by K'wan
Tut was a quick learner and a loyal soldier, which helped push him up the ladder of the organization. Between Tut and Omega the future of the organization was looking bright, but Tut’s path took a detour when he got locked up. He and Benny had been together when something popped off, which led to Benny pulling a gun on a kid. Nobody got hurt, but someone called the police. When Tut and Benny were heading back to the block their car was pulled over and the police found the gun. Benny was already on parole for a gun, so Tut claimed ownership and took the charge. The whole time Tut was going through is legal troubles the police kept pressing him for information about Pharaoh’s organization. They had a hard on for Pharaoh that would make a porn star jealous. They had even offered to let him walk, free of all charges, if he gave them even the smallest bit of information that led to a conviction. Tut never uttered a word. For his silence Tut ended up getting three years’ state time for possession of a weapon. It was this display of loyalty to the crew that put him on Ramses’s radar. It broke his heart when he was in prison and got the letter, letting him know Benny had been killed, because they had been close, but his sadness wouldn’t last long. When Tut came home from prison he was presented with an apartment, $20,000 in cash and a promotion within the organization. He would be elevated from soldier to lieutenant. It was just as Ramses had promised at the beginning of his bid: they took care of their own.
“You still preaching to the choir?” Omega joked as he walked up. His long dreads hung loose around his shoulders making him look like a lion. “What up, O?” Tut gave him dap. “What brings you up to this end of the world? You know you don’t fuck with the Bronx like that.”
“I do when its cash involved. You wanna make some extra paper?” Omega asked.
“That’s a dumbass question. I’m always looking to come up. What’s the lick?” Tut asked greedily. He made decent money on the strips Ramses had given him to look over, but his was one of the smaller and less lucrative locations. To make sure he had Pharaoh’s tribute every month, he sometimes had to take on extracurricular work, such as whatever Omega was offering.
“Take a walk with me, right quick.” Omega led Tut away from the youngsters so they could speak in private. “Dig, you know me and Li’l Monk got everything sewed up from like 133rd to 145th, right? Ramses doesn’t want us dipping any farther south because most of that belongs to them niggas from Harlem Crip. There’s more of us than them, but it’d be less messy just to let them have it instead of going to war. There’s no doubt we’d win, but fucking with Gutter and Danny Boy, we’d likely lose a lot of soldiers in the process.”
“So what does that have to do with me?” Tut asked impatiently. He wanted to get to the part of the story where he got paid.
“If you’ll give me a minute, I’ll get to that,” Omega told him. “Like I was saying, we can’t really dip any farther south, but he didn’t say we couldn’t push north. I wanna lock down everything from across the 145th Street Bridge to the Grand Concourse, and redirect all that money to us, and I’m even willing to make sure you eat off this, too.”
“What’s the catch?” Tut asked suspiciously.
“These wetback niggas who’re set up over there are in my way. It’s only a handful of them and they ain’t hardly moving enough product to present a problem if we wanted to muscle them, but Ramses won’t give me the green light.”
“Why not?”
“Well, apparently the kid, Petey, who runs things that way has some kind of history with Pharaoh. I guess his dad and the big boss were cool back in the days. Ramses agrees with my theory about the increase of income if we locked down the border, but doesn’t want them squeezed out by none of his people because it would look like disrespect to his later father’s memory on Pharaoh’s part. You know them old niggas are real big on honor.”
“But if something happens randomly to Petey by a third party, it would leave Pharaoh completely blameless and open the block up for you to take fair and square after you topple their leadership.” Tut picked up on Omega’s thinking.
“Exactly,” Omega agreed. “Man, I’ve tried everything with these dudes from offering profit shares to flat out buying the territory, but they’re making this shit way harder than it has to be. I can understand where Ramses and Pharaoh are coming from, but them Spanish niggas are in the way of progress right now.”
“I can dig it, but let me ask you something. Why come to me instead of sending your personal attack dog, Li’l Monk?” Tut asked. He had never cared for Li’l Monk, not because of anything he had ever done, but because of where he was in life and where Tut wanted to be. Before he went to prison, he knew Li’l Monk as the dirty little kid who was always fighting. To come home and see Li’l Monk in a position that Tut felt was reserved for him was like a slap in the face. He tolerated Li’l Monk for the sake of keeping the piece in the organization, but he also deeply resented him and every so often the resentment peeked out.
“Knock that shit off, man. Li’l Monk is my partner, not my attack dog. My nigga is a beast out here on the streets when shit needs to get handled, but make no mistake about it, that’s my brother. Ya dig?”
“Yeah, I dig,” Tut said in a less than convincing tone. “So what’s my part in this and my take of the spoils?”
“You help me move dude out and you and your people can run the spots we take. You can add those corners to whatever Ramses has blessed you with so far. In essence, your territory gets bigger and both our borders are guarded. You kick up to me, and I kick up to Ramses and Pharaoh for both of us. It’s a simple plan.”
“It’s always a simple plan to the nigga who ain’t putting his ass on the line,” Tut capped. “Now, you’ve already said that Pharaoh and Ramses really don’t want these dudes muscled, so what happens when they find out what I did?”
“That’s the best part, they ain’t gonna know. Petey and his crew been beefing with the Dominicans and the Jamaicans so anyone of them could be just as guilty in punching his clock. Outside of you I haven’t spoken to anyone else about this plan, so the only way it’ll get back to them is if you or your people are talking, because I sure as hell ain’t gonna tell them. I could be just as much in the dog house as you for going against Ramses.”
Tut weighed his options. It was a risky plan that could potentially put him out of favor with Ramses and Pharaoh, but on the flip side it could increase his profits and his reach. A wise man once told Tut, “Scared money don’t make no money,” so he had to put his balls on the table every so often to get where he needed to be. “A’ight. I’ll take care of this for you, but on one condition.”
“Name it,” Omega told him.
“I want a piece of Seventh Avenue.”
Omega looked surprised. “Nah, I get too much money on Seventh. You bugging.”
“Nah, I think you the one that’s bugging, Omega. You just came through my hood and asked me to commit treason. I could be killed just for having this conversation with you, or I could be rewarded for exposing your bullshit.”
Omega’s face twisted into a hard mask. “Damn, I come through here offering you an opportunity to get some bread and you talking about snaking me?”
“Never that, O. We got history. It ain’t about snaking you. It’s about being the best negotiator in a business deal,” Tut said slyly. “Don’t take it like that, Omega. I ain’t asking for all of Seventh Avenue, I just want one square block, from 142nd to 143rd. The rest of it is yours.”
“Why those blocks?” Omega asked curiously.
“Let’s just say they have sentimental value to me,” Tut told him. Benny had kept an apartment on Seventh Avenue between 142nd and 143rd. He and Tut had some memorable times on that block, living wild and free. It was where Tut had made his very first crack sale in Harlem. He wanted that block to honor Benny’s memory.
“Fuck it, you can have it,” Omega relented. “But if I give you that block, you gotta split the take with me because technically you’d be cutting into my money.”
�
�You got it, boss,” Tut said sarcastically.
“How soon do you think you can have it done?” Omega asked.
Tut looked at his watch. “No time like the present. You got a picture of this dude?”
Omega opened his flip phone, and pulled up Petey’s MySpace page. Tut stared at he picture for a while, committing Petey’s face to memory.
“A’ight, I got it. Before the sun sets this problem will be a thing of the past,” Tut told him.
“I appreciate you doing this, Tut,” Omega told him.
“Don’t tell me, show me. Make sure my pockets are heavy enough to where I’m more focused on them than this dummy mission I’m signing up for,” Tut told him.
“You got that,” Omega agreed, “but for what you’re asking, I don’t just need him gone. I need a message sent.”
Tut laughed. “My messages are better than Hallmark cards. Ask ya man Ramses. Don’t worry about it, O. I’m gonna make sure your voice is received loud and clear.”
Petey came out of his building and stretched like he had just awakened from a long slumber. It was the middle of the day, but to a man who didn’t get out of bed until 5:00 p.m. every day, it was early. As usual, he was dressed in a sweat suit, flip-flops and tall white socks with his father’s signature straw hat. He was on his way to the local Spanish restaurant where his father had held his meetings every day. Being that their numbers had been decimated over the years since his father’s death, it was more out of carrying on tradition than necessity. He strolled down the block waving to the residents of the neighborhood who acknowledged him. Having the love and respect of the people of his neighborhood made Petey’s heart swell with pride. His domain only stretched four or five blocks squared, but it was still his. In Petey’s little square of the Bronx, he was treated like a mafia don.
Petey had inherited his neighborhood from his father, Peter Suarez Sr. Peter Sr. had been the brother of the notorious Puerto Rican drug lord Poppito, who operated out of Old San Juan, Puerto Rico. Peter Sr. was small time in comparison to his brother, but inherited the notoriety that came with being a part of that family, which garnered him the respect of the larger crews in the area. When he died, the mantel was passed to his son, Petey, but by that time there wasn’t much left of Peter Sr.’s kingdom except few scarce blocks, where he was able to run through a few ounces per day via hand-to-hand sales. It wasn’t much to hold on to, but it was all he had so Petey kept things going as best he could.
Along his way to the restaurant he was joined by his constituents, who consisted of some neighborhood knuckleheads and a few older dudes who were still loyal to his father. There were only a handful of them but they held on to what was theirs ferociously. Everyone still in Petey’s employ knew that what they had left was only being held on to by a strand.
When Petey stepped inside the restaurant he expected to be greeted by Maria, the owner’s wife and his mistress, but she was nowhere to be found. That was unusual because Maria was always around. He looked to the counter and found the happy young girl who always took his orders was at her position, but that day she wasn’t smiling. There was a terrified expression on her face. It suddenly registered to Petey that something was terribly wrong.
Several shots rang out, dropping Petey’s entourage around him and leaving him standing there, alone and scared shitless. His nervous eyes drifted toward the direction the shots had come from. Occupying the booth where he usually took his meetings sat a young black man. Next to him was Maria. The black man had his arm draped around her, with a smoking gun in his hand. Sitting on the table in front of him was a large canister of olive oil.
“What the fuck is this?” Petey asked nervously.
“A going-out-of-business sale,” Tut told him. “Come sit down and let’s rap for a taste.” He waved Petey over, but Petey didn’t budge. “Petey, whatever you’re thinking you might as well unthink. I dropped your boys without getting up from this seat, so you’d be a dead man before you could ever make your move. Now sit your ass down so we can talk.”
Slowly Petey approached the booth and took the seat opposite Tut and Maria. “Who are you?”
“The repo man, come to collect,” Tut told him. “Let my visit serve as your official notice that shop is closed for you boys.”
Petey’s face twisted into a mask of anger. “You black bastard, you’ve got some pretty big balls coming into my fucking territory giving me orders.”
Without warning, Tut shot Petey in the arm. “Watch your fucking mouth in the presence of a lady.” Tut removed his arm from around Maria and set the gun on the table between him and Petey. He cocked the hammer and looked Petey dead in the eyes. “Let’s skip all the fake tough guy shit and get straight to the facts. You are done, over, finito.”
Petey clutched his bloody arm and winced in pain. “You won’t get away with this. My father has run this neighborhood for twenty years. You think we don’t have allies who’ll retaliate for this shit? My uncle is Poppito Suarez.”
The name rang familiar to Tut, but he was too busy showing off to think about where he had heard it before. “Dig this, no disrespect, but I don’t give a fuck who your father was or who your uncle is. Anyone of your thousand and one Spic-ass relatives are more than welcome to come back acting like they want a problem and they’ll all find themselves in a bad way. It’s already done, Petey, and me paying you a visit is just a formality. There’s progress being made on the streets and you, my friend, are in the way,” Tut snatched the gun up and shot Petey twice in the chest.
The women screamed in horror as Petey’s life drained away into the booth’s bench. He gasped to catch his breath, but couldn’t because his lung was punctured. He watched helplessly as Tut got up from the table and picked up the canister of olive oil and began pouring it over his head. Tut pulled a lighter from his pocket and sparked it, holding it in front of Petey’s face so that he could get a good look at the flame. When he decided he was done toying with Petey, he dropped the lighter into his lap and stepped back as Petey burst into flames.
“Now that’s how you send a fucking message.” Tut laughed while watching Petey burn.
CHAPTER 5
“Ms. Chandler,” Father Michael called, reminding Persia that he was still standing there, waiting. His dark eyes stared at her from beneath his busy eyebrows, urging her to hurry up.
Persia had been in Father Michael’s office more than a few times, but it always made her uncomfortable. It was an ode to everything ancient, with its overflowing racks of dusty history books, and shelves littered with knickknacks Father Michael had collected during his travels over the years. His newest addition to his office was what looked like an old airplane propeller, mounted to the wall behind his desk. Persia was staring at the propeller, trying to guess what kind of plane it had come off and how Father Michael had come into possession of it, when the door slammed behind her, causing her to jump.
“Sit down, Ms. Chandler.” Father Michael motioned toward the chair Mr. Thompson had just vacated. Persia did as she was told. Father Michael walked around to the other side of the desk, smoothing his black shirt before he sat down. He took his time, rummaging through his drawer for his hairbrush, and proceeded to tighten up the loose strands of hair on his salt-and-pepper head. Father Michael wore his hair slicked back like the mobsters Persia had seen in the old movies her mother was always watching. In fact, that’s what he reminded Persia of: a mobster. The way he talked, the way he walked, it was all street. The only thing that let on to the fact that he was a man of the cloth was the black shirt and collar he wore. After he’d completed his grooming, he addressed Persia. “Why are you here, Ms. Chandler?”
Persia shrugged. “Because Sister Francine sent me.”
“I know that, Ms. Chandler, but that’s not my question. Why are you”—he jabbed his finger at her—“here? Persia, I have to admit, when you came back to us nobody thought you had it in you to climb back into the fight and get on track with your class work, including myself. Much
to everyone’s surprise, you seem to be readjusting very well. Even when you found out you were short several credits, and wouldn’t be able to march with your class in June, you took it in stride, and kept your nose to the ground to get your diploma in January. You were on course to serving all your detractors a nice helping of crow, and then you went left. Your grades are on point, but you focus has slipped. Has something happened between now and when you came back that’s distracting you?”
The question sent Persia’s mind back to a dark time in her life and the root of her problem.
The period immediately after Persia completed the rehabilitation program was very dark for Persia. The doctors had suggested that she check into an inpatient program, but Persia didn’t want to. She wanted to try to kick on her own. They compromised and Richard paid for her to receive outpatient treatment at a private facility. The physical pains of withdrawal were worse than anything she had even been through, even falling out of a window. In the first few days she was racked with cramps and fits of vomiting. It was like she had a flu that wouldn’t go away. There were times when Persia felt like she was going to die, and few times she wanted to, but death was not in God’s plan for her; suffering was. It got so bad at one point that she couldn’t even control her bowels, and would pee and shit the bed. It was utterly embarrassing for her to have her mother clean her up like she was a baby, but there was no way she could do it on her own. It was during her rehab that she saw how strong her mother really was, because Persia doubted if she’d have been able to care for an adult as her mother had cared for her. She loved her mother for that.