Memoirs of an Accidental Hustler

by J. M. Benjamin

  “No, I came to see you,” I tried to clean it up. “But I need to see Mu, too.”

  “Yeah, right, Kamil.”

  I felt kind of bad because Trina didn’t deserve how I had been treating her. It wasn’t on purpose; I just needed some space so I started going over to see her less than she was used to.

  “I did come over here for you,” I repeated. I grabbed her by the hand and pulled her closer to me. I kissed her on the side of the neck just the way she liked.

  “Stop,” she cooed. “You know that’s my spot. Don’t start nothin’ you can’t finish.”

  I smiled. “I won’t.” In that instant, she got me aroused.

  “Don’t try to leave without giving me some.”

  “I got you.” I really meant it. Not just sexually, though. I knew based on what I had planned, I needed her, just like Mu had told me. And, in return, I was going to make sure she was good also.

  “Who is it?” Mu’s voice boomed from the other side of the door. I told him it was me and he invited me in. “What’s up, li’l bro?”

  I saw that he was in the bed. “I didn’t mean to wake you,” I apologized. “But I really needed to talk to you about something important.”

  My words got his attention. “Is something wrong? Run your mouth. Somebody fuckin’ with you?” Mu bombarded me with questions.

  “No, nothin’ like that,” I assured him.

  “So what’s up? Talk to me.”

  Before I got to the apartment I had rehearsed how I was going to present everything to Mu, but now that I stood before him I didn’t know where to begin or how to come out and say it. I inhaled. “Mal and I wanna get put on.” As soon as I said the words I regretted them, but there was no turning back now; they had spilled out into the air.

  For a minute Mu just stared at me. I could tell it hadn’t really registered with him yet. “What?” I could tell by his facial expression he was not happy at what I had said.

  “Mal and I—”

  Before I could finish Mu cut me off. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “I knew this shit was gonna happen.” Mu shook his head. Silence lingered in the air for a moment and then Mu broke it. “Are you sure?” he asked.

  I nodded my head.

  “No, I wanna hear you say it,” he stated.

  I cleared my throat. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

  “Tell me why,” Mu said.

  I wasted no time answering. “Man, it’s rough. For my family, everything. Me and Mal can’t do nothing about it. We supposed to be the men of the house, but we’re not acting like it. We just wanted to do something to help our moms and grandmother out and try to get them out of these projects,” I said all in one breath. “Besides, we can’t depend on you forever; we gotta do for ourselves,” I added.

  Mu shook his head again. “I knew it,” he repeated. “The shit is in ya blood.” He paused. “A’ight yo. If that’s what y’all want.”

  “Yeah, this is what we want to do,” I told Mu.

  “Okay, as long as you’re sure. You remember everything I been schoolin’ you on all these years? ’Cause I told you shit ain’t no joke out in them streets.”

  “Yeah, I know. I never forget anything you tell me, Mu,” I said to him.

  “That’s good, kid. That’s good. So you and Mal have been talking about how y’all gonna do shit, huh?” he asked. “What do you need me to do, front y’all some work or something?”

  “Nah, nah. Nothing like that,” I told him. “We got our own money saved up and we wanted to spend with you,” I cleared up as I went off telling him about the conversation Mal, Ant, Trevor, and I had previously.

  “That’s good that you told them that it was only going to be you and Mal and they should get down with each other, ’cause when you get money shit change and so do niggas. At least you know that your brother will always be your brother no matter what; but, in the game, your best friend can easily turn into your worst enemy. Remember what I told you about having somebody’s back and they havin’ yours?” Mu reminded me. “Only one you can depend on is your brother and vice versa. Damn, kid, you ’bout to fuck with the major leagues now; no more minor leagues, baby. It’s a man’s world in the streets. Ain’t no room for no little boys,” Mu said. I just listened.

  “Check what I’ma do for you, though,” Mu went on to say. “The last thing I want to see is you and Mal go out there and fall on ya face or get knocked off, so for the first month I’m gonna be out there holdin’ you down and pointing out your mistakes; but Ant and Trevor on their own except for their connect. I know I taught you how to cook up and all that but it’s still easier said than done, so I’m gonna do that for you and you gonna be there every time watchin’ until you perfect it and then you teach Mal. It’s up to you whether you gonna show Ant and Trevor, but the less you expose your hand the better it is for you, ’cause niggas will always have to depend on you until they catch on. You can get Trina to cut and bottle your shit up but you gotta learn that, too, just in case you don’t have Trina around no more to do it for you. You never know what might happen. The more you spend, the more extra grams you get, so if you put their money with yours all the extras will come to you and Mal. That’s free money,” he pointed out. “I’ve been schoolin’ you. But I’m gonna be schoolin’ you even more now, and by the time I’m done with you, you’re gonna be a ghetto genius out this muthafucka.”

  Mu laughed and then went on. “I’ma tell you straight up, though, you got some competition on ya hands out there. Between my boys I got, and Clyde’s runners, you’re gonna have to get your clientele up to G off. Then you got your boy Buff and his man Ice puttin’ work in. They be out there grindin’ hard makin’ that paper; but I got a plan for you and Mal to bust out with so y’all can get some customers. One of the things you need to know about getting into the game is you gots to be in it to win it. Ain’t no half stepping, Mil, and that’s on the real,” Mu finished saying.

  “I’m ready to do whatever it takes to get money!” I told him.

  “All right, kid!” Mu said, smiling. “I know you are, and you about to start gettin’ it, too.” Mu put his hand on my shoulder. “How much you got to flip?” he asked.

  “Twelve hundred,” I said. Ant and Trevor gave us $200 apiece and Mal and I had matched it with $400 apiece of our own.

  “Damn! Y’all li’l niggas holding like that already?” he asked, impressed.

  “Well, most of it is my and Mal’s, eight hundred anyway,” I told him.

  “You two dudes never cease to amaze me. Y’all about to blow. Trust me. Make sure you get that paper to me by this Thursday. You got two days. If you ain’t ready then you gonna have to wait until my next flip a couple days after,” Mu said.

  “I’ll have it for you by then,” I promised.

  “Cool! Now go out there and make sure your shit is straight wit’ Trina ’cause she has been walking around all week with her lips poked out ’cause you ain’t been over here. No matter what, you have to keep the shorties happy, regardless how many you jugglin’,” he said.

  “I got you, Mu. I’ma get on top of that right now.”

  * * *

  “Damn!” I rolled off top of Trina and onto my back trying to catch my breath. I didn’t realize how backed up I was until just then. Trina made sure she made up for lost time as well. She was going wild underneath me. I felt her cum four times. She had me sweating like crazy. “Yo! I needed that,” I said while catching my breath.

  “Me too, nigga,” she said back. “You’ve been acting all stingy with the dick lately.”

  “Nah! I told you what was up.” I laughed. “But it’s cool now ’cause I’m gonna start being back over here like before,” I told her.

  “Is everything all right?” she asked. “I know you said you had to talk to Mu about something important.”

  “Yeah. Everything’s good. I was just about to kick it to you about that,” I told her. “I’m abo
ut to start hustlin’ around here and I need you,” I said, looking her in the eyes. “I need someone like you to keep it real wit’ me. When I get on my feet you not gonna want for nothing. I just need to know I can count on you,” I expressed to her.

  “Baby, you should already know that you can depend on me. I’ll do anything for you, ’cause I love you.”

  She caught me off guard saying she loved me, but I didn’t have any reaction because I didn’t want to mess nothing up, so I just listened to her.

  “Whatever you need me to do consider it done; and I’m not doin’ it for what I can get out of you, I’m doin’ it ’cause I wanna see you doin’ good, that’s all,” she said.

  I had to admit, I really felt what Trina said to me. She was a trooper and I respected her for that. Even though she said she wasn’t looking for nothing, I had already made up my mind that once I blew I was still going to take care of her. With Mu as my mentor, Mal as my right hand, and Trina as my rider, I knew the only way I could go was up.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Everything was set. I got the money from Ant and Trevor, and put it with mine, and Mal’s, then took it to Mu before we went to school. Today was a half day, so I figured by the time I got home and went over to Reecie’s crib Mu would be waiting for me. Things with Lisa and me were still good, but I had to concentrate on handling my business and putting in time with Trina.

  Just like I had thought, Mu was sitting in the kitchen waiting for me, with all the necessities on the kitchen table, and everything set up like when I first saw him at work. He had two separate Ziploc bags of coke, and automatically I knew the smaller was ours.

  “Listen,” he started saying, “for the twelve hundred I got you two and a half Os. You only suppose to get two ounces and ten grams but my man looked out, so the extra four grams goes to you and Mal. For future references, just so you know, right now ounces go for five hundred, and it’s twenty-eight grams in an ounce. Sometimes ounces cost less, sometimes they cost more, depending on the papis in NY and how much their supplier charges them. You know how many grams in a whole pie?” he asked, referring to a kilo of coke.

  I learned all of that in science class so I knew the answer. “One thousand, right?”

  “How you know that?”

  “I learned it in school.”

  “Well, you ain’t gonna learn this shit I’m about to break down to you right here in school,” he said, laughing. “Like I said, it’s twenty-eight grams in an ounce, a hundred twenty-five grams in an eighth, which is four and a half ounces; two hundred fifty grams in a quarter key, which is nine ounces; five hundred grams in a half, which is eighteen ounces; and you already know it’s a thousand grams in a whole pie, and it’s thirty-six ounces in that. You need to know that if you in the game,” Mu told me as he started to strain the coke.

  I sat there and watched him do everything to a T the way he did before, and I picked up a few more things this time that I missed while he was cooking up. After he was done, he let it dry and then he put it on the digital scale. “You see this?” he asked. “The scale read 69.8. That means that this shit is bangin’ and the crackheads are gonna be open off your shit. We got us a good batch here, kid!” he said proudly.

  “Trina is gonna be cutting your product up and bottling it for you, but today I’m gonna chop it up for you ’cause I can cut better than her and Reecie put together. She can still bottle your shit up, though.” I just nodded.

  Mu chopped my whole package up with finesse within an hour, and when he gave me the plate, it had hundreds of little rocks on it.

  “Looking at this I say Trina will probably bottle up thirty-eight to forty clips,” Mu told me.

  “I appreciate that, Mu, I really do,” I thanked him.

  “Don’t thank me, kid. I really don’t have no business turning you on to this shit like this, but . . .” Mu paused. “Never mind. Just go take the plate to Trina.”

  I wondered what Mu was about to say, but I didn’t press the issue. Instead I just made my way to the back room.

  Each time Trina finished with fifty bottles I would rubber band them. Mu told me to clip them in tens because I wasn’t passing any packages out, only hand-to-hand sales, so it would be easier to manage how much I made off of every clip. I had banded thirty-five clips so far and Trina still had a nice amount of rocks left on the plate. Each time I banded a clip my adrenaline increased. I knew it was nearing crunch time. The total amount was thirty-nine clips and four extra bottles. Mu was right: almost forty clips.

  “Be careful,” Trina said, giving me a kiss before I left the room.

  “Thanks, I will.”

  “How many did she make?” Mu asked when I reentered the front room. I told him how many. “Yeah, that’s good,” he said. “Now, check, this is what you do. Give Trevor and Ant twelve clips for their four hundred dollars, and that’ll leave you and Mal with twenty-seven and some change.”

  “You sure twelve clips is good?” I asked.

  “That’s more than good, kid. You only supposed to double and then some. Twelve clips is twelve hundred dollars. That’s triple. You ain’t jerkin’ nobody; you bein’ smart. You the mastermind behind them gettin’ on, so of course you benefit the most. All this shit here I used cost money: the bottles, the bake, the scale, and all of that. They ain’t give no extra dough to help out on none of that; this is all on the strength of you. You can’t be soft in this game, Mil,” Mu snapped.

  “I understand.”

  “Now, like I was sayin’, you and Mal got twenty-seven clips and four extras, so that’s $2,740, but all you wanna see back now in this trip is $2,400, which is triple what y’all put up in the first place. The other thirty-four bottles is gonna be for you to get ya clientele up. That means you gonna be able to take three hundred forty dollars worth of shorts. You gonna get all the paper that the niggas who been out there for a while won’t take. The one for seven, or one for eight, the two for fifteen or the two for sixteen, the three for twenty-five, or the six for forty, and the seven for fifty, and the fourteen for one hundred, ’cause niggas only given up twelve, maybe thirteen, and that’s how y’all gonna get known.

  “Never get greedy, either. If you hit ’em for a couple of hundred for the day, cool out and catch a next day. You ain’t gotta sell out in one night; let them other niggas take a risk of getting knocked doin’ that. Besides, you still have to go to school so you can’t be pullin’ all nighters either, anyway, unless it’s on the weekends, but even with that I’ll let you know if it’s cool. A couple more things I want to tell you.” He paused.

  “Don’t be out there fuckin’ with ya boys while they smoking weed and drinking and all that other dumb shit on the block. Stay up outta them dice games; you out there to make money not lose it. And, most importantly, always look around before you make a sale to see if it’s safe. Always stay on point for the jakes,” he told me, referring to the police.

  “Yo, go take them clips to them niggas and come back, but before you do take out six clips: three for you and three for Mal, and tell Trina to hold the rest. You only need enough out there to keep you from havin’ to run back and forth out of this spot, ’cause you don’t wanna get the crib hot. You know I keep my shit stashed here, too, sometimes, so you know you gots to be on point, ’cause niggas gonna be clockin’ your every move and I don’t want to have to have to kill a nigga over no bullshit,” Mu said with a straight face.

  “I got you, Mu.”

  “A’ight, be safe.”

  I gave Mu a pound and hug; then I was out the door.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Hustlers were everywhere, running up on customers and to cars. It looked like a war zone. I heard one kid tell a patient to get the hell outta here and that’s when I stepped to him remembering what Mu had said to see what he wanted.

  “What up?” I said as I approached.

  “Yo, you’ll do me a favor and let me get two for fifteen? That’s all I got right now, but I’ll bring you the other fi
ve back later, I promise.”

  “All right, I got you,” I told him, knowing he wasn’t going to bring me no five dollars back.

  “I appreciate it, li’l man. What’s ya name so I know who to ask for if I don’t see you when I bring ya five dollars back?”

  I didn’t want to give him my real name so without thinking I just said K.B.

  “All right, good lookin’ out, K.B. And this weekend I’ma hook up wit’ my white boy and look for you ’cause he be spending all day, nothing under fifty dollars a whop,” he told me.

  Mu had warned me about guys like him so I just agreed. “I’ll be here,” I told him. That was my first sale in the game as a hustler. After the crackhead left, a sense of power swept through me. For some reason I felt superior, like I was in control. That was the icebreaker I had needed to turn my nervousness and fear into confidence.

  I was giving somebody one for eighteen when Shareef’s car pulled up. He and Ice hopped out. I was already up to a clip in sales and was working on my second one.

  “Say it ain’t so,” Shareef yelled, walking up on me and giving me a pound.

  “What’chu mean, kid? We can’t be chillin’ in the back seat of your ride for the rest of our lives,” I said to him jokingly.

  “What up, Mil,” Ice said.

  “What’s happening, Ice,” I returned.

  “Just another day in the hood, that’s all,” he replied. “And another dollar, too. No offense, but I hope y’all did ya thing earlier, ’cause we about to come out here and shut the block down,” he then said to me.

  I just laughed.

  “Damn! Look at us now,” Shareef pointed out. “All my boys out here hustlin’.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Who y’all pumpin’ for, Mu or Clyde?” Shareef asked, thinking it had to be one of the two.

  “Neither one; we all out here on our own.”

  “Yeah, all right.” They thought I was lying.

  “I’m telling you, we hustlin’ for ourselves.”