Falling For Rome

by Edwina Fort

  Well…

  All except the reign of the Most-High. A reign that is so complex in its simplicity it’s mind boggling. But here amongst us flawed mortal men, greed reigned supreme and it has never failed to destroy. No, not ever…

  I’ve discovered a delicate science to making this all work. I never try to go higher than my mayor. I am loyal to him to a certain extent and he is loyal to me. The governor has no idea I exist. I didn’t demand control of the whole city from my mayor, just half of the 24th Ward. In return, I use my skills to make sure he stays comfortable in his position, and he uses his position to make sure I stay comfortable to practice my skills.

  I guess you can call me the hidden hand. I don’t suffer from vanity, so I don’t have to be out front. I don’t need everyone to know who I am. I am comfortable being behind the scenes. I don’t need praise from others because I’d never met another who was as smart as I. Imagine me seeking praise from one whose brain does not have the aptitude to even begin to grasp mine.

  And I know that statement in itself sounds quite vain indeed, but it’s true. Remember, we are dealing with simple truths.

  And third…

  Now pay close attention because this is the most important truth I’ve discovered. Knowledge is power. He who holds the most of it will always hold the most power.

  I’ve created a program for my piece of the 24th Ward, setting out to prove that ghetto youths with proper nutrition and brain stimulation can compete and even excel in the world market. My little sista’s been screaming about genetically modified crops and how they’re ruining the soil ever since she was a shawty.

  So, I get to thinking one day while I’m sitting on my couch sipping Hen. If GMO’s killing the soil and God made man from soil, then what the f*** is that sh*t doing to us? I started looking into the matter. That sh*t ain’t just messing up the earth, that sh*t messing up the people that’s eating it too.

  I am now a silent partner in 21 restaurants and 42 corner stores inside my small slice of the Chicago pie. I’ve sat down with the other owners of each establishment and carefully chose the foods being sold in both restaurants and stores.

  The affordable generic brand sold in my hood comes from organic farms that I use my particular set of skills to protect from the big-name GMO power houses that are moving through the land eating up the small men. I’ve instituted certain incentives to the shawtys in my hood for eating fruits and vegetables instead of junk food.

  Have I hemorrhaged out a sh*t load of money?

  Hell yeah!

  But…

  I make a sh*t load of money… you’ll be amazed how much one would pay to make certain things appear and disappear from cyberspace. I just take what I make and put it back into my hood.

  Am I a criminal?

  Hmmm…

  You may or may not think so…I guess that all depends on what side of the spectrum you find yourself standing.

  Am I a hero?

  The answer to that question is a resounding NO! What I am doing here in the 24th Ward is to prove a point to myself, because I really don’t give a sh*t what anybody else think. I am always looking for things to challenge my own brain. My little brotha called me the Mad Scientist, because I shaped real life situations to entertain myself.

  That may in fact be true, but what was also true was that thirty-two percent of the black educated ghetto youths who have come from Chicago and made waves in the world over the last five years have come from my streets.

  I don’t know about you, but that looks like some damn impressive numbers to me. Both Jo and his spy wondered why I would use dope as a cover to my operation. The truth is, if the powers that be got wind of what I was doing here in the black community, I would be dead before anybody even realized an assassination had taken place.

  The dope boy isn’t and has never been a threat to this great nation. Knowing the Thug is operating within the inner cities helps the powers that be sleep comfortably every night, because they know that their secret is still safely tucked away.

  However, the Educated Thug strikes fear in their hearts. The Educated Thug’s mind is more than likely to correct itself from the damage that hundreds of years of oppression has caused and stumble upon the truth, and what will the powers that be do then?

  Yes, I am the Educated Thug. Now don’t get me wrong, I started off being the stereotypical nigga, repeating what I saw on TV and what the OGs did before me, sh*t they also saw on TV. But the truth was, I got bored with that. There was no challenge in it for me. Being a nigga was just too easy.

  So…

  I set out to change the Nigga mind state and reinstate the diadem, first in my own mind and then in the mind of those around me…

  Now that I’ve explained my strengths to you guys, allow me to explain the thug part of me. Many of you will get on me and say how could you not tolerate the word nigga, but be okay with the term thug?

  And I have a simple truth for that as well. To deny one’s nature is the very essence of stupidity, at least in my opinion.

  Yes, I’m smart as hell, I know that. I’m also very uncouth at times. I have a temper that surprises even me. These sudden fits of rage come upon me and yes, sometimes they rule my actions. In a temper, I have laid many to rest, a fact that I’m neither proud of nor disappointed in. A cancer needs to be removed, no matter what form it comes in.

  And finally, this is something that remains even a mystery to me, maybe they’re putting something in the water. But I have that impenetrable sense of doom, a feeling that I need to make my impact now, because any day could be my last one.

  Unfortunately, no matter how hard I try, I can’t visualize myself as an old man. Frankly, I doubt if I’ll live that long. So yes, like many ghetto youths, I live every day like it’s my last.

  The thug part of me is a product of my environment, but also a weakness, which is why I implement various self-control exercises in the training of myself and my crew. Yes, we easily lose control, but it’s not a good thing…and it’s not something we should just accept about ourselves.

  We’re not animals… no matter how the powers that be try to make it seem.

  All in all, I’m quite satisfied with the little kingdom I’ve created for myself.

  However…

  There is one who have made it his mission to destroy all that I’ve built.

  I brought my truck to a stop in front Ms. May’s Soul Food Eatery, one of the restaurants I silently partnered. My financial backing enables Ms. May to cook with only good wholesome organic ingredients. Because of it, the restaurant attracts folks from all over the Chicago area, sometimes the line to get in wraps around the corner. It has been spotlighted in the Tribune four times already.

  “Kado say that mutha f**** been in there for about fifteen minutes. Sitting down having lunch with some broad. He twenty-five deep.” Hannibal, my right hand said as he pulled a Swisher Sweet out his inner jacket pocket and began to roll a blunt.

  I didn’t smoke because I couldn’t stand the feel of my brain being hazy…but I didn’t have a problem with those around me smoking, because I liked the smell of good weed.

  Anyway, where was I? Oh yes…

  Ever since the days of Cain and Abel, there has always been a hater sitting on the side plotting the death of the achiever. Basically, if I’m superman, this b**** made punk, Saw Buck, who got up enough balls to cross into my turf and eat at one of my restaurants is my Lex Luther. And what makes it so bad, he used to be one of my two best f***ing friends.

  The other is Hitta, but I’ll tell you more about him a little later.

  It was Saw’s father, G who had first put me on when I was twelve. I’d gone to him and asked if I could be his accountant in order to make money for my family. I was desperate…My mother was killing herself to take care of us. Working two jobs she barely slept. Just came in from one job, pieced together a meal for us, and then trudged right back out to go to another.

>   After getting my brother and sister in the bed at night I paced the floor worried about her. One night she told me how much it pained her to raise other folks’ children while her own were growing without her.

  I’d heard her crying so many times. Her tears tore me apart on the inside. I felt as if I was letting my father down. He’d laid on his death bed and made me promise to take care of the family. He told me that it was time for me to be a man, and that they were now my responsibility. And here I stood watching my mother killing herself to do the job that my father said was mine.

  The night I left the house to find work, I swore my mother will never have to cry again. I’d already mapped out the perfect way to earn a lot of cash in a short amount of time.

  At first, G and his whole crew had looked at me and laughed at my asking to be his accountant.

  “Lil nigga, I sell dope, not real estate.” He told me before he went into another fit of laughter.

  I let him laugh, but when he was done, I showed him how he could triple his profits just from keeping books. I showed him where he was losing funds and where there was room for growth.

  By the time I was done, he and his men were looking at me as if I was a freak of nature. That may have been the case, but after that day, I became the first twelve-year-old accountant in the history of accountancy, and for a drug emperor no less…

  Because of me, G’s small operation went from being a few blocks strong to all of the 24th Ward, but I was only biding my time. I didn’t like the fact that he sold crack, I didn’t like what it did to my people, which is why I don’t allow it on my streets.

  Saw Buck is the same age as me. I guess you can say G raised him, me, and Hitta, who is his nephew and also my age together. Back in those days, the three of us were inseparable. We made plans to grow and rule Chicago together.

  But Hitta started knocking mutha f****s out early, back then, folks called him Hard Hitta. Instead of teaching him the dope game, G got him into boxing, forcing him to go to the gym every day. By the time he was seventeen, he was fighting professionally and had an impressive career that lasted nearly a decade.

  An injury forced him to leave the sport and now he ran one of the biggest underground boxing arenas in Chicago. I use my particular set of skills to make sure he continued to operate without the law getting involved, trying to shut him down. I didn’t need to use my skills to make sure he kept haters off him, ‘cause Hitta is a goon in every sense of the word, and there ain’t a mutha f**** around with enough balls to cross him, which left Saw and I to run these streets. At first, everything was good, till his and my views began to differ on how that should be done.

  I tried to tell him it was a new day. Technology was becoming the force to be reckoned with. I studied my ass off and learned it without attending anybody’s tech school. I told him this would be our key to taking over and doing it bigger than any of the OGs before us. But he wasn’t trying to hear that. He couldn’t see past the dope game. After his pops got gunned down, Saw wanted to continue where he left off and I just wasn’t feeling it.

  So, we split the 24 in half. My guys didn’t crossover into his area, and his guys didn’t crossover to mine. There was peace in our section of the Chicago map for a while. He chose to sell rock on his side, and I allowed the hustlas to sell bud on mine. But you know how I do…If I’m going to allow weed to be sold, then it got to be pure, non-GMO and not laced with no bullsh*t.

  I found a crazy ass white boy in California who grew the best weed I ever smelled. He said his bud was all organic, said he used heirloom seeds that had been in his family for decades. When I met him, he was small time; I became a silent partner and now he supplied product for my whole area and was in a very good place for when Proposition 64 is voted in allowing legal usage of the herb by adults in California.

  Folks came from all over Chicago to shop with us. It ain’t no secret that we got the best weed in the land. That being said, Ol’ Saw Buck’s playa hating a** started noticing that my operation was outgrowing his… rapidly, and his jealousy set in. He thought we were balling like this because of that fiyah weed.

  And I let him…I let everybody think that.

  Only a small number of people knew what I actually did. Only a small number of people knew how invested in this neighborhood I am. Even my silent partners didn’t know about each other. They all assumed I was in business with them only. Just like the mayor, they kept their lips sealed about our transactions. Upstanding citizens like themselves didn’t want to be lumped in with a thug like me, it wasn’t a good look, which was just the way I wanted it.

  My model was simple…never let your left hand know what your right is doing. I am the specter.

  A few years back, Saw Buck brought his clown a** to me asking about him setting up shop over here on my blocks. I laughed at him. I knew he was on some jealous sh*t and ready to start a war. It was foreseeable, I knew it would happen eventually.

  I told him to bounce, ‘cause he know damn well I don’t allow crack on my streets. Not now, not mutha f***en ever. He tested me and sent in a few of his boys anyway. And we sent them mutha f***a’s back in boxes.

  That was when sh*t jumped off, small skirmishes began to happen here and there between his men and mine. Nothing so big that it would cause our two sides to go to war, but him being the b**** he is, snitched a few times and got some of my boys locked up. Because he didn’t know that the mayor reported back to me, he had no idea I knew each time his lips went loose, my boys never spent longer than an hour in lock-up.

  Through careful calculation and perpetration, I’ve managed not to lose any of my people. Like I said, we had to send a few of his crew back to him in boxes. My mother would call it a blessing. And maybe it was. But I also made sure my soldiers and future soldiers were trained in hand- to- hand combat and target practice. They didn’t just talk a good game, they could back it up, whether throwing them thangs or busting that heat, all skills that were necessary to survive this concrete jungle.

  The fact is, these streets would be a better place with Saw dead. If I didn’t think it would start a war, I would walk into that restaurant and air his a** out right now without hesitation. The thing is, I’m responsible for every man, woman and child under my watch. And if I murk Saw, it would be an all-out blood bath by tomorrow. Lives would be lost on both sides, and I was not willing to sacrifice none of mine.

  Nothing in life is easy. But that’s alright with me. Just because Saw wasn’t an easy kill didn’t mean his days weren’t numbered. There was more than one way to skin a cat. I took a page out of our government’s playbook and carefully chose the man I felt would be a good replacement for him…Bobby. I’ve trained Bobby since he was a small boy and he was unquestionably loyal to me. Five years ago, I sent him in to get tight with Saw.

  Ol’ goofy ** punk opened up to him and took him right in. Now Bobby was his second in command. All his soldiers were ready to follow Bobby should something happen to him. And something will happen to him, I was just waiting for the perfect time to strike.

  The problem was, Saw knew I wanted him dead and has become paranoid. Bobby said this fool slept with guards at his front door, bedroom, and back door. I’m surprised he got up enough balls to eat at one of my restaurants. He’s really taking his life in his hands. Although he had come deep, there were several cars and trucks lined up behind and in front of his.

  A few of his men sat in their vehicles while the others stood outside chopping it up with my soldiers, who were there to keep an eye on them. This area belonged to the Four Corner Hustlers, their chief is Kado, it was he that called Milo and alerted him to Saw and his men’s presence.

  I killed my engine when Kado spotted me and began to come my way.

  “Yo, Rome this truck is sick, my ni--!” He caught himself. “Brotha!” His eye greedily took in my F-250 King Ranch Ford Pick-up.

  “Is anything on this mutha f***a from the factory?” He asked clasping hands with m
e.

  I chuckled. “You know better.” was all I told him…and he did.

  I didn’t make it a habit of answering foolish questions and I didn’t need to brag. One had only to look at the truck and see it was custom built. The executives at King Ranch had been nice enough to fly me in, and we sat down over lunch as they took down my vision for my vehicle.

  “What up, Han?” he said to my passenger when he finally finished eye humping my ride.

  Hannibal nodded without looking away from the blunt he was rolling. “Ay, what up, K.”

  I gestured toward the restaurant. “What you got for me?”

  Kado leaned his back against my door folding his arms. “Like I told Milo, dude in there caking with some broad. You want us to ghost him?”

  I didn’t answer him right away. Everything inside me wanted to say yes as I pondered for the thousandth time on how I could murk him without starting a war. And for the thousandth time, the answer came back, there was no way.

  I leaned back in my seat getting comfortable. “Naw, today ain’t the day. Who is this broad he with?”

  Kado shook his head. “I don’t know, I ain’t seen her around here before. She sexy as hell though.”

  “Here, hit this while I check it out.” Hannibal told Kado, who wisely walked around the truck to get the blunt. Both of them knew if they’d rudely passed it in front of me, I would have hit the roof.

  Han took his laptop out his book bag and pulled up the camera feed inside of Ms. May’s place.

  Yep! You guessed it! I got eyes on every place I invested in, including the farms. I’m a controlling mutha f****, I’m big enough to admit that.

  “She is sexy.” Hannibal said as Kado passed him back the weed.

  The girl wasn’t bad looking, but she couldn’t hold a candle to that little spy who’d so foolishly decided to take me on. My phone dinged from where it sat in the cup holder. Lifting it I read the text message that had just come through. Speaking of my little spy…