King

by Johnson, Tremayne

  ''I hear you, but how do I know for sure you’re going to handle this?'' I asked.

  ''Don’t even worry about it, King. I got this...you should think about putting a nigga like me on your team. I know how to play my position.'' He said as he turned, got back into his truck and sped off.

  ''What do you think?'' I asked Reemo.

  ''I heard the boy Rahmeek is a monster...I don’t know...only time will tell, King.'' Reemo answered.

  It was two days later when I got a call from Lou telling me Rahmeek was on my block and he wanted to see me. I snuck out the house while Asia was sleeping so she wouldn’t scream on me. If she knew I was going out the house at two-o-clock in the morning it would have been a problem.

  The night air was calm and cool as I pulled up on Jefferson Avenue and parked my car behind Lou’s Lamborghini. It was an unusually quiet night in the hood and something didn’t feel right. I saw a dark-grey work van double-parked a few hundred yards down the block. Lou and Rahmeek were standing a few steps away from the van. When I got to where they were, Lou began shaking his head.

  ''This nigga here,'' he said pointing to Rahmeek, ''is fucking crazy...show him what’s in the van.''

  Rahmeek opened the back doors of the van and I could not believe what I was seeing. Ant, his mother, and his little sister were all tied up in the back of the van. I was at a loss for words.

  Rahmeek looked at me and said. ''This is what you were looking for, right King?'' he reached into his pants and pulled out a black, handgun with a silencer attached to the end of it.

  I didn’t even answer. I looked back at Lou and he was still shaking his head. Before I could speak, Rahmeek pressed the barrel of the gun to Ant’s little sister’s forehead and squeezed the trigger. In an instant her brain matter flew out the back of her head and onto the plastic that was covering the interior.

  ''Oh shit!'' Lou blurted out turning his head from the grisly scene.

  Without blinking once Rahmeek did the same to Ant’s mother then turned and handed me the hot iron.

  ''I figured I would surprise you and let you do the honors...fuck it, you can keep the ten grand. I told you it ain’t about the paper.'' He said.

  All types of shit ran through my head. I was bugging out. Rahmeek was putting me on the spot. Right here, right now, he was expecting me to kill Ant. I had to do this, my reputation was at stake. If I proved myself now, no one would ever second-guess me later.

  I walked up to Ant, put the hot silencer to his temple, looked him dead in his terrified eyes, composed myself and squeezed the trigger. His body collapsed onto his siblings and his eyes were still wide open with a disturbing look of fear in them. I passed the pistol back to Rahmeek and walked to my car.

  I made it back to Asia’s house and tried to be as quiet as possible when I came in. I flicked the living room light switch on and there she was sitting on the sofa waiting for me.

  ''Where the hell were you at two in the morning, Deon?'' She howled, jumping in my face. I gazed at her with a blank stare. ''Deon, you hear me talking to you!'' she continued screaming. I sat down on the sofa and let my head fall back onto the pillow. ''Deon!'' she shouted once again. My head started spinning and I felt like I was about to vomit, so I ran to the bathroom. ''Deon, what the fuck is wrong with you?'' she questioned, angry as she watched me kneel down in front of the toilet and begin throwing up. She stared at me for a minute. ''Deon, no...no...Deon, I know you didn’t do what I think you did?''

  I turned around and looked at her with tears in my eyes. Asia knew the situation because she had been through this same scenario with her father years ago. She once told me that she could look into a person’s eyes and tell if they were a killer or not. She always said that I didn’t have the eyes of a killer, but tonight that changed.

  Asia kneeled down beside me, embraced me and held me close to her heart. The both of us sat on the bathroom floor until 7am that morning.

  They say the first time you kill a person you’ll see that persons face in your dreams for the rest of your life. Every time I closed my eyes I saw Ant’s face. I will never be the same man I was before the murder. My heart has a different beat and my eyes now have the look of a killer in them.

  After a couple weeks of laying low I took a ride out to queens to see Jay-Roc. It had been nearly two months since we saw each other. We spoke on the phone a few times, but I was giving him the space he needed to be with his family. He was a father now and that was his first priority.

  Him and Shareeka moved from their apartment in Flushing and bought a nice house in Astoria. The neighborhood looked like it was a real quiet one and he said all his neighbors were white. It was a cool spot because everyone minded their business.

  ''King, what up?'' Jay-Roc said, greeting me at the door.

  The house was lavish. They had a white, Persian rug covering the entire living room area and a white, leather, sectional couch just like the one in the Scarface movie. A 50-inch screen television was pushed up against the back wall and they had a bar off to the far right.

  ''Nothing much my nigga, how’s the baby?'' I asked, making my way to the bar. I poured a shot of Remy Martin 1738 and threw it back.

  ''She’s ok, thanks for asking. You all right?'' He asked.

  I knew he found out what went down from Lou.

  ''Yeah, I’m good...you know how it goes. I didn’t think this shit would fuck with me the way it has, but...I’m dealing with it.'' I replied.

  ''Well, you know if you ever need someone to talk to, I’m here for you my nigga. That’s serious shit you dealing with right there...you done crossed over into a whole different world now, King.''

  I felt the sincerity in Jay-Roc’s voice, but at the same time I didn’t want to talk about it. I was trying to push the scene as far away from my mind as possible.

  As a man I didn’t feel any different, it was just the fact that I now knew what it felt like to take a human life. My mother use to always quote a line from the bible: ''Thou shall not kill'', she would repeat. Not that I was a follower of any specific religion, I did know that whatever negative you did in life would come back a thousand times worse. I was afraid of what my karma would be.

  ''Hey, King,'' Shareeka spoke coming from the back room. ''How’s my girl Asia doing?''

  ''She’s doing good Shareeka...and you?''

  ''I’m doing fine, just trying to get use to this motherhood thing...you know,'' she answered.

  Shareeka didn’t look like she had just given birth. She had her petite figure back and she was moving around like nothing ever happened.

  ''Well, tell my girl I said hey and whenever she gets a chance she can come by and help out with Tiana because Jay-Roc don’t do shit but sit his ass around the house all day,'' she expressed, rolling her eyes at Jay-Roc. ''I’ll see you later, King...Jay-Roc, I hope you’re not leaving out the house?''

  Jay-Roc walked over to the bar and poured himself a shot of cognac.

  ''My nigga...'' he said shaking his head, ''this fuckin’ girl is gettin’ on my nerves. Son, every time I get ready to leave this house she starts trippin,’...I mean damm!'' he said, throwing back his shot of liquor. He poured another one and did the same. ''I love her and the baby to death, but a nigga need some space. This bitch been actin’ funny too, King. I can’t put a finger on it yet, but I know something ain’t right. Some nigga keeps calling here and every time I pick up the phone he hangs up. If I find out who it is I’ma kill him and her.''

  I could see the stress on Jay-Roc’s face, but I didn’t want to get involved in family matters.

  ''Yeah, I feel you my nigga...I’ma make sure Asia makes her way over here so Shareeka can have someone other than you to talk to. That’s probably all she needs.'' I said.

  Jay-Roc and I talked for a few more hours. Being that Shareeka was on his back about everything, we came to an understanding that I would run the business so he could stay focused on his family.

  I was being put in a position of power and to me t
his meant that Jay-Roc really trusted in me and he acknowledged that I had the qualities to be a leader. Everything I learned from my father, my mother, and Jay-Roc was being put in to play. I was living up to my name and the streets now knew who King was. In addition to this I also acquired a new shooter in Rahmeek. He was now under my wing and ready to kill at will.

  Chapter Ten

  It had been a whole year since I had been appointed top dog in our association. Everything was running according to plan and I even managed to increase profits by sixty percent. Every member of the team was eating lovely.

  Lou and Reemo had their Young Bloods on the streets tearing shit up. If you weren’t affiliated then we looked at you as a problem and you were dealt with appropriately.

  Rahmeek was by my side day in and day out. If a nigga so much as blinked too many times in my direction or looked like they thought about causing a dilemma, Rahmeek was pushing their shit back to the white meat. I witnessed him do it so many times that it became a normal thing to me. I developed numbness for murder. Bullet riddled bodies and blood stained corpses were ordinary sights to me now.

  As far as my home life, Asia and I were still together despite all the fighting and arguing. She began attending Iona College full time and I had just purchased a house in New Rochelle, New York for my mother.

  The day I handed her the keys to the colonial style, three bedroom home, her eyes lit up like Christmas lights. She cried and told me it was the best gift she had ever received from anyone.

  I also bought a condo in White Plains for Asia and me. It was more convenient for her to travel from there to school then having to come all the way from Brooklyn.

  For her twenty-first birthday I copped her a brand new 2000 S-class Mercedes Benz and it was still 99’. Besides what she was learning in school I was teaching Asia the ins and outs of the drug game. It was essential for her to know how business was conducted and the way things operated. I introduced her to all the players in the game just incase there was ever a time when I couldn’t do the dealing she had the knowledge to run the big business.

  By the time the year 2000 came around we were on top of the world. Jay-Roc had begun showing his face on the streets again and we were talking about a major shift change into the dope game.

  This particular move would set us up to become multi-millionaires. From what I was hearing the Africans controlled the dope game in New York. They were the ones bringing in the best product and directing the flow. They had the cheapest prices and kept large supplies. It was just a coincidence that just a month ago I was introduced to two African brothers who were at the top of the heroin trade hierarchy. They ran their business out of New Jersey.

  It only took one phone call to set up a sit down and two days later Jay-Roc and I were on the highway headed to East Orange, New Jersey to meet with Prince and his brother Zabu.

  Prince and Zabu are identical twins from a small city called M’Bour in Senegal, Africa. They had come to the United States in the mid-90’s on a mission to get rich. The word on the streets was they were hired assassins on the run for killing a high-ranking political official back in their homeland. After eluding authorities for nearly two years, the two brothers figured out ways to smuggle heroin into the U.S. Some of their most successful ways of transportation was stashing the drugs inside canned goods and lollipops and having them shipped to the states.

  When we pulled up to the address we were given I could not believe what I was seeing. From the entrance gate to the front door of the mansion had to be about one hundred yards in distance.

  The giant steel gates opened and we drove slowly up the zig zagging driveway that led to the house. When we finally reached the front, two, Continental Bentley’s sat parked off to the side. One was cocaine white and the other was canary yellow. I could see a tall, black man in a tuxedo standing at the front door.

  ''Gentlemen, Mr. Prince and Mr. Zabu are awaiting your arrival.'' He spoke from where he stood.

  Before I got out the car I took my gun from my waistline, checked the clip and tucked it back into my pants.

  Jay-Roc cracked a big smile. ''I taught you well, son,'' he said sarcastically. He did the same and we made our way into the house.

  When we entered I thought my bottom lip was going to hit the ground. The entire floor was made of Polished and honed Crema Marfil marble and a twenty-foot stone column sat in the middle of the house. A giant, crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling and a spiral staircase led to the second floor.

  We followed the man to an elevator that took us upstairs. He escorted us down a lengthy hallway that was covered in red carpet to a pair of double Oak doors.

  ''Now this is how you get money,'' I said. ''These niggas are rich as fuck!''

  ''These niggas are past rich, King...their wealthy.'' Jay-Roc replied.

  Although I did not fully understand, I realized there had to be a difference between being rich and being wealthy. Before long I would find out.

  The double doors opened and across the room I could see two tall, dark-skinned men in suits standing at the rear. One stood behind a desk and the other sat at a small table staring down at a chessboard.

  ''Mr. Prince...Mr. Zabu, your guests have arrived.'' The man in the tuxedo said.

  The slightly taller one of the two came from around the desk and greeted us.

  ''Hello my friends...I am Prince and this is my brother, Zabu.'' He said, pointing to his twin.

  Prince and Zabu were at least six feet tall, Prince being a bit taller. They both had a rich, dark-skinned complexion. Prince had a shiny baldhead, dark brown eyes, and an average slim physique.

  Zabu’s hair was cut in a low style something like mine. Other than their hair and an inch in height they looked exactly the same.

  Zabu pushed his chair back and stood to greet us. When he came close I got a look into his eyes...he had the eyes of a killer.

  ''Greetings, and you are?'' He asked, extending his palm to me.

  ''King...'' I answered, gripping his hand firmly.

  ''Mr. King, I suppose this is not the name your parents gave you at birth, is it?''

  ''No, it’s not...my birth name is Deon, but everyone calls me, King.''

  ''I see...and you?'' He asked, reaching out to Jay-Roc.

  ''Jay-Roc,'' he answered, ''but my real name is Jayson.''

  ''Yes...well, now that we have been formally introduced...Deon, are you a man of chess?'' Prince asked, rubbing his hand over his chin.

  It had been a while since I got the chance to really sit down and play, but like riding a bike, chess was a game you could never forget. I felt like Prince was challenging me to see where my head was. Chess is a strategic game, similar to how life is. The object of playing chess is really quite simple, but mastering this game of chess, just like life, is a whole different story.

  I sat opposite of Prince at the table and stared down at the chess pieces. I had never seen a chess set like this one. The entire board was made of 14-carat white gold, set with thousands of black and white diamonds. It was crazy.

  Zabu and Jay-Roc stood watching the two of us meticulously engage in a battle. To me chess is a craft; every move in chess is carefully crafted. It requires a calm and stable mind and you’ve got to be pro-active.

  Prince tried to dissuade me several times into making the wrong moves, but all his attempts were futile.

  ''When you play me,'' Prince said, ''it is not a question if you win or lose. It is a question whether you survive.''

  I was becoming frustrated at how arrogant Prince was. I told myself to calm down and think about what moves I needed to make. Before you knew it, it was over.

  ''Mate!'' I said, smiling.

  ''Bullshit!'' Prince shouted. He was visibly upset that I had beaten him, but I was hoping it wouldn’t affect our plans to do some business. ''A quality player is always prosperous.'' He stated.

  I smiled at his remark and said, ''This is chess not checkers!...The ultimate objective of the game is to capt
ure the ''King''. Having said this, the ''King'' will never actually be captured.''

  After the chess match we got right down to business discussing exactly what we came for. Prince said he’d heard about our organization from some of his people in Brooklyn. He told us he didn’t have a problem doing business with us as long as it was an exclusive venture, meaning he was the only supplier we could deal with.

  We sat with Prince and Zabu for over an hour going over the do’s and don’ts of the drug game. I can’t front, Prince’s first impression was a strong one. He was very articulate in the way he spoke and his aura exuded authority. I could see that he was the brain of the operation because almost the whole time we talked Zabu said few words.

  Jay-Roc and I agreed to his terms only because we knew he had the best dope on the east coast, and after finally seeing eye to eye, we agreed on a price of sixty-thousand per kilo as long as we bought at least ten kilos at a time. With prices ranging from eighty to one-hundred-fifty-thousand a kilo, that wasn’t too bad of a deal.

  We told Prince that we would be doing some business with him within the next month or so and he was satisfied.

  ''Before you two leave I have something for you,'' he said, picking up his phone. After he said a few words and hung up I looked over to Jay-Roc and I could see him squirming in his chair.

  He slowly placed his hand on his waistline where his gun was. I watched Zabu closely and knew he could see Jay-Roc from the corner of his eye. I didn’t want it to go down like this and was hoping Jay-Roc calmed down.

  Two minutes later the sexiest woman I ever laid eyes on in my twenty-one years on God’s green earth, entered the room. This tall, brown-skinned queen sashayed past Jay-Roc and I smelling like Escada perfume. I knew the smell because I had bought a bottle for one of my friends. Her curly, black hair bounced with every step she took and her smile was radiant.