by Erica Hilton
“What she say?” Lil Nut asked when Butter got back into the car.
“Man, she called me because she thinks she pregnant.”
“Congratulations,” Lil Nut said with no enthusiasm.
They ditched the second car Butter had stolen after they succeeded in collecting the money that the last customer owed them. Now it was time for Butter to fess up and tell Lil Nut who owed twenty thousand dollars, but he didn’t know how. All he knew was that he had to say something. He contemplated leading Lil Nut to the police officer so that he could kill Lil Nut, but they had been friends for a long time, and he just couldn’t do it. So he figured if he told Lil Nut about the officer, they could get rid of the cop together.
As they walked Butter looked over at Lil Nut. He could see that stress was all over Nut’s face. Butter could tell that his friend was under a lot of pressure, and he knew it was from the debt he now owed the connect. Nut’s stress was all his fault, and he knew he had to fix this situation on his own, so he decided to meet the cop by himself and kill him.
“Nut, man, I’ma meet you back at your crib. I’m gonna run by the spot and check on Tamia right quick,” he lied.
“We need to get this paper, and we need to collect from the young boys too,” Lil Nut told him.
“I know, man, I gotchu. Word up. Just give me a minute to check on her so she can stop bitching, and I’ll get up with you,” Butter assured him.
Lil Nut looked into Butter’s eyes to see if he was sincere. “A’ight, man, hurry up.” Lil Nut headed toward Stone Avenue while Butter went in the opposite direction.
Nightfall was near and it was dusk by the time Butter reached the alley where the cop told him to bring Lil Nut. He made his way down the alley. Butter walked past the back door of a restaurant and traveled deeper into the alley. He was beginning to think the cop wasn’t gonna show when he heard a noise. He whipped around to see the black cop dressed in all black.
“Yo, man, why you playin’?” Butter asked, startled.
“Where’s your boy at?” Officer Ryan asked.
“He . . . he . . . comin’ through,” Butter stuttered.
The officer twisted his lips in disbelief. “What kinda fool you take me for, boy?”
“Word up, he coming.”
The officer removed his service revolver and pointed it at Butter. “I don’t like dishonest motherfuckers,” the officer said.
Butter looked at him like he was crazy. In his mind the officer was nothing but pure evil.
“Man, why can’t you just give me some of the loot and we can keep the deal going as is? I mean, he don’t know.” Butter tried to reason. “I mean, I’m sayin’, do you even have some of it that I can take back to him?”
“Oh, I have it. In fact, haven’t you wondered why I haven’t contacted you to get more?”
Butter thought for a minute. He realized now that the cop hadn’t called him to get more drugs for a while, and he used to get crack from Butter every day.
“Yeah, I do now. What, you went to rehab and quit?” Butter laughed nervously.
“Funny, but no. I robbed you while your girl was home alone.”
“Oh shit! You got us for all our shit. That’s fucked up!” Butter was getting pissed.
“Oh, word? So it was you who took my shit?” Lil Nut asked from behind the cop.
The cop turned around and fired a shot that missed. Butter dove to the ground. Lil Nut shot the cop in the hand that held his gun. The officer dropped the gun and grabbed his injured hand. Lil Nut shot him in both legs, one bullet causing him to drop to his knees.
Butter was shitting bricks. He wasn’t sure how much of the conversation Lil Nut had heard, because he never saw him enter the alley.
Lil Nut walked up on the cop as he lay on the ground, breathing heavily. “Your credit is dead,” a demonic Lil Nut said before he unloaded the remainder of the bullets into the officer.
He and Butter ran to the end of the alley and peeked out before making a mad dash up the street.
On the walk home Butter discovered that Lil Nut didn’t hear the entire conversation. What he heard was the cop tell Butter he broke into the apartment. Butter was relieved and swore that he would take this secret to his grave.
“So how did you know where I was?” Butter asked after they were back at Lil Nut’s apartment.
“Because I know how much you love Tamia, and if she really told you she was carrying your seed, you would have been amped. But what really clued me in was when you said you was gonna stop by your crib. I watched you walk away, and you weren’t headed in the right direction. At first I wasn’t gonna follow you, but then I said fuck it. Then I lost you and was walking around for a minute until I heard the voices echoing out of the alley. That’s when I snuck up in there and heard the convo.”
Butter told Lil Nut that the cop was bribing him for money, and he had to pay the cop once a week, so that was why his debt was so high. Lil Nut seemed to accept that answer, and Butter was relieved that he had escaped with his life.
***
Two weeks later Lil Nut had managed to get the money up to pay back Luis.
“Mmm . . . you surprise me, Little Nut,” Luis said.
“Why?”
“Because me really not think you could do it. I had to test you, my friend. Now we do real business, and anytime you need credit, there will be no time limit for you.” Luis smiled at Lil Nut and patted him on the back.
“Naw, not me. That credit shit is dead in my book.”
7
“. . . keep your family and business completely separated. Money and blood don’t mix like two dicks and no bitch, find yourself in serious shit.”
—“Ten Crack Commandments,” Notorious B.I.G.
1990
It was surprising how just a few months of steady hustling in the crack game could get the crew back on their feet. Lil Nut began to take things more seriously and wanted to treat the crack game like a business. Yes, he’d always wanted to get money and took that seriously, but now he wanted his hard work to sustain. He’d seen niggas getting locked up and getting sentenced to football numbers—double digits—on drug charges. And he’d also seen motherfuckers getting murdered over this here crack game. In fact, he’d rocked to sleep more than his share of niggas, and he was just approaching his twenty-first birthday.
Lil Nut stood in his boxers looking out the window of his project apartment. Melissa, his new girlfriend, was sound asleep in his bed, and his mother was in the kitchen making breakfast and gossiping on the phone with her sister, Mary. Lil Nut thought about his future, and then reflected on his past—his friends, enemies, and most of all his pops. He sure did miss him.
He walked into the kitchen and gave his mother a kiss on her cheek. She looked up, smiled, and pointed toward the food on the stove.
“Hold on a minute,” Julie said to Mary. “Nelson, go ahead and make you and Melissa a plate for breakfast.”
Lil Nut looked at the bacon, eggs, and grits and smiled. He loved his mother. He watched her on the phone and noticed that her hair was graying and she’d put on some weight over the past couple of years. He wondered if she was happy living without her husband. Lil Nut tried to give his mother all the amenities to keep her occupied while she stayed cooped up in the house each day. Her most prized possession was her fifty-two-inch color television. Starting from noon until four o’clock she watched her soap operas, Court TV, and then primetime sitcoms.
“Ma, hang up the phone. Tell auntie that you’ll call her back. I need to talk.”
Julie didn’t hesitate to please her son. “Mary, I’ll call you back later. I need to talk with my son.”
Lil Nut fixed a plate and sat at the table next to his mom. A lot of thoughts had been running through his head for a while, and he wanted to share them with her.
“Ma, I want to get us up out of here, move us somewhere nice where we don’t have roaches crawling up and down our walls, and motherfuckers pissing in the elevators. Whatchu think about that?”
Julie thought for a moment before responding. “Nelson, I’ve lived in Brownsville all my life, and I would love to get out. But my eyes have seen more than I would wish on anyone. Now my daddy was a number runner, and back in the sixties he was the man. When I was nine years old he moved me and your grandmother out of our rent stabilized apartment and bought us a house over on State Street. We didn’t live in that house for more than two years before Daddy couldn’t make the mortgage payments, and we were evicted. Nelson, I’m too old to be evicted from anybody else’s property.”
“Ma, running numbers is old school. The type of money I’m making is practically guaranteed money—”
“There ain’t no such thing when it’s illegal tender.”
“You mean to tell me you think that there won’t always be crackheads?”
“Of course there will be, but your slot ain’t always guaranteed. There are too many pitfalls out here lurking around. You got little young boys trying to make a name for themselves that might want to try and take you out. You got stickup kids, five-oh, and snitches. How you gonna keep beating those odds? That’s why I keep telling you to save up enough money and then open up a legit business.”
“Ma, I hear you, and that ain’t gonna be me. I’m not one of these knuckleheads out here—”
“Oh really?” she interrupted. “That’s why you got a twenty-thousand-dollar car parked outside the projects? You don’t think that was a knucklehead move? Your father is probably turning in his grave.”
Julie was disgusted when Lil Nut went up on Northern Boulevard in Queens and dropped twenty-one thousand dollars in cash on a used Mercedes Benz 190E 500. She knew that he was making one of the ultimate mistakes young drug hustlers made, and she feared that his actions were already setting the stage to either get him noticed by the police, or murdered by the competition. His foolishness was the main reason she wasn’t leaving her apartment. With or without her son, she knew that she’d always be able to afford this roof over her head.
“It ain’t even that serious. You know how badly I’ve wanted a Benz. I’ve been working hard toward this for six years. You telling me that I can’t reward myself? I’m supposed to just keep using my bread to make other motherfuckers happy? I didn’t see you telling me to invest my dough in a business when I came through with your new TV. I spent three gees on that. I didn’t hear you complaining that the money could have went to something else when I copped you that mink coat for Christmas. Did you?” Lil Nut accused. He felt that his mother was being hypocritical, and he wasn’t above calling her out.
Julie shook her head. “I know I didn’t raise a dumb nigga, but that’s exactly what you sound like. In all your years of slinging that drug, the same drug that destroyed our family, I ain’t ever asked you for shit!”
Lil Nut looked at his mother incredulously. “Are you fucking kidding me? That’s all the fuck you ever did. You had me paying our rent when I was just a little young dude of fifteen. What the fuck you call that?”
Julie refused to take her mind there, so she found it easier to call her son a liar.
“Look, you better get outta my face with all your lies. In fact, you and your bitch can get the fuck outta my house. My name is on that lease, and my name alone!”
“Oh, you think you really saying something? A’ight, bet. You think I won’t jet and be out?” Lil Nut brushed past his mother, went straight to his bedroom, and woke up Melissa. He shook her forcefully, startling the sleeping beauty. “Yo, wake up. I need you to go to a Realtor and find us an apartment.”
Yawning, she replied, “What? What’s going on?”
Lil Nut was already pulling thousands of dollars from one of his stashes. This was his pocket money. He tossed five thousand dollars at Melissa and repeated his wishes. “I want you to go to a Realtor and find us an apartment. I want something plush in a residential neighborhood, and I don’t want no roaches! And you better make sure my name is on that motherfucking lease.”
***
Six weeks later Lil Nut and Melissa were renting the ground floor apartment of a Cobble Hill, Brooklyn brownstone that didn’t have any roaches. He was a little pissed that the landlord wouldn’t allow his name to be on the lease because he didn’t have any credit, but it was all good. The living room even had a working fireplace, plush carpet throughout the two-bedroom apartment, and ceramic tiled floor in the compact kitchen. It was more than they both could have imagined. His tricked out Benz didn’t stand out like a diamond in a minefield on these streets. The tree-lined block was filled with high-end luxury cars. Lil Nut felt like he had finally arrived.
When the couple finally got the keys to their apartment they didn’t have a stitch of furniture, so they made love in front of the fireplace on the plush carpet. When they awoke in the morning Lil Nut gave Melissa five thousand dollars and told her to get busy shopping for furniture. Meanwhile, he had work to do.
Back around the way Lil Nut stood politicking with Butter and his cousin, who everyone called Peter Piper. Peter was Skinny Lorene’s son, and he was a thorn in Lil Nut’s side because he was always begging, just like his mother.
Butter and Lil Nut had their cars parked in the lot of Howard projects with Ice Cube’s new album, AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted, blaring from Butter’s Beamer. Slowly the west coast was taking over the rap scene with their explicit gangsta lyrics. The three began a friendly game of dice.
Lil Nut blew inside his hand that held the dice and giggled.
“Blah-ow,” he yelled and then rolled a six and a four. “Yo, y’all gotta come through and see my crib.”
“Yeah, I heard you up and moved out, leaving Auntie Julie upset. Why you had to go and do her like that?” Peter Piper asked.
“Nah, she was beefin’ and shit. You know I don’t like all that arguing and shit. She was trying to make a nigga feel low, like I wasn’t shit. So I figured I could show her better than I could tell her.”
“I feel you,” Peter Piper replied as he picked up the dice.
“Yo, I’ve been meaning to tell you about this nigga I met at the rink the other night,” Butter began.
“What rink? Empire Skating Rink?” Lil Nut asked.
“Nah, the rink in New Jersey. That shit was nothing like Empire. You know when you walk in Empire you see around-the-way girls and the same old head hunters ready to snatch your chain. We gotta keep our gat close by just to get our skate on. But with the rink in Jersey you look out and see a sea of beauties. I swear each girl in there has long hair touching her butt. I mean real hair, long and silky, and they wear the tightest jeans as their hips be swaying from side to side.” Butter began demonstrating their movements and they all burst out laughing. He continued. “But what I like most about the rink is that all the dudes in there holding serious paper and making serious moves. You know real recognize real.”
“You know those Newark niggas on some real grimy shit too,” Peter said. “They just as bad as us Brooklyn cats.”
“You ain’t listening. It’s none of that bullshit in there. Those ain’t Newark niggas. Those niggas are from Harlem.”
“Harlem?” Peter Piper asked.
“Yeah. When you pull up in the parking lot all you see are Mercedes, Lexuses, Beamers, you name it. And all those niggas in there are about getting money. So I was talking to this nigga named Remy, and he was peeping my style. He know I’m from Brooklyn, and he was saying that not many of them niggas in there would want to fuck with me because we’re known for that grimy shit, but he got a connect in D.C. that could get us that powder white for a low number.”
Lil Nut was furious. Butter was going against the grain fucking with an outsider. Lil Nut was a creature of habit, and
he didn’t like no other boroughs, because each borough had their own code. He was a thoroughbred from Brooklyn, and he didn’t trust no niggas from Harlem.
“What the fuck you doing discussing our operation with other motherfuckers?” Lil Nut yelled. “I hope you didn’t think I would be OK with that?”
“Damn, Nut. What the fuck is up with you?” Peter piped in.
Nut’s head swung around to face his cousin. “Who the fuck was talking to you? Your bum ass don’t have a pot to piss in, nor a window to throw it out of. You don’t even have an operation to discuss!”
Peter gritted his teeth to keep from responding to his cousin’s disrespect. He knew that his cousin was a hot head, and Peter wasn’t built to go to war with him. Butter finally decided to squash the situation.
“Nut, man, sometimes you got to listen and just see where I’m going with this. You know those uptown cats get paper. And you know we get paper too. But we both said that we wanted to start pushing weight, ’cause that’s where the real paper is at. I don’t want to be out here hustling when I’m thirty. At that age I want to be married and chillin’ in a big ole house without a worry in the world, talking shit about how I beat the game and the game didn’t beat me. But just eating off our little runners ain’t gonna cut it. It might take us a week to pull in five gees. We could make five gees off each brick, and move ten bricks a week.”
Lil Nut thought about Butter’s logic and was a little pissed that he didn’t think of it himself. He decided to ignore his gut feelings about those Harlem niggas and take a chance on Butter and his newfound friend. Lil Nut had a lot to prove to his mother. He wanted to show her that he wasn’t just an airhead, and could make enough money to legitimize his business. Nut decided that once he made five hundred thousand in the crack game, he would retire.
“So you trust this motherfucker?” Nut asked.
“Hell, yeah. He seems solid. And he’s heard of you too. So that means he knows you ain’t no joke, so if he ever tried any funny shit, he knows he’d have to look over his shoulder night and day, and I know he ain’t built like that.”
