Larceny

by Jason Poole

  “Like what type of talents?” I asked.

  “Music. I’m one of the original members of the Junk Yard Band. I used to play the buckets.”

  I immediately started laughing. “For real?”

  “Yeah, sweetheart, I was the man on the buckets back in the day.”

  “Did you ever graduate to real instruments?”

  “Yeah, I took up trumpet and piano in school.”

  “Damn, I never met a guy who knew how to play the piano,” I said, impressed.

  “There are a lot of things I know how to do that might surprise you,” Jovan said, smiling.

  “Stop being fresh. Remember this is our first date.”

  “So, you’re calling this a date? That must mean I got a shot at seeing you again, huh?”

  “No, I didn’t mean it like that. I meant this is our first meeting, and if this goes well, who knows what may happen?” I said, smiling back at him.

  “Now you’re the one being fresh,” Jovan said, laughing.

  “So, where else did you live?” I asked.

  “Oh, we moved from the Farms to the Valley.”

  “You mean Valley Green?”

  “Yeah, sweetheart.”

  I wished he’d stop calling me that, because it was turning me on.

  “Living in Valley Green was real rough, but somehow my mother found a way to keep me outta trouble. She sent me to the Number Eleven Boys’ Club after school. That’s where I played basketball, football, and took up boxing. On the weekends, she sent me over Northeast to my grandmother’s house, and I liked going over there, ’cause that’s where my best friend lived.”

  CHAPTER 3

  “The Lawyer”

  Ring, ring, ring.

  “Law offices of Rohon and Robinson. May I help you?” Cindy said.

  “Hey, Cindy, this is Mark. Is Jovan there yet?” Mark asked her.

  “Yes. He’s in your office, waiting for your call.”

  “Good. Plug me in,” Mark said.

  “Jovan?” Cindy said.

  “Yeah, Cindy, what’s up?” Jovan said.

  “Mark’s on line one.”

  “Okay, thank you,” Jovan said, pushing line one. “Hey, Mark, what’s the deal?”

  “Well, it took you long enough to get there. I’ve been calling all morning,” Mark said.

  “C’mon, Mark, you called me at home at nine o’clock and it’s now nine thirty-five. I came as fast as I could,” Jovan said.

  “Damn. Hope you brushed your teeth,” Mark said, laughing.

  “Good joke, Mark.”

  “Okay, enough of the funny stuff. Let’s get down to business.”

  Jovan liked that in Mark; he knew when to joke and when to take care of business. Jovan guessed that was why they connected so well.

  “Look, I need you to find me some cases on conflicts of interest, ineffective association of counsel, and illegal search and seizure.”

  “Are these the issues your client is putting forth?” Jovan asked Mark.

  “Yeah, but not right now. I just need the cases beforehand in case the government wants to argue; then I’ll already have my guns loaded.”

  Mark always stayed two steps ahead of the government, because whenever they presented something in the cut, he hit ’em right back with it.

  After Jovan got off the phone with Mark, he went into Mark’s private law library and looked up the cases that would fit his argument to a tee. The fact that this new client was his best friend made him work even harder. He Shepardized case after case, updated them, and faxed them straight to Mark.

  Mark called back again.

  Ring, ring, ring.

  “Law offices of Rohon and Robinson. May I help you?” Cindy said.

  “Cindy, plug me into Jovan again,” Mark said.

  “Jovan, line one. Mark again,” Cindy said.

  This time Jovan didn’t pick up the receiver; instead he sat back in Mark’s chair, placed his feet up on his desk, and pressed the intercom button.

  “Yeah, Mark, what’s up?” Jovan said.

  “First of all, get your ass outta my chair. When you legally become a lawyer, you’ll get your own desk and chair,” Mark said.

  “Yeah, right, besides yours, huh?” Jovan said, laughing.

  “I don’t know ’bout that one, buddy,” Mark said.

  “Hey, were those cases any good?”

  “Yeah, they were damn good. The government’s mad as hell,” Mark said with a chuckle.

  “What’s next?” Jovan asked Mark.

  “Well, my client only has one hang-up.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The government still has the statement from a witness during the grand jury testimony, and they’re saying that this witness is still willing to testify,” Mark said.

  Damn, Bilal’s shit was looking fucked up, so Jovan asked, “Did the judge grant a new trial?”

  “No, not yet, but we do have some good news.”

  “Yeah, what’s that?”

  “Come to find out the officers who arrested my client never had a legitimate warrant for his arrest. They just had a personal vendetta against him, so they got some information from an informant and put together a bogus warrant and illegally searched his home.”

  “So, does he now have a good argument to drop all the charges?” Jovan asked hopefully.

  “Yeah, but there is still one thing that fucks it up.”

  “What’s that?”

  “If the charges get dropped, the government is gonna reindict my client for conspiracy, and they will use the witness that was an informant for the police to testify against him and his grand jury statement, which I’m reading right now.”

  “Is his statement bad?” Jovan asked, needing to know because his best friend’s life was on the line.

  “Yeah, it’s very bad. It says here that my client sold him at least five kilos of coke a week.”

  “Damn, they got him in a bind, huh?” Jovan asked.

  “Yeah, this will fuck him up for good.”

  Bilal was Jovan’s best friend, and he had to do something; he had to find some way to get him out of this bind.

  “Mark, how much time do we have to work on this case?”

  “I’m gonna ask the judge for an extension of time. I’ll call you back and let you know how it goes,” Mark said.

  When Jovan got off the phone with Mark, he was in a state of confusion. How in the hell was he gonna get his man outta this situation?

  Jovan

  After Mal-Mal’s death, I chilled out for a while, but I eventually got back into the swing of things. By the summer of ’91, I was coping at least four bricks a week. My connect was from New York, and sometimes he would bring it down to me, but most times I had to go get it myself.

  After a few months of dealing with my connect, we became real cool. He put me down on a lot of things in the drug game, and he taught me how to whip up bricks. I would take two bricks and cook them up with B1 vitamins and baking soda, and it would make three bricks out of two bricks. The coke would never come back Grade A, but on a scale from one to ten, I’d say it was a six.

  I wouldn’t sell these bricks to the niggas I fucked with regularly; I always kept them with good coke so they could make their money fast and buy more bricks from me. What I would do was serve it to them Virginia Bammas because they would buy anything as long as it was coke.

  Virginia was pumping like that. Them Bammas would cop, like, two bricks a week from me, straight money not a dollar short. That was what scared me about those niggas. So when I served them, I made sure they brought their asses across the bridge to Washington, D.C. because if any funny business was to happen as far as the police was concerned, I’d have a better chance of getting away.

  My connect also told me about the hydraulic stash spots, that James Bond shit. So what I did was go to the nearest Mazda dealer and buy myself a brand new MVP van. Then I sent it up to New York, and my connect had his man make me a spot that could hold at lea
st eight bricks. That shit cost me ten thousand dollars, but it was worth it. I also bought a new silver 535 BMW with chrome BBS wheels.

  At the time, I was renting a townhouse out in Clinton, Maryland, ten minutes outside the city, and everything was going good for me. I was anticipating my man, Bilal, coming home, and whatever I had was going to be broken down 50-50. Half of this shit was his. We’d both be getting money together, doing all the shit we dreamed about; but for right now, I was the man of the hour. I traded my old Rolex in for a new one, an 18K Presidential with a diamond bezel and diamonds flowing through the middle of the band. Bitches would go crazy when they saw me rocking that joint. I also had a three-carat earring that I rocked on occasion, and a plain Rolex band bracelet.

  My style of clothes also changed. It was no longer Polo. I had switched to Gianni Versace, Gucci, MCM, and Ferragamo. I was getting too much money to be dressing like I was still some corner hustler. The more money I made, the less sweat suits and tennis shoes I wore. I started going to all the main events: fights, lavish parties, and social functions, and I was fucking the baddest broads in the city. I had more clientele than I could handle. I was holdin’ around a hundred thou plus assets.

  At the time, I was involved with the prettiest up and coming youngin’ in the city. Her name was Barvette. She was brown-skinned with a milky complexion, nice hair, a nice body, and a walk that made her look sexier than she really was. The pussy was on one thousand. It was Barvette that hipped me to all the finer restaurants in the city. She also hipped me to all the boutiques on Wisconsin Avenue: Neiman Marcus, Gianfranco Feree, Versace, Gucci, and Everett Hall. In fact, I think the first time I ate at the Cheesecake Factory was with her—or was it with freaky Tracey? I don’t know, ’cause I was fucking both of ’em at the same time.

  We also went on trips together to Negril, Vegas, Cancun, and a couple of other places. Although she wasn’t officially my girl, we were still cool as shit, so if there was anything I could do to help her out, I didn’t have a problem with it—until she started asking for that Chanel shit. Now, that shit was costly. They wanted three thousand for a pocketbook, so instead of breaking her off a nice bank for that Chanel shit, I broke off the relationship. I hustled too hard to be giving up that much bank to a broad who wasn’t officially my girl.

  Damn, I wished Bilal would hurry up and come home. All I kept thinking about was how comfortable it was gonna be for him when he got there. I was Bilal’s only family besides Aunt Gloria, and she was at the St. Elizabeth Mental Hospital. After Li’l Gweene died, Gloria wasn’t the same, and Ms. Cookie had passed away a year ago.

  When Ms. Cookie went into rehab, she discovered she had full-blown AIDS from shooting dope. I saw Ms. Cookie after she got out of rehab. She looked bad because the disease was killing her. I used to take her to the doctor and to the pharmacy to pick up her medicine, and sometimes I’d take her to lunch and we’d talk about Bilal and Mal-Mal.

  Before Ms. Cookie died, she finally, for the first time, went to visit Bilal. I don’t know how that visit went because right after that, Ms. Cookie was hospitalized and she went into a coma, and then two weeks later she died. I paid for the funeral and had her buried right next to Mal-Mal.

  CHAPTER 4

  “Only the Worst Could Happen”

  It was October 1991, and Bilal was due to come home the next month. Jovan couldn’t wait, but what he didn’t know was that all his plans to welcome Bilal home would soon come to an end.

  In early October, there was a coke shortage, and Jovan was still getting bricks, but not as many as before. The prices were sky high, and Jovan’s connect had to divide whatever he could get with all his major clientele. The city was at its lowest point; only a few niggas had bricks stashed, and they wasn’t servin’ nobody who wasn’t in their crew.

  The only nigga out there who was still on top was Big Head Larry. Jovan didn’t know Larry personally, but Bilal and he went to school together, and they were real cool back in the day. At the time, Larry was hangin’ out with this New York nigga named Po, and Jovan didn’t like Po because he came to his city when they were vulnerable and used it to his advantage. He got up under the most feared nigga in the city at the time, a nigga by the name of Big Silk. He knew he had to get Big Silk on his team, ’cause if he didn’t, those niggas out there would have torn his ass to pieces.

  In Jovan’s eyes, Po was a bitch. He turned friends into enemies, he used real niggas for protection, and he hid behind a mask; but when that mask was pulled off, it was too late. Jovan found out that Po was down with the feds, and this bitch-ass nigga emptied his brain to the government and turned state’s evidence on all those who held him in high regard. To Jovan, Po had committed the ultimate sin.

  Niggas out there were hungry. Ounces were going for eighteen hundred a pop, and you couldn’t find nobody selling anything for less than that. Then came the break Jovan needed—at least that’s what he thought. His connect called him and told him he was back in action.

  “Okay, slim, I’m on my way up!” Jovan said, excited to hear from him.

  “Naw, money, you ain’t gotta come up. I’m on my way down there ’cause I got a few more people I gotta see,” Jovan’s connect said.

  “Shit, cool. C’mon, slim, I need you,” Jovan said, needing to cop bad.

  He told Jovan that he only had a few bricks and that he should try to cop as many as he could get. The price Jovan used to pay wasn’t happening. It was a little higher, but not as high as niggas were paying out there. He was going to give ’em to Jovan for twenty-six. Out there they were going for thirty or better.

  Jovan went to his townhouse in Clinton to count his stash, and all he had was a hundred and eighty thousand. He usually never copped with all his bread, but this time he had to, because he was gonna make a killing during this drought. He had enough to cop seven bricks, and his plan was to break ’em down to ounces and sell ’em for sixteen hundred apiece, two hundred lower than the going price out there.

  Four hours later, Jovan’s connect called him and said that he was staying at the Ramada Inn in Virginia, across from Pentagon City.

  “Okay, slim, I’m on my way,” Jovan said, about to hang up the phone.

  “Yo, hurry up, money. They’re going like hot cakes. I can’t hold ’em for too long.”

  “A’ight, slim, I’m on my way,” Jovan said, hanging up the phone.

  Jovan packed the hundred and eighty thousand in shoe boxes and placed them in two big-ass Banana Republic bags. He got into his MVP and popped the hydraulic stash, placing the money in there, and then he headed to the hotel where his connect was staying.

  When Jovan reached the Ramada Inn, he didn’t bother to park his mini van because he was so anxious to be copping that he just pulled in front of the hotel, put his hazards on, and jumped out.

  As he was walking into the hotel lobby, his pager was blowing up like shit. Everybody was trying to cop before the first of the month. Jovan was all smiles because this was going to be his big come-up. All he could think about was the money he was ’bout to get and how right his bank was gonna be when Bilal came home.

  When Jovan got off the elevator and knocked on his connect’s room, he heard two voices. Now, whenever Jovan used to cop from this dude, he was always alone. Although sometimes he would mention his partner, Shorty, he would still do business by himself.

  When Jovan heard the two voices, naturally he was on his guard. He put the two bags of money into his left hand and kept his right hand free, close to his side, as close to his Beretta 9 mm as possible. He prayed this nigga wouldn’t try to pull no move on him, because he already had a hate for cruddy niggas, and if they even thought about violating him, he guaranteed there would be two niggas in the hotel dead, and he wouldn’t be one of ’em. He’d killed before, and would kill again if necessary.

  When Jovan’s connect opened the door, he had a smile the size of Texas on his face.

  “Yo, money, what’s up!”

  “Ain’t shit,
slim. Still doin’ my thang.”

  As Jovan entered the hotel, he got a glimpse of the other dude sitting on the bed counting money.

  “Yo, Jovan, this is my partner, Shorty.”

  “What up, money? I heard a lot about you,” Shorty said.

  “Yeah, and vice versa,” Jovan said.

  After the introductions, Jovan and his connect got right down to business.

  “Yo, Jovan, what you trying to get? You know I ain’t gonna be in town that long.”

  “Slim, I’m working with one eighty.”

  Jovan connect’s eyes got as big as shit when he heard how much Jovan had. Usually Jovan copped only four or five bricks at a time. Jovan guessed the sound of extra money excited him.

  “Yo, this is what I’ma do: I got ten bricks left. I’ma give you eight, and you can owe me the difference until the next time you cop.”

  Damn, that was a sweet deal. Jovan immediately handed over the money and placed four bricks in each bag. He stood there for a second so that his connect could count the money, but it looked to him as if he was getting ready to pack up.

  “You gonna count that?” Jovan asked curiously.

  “Naw, money. I’ve been dealing with you for six months now. You ain’t never been short. Your bank has always been right,” Jovan’s connect said.

  As Jovan left the hotel, he felt like nobody in the city could fuck with him. All he kept thinking about was how much money he was gonna make.

  His pager was still blowing up like crazy as he headed back to his townhouse as fast as he could to cook up and move this shit like a fat turkey on Thanksgiving. Jovan then started counting figures in his head. He had eight bricks at sixteen hundred an ounce. That would come out to at least three hundred and eighty thousand. He had his 535 BMW worth forty-two thousand and his MPV van worth twenty-five. All together that was four hundred forty-seven thousand. His jewelry was worth about four hundred eighty thousand, and with the little money he still had out in the streets that niggas owed him, he figured he was worth about a half a million dollars. He’d have more than enough when Bilal came home. He wished that bitch Dee-Dee could see him now, he thought, smiling to himself.