In the hallway, I was about to put him down, but he clung to my neck and tightened his legs around me, so I kept holding him. “All right. I was late, so you call the shots today. What’s my name, again?”
“Da-win.”
“What’s your name?”
“HeeHee.” He hadn’t mastered the K sound yet.
The projects were pretty quiet because it had started to rain. I pulled Kiki’s hat down over his ears. “I know what you’re thinking, little bro. You’re wondering why you gotta grow up in such an ugly-ass place. Gimme eight years. By the time you’re ten, I’ll have you set up someplace nice. I promise.”
We reached our building, and I climbed the stairs, which was faster than waiting for an elevator. I held him with one arm while keying the lock, then washed his hands, changed his diaper, and put on some cartoons. There was a box of Goldfish crackers in the cupboard, but it was empty. I never understood why Mom put empty stuff back in the cupboards—maybe because the cupboard was closer than the garbage can.
I checked for Cheerios, but there were only Bran Flakes, and I knew Kiki wouldn’t go for them. I found a protein bar in my knapsack and cut it into little pieces, then gave it to him in his favorite Spider-Man bowl. At the first bite of chocolate, he was happy. I figured the protein would be good for him, especially since we were also out of milk.
I wrote a note for Mom with a list of things we needed and left it on the table with some money. It amazed me that my family had survived while I was in juvie, but I guess Tasha had picked up the slack. It wasn’t that Mom didn’t make money—she did okay as a dental receptionist—but she spent it all wrong. Too much takeout, too many beauty products.
At least Kiki had Tasha and me. We’d just had Mom. I couldn’t even remember my dad. He died when I was eight months old on a peacekeeping mission to Bosnia. I only had one picture of him. He was wearing his military fatigues and a blue peacekeeper’s cap. He looked strong and intelligent. A modern-day hero, the way I saw it. Sometimes I wondered how my life would’ve been different if he were alive. Maybe I wouldn’t have ended up in juvie. But then, if Dad had been around, there wouldn’t be a Kiki.
“Hey,” Tasha said when she walked in the door a while later. She slung her wet jacket over a chair and went right over to Kiki. “Where’s my hug, sweetie?”
He complied without taking his eyes off the TV.
“You gave him a chocolate bar for snack? Seriously?”
I didn’t look up from my magazine. “It’s a protein bar.”
“There’s probably way too much protein in it for him. What if it makes him sick?”
“I’ve never heard of protein making you sick. There’s nothing else to eat anyway.”
“You could’ve taken him to the store.”
“It’s raining. Maybe you didn’t notice.”
She sighed loudly. I could never do anything right.
Tasha always gave me a hard time. When we were kids, she’d teased me and grabbed my toys and pushed me in the dirt. But she’d also stood up for me when bigger kids wanted to knock me around.
If she’d had a soft spot for me back then, she didn’t anymore. When I got charged with dealing, she called me every nasty name in the book. She told me it was my fault Mom went into labor early with Kiki, not pregnancy diabetes like Mom said. And she visited me every month to tell me how hard it was at home with the baby and with Mom struggling to pay the bills.
Tasha sat down across from me, opened her knapsack, and pulled out a textbook. That was my cue. “Time to go to work,” I said.
“Whatever.”
I stood up. “Is there something you want to say?”
She knew I was dealing. So did Mom. It was another reason for Tasha to look down on me, but she never said anything. And I knew why.
She glanced at the money on the table.
“Later,” I said.
EVIL
Some people say that no one is born evil—that life makes you that way.
But I knew that wasn’t true. Plenty of people got fucked over by life, beaten into the ground, and spit on. But they didn’t end up like Diamond Tony.
All I wanted this morning was my choco-latte and a quick bus to school. Instead I got a crime scene right in the middle of the projects.
Somebody shoved past me to get closer. I stepped back, away from the crowd, away from the stench. I’d caught a glimpse of the body and the bloodstained ground and didn’t want to see more. Everybody was saying that it was Rico, Pup’s brother. And that Tony had done the job himself.
A light-skinned girl was screaming. Must be Rico’s girlfriend. She ran toward the body, but her friends tried to pull her back. Finally the crowd parted to let her get closer, and she collapsed, shrieking. Her friends picked her up and dragged her away. Smart friends. If she stuck around the crime scene too long, she might say or do something that would put her on Tony’s hit list.
People in the crowd kept asking why. Had Rico been planning to rat on Tony to get Pup a lighter sentence? Or was it Tony’s way of telling Pup to keep quiet or the rest of his family would die? I wanted to shout at them that it didn’t even matter. Tony was sending a message to the whole neighborhood. Don’t talk. Be afraid. Don’t think I won’t.
The crowd suddenly hushed. A group of guys were crossing the projects ten yards away. It was Diamond Tony and his entourage.
They say killers like to hang out by their crime scenes. I guess it’s true. From a distance, Tony could be any random guy in a black bomber jacket and Jays cap, but the sunglasses gave him away. He wore them whenever he was outside, whether it was sunny or gray, morning or night. Tony waved at the crowd like a celebrity greeting his fans.
Evil.
THE KID
When I was fifteen, I got recruited as a lookout. That’s how it started.
I felt honored and bragged about it to my friends. I got paid, sure, but I’d have done it for free, just for the status of being a part of Diamond Tony’s operation.
I didn’t know back then what Diamond Tony was made of. All I knew was that he was the most notorious kingpin Toronto had ever seen.
It was all good for a few weeks. I had as much MPR—money, power, and respect—as a kid could hope for. Then one day, while a deal was going down, the cops descended on us from every direction. One of Tony’s guys shoved a package into my hand. “You know the code.” We ran off in different directions, but I didn’t get far before the police tackled me.
In the cruiser, I had this jittery feeling. I knew the code: Don’t snitch. If I named names, I’d pay the price. My family would too.
They put me in a white room that was as small as a prison cell. There was a table attached to the floor and three chairs. Two detectives, a skinny white guy and a short, Jennifer-Lopez-plus-thirty-pounds, came in to interrogate me.
Skinny paced around the table. “Why don’t you make this easy on yourself and tell us who those drugs belong to?”
“I’m waiting for my lawyer.” Everybody knew that Diamond Tony had a fancy-ass lawyer who represented his people. I hoped he’d send him soon.
Skinny flattened his palms on the table and leaned toward me. “Why would you need a lawyer?” I jerked my head back at his coffee breath. “The crack isn’t yours, is it?”
I didn’t answer.
That’s when J.Lo started in on me. “All you need to do is tell us who gave you the drugs and what they asked you to do.”
“No one and nothing, ma’am.”
Skinny raked a hand across his bad comb-over. “How would a kid like you get half a kilo of crack in the middle of Walker territory?”
Half a kilo? Shit. I glanced at the door, wishing Diamond Tony’s lawyer would hurry the hell up.
J.Lo pulled a chair up next to me and gave me a motherly look. “You can tell us the truth, Darren. That’s what’ll get you out of this.”
I forced a laugh. It wasn’t a mother I needed—it was Witness Protection.
She might’ve guessed my
thoughts, because she said, “If you’re willing to talk, we can keep a close eye on you and your family.”
Yeah, like a cruiser driving by a couple of times a day would protect us if I snitched.
“Half a kilo is serious, Darren,” she said. “You could spend several years in juvie, and then you could serve the remainder of your time in an adult prison. Is that worth it to you?”
I didn’t answer. My stomach clenched, and it was all I could do not to throw up. I wanted to run away. Pretend none of this was happening.
But it was.
The Mission
Before I left juvie
I told the cops I had a plan
To bring down Diamond Tony
Number-one wanted man
They gave me some green, an ID number, and a phone
It was better than nothing
I would’ve done it on my own.
IN THE BIZ
We got a problem on our hands,” Vinny said, looking around at his dealers. It was Friday at five, and we’d been called to an emergency meeting. “South Side Bloods are moving in on us.”
We all went quiet as we took in the news. Vinny was our lieutenant, the guy who connected us to Tony’s operation. The moment I’d heard about the meeting, I knew something was up. Though Vinny was in charge of six dealers, I’d rarely been in the same room with the others.
Vinny was a former foster kid. His face had scars of a rough life, the kind that all the money in the world couldn’t erase. He was probably twenty-two, twenty-three, but half his teeth had silver caps, with a gold one at the front. I’d heard that Diamond Tony’s operation snatched him up young and raised him as their own. Tony’s choices were never random. Vinny was smart, but not so smart he’d ever question Tony. And Vinny was loyal—how could you not be when you got pulled from the gutter? Even if he came off as cocky, that didn’t bother anyone. You could tell he was trying so hard to be somebody.
Vinny’s town house was full of classy furniture and high-tech gadgets, but we were down in his basement for the meeting, which had a musty smell and saggy old couches.
“The Bloods ain’t gonna take away our business,” T-Bone said, waving his hand like he was swatting at a fly. “Our fiends know we got the raw product. What they got is weak.”
Vinny shook his head. “Not anymore. They got good shit now. Some are saying it’s better than ours. And they been dropping their prices to undercut us.”
I was surprised Vinny was admitting that another operation could have a product as potent as Diamond Dust. It was a crack-cocaine so pure, so gleaming white, that once you got hooked, you could never be satisfied with anything else. Tony had managed to do what every businessman dreamed of. He’d created a product that people literally couldn’t live without.
“If I see one of their dealers in our territory, I’ll take him out.” Albert put a hand to his side, showing he was strapped. “DT fought hard for his territory. Brothers died for this. We ain’t giving up a single corner.”
“Don’t go shooting anybody unless you have to, hear me?” Vinny said. “The cops are watching us. That’s how Pup got caught. DT says we have to go dark for a while, which means no shoot-outs.”
That didn’t mean no shooting, just not in public. Diamond Tony didn’t do diplomacy.
“So what am I supposed to do when I see the Bloods around?” Albert demanded.
“Ask them to kindly move along,” Cam said in an old-lady voice, and we all laughed.
Cam was my dealing partner. We’d grown up together in the neighborhood, so I was glad when Vinny had put us together. Cam was a dropout and a heavy weed smoker with a talent for imitating people. Even when he mimicked the neighborhood assholes, they were too impressed to get pissed off. He had a huge mop of red hair and the words “Thug Life” tattooed on his arm—the only white guy I knew with a tattoo like that.
Cam’s comment might’ve made us laugh, but like everybody else, he was waiting for an answer to Albert’s question.
Vinny didn’t seem to have one. “Don’t do shit without calling me, a’ight? I gotta check everything with DT. He’s counting on his soldiers to keep it locked. Can y’all handle that?”
Everybody nodded. Their chests puffed out. They liked being Diamond Tony Walker’s street soldiers. They liked working for a legend.
The guys started talking about how weak the South Side Bloods were, but I was only half listening. The Bloods were ballsy to make a play for Diamond Tony’s territory. It must be their new leader, Andre. He’d been Pistol’s top lieutenant and had taken over after Pistol died. Andre was known for being calculating and fearless—he’d have to be to take on Tony. And he had more lives than a cat. Rumor had it he’d been shot five different times.
I bet Andre’s play for Walker territory was more than just business. It was revenge for Pistol’s murder. I was sure that a lot of people secretly wanted to see Diamond Tony go down, but they didn’t have the courage to do anything about it.
The thought made me smile. I was doing some real community service.
Vinny brought us pizza and wings but told us to eat fast so we could get to our corners. It was incredible how happy the guys were when they saw the spread. For all the money we made for Tony, we should’ve been given cars, not pizza and wings.
By six we were wiping our hands and getting up from the saggy couches. When we headed upstairs, there were some guys in the living room.
One of them was Diamond Tony.
My skin prickled. I’d never seen him up close and never without his sunglasses. I glanced away quickly, but not before I caught a glimpse of his eyes. They were dead, glassy. The eyes of a sociopath. I wondered if that was why he always wore sunglasses—so people wouldn’t see who he really was.
He didn’t look like the kingpins you saw on TV. He didn’t dress to get attention. He always wore a clean, crisp outfit. Tonight, it was white and blue Enyce with shoes that were brand-new. If you looked closely, you saw the signs of wealth: the diamond in his ear, the diamond-studded infinity symbol around his neck. Some people thought that’s how he got his name. But when you saw Diamond Dust sparkle in the sunlight, you knew that’s where it came from.
There were two huge guys with him, obviously his security, and two of his executives, Marcus and Donut. Marcus gave off this cold, remote vibe that reminded me of a robot. Programmed to do whatever Tony wanted, no doubt.
Vinny walked into the living room and gestured for us to follow. “Here they are.”
Diamond Tony got up. We all stood up straighter, like military recruits waiting for inspection. He looked us over, one by one, and when he got to me, he paused thoughtfully. “Darren Lewis,” he said.
Blood rushed in my ears. Is he onto me?
“Soldier,” he said, and clapped a hand on my shoulder before moving on to the next guy. I was sure I was pitted with sweat.
After he’d looked over the last guy, Diamond Tony sat back down. “You told them?” he asked Vinny.
“I told them. You got solid soldiers here, Tony. They’re gonna make you proud.”
Tony didn’t take his eyes off us. “Of course they will.” In true Diamond style, it was both a vote of confidence and a threat.
Then Vinny sent us out into the night.
ZOMBIES
Cam and I went to our corner in front of the 17 high-rise. It took a while for my pulse to slow down. How had Tony recognized me? We’d never actually met. I’d seen him a few times, but I hadn’t thought he’d noticed me.
Obviously I was wrong about that.
Maybe he didn’t stay as far in the background as I imagined. Who knew how many times he’d driven by our corner, watching through some tinted-windowed SUV?
I didn’t like it.
When I was fifteen, I would’ve been excited that Diamond Tony knew who I was. But I wasn’t a dumb kid anymore. Now I knew the game he was playing, and I saw right through him.
I just hoped he couldn’t see through me.
Tonight the
fiends were out in full force. Reminded me of a zombie movie. They were slow but jittery, dragging themselves toward us. Sometimes I had to remind myself that they weren’t the walking dead.
Growing up in the projects, I knew what addiction looked like. But selling on the corner night after night really brought the ugly home. I saw normal people become strung-out fiends in a matter of weeks.
The creepiest zombie was this guy called the Vet. He wore a raggedy green army jacket and told everybody he’d fought in Afghanistan. He was skinny as hell, with sunken eyes and sores.
The Vet came up to me with mostly change from panhandling. I counted it and put it in my pocket, then gave Cam the signal and he supplied him. We watched the Vet shuffle away. Cam pulled a face. I could tell the Vet freaked him out too.
“You going to the party later?” Cam asked me.
“Yeah.” Smalls had been talking about his party all week, so I figured I’d go.
“Tell your sister to come,” Cam said with a grin. “I’m aching to get laid.”
“She’d help you out, but she’d need a gas mask to put up with your stank.”
Cam laughed.
After we did the final exchange of the night with Vinny, we headed to the party. The apartment was jammed with people. It was dark, lit only with purple lightbulbs, and the air reeked of weed and cognac cigarillos.
Cam saw a pothead friend and said, “Catch ya later.” Then he headed for one of the bedrooms. I grabbed a bottle of Scotch off the dining room table. White Chris always said it was your choice of liquor that separated the men from the boys. Too bad I had to drink it from a red plastic cup.
A cute Vietnamese girl caught my eye, and I smiled at her. She smiled back, then whispered something to her friend, who seemed to be urging her to approach me. I wanted to tell her friend not to rush it. I hadn’t scoped the whole place yet.
I made my way to the kitchen, where a bunch of people were talking about last night’s game. Vinny was already there, no surprise. He showed up anywhere that people paid attention to him, even if it was a party of mostly high school kids. Maybe he was looking for a new girl. Or, if the rumors were true, two or three girls.
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