Authors: Rio
~Chapter 11~
Tyrone and his younger cousin Joe-Joe had run all the way to the corner of Kedzie and Douglas after the girl pointed a gun at them. Stunned and out of breath, they stood there for a moment
, chests heaving, taking turns calling Lil Mike’s phone number from Tyrone’s phone—as if Lil Mike would answer for one of them and not the other.
“Damn, Joe. This nigga ain’t even answerin’.” Tyrone dropped his phone in a pocket of his black denim MFG shorts
and pulled them up around his waist; he had a belt on, but the .45-caliber Smith & Wesson on his hip and the twenty-round magazine in his rear left pocket were weighing down his shorts. “We gotta go back and make sure Big Mike a’ight. That nigga had a gun to Big Mike’s head, Joe.”
“
Nigga,
you
gotta go back,” Joe-Joe corrected. He was shorter and darker than his cousin, with short nappy hair and a barely noticeable overbite. He, too, wore an Armani Exchange shirt, long denim shorts, a Bulls fitted cap cocked to the left, and Jordan sneakers.
The only real difference was that Joe-Joe didn’t have a pistol.
“I ain’t got no banga on me,” Joe-Joe said. “You ain’t about to get me shot up tryna save Big Mike’s ass. Fuck that nigga. Ain’t he a GD from the south side? Nigga we TVLs—”
“So muhfuckin what?!” Tyrone snapped as he turned to head back toward Lil Mike’s block. “That’s Lil Mike daddy, nigga. Go and let him know wussup. Tell the Travs too. I’m finna go try to handle this shit myself.”
Tyrone took off in a sprint, and was halfway to Anna’s—a food and liquor store on the corner of 13
th
and Kedzie—when he looked back and saw his fourteen year old cousin running up behind him.
They stopped in front of the store and Joe-Joe said, “Man, you know I cain’t let you go by yo’self.”
Then the two young black boys rushed back into the alley.
~Chapter 12~
“I’ll give you to the count of six to tell me where that bread at, nigga, and you can think I’m bullshittin’ if you want to,” James threatened. He was standing over Big Mike and Assata, both of whom were stretched out on their bellies on the linoleum kitchen floor.
Cresha had the revolver aimed at the middle of Assata’s back and James was aiming his gun at Big Mike’s head. Assata had joined the party mere seconds ago when she happened to walk in the back door a moment after James had shoved Big Mike into the kitchen.
“Nigga what
bread
?” Big Mike asked, his tone thick with anger. “Do it look like we got bread around this mothafucka?! We barely go white bread.”
“One…” James started.
“What is he looking for?” Assata asked.
“Two…” said James.
“Hell if I know!” Big Mike raged.
“Three…” James continued.
“Nigga, I wouldn’t give a fuck if you counted to six
million
!” Big Mike shouted. “What part of ‘I’m broke’ do you not understand? Me and my wife probably got forty dollars altogether, and that’s in our bedroom in the dresser. Take that lil bit of—”
“Four…”
“—money and get the fuck out my house ‘fore somethin’ bad happen. Carry yo’ ass down the street and rob them drug-dealers, ‘cause we ain’t got shit for you.”
“Five…” James aimed the gun at Big Mike’s left shoulder and slipped his index finger in over the trigger. He was just about to squeeze it when Cresha stopped him.
“Wait,” Cresha said, holding the identification card and studying it closely. “Where’s your son, Big Mike? Where’s Michael Love, Junior? Tell us now or I’m blowin’ your wife’s head off.”
Neither Big Mike nor his woman spoke.
“Try to find the duffle bags,” James said to Cresha as he took a seat at the kitchen table. “Somebody gon’ die if I don’t get that money.”
Lacresha Radcliff searched all through Big Mike and Assata’s bedroom and found nothing but $42.57 on their dresser. She flipped their bed over, snatched out their dresser drawers, pulled everything from their closet, and emptied two floral-patterned suitcases.
No duffle bags, no cash.
But something on the dresser caught Cresha’s attention. It was a picture of the guy from the ID, wedged in the side of the dresser mirror between two pictures of the girl Cresha had seen on the Love’s front porch.
The picture that had Cresha’s attention was a club picture. Judging from the background, it seemed to have been taken at Club Adrianna’s, a popular nightclub in Markham, Illinois. Big Mike’s son was hugged up with Peaches, a dark-skinned stripper that recently started dancing at the same strip club where Cresha worked.
Cresha took the picture and slipped it in her bra.
“Hmm. Lakisha Sanford,” Cresha said thoughtfully as she turned to leave the bedroom.
She didn’t even make it to the doorway.
~Chapter 13~
Joe-Joe slung the pie-sized slab of brick through Big Mike’s bedroom window and watched it collide with the back of the girl’s head. She landed harder than the brick.
“Run in there, Ty!” Joe-Joe said, yanking up his sagging shorts.
Tyrone ran to the rear of the house and Lil Mike’s sister, Treecy, leaned around the front of the house a few seconds later.
“Ooooooweee, Joe-Joe, I know yo’ lil bad ass ain’t just bust my daddy’s window,” she shouted disbelievingly.
Ducking low beside the house, Joe-Joe shouted, “Hurry up and get on the ground! Ty bout to—”
The first gunshot sounded like a canon. Joe-Joe immediately dropped flat to the concrete walkway, and Treecy and her beautiful bow-legged friend Nyomi followed suit.
There had actually been
two
gunshots fired simultaneously from Tyrone’s .45 and James 9mm. Shocked by the sudden shattering of glass, James had kept his gun aimed at Big Mike’s head as he stood up to inspect the hallway. When Tyrone kicked the back door in and put a bullet in the left side of James’ neck, James instinctively squeezed the trigger of his Ruger. Then he slapped a hand onto the tingling hole in his neck and fell sideways to the floor, raising his pistol to return fire.
But Tyrone was quick. He let off four more shots, and every one of them found James, punching three holes in his face and one in the middle of his Bears t-shirt.
“Assata! Big Mike! Come on!” Tyrone yelled, still aiming the gun at the man he had just killed.
Assata got to her knees and screamed, “Michael! Noooooo!”
That’s when Tyrone glanced at Big Mike and saw that the old guy had suffered a bullet wound to the back of the head. His cheek was planted in a grotesque splash of brain and bone, and his distraught wife wouldn’t stop screaming about it.
Then came three more gunshots.
Stepping out of the bedroom, dazed and aching, holding the back of her bleeding head, Cresha gasped at the sight of her dead brother. She pointed the revolver at the teenager and shot him twice in his left shoulder. Her third shot missed but the first two knocked him off his feet. His gun skittered across the bloody linoleum, and he let out a painful groan.
Cresha ran past him and o
ut the back door.
~Chapter 14~
“Damn, bae... y’all… need to do this shit more often.” I was holding on to Shay’s narrow waist and staring at the angel wings that were tattooed on her lower back while she bounced her lubricious pussy up and down the length of my condom-wrapped magic stick.
Kisha was kissing all over the big VICE LORD tattoo that was arched across my abdomen. The pleasurable feeling of her soft pecking lips and Shay’s gushy juice box—combined with the good Kush and alcohol
, and the knowledge of all the dope and money I had hidden away in Kisha’s bedroom—had me sitting on top of the world; or at least on top of the Lawndale neighborhood. I’m pretty sure I was the only nigga in the hood with seven bricks of cocaine—well, three and a half bricks, since the other half of the dope belonged to Pops. Now, sitting on the ugly sofa with two pretty, naked black women who’d been taking turns riding me for the past forty minutes, I was in the best mood ever.
“You gon’ get me some Louboutins?” Kisha asked as she eased her head back to smile at me. “The pair I want only costs twelve hundred. They’re called the Miss Benin 160 leather sling-backs.
Please
get them for me.”
I grinned, grunted and relieved myself into the condom. Shay’s snug vaginal walls pulled every drop out of me. Breathing heavily, with sweat leaking down my face, I fell back on the sofa and exhaled.
On the table, my phone was ringing nonstop.
“I’ll get both of y’all some Louboutins if I keep getting’ treated like this,” I said.
Kisha sucked her teeth. “I didn’t say all that.” She snickered and slapped my chest, then handed me my phone while Shay climbed off of me.
The call was from Treecy.
And the news was bad; terribly bad.
~Chapter 15~
My brother’s blue Escalade on chrome thirty-inch rims pulled up in front of my parents’ Troy Street home ten minutes after I did. Treecy had raced into
my arms as soon as I stepped out of my Chevy and I was still holding her tightly when Scrilla walked up and wrapped his arms around the both of us.
I had called and told him what I’d heard from Treecy.
“It’s gon’ be okay Treecy. Everything’s gon’ be okay,” I murmured, trying my best to remain cool and level-headed.
That’s because I had to. CPD patrol cars and SUVs were everywhere. Our front porch was blocked off in crime scene tape. Uncle Mutulu—Momma’s brother—had arrived shortly before I had. He was now doing to Momma what I was doing to Treecy, holding her while she cried and screamed her head off.
“Damn, bruh,” Scrilla said. “What—shit, what happened?”
“It was some black ass nigga and a girl,” Treecy told us. “I saw the girl speed off in a green Tahoe after she shot Tyrone, and I found the nigga she came with dead in the kitchen with Daddy. Lil Joe-Joe took the guns and helped Tyrone walk down the alley to Rick’s car. They just took him
to the hospital.” She shook her head and sniffled. “I just wanna get away from here, Mikey. I don’t wanna see them carry Daddy out in no damn bag.”
I rubbed her back and pulled her closer. To be honest, I didn’t want to see my father’s body being carried out, either. But I wasn’t about to leave.
Not without my father’s duffle full of cash.
I walked Treecy over to Uncle Mutulu’s long, black Cadillac and helped her into the backseat. Momma got in beside her. I leaned in and kissed Momma on the cheek, wondering what I could possibly say to console her. Nothing came to mind, so I gave her a hug and shut the door.
“We’ll be at my house,” Mutulu said as he got in the driver’s seat. He had on a gray business suit, the everyday attire of a business owner. He owned two convenience stores and several houses in the Lawndale neighborhood, including the one I was now standing in front of, the one that was now swarming with police officers.
“I’ll be over there in a lil while,” I said to Uncle Mutulu.
Momma rolled down her window.
“That
duffle bag,” she said, “the one Michael brought in this morning. It’s in the trunk of his car. I think that’s what they came for. Here,” she said as she handed me the keys to my father’s broke-down 1989 Chevy Caprice.
‘They couldn’t have come for the money,’
I thought to myself as I watched the Cadillac accelerate up Troy to Roosevelt.
And then it hit me.
‘The green Tahoe.’
I had seen a green Tahoe on the corner near Mone’s house shortly before the robbery; I’d nearly crashed into a green Tahoe at the intersection of Troy and Roosevelt on my way to Kisha’s; and Treecy said she’d seen the girl speeding away in a green Tahoe.
“Shit.” I crossed the street to where Kisha and Shay were standing behind my car. “They must’ve followed me,” I guessed out loud.
“Who?” Kisha asked.
I didn’t answer because I had no answer to give.
~Chapter 16~
The following week seemed to pass by in slow motion. Momma was grieving too heavily to manage my father’s funeral preparations and Scrilla was too damn lazy—or “busy” as he always said—so it all fell on me and Kisha. The $10,000 life insurance policy covered all the expenses. I went out with Kisha and Treecy and bought Pops a three thousand dollar Armani suit so he could leave us in style—and I ended up on an impromptu Michigan Avenue shopping spree that relieved me of and additional twelve thousand dollars on designer clothes for myself and the girls. I had put Pops’ raggedy old Caprice in a local detailing shop for a fifty thousand dollar makeover the day after his murder, and although I was too fucked up over his death, in the back of my mind I was anxious to see the old car’s new look.
I awoke at 3:00 a.m. on the morning of his funeral, my head heavy with images of Pops lying dead in his casket, my eyes brimming with tears. I hadn’t cried in years, but now I did. The tears crept out of the corners of my eyes and cascaded down into my ears as I gazed up at the clean white ceiling of the Hilton Hotel suite Kisha and I had been staying in for the past two days. Kisha’s left arm was draped across my chest, and her face was buried in the crook of my neck.
I thought of the nightmares I’d been having since the day of Pops’ murder. They had all taken place in different locations, but the situations had all played out the same way, with me being shot to death while driving my father’s Caprice past a group of young niggas in black hoodies. Twice the daunting nightmares had occurred in front of Mone’s stash house, and the others transpired in and around my hood.
Shifting onto my side, I eyed Kisha’s beautiful chocolate-brown face and realized why those dreams were bothering me so much: I was afraid that one of them might come true, and that Kisha would be with me when it did.
I pressed my lips against her forehead and pulled her naked body closer to mine. The warmth of her closeness comforted me, and soon I was drifting back off to sleep.
“Lil Mikey. Lil Mikey, wake up.”
Instinctively, I dipped my hand underneath my pillow and curled my fingers around the butt of my Glock before opening my eyes to investigate the voice.
I let out a sigh of relief when I saw that it was Kisha. She was standing beside the bed in a black lace Victoria’s Secret bra and panties set. She had on the Christian Louboutins I’d gotten her last week, and she was ba
lancing a palate-teasing breakfast tray in the palm of her hand: biscuits drenched in thick meaty gravy, scrambled eggs with cheese, hash browns, and a tall glass of milk.
“Good morning, bae. Get some food in your stomach so we can get goin’. We need to be out of here in the next thirty minutes.”
“I’m cool,” I said, pushing the tray back at her. I looked at the red digital numbers on the bedside clock, 7:15 a.m. “Just roll me a blunt, baby. And give me a kiss.”
“You need to eat something, Mikey. You barely ate anything yesterday.”
“I’ll be a’ight.” I sat up and fingered the crust out of my eyes.
“No, you won’t.” Kisha planted the tray on my lap. “Eat.”
“Nuh uh.” I sat the tray aside, swung my legs over the side of the bed, and ran my hands up her soft black thighs. “I’m not about to force myself to eat when I ain’t even hungry… unless you gon’ let me eat some of this.” I kissed the front of her panties, inhaling the mouth-watering scent of her pussy.
“Boy.” She leaned down and kissed me on the lips. “Eat your breakfast, okay? I might give you a little snack before we leave.”
“Better give me
somethin’
, all that muhfuckin bread I done blew on you.”
“So what? I’m wifey, ain’t I?
You’re supposed to take care of me. That way I can take care of everything around us.” She slapped me gently on the cheek. “Now eat.”
I smacked her on the ass and watched it jiggle as she walked out to the sitting room. We were in a Lakeview suite, the most expensive suite at the Magnificent Mile’s most lavish hotel, yet somehow Kisha managed to keep me entranced more than the room’s panoramic views. Her
sensuous walk held me spellbound. She sauntered the way I imagined an angel would, a perfectly imperfect angel of African descent.
Needl
ess to say, I struggled with an early morning erection while devouring the warm breakfast. Suddenly I was glad that I had gotten away with the cash and drugs. Kisha had started dancing at Arnie’s shortly before that horrible day last week, and thanks to the money, she hadn’t danced there since; which was indeed good because I hated having a stripper girlfriend. I wanted to be the provider, the man, the pants-wearing bread-winner. And now I was just that.
I finished eating,
took a shower, and put on the black Tom Ford suit Kisha had rented for me to wear to the funeral. She had my blunt ready and my tie in hand when I stepped out of the bathroom.
“Scrilla and his cousin Rose just got here with Shay,” she said, slinging the black silk tie around my neck. “Rose wants a whole brick this time, and I think your brother said he wants another one.”
“Fuck you mean you
think
he said that?”
“I couldn’t really hear him with his lips glued to Shay’s neck. They probably ran a train on her last night.” Kisha twisted her face in disgust as she pushed the blunt between my lips. “No more threesomes with her. Ugh.”
I smiled and filled my palms with her soft derriere. “You love me?” I asked, gazing into her sweet brown eyes as she lit the blunt.
“I’ll love you when I get a ring,” she retorted. “Till then, I’ll only like you sometimes. Is that good enough?”
“As long as
till then
you keep bringin’ me some new pussy sometimes, I ain’t got no issue with that.”
“You tryna get slapped?”
“I love you, Kisha.”
“That ain’t what I asked—” she started, but I lifted her by the waist and playfully tossed her onto the large white-blanketed bed. She giggled merrily, and for a moment I contemplated getting a taste of her juicy womanhood. But then Scrilla and Rose walked in.
Unlike Scrilla, who was brown-skinned, short and a little chubby, Rose was dark and taller, with an athletic frame and an ice cube chilling behind each of his eyeballs. They were swagged out in True Religion blue jeans and Gucci everything else. Scrilla had a big white McDonald’s bag folded over in one hand.
“Why y’all ain’t dressed for the funeral?” I asked as I crossed the room to a white easy chair. My Mauri shoes were standing atop my two thousand dollar Louis Vuitton suitcase next to the chair. Kisha’s black Valentino dress was draped over the arm of the chair beneath my box of Gucci cologne.
On the seat of the chair was my new 9mm Glock, fully-equipped with red laser sighting and a 50-round SGM drum magazine.
“Nigga, we is dressed,” Scrilla said. “I’m goin’ G’d up to folks’ funeral.”
“Straight up, G-ball,” Rose added, typing something on his iPhone 5.
Simultaneously, I picked up the Glock, lit the blunt, and threw Kisha her dress. She caught it and put it on quickly… and I caught Scrilla and Rose staring at her as she shimmied into the dress.
“You should wear something respectable for the old man,” I said to Scrilla. I sat down in the chair and put the Glock on my lap, studying Scrilla and Rose’s expressions.
I sensed bad news.
Scrilla opened the McDonald’s bag and canted it toward me. It was filled with rubber-banded stacks of cash.
“You bring the slabs?” He asked.
“I told you last night I had ‘em with me. Is that sixty racks?” I sucked in a bunch of smoke. Kisha squatted in front of me and started stuffing my feet into the gator-skin Mauris.
“Yeah, it’s sixty. Counted it twice,” Scrilla said. He laid the bag on the foot of the bed and sighed. “Man, lil bruh… we don’t think you should go to the funeral. Shit might pop off if some Vice Lords show up at a funeral full of GDs, you feel me? ‘Specially since Pops got killed in a Vice Lord neighborhood. That’s why them lil niggas got shot up on Ogden the other day. Shit, that’s why most of the shootings that done happened in the past week been in yo’ hood.”
I dropped my head back and blew out a perfectly circular ring of Kush smoke. Scrilla’s suggestion that I not attend our father’s funeral made me grind my teeth in anger, but I held it in like the next lungful of smoke. Pops had been a Board Member, the highest rank given in the Gangster Disciple Nation. Yesterday his wake had been packed full of GDs from all over the Midwest, and I had been the only Vice Lord.
Scrilla and Rose were also Gangster Disciples.
“Baby,” I said to Kisha, turning my head as she sprayed me with the Gucci cologne, “grab those two bricks out the suitcase, and start countin’ that money.”
For a while a grim silence filled the room. I sat there in the soft white chair and smoked my blunt watching Kisha as she began counting the cash on the bed. I wondered if my brother thought my hood was soft or something, like we were afraid to show up at a funeral full of the opposition. I didn’t give a fuck if every gang in the city showed their faces there, I was still going.
“Pass that good shit, nigga,” Scrilla Man said. He walked over and got the blunt from me. “Just for the record, if something does pop off, I’m knockin’ heads off for you. But I think it’ll be better to avoid that kinda situation… unless you’re tryna do forever in the joint.”
I stood up and started removing my suit piece by piece, holding the Glock and opening the suitcase. I left the suit scattered across the floor
and pulled out a brand new True Religion outfit—a white t-shirt and baggy blue jeans. I put on the outfit, added a gray pair of Louis Vuitton sneakers with a matching belt and visor cap.
“Shit,” Rose said, “that nigga ain’t gon’ need our help. You see dat drum? What’s that, a fifty?”
“Hell muhfuckin yeah, nigga, and it’s filled all the way up,” I said, buckling my LV belt. I knew that Scrilla Man and Rose wore Gucci because they felt the double G symbol represented Gangster, as in Gangster Disciple. So I wore Louis Vuitton’s LV symbol for Vice Lord, and all my niggas on 15
th
and Homan had done the same.
Scrilla tapped my shoulder and passed me the blunt just as Shay came sauntering into the room wearing a short black strapless dress and the six-inch Louboutin heels I’d bought at the same time I bought Kisha’s heels. Shay was flipping through a stack of hundreds, fifties, and twenties.
“Here’s your money for that Kush,” Shay said, handing me the cash. “Fifty-five hundred. If you can hit me with another pound, I’ll have it gone tonight. My lil bro want one, too.”
“I gotchoo.” I was already counting the bills.
“It’s sixty thousand,” Kisha interjected from the bed. She dropped the two kilos—which were wrapped in clear cellophane and stamped in the center with the letters KR—into the McDonald’s bag and tossed it to Scrilla.
“I take it you’re still goin’ to the funeral,” Scrilla said as he glanced from the pistol in my hand to the brand new
Louis Vuitton duffle bag on the other side of the easy chair. “Gangbanging ass nigga.”
“Hell yeah I’m goin’,” I said assertively. “Pops wouldn’t have it any other way. I’m ready to die right
there in front of him if I have to.”
Kisha and I packed hurriedly. Ten minutes later, we followed our guests out of the Hilton suite.