Mack Daddy Legacy of a Gangsta

by Darrell King

  During the remainder of 1980, I accomplished exactly what I intended. I wooed Melissa Tate, and after only two weeks I gave her the banging of her life. She was impressed by the way I showered her with so much affection and quality time. I took her out to some of the most fun places in Southern California: Disneyland, Venice, Ocean Park, and Hermosa Beaches. We went to a couple kickass block parties, around my old stomping grounds during the time when break dancing was all the rage during these festive breakdance block parties. I’d entertain the crowd with a few of my own electrifying moves, or occasionally because of my wide spread notoriety in the ‘hood I’d help the DJ spin the records to a most raucous chorus of cheers from the ghetto teens. At these immensely popular block parties, everyone that was anyone in the ‘hood attended. Gang members from all over the Los Angeles and Long Beach area converged on Compton or Watts during these late summer into early fall celebrations. These were the few times I can remember that everyone came to party and have a good time and forget about rival colors and animosities.

  Popular rap stars of the day also performed. The Sugar Hill Gang, Kurtis Blow, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Melly Mell, Run DMC, you name ‘em, they were there. West Coast rap hadn’t really blossomed that much yet, and gangsta rap was not to be heard of until years later. So New York rappers took center stage at most shows and parties. Melissa loved it. She loved the rough, rugged lifestyle and culture of the ghetto and its inhabitants, much more than she did the sheltered, pampered, lily white, aristocratic environment that she’d grown accustomed to during the short span of her young life. She was wrapped in wonder over my contagious popularity wherever I went, inside the pen or outside on the streets. She was absolutely dumbstruck at the number of cuties that sought my attention and romantic interest with the greatest fervor and persistence.

  Melissa marveled at the way I got us free admittance in to movie theaters, theme parks, rap and P-Funk concerts and major sporting events at the L.A. Coliseum, the Rose Bowl, and the Forum. Melissa was never nervous or afraid when she was in my company, because she knew that I was too well-known, respected and feared for almost anyone to have good reason or good sense to fuck with me. Only one time did I ever have to display my wicked temper before her.

  During December of 1980, shortly before the holiday season, whenever I had a chance to get out of the pen, I’d make my usual dope runs for Captain Tate, take back the drug money to his house and for the rest of the weekend I had the time to myself. I didn’t want to go around my mother’s way just yet, being caught up in the drugs so heavy and also being locked up, so I spent time in Compton or Watts, hangin’ out with my Reaper homies or going out on dates with Melissa.

  Lawrence Tate was a member of one of the exclusive country clubs of Bel Air. Polo, horseback riding, golf, tennis, skeet shooting and racquetball were a few of the featured attractions there. Melissa attended the country club with her father and regularly participated in the events offered there, especially horseback riding and tennis. Tate really didn’t want me, a little hoodlum, hanging around the country club and his affluent, white Bel Air acquaintances; which was all good as far as I was concerned.

  I simply showed up to drop off and at the end of the day pick up his lovely daughter. This one particular day as I pulled up at the entrance and gave the uniformed gate keeper my name and the name of the member whom I arrived for, he pointed toward a red Ferrari parked next to the opposite end of the street. I saw that a tall, sturdy, clean-shaven white boy around seventeen or eighteen wearing a tennis outfit and sunglasses was trying to talk to Melissa as she crossed the street coming toward me. She at first smiled and chatted briefly with him, then I could see that she was beginning to get irritated with his aggressive, flirtatious behavior.

  As she angrily jerked away from him, he quickly got out of his Ferrari and reached out, pulling her towards him and forced her lips to his. She struggled free and slapped him hard across the face. The white boy turned scarlet with rage, backhanding her to the ground. I’d seen just ‘bout enough. I took off out of my rag top lowrider like a bat out of hell enroute to the scene of the trouble.

  Before the white boy could even reach for Melissa a second time, I’d dropped his tall ass with a nasty two-piece, followed up with a wicked right upper cut to the chin. The big white boy staggered for a second or two then careened backward like a felled pine upon the hood of his Ferrari, from which he slid to the grass below, moaning groggily and holding his swollen jaw.

  Out of nowhere, around six or seven of his homies came running in my direction yelling obscenities and swinging golf clubs. I went behind me and from the small of my back I emerged with a nine and leveled the barrel on the onrushing attackers who stopped immediately in their tracks.

  “Looks ta me like one-on-one—me against him is a fair fight, but if you all high ‘n mighty whiteys want to make it uneven, then bring it on!” I snarled, slamming a clip into the nine and beckoning them with my finger. Not a soul moved. I smiled devilishly as I thought about jacking them for their Rolex watches and other expensive items, but I canceled that thought. I probably was in enough trouble already.

  I helped Melissa to her feet, made the white boy whose ass I had just kicked apologize to her and we took off in my rag top with Melissa smiling from ear-toear and talking big shit back at the white boys as they helped their beaten and embarrassed friend off the ground into his car. After that incident, Captain Tate sat me down and really let me have a piece of his mind. But I really didn’t give a shit, because I knew and he knew that he needed me too damn much for him to just simply let me do my remaining two years in prison and let it go at that.

  I was SCORPIO’s lead connection to the South Central drug market. So I knew good and damned well that Tate’s little harsh lecture was simply a slap on the wrist, a ploy for me to chill out in the big money areas where he’d have a lot of explaining to do and a hell of a lot to lose if my ghetto mentality got out of hand or our association went public. That would indeed prove to be one of the biggest scandals in Los Angeles Police Department history.

  My relationship with Melissa, however, blossomed more than ever. She was picking me up at one time on the weekends from prison until her old man the Captain forbade her to ever again show up at the correctional facilities for any reason. That didn’t stop her though. It only made her desire all the more intense. She’d roll up in the hood behind the wheel of her rose colored IROC Z-28 and scoop me up. She never had a problem finding me, because she’d call me the night before in the pen or write.

  We’d hit North Hollywood, Santa Monica or Woodland Hills, buy up some shit at the malls, catch a movie or two, fuck with Disneyland or shoot on down to Sea World in San Diego, and save the night for good old hot, butt-naked sex. We fucked everywhere – in her Z-28, in my drop top, at beaches, in public parks, everywhere. Once I fucked her in the Hollywood Bowl after a Parliament/ Funkadelic show. Driving down Pasadena Freeway she once took out my jimmy and placed it gently in her mouth, slowly caressing the head and shaft with her luscious lips, gazing into my eyes most seductively as she licked lovingly around the end of my now erect member. I ran my fingers through her curly, dark brown mane, forcing her on my dick with my palm positioned firmly behind her head covered in her silky brown locks.

  She moaned gently and pulled my jeans down a little ways further on my thighs, then like a bitch in heat she ripped off my underwear, cupping my balls in her hands, all the while bobbing her head up and down on my manhood. I fought to steady my free hand on the steering wheel as I became increasingly aroused by the second, observing this magnificently sexy female orally satisfy me.

  As we continued along the freeway I was honked at several times for veering into another motorists lane. My body began to shake slightly and I gripped the wheel with an even firmer grip. I gritted my teeth and felt my penis spasm rhythmically, then experienced overwhelming pleasure as I shot load after load of thick semen into her mouth. She swallowed willingly, then greedily slurped down
on my meat for more.

  We made passionate love even further when I took her home that same evening. Her mom was home but she didn’t mind me coming over. She saw me in and out of her crib anyway, delivering coke and bringing back payment to her crooked cop hubby. She’d greet us, then go right back to entertaining her girlfriends which were neighborhood wives of Bel Air tycoons. They gossiped, played cards, sipped on champagne, and snorted long powdery lines of cocaine – while Melissa would take me upstairs to her princesslike bedroom and fuck my brains out.

  Tate didn’t stay home much. He was a busy man as a city police chief, mobster, playboy. It was no secret that Lawrence Tate and the Brazilian beauty, Valencia Milano, had an ongoing affair that lasted for quite some time. They went on cruises together, dined at some of the most expensive and exclusive eateries in Hollywood, and received many a costly gift from one another.

  Mrs. Tate knew about her husband’s infidelity. How could she not know? But she didn’t seem to mind much. Just as long as Tate kept bringing in the cash she was happy. They even had threesome sex up in the Tate household, according to Melissa. Anna Marie had her little secret lovers on the side as well. More than a few times I did notice strange vehicles parked in the driveway or pulling off at the break of dawn, during the times the Captain was out of town on business or pleasure related trips.

  But in Southern California free for all sex, partner swapping, or swinging as it was known among rich folk and illegal drug users, was the norm among the high society. As the year 1980 moved on and 1981 came around, Captain Tate began enlisting recently freed ex-cons – many of whom were previous gangbangers as the new Los Angeles chapter of Big Daddy Mendez’s SCORPIO syndicate. These niggas made more loot working for Tate than they ever did before. They had never made that kind of money slingin’ the meager amount of dope they used to. A bag of weed here, a bag of weed there, and maybe a little poor quality cocaine or heroin whenever they got their hands on it. But that was all. They bought in a few hundred on a good day; but under the management of Lawrence Tate they were assured several thousand bucks each and every week, no longer running from cops or worrying about rival gangs battling over colors or drug territory.

  SCORPIO had no rivals. Any rival gang was given extra pressure by the Tate-led police force and many gang members ended up behind bars for reasons as simple as just living in areas that SCORPIO wanted for drug distribution. Whichever gangbangers escaped arrest and conviction, Tate simply gave word to his dope boys to put them to sleep, which they carried out with great enthusiasm.

  During the months of January, February, and March of 1981, there were widespread arrests of gang members all over Los Angeles. But bullet-riddled bodies seemed to litter the black and Chicano areas of South Central and East L.A., even more than there were arrests. The bloodbath was such that at the end of March, Captain Tate held news conferences at the L.A. police headquarters and the L.A. City Hall, stating that he would assure the citizens of the gang-plagued sections of L.A. that he, along with the proud officers of the LAPD, would do everything within the statues of the law to end the madness and bring the lawbreakers to justice.

  He shook hands with and warmly embraced the Mayor of Los Angeles, amid the clicking and flashing of multifarious cameras in unison with the bevy of questions hurled at Tate by the press. He smiled and calmly disappointed the news reporters by stating that he had no further comments at that time. He then placed on his dark sunshades, waved to the bustling crowd in front of city hall, and stepped down from the oak podium, receiving a burst of applause as he and an entourage of spiffy-looking police officers exited the rear of the building. A police spokesman satisfied the reporters by further answering their many inquiries. It wasn’t long before I began to grow weary of watching the new members of SCORPIO indiscriminately waste homeboys from my old neighborhood and Chicano neighborhoods where we took over and usurped drug turf.

  I knew many of the homies that got smoked by these busters. They didn’t even spare female gang members. They were offed many times quicker than dudes. A cat named “Rawbone” boasted how he had iced two pregnant girls, with the most recent victim having had the five-month-old fetus ripped from her womb with a hunting knife, and fed to his pet Rottweilers. He was an insane muthafucka period. Rawbone was Jamaican with a heavy accent and he stayed high all day long, smoking either ganja or Angel dust. So there was no tellin’ what his next major move might’ve been.

  One morning that April, on a Saturday when I got outside the pen, I was scheduled as usual to go on my drug runs for the Captain. I went with two other SCORPIO dude. One was Rawbone. We were to go to Sunset Blvd. and pick up some heroin from a dealer there – twenty-three hundred dollars worth to be exact. So, anyway, as our ebony SCORPIO van pulled up, I exited. We met with a sharp dressed Italian dude and exchanged our briefcase of smack. We both checked our briefcases, then bid each other goodbye. As I turned to leave, a prostitute approached me and offered me up some pussy. I got angry because she was holding me up and we had other errands to run. I told her to get lost and brushed her aside. She caught hold of my arm, so I back slapped her as hard as I could. As soon as she fell to the street crying and touching her bloodied mouth her pimp stepped from his Cadillac and stepped in front of me, drawing a pistol from his belt.

  I stood my ground and stared him down, each one of us daring the other to make the first move. From behind the pimp’s rear I noticed Rawbone creeping up, and before his whore could cry out to warn him, Rawbone rose a machete high above the pimp’s left side and swung the heavy blade like a tennis player swinging a racquet. The machete sliced into the fellow’s neck, instantly separating his head from his body. The prostitute screamed out in terror as the decapitated head rolled over on the sidewalk near a storm drain and came to rest.

  The headless body flopped around in dying convulsions spraying arterial blood from the severed neck everywhere. A crowd had gathered and was now looking on in terror at the event. So we hopped into the van and high-tailed it outta there.

  Ex-cons and plain old broke-ass niggas on the street hurried to get with Tate’s SCORPIO connection. Cats were living large, driving BMW’s, Jaguars, Mercedes Benz’s, Corvettes, Ferraries, Mazaraties, and wearing thousand dollar suits and sporting valuables such as gold watches, bracelets, rings, necklaces, and earrings along with precious gemstones: diamonds, emerald, rubies, sapphires, and pearls. These were presented to the mothers, girlfriends, sisters, and daughters of these rags-toriches thugsters.

  Money had been a part of my life since childhood, so I knew how to handle a great deal of cash without losing my head over it. But most of these fools weren’t used to having as much loot as they now had and this very reason would later prove Lawrence Tate’s downfall.

  During the summer of 1981 I had gotten Melissa pregnant, which infuriated her father. He insisted that she get an abortion right away. He sweated her about how a baby could ruin her life and cause her to drop out of college. The dumbass! Melissa was a pampered little rich girl. What the fuck could having a baby do to her financially!?! She probably wouldn’t even have to change the kid’s diapers or feed it; hell, she could hire somebody to do it.

  She had money. I mean, she was born well-todo and the little hustler that I was I’d always keep a fat pocket whether I was working for pops or not. Her father didn’t really give a shit about his daughter being knocked up, for real though. He only cared about himself and how Melissa’s pregnancy out of wedlock by a hoodlum jailbird would affect his public life. He was a most selfish S.O.B., and I, as well as his oldest child, hated him for being so. After constant pressure from her father to get rid of my so-called “demon seed,” Melissa relunctantly got the abortion her dad so diligently insisted upon.

  Melissa was so distraught over getting rid of our unborn child that she didn’t speak to her father for weeks after. When her eighteenth birthday came around on May 24th, it was celebrated at Venice Beach and scores of her childhood pals in company with many of her sorority sis
ters from UCLA attended. According to her mom, Anna Marie, Melissa was fully enjoying her self until her father arrived at the beach party with an armful of gifts, one of them being a dazzling, diamond and black pearl necklace. She threw it in his face and told him to go fuck himself. Then she excused herself and jetted off in her pink Z-28. He would have slapped her if not restrained by his wife.

  For those series of events, Tate took it out on

  me real bad. This time he didn’t simply warn me to slow my roll but instead promised me that if I even thought about coming near his daughter again he’d break all the fingers on both my hands, or castrate me – one of the two – or maybe both if he was in a particularly bad mood. I again shrugged it off like nothing ever happened and said “right” in front of his face. A bold “Whatever, cuz.” That’s when he reached back and smacked the living shit outta me and jacked me up against my cell bunk staring me squarely in the eyes with his face a picture of living anger. He once again smacked my face. He then warned me never to try his patience again as long as I lived. I wanted to kick him square in his balls and then fuck him up right quick. But I knew that would spell certain death for me. So I chilled for a bit and acted the bitch role so that the punk could back up off me.

  “Yo, Tate you got it G, it’s all good…. You da man, you know that!” I said smiling weakly.

  “You’d better not forget it, you half-breed bastard,” Tate answered straightening his collar and uniform after letting me drop to the floor. “Cause next time I just might not be so nice!” he growled, then as I was rising from the floor he kicked me so hard in the ribs I though he’d cracked a few. I rolled around on the floor in agony for about fifteen to twenty minutes after he left my jail cell. I even spat up blood. But being the true soldier that I was, I regrouped quickly, and thought of little else than how to kill that bitchass muthufucka. Oh yeah, nobody puts their hands on DiAngelo Lovett and walks away free. You’d be better off simply killing me. You’re either gonna get a royal asswhippin’ or the death penalty.