speak.”
“But, Trey. You’re dead, man. We found the body. Pieces of your shoes.”
“Body brokers,” Clyde said, handing Trey a glass. “You’d be surprised how easy it is to buy cadavers, especially Black ones.”
Trey took a seat at Clyde’s table and crossed his legs. “That’s why I ran back in. I planted the body and the shoes. I ran out the back through the garden and even dropped that photo there, as a nice touch, long before the building collapsed.”
I still didn’t get it. “Why would you do this to me, Trey? After everything I’ve done, everything the Happy Campers have done for you?”
“Because you are everything that’s wrong with this world, Buck,” he said, and banged his cane on the floor. “The person who lives like they can do whatever they want without any consequences. Consider this a consequence of past sins committed.”
“Trey.” I got up and walked over to
him. “What are you talking about?”
He seemed unfazed. “What is my name?”
“It’s Trey.”
“No.” He shook his head. “My full name.”
“Treyborn Percival Evans. Why?” I placed a hand on his shoulder, but he flung it off. “It’s me, Trey. It’s Buck, man. What the fuck?”
“Does my name sound familiar to you? Any part of it?”
I closed my eyes, trying to think, but I couldn’t connect it to anything. “No, it doesn’t.”
He stood and faced me. “When I was younger, people used to call me Percy.” He paused. “After my grandfather.”
“And what does that have to—” I stopped, the blood in my veins turning to lead. I did know a Percy once. Mr. Percy Rawlings. Rosewood, of course. I recognized that cane.
Trey smiled. “Now you see, huh? You kicked my grandfather out of the home he had lived in for decades, you piece of shit. Do you know what happened to him when he left? Where he went?”
All I could do was shake my head.
“He went to an old people’s home. He and my mom didn’t speak anymore, but when a nurse called our house, I picked up and said I’d go to see him. Even though my mom never let him visit us, I remembered and loved him. He was the kindest man I knew. Not one!” He was shouting now. “Not one bad bone in that man’s body.
“But when I went to see him, all he could talk about was you. The kid he wronged by not letting you have a last word with your mom. He would say your name in his sleep and repeat it all day, tears covering his wrinkled face as he stared out the window. Within a few weeks of me getting there, he had a stroke. Nurses said he was under a lot of stress. That his body just couldn’t take it.
“So I went to where he used to live, to confront you, but when I saw what you all were doing, I figured I could make my revenge even sweeter—that I would hurt you and everyone you loved in the process.”
“And when he came to me,” Clyde interjected, “I didn’t hesitate. It was Trey’s idea for me to start WUSS, and he always helped me stay one step ahead of you . . . except when your friends went all Taken on me.”
“That was the only thing I missed,” Trey added. “But it didn’t matter. Jason was always running his mouth about his drug-dealing past. So, knowing he wouldn’t be able to pass up a quick buck, I convinced him to start dealing to Clyde without knowing it. He always just came here, dropped the bag off, took the envelope, and left without ever seeing Clyde.
“We were the ones who got people from WUSS to jump him and told him he had to deliver the cocaine today or that we were done,” Trey said, looking at me with a face full of satisfaction. “This was chess, Buck, not checkers. You never knew what game you were playing, but all roads still brought you here. And that’s what matters most.”
“That’s right,” Clyde said, rounding the table and getting so close that I could smell the fermented grapes on his breath. “You took Rhett away from me!” he shouted, spitting in my face. “The only brother I ever knew. You’re scum, which is why I named you Buck. Because I knew you’d never be worth more than that.”
I looked from one to the other, wondering what they were going to do to me, if there was some staircase I could run down, or maybe even a window I could jump out of and somehow survive the fall. I needed time to think. “What now?”
Clyde unclenched his jaw, sat back down, and poured himself another glass. “You just delivered a quarter pound of coke to me, Buck. What do you think?”
“No,” Trey said, opening up a cabinet, taking out other packages. “He delivered a few pounds of it, actually. And we have it all here.”
“You both are insane. I never did that.”
“No?” Clyde said. “We have you walking into my apartment, placing the bag on the ground, and taking the money. When we told my dad’s DEA buddy that we knew about a big drug dealer parading around as some civil rights activist, he jumped at the chance.”
Clyde took out his phone and brought it to his ear. “You can come up.”
I turned to the elevator, saw the numbers slowly rising, and ran to the window. I stuck my head out and saw tiny people pausing on the sidewalk as more cop cars arrived, sirens blaring. It was a long way down—there was no way I’d make it. And even if I did, they’d be there to stop me. I looked back at the elevator—the numbers kept climbing.
“Trey,” I said, running over to him. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry about Mr. Rawlings, man. About everything.”
“I’m sure you are,” he said, hard eyes boring into me. “I would be too if I were about to go to jail for a very, very long time.”
“Clyde,” I said, rounding the table.
“No, Buck,” he laughed. “It’s too late for—”
I blasted my fist through his face, breaking his jaw, nose, and some other smaller bones in that blond head with those bluer than blue eyes.
Just then, when the elevator rang and the doors opened, I could think of only one thing. A question.
Was it all worth it?
Reader: You tell me.
Epilogue
On May 8, 1973, New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller signed what are known as the Rockefeller Drug Laws. If you were caught selling two ounces or more of narcotics or weed, or even just possessing four ounces of either, you were going to prison for a minimum of fifteen years and a maximum of twenty-five years to life. I know, fifteen years of your life gone for just two ounces of weed. The prison population in New York tripled, and ninety percent of those incarcerated under the drug laws were Black and Latino males.
In 2004 Governor George Pataki signed into law the Drug Law Reform Act, which reduced the minimum sentence from fifteen years to eight. So now a Black or Latino male would spend only eight years of his life in prison for selling or possessing drugs that had seemed to them like the only way out of their circumstances.
In 2009 yet another governor, David Paterson, removed the minimum sentences and left prison time for drug possession and sale up to judges’ discretion.
So how do I fit into all of this? Thanks to the video Clyde had of me dropping the backpack off and taking the money—and his framing me for the two pounds that Jason had delivered—I was charged with an A-I felony.
My lawyer threw everything she had at them, including entrapment and a whole host of other shit, but nothing stuck. And since I refused to snitch on Jason, a jury found me guilty. Despite being a first-time offender, I was sentenced to a healthy eight years without bail. I suppose it didn’t hurt that the judge and prosecutor played squash with Clyde’s pops on weekends. Or that I’m a young Black male who successfully bucked the system that was created to keep them in power and minorities like me subservient. But that’s just a hunch.
The rest of the Talented Fifth, plus Jason and Soraya, held marches. People from all over the world made posters saying FREE BUCK. Others lobbied Congress. But I eventually told them to stop. The Happy Campers were bigger than I was, and they would be able to thrive without my presence, proving I’d done something right.
I’ve been in here for two years now, and my lawyer continues to fight for me. But to tell you the truth, it’s not so bad. After the whirlwind I experienced, the past two years have given me time to think, analyze, and finally internalize everything that happened: Ma’s death, Mr. Rawlings’s, Sumwun, Rhett, Barry, the Happy Campers, and all of the other events that feel like a dream that happened far too quickly to someone that young.
Plus, I receive about a hundred letters every week from new Happy Campers and other admirers around the world, so I have my hands full responding to them, calling in to different talk shows, and taking about a dozen visits a week from friends and strangers. Just last month Frodo showed up with Marissa and told me they’re having a baby. Life is weird as fuck. I would have never guessed Frodo knew what a vagina looked like. Even Brian has a girlfriend—the French woman he picked up at the bar during his sales training.
As for the others, Jason cleared his mom’s debt and still live
s with her in Bed-Stuy, although in a much nicer and larger apartment that he owns. Rhett’s still going strong at Sumwun, Barry continues to move up the Forbes list, Bonnie Sauren came out with a New York Times bestseller, White Offense: Why Being White Is Quite All Right, and the rest of the Talented Fifth have their hands full with thousands of Happy Campers worldwide. Trey, unfortunately, has never reached out to me and I don’t know what he’s up to now. I hope that it’s something good.
At the beginning of this book, I told you that my aim was to teach you how to sell in order to fix the game, to realize that life comes down to a handful of key negotiations, and that you’re either selling someone on “amen” or they’re selling you on “hell no.” If I taught you something, skills that you can take into your own life to get ahead, I hope you’ll make good on your end of the deal and share this book with someone who needs it. Don’t give them your copy; I want you to wear it out, reread your favorite passages, and understand the tactics that worked and the choices I made that didn’t. Buy your friend a new copy, open up the first page, and write the thing that you wish most for them. For me, what I want most for you is to be free.
As for my life, I am happy. I am locked up in a cage but have never been freer. I also apologize if I tricked you; it’s just that you probably wouldn’t have wanted to sit through hundreds of pages written by someone locked up who was trying to teach you how to be free.
But I’ll end this on a happy note, and I do hope that we’ll see each other again. The highlight of every week I’ve spent in here for these two years is Sundays. A correctional officer—who, I should add, has a niece who’s a Happy Camper—says I have a visitor. He unlocks my cell, we shake hands, and he leads me to the visitor center. When I sit down, the first thing I notice is the smell: cinnamon and cocoa butter.
We never say anything for the first minute or two. We just stare, taking in each other’s faces across a table. Then, my visitor turns her hand into a phone—thumb up, pinkie down, index, middle, and ring fingers curled toward her palm—and raises it to her ear. It’s my signal to do the same.
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