You woke up with all of that on your mind and two dollars in your pocket. The weekend was on the way and Boyz II Men was coming to the Cap Centre with a bunch of other acts. Catalina loved those gump-ass niggas, and thus expected you to foot the bill for two tickets, preceded by dinner and hopefully followed by you getting some long-awaited ass. You’d been chipping away at that pussy for weeks, first base all the way to the edge of third. Now home was definitely in sight.
Things would’ve been simple if that coming Friday was a payday. But it wasn’t. Add in the fact that you already owed Dante twenty dollars from the last time you took Catalina out and thirty to Sean for those tapes you were supposed to go in half on, then taxes, your pager bill, and cake for gas, and that forthcoming check was already spent. You needed some more dough and you needed it yesterday.
So you tried to come up with a plan in the shower, ’cuz that’s where you do your best thinking. Under water your thoughts flow evenly. In the stream you cut through all the bullshit. So it was there, under the “massage” setting spray, that you thought about running game at the rec.
It was a Tuesday after all. Who the hell went to school on Tuesday, especially when you could buy off the rec manager with an apple stick and two packs of Now and Laters? What a pathetic price for a nigga as old as your father, whoever he is.
“You tryin’ to play for time?” you asked your first mark, some light-skinned dude with a low-taper his barber shoulda got stabbed for.
You knew the kid had cake. He had that look in his eye, plus a Guess watch, the new Jordans, and a sweet pair of Girbauds cuffed at the ankle. You’d seen him around before, so you knew he wasn’t some out-of-bounds hustler trying to move in on your racket. Yeah, that’s right, it was already yours, even before the first shot.
“I’m tryin’ to play for money,” he said boldly, tapping a nervous finger against his thigh, the biggest tell in the world that he didn’t have what it took. You had him on the rack six times in under an hour. The idea crossed your mind of majoring in pool when you got to college.
“My game’s off today,” he confessed earnestly after handing you three twenties without a flinch. “I guess my loss is your gain.”
There was something about that phrase that didn’t sit well with you. It wasn’t the kinda shit niggas say on Ridge Road. Or if it was, you’d never heard it before. And that made you curious. You and your damn curiosity.
“And a nice little gain it is,” you replied gloating, thinking of the words as a perfect move to finish him off.
“It ain’t shit to me,” he replied. “But I can see you need the money.”
You told him he needed to watch himself, that he didn’t know you like that. You turned open palms into fists, preparing yourself for battle. Yet all he did was grin. And that little grin made you think he might have heat, which meant you might be dead in the next few seconds. There you went again, acting before you could think on it.
He told you to chill. He didn’t mean any disrespect. He just thought that maybe the two of you could help each other out. After all, he’d seen you around the way and knew you were no joke. Truth be told, he even made it so he lost the first game or two of the previous series just to make you feel comfortable, just so you could feel like he was an easy mark. You took in all the words, but you didn’t really understand them, except for when he said that he had a problem he wanted you to help him with.
“What you mean you want me to help you? I don’t know you, nigga,” was your response.
“It’s ten G’s in it for you,” he replied. “Ten G’s for some shit that won’t even take ten minutes.”
This was when you should have turned away. You weren’t a fuckin’ criminal. Sure you’d sold a few rocks back when everybody was doin’ it, and sure you and Sean had run some chains off people outside of the go-go. But anything worth ten G’s was way too hot for you to touch. Yet even though you were thinking these things, your mouth said: “Ten G’s!? Shit, what the fuck I gotta do?”
Now according to the story, this dude who soon after introduced himself as “Butchie” had a little crack thing going down on Texas Avenue with a partner of his. The two of them had either bought (or run) some old lady out of her crib and were dealing there, but strictly to respectable clients (i.e., people who had all their teeth and wouldn’t draw suspicion from the cop details). And it had actually worked out. They’d cleared just over 100 grand in six months.
This partner, introduced only as “D”, handled muscle and management. Butchie dealt with the supplier and scouting out clientele. The only problem came in when D got hit with a rape charge on the other side of town. Not only was it a parole violation but the dude’s second felony. Needless to say, D wouldn’t be seeing daylight anytime soon. But there was money and some product still at his crib on Adrian Street, right over the hill from the rec where you met Butchie.
At this point, all the young man in front of you wanted to do was cash out, because there were no guarantees that D wouldn’t give him up. However, he still wanted what was his, half the thirty-five grand in D’s crib and whatever product was left over, so he could sell it wholesale and dump the money into a McDonald’s he wanted to reopen out on Bladensburg Road. It was a plan you could respect. Shit, if you’d had the cake you would’ve done the same thing yourself.
Butchie went on to inform you that D lived alone and had even given him a key to the house. But he didn’t want to pick up the loot himself just in case the cops were there waiting for him. Plus, he wasn’t the kind of “go-hard nigga” that you were. As a matter of fact, he’d brought D into the equation because he wasn’t from the street, because he needed somebody to have his back in an always competitive and treacherous marketplace. Thus, he was willing to give you almost a third of the cash sum if you’d just go in and get it for him.
Once again you were listening less to the plan and more to your own imagination. What would ten G’s feel like in your hand? What couldn’t you buy with that kind of dough? The possibilities were endless, and you, even with sixty-two bucks in-pocket, enough for the tickets and a little dinner, were now game on snatching this new ball of wax. Citing a prior commitment, he gave you his pager number before he headed toward the ’93 Pathfinder on the asphalt. The deal would expire at the end of the day.
2
“I don’t know about this shit,” Sean had grumbled as he passed you the remains of the blunt. Babatunde and Dante were on the other couch and Fat Rodney was upstairs cooking Steak-ums in the kitchen. If you were going to do this, you weren’t doing it alone. So you got the crew together and sat them down in your mother’s basement. These were the only dudes you trusted in the whole world.
“Me neither,” Dante added. “This shit sounds way too easy for what he’s payin’ us.”
“But then again, this nigga sounds weak,” Baba fired back. “You know, like the kinda dude ain’t never thrown a punch in his life. If the money’s in there, we’d have it before him. Shit, if we wanted we could take it all and say ‘fuck him.’”
“That’s what I was thinkin’,” Fat Rodney said with half a sandwich in his mouth. He was that kind of fat where his whole torso bounced with every other step. Five-foot-nine and 300 pounds at sixteen. Somebody needed to put his ass on a treadmill.