by Ty Marshall
Smitty greeted the young gangster with a pound when he exited the car. “Come on,” Smitty waved his hand, signaling for Dayvid to follow him back into the house. “You want something to drink?” he asked once they were inside while offering him a seat on the couch.
“Nah, I’m good. This ain’t gonna take that long OG.” Dayvid replied choosing to remain standing.
“What’s on ya mind then?” Smitty asked plopping down on the couch.
“You got company?” Dayvid inquired looking around making sure he could speak freely.
Smitty was a handsome older gentleman, straight old school with a slick silver tongue, spitting game with every word. He was known to keep company with many different women and his bed was seldom cold. So it wasn’t far-fetched that he would have a female in the house.
“We good, go ahead,” he answered in his normal smooth manner.
“Listen I just wanted to stop by and tell you in person that we’re gonna pass on that job we talked about last week,” Dayvid informed him.
“Whatchu mean you gonna pass on it?” a confused Smitty questioned.
“It’s just not a move I think we should make right now, especially since we’re undermanned with Fallon off playing house with this nigga Linx. That shit ain’t a three man job.”
Clearly bothered by what he was hearing from his young protégé’, Smitty leaned back on the couch and took a deep breath while running his hand down the side of his face.
“But peep this, I gotta crew from The District that I could put on it tho. You’ll get your same exact cut and won’t even have to meet these niggas. I’ll take care of all that; even less of a risk for you but the same paper. You can’t beat that.” Dayvid offered his mentor.
“Fuck you think this is? A temp service or a staffing agency?” Smitty snapped. “I’m not looking to do no hiring. We got a system, I set up the jobs, y’all knock em off and everybody goes home happy. Why fuck it up if you don’t have to?”
“Outta all due respect, I didn’t come here to debate with you. I just came to let you know what it is. If you don’t want to do it like that, then cool but we ain’t fucking wit’ it,” Dayvid said as he reached in his back pocket and pulled out a thick yellow envelope, sliding it across the table.
“What’s this?” Smitty asked.
“25k, outta respect, for the inconvenience.” Dayvid explained.
Smitty laughed, not even bothering to pick up the envelope. “You gotta be kidding me young nigga. I stand to make at least three times that off this heist,” the frustration in his voice evident. “Nah, nah…y’all gonna do this shit, and we gonna get paid, you can thank me later.”
Dayvid stared at his mentor and felt himself getting upset. In all the years of doing business with Smitty they had never backed out of a job but something about this one didn’t feel right. Dayvid felt that Smitty should understand him not wanting to do it, but the fact that he hadn’t, didn’t sit right with him.
“Let me ask you a question…who da fuck you think ya talkin’ to?” Dayvid snapped. “You an old nigga with a fucked up leg, who don’t understand that his best days are behind him. We don’t work for you, we work with you. I decide what my family will and won’t do, so it’s 25k or it’s nothing.”
Smitty remained silent, just staring at Dayvid as his chest heaved up and down. He could almost see smoke coming from his flared nostrils like the young bull he was. Smitty always knew that Dayvid was the alpha male type, he had shown all the traits since a youth but Smitty had been able to will his influence over him a bit when he was younger. But as of late that had become a thing of the past, Dayvid only did what he wanted to do, no ifs, ands or buts. After a few seconds Smitty rose to his feet, letting out a grunt from the pain shooting through his leg. Walking with a faltered step over towards the bar, he poured himself a drink. Dayvid watched intensely with menacing eyes.
“Boy you just like your daddy,” Smitty finally spoke after taking a sip of the cognac in his glass, smiling and shaking his head while reminiscing.
Dayvid’s face instantly changed, wrinkles formed on his brow, slightly confused by the man’s statement. “What you know about my pops to be speaking on him?” He was always under the assumption that Smitty didn’t know his parents, only his Aunt Nanny.
“Who ain’t know James Porter,” Smitty laughed. “Lil nigga I knew your daddy for years,” he informed Dayvid. “He worked for me for a while, best getaway drive I ever saw. Your daddy loved cars, just like you. And he could drive the shit out of anything, just like you too. One day he came to me and said he wanted to do his own thing, he was tired of the cut he was getting and wanted a bigger piece. Said he needed more money since he had more mouths to feed after your baby sister Autumn was born. Told me he was putting his own crew together to pull off a couple of jobs. I understood, no hard feelings, he made a business decision,” Smitty concluded.
“Why I ain’t never heard this before? Aunt Rachel never said shit about my pops robbing no banks.” Dayvid quizzed.
“He never got the chance, he and ya mama died in that car crash about a week later,” Smitty said lowering his head in sadness and shaking it from side to side.
“Why you telling me this now, Smitty? What that got to do with this shit?” Dayvid asked quickly trying to change the subject not wanting to think about the tragic accident that claimed his parents’ life.
“Just making a point, it’s not good to switch up when you gotta good thing going,” he said the whole time looking into his glass, shaking the ice around before downing it.
***
That day at Smitty’s house had never really sat right with Dayvid, but it was eating at him even more now that he was confined to his cell under twenty-four hour, high security watch in a segregated unit. Dayvid was not housed with other prisoners, partly due to his case’s high profile but mainly because of the power he held. Separating him eliminated the potential coercion of other inmates and prison staff. And after the recent escape of his sister, Autumn, prison officials weren’t taken any chances.
The facility’s solitary housing unit, or the “shoe” as it was referred to, was run by Sargent Roberts and his goon squad of officers, who led unprovoked attacks on inmates enforcing their brand of vigilante justice. Roberts, a bald and beefy, 23 year veteran with a vile temper, was the hardest amongst the hard asses and the most brutal.
The unit had sixty identical 6 by 9 cells. Each had no windows or bars with concrete floors and cinder block walls. The cell doors were solid metal with narrow slots that served as entries and exits for food trays, and were barely wide enough to allow prisoners to stick their wrists in and out to get handcuffed.
Roberts instructed the guards not to allow Dayvid to shower upon his arrival. It was a tool he used to break new inmates. After a few days, he cracked his cell and turned on the fire hose dousing Dayvid, leaving him soaked and sore from being slammed against the wall by the strong steam of water. That was Dayvid’s first encounter with Roberts but it wouldn’t be his last.
He was only to be let out of his cell to see his lawyer, or go to his preliminary hearings, which were to be held in Baltimore in two weeks. Being cut off and isolated from the world would drive a lesser man insane, but Dayvid passed the time exercising and piecing together the events that landed him in custody, mainly who was responsible for him being locked away.
The Porters had made plenty of enemies over the years, including Linx, who Dayvid had shot once upon a time. Linx got money but he was never about no gunplay and it was right up his alley to do some sucker shit like go to the feds in order to gain some get back. But even still, Fallon hadn’t been in contact with the nigga in a minute, even though Dayvid knew she had continued seeing him for a while after she said she wasn’t. There was no way possible he knew about the heist or the safe house. No matter how Dayvid sliced it, it all kept coming back to one person, their mentor Smitty and his faithful words, “It’s not good to switch up, when you gotta good thing going.” Fo
r days Dayvid had been replaying every conversation he had with him throughout the years, over and over. This muthafucka had the most to lose by us getting out the game and going to Mexico, he thought to himself. How long has he been playing us?” Dayvid pondered. “Probably since the beginning,” he answered out loud. In his heart he always felt there had been something Smitty wasn’t saying about the relationship between him and their father. He had never been able to question Nanny about it, she died a few years before Smitty revealed that tidbit of information, something else Dayvid found strange. “This nigga been a snake the whole time, since day one. On everything I love, I’ma put that old muthafucka under the dirt.”
***
Dear Dayvid, my twin, my kindred and sharing spirit,
What can I say that you don’t already know? What the Porters so carefully spent our entire lives avoiding, finally came to fruition…we got caught. The other was trusting outsiders. Because of that violation, the very rule the many warriors and gangsters before us, we now have to pay for it with our lives. That irreparable oversight came in the form of a mentor, father figure and confidant – Smitty, who put all of us in this position. Slow down, bro I can already feel the blood rising to your head and you want spazz the fuck out, but don’t. You don’t want to signal any emotions to them cracker guards who are probably no more than three feet away from you as you read this letter. Just follow Mr. Morganstein directions, he down for us. So be cool for now and try to remember everything I tell you, because you cannot take this paper back with you.
Anyway, Smitty don’t matter anymore, ‘cause I handled that shit. If you know me, you’d know what I do to anyone that hurt my family. Plus this nigga killed my girl Laura.
I’m going to be straight up with you D, you are not getting out of prison alive. I hired the best money can buy, who worked on and built cases on niggas that ain’t do a tenth of what we did. They have so much evidence on us, it’ll take about ten seconds to send us away to prison for two hundred years, and I feel certain we can’t live with that. As we speak, I am going mad just thinking about you sitting in there all alone and trapped. I feel we can’t go through another day of these terrible times.
But I do have some good news that will change everything…Fallon and Autumn are out of prison. They are on the run, but at least they are not locked up, and most of all they are safe. What I’m going to tell you next is our way out of this. Dayvid, we were born in a world where the only thing we know is death, survival, drugs and crime. That’s the hand that we were dealt. We were predisposed and predestined to that way of life. Right before Smitty met his maker, he said something to me that made me think. He said……
“Nobody gets out of the game once you’re in the thick of it, Rain. You knew that. If you in for a penny, you in for a pound, and ain’t no in between. You married to this shit and the only way out for motherfuckers like us is death!”
He was right, which is why we were really feeling that Mexico shit from the first thought. We were doing it for Fallon and Autumn’s sake, as we should have from the very beginning. But, you know it as well as me that our little sisters never were cut like us. Even though we all had the same mother and father, I always felt like they weren’t built to be like us. Like me and you took all the stronger genes.
Do you remember when Miss Jackie kept warning us, “You can change a cucumber into a pickle, but you can’t turn a pickle back into a cucumber.” I finally figured out what she meant by that recently. It means that when you’re young you still have a chance of a life of crime getting a hold on you, but if you continue it becomes you and knows no other life and you don’t know when the cast hardened. There was no turning back for people like me, you, Nanny or even Smitty. Fallon and Autumn are still cucumbers, and I’m satisfied with that, and I can go peacefully with a clear conscience.
Dayvid, I hope you understand where I’m going with this, and that’s the reason I’m writing you this letter in the first place. We going to Jim Jones this shit and I’m not talking about the rapper. With that said, the next time you see my face, that’s when it’s going down. But we are taking a whole lot of people on vacation with us.
If you agree to these terms, I want you to sign this paper with your signature, more so, as a front for the cameras that are watching you. Close the folder and tell Mr. Morganstein, “I understand my charges and accept the terms and conditions that you will represent me.”
Well, bro, it isn’t too much left to say besides I love you to death and will see you soon.
P.S. Do not worry about Fallon and Autumn. I have them set up financially for years to come, because along with our money, Smitty gave up his stash of money and diamonds before he died. Well, kind of. I took his keys and the nigga wasn’t as smart as we thought, cause he left his fortune stashed all throughout his house. (If you still don’t trust that this is me……..74261.)
Eternal peace, bro. I love you.
Your sister Rain.
Dayvid leaned back in his seat just a bit as he let his twin’s proposal sink in. Live Fast & Die Rich, he thought to himself. That was what he and Rain used to tell one another. She was right, after everything they had done in life it was only fitting that they go out in a blaze of glory. He was only fooling himself to think otherwise. Niggas like him didn’t retire and grow old on a beachfront property somewhere. They either died in a hail of bullets in the street or rotted away in prison. Dayvid had willingly assumed the risk that came with the life, fully accepting the possibility of dying in the streets but rotting away in the federal prison system wasn’t an option. If he was gonna go out he preferred it be on his terms. As he lifted the pen off the table to sign his name, suddenly Nova’s face was all he could see, vividly, almost like a hologram causing him to hesitate briefly. Dayvid thought for a second, flipped the paper over and scribbled something down.
“I need you to do me a favor, Mr. Morganstein.” Dayvid said as he looked up from the papers, staring the man directly in his eyes expressing the seriousness of his statement. Then he signed his name on the paper and slid the pile back to the lawyer.
CHAPTER FOUR
“When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it.”
(1 Samuel 17:34-35)
Dayvid stood in the shower letting the water run over his head as if he was washing away his sins. At peace with the suicide mission he had signed up for, Dayvid’s only concern was Nova. He knew the message he had sent through Mr. Morganstein would hit her like a sledgehammer shattering her world into even smaller fragments then it probably already was with him being behind bars. He wanted to spare her the emotional stress of having to watch him sit in a courtroom with his life hanging in the balance. He knew Nova would show up every single day and endure the torture of a trial, but that was a cross Dayvid preferred not to bear. She had been through too much already and no matter how much it pained him, he had to let her go. Her happiness meant more to him than her support. Dayvid was willing to do whatever to protect her, it had always been that way.
***
May 2002
The slamming of the front door shook the quiet row house waking Nova from her sleep. Looking over at the clock on the nightstand she struggled to make her sleepy eyes focus on the little red digits. Finally, they locked in and she could see that it was 1:27 in the morning. She knew it could only be one person and by the heavy thuds of footsteps and loud noises she could tell he was drunk again. Ronnie Simmons, or Redd as he was called by everyone, had been with Nova’s mother since she was 11 years old. The former high school basketball star was a fixture in the neighborhood. It was well known that he sniffed heroin and drank a little too much; two habits that seemed to increase after the recent drug overdose of Nova’s mother. Despite his dependencies, Redd was able to hold down a steady job and people around the neighborhood commended him for continuing to take care of Nova after
her mother’s death. But Nova wasn’t one of those singing his praises, she knew the ugly truth about him, she saw a side of him that nobody knew about. Redd had been molesting Nova since the age of 12. It all began as soon as her young body started to take shape. Nova’s breasts were large for her age and her thick thighs and curvy hips had been inherited from her mother, arousing the predator inside of Redd. He wasted no time stripping the young girl of her innocence. Getting her mother high one night, then sneaking into Nova’s room forcing himself on her after her mother had nodded off in one of her dope comas. The late night attacks continued with Redd using the threat of violence against her mother to keep her quiet. The sexual abuse had become more frequent after her mother’s recent passing.
Nova’s body froze with fear when she heard his footsteps stop in front of her door, she had hoped he was too drunk to be bothered with her tonight. She held her breath as Redd attempted to twist the door knob but it was locked. He tried a few more times before giving up and Nova felt the tension in her body disappear as she heard his front steps walk away from her door. Taking a deep breath she allowed her body to relax as she turned over pulling the covers up and closing her eyes.
The sound of her door crashing in frightened her, causing her body to jerk in surprise as her heart skipped a beat in her chest. Redd stood in her doorway looking like a man possessed as he growled like a bear and his chest heaved up and down from the adrenaline pumping through him after breaking down the door. Nova threw the covers off of her and tried to leap from the bed to escape the room but Redd grabbed her by the neck tossing her back onto the bed. She tried screaming but before she could get out a sound he had his huge hands over her mouth and all his weight on top of her 15 year old body. He reeked of liquor, it was as if he had bathed in it. The loud smell made Nova sick to her stomach and her skin crawled as he laid on her, breathing in her face.