The Mike Black Saga Book One

Whatever It Takes by Angela Jones

Somebody’s Somebody by La Jill Hunt

Don’t Be
A
Dumb Bitch by Ayana Ellis

Coming Soon from Kingstown Publishing

No Loose Ends by Roy Glenn

Ain’t Nothing Like
The
Real Thing by La Jill Hunt

Visit www.escapismentertainment.net

It was a beautiful Caribbean night. The moon was full and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. I sat by the pool at my house in Nassau with my daughter Michelle asleep with her head on my lap. She’s a beautiful girl that looks just like her mother. I sat looking at her, and I wondered what her life gonna be like?

How would I protect her? How would I keep her safe from my world? How would her life be different from mine? For one thing, Michelle would grow up having her father in her life. I never knew my father growin’ up. I was born in St. Vincent. My mother, Emily Black met my father one night at a dancehall.

“Michael, back then, I was a different person,” Emily told me one night. “I was eighteen and I was so fast.”

“You? Fast? I have a hard time believing that,” I said.

“It’s true. Having you changed my life.” Emily smiled. “I was so drunk. That’s why I stopped drinking. I never saw him again after that night, never even tried.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” I asked her.

“Pride. You were too young when you used to ask. Besides, it wasn’t your business. When you got older, you stopped asking. I didn’t think it mattered to you anymore. I didn’t know that man. Only thing I do remember about him is that he was kind of arrogant.”

I was four years old when my mother left St. Vincent and came to New York. We had no family or friends when we got there. We didn’t have much money either. We moved into a small, one-room flat in the South Bronx. After Emily completed nursing school, she got a job at Lebanon Hospital working the evening shift when I was six. With a new job, she was able to move us out of the South Bronx into the basement of a two family house, in a section of the Bronx with a large West Indian population.

I met my best friend, Bobby Ray when we were in the third grade together. He lived down the block and we’ve been best friends ever since. Bobby is more like a brother to me now. When we were in the fifth grade, Wanda Moore and her older brother moved on the block and that same summer, Perry
Dukes
parents bought the house next door and Vickie Payne moved down the block near Bobby. We were in junior high school when Jamaica moved to the block. His real name is Clyde Walker, but since he had just got off the boat from Jamaica, and he talked with an accent, we just started calling him Jamaica. Now our crew was almost set. The only one left was Nick.

Nick Simmons lost his parents when he was eleven. He never really knew what happened to them. One day they just didn’t come home. So his brother and sister went Mississippi to live with his father’s brother and his wife. But they didn’t want Nick. He told me that he heard his uncle talkin’ about it one night.

“They were just babies. We could raise them in the church. They will be all right. But not Nick, that boy is into too much trouble and I not havin’ it. Not in my house! He probably the reason they didn’t come home,” his uncle said. He didn’t know Nick was listening.

It was decided that Nick would go live with his grandmother.
 
She lived on the block. And after I kicked his ass on his first day on the block, the crew was set and we ran the block. We protected everybody who lived there. It started when we were young. Emily would make us carry packages for the ladies on the block. When we got older, we would walk them places at night. We wouldn’t let anybody who didn’t live there hang out there.

One day when I was fifteen and some guys tried to sell drugs to some kids on the block.
Me
and Bobby chased them off the block. A drug dealer named André Harmon, who ran most of the illegal activity in the area, saw the whole thing. He calls me over to his car. “
You done
good chasin’ them fuckas off your block.”

“Really,” I said, excited that André was even talkin’ to me like that. At the time, I really looked up to André and believed everything he said. I was
a wanna
be gangster, and I wanted to be down with André.
 

“But you know it won’t last.”

“It won’t?”

André shook his head. “They’ll be back.” He told me to get in the car and ride with him. While we drove, André said, “Those are small fish. If you want to put a stop to it, you gotta cut off the head.” He told me that they work for a hustler that called himself Chicago. Then he handed me a gun. “You know how to use one of those,” he asked.

I shook my head quickly. I had fired a gun a few times, but I never shot anybody, much less kill somebody, but I wasn’t about to tell André that. If that’s what it took to be down with André, I was in. “It will never stop until you killed him.”

For a couple of weeks I followed Chicago around. Trying to see the best time to hit him. Chicago was a creature of habit; he would leave his house about the same time every day. So I got a friend of mine named Angelo Collette to drive for me. Mainly because Angelo was the only one I knew with a car “That’s where I’ll hit him. Right in front of his house, to send a message. You mess with me at my
home,
I’ll mess with you at yours.”

“You really gonna whack this guy, Mikey?” Angelo asked when I told him where they were goin’.

“Yeah, Angee. I’m really gonna whack this guy,” I said from the backseat.

Chicago came out of the house heading for his car. Angee started to roll. When they got up on him, I pulled my gun, ready to kill him. But I heard somebody yelled, ‘Daddy take me with you.’ I stopped and looked back, and I saw a little girl standing on the steps looking dead at me.

I couldn’t do it.

Those eyes went right through me. I just told Angee to drive. When I got back to André’s, I was there with Bobby and five women. After the women left I told André and Bobby what happened, and they both had a good laugh. Then he told me and Bobby to go a little bar up on Bronxwood later that night.

André gave us a picture of these two guys, and told them what he wanted done. Since I had just got punked out on a job, André asked if
me
was sure I can handle it.

“Hell yeah, I can handle it,” I told André that day. I was pretty sure that none of their kids would be hangin’ out with them at the bar.

The rest of the day,
neither me or
Bobby did much talkin’, which was rare for Bobby. Truth was
,
we were both nervous, especially since I had just fucked around and couldn’t kill Chicago.

When we get to the spot, the guy at the door won’t let us in. He said that we looked too young to be in there, until Bobby told the man that André sent us. After that it was all good.

Once we got inside and sat down I asked Bobby, “What you tell him that for?”

“It got us in, right?” Bobby said. “And besides, André wants everybody to know it was him behind it.”

I couldn’t argue with his logic.

“Just relax. Have a drink and enjoy yourself,” Bobby said and stared at the lone naked dancer behind the bar. “You ain’t scared are you?”

“No! And don’t you start with me. I heard enough of that shit from Angelo.”

“Angelo.” Bobby shook his head. “Why you
hangout
with that guy anyway?” Bobby tolerates my friendship with Angee, but he never did like him, and wonders why I do.

“Angelo’s a good guy. Give him a chance. He’s gonna be a good guy to know,” I told Bobby and we waited.

It was two in the morning before the guys we were looking for got there. I tapped Bobby on the shoulder.

“You ready?” I asked and Bobby nodded.