Hood Rich: The rise and fall of one of Brooklyn's Finest

This book is dedicated to my seeds and my earth.
They are my motivation for making life changing decisions.
They give me the strength to do the things that I need to do

They aint call me “Hood Rich” for nothing… I had the
whole Wilson Avenue popin’ from the L stop to Halsey Street. I had some of the rawest coke too. It was so
raw, you could step on it, and it was still better than
any other coke you could find anywhere in the five
boroughs. It was all luck at first though, I must admit.
I had the best connect in the world... nobody. I got all
those bricks for free.
The abandoned house on Cooper and Knickerbocker
Avenue had been boarded up for fifth-teen years.
Word on the Street had it that twenty years ago, an
entire family had been murdered in that house. It was
the corner house. Everyone thought it was haunted,
and so did I. For 15 years no one went in. I would
never forget the day that I went in. My whole life
changed that day. It was June 21st. I can remember it
as if it was yesterday...
Me and Zeke were walking down Wilson Avenue
when we heard the gunshots. A couple of bodies
dropped right in front of Razor Sharp barbershop on
Wilson Avenue. I could see who was shooting as we
ducked down between two cars. It was those crazy
ass Moffat Street niggas. Manny ran over to me and
handed me a gun
“Here yo, stash that for me... I’m a holla at you later
youngin.”
Manny patted me on the back and took off running
up Wilson Avenue. I stood there with the gun in my
hand, frozen in time. I thought to myself for a split
second... what do I do?
Manny was like “Mr. Big” in my hood. I was only
seventeen years old and I had just graduated from
Franklin K. Lane high school. However, growing up
in the hood gave me maturity beyond my years. I
knew I needed to get rid of that gun as fast as possible. I looked up and Zeke was already gone, sprinting
up Wilson Avenue towards Decatur Street. I could
hear the sirens approaching as cops started swarming
the area. I ran up Moffat Street towards Knickerbocker Avenue as a patrol car zoomed by me.
I cut through the school yard to Cooper Street and
looked up at the abandoned house. Perfect I thought.
It appeared old and dilapidated on the outside. It definitely hadn’t been kept up over the years. It stood
three stories high with deep red bricks and white
awnings.
I reached the back door and surveyed the entrance. It
was covered by a rapidly rotting wood board. I
pulled the boarding back and opened the door. I took
a deep breath and stepped inside. I stood there in the
kitchen with years of accumulated dust on everything. Dishes were still on the sink and counter. An
old metal toaster and salt & pepper shakers sat on an
old round breakfast table. I walked through to the
dinning room which was almost empty. There was a
ladder leaning against the wall and several cans of
paint on top of a thick clear plastic sheet. The living
room had the same arrangement. The basement door
was open. It stood between the living and dinning
rooms.
I inched slowly down the steps. As I cleared the ceiling I could see that the basement had been used as a
makeshift casino parlor. The light was dim, and almost nonexistent in the rear. In the front, streaks of
hard light cut through the edges of old wood planks
that were used to board up the basement windows.
There was a bar, and three round tables. Two of the
tables had carousels with poker cards and chips. The
other table had an old fashioned triple beam scale.
There were some Black duffel bags on the floor and a
cherry wood armoire against the wall. I looked toward the back of the basement which was dark. I decided not to go back there. I wiped the biscuit off with
the bottom of my white tee. Today was the first day
I’d actually held a gun. It was a chrome and pearl .357
magnum pistol. I tilted the armoire forward and
placed the pistol underneath it. Out of curiosity I
walked over to the Black duffel bags and pulled at
one of the zippers.
As I pulled the zipper down, my eyes opened up
wide and my pulse quickened. There was forty carefully wrapped plastic packages inside of the duffel. I
unzipped the other eight bags and they were the
same. I took one of the packages out the bag and sat it
on the scale. The package weighed two pounds and
eight ounces. My heart started pounding a mile a minute. I began to think... what the hell was I going to
do?
I wasn’t a drug dealer, but I was from the hood. I
didn’t know exactly how much this was worth, but I
knew it was allot! My mind began to race, catching up
to my heart I was thinking I should show Manny.
Wait... no... this is worth too much to much. I can’t tell
nobody, I thought. I wanted to find out exactly what I
had on my hands before I did anything. I decided I
would show Manny one of them, and tell him I found
it somewhere else. I took off my shirt and wrapped
up one of the packages. On my way out all I could
think of was who had lived in this house, what happened to them, and why all of those bags were left in
the basement. I peeped out of the boarding to be sure
that no one could see me coming out. I had to be careful.
Shakita was walking up the Street. In her day she was
one of the flyest chicks in Brooklyn; not that she still
didn’t have it.
Shakita was a curvaceous but slim red bone at 29
years old. She had the prettiest green eyes and
looked young too. She would get upset if any of the
neighborhood kids called her “Mrs”. She’d rather
them call her Shakita, in keeping with her young persona. Shakita had six kids. Only the two youngest
lived with her. They were twins, Quran and Teran.
The twins were ten years old. The other four kids she
had before she turned eighteen were lost in the system. Between her doing drugs and being pimped, she
lost her life, or the part of it that was meaningful.
Time was taking its toll, but Shakita still looked better
than most of the neighborhood chicks. This was mostly because she kept herself up so well. Shakita’s name
rang bells like Sunday at twelve o’clock amongst the
city’s top hustlers. In her teens she was a ghetto superstar. The two biggest drug dealers in Brooklyn
once had bad blood over Shakita. She was a dime
piece and she was down for anything, including taking trips and making drops. She was a hustlers
dream.
Shakita used to leave home for days at a time,
shacked up with a different drug dealer each week.
While on one of her getaways, her mom had a stroke
and the state took her children away. She was 17 at
the time. When she came home and got the news, she
sat on her stoop and cried. I watched from my window across the Street. I remember ... I was 6 six years
old then. I watched as Manny walked up the Street
and asked her if she was okay. This was the old Manny, before he became “Mr Big”.
Shakita and Manny were in the same class at Franklin
K. Lane high school, although Shakita only appeared
in school occasionally. Manny liked Shakita, even
though she never gave him the time of day. In fact
this was the first time he’d gotten eye contact from
her. They talked for a while before she went in the
house. Later that night, Shakita and one of her drug
dealing admirers rudely awakened the entire block
with their’ loud argument. Shortly after her friend
left, another one pulled up to pick her up.
After that night, Shakita was missing for a whole
year. One day she reappeared in a yellow cab with a
suitcase. Turns out she was in Atlantic City turning
tricks on Pacific Avenue. She ran away from her pimp
and came back to Brooklyn only to find out that her
mother had passed away from another stroke. When
the cab pulled up, Manny happened to be sitting a
few stoops down. He broke the news and managed to
console her.
The very female that Manny had admired since his
days at P.S. 384 elementary school was now in the
need of help. Manny had moved up in the crack game
during the year she was gone. He’d just taken control
of the main three crack strips in the hood. He also had
a crack house on Moffat Street, which was the block
he lived on.
Manny was there for her and it paid off. Shortly after
Shakita’s return, the twins were conceived. She was
Manny’s trophy, but not for long. Her whorish ways
got him into plenty quarrels, and even a shootout before he realized what and who he was dealing with.
Manny tried everything from spoiling, to beating her;
to no avail. One day Manny came home and caught
her having sex with one of his workers. It broke his
heart and turned him into a killer. They never found
that poor kid. From that point on Manny treated
Shakita like the dirt on the bottom of his shoe. He had
other females over the house, and even had sex with
them with her in the bed. Manny disrespected her in
private and in public in front of other people. At one
of his private parties, Manny sat in front of the table
snorting coke with two naked females. When Shakita
walked over to join the activities, Manny stood up
and blocked her. He turned her away. Instead he gave
her a Dutch that was laced with coke and weed. I
don’t think Manny ever thought that Shakita would
start smoking straight crack, or get hooked. The next
day Manny got booked by the narcs. He couldn’t
bailout on the account of his probation. He ended up
sitting for nearly twenty-five months in jail on Riker’s
Island. When Manny came home, Shakita was turning
tricks on Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the Galaxy
Motel to get high. Manny got on his feet and got her
off the streets, however he was always in denial about
the whole ordeal.
With the package in hand I darted out of the alleyway
and around the corner and up the block to my stoop. I
sat down and placed the package on the step beneath
me. I looked across the Street to Shakita’s house. The
lights were on and I had just saw her walking towards the block.
Decatur Street, our block, was usually filled with little
kids running up and down the Street. Old folks sitting
on they stoops watching the kids and just being plain
old nosy.
The “Fly Girls” sitting on the hood of somebody’s car
exchanging gossip. Hustlers standing in front of
“Georgie’s”, the corner bodega, slinging cracks. Now
today, however, was a different type of day. The hood
was deserted after all the shooting that had taken
place over the last two hours.
Bushwick, our neighborhood, was never usually that
quiet. Twenty-four hours a day there was nonstop action, especially in the summer. Being a mixed neighborhood, we had: Black's, Puerto Ricans, Jamaicans,
Dominicans, and Haitians. My block was mostly
Black, and Rican though. I lived on the so-called
“clean” Decatur Street, between Knickerbocker and
Irving. Now the block before mine between Wilson
Avenue and Knickerbocker was known as the “dirty”
Decatur Street or simply as the “dirty” block. The
reason it was called the dirty block is because it was
full of run down apartment buildings. My block, the
“clean” Decatur had mostly houses and duplexes. It
was well kept and all the kids dressed better. We also
had all the fly girls. Most of my homies lived on one
of the two Decaturs. A few of them lived on Cooper
or Moffat streets. We called ourselves “Brooklyn’s
Finest”. We named ourselves in homage to the original Brooklyn’s Finest or B-K-F as it was known in the
eighties, when Brooklyn had gangs with three letter
acronyms. They had Born To Fight or B-T-F, Brooklyn’s Most Wanted or B-M-W, and so on.
The O.G.’s that was down with the original Brooklyn’s Finest called us “Part Two”. We were all young.
Most of us had just graduated from Bushwick High or
Franklin K. Lane. We didn’t hustle or gang-war, we
was just homies.
I was sitting there for about five minutes before police
cars swarmed the block. A helicopter was shining a
spotlight at Shakita’s door. The police kicked it in,
and a few moments later Manny emerged at the door
in handcuffs and shackles. He was taken away quickly by Homer, NYPD’s top homicide detective. It
turned out that one of the guys that dropped in front
of the barbershop was playing possum, he was still
alive. The police combed the streets until morning
looking for that gun (that I had stashed in the abandoned house).
That night was the second time I saw Shakita cry. It
was like a rerun of a sad sitcom. Only this time, I was
outside and I was 17. I was old enough to understand
what was going on. I got up and walked across the
Street. I sat next to Shakita and draped my arm
around her.
“It’s going to be okay.” I told her. I tried to offer some
hope. It’s the least I could do.
“No, it’s not... that was homicide. Aint no corning
back from murder. What am I gone do? I aint never
work no nine to five. My kids need shit. I’m tired of
turning tricks for a couple of dollars. Niggas aint shit
either. I know Manny wasn’t shit, but I made him that
way. He really loved me and I did him dirty. What
the hell am I gone do now?”
I saw the pain in her eyes. The tears fell to her lap as
she trembled and cried in my arms.
“My life is fucked up... it’s not even worth living no
more... shit!”
Those words struck a nerve, and my heart. My mom
killed my dad when she caught him cheating. After
shooting him, she turned the gun on herself and
committed suicide. I was only five years old at the
time. I never dealt with it even though I had a therapist. I just blocked out my parents. It was my defense
mechanism. I couldn’t feel. All I could do was block.
My foster mom tried to get me to talk about it so
many times, but I never did. She was very supportive
and caring, and I was very stubborn. She quit trying
eventually because I was doing so well in school, and
adapting to my surroundings with so much ease.
I never spoke about my biological parents, but to hear
someone speak of suicide, it forces me to think about
my parents. I couldn’t let Shakita do that to her kids.
The twins were 10 years old. They were super-cool,
Quran and Teran. They already spoke the language of
the streets.
I looked Shakita in her eyes and grabbed her chin.
“Your kids... they need you. Remember how you felt
when your mom died? Do you want them to feel the
same way you felt? Just stay strong... it’s gone work
out.”
I wanted her to believe, but I already knew Manny
would be okay. After all, I’m the one who stashed the
gun. Shakita looked at me, smiled and said in her
tender voice: