Cracked Dreams

by Michael Daniel Baptiste

  Roscoe had made some serious accusations after the beating he’d taken that night. He’d said a lot of shit that Don P. didn’t want to sit on—not even for the rest of the night. When I finally met up with them, it was 6:00 a.m. We met at Baychester Diner on Baychester Avenue and Boston Road.

  “What’s good, son?” I asked as I walked toward the entrance from the parking lot.

  “Good?” asked Poncho. “Ain’t nothin’ good, dog. Your boy Roscoe made sure of that shit.”

  “Where that nigga Roscoe at, anyway?”

  “Oh, you don’t have to worry about him, dog,” answered El. “You won’t ever hear any more negativity from that hot boy, feel me?”

  Don P. chuckled a bit, and then we all went inside the diner for breakfast. After we’d been seated and placed our orders, Don P. began to run down the specifics of the get-together from earlier in the morning.

  It seemed as though Little Jay had noticed that the profit from the spot he worked on 227th Street had been coming up short the last couple of weeks. What stood out was that the amount was always the same, five percent. If they estimated thirty grand, at the end of the night they would only have $28,500. The rest of the Family never noticed this because Little Jay would always make up the difference out of his own pocket. He wanted to find out who was the thief before he raised any eyebrows, and then he’d report them. He figured out that whenever he sent Roscoe to drop off, that’s when their profits took a loss. The night he was arrested was the first night he’d decided not to send Roscoe on the drop-off, but he never got a chance to report because he was taken through the system that night. When Don P. were done explaining the story up until this point, I was surprised but didn’t feel that it deserved as much importance as they were placing on it.

  “All right,” I said, uninterested. “That’s what ya’ll mu’fuckas thought I needed to come out here from in the bed with my broad to hear?”

  “Nah, son,” answered El. “We saved the best part for last.” “Okay, spit it out.”

  “After a few hours of getting his ass beat, Roscoe finally admitted that he’d been stealing from us. That’s not the only thing though, son. He said that it wasn’t his idea and that Ceelow put him up to it.”

  When El was through I had a furious, but confused look on my face. It was so hard to believe that someone from the crew I considered family would steal from us. Since we’d both been little, it was us that had spoken about getting money together the most. We’d had the longest conversations with one another about the numerous things we could buy with the money we made. With all of these things running through my head, I wanted to find him, and lay him down wherever he was, but I had to calm down. I had to figure the right course of action to take.

  “Yo, let me sit on this for a while,” I said after minutes of silence. “I’m gonna handle this shit personally, ya heard? We ain’t about to start a war within the Family because of what some bitch-ass rat mu’fucka said to save his ass.”

  “Yeah, I got you,” said Poncho. “For whatever, my nigga. All you got to do is holla.”

  “Word up, son,” agreed El.

  After my conversation with Don P., I realized that it didn’t matter how long you knew someone. You just can’t trust them unless they just that type of nigga. I saw their honesty and dedication when Don P. said that they’d hold me down, and I hadn’t known these niggas ten years like I’d known Cee. “Whatever,” I said to myself. If this information would prove true, then it was just a situation that needed to be dealt with. Two and two is always going to equal four, you know?

  CHAPTER 7

  Today was a busy day for Spits. He had some business to take care of. When Spits would get in these moods, the only thing that could relax him was listening to a little Sade. He got in the truck late that morning, pressed play on the CD player, and immediately became tranquil as the soothing sounds of his favorite song “Kiss of Life” came through the speakers. He sat back in his truck with the windows rolled up and zoned out for a minute before he pulled off. He then began his morning grind with a delivery run to Burke and Arnow Avenue. There were some new young Puerto Rican cats out there starting to make a name for their crew. They called themselves “The Chosen” and the only problem was that whenever they made a request, it would always be for a little at a time. That must’ve been the only flaw in the whole delivery process; niggas would take advantage of the no-risk factor. But Spits had a plan devised for such occasions. One of Spits’ run-men, Vic, informed him of the situation. He told him that their money was never short but the requests were always mediocre. He’d make the drop personally to have a talk with them.

  “Yo, what up, my nigga?” yelled Bobby as a he saw a friend of his drive past. The car stopped halfway into the block and reversed to where Bobby had been standing waving his arms. When the car stopped, out came D. He tried concealing his happiness but soon gave in to a huge smile. He hadn’t seen his man Bobby in a while.

  Bobby and D. had been friends for over ten years. They’d grown up in Edenwald Projects together and hadn’t seen each other since Bobby had been sent away for an assault charge. He did four years out of a three-to-six sentence and had been home for a few months. Bobby and D. used to be a stick-up team back in the days before Bobby got sent away. They’d lost touch since then, but the love they had for one another was still strong.

  “What’s good, son?” asked D. as he gave Bobby a hug. “How long you been home?”

  “Oh, about like three or four months now,” responded Bobby. “Damn, Bobby. It feels like it’s been forever. What you been up to nowadays, son?”

  “Same shit, same shit, you know?” responded Bobby. “Ain’t nobody called me Bobby in a while, but other than that, the God ain’t change a bit, feel me? I see you ain’t changed either. You still driving that bullshit Accord, huh?”

  “Yeah, you know,” said D., shrugging off Bobby’s insult. “Shit ain’t been the same since you got knocked, my nigga. We used to do it big, but ain’t nobody left out here that’s still thorough. I was doing sticks with Drew and that nigga Pone for a minute, but that shit ain’t last too long, so I just been doin’ me.”

  “Why?” asked Bobby. “What’s up with them niggas?”

  “They both dead, son,” answered D. with a low drop in his tone. “They got bodied and shit. But fuck all of that, son; I heard you was home, but I didn’t know where you was laying.”

  “No doubt,” responded Bobby as he pointed to the house behind him. “This is me right here. I’m renting a little room up there on the second floor. It ain’t much now, but I’ll be back up to par in a few, na’mean? I’m home now.”

  “That’s cool, playboy. Now we can do it up like back in the days, for real.”

  “Word! Yo, umm . . .where did you, umm . . .” said Bobby as he couldn’t quite get the words out.

  “Huh?” asked D., expressing his confusion.

  “Umm, where did you hear that I was back home?”

  “Oh . . .that nigga Bernard and all them niggas from the 8th. They told me that you was back making mad noise, making it hot again. I don’t know why, but it sounded like they wasn’t too happy to see you home. What’s that about?”

  “Fuck them niggas, dog,” responded Bobby as his voice started to rise. “Them niggas is just haters; that’s all. I could leave them niggas with rabbit ears whenever I feel like it, and they know that shit. They can’t fuck with me. They scared now that I’m home because they know I got that knockout blow and I buss my gun. They gonna know in a minute though, you heard?”

  “Yeah, I ain’t feeling them niggas like that anyway. They think they own the whole White Plains Road now.”

  “Oh, word?” asked Bobby, already plotting. “I’ll see what they working with. Yo, you want to come up for a while? I got to make a phone call.”

  “Oh, all right.”

  “Which one of ya’ll mu’fuckas is Johnny?” Spits asked as he pulled up to the corner, which was too crowded to tell anyone apar
t.

  “What you say, pa?” one of them asked as the others looked on.

  “You heard what the fuck I said,” Spits shot back. “Are you Johnny?”

  “Yeah, that’s me,” he said, approaching the truck still perplexed.

  Spits waited for Johnny to get close enough to the truck before responding as to not let anyone else hear what he said. “Well, I’m Spits, nigga! You know me now?”

  “Oh, my bad, pa. You never know out here, feel me?”

  “Whatever, mu’fucka. Listen, hop in so I can holla at you. We gonna take a ride right quick, dog.”

  “Give me a minute,” he said as he turned around to talk to the rest of his crew. “Ayo, that’s that nigga Spits in the Lex over there, kid. He wonna holla, so I’m gonna take a ride with him. I’ll be right back, i-ight, ya’ll?”

  They all agreed and gave their personal handshake before he turned back toward Spits. He jumped in the passenger side of the truck and they were off. Spits went East on Burke Avenue and made a left turn onto Bronxwood Avenue. Once they got to the area they considered “The Woods” he slowed down a bit so that the conversation could have visuals.

  “You see all of this up here?” Spits asked Johnny. “All of this shit is for the Time Bombs. All these niggas out here work for the Family. Now, my man Vic told me about you and your crew. The Chosen, right?”

  “Yeah, pa,” he responded, as he was excited that someone knew their name. “I hope he didn’t have nothin’ bad to say about my crew.”

  “Nah, he told me that ya’ll always got your paper straight, and that ya’ll not the type to feed off the re-up money with petty bullshit,” said Spits. “The only thing I had a problem with, was the fact that you dudes would call five or six times a day to re-up with eight-balls. Now, I know ya’ll get it poppin’ over here. Why don’t ya’ll ever take a bigger bite of the weight?”

  “The problem isn’t moving the product, bro. With all due respect to you and all your peoples, we’d rather hold out and let ya’ll take all of the possession risks. We know how much shit we can move in a given amount of time, so why have more than we need. Feel me, bro?”

  “Yeah, I feel you, dog, but peep game, Johnny. If we’re going to pretend like ya’ll mu’fuckas are workers for us, then ya’ll mu’fuckas might as well be workers for us,” Spits said before pausing to shoot a grin and wink an eye. “Now, whatever you make gets reinvested anyway leaving ya’ll no spending money, so I think that it would be in your best interest to formally involve yourselves with our organization. That means that we’d put up all the white, already cooked and bagged, and you and your crew get a percentage. Does that make sense?”

  “I don’t know,” Johnny answered, showing a little doubt. “That just sounds like ya’ll get all the control.”

  “You a smart mu’fucka, Johnny,” Spits said with a chuckle. “But do the math. It’s the difference between you guys taking home $1,000 a week, and $10,000 a week. You don’t have to answer now, but I’ll send someone for a response tomorrow morning.”

  As Bobby hung up the phone, he turned to D. and said, “Yo, peep this,” as he handed D. a black Desert Eagle. “You like that?”

  “No doubt. This shit is pretty, for real,” answered D. “This is what I need.”

  “I could get you one if you want, son.”

  “Oh, word?” Bobby asked with excitement.

  “Yeah, you remember my uncle that lives down South, right?”

  “Yeah, you talking about Richie, right? He still in the army?”

  “Yup, he get all kinds of gats easy. For good prices, too. He be hooking me up so I can sell them shits up here.”

  “Oh, that’s flavor, son. For real.”

  “Yeah, I had that one for a while now. That joint got . . .” said Bobby, pausing like he heard something. “Did you hear that shit, son?”

  “I ain’t hear shit, dog,” responded D. “You all right, man?”

  “Yeah . . .I’m cool. Anyway, what was I saying?”

  “You was telling me about the gat,” said D., still playing with it.

  “Oh, yeah. That shit got mad bodies on it, kid,” Bobby said as he went looking through the closet.

  “Oh, shit! I forgot I was supposed to go check my baby mom’s, right quick,” D. said as he jumped up to leave. “Yo, don’t go nowhere. I’ll be right back.”

  “All right, dog,” Bobby said, still fumbling through his closet. “Where the fuck did I put that shottie?” he asked himself.

  “One,” yelled D. as he exited the room, dropping the gun on the floor before he left.

  “Yeah-yeah, dog. One.”

  Before Johnny could even respond to the offer that Spits had laid out, he got a phone call and dropped him back on Burke Avenue before speeding off. He still had other matters to attend to that superseded the importance of these “Chosen” dickheads. Before anything, he went to go check this nigga he knew from his high school days. Some dirty nigga named Tec.

  Now, Tec got his name from . . .well, it’s obvious how you get a name like Tec, but it’s one thing to just say “yeah, call me Tec,” and it’s some completely different shit to never even have to ask anyone. If you’d ever heard about him or met him, you’d know why that was his name and you’d call him nothing else. Tec was the gun man. Any kind of toaster you could think of, he bussed it before and would have it for sale if you requested. He could explain in detail everything about any gun, but the only thing was he wasn’t exactly “all there” upstairs. Tec had supplied the basic needs of the TB Family in the past, but Spits had put in a special order and was just notified of its availability.

  When he reached Tec’s block, he made a right turn onto Laconia Avenue, between 229th Street and Grenada Place, and double-parked in the front of the house that he lived in. As he turned the engine off, he saw Tec walk past his truck on the right side. He tried calling to get his attention, but his shouts fell short of Tec’s ears. In a hurry, he jumped out of the truck and went after him. Finally catching up to him halfway into the block, he realized he had a shiny black shotgun under his coat. When he attempted to give him a handshake and ask him what was going on, Tec raised the polished cannon and pointed it directly in between Spits’ eyes and cocked it. Ultimately realizing who it was that he’d just pulled a shottie on, he quickly lowered the shotgun and apologized.

  “Oh, shit,” said Tec with a chuckle. “My bad. I didn’t even see you there. Where the fuck did you come from?”

  “You didn’t see me?” Spits asked sarcastically. “Where did I come from? Nigga, I was calling your fuckin’ name from down the block.”

  “My bad, son. I was just on my way to . . .uh, I was on my way down the block to . . .” he said with a blank look on his face. Then, when he finally looked down at the huge gleaming shotgun he had tucked under his trench coat, he said, “Oh, that’s right! I was on my way to 228th right quick. Yo, just wait for me in my crib. I left the door open. I’ll be right back.”

  Before Spits could even reply or attempt to probe as to why he was walking down the street in broad daylight with a fucking monstrous shotgun underneath a trench coat, in the middle of April at that, he was gone. So Spits, being the curious mu’fucka that he was, went up to Tec’s house to wait for him. He walked up one flight of stairs and straight to the door of the room Tec rented. As he entered the unlocked room, he almost tripped over a .44-caliber black Desert Eagle that Tec had just laying on the floor in the front of the door.

  This dude is crazy, thought Spits to himself before picking the pistol up off the ground. He shifted the shaft back enough to see a slug in the chamber, then removed the clip. As he examined the fully loaded clip, he heard gunshots go off that didn’t seem too far from him. First, a clutter of small shots fired, and then three loud booms could be heard. After that, silence. He inserted the clip back into the pistol and put it back down on the floor, but realizing his fingerprints were still on it, he quickly picked it back up and rubbed it off on his shirt. When he was done he
got up to take a little peek out the window, and he caught a glimpse of Tec running around the corner. He had a look on his face that considered to anyone watching him that he didn’t even know why he was running, but that he just had to be. He made a sharp turn into the gate in the front of the house, and in seconds he was in the room standing in front of Spits, breathing hard and coughing with sweat running from his forehead. He shut the door behind him and dropped the shotgun on the floor next to the bed.

  “What the fuck did you just do?” Spits yelled with a shaken voice. “That was you bussin’ off just now?”

  “Yo, calm down, son,” said Tec, wiping the sweat from his brow. “That wasn’t nothing, kid. Those niggas had it coming. Look how much paper them niggas was holding, son.”

  “Son, you buggin’ the fuck out, or what?” asked Spits. “There’s ways you do things, nigga. You can’t just be running up on niggas in broad daylight. There’s only a matter of time before you gonna get it, too. You can’t be so reckless, dog.”

  Tec paused for a bit, looking as if what Spits said had started to sink in, and then said, “Whatever, nigga. You want the thing, or not?”

  “Yeah, nigga,” said Spits, giving up hope. “Let me get that so I can bounce before the police run in here shooting shit up.”

  Tec reached under the bed and pulled out a silver briefcase. He laid the briefcase down on the bed and opened it, facing Spits. When it was opened all the way, two chrome pearl-handled .45 Magnum pistols stared up at Spits. He was hypnotized at the sight of them. Engraved in the pearl handles was the exact logo each member of the Time Bombs had tattooed on their forearms. Immediately satisfied with what was presented to him, he instantly paid Tec the suggested price and left in a hurry with the briefcase under his arm.