He replied, “Yo, I’m really tryin’ to see son.”
“Tomorrow baby. Tomorrow,” she assured him. “When I get up and go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, I’ll leave his number on the dresser for you so you can call him as soon as you get up, if I’m not up.”
“Aiight, cool,” Tone commented, satisfied with that.
Within seconds Sonya was sound asleep. She went to bed with the notion that every inch of Tone belonged to her. On the contrary, Tone fell asleep thinking about the streets of Baltimore and all the promise that it held. Clearly they had two different agendas.
4
The warm rays of the sun beamed through a gap in the curtains, gently kissing Sonya’s partially covered face. The heat was just enough to stir her from her sleep. Even in her sleep, a blissful smile was pasted on her lips. She was engulfed in a euphoric feeling of disbelief. Sonya couldn’t believe that the love of her life, Tone, was here in Baltimore and would be for the foreseeable future. It was as if she had suddenly remembered what it was like to have her boyfriend in her everyday life. She loved him deeply, the time she spent away at college had done nothing to diminish that.
With Tone being nearby, she felt whole. She was that girl again. Immediately, she poked out her butt in an attempt to feel for him. She wanted the warmth of his body and his manhood pressed up against her. Sonya scooted her butt over again and again, to no avail. When her actions didn’t yield the results she intended it to, she rolled over in the bed to discover that she was alone.
“Tone?” she called out from the bedroom.
No reply came.
“Tone!” she shouted this time, suspecting that her boyfriend was either in the bathroom, the kitchen, or in the living room watching television.
Completely naked, Sonya rose up out of her warm bed in search of Tone. He was nowhere to be found. In his place she found a handwritten note stuck to the apartment door.
Stew came by and scooped me. I’ll be right back, the note read.
“Damn!” Sonya cursed herself for being stupid enough to give him her cousin’s number. As if Tone wasn’t persistent enough to call someone he had only spoken to a time or two on the phone.
Sonya crumpled up the note and threw it on the floor in disgust as she headed back to her bedroom. She thought that Tone should be introduced to the city of Baltimore gradually and carefully. Clearly he had other ideas. Despite Sonya’s best intentions, Tone was quickly turning his move to Baltimore into his own personal field trip.
Sonya sighed and decided to go back to bed. Her day had already gotten off to a bad start. Despite the great night she had last night, Sonya was having a rough morning. As she lay in the bed all she could do was replay last night’s sexual sequences. Sonya thought she was going to wake up to some morning sex. Obviously, now that wasn’t the case. Tone’s disappearance frustrated her. He was beginning to flash signs of the old Tone, her high school sweetheart who danced to the beat of his own drum. The person who did what he wanted, when he wanted, no questions asked.
Sonya wasn’t in the mood for Tone’s thoughtless behavior today. But she wasn’t in the mood to argue with him either. With no classes on her schedule for today, she decided to go back to sleep. Sleep usually prevented her from overreacting, saying or doing something she might later regret. It wasn’t like she could contact Tone and tell him to bring his ass back home. Neither he nor her cousin Stew had a pager. So there was no way to get in contact with them. They could be anywhere in the city, so Sonya nixed the idea of jumping in her car and riding around looking for them. She was forced to wait for Tone’s return, whenever that was.
Hopefully when she woke back up, he’d be home. Then they could go about their day.
The smoke filled burgundy Toyota Cressida maneuvered through the streets of East Baltimore. Stew hit the Philly blunt filled with weed until he had his fair share then offered Tone some. Tone declined the blunt. He wanted to stay focused and analyze everything around him. Getting high might cloud his judgment. Almost from the moment Tone arrived in Baltimore, he was all business. If it wasn’t about a dollar it didn’t make sense to him.
Riding around East Baltimore smoking weed wasn’t Tone’s idea of looking for blocks to hustle on. But for the time being he bit his tongue. Because if nothing else, the time he spent with Stew would give him a good idea of what he was all about. Stew could claim he was a hustler all he wanted. However, time would tell. He could show Tone better than he could tell him.
“I gotta make a stop yo,” Stew suddenly announced in between tokes.
“No problem,” Tone replied. “Do what you gotta do, kid.”
Shortly Stew arrived at his destination and parked his car. He tried to pass Tone the blunt, which he declined, having had his fair share of weed.
“You want some pussy, yo?” Stew questioned him. “I’m about to go knock on this broad’s door. She gotta sista, you could spit some of that New York game to her and probably fuck shorty.”
Because of his statement, Tone immediately became suspicious of Stew. He didn’t know if this was a trick question or if his girlfriend was using her cousin to set him up. The fact of the matter was, Tone just met this guy a few hours ago and he didn’t know whether to trust him or not. It was a point of principle for Tone not to mix business.
Tone began, “Yo, c’mon man….You know I’m fuckin’ wit’ ya cousin, right?”
Stew broke out into a grin. There was no clarification needed. Tone wasn’t with it and he had to respect that.
Tone wasn’t thirsty. He didn’t mind passing on a piece of pussy. To him it was a respect thing, Don’t eat where you shit. Besides, he knew if he got his drug dealing operation off the ground and he did his thing right, pussy wouldn’t be a problem. In fact, it comes with the territory. There was a time and a place for everything. Now wasn’t the time for this, and it certainly wasn’t the place.
“I don’t mean you no harm, yo. I know you my cousin’s boyfriend. But a man gone be a man. Variety is the spice of life. I just ain’t want you to feel left out when I go do my thing,” Stew explained.
Tone didn’t know it, but at the moment the contrast between the two men was clear. Stew wasn’t a go-getter he was more of a skirt chaser. He wasn’t who he projected himself to be in the conversation they had over the phone. All the talk of him being a hustler was starting to look like a façade. Another incident or two and Tone would officially relegate Stew into the category of being a clown who didn’t want to make money.
The car came to a stop on Ashland Avenue.
“Let me go handle my business real quick. I’ll be right back, yo,” Stew announced. “You’ll be alright out here right?”
“No question,” Tone told him. “I’m good in any hood.”
“I know I been bullshittin’ all mornin’,” Stew insisted as he exited the car. “But when I come back yo, we gone go find you a block to move that shit.”
“Word!” Tone remarked. “Now you talkin’.”
Tone watched as Stew quickly climbed the steps of a nearby row house and knocked on the door. After a brief pause the door was opened and Stew disappeared inside.
Time went by slowly. Tone sat in the car fiddling with the radio. Stew was taking longer than Tone thought. He grew bored and restless sitting in the car. Finally Tone got out the car and smoked a cigarette. As he did, Tone took notice of what was happening around him. He saw groups of people entering an alleyway, cars constantly pulling up and dropping people off, but no one exiting the alley.
Even from a distance Tone could tell that there was some illegal drug activity going on. On this block, the alleyway seemed to be the center of attention.
With all the people going to and fro, Tone got the sense something major was happening around here. The block had a certain energy about it that he couldn’t explain. One that he’d only seen in New York on the first and fifteenth of the month. There was money out here, Tone could sense that much.
He sat on the car
, continuing to observe when fate intervened.
“Hey,” an older woman said. “You wouldn’t happen to have another one of them cigarettes would you yo? I’ll buy it off you.”
“It’s aiight,” Tone said. “You good. I gotcha!”
Reaching into his pants pockets, Tone retrieved a pack of Newport cigarettes and handed one over.
“You gotta light, New York?” she asked with the cigarette perched between her dark lips.
For the first time Tone took a good look at her. She was not a bad looking woman, but by her frail weight, Tone could see she had seen better days. Her black cornrowed hair had large traces of gray in it. Her eyelids were so heavy they drooped. It appeared as if she hadn’t slept in days. Her forehead was creased with lines etched by years of stress. This woman bore the earmarks of the street life and drug abuse all over her. She was by all accounts a street person.
Tone didn’t immediately discount her presence because of that. Her look would only lend to her credibility. He had the unique ability to treat a person like a person regardless to what condition he found them in. In fact, this woman being a street person was a plus. It only meant that he could relate to her in some form or fashion. She could put him down to what was going on around here.
He sensed that there was a wealth of information inside her. Tone knew he couldn’t just let her leave his presence without picking her brain about the drug game in the area. He knew he had to hold a conversation with her, so he initiated one. Tone cut straight to the chase.
“What’s goin’ on out here?” Tone suddenly said.
The woman remarked, “You already know what it is, New York. If you ain’t in it, you in the way.”
“Word? How can I get some money out here?” Tone asked.
“Easy,” she said. “If you got some good product, I can help you move it. Alotta this shit out here stepped on. It’s garbage. Junkies can’t get high off cut.”
Tone was equal parts hustler and equal parts opportunist. The information he was receiving from her was exactly what he wanted to hear. The wheels in his criminal mind began to turn.
“Take a walk wit’ me,” Tone said as he locked the car doors.
“Where to, New York?” she wondered. Truth be told, she would have followed the stranger to the moon. He was talking her kind of talk.
“To the store,” he told her.
As they walked the short distance to the corner store, Tone and the woman conversed as if they had known each other well. The entire time Tone was just observing his surroundings.
“How you know I’m from New York?” he wondered.
“I could smell you New York niggas a mile away, yo. This ain’t my first rodeo. I done dealt wit’ a few New Yorkers before,” she bragged. “I know y’all muthafuckas. It’s the way y’all walk, the way y’all talk. It’s the accent all y’all have. Y’all just carry yaselves differently, yo.”
Tone joked, “So is that a good or a bad thing?”
“Both,” the woman snapped. “It could be good if you out here just tryin’ to fit in. It could be bad if you comin’ out here tryin’ to show out, yo. You can’t come out here and try to get all the money and fuck all the bitches. That shit right there breeds jealousy. A jealous muthafucka will kill you quicker than a scared muthafucka. It ain’t what you do, New York, it’s how you do it. Trust me I know. I done seen New Yorkers come and I done seen them go. In this game longevity is key.”
The wisdom in her words caught Tone’s ear. He could relate to what she was saying. Intelligence was always attractive to him, no matter where it came from. He yearned to hear more from her.
“Word,” Tone chimed. “You don’t have to worry about me. I ain’t on it like that. I don’t want no trouble, but I damn sure ain’t gone run from none. I’m out here to get this paper first and foremost.”
“That’s good to know, yo,” Shorty assured him. “Because there’s money to be made, you just gotta stay focused.”
They stopped at the corner store where Tone bought both himself and his companion a soda. As they sipped their individual drinks, they continued to walk. Tone made it a point to walk into the direction of the alleyway where he saw all the foot traffic headed. He remained observant as he continued sipping his soda.
“Yo, what’s ya name?” he asked. “I’m been kickin’ it wit’ you and I don’t even know ya name.”
“Shorty,” she answered.
“Fa real? Yo, how you get that name?” he laughed, admiring her small stature.
“You got jokes, huh? How the hell you think? Look at me,” she chuckled. “Now what’s ya name, yo?”
The question caught Tone off guard. He knew better than to give her his real name. “Jason,” he said with a straight face.
Shorty took a long pull on her cigarette, smirking as she blew the smoke out her nose.
“Jason, huh?” she spat. “Yeah right! That ain’t ya damn name. That’s a fuckin’ alias yo. All you New Yorkers are liars.”
Tone couldn’t help himself. He doubled over in laughter.
“It’s Tone,” he admitted, unsure why he had just given her his real name. “But if the police ask its Jason Jones, aiight?”
“Okay, New York Tone,” Shorty teased. “Pleased to meet you.”
“Yo, I like ya style,” Tone commented, taking an instant liking to her. “New York Tone, huh? Got a lil ring to it.”
Tone felt like he had met a mover and shaker in the streets. Shorty was someone on the frontline who was very knowledgeable. That he could already see. Already she was his eyes and his ears.
As soon they got to the opening of the alleyway, Tone peered in. There he witnessed a sight he had never seen before. Grown people, addicts, standing in a single file line, silently, like children waiting to receive their bags of dope. The line seemed to stretch from one end of the alley to the next. Unsure of what he was seeing, Tone did a double take and continued walking. Then suddenly he doubled back to get a second look. This only served as confirmation. He had seen what he thought he saw. It all happened so quickly nobody noticed him.
“What’s that?” Tone asked.
“Dope,” she assured him. “That’s a dope line, yo.”
Damn! Tone thought. All he saw was dollar signs in his head as he did a quick count of all the customers on line.
“Yo, it’s like that out here?” he wondered.
Shorty replied, “It’s like that everywhere out here, New York. If you got good product and some hustle in you, you gone make money, yo. Believe me.”
“No doubt,” Tone added as his mind continued to race.
They walked back to the car with Tone remaining rather quiet as thoughts of money raced through his mind. Meanwhile, Shorty continued to fill him in on the drug trade in the area and the players involved. She told him who was who and what was what.
“This neighborhood is wide open, yo. Ain’t no good quality coke around here since the Feds come through here, yo.” Shorty proclaimed. “The game don’t stop because a player gets popped.”
Shorty told him that there had been a big drug bust a few months before he arrived in Baltimore. A federal indictment had swept the area clean of any major drug organizations that had control of the area. So the neighborhood was basically up for grabs. She explained to him that the time was right for him to come in and do his thing.
“What you got, girl or boy?” Shorty questioned.
“What?” Tone answered, confused.
“Dope or Coke?” she reiterated.
“Coke,” Tone replied. “Fishscale.”
“Is it raw?” she wondered.
“No question,” Tone added, confident in his quality of drugs.
“You got some that shit on you now, yo?” she moaned.
In Baltimore, everyone and their mother was looking for a good New York drug connection. Here it was Shorty, out of all people, had the good fortune of just stumbling across one. Inwardly, she was thanking her lucky stars. She knew their relationship could be m
utually beneficial.
He answered. “Nah, I ain’t bring none out. I wanted to scope shit out first.”
“Damn yo, if you had that shit on you and yo shit as good as you say, we would have made a killin’ right now,” she said, trying to entice him.
“Shorty, slow ya roll. Tomorrow is another day,” Tone stated. “I’m not rushin’ into nuttin’. It’s better to be safe than sorry.”
Shorty replied, “Yeah, you right New York. What time tomorrow we meetin’ up?”
“You tell me? What’s the best time?” he wondered.
“Mornin’,” she assured him. “The junkies cop that boy in the mornin’. If we set up early and put the word out, they’ll come cop that girl from us. Once they know it’s raw, they’ll keep comin’ back all day long.”
Tone liked the sound of that. From what he had heard, there was a whole lot of money to be made.
By the time Stew finally exited the house, Tone and Shorty had arrived back at the car and had made arrangements to meet up at a prescribed time and place.
“Shorty, what up yo?” Stew greeted her. “You out here hollerin’ at my people, huh?”
“Oh, this ya peoples?” she replied. “I was wonderin’ who he was waitin’ on….. New York you should have said somethin’.”
“Why?” Tone said. “Did it matter?”
“No, but ya peoples is my peoples. Me and Stew go way back like car seats. Ask him bout me, yo! He’ll tell you how thorough I am.”
Stew cosigned her street credibility. “Shorty more thorough than most of these niggas out here yo. She’s a soldier.”
Stew went on to explain how Shorty’s name was good as gold in the streets. Shorty was as much of a staple in East Baltimore as any good brand of heroin. When junkies wanted to know who had that good stuff, they sought out Shorty. When drug dealers wanted to spread the word about some good product, they bought a few vials or bags over for her to sample. If she said a dealer had the bomb, then he had it. Shorty was the number one drug runner and tester around.
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