The Fix

by K'wan

  Chucky hadn’t come up there to get high or get his dick sucked, but since both were confidently at his disposal he figured, why not? He accepted the blunt and took a long drag, letting the numbness invade his lungs and spread through his body. He felt an icy chill run through his limbs and settle in his dick, making it feel like it was getting harder than it already was. Chucky had been a closet cocaine addict for quite some time. He started out snorting a few lines here and there when in the company of females who did coke, the graduating to getting high by himself. The more coke he did, the more he liked it. Soon it was a regular thing. Sometimes he would even ride around in his car, smoking Woos in plain sight. Unless you were in the car with him or close enough to smell it, you’d have assumed it was nothing more than a regular blunt. Chucky had to be careful with his addiction, because Ramses frowned on his people doing harder drugs than weed or alcohol and the punishment was swift and cruel.

  Yvette kept sucking Chucky’s dick, while he smoked the Woo down to a roach. Yvette’s mouth felt good on him, so good that he grabbed her by the back of her head and fucked her in her throat until she gagged. Instead of being upset with him for trying to choke her, she seemed to get more turned on.

  “You’re trying to kill a bitch with this big black snake, ain’t you?” Yvette asked, while stroking him. The Woo had Chucky’s jaw so tight that he couldn’t even open his mouth to reply, but the way his eyes kept rolling back in his head said he was enjoying himself. “I want you to get just as deep in this pussy as you were in my throat.” She got off her knees and straddled his lap. Yvette’s pussy was soaking wet. “You feel that, baby?” she whispered in his ear, sliding up and down on his dick slowly. She grabbed him by the back of the neck and switched gears, putting all her weight down so that he was touching her insides, and began swirling her hips. Chucky’s face twisted, letting Yvette know he was reaching his climax. Without missing a beat, she hopped off his dick and got back on her knees. “Let me get it, baby. Let mama have that,” she demanded, stroking him while rubbing her tongue around the head of his penis. Chucky exploded, painting Yvette’s lips and face with his semen.

  Chucky sat there, dick still leaking, and breathing heavily. He looked for the blunt, but there was nothing left so he picked up the mirror and finished snorting the cocaine off it. When that was gone he ran his fingers over the mirror before licking the residue from them. When he heard something buzzing, he almost jumped out of skin. Cocaine always made him extremely paranoid. It took a few seconds before he realized the buzzing sound was coming from his pants, which were around his ankles. He fished the phone from his pocket and looked at the caller ID screen. He didn’t recognize number and started not to answer it, but he thought that it might’ve been Benny. “Hello,” he hastily answered. To his dismay, it wasn’t Benny on the other end, but he welcomed the call just the same. He’d known it was coming, but not this soon. “This was an unexpected call. How ya doing?”

  “I’ve been better. I hope I’m not interrupting anything?” Persia asked on the other end of the line.

  Chucky looked down at Yvette, still kneeling, face dripping with cum and staring at him like a lost puppy. “Nah, you weren’t interrupting anything at all.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Outside, all was quiet . . . much quieter than Li’l Monk had expected for his first night as a part of Pharaoh’s crew. The past few hours had crawled by without too much going on, which was probably a good thing, since he’d have to handle it if anything did pop off. He and Omega passed the time, sitting on the stoop, talking shit and getting to know each other. He learned that Omega was from Brooklyn, and had been on his own since he was fourteen. He never knew his father and his mother died of an overdose. He had been living from pillar to post over the last couple of years, hustling in the Lafayette Gardens Housing Projects until he was recruited by Benny into Pharaoh’s organization.

  “So, it was Benny who brought you in and not Chucky?” Li’l Monk asked after hearing his tale.

  “Chucky is my dog, make no mistake about it, but it was Benny who taught me the ins and outs of the game,” Omega confessed.

  “So you must be just as worried about him as everybody else.”

  “Yeah, I’m worried about my big homie, but I can’t lose sleep over it. One thing Benny taught me about this game is that whenever you leave the house there’s only a fifty percent chance that you’ll make it back. Nothing is promised when you’re doing dirt. I hope they find him alive and in good health, but they don’t I’m next in line for this strip, and I’ll make sure I ball every night in his memory,” Omega told him.

  Li’l Monk wasn’t sure what to make of the Brooklyn native at first, but the more they talked the more he grew to like him. He was a little surprised how candidly Omega was speaking, but he understood why he was revealing so much so soon. If they were going to be working together, he was laying all his cards on the table early so that there was no misunderstanding between him and Li’l Monk as to what kind of person he was and how he moved. Li’l Monk respected his blunt honesty, and decided that he and Omega would get along.

  The lobby door to the building that they were sitting in front of swung open and Li’l Monk was immediately on his feet, gun drawn.

  “Hold on, youngster. It’s just me!” Neighborhood threw his hands in the air.

  “Man, what are you doing skulking around in the middle of the night?” Li’l Monk asked, tucking his gun back in his pants.

  “Nigga, I’m a crackhead. That’s what we do.” Neighborhood flashed his rotten smile. “They got you two running the block all by your lonesome? Where’re Benny and Chucky?”

  “Chucky is around and there’s still no sign of Benny. I’m sure he’ll pop up though,” Omega said hopefully.

  Neighborhood shook his head. “After all this time and still not a word. I doubt it. This shit is starting to smell funny.”

  “Watch how you talk about my friend, old man,” Omega warned.

  “I ain’t talking about him. I’m just giving you a history lesson. In my years of hustling, anytime a dude who is clocking the kind of bank that Benny was disappears without an explanation, they were either dead or the police had them tucked away somewhere, bleeding information out of them.”

  “Then Benny must be dead, because he’d never rat!” Omega said heatedly.

  “That’s the same thing they said about Nicky Barnes.” Neighborhood cackled.

  That was the final insult. Omega lashed out and landed two punches to Neighborhood’s chin, dropping him onto the stoop. Omega swooped in to stop the helpless addict, but Li’l Monk grabbed him.

  “Chill out, man,” Li’l Monk told Omega.

  “Fuck that, this fiend is out of pocket.” Omega struggled, but Li’l Monk was bigger and stronger than he was.

  “Shut up that noise down there before I call the police!” a woman shouted from a window above them.

  “Fuck you, bitch!” Omega shouted back.

  “Omega, you’re making the block hot and if the police come through here, Ramses is gonna kill both of us. Let’s take a walk.” Li’l Monk pulled him away from the stoop and down the street.

  “I don’t like that nigga,” Omega said as they were walking.

  “Neighborhood is harmless, but sometimes he just doesn’t know what to say out of his mouth,” Li’l Monk told him.

  “Then maybe I should teach him.” Omega started to turn back, but Li’l Monk wouldn’t let him.

  “Leave that shit alone and let’s check on Burger and them. They should be finished with the packages you gave them by now,” Li’l Monk said. He looked at the corner where Burger was supposed to be, but saw no sign of him. “Where the fuck is he?”

  “Knowing that fat fuck, he’s probably off getting something to eat. Burger is the only cat I ever met who seems like he’s hungry twenty-four-seven.”

  “Still, wasn’t smart of him to leave his corner unattended like that. What if Chucky had come back out and peeped it? It would’ve
looked bad on us.” Li’l Monk couldn’t help but to rub salt in because he didn’t like Burger.

  “You’re right. Let’s go find this nigga before I end up having to smack the shit out of him.”

  Omega and Li’l Monk walked down the Avenue, toward the chicken shack, where they figured Burger would be. They were passing a building, when something in the lobby caught Li’l Monk’s attention. He peered through the glass and saw three men in the dark nook under the stairs. One man faced the wall, and the other two stood behind them, with their backs to the door. It only took Li’l Monk’s brain a second to register what he was seeing. Without saying a word, he drew his gun and pressed his back to the side of the building.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Omega asked suspiciously.

  Li’l Monk jerked his head toward the lobby door, motioning for Omega to take a peek.

  “Oh, shit, they’re trying to rob Burger.” Omega caught on. He immediately slipped into combat mode, drawing a .380 Li’l Monk didn’t even know he was carrying. “Not on my watch.”

  “I got a plan,” Li’l Monk whispered. “Watch the door,” he told him before disappearing into the building next door.

  Li’l Monk bounded up the stairs to the roof, and it was there that he crossed onto the next building where Burger was being robbed. He kept his gun at his side, out of sight in case he ran into a tenant, but still ready. It’d have been a lie if Li’l Monk had said that he wasn’t nervous. His palms were sweating so bad that he prayed that he wouldn’t drop the heavy pistol. When he got to the second-floor landing, he stopped and peered over the edge so that he could see down into the lobby. Burger had his hands on the wall, while a dude wearing a stocking cap over his face was patting him down. Another man, wearing dark sunglasses, stood a few feet away, brandishing a gun and looking around nervously.

  “Man, I gave you what I had. I ain’t hardly sold nothing tonight,” he heard Burger whine.

  The dude who had been patting Burger down slapped him in the back of the head. “Stop playing with me, fat boy, and set it out before we air you out.”

  “Man, hurry up and grab whatever this nigga got, before somebody comes through here. We’ve already been in the building for too long,” the one holding the gun said.

  Neither of them saw Li’l Monk. He had the drop, but was hesitant. He had fired guns before, but never at a person. Li’l Monk was fearless and would go at it with anyone, but he wasn’t sure if he had it in him to kill a man.

  “Dear Lord,” someone said from behind Li’l Monk. He was so focused on the robbers and his moral dilemma that he didn’t see the woman come out of her apartment. She had blown Li’l Monk’s cover and all eyes were now on him.

  The sounds of gunfire were deafening in the cramped lobby. The dude who had been holding the gun started firing blindly. Li’l Monk tackled the woman to the ground, just as a bullet struck her apartment door. The woman was screaming hysterically and people were coming to their doors to see what was going on.

  Li’l Monk felt his stomach lurch, but he had to hold it together for the sake of his own survival. He was not going to die in a tenement hallway. Moving off fear and adrenaline, Li’l Monk scrambled to his feet, and returned fire down the stairs. He didn’t hit anyone, but it backed the robbers off.

  Burger tried to make a break for it during the chaos, but his sudden movement startled the man with the gun. A slug hit Burger high in the chest and back-flipped him into the mailboxes along the wall.

  Seeing Burger’s body laid out at an awkward angle reinforced the seriousness of the situation to Li’l Monk. He steadied the gun in both hands and fired high. The top of the gunman’s head burst, splattering onto his partner. The man with the stocking cap over his face suddenly decided that the risks were no longer worth the rewards for the caper they had set out on, and bolted for the lobby exit.

  Li’l Monk’s legs felt like noodles when he descended the last few stairs to the lobby. Just beyond the last step lay his handiwork. He thought he would be repulsed by the sight of a man with a gaping hole in his skull, but he wasn’t. He was simply numb. His eyes went to Burger, who was lying on the dirty lobby floor, lifeless eyes staring off into space. He didn’t like Burger, but he didn’t wish death on him. Seeing a boy who was his age, and caught up in the same struggle that he was, dead before his prime filled Li’l Monk with anger. With a firm grip on his gun, he turned toward the fleeing man.

  The man with the stocking cap had almost made it to the lobby exit, when the door swung open and Omega stepped in. His dreads hung loose around his face, and his green eyes cold and unmoving. With a sneer on his lips, he raised the .380 and pointed it at the man wearing the stocking cap. “When you get to hell, tell them Omega sent you.” He fired twice into the man’s face.

  When Li’l Monk approached Omega, he was watching him intently, waiting for a reaction. Li’l Monk looked from the corpse at Omega’s feet to the one he’d left at the other end of the hallway. When he met Omega’s gaze an unspoken understanding passed between them. They hadn’t known each other long, but the acts committed in that hallway would be the tie that bound them. They would burn together or prosper together.

  “They killed Burger,” Li’l Monk finally managed to say.

  Omega’s just nodded. “These are probably the same dudes who robbed us before.” He knelt beside the corpse of the man wearing the stocking cap, and uncovered his face. When Omega saw who it was, it hit him like a brick. “Damn,” he sighed.

  “You knew him?” Li’l Monk asked.

  “Yeah, I knew him.” Omega stood. “Let’s get outta here before the police come.”

  Li’l Monk made no arguments about that. “Shouldn’t we tell Chucky what happened?”

  “We will, but Ramses is gonna wanna hear this first.”

  PART 3

  FRIEND OR FOE

  CHAPTER 13

  Chucky was awakened by the sounds of banging on the front door. At first he was disoriented and couldn’t remember where he was, but when he saw Yvette passed out on the couch across from him, everything came back.

  During his freak session with Yvette, Persia had called. Had he been in his right frame of mind instead of coked up, he would’ve ignored the call, but the drugs put the devil in him. He had plans for Persia, so he might as well start laying the ground work early. From the first time he’d seen her on the block he’d been thinking about pushing up on her, but when he found out who her parents were it changed his whole game plan. Her father had been in prison for years, but his name still rang in the streets and in Chucky’s ears.

  The Persia he spoke on the phone with was different than the Persia he’d met on the block. She still had a slick mouth, but he also found that she was smart and articulate. Chucky listened, without interrupting, as Persia rattled off about her life and her struggles. He found it hard to believe that her life could be as dismal as she made it sound, considering that she didn’t live in the hood and came from a two-parent home, but she made it sound so tragic that it nearly tugged at the strings of his cold heart.

  After speaking for almost three hours, Chucky’s phone beeped letting him know the battery was going dead. He could’ve plugged it into the wall charger and continued the conversation, but he’d heard all that he needed to at the moment. Now it was time to process the information. Persia was the total package: brains, beauty, and pedigree. The best part about it was that she was still young enough for Chucky to shape her into whomever he wanted her to be, which was what he intended to do. By the time Chucky was done with her, she would either love him or hate him. Either/or, didn’t matter, as long as he got what he wanted.

  The banging on the door started again, snapping Chucky out of his daze. He got up from the chair and fixed his pants and grabbed his gun, before going to the door. It was the middle of the night, and those were the hours dudes got caught slipping. “Hold the fuck on,” he shouted, as whoever was on the other side continued their pounding. He carefully looked through the peephole
, identifying whether it was friend or foe, before undoing the locks and opening the door.

  “Do you know how long I’ve been trying to reach you?” Ramses asked when Chucky finally opened the door.

  “I was sleeping and my phone battery was dead,” Chucky told him.

  “That’s inexcusable. You’re supposed to be accessible at all times in case someone needs to reach you. That’s what being in charge means, or have you forgotten you were supposed to be supervising them young boys last night?”

  Chucky had been so caught in his coke high and buttering Persia up that he’d forgotten he was breaking in the new recruits. “Sorry,” he said in a low tone. He knew he had fucked up so there was no sense in arguing. “Everything okay with them? Omega didn’t fuck up, did he?”

  “The young boy has actually proven to be more reliable than certain people who’ve been with me twice as long, but that’s another story. Get your shit and let’s take a little ride,” Ramses told him.

  “What’s wrong?” Chucky asked, not liking the tone of Ramses. He had known him long enough to know when something was off.

  “I’ll be outside waiting for you. And leave the pistol, you won’t need where we’re going.” Ramses turned and walked away.

  A ball of ice settled in the pit of Chucky’s stomach. Something wasn’t kosher. He had been the man knocking on doors too many nights to not know what could be waiting for him. Ramses was his friend and his mentor, but it was the ones closest to you who they sent to end you. Chucky went back into the apartment and jumped in his clothes. He looked at his gun wondering if he should defy Ramses, but figured it wouldn’t do him much good anyway if they planned to kill him. Better to do as he was told until he figured out where he stood, and hope he didn’t regret the decision.