Memoirs of an Accidental Hustler

by J. M. Benjamin

  “Grandma, you heard me? What’s going on with Nique?” I repeated.

  “Kamil, baby, I’ma tell you, ever since you and your brother been gone, your sister been out of control. Most of the time she’s staying out all night, and we don’t even know where she is because she don’t call. Your mother wanted to put her out too, but I talked her out of it. Boys are still calling here in the wee hours of the night hanging up and being disrespectful. One time I picked up the phone while she was on there and heard her talking to some boy about what they were gonna do when they hook up and all that mess. I didn’t tell your mother because I knew she’d kill, but I know she ain’t no virgin like she’s been saying. To make matters worse I think she done dropped out of school, too, because sometimes she strolls up out of here around the time school’s about to start, before the summer came. I don’t know where she was going, but it wasn’t school.”

  “Is she there, Grandma?”

  “Yeah, her trifling, lazy butt back there in the room. She don’t do nothing but lie back there and eat and get fat.”

  “Let me speak to her.”

  “Hold on. Monique!” I heard my grandmother shout. “Pick up the phone.”

  She must’ve asked who it was because my grandma shouted my name.

  “Hey, bro, what’s up?” she answered the phone.

  “You tell me,” I said.

  “Grandma, hang up the phone, please,” she said, knowing that my grandmother hadn’t hung up yet.

  “Chile, please, nobody wants to hear what you got to say,” my grandmother spat. “Kamil, baby, you take care and stay in touch, you hear?”

  “I will, Grandma. I’m gonna have Nique give you our new phone number so you can call us anytime if you need anything or whatever. If you can, tell my mom we said we love her.”

  “I will, suga’,” my grandmother said before hanging up.

  “What’s goin’ on?” I asked my sister as soon as I heard the receiver hang up. “Grandma telling me all this junk about you, how you might’ve dropped out of school and just a whole bunch of other stuff.”

  I could hear her sniffling as if she were crying. “Mil, I’m in trouble,” she said.

  “What?” My heart started racing. So many thoughts flashed through my mind and none of them were good. “What do you mean you’re in trouble? What kind of trouble?” I asked.

  “I’m pregnant.”

  As soon as she said the words my heart dropped to my stomach and my blood began to boil. “What? By who? How the fuck did you let that happen?” I was not a big fan of cursing and it took a lot for me to get that upset, but Monique’s situation was too much not to be angry.

  “Mil, don’t start. I can’t deal with all these questions right now. I came to y’all ’cause the guy I was messing with is acting all funny and talking about the baby isn’t his, he used a condom, and he’s not taking care of no baby or paying for any abortion for a kid that’s not his.”

  With every word I became sick to my stomach just hearing my sister talk like that. But what burned me up most was how some guy had treated my big sister. “Who’s the nigga?” I questioned.

  “You know Tone from Arlington Avenue?”

  “That nigga? Yeah, I know who you’re talkin’ about. Don’t even worry about it.” By now I was fuming.

  “Mil, leave that alone, please. I just want to take care of this and be done with it,” my sister cried.

  “Yeah, all right,” I dryly replied. “Anyway, how much you need?” I asked.

  “Before I only needed four hundred seventy-five dollars, but now I need six hundred because I waited too long.”

  “Damn, Nique, we used to try to tell you all the time to watch ya’self and cool out, but you didn’t wanna listen. And how you gonna drop out your senior year? You know when moms find out she’s putting you out, right?”

  “School was just too much for me right now, Mil, being pregnant and all, and I can’t find no job. I think about coming out there with y’all sometimes. I be seeing girls out there hustling and I’m more thorough than them.”

  “You talking crazy. We ain’t trying to hear that. If you need anything let us know, but all that you hustlin’ junk is out the window. It’s not what it seems. Just concentrate on going back to school when it opens back up. We got you, I promise,” I assured her.

  “I’ma go back to school, Mil, but just not this year. Probably next year,” she said.

  “All right.” In my mind I knew she would never go back. “I’m gonna leave the six hundred dollars wit’ Trina, and another one hundred fifty for you and Jasmine. Tell her we love her, and we love you too.”

  “I know. I love y’all too.”

  I told Kamal everything I found out about the family. I knew he was going to take the stuff about Monique hard because he always tried to prevent something like this from happening. I had to calm him down because he wanted to go to the kid Tone’s block and hurt him. I told him to chill. Plainfield wasn’t but so big and I knew eventually we would cross the kid Tone’s path.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  “Hello, can I speak to Ke Ke?”

  “Who’s calling?” a female’s voice asked.

  “Kamil.”

  “Hey, li’l man, this is she.”

  “Nah, I’m not little,” I corrected her.

  “Oh, okay, excuse me,” she said, laughing. “But I was only talking about your height.”

  “My bad, but I got a thing about that little stuff.”

  “I see.” She laughed again. “What’s up, though?”

  “I was just callin’ to see if this was the right number, that’s all,” I said jokingly.

  “Now that you see it is, what are you gonna do?”

  “I’ma see if we can get together or somethin’.”

  “That’s cool, what y’all wanna do?”

  “Whatever, it doesn’t matter.”

  “Y’all drivin’?”

  “Not yet, but we will be,” I told her. Mal and I had been discussing copping rides lately.

  “That’s all right, because we are. Call us on Friday or Saturday and we’ll hook up or something,” she suggested.

  “All right, cool, talk to you then,” I said, and then we hung up.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  “Mu, what up?”

  “Nothin’, just came to cool out and shoot the shit with my dawgs, that’s all. You two niggas done got so large now, you can take days off, huh?” he said, playing. We both laughed.

  “Nah, it’s not like that. We just tryin’ to get this money together so we can go drop on whips,” I told him.

  “Word, y’all ready for that?” he asked, impressed.

  “Yeah, we think it’s about time we show people we been puttin’ that work in,” Mal said. “Besides, it’s getting played out ridin’ shotgun,” Mal added.

  “Nah, worrying about what people think is the wrong reason. Do it ’cause you’re tired of muthafuckas takin’ you here and there, but fuck what people say or think,” Mu said.

  “You right,” Mal agreed.

  “Speaking of askin’ niggas to take us here and there, you think you could take us out to St. George’s Avenue?” I asked. We all burst out laughing.

  St. George’s Avenue in Linden had everything from Benzes to Beemers, Jaguars to Jeeps. All the phattest whips, you name it they had it. They even had whips already hooked up that the dealers sold, or they brought from police auctions. We didn’t want to cop anything too flashy; that would draw heat on us from the cops. The narcs still didn’t really mess with us, probably because of how little we were, so we didn’t want to mess that up.

  “Yo, Mil, look at these joints right here,” Mal yelled over to me, as Mu and I were checking out this fly convertible BMW.

  “This is us right here, kid,” he said, pointing to two Audi 4000s.

  They did look like they fit us. They were both in good condition on the outside and on the inside. There weren’t any price tags on them, just the year. One of
them was an ’84 and the other was an ’85.

  “Excuse me, sir, how much are these two Audis right here?” Mal asked the gray-haired white man.

  “This white one is fifty-two hundred dollars and the red one is fifty-seven hundred dollars,” he said.

  “What’s the difference?” I asked.

  “The year, mileage, and the condition of them. The red one has fewer miles and runs better.”

  “Can we check them out?” Mu asked. Mu had four cars and knew about mechanic stuff, so he was an expert at shopping for whips. “Pop the hoods for me,” he told the salesman. Both engines looked identical to me. They were both clean and fairly new. Mu touched something on the white one under the hood.

  “Vroom! Vroom! Vroom!” was the sound of the engine when he revved it, and then he did the same to the red one. It sounded the same.

  “The white one sounds like it idled too high and the red one sounds like the timing is off,” Mu said to the white car salesman.

  Mal and I looked at each other. We didn’t know what Mu was talking about.

  “I knew that already, and I was gonna fix that whenever I sold them. I give all my cars a tune-up before they leave the lot,” the man said.

  “What about the warranty?” Mu asked.

  “Ninety days.”

  “Yo, what up?” Mu turned to us. “What y’all wanna do?”

  “Yeah, we want ’em,” we told Mu.

  “All right. Ay yo, we’ll give you ten Gs cash right now, tax included, for the both of them,” Mu told the man.

  “Nah, I can’t do that. Even if I wanted to,” he said back.

  “All right, we appreciate ya time though, thank you,” Mu said and then told us to go. Although we liked the cars and wanted them, we didn’t question Mu’s decision.

  “Hold on a minute,” we heard the man say just before we exited the lot. “Step into my office and maybe we can work out something.”

  It was apparent Mu knew what he was doing. He was good.

  “This is the lowest that I can go with taxes and everything combined,” he said, showing Mu a number on a pocket calculator. It read $10,500.

  Mu showed us, and we shook our heads in agreement. Even though we had all the money on us, Mu told him we’d give him $5,500 now and the other $5,000 when we came to pick them up in a few days.

  “Who will the vehicles be registered to?” he asked.

  Mu looked at us.

  “Put down Zella Benson,” I said. That was my grandmother’s name. I wasn’t 100 percent sure, but I knew if anyone would let us put our whips in their name, it would be her.

  Against her better judgment, my grandmother agreed to do it. We offered her $1,000 just because, but she refused to take it. Thursday we picked them up. Mu dropped us and our grandmother off before he went to New York. We had flipped more this trip to make the money back from the whips. Ounces had gone up to $625. We usually copped twelve, and Ant and Trevor would cop twelve too for $14,700 plus the extras Mal and I still got. This time we had to put out for a half a key.

  We had both cars registered and insured the same day. To show our appreciation we took our grandmother out to lunch, and then dropped her back around the projects. We drove the cars home and then parked them.

  “Yo, we gonna hustle hard as hell for three weeks straight and then throw our shit in the shop and get them hooked up,” Mal said to me all hyped.

  “Yeah, I’m with that, but I want some beats this week,” I said. After riding in Mu’s and Ant’s and ’em rides I had fallen in love with loud music.

  “Oh, no question, we’re gonna hit Canal first thing in the morning, kid,” he said back to me. “We gonna get Ant and Trevor to roll out there with us since they got licenses, and know the people who be hookin’ them up out there. Let’s hit the projects and put this work in.”

  I was right behind Mal as he made his way out the door.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Ant and Trevor pulled up a couple of hours later.

  “Where y’all been all mornin’? We came by the house but you weren’t there,” Ant said.

  “We had to go take care of some important business,” Mal said to them.

  “Like what?” Trevor asked.

  “Like coppin’ our own whips so we ain’t gotta sweat y’all no more for a ride,” I said with a smile on my face.

  “Oh, shit! Get the fuck outta here,” Trevor yelled. “Where they at?”

  “At the crib,” Mal answered.

  “Well, let’s go see ’em,” he said to us.

  “Man, we tryin’ to get that money back, and besides we already know what they look like,” Mal said, joking.

  “How much you pay for ’em?”

  “Almost eleven Gs,” I said.

  “What, you got Beemers?” Ant asked.

  “Nah, Audi 4000s.”

  “Okay, them joints is phat. I seen a couple of them hooked up.”

  “I know you gonna hook them shits up, too,” Trevor said.

  “We ain’t with that,” Mal said, not wanting them to know. “We gonna go check them out right quick. We’ll be back.”

  “Yo, we gonna put some music in them though and we want y’all to take us over to Canal in the morning,” I said before we forgot.

  “Yeah we got you.”

  Mal and I got the same hookup: four tens, top-of-the-line EVs, in the window, a pullout radio, Blaupunkt EQ, bullet tweeters, and a Zeus amp. Due to the build of our whips our joints was loud. We had the Holland Tunnel rumbling when we came through. We both spent a hundred dollars on Ron G’s, Kid Capri’s, Doo Whop’s, S & S’s, and Jersey’s DJ Juice’s mixed tapes before we left Canal. Like everybody else, when we got back in town we hit every block in town, pumping our systems. I was playing “The Bridge” and Mal was pumping “Project Ho,” both off the MC Shan Down by Law album.

  When we bucked the corner to ride through Arlington, the first face I spotted was the kid Tone. Our eyes met. He shot me a stupid grin when I drove by, and I knew what it was for. He knew Monique was my sister. It took everything in me not to jump out and punch him in the face, but they were too deep out there so I let it ride. Our last stop was the projects. All the project chicks and hustlers were out when we came bucking around the corner. We all hopped out and left the music blasting. When they all saw who it was, you could see all the different types of reactions on everyone’s faces.

  Trina was at the gate talking to one of the new guys on the block when I pulled up. I could see it in her face she was trying play it off when she saw me like she wasn’t really talking to him. She started walking over to me. “What’s up, boo?” she said, wrapping her arms around me. “Y’all cars are fly.”

  “Thanks,” was all I said.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “What you doin’ over there talkin’ to that nigga while he’s out here tryin’ to get money, huh?”

  “Who Steve? He ain’t nobody,” she answered, nixing my question. “I know you don’t think I was letting him push up. I don’t get down like that, Mil. I fuck with you and only you,” she said, making me feel like I had overreacted.

  “Anyway,” I said. “Me and Mal goin’ out tonight so I’ma be in late. You can either stay at the house or I’ll see you tomorrow,” I told her, knowing she wouldn’t want to stay at my place by herself.

  “I ain’t stayin’ over there by myself. I’ll just see you tomorrow. I need some more money, though, ’cause me and Reecie goin’ to the mall later.”

  I pulled out my dough and peeled her off three hundred-dollar bills.

  “Where you goin’ tonight?” she asked.

  “Out, I told you.”

  “It better not be with no other bitch,” she snapped. “Don’t make me fuck somebody up.”

  “Go ahead with that,” I said. “You always accusing me of something and be wrong,” I shouted at her, trying to use reverse psychology.

  “Nigga, you heard what I said.”

  Mal, Ant, and Trevor started dying laug
hing.

  “I’ll see you later. Take your ass in the house,” I told her.

  I watched as she spun around and sashayed her way to Reecie’s.

  I just shook my head because I knew the more time that passed, the more of a problem Trina would become.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  For the next three weeks, we hustled liked crazy as planned. That following week we put our cars in the shop and were back on foot. When asked, we told everyone that they had gotten repo’ed, but Ant and Trevor knew better because they knew that our whips were paid for, so we told them that the cops impounded them for thirty days, for driving without a license. We had made the dough back that we put out for the cars and systems, plus another twenty-something on top of that, not including the fifteen grand we put to the side to hook our rides up.

  We went all out. Paint jobs, ragtops, sheepskin interior, rims, wings, kits, fender trim, rocket panels, and chrome double tailpipes, coming to $7,500 apiece. Mal was getting his painted super white with a blue rag, and I was changing from red to light blue with the blue rag too. We both were getting Maxima kits cut and fitted on them, and writing on our rocket panels. Mal’s was going to say ANOTHER ONE TO GET JEALOUS OF, a saying he got from MC Shan’s tape, which was his favorite, and mine was going to say STOP, LOOK & LISTEN, something that I got from an MC Lyte cut. The people who were doing it hooked up all of Mu’s cars, so we knew that they were going to be dope.

  “Yo, Mal, get up,” I yelled to my brother. “Mu is gonna be here any minute.”

  “I’m up, I’m up,” he yelled back.

  “Well, get ready then so we can go pick our pieces up.”

  Beep. Beep. Mu was already here.

  “Mal, you ready?”

  “Yeah, let me just put on my sneakers.”

  “Don’t forget to snatch your radio up.”

  When we stepped outside, Mu was sitting in a charcoal gray Benz 300E with a temp tag in the window.

  “Damn! This shit is dope,” Mal said behind me as we were walking over to it to get in.

  “I picked it up last night. I gave up the Volvo and sixteen Gs for it.”

  “Yo, it was worth it, kid, this piece is dope,” Mal said from the back.