10 Crack Commandments

by Erica Hilton

  Lil Nut already knew what Tim was talking about. After all, he lived in those very same projects. He’d never been down in the hole, but he’d always known about it. He wondered why Red would be in the basement of one of the buildings in the projects where Nut lived in. Red didn’t usually cop from there.

  “Oh, a’ight, good lookin’, man.” Lil Nut shook Tim’s hand again, thanking him before walking off toward the building.

  Once inside the hallway, Lil Nut walked to the basement door and looked around. He pressed his ear up against the metal door to see if he could hear anything. When he heard nothing, he carefully pulled open the door. There was a lit light bulb hanging from the ceiling of the stairwell.

  He crept down the stairs, making sure he stopped and listened after each step. As he got closer to the bottom, he could hear a lighter being flicked. He then smelled crack burning. He now knew that someone was down there smoking crack, but he didn’t know who.

  The basement reeked of urine. He had to pinch his nose closed to get relief from the smell. As he traveled along the basement, he made sure he stayed close to the wall, because some parts of the basement were very dark. He could hear mice squeaking as they traveled along the wall. Lil Nut kept moving. Once he reached the rear of the basement the smell of crack got stronger, and then he heard the mumble of voices. There was more than one person down there.

  Lil Nut removed one of his guns and held his hand behind his back. He turned the corner, and sitting there on the floor of the basement with a glass pipe up to his lips was Fuquan. Red sat on a crate in front of Fuquan, reloading his pipe with crack. Neither of the men heard Lil Nut approach.

  Lil Nut felt his blood begin to boil as he realized that his previous premonition was correct. He was heated that his boy not only had been smoking up the product, but had the nerve to do it in the basement right under Lil Nut’s nose, in a building in the very projects where Nut lived. Visions of Lil Nut’s father getting high off crack came flooding back and all the beef he had with his friends, Lamiek and Lite. Lil Nut felt betrayed.

  Fuquan was sweating profusely as he flicked the lighter again. Lil Nut reached behind his back with his other hand and removed the gun that was concealed in the back of his waistband.

  Anger invaded his whole body and he no longer saw his brother in his friend Fuquan. What he saw before him was a man who had betrayed him in the worst way. All the lies Fuquan had told him flooded his brain and infuriated him even more.

  Lil Nut cocked the hammers on his guns, and the noise alerted both males to his presence.

  “What’s up?” Red asked. He stood, still holding the pipe in his hands. “Is you fucking crazy, sneaking up on me like that?” he asked with much bass in his voice.

  Lil Nut never said a word. He continued to ice grill Fuquan with hatred. Fuquan couldn’t even look his friend in the eyes. In fact, he had the nerve to reload the pipe with a rock and continued to smoke with shaking hands. Lil Nut was filled with rage and anger. Using drugs was the catalyst that had led to his father’s murder. Had his pops not been getting high, he would have been on point when the wolves came after him. Milton would have never gotten caught slipping had he not been a crackhead.

  “Nut? You don’t hear me talking to you, little nigga?” Red bellowed with authority.

  Lil Nut simply raised one of the guns and shot Red in the chest, sending him flying to the cement floor.

  Fuquan almost jumped outta his skin when the shot was fired. He stood and dropped his pipe to the ground. It crashed, sending pieces of glass flying. He stood there leaning against the wall. He began to cry and plead for his life.

  “Nut, man, come on, man, what are you doing?”

  “What am I doing?” Lil Nut asked calmly. But it didn’t take a rocket scientist to know that Lil Nut was not happy.

  “Nut, it wasn’t me, man. Red made me do it, man! I was stressing out. He made me do it, I swear.” Fuquan cried while snot ran from his nose.

  “You were supposed to be my brother. You played me out. I trusted you, and this is how you do me?”

  “No, Nut! No, man! I swear it wasn’t my fault! What was I supposed to do? He made me do it.” Fuquan continued to cry.

  “Red ain’t make you suck on that glass dick, did he?”

  Fuquan lowered his head.

  “You were supposed to come to me like a man,” Lil Nut told him. His father’s advice came out as if it were his own. “Real niggas’ don’t ever get high on their own drug supply.”

  Fuquan went down to his knees and continued to beg for his life.

  Hearing enough, and no longer having a heart for Fuquan, Lil Nut put a bullet in his friend’s head. He then walked over to Fuquan and put two more in his face. He did the same to Red to ensure that they were both dead, and then Lil Nut walked out of the basement.

  5

  “Never sell no crack where you rest at, I don’t care if they want a ounce, tell ’em bounce.”

  —“Ten Crack Commandments,” Notorious B.I.G.

  1988

  A light mist of rain fell from the sky. It was seventy-seven degrees at eleven ten pm on a Friday night. The blacktop streets shined from the thin mist of rain that covered them. A patrol car slid and then came to a full stop. Radio dispatchers could be heard over the walkie-talkies the police carried.

  Onlookers covered the street corners, trying to see what was going on. Lil Nut stood with his crew in front of Akbar’s bar. All the patrons from the bar had filtered out onto the sidewalk. Some hustlers continued to conduct drug sales right under the policemen’s noses.

  “Damn, look at that cat in the car,” a male bystander said.

  “I think I’m gonna be sick,” a woman said to her friend as she turned her head away from the scene.

  Two bodies lay twisted in the middle of the street, and another dead body sat behind the wheel of a car. The driver’s head lay on the headrest, and it was clear that his face was blown away. Nothing but blood and brain matter was visible. The medical examiners and crime scene investigators hadn’t arrived yet, so nothing had been placed over the dead men’s bodies to cover the gruesome sight.

  “Damn, that dude ain’t have a chance,” another male bystander said.

  “Look at the other two. They had about as much of a chance as the cat in the car,” another onlooker commented.

  The back of the head of one of the bodies lying on the ground was missing. His brain matter oozed onto the street. The other male had a gaping hole in his back, almost severing his torso.

  More police officers arrived, along with television cameras and the news media. The police began to go into the crowd of onlookers and ask questions.

  “Let’s be out,” Lil Nut said as if on cue. He wanted no part of the cameras or the police questioning.

  Lil Nut and his crew walked off, making their way through the crowd.

  “That’s fucked up what happened to Devine and ’em,” Butter said.

  “Yeah, I bet you it was the Boogie Crew that hit them and shit,” Fatman said, looking back at the scene they’d just left. “I know they’re the ones that murked Fuquan and Red on some jealousy shit.”

  “Nigga don’t you think if I thought they had something to do with my man getting murdered they wouldn’t be breathing right now? Fuck the Boogie Crew. Them niggas’ soft. You know I don’t have a problem letting my thing go. As I told ya’ll niggas last year, I think Fuquan got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Shit fucked up. No doubt he probably went down to the basement looking for Red and most likely got played out by some fiend,” Lil Nut reasoned. He never did let his crew know he was the one who rocked Fuquan to sleep. He thought it was better this way.

  “Yeah, you right,” Fatman replied. “I just miss that nigga, that’s all.”

  “We all do,” Butter stated.

 
They were all in deep thought as they walked in silence. Their sneakers, missing the laces, clonked on the wet pavement. Crack vials lay scattered about the sidewalk. Fatman stepped on the vials, crunching them under his feet.

  They knew the guys who got smoked just a few blocks back. They were all cool with each other, and had no beefs with their crew. So it kinda hit home to see them dead and disfigured.

  The horn of a car sounded off and they all looked up. The window came down and Skinny Lorene stuck her head out of the passenger window.

  “Hey, Nut!” she called.

  Lil Nut looked over at her, but kept walking. Skinny Lorene was his aunt, his mother’s other sister. He hated what she had become. She was one of the many crack addicts on the streets.

  “Nut!” she called again.

  The fellas all looked at Lil Nut, wondering why he wasn’t responding to his aunt’s calls. No one said a word, though. They just kept walking alongside and behind him.

  A white man who looked to be Italian was driving the old, rusted yellow Vega that Lorene occupied. He crept alongside the crew as instructed by Lorene.

  Lil Nut figured the man was probably some trick she suckered into spending his money on some get-high.

  All of a sudden Lil Nut stopped walking. His boys all stopped as well. He walked over to the car, which had also stopped and idled in the street.

  “Hey, baby boy, you holding?” Lorene asked.

  “No, I ain’t got nothing. Do me a favor, Lorene, and don’t come looking for me in the streets for no drugs. I ain’t got nothing,” he said simply. He walked away from the car and back onto the sidewalk.

  “Oh, so it’s like that, huh, Nut? You got you a little money, and you think you all that?” she yelled at him.

  As the crew followed behind Lil Nut, the car continued to drive alongside them, and Skinny Lorene continued to yell at Nut out of the window.

  “Yeah, all right, I got your number. Nephew or not, you done fucked up!”

  Lil Nut was becoming more furious by the second. His aunt was calling him out in front of his crew and a white dude he didn’t know.

  Lil Nut knew that Skinny Lorene was not the one to fuck with. Even before she became a crack addict, she was ruthless on the streets, always fighting or starting fights. She was of the streets and loved to brawl. After becoming addicted to crack her personality worsened. She’d always been a shit talker, but now she was worse. When Skinny Lorene needed that blast and couldn’t get it, she was worse than the devil himself.

  Butter tried to reason with Lil Nut. “Nut, man, come on, just serve her before she snitch on us.”

  Lil Nut kept walking, looking at the ground with his hands shoved into his jeans pockets. His face was twisted. What he was really thinking about doing was pulling his gun from his waistband and just doing away with his aunt and her big mouth. But Lil Nut had too much respect for women, crack addicts included. That was why all women loved him.

  Skinny Lorene continued to talk shit to Lil Nut.

  “Yo, man, serve her,” Nut instructed no one in particular, and then disappeared into the courtyard of the projects where he lived. Fatman walked over to the car and served Skinny Lorene while Butter continued to walk with Lil Nut.

  ***

  Early the next morning Lil Nut had just lain down to go to sleep. It was three am and his body was tired. His head sank into the pillow and he could feel his body floating on the twin mattress. It felt good, and he welcomed the comfort. He was ten minutes into his dream when he heard something hit his window. He knew was dreaming, or that it was the noise from the window fan.

  He opened his eyes and looked at the ceiling. He lay still, listening intently, making sure the noise was nothing more than his imagination. He was able to see a roach climbing his bedroom wall from the streetlights that shined through his window. As he watched the bug crawl, he heard the noise again. He knew he wasn’t dreaming this time. He sat up in the bed and swung his feet around, placing them on the floor. All he wore were his boxers.

  A thin layer of sweat covered his chocolate muscular body, making it glisten. A big keloid scar ran down the front of his chest from where a bullet from a .44 Magnum almost claimed his life. Although Lil Nut survived that night, he had his scar to remind him of it every day.

  Who the fuck could this be? he wondered before standing.

  He reached under his mattress and pulled out his gun before approaching his window.

  Ping! Something hit the window again. He crept along the creaking wood floor and approached the window from the side. He peeked out of the top windowpane and saw Skinny Lorene looking around on the ground. He lowered his gun and lifted the screen on the window. Just as he stuck his head out the window, she tossed another rock up at the window, almost hitting him in the face.

  “Word to the mother, you illin’!’ he yelled down at her.

  “Hey, Nut, you got anything on you?” she asked. She looked up at him with desperation written all over her face.

  Standing there, just skin and bones, she continued to look up at Lil Nut with pleading eyes as he thought about his answer.

  “I ain’t got nothing,” he said simply.

  “Come on, Nut, I know you got something. I got money.” She held up a fist full of wrinkled bills.

  Lil Nut sighed and dropped his head. “I said I ain’t got nothing.”

  “That’s how you gon’ do me? Come on, just let me get three and I won’t bother you no more,” she promised.

  Lil Nut pulled his head in from the window and thought about it. Maybe if he just sold her the three she would go away. He figured if he didn’t, she wasn’t gonna leave, and depending on how bad she wanted a hit, she was definitely gonna show out. Plus he didn’t want his mother to wake up and find her out front at this time of the morning. His mother had banned her from coming around their house.

  He began to step away from the window, and was about to go to the stash and get her the three vials when she called out to him again.

  “Nut!”

  He stuck his head out of the window quickly.

  “Chill out!” he said in a loud whisper. “I’m coming.”

  He knew that this was a bad idea. But he was gonna make sure he told her when he got downstairs that this was the first and the last time he served her from his crib.

  Lil Nut threw on a pair of Nike sweats and snuck out of the apartment. He opted to take the stairs instead of the elevator. Once in the stairwell, the smell of urine assaulted his nose immediately. He thought about leaving the staircase and taking the elevator, but that thought left his mind quickly. Either route he took it was going to be one pissy experience. The elevator reeked of urine as well, but not as badly. He walked through the stairwell doors and headed down the hall to the front door.

  Before he could get to the front door, Skinny Lorene was standing there peering into the glass part of the door, watching for him. She had her face pressed up against the dirty glass, and when she saw Lil Nut coming, she backed away, looking around frantically as she left fog from her breathing on the glass. Her hands shook and she looked as if she’d seen a ghost by the way her eyes stretched wide.

  “Lorene, listen, I’ma do this for you this one time. This ain’t no crack house, so don’t come back here no more.” He looked at her seriously, but respectfully. After all, she was still his aunt, no matter what her crutch was.

  “Yeah, yeah, Nut. You got ’em?” She was obviously ignoring his statement as she looked over her shoulder.

  “Yeah. How many you want again?” he asked before actually pulling out any capsules from the pocket of his jogging suit pants. He knew what she had asked him for earlier, but he also knew that Skinny Lorene almost never came with the right amount of money for the product she wanted. Then if the dealer would refuse her service because of it, she would have the ner
ve to wild out on them.

  Skinny Lorene began to count the wrinkled bills as if she didn’t know how much she had before she came to cop. She made this funny sound with her mouth. It sounded like the noise most people made when their throat itched and they tried to get relief.

  Lil Nut looked at her impatiently. He leaned up against the frame of the door, trying to remain calm. He scratched the scar on his chest because it began to itch. He breathed through his nose, sighing impatiently. He watched Skinny Lorene count the money for a third time. He had already counted the money when he watched her count it the first two times. So he knew exactly how much she had, and of course she didn’t have enough. He was just waiting to hear the story she was going tell him to be able to get the credit on the product.

  Skinny Lorene started counting the money yet again. She kept losing her count because of her delusional state.

  She had twenty-three dollars, and the capsules went for ten each.

  “I need three of them jumbos,” she said, looking around, clearly paranoid.

  “How much you got?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

  “I got enough, Nut. Let me get the three jumbos,” she said with an attitude as she shoved the money into his hand and held out her other hand to receive the crack.

  “Lorene, this ain’t thirty beans. This is twenty-three,” Lil Nut said as he separated the money.

  “That ain’t thirty? I counted thirty.” Skinny Lorene kept looking back over her shoulder onto the street as if she was looking at someone or something.

  Lil Nut knew she was high, because he knew the effects crack had on a person. Most crack smokers became paranoid. But he followed her eyes anyway to see what she was looking for.

  Parked out on the street was the yellow Vega that she was in earlier that night. Lil Nut knew that was the white man she was with earlier.

  “Who that cat you with, Lorene?” he asked as he threw his head up toward the car waiting for her.