Authors: Rio
~Chapter 17~
“You’re gonna need some more dope soon, and I know just the person to contact. This girl I met at the strip club introduced me to him the night I started dancing there. I think his name is King-Royce or somethin’ like that; a Latin King wit’ connections to the Costilla Cartel. She said Royce had been sellin’ bricks to the Breeds for fourteen racks apiece. You’ll make a killin’ wit’ those prices.”
Lying back in the passenger’s seat of my Monte Carlo with my fingers interlaced behind my head while Kisha steered the new chrome 26-inch rims through the west side streets, I was trying to hide the fact that I was still angry about the GDs not wanting me at my father’s funeral.
I sat up and glanced around the street—we were soaring down Independence Boulevard—then said, “Ain’t nobody sellin’ bricks for no fourteen racks. Can’t even get
half
a brick for fourteen.”
Kisha sighed and sucked her teeth. “Haven’t you heard of the Matamoros Cartel in Mexico? I watched an episode about their war with the Zeta Cartel on Gangland. The Matamoros drug cartel is now considered to be the number one trafficker of heroin and cocaine in South America, and a lot of people believe the Matamoros Cartel
is
the Costilla Cartel. If King-Royce is plugged with them, then he probably is selling kilos for fourteen thousand.” She turned to me with a reluctant expression on her face. “I, uh… have his number somewhere in my locker at the strip club. I can drop by and get it if they haven’t cleaned out my locker yet. Or I can call the dancer who introduced me to him. I think I still got her number in my phone.”
I shrugged my shoulders and lit a Newport. “I don’t give a fuck. Just get me to 15
th
and Homan so I can check on my lil nigga Tyrone. He just got out the hospital last night.”
Kisha dialed a number on her smartphone and a few seconds later she said, “Hello, is this
Lacresha?”
**********
There were over twenty teenaged gangbangers posted up on 15
th
and Homan when Kisha parked the Monte Carlo behind my nigga Tweet’s old school Cutlass; the red 1969 Oldsmobile had black rally stripes, black leather interior with red stitching, and a matching set of black 30-inch rims that hurt my pride a little as I stepped out to a barrage of TVL handshakes. The “ballers” of the clique—Tweet, Zo, and Roddy—embraced me first. Then came the young niggas, like Dre, Shorty Hustle, and Joe-Joe.
“Here you go, Joe,” Joe-Joe said as he handed me a wrinkled and folded knot of cash. I had given him three ounces of crack four days ago for him and his crew to get rid of, and he owed me $3,300.
“How much is this,” I asked.
“Thirty-three hun’ed,” Joe-Joe said. “Sold the last of that shit the other day. Been sellin’ Kush sacks and boy since then. Ain’t shit gettin’ sold right now, though. We just whooped one of the Breeds on Sixteenth. They talkin’ about comin’ back on gunplay.”
Shaking my head, I looked to my right and smiled at Tyrone as he came walking up the sidewalk with his arm in a sling. I watched him and he watched me, while everyone else admired and talked about the new rims on my Chevy.
“Damn nigga, you ridin’ on sixes now?” Tyrone said with a grin.
“You and Joe-Joe get in the car,” I said, handing him the cash Joe-Joe had just given me. “Do whatever you wanna do with that. I got somethin’ else for you, too.”
“You don’t owe me a dime, bruh. I did that
‘cause I fuck witchoo,” Tyrone said as I opened my passenger’s door and slid the seat forward so they could get in.
Suddenly, the piercing sound of screeching tires interrupted the serene street. A white Lincoln came barreling down Homan and two young nigg
as with dreads and dark faces were hanging out the passenger’s side windows with assault rifles gripped tightly in their hands.
My Glock with the fifty-round drum was folded into my seat; Kisha was scrolling down her Facebook page on her phone; Tyrone and Joe-Joe were just getting situated in the backseat.
I grabbed the Glock, ducked into the backseat, and aimed at the rapidly approaching Town Car just as the dread-headed gunmen opened fire.
PHOP PHOP PHOP PHOP PHOP PHOP PH
OP PHOP PHOP PHOP PHOP PHOP
The gunshots from their assault rifles were so loud that I hardly heard the boom of my Glock as I started shooting holes through the rear window, aiming at the shooters and ignoring Kisha’s frantic screams.
I dove to the floor as they sped by. The pinging sound of bullets ripping through my car frightened me a little, but I rose as soon as they passed and stood beside the open passenger door. I was holding the gun sideways and squeezing off shots at the Lincoln until it made a left on 16
th
and disappeared.
I looked at Kisha, saw that she was okay,
and then checked on Tyrone and Joe-Joe; they were good, too.
But the same could not be said for Luke and two other TVLs.
They were stretched out on the sidewalk, bleeding profusely from multiple gunshot wounds.
~Chapter 18~
With eight fresh bullet holes in the side of my car, I had no choice but to show up at my father’s funeral in Kisha’s white Expedition, which wouldn’t have been so bad if not for the hot pink Hello Kitty interior. Kisha had stayed home with Tyrone and Joe-Joe; she’d been too shell-shocked to attend the funeral.
I sat in the front pew between Momma and Treecy during the service, flicking my eyes around at what seemed like a million Gangster Disciples and fighting back tears every time I looked at the casket. Scrilla Man was sitting next to Treecy, crying with a straight face.
Halfway through the service, Momma fell against me and started sobbing. Groaning and repeating “No” over and over again until her voice became a small whisper. I wrapped my arm around her fragile body and pulled her close, and we stayed that way until it was time to leave for the burial.
“Walk Momma out to the limo,” I told Treecy.
“Daddy’s
gone
,” she replied weakly. “He’s really
gone
.”
I nudged the two of them toward the aisle, but they were too distraught to walk alone, so I walked them to the tall oak door, opened it, and stepped out into the sunshine with them.
The first thing I noticed was the single CPD Suburban that was slowly driving past on Roosevelt Road, sticking out like a sore thumb amid a crowd of 400 GDs, 100 TVLs, and eighty or ninety members of my father’s extended family.
“Go and tell that old nigga I said bye,” Assata muttered, dabbing the tears from her smooth brown cheeks with a Kleenex. “I’m not strong enough to tell him myself.”
“You’re strong enough to do anything, Ma,” I encouraged.
She shook her head no. “Not today, Mikey. Not today,” she said, and started toward the limo with Treecy.
I lit a cigarette and was taking my second pull when I looked over and saw Scrilla Man standing next to me.
“We gotta find out who that girl was, lil bruh. The bitch that shot yo’ lil guy Tyrone. She
gotta
get murked for this shit. Let me hit that square.”
“We’ll find her,” I said, handing him the cigarette.
There wasn’t much conviction in my tone. I knew that we didn’t have a chance at finding the girl without knowing her name. Shit, I couldn’t even find my own damned Illinois State…
“ID!” I blurted suddenly. “It
was my mothafuckin ID!”
Scrilla Man’s expression became quizzical. “What?” He said.
But I was already jogging urgently toward Momma and Treecy.
“Treecy! Momma! I stopped them just as they were about to get in the black limo. “The girl who shot Tyrone, did she have on a pink dress? Dark-skinned wit’ short hair?”
“Yup,” said Treecy. “That’s exactly how she looked.”
Momma nodded her head in agreement.
~Chapter 19~
It never took much liquor to get Kisha drunk.
The shooting had rattled her nerves severely, and now she was sitting at her kitchen table with Shay, Tyrone, and Joe-Joe. They were playing a game of Spades for shots of Ciroc, and Kisha and Shay were taking a beating.
“I quit,” Kisha said, throwing in her hand. “I’m way too drunk for this shit. Shay, roll up another blunt. I’m about to go outside and see if that girl done made it here yet. She was s’posed to meet us on Homan before them crazy ass niggas got to shootin’.”
Tyrone shook his head in disbelief. “I just cain’t believe they came through bussin’ like that. We been beefin’ forever, but this the first time it came to gunplay.”
“Don’t even trip, Joe,” Joe-Joe said as he picked up the half-empty Ciroc bottle. “We got choppas on deck, too. Wait till the hood cool off, I’m choppin
’ niggas down on sight.”
He turned the bottle up to take a sip but Shay snatched it out his hand before it made it to his lips.
“You too young to be drinkin’,” Shay said, filling her shot glass with the vodka. “Two shots is enough for you.”
“Fuck you think you talkin’ to? I’m fourteen goin’ on thirty, and I got a grown man dick and a grown man bankroll...”
Joe-Joe was flaunting a stack of cash in Shay’s face when Tyrone got up and followed Kisha out of the kitchen.
“I’m not lettin’ you go outside drunk like this,” Tyrone said, grabbing ahold of Kisha’s elbow just as they were entering the living room. “Wait till Mikey get back. You can’t even walk straight right now.”
“Boy you better let me go before you end up wit’
two
useless arms.” She yanked her elbow out of his grasp. “I’m good, okay? Shit, I might be able to get this hoe to give you some pussy. She a stripper, dark like me, kinda cute, too.”
Shaking his head, and secretly scoping Kisha’s plump backside, he locked his fingers around her elbow again. But this time he pushed her onto the new white leather sofa.
She looked up at him and laughed. Her eyes drifted down to the crotch of his jeans and she reached out to touch it; he slapped her hand so hard that she snatched it back and massaged it.
Tyrone’s expression became a mask of disgust. He was attracted to Kisha the same way he was to all beautiful black women, but his loyalty to Mikey and the TVL mob came first.
“You ain’t
that
muhfuckin drunk,” he said, scowling.
“I know.” Kisha shook her head. “I’m sorry, Tyrone. I’m so fucked up off that Ciroc.” She reached around him and lifted her phone from the table. “Damn, Cre done called me three times already.”
“Who?”
“Lacresha, the stripper I was just tellin’ you about, the one who was supposed to meet us on Homan
when they started shootin’.”
Tyrone frowned thoughtfully.
Kisha returned Lacresha’s call.
~Chapter 20~
In the alley a block down from Kisha’s Millard Street home, Lacresha drove up beside the white Lincoln and parked. She was behind the wheel of her new friend King-Royce’s shiny yellow Bentley coupe. A dark pair of Chanel shades shielded her blood-shot eyes from the harsh sunlight and her tiny, yellow, one-shouldered Prada dress left little to the imagination. Yesterday she had watched her brother’s casket get lowered into the earth, and then she had driven home to Royce’s condo in his black Benz and curled up in bed alone, crying her eyes out and reading a LaTonya West novel on her iPad’s Kindle app.
Royce had stayed at the small mansion that he shared with his wife Aesha in Bellwood, just as he’d been doing since he’d given Cresha the keys to his Gold Coast condo. She knew he was only helping her out of sympathy;
She was his favorite stripper at Arnie’s, had been for months, plus she and James had just bought nine ounces of soft from Royce a couple of weeks ago, and eight pounds of Kush a month before that.
Cresha took a seven-gram bag of coke out of her Coach bag and poured a little onto the screen of her iPad. The Bentley’s passenger door opened and in climbed two dark-hued goons, both with assault rifles gripped tightly in their veiny teenaged hands. Branches of dread locks were draped over their cold young eyes.
“Please,” Cresha said, rolling a hundred dollar bill into a nose straw, “tell me y’all found that nigga and put a hole in his head.”
“We aired out the whole block. The whip we been seein’ outside ol’ girl crib was out there. We wet that muhfucka up, too,” said Treys, the
violently-composed Black Disciple in the passenger’s seat. “A nigga in that Monte Carlo got to bussin’ back and shot Lil Bobo in the neck. Lil nigga in there bleedin’ out as we speak.”
“Hell yeah,” said Two-One, the BD who was sitting behind Treys. “That lil nigga stretched out in the backseat lookin’ paler than a muhfucka. He called his momma. She on her way to get him now.”
Cresha snorted up a line of coke and then dropped her head back, pinching the bridge of her nose between her two fingers.
‘These lil nigga gon’ get me locked up,’
she thought to herself before glancing over at the white Lincoln.
“Does she know that he was with y’all?”
Treys shook his head no. “Fuck is we still sittin’ here for? Let’s ride, nigga.” He reclined his seat and waited for her to pull off.
But Cresha didn’t step her Prada heel on the gas pedal. She snorted up another line of uncu
t powder then dug in her purse and, ignoring her vibrating phone, pulled out the chrome .38 she had gotten from her brother, and handed it to Treys.
“Y’all just put in some serious work for me, and I’m not tryna be tied up in court over this shit.” Cresha locked eyes with the young goon sitting next to her. “Think they ain’t gon’ question Bobo when he get to the hospital? You better handle that shit ‘fore we end up wit’ life sentences.”
“Hell muhfuckin yeah,” Two-One agreed from the backseat. “We just met that lil nigga anyway. If he fold, we all fucked.”
Aggressively, Treys pushed open his door and walked over to the old white Lincoln. He stuck the revolver through the driver’s side window and two thunderous gunshots followed.
Cresha watched the blood splash up onto the rear windows. Then Treys returned to his seat in the Bentley and Cresha sped off.