Cake

by D

  “Oh, you mean the De La Soul one?”

  You nod.

  “My sista played that shit to death back in the day. I think she used to sing it to me when I was little.”

  “How old are you?” Anything above seventeen keeps you away from a case.

  “Twun-ee,” she says. “So what you ’bout to do?’

  “Head back to my cousin’s.”

  “And where he stay at?”

  Something inside of you flips on the caution switch.

  “Not far. What about you?”

  She thinks on it for a moment. “Not far,” she grins.

  “Then we should get up sometime.”

  “We should.”

  She writes her number on the back of a store receipt. Her cursive is pretty. Or prettier than yours at least.

  “What time you gonna be home?” you ask.

  “If you call I’ll answer, no matter where I’m at.”

  You tell her your name and you shake hands like it was some kind of a business meeting. She gets up before you, probably just to show you the ass you’ve been trying to peek at. It’s like a globe, the kind of thing that would give Will a heart attack, even if he can’t fuck her anymore.

  For a moment you daydream about a strip of thong resting between her ass cheeks, about what it would be like to grip them while she’s on top of you. You want to know how she sounds when she comes. You want to feel those glittery nails grinding into your back.

  Then you think of Her and try to push those thoughts away. The same shit can’t happen twice—but that doesn’t mean you’re not paranoid that it still might.

  2.

  “And we made it, muthafucka!” Duronté screams, a little too excited for winning a single hand of Spades when he’s still down 200 in a 500 game.

  Meechie is a 5’10” dude with a crazy Afro and a slight limp from when he got hit by a car when he was eight. He’s the color of peanut butter and doesn’t talk much.

  Alonzo is putting himself through grad school by working in the street. So when he’s not making runs for Duronté, he’s writing papers and hitting the books. You get along with him best for obvious reasons.

  Jamar is only seventeen, about to start his last year of high school. He’s the driver. He never carries any product, or a pistol, or anything else. He’s strictly transportation. He’s also your partner in the game, and a damn good one at that.

  “Don’t tell me you needed your New York cousin to come down South and spank yo’ ass,” you joke.

  There are bottles of Icehouse on the table and a nice-sized blunt is going around. The Falcons are playing Detroit in the preseason but no one is paying the game any mind.

  “Fuck you ‘dun sun’ ass, nigga!” your cousin yells back, his words starting to slur.

  “Hey, hey, y’all family,” Alonzo interrupts, trying to sound like Tré from Boyz N the Hood.

  Everybody laughs. Then Duronté’s phone rings.

  You can tell it’s business because playtime goes out the window. Either he’s got a buyer on the line or it’s Keyshia Cole saying that she ain’t got no panties on. Either way he’s pacing.

  “I don’t know if I can get it that fast,” he says into the receiver. The fingers on his other hand fidget. “I’ll call you back in a hour, all right? Out.”

  “Fuck is up?” Alonzo asks.

  “You know Reggie over in Candlewood?”

  Everyone in the room nods but you.

  “Nigga says he’s on short, something about his boy gettin’ pulled over for a DUI with a good five pounds in the trunk.”

  This story is the kind of stupidity that makes your skin crawl. But this ain’t your operation. So you only speak when spoken to as far as the business is concerned.

  “Fuck that got to do with you?” Jamar asks.

  “He wants to buy five off me.”

  “Shit, do you have five?” Alonzo asks.

  “It’s all we got,” Meechie says.

  That spider sense of yours gets your head a tingling. The way you look at it, this is all a little too convenient.

  “Says he’ll give me double the wholesale price. I could do it and re-up with Dale tomorrow.”

  “Hell fuckin’ yeah!” Jamar all but yells. “That’s what I’m talkin’ about.”

  This is where you have to intervene.

  “Where you know this nigga from?” you ask, sliding your chair back from the table to show that you’re serious.

  “Since high school. We caught up this bitch that was tryin’ to play us both. Then we ended up sellin’ around the same time. Not much of shit. Dimes and dubs mostly, whatever we could get off the major niggas.”

  “He ever called you for help before?” you continue.

  “Nah, but I don’t think he ever needed to.”

  “He got a dude carrying that much weed in one car? That’s somebody he has to trust. And the dude he trusts gets fucking drunk on a run?”

  “You think this shit is a setup?” Alonzo asks, as if those kinds of things don’t ever happen in the illegal drug business.

  “I don’t know what it is,” you say. “But the shit don’t feel right to me.”

  “But if you wrong, we pass up on some real paper,” Jamar says.

  “You ain’t passin’ up on shit, lil’ man.”

  Jamar turns to your cousin, looking for permission to break bad. Duronté’s expression lets him know that your words matter.

  “What if Jamar’s right though?” Alonzo asks.

  You could be taking yourself way too seriously in this regard. In truth, you don’t know shit about these people. You don’t really know shit about the weed business other than what you’ve overheard in a whole other city. But you ain’t no monster either, and there ain’t no way in hell you can let some blood of yours walk into a trap unprepared.

  “I just don’t think you should go out there on the solo to do this. You take some people with you, more than one car and a little something just in case these cats wanna get the party live.”

  The rest of the room thinks this over.

  “And I say we leave Jamar here.”

  “Why the fuck you wanna do that?” Jamar pouts.

  “Because if anything happens, if we get busted, if it turns into a shootout, we got a man and a car back here to come in for the rescue or at least bail us out.”

  They all look at each other like you’re some kind of a genius. It feels good to be control. It feels good to have that little bit of influence, that little bit of power.

  “And we’re gonna need more than one pistol,” you add.

  Meechie cracks a weird kind of smile. “That ain’t gonna be a problem.”

  “But before we go to war and all,” your cousin says, “let’s make sure we got what they need.”

  And that’s how it starts. Duronté and crew start making calls to their various stashes to tell them to put a hold on the inventory. Then Alonzo goes out to make the grab. Meechie heads off to get the heat. And the three of you watch videos on BET.

  Duronté sets the meet at some fleabag motel out by the airport. He rents the room, which gives him an advantage of having the whole area checked out before Reggie gets there. Nine times out of ten this whole thing is going to be simple. That feeling you have is probably the same feeling you get about just about everything these days.

  But there’s another voice in your head, one that says you shouldn’t even be giving advice, that you should get yourself a hotel room for the week—until your end is ready. Shit, you’ve got the money. You should get in your little Honda and wheel it away. This isn’t your problem. You’re normal now. You’re about to start school. You need to put your past far behind you in favor of a nice and safe future.

  But at the same time, you were always pretty bad at telling people no.

  By midnight you’re sitting shotgun in Duronté’s ride, a ’78 Malibu with a candied copper paint job sitting on Ds. Alonzo’s following you and Meechie’s going to meet you at the car wash.<
br />
  “Personally, I don’t think this shit is about nuthin’ but makin’ money,” Duronté says as he fires up a Black and Mild. “I mean, it ain’t like we talkin’ bout heroin.”

  “Yeah, but you is talking about money, and we all know what niggas will do for money.”

  “I know that’s the truth. But if he wanted to go at us he coulda just hit us at the crib.”

  “Yeah, but what if he ain’t lie about losing his stash? What if he just ain’t got the money to pay for it so he’s gonna jack you to get what he need?”

  “But it’s just weed. Gettin’ weed is like gettin’ milk at the sto’ around heah.”

  You give him nothing but a nod as your two-car caravan makes its way onto the interstate. After that it’s nothing but headlights and medians for close to a half-hour. Duronté switches the song in his changer every other minute. Just as you’re getting used to the track he jumps into something else, from Outkast to T.I. to Archie Bell and James Brown. He’s nervous. You both are.

  Your cousin bought into a car wash as a result of getting four numbers out of five in the state lottery, which earned him $100,000 the summer he turned nineteen. After taxes he had about sixty Gs left, which his mother convinced him to invest in something (after he gave her a nice piece, of course). With that he bought his ride, two bricks of hydro, and into this place, which some old school rapper had run into the ground by overcharging and undermaintaining. Duronté was sitting on the exact amount the guy needed to give the place a full overhaul and start back at zero.

  He gets fifteen percent of the monthly take after taxes and permission to have his people sell tree to whoever’s looking for it. He might be a little over the top sometimes, but your cousin is definitely not stupid.

  There isn’t a light on anywhere as you and Alonzo park in the rear. Duronté types a code into a lit keypad and two security floodlights come on, revealing what looks like any other car wash in the middle of nowhere. He puts a key in the lock and heads inside.

  The three of you move down a flight of stairs and into what looks like a small office. There’s a TV and a pool table and an old-ass arcade game called Centipede. You remember it from when you were little but you never actually played yourself. This is the staff rec room. Employees come down here on their lunch breaks and to change at the beginning of shifts. The pool table was Duronté’s idea. The whole setup is so nice that it makes you wonder why in the hell he’s selling weed.

  It’s another half-hour before Meechie finally gets there carrying a backpack with four different pistols and, of all things, a grenade.

  “The fuck you bring this for?” Alonzo asks Meechie.

  “Playboy said it was a bonus. Says he got a whole box of ’em.”

  “I don’t think we’re gonna need no shit like that.”

  You have your Glock handy and Duronté has his .45, so it’s really Alonzo and Meechie’s show. Alonzo picks a Beretta 9. Meechie grabs both of the .380s. Duronté tucks the bag with the rest in a lockable file cabinet. It’s 1:15 by the time everyone is locked and loaded. It’ll take at least thirty to get to the motel. So the fifteen will be all you have to give the place a good look, which should be enough.

  “I gotta ask you a question,” you say, breaking the silence on the ride from I-20 to 285.

  “Wassup?” Duronté replies.

  “Why you in this weed thing if you making cake from the car wash? Is it really worth it for you?”

  “You gotta have a lotta different hustles, playa. I mean, yeah, that car wash shit bring in a couple grand a month. But see, I put that shit away. What if I have a kid or I need to get outta town or whatever? That check does right to my lil’ money market account. I make investments and shit. But this right heah, this shit is about who I am, about bein’ somebody. I’m the man to come to off Ashby Street. When school start up, all them college boys and girls be at my do’ for their dub and they ounces. They got me at they parties, sometimes even up in they dorm rooms. You know, one time this dude from Cali had me at his graduation dinner? I mean, that’s the real shit. That’s juice. That’s livin’ and bein’ young. If I had a way to do more, if I could get my hands on somethin’ even bigger and be fresh to death for real … I’d do that too.”

  Duronté is both smarter and dumber than you thought. On one hand he’s looking toward the future, thinking about what matters beyond the here and now. On the other he’s caught up in getting props, in being known, and that’s a losing proposition. In the end, being known only makes you a target.

  Your three cars pull into an almost empty lot just out past the ugly Bankhead Court Apartments. They seem familiar, as if you might have seen them in a video once or something. But the motel in question looks even worse than those projects, like some shit Norman Bates would hit the gas to get past.

  The night manager is missing two fingers on his right hand. From what you can tell, it looks like a war wound. Some mortar blast or a mine or shrapnel. He is gray all over, even the hair on his arms, and he looks like his mind is somewhere else as he takes your forty dollars and hands your cousin a metal key with the number 13 attached.

  The whole place is ranch-style, which means it’s all on one floor. Duronté gives the boys the number and you drive around and park in the designated space that comes with the room.

  Taking your advice, Duronté tells Meechie to park by the room two units over from yours and to wait there on stealth. Alonzo parks behind the trash dumpsters at the far end of the parking lot with his engine running. If it’s some kind of a setup, there’s help in two different places. Then, you’ll have Duronté’s back on the inside.

  In the middle of all of this, you find yourself thinking about family. In a way, Duronté and Mabel are all that you have. You don’t want to trust them because everyone you’ve trusted has ended up dead. You don’t even want to believe that you’re related, because you don’t want to pull them into what it took you almost everything to get out of. But listening to your cousin and thinking about who your real parents were, you know that you are the spawn of hustlers. Your people have never played it straight. You have always taken the angles. You have always tried to buck the system.

  You think about your old man, or what little you can remember of him and your mama. There was always some stranger coming by the house, always some banging on the door at a late hour. You don’t remember guns but you remember the smell of weed and incense mixed together. That smell has followed you everywhere since.

  The room is an absolute bug farm. An army of ants climbs one wall to go through a tiny crack in the ceiling. The sheets look like they haven’t been changed in weeks. The sign out front should say, Truckers, Johns, and Dealers Welcome. Which one of those are you? Or are you all of the above?

  2 a.m. comes and goes like nothing. Then it’s 2:30 and then 3. Duronté calls Reggie and there’s no answer. But just as he closes his phone, the room phone rings and he rushes to answer.

  It doesn’t take much for you to tell that whoever the caller is has just scared the fuck out of your cousin. He holds the phone to his ear for less than thirty seconds before dropping it back into the cradle.

  “What the fuck is up?” you ask.

  “He says what you’re looking for is in the trash dumpster out in the lot.”

  You know what’s inside before you even close the front door behind you and Duronté. It becomes even clearer as you start across the lot. Meechie drives from around back and Alonzo turns his engine off. You’re glad Jamar is back at the house. He doesn’t need to see this, unless he has to.

  You can smell the blood as you flip the thick plastic off the steel container. There are four men inside. And though you don’t know them, the rest of your people do.

  “Oh shit. That’s fuckin’ Reggie!” Alonzo yells, perhaps too loudly considering the fact that someone might be able to pin accessory beefs on all of you.

  The bodies are piled from the largest, a fat boy who barely looks twenty, to Reggie’s, a 5’6” kid with
too many tattoos, sort of a light-skinned Lil’ Wayne without the dreads.

  “Who did this shit?” Meechie asks. None of you have turned away from the bodies, even though most people would be hurling or running.

  Their throats have been slit, as if four men with knives just walked up behind them and did them away with single slashes. Reggie has a note pinned to his chest. You snatch if off of him as if you’re worried that he’s going to wake up.

  “What it say?” Duronté asks.

  The letters are written big and clear: Your House.

  Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to leave Jamar there alone.

  Duronté’s in fifth gear on the way out of the parking lot and the others are right behind you. More bodies. It’s ridiculous that you didn’t even flinch, that they didn’t flinch. Maybe it’s because none of you want to believe that something this fucked up could actually go down. I mean, hell, at least a shootout would have been something you’d have more control over. Four people are dead and some poor high school kid could be next.

  Duronté’s speedometer is pushing past eighty when you tell him to slow down. Cobb County is no fucking place to get pulled over, especially since you forgot to put your guns in the trunk. That’s three years in jail for speeding. You tell him to calm down, that at least it wasn’t any of his own people.

  “But it’s still a nigga I know,” he says.

  You can see how he has a point, but he’s not looking at the bigger picture. Whoever did this knew where you were, which means that Reggie told them. But the bigger question is why. If it was a straight robbery, why kill everyone? Plus, knives are sloppy. Knives come out of anger. Someone was trying to set an example in a place where Duronté could see it plain as day. The question was … why?

  There’s a 850 CSi with Illinois plates parked right in front Duronté’s place. You tell your cousin to cruise past and further down the street. Alonzo and Meechie seem to know to follow suit. You park as quietly as possible and form a circle out in the street to put together a new plan.

  It’s the same as at the motel. Duronté gives Meechie the key to the back door and tells him to cover it. If he hears shots, he comes in ready to blast. Alonzo stays out front with his engine running. You and your cousin go in the front.