Ice

by Ice-T

  Some of the crews got more messy and more reckless with it.

  We used to have a code. Right before I pulled the hammer out, I’d say “Is it a bet?”

  I’ve got the baby sledgehammer stuck in the back of my waistband. I’m getting ready to grab the head of the hammer and come out with it. When that hits the glass, that shattering sound scares the shit out of people.

  And if my partner says, “Naw, it’s not a bet,” I’d keep the baby sledge in my waistband. If he says, “It’s a good bet”—SMASH!

  Two sets of eyes were needed for confirmation. Almost like requiring two keys to arm a bomb. If my partner sees something’s off, we’re pulling out.

  BACK AT THE CRIB, I was getting even more meticulous. I’d lay out maps of the city, circling the location of the lick in red pen, marking the nearest police stations, the various getaway routes, and the quickest access to freeways. We always worked on the five-minute rule. We figured we’d have five minutes to get in and out after we tripped the security system and before the cops arrived. Didn’t matter if the alarms were sounding, we’d stay focused, never panicking, because we knew the cops couldn’t respond before we’d clean out the store and be gone.

  We loved to hit those mall jewelry stores, but nothing easy lasts forever, and the stores started to get wise to the bash. They upped their security systems. They started to lock the best pieces in safes, and that meant you couldn’t get to them without holding the store employees at gunpoint.

  No problem; there were plenty of other targets. After a while, I realized we could make just as much money, taking much less risk, if we targeted leather boutiques. One night we left one spot empty—took every single leather coat, jump suit, and handbag in the store. The best licks were stores that carried Gucci and Louis Vuitton bags, because we found we could sell those for $1,000 or $1,200 per bag. A good night’s work stealing Gucci and Louis was just as big a score as pulling a big jewelry heist.

  Man, we pulled some incredible licks. One time we went into a department store and cleared out literally all their minks. They had a mink case, with about twenty-five minks, and it was right by an exit. We waited, we pretended to browse, we went into the mink area. The case was open. There was one lady working there. We just looked at her. What is she gonna do? It ain’t her shit, she doesn’t have a gun. Is she really going risk her life for these fucking minks?

  It just took nuts.

  I reached in and grabbed a whole rack. My partner reached in and cleaned out the other rack. Cleaned ’em out.

  We started heading toward the emergency exit. And since we’d done all our advance operational planning, we knew the layout. All department stores have catacombs—if you look at a diagram of a huge store like Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, or May Company, you’ll see that there’s a whole world, invisible to the average person, on the sides and below the shopping spaces. We snatched all the furs and disappeared into the catacombs, moving too fast for any pursuit.

  We got outside and were laughing because we’d got away so easily. As I looked at the mountain of mink and fox coats, I was already doing the mental calculations and figured they were worth maybe $50,000. We could sell them that same night for about $10,000. We started loading and stuffing all the minks into the trunk, backseat, and front seat and got into our car. We couldn’t see out the windows because the mink was piled all the way up. The driver had to clear a little rectangular space so he could see where he was going. When we pulled away in the car, people kept staring at us and laughing, because we looked like a fucking furball driving down the street.

  BUT NO MATTER HOW CAREFULLY you lay out your operational plans, just like in actual combat, there’s always some unpredictable shit that can fuck up the mission. This one hot September night—Santa Ana winds blowing dry desert air through the city—we were pulling a lick at a mall on Western, going up toward Pico, as you start to get toward the Korea town area. This wasn’t a big-money lick, wasn’t a jewelry store with hundreds of thousands in diamonds on display. For more than a week, we’d cased this Asian boutique specializing in designer bags and imported perfume located in a strip mall. The store almost looked like an airport duty-free shop. Nothing but the high-end shit. The good thing about robbing a mall: Nobody has guns. It’s a safe lick. If somebody’s going to chase you, odds are it’s a Good Samaritan, or it’s going to be people on walkie-talkies.

  Rule one of any lick: You never rob in your own car. Some cats are stupid enough to steal cars in their neighborhood, but that’s the very place the cops are going to start their search. We’d head out to the Valley, down to Long Beach, or out by LAX to steal a “G.” We always picked older cars, Fords, Pontiacs, Chevrolets. In those days, pre–electronic ignition, a snatch bar wasn’t needed; a car could be stolen in twenty seconds with a pair of pliers or a screwdriver. Didn’t really matter what kind of car we stole, because after the lick, we were going to ditch the G anyway.

  There were four of us that night: Nat the Cat’s brother, Bebop, me, and two chicks. We showed up at that strip mall in an old rusted-out Pontiac we’d boosted. All the stores were deserted, all the lights were dark, even the supermarket down the block. There were no burglar bars on this Asian boutique, and we bashed through the lock in no time.

  The alarm sounded, piercing the 2 AM silence, but we sparked the flashlights and got right down work. No one was talking, just snatching up the Gucci and Louis bags under the glare of our flashlights. The burglar alarm was screeching, but we’d done this drill so many times, we kept our focus. Just stay cool and steal as much shit as you can carry.

  It was a running joke within our crew: Whenever we pulled a lick, I always wanted to stay in longer than anyone else. It took me years to analyze why. I finally realized that I wanted to stay in longer than anyone else because I fucking hated stealing. In fact—this may sound funny—I hated stealing so much that I did it with a passion. I felt, once I’m doing it, I got to do it well. If I’m robbing you, then you’re gonna get fucking robbed, ’cause I hate the fact that I’m robbing you. I’m not just taking a little; I’m taking everything you got. I’m cleaning you the fuck out.

  I’m in there, and there’s this chick named Tanya next to me grabbing up designer handbags by the armful. The alarm has been going off for about four minutes, so we know it’s nearly time for us to break.

  Suddenly, I look back and Tanya has this terrified look in her eyes. Without a word, she makes a dash out the front door.

  I turn and see a security guard in a black uniform running hard toward us. And then I see that the dude is armed. Where’d this muthafucka come from? He damn sure ain’t no cop.

  The guy had been on night watch at the supermarket down at the end of the mall. I was so deep in the store, so in my mental zone, everyone else had broken out. After Tanya, I was the last one running out the store with my arms full of designer bags.

  The security guard was about twenty feet away with a pistol. He centered that shit on me. He shouted, “Freeze!”

  I said to myself, Naw—this fool ain’t gonna shoot.

  I dropped the leather bags, ducked, ran off to the right.

  He blasted at me. Took out a window right over my head.

  Plate glass shattered, showering my neck and shoulders. My sneakers were crunching glass, and the cement was shimmering like someone had split open a piñata filled with diamonds.

  I was running low, in a half-crouch, and he kept busting shots, taking out more and more windows. No hesitation—some real cowboy shit. The guy blasted out every goddamn window of that mall aiming for my head.

  I bolted around the corner, and my crew was in the old Pontiac, moving toward me, but on some slow-roll shit. They wheeled up so close to the mall that the shattered windows were showering the car. I positioned myself to dive headfirst through the back window. But as I dove, the molding from the inside of the car door shot through my pant leg. I was stuck with my body half in the car, my leg sticking out the back window, and this fucking maniac
Wyatt Earp security guard getting ready to take another shot at me.

  I looked up at Bebop behind the wheel.

  “Drive, muthafucka, drive!”

  He gunned the G out of the parking lot, ran a red light, and we were on the freeway in minutes. Somehow, I managed to pull my body into the car and took a few deep breaths. The hot desert wind was replaced by the smell of new leather; the G was packed with all the Gucci and Louis bags we’d managed to carry. No one said shit until we were halfway back to South Central. Then we all busted out a crazy laugh.

  To this day, I don’t know how I escaped with my skull intact. When I got back to the crib, my girl was half-asleep in bed. She kissed me, stroking my neck, and suddenly let out a little gasp.

  “What’s the matter, baby?” she said.

  She pulled away from me, turned on the bedroom lights. There was a drop of blood on her fingertip.

  We went into the bathroom, and she must have spent thirty minutes picking out all those tiny pieces of glass from my hair.

  THE GAME WAS SO DIFFERENT in my day. You didn’t have DNA testing to worry about if you got cut reaching into the glass case during a bash. Nobody was even thinking about hidden cameras or videotape.

  Funny thing is, some spots did have security cameras, and apparently I did get captured on videotape. Years after I got out of the robbery game, when I was already steadily working as an actor, one of my former crime partners went to a funeral and the police picked him up. They’d had him under surveillance and grabbed him up on an outstanding warrant. He had two different IDs on him. He’s an ex-con, so they were busting his balls. In the midst of questioning—for some fucking reason—he blurted out: “No officers, I’m in the entertainment business. I work with Ice-T.”

  One of the cops said, “Fuck Ice-T. Ice-T hangs with a den of thieves. You tell Ice-T to keep his nose clean. We got enough film on him to make a fuckin’ movie.”

  By that time, I was already out of the robbery life. The statute of limitations had long passed on any of my crimes.

  And when my buddy called me to tell me this, I screamed on him.

  “Nigga, what the fuck? I don’t do shit anymore! I’m square. Didn’t they get the memo?”

  THESE DAYS PEOPLE CONSTANTLY ASK ME how I could go from being a stone criminal to playing a cop for ten years on Law & Order. Some cats try to make it like I’m a hypocrite, or two-faced, or some bullshit.

  Listen, when you’re in the life of crime, it’s true, you feel like you’re in a fraternity. There are people out there that really love to break the law; they’re antisocial, always in that fucking zone. But I never was that kind of cat. I didn’t hate the police. As a matter of fact, I think if you’re a real crook, you better have respect for the cops. Otherwise you’re going to get caught.

  But don’t get it twisted. I never had any allegiance to crime. I just wanted the paper. I lived that life because there was a time when I thought I could do it, an era when every day I thought I was smarter than the police. I took pride in outsmarting them.

  I used to always tell Sean E. Sean and my boys, “The cops’ job is to watch the line. My job is to step over and back.” I took pride in the fact that I could step over and back without getting caught. Criminals think they’re slick. It’s the ego pump you get, like John Dillinger, smirking, “They have to watch every bank. I only have to pick one.” There’s nothing more dangerous than a successful criminal. He’s got so much attitude. And, hell yeah, I’ve been that monster.

  WHILE OUT THERE HUSTLING, hitting jewelry licks, I was getting into Iceberg Slim books—really deep. Memorizing every word Iceberg wrote. Through those books and my time in Hawaii around Mac and the other pimps, I’d soaked up the game. It seemed so intriguing, honestly, that I just wanted to try my hand at it.

  Let me preface this by saying one thing: Pimpin’ is not by any means an honorable hustle. It’s just like stealing cars, robbing banks, or selling drugs. It’s negative. People romanticize bank robbers like Dillinger and Jesse James. People romanticize jewel thieves. People romanticize mobsters like Al Capone and John Gotti. There’s a similar mystique to the pimp.

  But there is nothing positive about pimpin’. It’s just like any other criminal game. And most people who talk about pimpin’ don’t even know what they’re talking about.

  When someone comes up to me today and says, “Yo, Ice, I’m pimpin’,” usually he’s not. Usually he’s just a player, a guy who’s got a lot of girls. But it’s fashionable these days to call yourself a pimp. Pimpin’ is a lot more than having a nice lifestyle, a sexy car, and a gang of girls around you all the time.

  During the height of our robbery sprees, we had to go on the lam. The situation in L.A. was too hot for a minute. Everyone in our organization had to go out of town until shit cooled down. I went back to Hawaii, and I connected with the same folks out there, Mac and the other pimps. Mac was steadily pushing that ism: “Yo, Ice, you need to be doing this. This is something you’re cut for.”

  I thought about it while I was in Hawaii. When I came back to L.A., it wasn’t nothin’ to put a couple of girls in motion. But as the famous saying goes: Pimpin’ ain’t easy. No, as a matter of fact, it’s very fucking complicated. It’s the type of game where you’ll end up pulling your hair out before you learn to do it correctly. That’s why I never claim I was some stand-up pimp, doing it full-time, sending girls out there on the track for years and years. There are so many levels of the game. The most basic is just “sending a bitch.” Most guys—even entry-level pimps—have “sent a bitch.” Yeah, I’ve done it. And I still know how to do it. Even if I’m not pimpin’ today, I know the fundamentals.

  It’s been said that trying to teach pimpin’ to a square is like trying to teach astrophysics to a wino. But that question comes to me a lot: What’s pimpin’?—so I’ll break it down simply. Basically you’re turning the game that the girls use on men back on themselves. You’re flipping it completely. When a typical guy meets a hot girl, he’ll say, “Man, I’ll do anything for her. I’ll give her all my money. I’ll buy her anything if she’d just give me some play.” That’s the guy’s mentality.

  The pimp is the reverse of that. He spins that mental one hundred eighty degrees on the woman. The pimp thinks, “If I’m marrying you, then why the fuck am I on my knees?” The first agenda of the pimp is to be hotter, flyer, better-looking than the girl. That’s the reason pimps wear expensive tailor-made suits, why they wear gators, why their hair grows longer than the girls. Their job is to outmatch the female in everything. Rule one: You have to be finer than the girl. You do that so that she feels like she’s stepping up in the world by being with you.

  There’s another common expression in the pimp game: “Every man cannot accept ho money.” If a guy meets a stripper and likes her—maybe his dumb ass even falls in love—the man’s natural instinct is to tell her to stop stripping. He’s a square dude so he wants to turn her into a square chick. Happily ever after, two kids and a dog on a quiet block in the suburbs. All that Hallmark-card bullshit. But the pimp, he doesn’t try to “reform” her; he feeds into the negativity that she’s already living. If a girl’s working as a stripper, she can’t have a girl for a roommate who’s trying to scold her, make her feel guilty, saying: “Why do you do that? Why do you strip? You’re demeaning yourself!” No, she needs a roommate that backs her agenda: “Ooh, girl, I like them shoes! We gonna break them dudes tonight!”

  Rather than a girlfriend, the pimp is a male that reinforces the negativity.

  Real pimps do not pimp square girls. That’s a huge misconception. There’s a fear out there in the square world that a pimp is going to find some nice middle-American girl—an apple-cheeked cheerleader from the suburbs—and turn her into a prostitute. That’s not going to happen. The only pimps that do that are known as “gorilla pimps,” and they’re not even respected in the game. They’re basically kidnappers and sex traffickers. They’re seen as scumbags. No one considers them real pimps. A gorill
a pimp will snatch up a girl, get her high, lock her up someplace, then rape her and make her have sex for money—but the girl is going to run as soon as she sees a chance to escape. That’s not a pimp. Real pimps say, “It’s by choice, not by force.”

  Choosing is the key word in the pimp game. Because you can’t convince a girl to give you her money. No amount of sweet-talking in the world is going to do that. She has to want to. She has to choose to do that.

  That’s why pimps dress so outrageously. It’s full-disclosure. Like truth in advertising. When you get into real heavy pimpin’, you’ll see the most outlandish fashion statements. “Yo, I got on a canary-yellow suit, bitch. Come on! You know what this is.” That yellow suit is like a billboard saying, “I’m not trying to attract a square broad. I’m trying to attract a broad that knows what this game is and wants to be part of it.”

  Pimps don’t hide behind the bushes, pretending to be some UPS man. They’re flamboyant as fuck. They’re peacocks of the street. And trust me—there are hundreds and hundreds of girls who are attracted to that game.

  What pimps live by day-to-day is the act of sending the woman to go get money from a trick. The thing of it is, even without pimps, girls do it to guys all the time. When a woman goes on a date with a man that she doesn’t like—just for the dinner, or a pair of shoes, or some jewelry—that’s a form of hoin’. Anytime a girl does anything sexually to get something material in return without really caring about the guy—don’t kid yourself—that’s hoin’.