Later on when I caught Manny alone, I pushed my twenty-two into his ribs and he shitted all over himself. I changed his name to Doo-Doo. He never tried that shit with me again. Now every time I see his schoolboy crew, they act like they don’t see me and just walk on by.
Keeping everybody on edge was the robbery boys. They didn’t go to school or work. They hung around waiting for everybody else to do that. Once the people were out of the building, they ran up and broke into their apartments and spots, stealing toasters, televisions, VCRs, and whatever they could sell. Their team was known as the Smash Brothers. It was led by two brothers, one was named Ronald, the other named Rolland, last name Smash. This team of geniuses would steal from the fifth floor, and sell the goods to the people living on the sixth floor! After one big smash and grab, they fucked around and sold a girl from my building’s new red leather jacket before she ever got a chance to rock it. When the girl from the next building over who bought the jacket from the Smash Brothers wore it outside, it tipped off “Girl War One.”
A bunch of fourteen- and fifteen-year-old chicks were out front beating the shit out of each other. The real owner of the jacket and the new owner of the jacket were fighting for the coat they’d both paid for. The rest of them girls were fighting ’cause they lived in different buildings and were always beefing anyhow. The boys and a few men from both buildings cheered when the shirts got ripped open and the bras and panties started flying. The fight ended when a girl from the other building bit off the finger of a girl from my building. The cops, who had been standing still watching the fight and enjoying the view, swooped down on all of them. Ronald Smash located the bloody finger and handed it over to the police like he was an innocent bystander and a concerned youth.
I don’t go to school. I study at home. Sometimes during the day, I let them robbery boys see my face around the building, so they know if they come running up into my spot, they’ll never get back out.
Anyway, the Smash Brothers ain’t half as bold as the stick-up kids. They don’t wait till you go to work or school to steal your shit. The Cash Crew rolls right up to your face. They’ll let you see their faces too and still take your shit. Matter of fact, everybody in the building knows who they are. They wave their guns around, bust shots in the air, or randomly shoot off rooftops. In a tight situation they even bust off at the popo.
Terrorized youth and mothers bend to them. Old ladies gamble with their lives and dime them out to the cops, unaware that the officers they’re calling for help are just as crooked as the crooks.
The leader of the Cash Crew, named Mighty Dollar, Mighty for short, didn’t deal with stolen toasters, televisions, VCRs, or furniture. His crew stole shit that was either cash or easy to liquidate into cash, like jewels and welfare checks. Mighty was notorious for controlling the mailboxes in the lobby of our building, where people received their checks; the coin boxes from the pay phones; the parking meters; and for hitting up the local arcades.
They was on the prowl every day. But I noticed they did their biggest capers on vacations and holidays. On Christmas Day, they went on a “shopping spree.” I know because my family doesn’t celebrate Christmas. It is just another day for us. The Cash Crew caught a group of schoolboy suckers running their mouths and showing off their presents, styling and shining in their new gifts. Mighty made all of them run their valuables. They took their new jewels right off their necks and wrists and put it right onto theirs.
Afterward, Mighty and his boys just chilled right there outside the building, sporting the stolen shit and confident nobody could do nothing about it.
I was on the block when Lavidicus came downstairs with his momma. She had a black extension cord in one hand following behind her teenage son. She stood about twenty feet away as her son went to beg his watch back. The boy seemed so scared his hands and legs were shaking and his bottom lip had dried up and turned ashy gray.
It was as if Mighty had eyes behind his head and saw Lavidicus coming. He started laughing before the kid even got close on his back. Even his boys thought it was mad funny. The kid stood behind Mighty mumbling about “Can I talk to you for a minute.” Mighty stayed calm, kept conversating with his boys and wouldn’t bother to respond. I understood that. My father always said, “Men don’t mumble. Either shut up or speak up.”
Afraid and defeated, the boy walked back toward his mother, who spanked his ass with her black cord right outside in front of everybody. He jumped around like he was dancing on hot rocks.
Afterward his mother approached Mighty, with part of the cord still wrapped around her hand and the heaviest part dangling. She started talking loud about how he better give her son back his watch. Mighty said, “How do you know this is your son’s watch?” She answered, “ ’Cause it’s a Tag Heuer and I brought it for him and it cost too much damn money to be playing around with.”
Mighty said, “You right, it’s a nice watch. That’s why I bought it.” He laughed.
“You didn’t buy that one. I bought it. Take it off and I’ll prove it to you,” she said with her free hand on her hip.
“If I take this watch off, you gonna have to take something off too,” Mighty warned her. “Are your feet as pretty as your face?” he asked the boy’s mother. And, in what had to be the worst day of the boy’s life, his mother’s whole stance switched. She cracked a wide smile of delight at Mighty’s twisted compliment and answered, “I do have nice feet.”
Mighty showed the mother the watch. She flipped it over and pointed out that she had Lavidicus’ name engraved on the back of it. And that “Ain’t nobody else around here named Lavidicus.”
Mighty gave her the watch. She gave Mighty herself. They became the rowdiest couple on the block, famous for fighting and fucking indoors and outdoors. Mighty even shot at her once as she ran out the back of the building.
The last time I seen Lavidicus, we rode down in the elevator together. I handed him a flyer for the dojo, figuring he might want to start training his mind and his body. As a teenager, he would be starting out late in learning fighting techniques. Still, I couldn’t see him surviving in the hood without a whole new outlook, understanding, and stance. We didn’t speak no words that day in the elevator. In fact, I never even saw him on the block again although his moms was still living there disgracing herself.
I had one run-in with Mighty and them. I saw their crew out in the dumps, a place where garbage is piled up on top of garbage. They seemed surprised to see me rolling for self, out there where they be plotting at. They watched me as I set up empty cans for target practice. I stayed focused and started blasting the cans rapid-fire quick, letting them see how I hit my target when I take aim the first time. Before the gun smoke cleared, I disappeared.
They were tight that my firing caused the cops to come racing to their meet-up spot. They had to switch up their hideout after that. Still, I knew they was impressed. They couldn’t do that shit. I saw once when they got into a shoot-out with this kid named Scooter around our way. I counted twenty or more bullets, let off by three different shooters. Shell casings dropped all over the sidewalk. They never hit nothing or nobody. Meanwhile, their live target is just running at top speed, dipping, zig-zagging, slipping away from them easily.
By watching Mighty and them I learned that a small reckless crew of cats can rule over a whole building off of fear alone. They had guns but no shooting skills. They had easy targets as their victims but no goal, no plans other than dressing up, styling, and playing C-low outside the building with other people’s money.
Around our way we got pimps and rapists, same thing. Stupid girls and desperate women are their prey, product, and cargo. Their business is steady and heavy. One day you see a young slimmy walking to the store with her butt poked out. A few nights later you see her going in and out of the side entrance of a little hole-in-the-wall strip club called Squeeze. All courtesy of Larry from apartment 3B, the runner for the main pimp in our area, named Trinidad.
Larry lingers arou
nd the building with a pocket filled with Jolly Ranchers, Now and Laters, and Blow Pops. He got an eye for the extra young ones whose bodies are just starting to fill out. The ones who like to cut class, lean on the wall when they walk, look lonely, and ain’t got no fathers, brothers, or brains.
Me and him bumped heads once when I went up on the rooftop to clear my mind, think, and watch. I caught him conducting a lollipop licking contest between three little girls, ages maybe ten or eleven, or twelve tops. The little girls were all eager-faced, their tongues dark grape, dark cherry, and dark watermelon. They were licking really fast and hard, really trying to beat each other to the promised “prize,” while dirty thirty-something-year-old Larry watched with his long fingers and dirty, long fingernails gripping his crotch.
I snapped, then cracked that motherfucker over the head with an empty Colt 45 forty-ounce bottle. I told them little girls to go home as Larry folded and fell out cold like Thomas “Hitman” Hearns after “Marvelous” Marvin Hagler hit him with that right. Two of the little girls looked shocked. The other one started talking about, “You messed up my prize money. Now you owe me five dollars.” I told her, “Shut up and slow down.” After that I figured I was wasting my time talking to her, trying to defend an honor that none of them had based on an idea that none of them knew and a belief that none of them understood or shared.
Later Larry and his apprentice, a big seventeen-year-old named Lance, jumped me. I didn’t use my burner. It wasn’t on that level. Larry backed off when he felt how hard the blows was swinging. He wasn’t no real fighter. He was only a conqueror of young girls. He said for me and Lance to shoot a fair one. I went straight to it. I was thirteen years young. I caught more than a few bruises. I didn’t care. I thought it was worth it. In my mind pimps are lower than thieves.
I don’t know where Larry moved his stripper training camp to. I just knew it wasn’t happening on the rooftop of my building no more. It was big news when Lance got arrested for molesting some little girl from the block who wasn’t even old enough to strip at the illegal strip joint Squeeze.
Now them same three little girls who I looked out for on the rooftop be wandering around the hood giving me the eye as though they want to get with me and got something that I want. I brush them off, send them home, and remind them to stay off the roof and the stairs and out of everybody’s face. I guess they just destined to be fast. I look at them as being exactly how I would never allow my little sister to be. I would rather my sister be dead than to turn out like one of them. In fact, someone would have to either call the coroner to haul off the guy who tried to get at my little sister, or step over my dead body to get my little sister into that low, ran-through position.
Every now and then, the young ones who ain’t robbing and stealing or pimping get the bright idea to form themselves a gang. A few of them approached me to see if I wanted to get down with their team. I said, “Nah.”
Only some Black American fools could stop and think and then come up with the idea that being in a gang means wearing the same colors, dressing up the same like a bunch of fucking cheerleaders, beating each other down, and running wild scaring the shit out of their own neighbors. These gang types were hilarious to me with their secret handshakes and bullshit nickel-and-dime schemes.
Because they all dressed the same and did the same dumb shit, the cops could easily identify them and had an easy excuse to keep sweeping and locking them up. Every day some of them got picked up and a handful got let out. They snitched on one another so much, there was no way for them to really know who was in or out of the gang at any given time.
I felt sorry for the young gang fools. Some of them had heart but none of them had brains. I figured someone ought to tell them little motherfuckers that America is a country of businesses. If they wanted to be able to buy anything in this country, they had to have something to sell, a product. And everything you eat, wear, do, or watch is a product you could be manufacturing and selling for the right price. But these boys were knuckleheads. Instead of getting a product or building up a skill or talent, they would turn around and sell their own sisters and mama. The way I looked at them was if you don’t have no real business, no real money, no real plan, no real power, why should I join you? Should we get together and split nothing nine ways? I mean, I come from a country where men fight over gold, oil, diamonds, and land. Now I live in a country where niggas fight over nothing.
The drug dealers got something though—cars and cash and a constant flow of ass. But individually and together, they seem like disorganized, gullible dudes.
The real hustlers in Midtown Manhattan’s diamond and gold district, and the jewelers down on Canal Street, always get excited when they see them coming. They take them for their money and play them for fools. They get them dripping and draped in ten-karat gold, one- two- and four-finger rings, and cloudy-ass diamonds.
The hustlers who think they a cut above the rest insist on fourteen- or eighteen-karat gold. Where I am from, even this kind of jewelry is known as junk.
Around my way, at the time, the dealer’s car of choice was the BMW. They also chilled in Maximas, Saabs, Jaguars, and baby Benzes, the 190. Somehow each of them would find some way to fuck up a decent new ride. Either they would put bright-yellow fog lights on, or skirts, or an additional bumper made of plastic or some big fucking letters pasted on the windows, which I thought could only draw even more attention to themselves when it seemed to me like common sense that their line of work required them to hang back and camouflage.
Around the hood they be flossing their money knots, shaking their dice, shooting their C-low, smoking their weed, hugging their forties, making an unnecessary scene in the sunlight when everybody’s watching. Any one of them would pull a stack of bills out, line a bunch of boys up, and pay for all of them to get cuts at the barbershop or ice cream at the ice cream truck. I turned down their offers. It wasn’t no real money in it for me. Besides, I have a father. I wasn’t out looking for none of these cats to play daddy.
All of their deals were loaded anyway. They got almost everything. You got next to nothing. The police stay on your ass, not the boss’. They stayed styling while you became nothing but a scrambler, a runner, you running all the risk all the time.
One of them, known on the streets by the name Superior, offered me a package to sell for him, with promises of me blowing up over time. I told him, “Nah,” I had no time for that bullshit.
Of course there were working people where I lived who had regular jobs. Their work was legit, but their mentality was just as foreign to me. We had janitors, waiters, garbagemen, and postal workers. They were grown men. They did what they thought they had to do on the weekdays and got high or drunk on the weekends to forget it all. They tricked part of their earnings watching and paying young girls to peel their clothes off at Squeeze and paid them a little more to bounce in their laps. Compared to all the other men in the hood, they swore they were doing it. They had legit jobs with benefits and crowned themselves kings because of it. For entertainment they juggled the hearts of the husbandless mothers who outnumbered them ten to one. Their constant lying and creeping made for tight, uncomfortable, volatile rides down on the elevator in the morning where these various women faced off.
We also had a couple of shiny shoe U.S. Army cats living in our hood. They were shipped, deployed, and flown in and out. They were respected for their assumed military skills. On top of that, cats admired that they had permission and orders to kill without penalty.
Envious young niggas got their get back on the military men by making trampolines out of their girlfriends and wives while they were away on active duty.
One cat named Arthur fucked around and caught feelings for one of the army wives, and blasted her husband on the first hour of his first day on leave back home. The army guy had survived the blood, roar, bullets, and bombs of America’s unjust wars. He managed to stay alive in the alleys and corridors of Beirut, Lebanon, but got clapped up and gunned down
easily on the ghetto-hot streets of BK.
Luther Mathews was a big-time corrections officer, who still lived in our building along with the same motherfuckers who kept getting locked up. He walked around like he was a supercop and a deteck. The older females sweated him because he had a job, benefits, and a uniform. I looked at him like he couldn’t be too smart, a grown-ass man still stuck in the projects with the wild wolves.
I once saw him behind the building beefing with some young strays like they was his own children. Quick-tempered, he started screaming, “Wait till I get y’all asses up at Rikers,” like he was so sure every teen would end up in lockup eventually.
The real cops were like germs no antibiotic could kill. They watched us. We watched them. They were all over the place. So were we. The only difference was, we lived there and they didn’t. Still, they acted like they lived there and we didn’t. They had beef with everybody who wasn’t one of their bitches or snitches.
No matter what a guy’s angle is, legit or illegit, around my way you gonna encounter the police. There are random stops, random searches, random beatdowns, random arrests, random police shootings and murders of unarmed teens, and none of it random. So I moved calm yet swift through the streets and I got more than a few hidden places to stash my heat.
The notorious cop around our way was Officer Brandon Huff. Black and built like a bodybuilder, he was known for pulling over pretty young thangs on a routine survey and head count of single mothers. He would entice them with his promises to straighten out their teenage sons who wouldn’t “act right” or respect them. He was big on beatdowns and more prejudiced against black youth than a white man. Everybody around my way called Officer Huff by his street name, Stress.
I like math and I am good and quick with numbers. I figured out the smaller percentage of time I spent in the hot spot known as my block, the less of a chance of me getting harassed and bagged by the cops for standing still.
Midnight Page 4