“Just stick to the script and we’ll be fine. You ain’t gotta do nothin’ but get me in the crib,” reassured Tone.
Finally, Roscoe cut the headlights off and shut off the old ’88 Buick LeSabre. Tone slipped on a ski mask, grabbed his gun, hopped out of the car, and darted across the block. Tone’s plan was to post up off to the side of the front door, while Roscoe rang the bell. Then, when the man opened the door for Roscoe, he would burst through the front door with his gun drawn.
Nervously, Roscoe walked across the street to the trap house door and rang the doorbell. With his hands shaking and his palms sweaty as hell, Roscoe was praying that he just made it out of the situation alive. He felt like he was in over his head, but it was too late to turn back. However, if God let him out of this one unharmed, he was going to make some changes in his life. Crack had too much control over him, and was putting him in too many bad predicaments.
Tone took a deep breath while he waited on the door to swing open. He had been in this situation so many times before, but it had been a while due to his incarceration. His heart was beating fast, but he wasn’t scared. Tone was excited; for the first time since coming home from prison he felt alive! In his mind, Tone felt like this was where he belonged. In prison he had talked a lot about leaving the crime side of life alone, getting a regular job, then falling back and having some babies with Lotta.
He was quickly realizing that wasn’t the life for him at all, though. The adrenaline rush he had flowing through his body was exactly what he needed. The time Tone had been locked up had only thrown fuel on the fire that was already burning deep within him. He had a need to have drama in his life; it was a part of his character.
As the door finally began to swing open, Tone’s eyes grew as wide as could be and he clutched his gun tight!
*****
“Ugh! Let me up!” hollered Lotta, in another unsuccessful attempt to push Neeta up off of her.
Lotta struggled and tried her best to get free, but she just couldn’t get from up under Neeta, who was holding the sharp knife blade up against her cheek. She could feel the tip of the blade just starting to pierce her skin. Neeta was taking pleasure in the fact that she was about to ruin Lotta’s perfect face.
“Yo! What the fuck is goin’ on up here? What the hell are you doin’ to my niece, Neeta?” hollered Marv, responding to all the commotion in his house.
Marv was half faded off of Peach Ciroc and codeine dipped blunt, but he knew something wasn’t right due to all the screaming he heard coming from his bathroom. Quickly, he ran and pushed Neeta off of Lotta, just before the sharp blade of the knife did any real damage to her face!
“Bitch! What the hell is wrong with you? You outta pocket!” yelled Marv.
“Nah Marv, this hoe gonna learn today! She beat my cousin up back in the…” started explaining the woman.
However, her explanation was cut short. Marv took his hand and backslapped the hell out of Neeta!
“Don’t you never in your life come in my house and threaten my lil’ niece. You hear me?” rhetorically asked Marv.
Marv was a pretty big man, standing at 6’1 and weighing right around 200 pounds, so his backhand had shaken Neeta up. Lotta had managed to get back up off of the floor, embarrassed that she had got caught slipping and had needed her uncle to come and rescue her.
“Now get your shit and get the fuck out here. With ya ugly ass,” instructed Marv.
“Oh so that’s how it is Marv? I’m ugly? All right then. You wasn’t sayin’ that last night, but I got you. You’s a nut anyway,” said Neeta, as she bumped Marv and stormed out of the tight, cramped bathroom.
Marv just shook his head as he watched Neeta walk away. He was shocked and disgusted at her actions. He had been letting her stay with him rent free for weeks and this was the way she repaid him.
“I only fucked with your old ass ‘cause you gettin’ a lil’ bit of money! It ain’t that serious though, you ain’t the only nigga in town who be trickin’! I’ll find me another nigga!” Neeta continued to holler, her words trailing off the farther away she got.
Neeta was irate that Marv would take his niece’s side over hers and she continued cursing up a storm as she grabbed all of her belongings and finally made her dramatic exit out of the house, slamming the door hard behind her.
“Are you good?” asked Marv, staring in Lotta’s direction.
Lotta had tears in her eyes and was trying to maintain her composure but she just couldn’t. She was a strong person, but everything that was going on in her life was finally getting to her. The drama with her Dad, plus the fact that she had been forced to move out of the comfort of her house was killing her. All the possessions that Lotta had were taken from her in the blink of an eye. With the exception of the $1,500 that she had in her personal checking account, Lotta didn’t have shit.
Frustrated, Lotta fell into her uncle’s arms and just cried. All the emotions she was dealing with were coming to a head. Lotta was finally at the realization that the good life she was used to living was over. She was going to have to fend for herself in the cold, cruel world. Her safety blanket was gone.
“Look, we gonna be alright. Just me and you, Lotta,” comforted Marv, as he held Lotta close.
“Just me and you…” he repeated, as he wiped Lotta’s pitiful tears away.
*****
“What’s up, Roscoe? What you coppin’ today?” asked the young, baby-faced hustler as he opened up the door to the trap house.
Before Roscoe could answer, Tone burst through the door! He aimed his gun at the man and looked him dead in the eye.
“You know what this is!” hollered Tone.
The hustler running the trap house was scared as hell. He was just a young buck, no more than 17 years old with peach fuzz still on his face and box braids in his hair. He was tatted up with all types of gangster slogans and logos across his body, but with a gun in his grill he wasn’t bout’ that life.
“Come on, dog. It ain’t gotta be like this. Chill,” he pleaded, putting his hands up.
The man’s pleas were falling on deaf ears; Tone wasn’t trying to hear that shit. He had too much anger in his heart to care about anyone but himself. Tone knew he needed more out of life than sleeping on the couch in the one bedroom apartment that Melinda was providing for him.
Quickly, Tone checked the man over to see if he was strapped. Luckily for Tone, the man had left his .45 sitting on the couch. Tone kept his gun aimed at the man, then went and retrieved the other gun from off of the couch. Roscoe was silent, just hoping that Tone didn’t decide to take things another level and turn all the way up. Calmly, Tone looked at the young hustler.
“I’ma ask you one time. Where the stash at?” he asked, while pushing the barrel of his 9MM into the scared boy’s face with no remorse.
“In…in… the back room,” nervously admitted the boy.
“Lay down on the ground and don’t move either, nigga. If he moves, you holla, Roscoe,” instructed Tone.
Tone kept the gun aimed at the boy and backed out of the room that they were in, headed to the back room. Things were easier when his stick-up partner Amir was running with him, but now he was gone. Amir had been killed over a woman, which was hard for Tone to deal with. If he had been killed in any other way, Tone could probably accept it and chalk it up to the game. However, the past was the past, and the present was the present. Currently, Tone was focused on getting two things out of the trap house that he was in: money and drugs!
“This nigga better not try nothin’ funny,” mumbled Tone to himself, as he made his way to the back room with one gun tucked on his hip and another in his hand.
As the boy laid face down on the floor nervously in the other room, Tone searched frantically around the back room for the stash and the drugs. He went through the closet, looked under the bed, but couldn’t find anything.
“I hope this nigga ain’t lying to me,” remarked Tone.
If the boy was lying, shit was g
oing to get ugly! Tone stormed back out to the room to where he had left the young hustler. As instructed, he was lying face down on the dirty, cold floor of the trap house. Roscoe was standing there petrified watching him; Tone couldn’t tell which one of them was more scared.
“Yo nigga, I asked you where the stash was at. I ain’t see nothin’ back there. This ain’t no game and it damn sure ain’t practice! I’m a ask you one more time,” said Tone.
Tone took the butt of his gun and smacked the boy upside the back of the head.
“Shit!” he screamed out in pain.
Realizing that Tone wasn’t playing games, the young hustler suddenly got more specific.
“Yo, it’s in the Nike shoebox, behind the TV. Damn!” he said, definitely not wanting to feel the hard steel of the gun going up against the back of his head again.
“The Nike shoebox, huh? That’s real original,” mocked Tone, as he made his way back to the back room again.
Not wasting any time, Tone pushed the television out of his way, exposing the orange and grey Nike shoebox. The rules of the trap house dictated that after each sale, no matter how big or small, the cash was placed into the shoebox. The hustler who really supplied all the drugs for the trap house would come through at the end of the week and pick up the profits, then pay the younger hustlers. So all the money the spot had made, as well as the crack that had yet to be sold was in the shoebox.
Tone flipped the top of the shoebox open, and there it was! Cold, hard cash bound together in rubber bands and crack already bagged up in various sizes.
“Roscoe, go start the car!” yelled Tone.
Tone picked up the whole shoebox and headed back towards the front of the crib. It was time to be out! Roscoe was already halfway across the street and was headed for the Buick LeSabre. Tone took one last look at the boy that he had just robbed and then got up out of the crib. Years ago, he might have actually felt sympathy for the young’n, but prison had made him heartless. Tone felt like no one in the world cared about him when he was locked up, surviving off of Jack Mack’s, rice and Ramen soups. Where was the sympathy for him now that he was home from prison, struggling each and every day? Even Lotta, who he just knew would be there for him, was nowhere to be found. Tone was cold, heartless and determined to get money at all costs!
Tone and Roscoe made it safely back over to their block within a few minutes. The old Buick LeSabre wasn’t the best running vehicle, but it got the job done. All in all, the sting had netted $4,220 in cash and almost two ounces of drugs. Not to mention, the new .45 Smith and Wesson Tone had come up on, which was an added bonus. For the first time in a long time, Tone ate good with his new profits. He ordered up lobster tails, New York strip steak, shrimp and crab legs for Roscoe and himself. Then he copped a bottle of Moet as well as couple pints of Hennessey Black. He also slid Melinda $250; even though she didn’t charge him rent, Tone didn’t want to be viewed as anyone’s charity case or some type of freeloader.
Roscoe had sworn during the robbery that he was going to leave crack alone, but after seeing the drugs right in front of him, it was a different story. He couldn’t resist getting high, especially since it would be free. After all, Roscoe felt like he had earned the drugs, and smoking them would be his reward. The sting couldn’t have possibly gone any more successful than it did. It was a perfect plan, with perfect execution which was what Tone prided himself on. For the first time in years Tone felt like he was back to his old self and this was just the beginning!
Chapter 5
“I know it’s been a while since I came to talk to you, but things have been crazy for me lately. Actually, everything has been going bad,” said Lotta, as she stared down at the ground.
Lotta was at the one place she knew that she could always go when things were going rough in her life. She had caught the bus up to the gravesite of her mother. Lotta liked to go to the cemetery and speak her problems out while standing on top of her mother’s grave. It had been eight years since her mother had been gone, and each day Lotta missed her more and more.
There were so many questions Lotta needed answers to, but she knew that she was in the right place. It was always hard for Lotta to understand why God had chosen to take her mother. She never felt like it was fair for everyone to grow up with their mother, when she was forced to navigate through her teenage years without a grown woman to guide her. Now, with Roc facing a bunch of time, Lotta felt like she was going to be completely alone.
“I just don’t get it, Mom. Why does God take everyone out of my life that I care about? You, Daddy, and Tone all got taken away from me. Why do I get so attached to people if they are just going to be taken out of my life?” she questioned.
Lotta began to reminisce back to the last conversation she’d ever had with her mother. Sadly enough, it was an argument. At 13, Lotta had a whole lot of mouth and was never one to take ‘no’ for an answer. She had wanted to go to the skating rink, but due to a D in her Pre-Algebra class, her mother Sharmaine wasn’t having it. Sharmaine had made her stay home and study on a Saturday night, which had Lotta upset. In Sharmaine’s house, education came first. However, after a while, Sharmaine began to feel guilty for coming down so hard on her only daughter. To make it up to her, she decided to order Lotta her favorite pizza, with pineapple and extra cheese.
It was on the way to pick up the pizza that Sharmaine was brutally attacked and murdered. To this day, the exact reason for the attack isn’t known. Even worse, the killer was never apprehended. All that is known is that Sharmaine was beaten so badly, Roc could hardly identify her body. A ripped dollar in her back pocket that she had split with Roc as a token of their love was the only way he was able to identify her.
Sharmaine’s murder sparked a change in Lotta that transformed her forever. She shut down, and never really made any friends or barely even talked to other girls her age. They couldn’t relate to her or the things that she was going through because they had their mothers. Lotta stopped trusting in people and outside of her father, Lotta really never grew too close to anybody. The only person who had been able to get her to let her guard down was Tone.
Tone was different than the flocks of other young men who tried to holler at Lotta. He was special. While Tone was as hard as a rock on the outside, inside he was sweet and caring. Tone had a way of listening to whatever Lotta said and interpreting it in his own way. He was generous; in fact he had paid for the very headstone that sat atop Sharmaine’s grave.
Lotta wished that she could contact Tone, but her iPhone was shut off due to the account being linked to her father’s frozen credit card so she had never gotten his messages. All she could do was wonder where the other half of her ripped dollar, which represented Tone, currently was. Lotta prayed to God that he was doing OK. Little did Lotta know, after the successful robbery, Tone was doing better than OK!
*****
Roc sat at the small table in the special legal room of the jail, waiting for the group of agents, detectives, and lawyers to begin speaking to him. He was nervous, angry and anxious all at the same time.
“Well, Roc,” the head agent finally said, pronouncing Roc’s name sarcastically.
Roc just looked on at the man, waiting to hear the bullshit that was going to come from his lips. His own lawyer sat right next to him, also anxious to see what the team of Federal agents had called Roc into the slightly unexpected meeting for. Finally, the ringleader of the band of federal agents sat next to Roc and spoke.
“Wanna hear a quick story?” he asked rhetorically.
Roc didn’t respond, instead he just let the man speak.
“A few months back a young dealer got pulled over comin’ down 95 with 2 kilos of some of the purest cocaine I’ve seen since I been a detective. We caught him red handed and locked him right up. Public defender tells him he’s gonna spend his next 10 birthdays in prison. The guy says he can’t do that kind of time. He’s got three kids to feed and a sick mother to look after. Starts singing like a bird. And h
is song was all about you my friend…” said the agent, with a hint of a laugh in his tone.
Roc could already see where the agents were going with their story.
“You seem like a smart man, so you know you’re looking at a few decades yourself. However, there are ways around that,” insinuated the man, as he scratched his freshly shaven face.
“So you want me to snitch?” asked Roc.
“Snitch is such an ugly word. We like the term cooperate. You help us, and we help you,” countered the agent.
Roc looked away from the man.
“Lotta is about 21 now, right? Never had a job. Mother is deceased. How do you think she’d fare in these streets with you behind bars for the next 240 months?” asked the agent.
The Feds were playing on every emotion Roc had by bringing up his daughter’s name.
“You don’t have to answer me now. You think it over. Just remember Roc, there are bigger fish in the ocean than you and those are the fish that we want,” said the agent, as he smiled devilishly and left the room, followed by the rest of the group.
Roc and his lawyer remained alone in the room, staring at each other in silence and searching for answers. The feds were quite clear in their intentions; they wanted Roc to provide them with information to help convict members of the Mexican Cartel that supplied him. If he did that, he would be awarded what was known as a downward departure, or 5K1. A 5K1 allows a judge to go beneath the mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines and give a person a much lighter sentence than normal. If Roc snitched, he would still have to do some time, but not nearly as much.
Finally, Roc’s lawyer broke the awkward silence.
“You know Roc, they have a saying. It goes: There are two types of people in Federal prison, the ones who snitched and the ones who wished that they had snitched. Which one are you going to be?” he said.
Roc just looked at his lawyer. All the prepaid legal fees he had paid him really weren’t worth anything. The case against Roc was so strong, his lawyer didn’t even want to consider going to trial. It was a conspiracy case, and the Feds had gone all out. They had Roc on wiretaps, discussing drug deals. They had monitored his businesses and basically proved there was no way he could have started all of his companies legally without a valid job. Most importantly, the Feds had a cooperating witness who was ready to take the stand and tell a jury everything they wanted to know about Roc. There was no way of beating that.
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