Ice

by Ice-T

  We go off the clock at night, and the formalities and all the respect that’s necessary in a marriage comes back. It’s hard to be overly polite in business. You gotta just get into it. Get shit done. And being as direct as possible is essential for me. That makes doing business with someone you love an even greater challenge.

  Relationship-wise, a lot of times your partner gets into a funky mood, and you’ll want to do everything in your power to make your partner happy. You’ll try to apologize, try to fix it, but there’s nothing you can do about it. Coco and me just say, “Yo, it’s not you. I’m dealing with something.” A lot of times you just need to cycle through situations; you need thirty minutes to work through the mood and tell your partner not to personalize it.

  My earlier relationships were structured different. What I learned was that if you want to be with somebody, you can’t let weeks go by where you don’t communicate. With Coco, when we’re “off the clock,” we try to talk all the time.

  People are always asking, “What’s the thing that holds you guys together?” They think that it’s love or sex or companionship. I say “admiration.” Love is a great thing but you also have to admire your mate. When I go on one of her modeling shoots, I watch her working and think, “Yo, Coco is the bomb.” When I’m rapping or doing my thing as an actor, she says, “That’s just Ice—he can do that shit.”

  I don’t mean this to sound too corny, but when you admire your partner, when neither one feels subservient to the other, then you actually feel like teammates. It becomes a real-life Bonnie and Clyde, ride-or-die dynamic. It’s tough sometimes in the heat of a relationship to remember that y’all are teammates and not opponents; allies not enemies. A successful marriage is built on the realization that the other person helps the overall situation, that they’ve got your back no matter what.

  With Coco and me both being in the public eye—snapped by paparazzi and eavesdropped on by gossip hounds—we need to approach things as a team. Our moves have to be strategic. We try to plan which one of us would be better for certain things. Even simple shit, like getting a room at a hotel. Who would be better for that task? If there’s a guy at the front desk, maybe he’ll react better to Coco. If there’s a woman, she may react better to me. She might have some hostility to Coco—Oh, I don’t like that bitch. Fuck her.

  We’re still players—I mean, we’re legit players now—and part of being players is knowing that there’s a strength in the feminine side and a strength in the masculine side. Knowing how to use whoever is better for the task. She’s much better at answering phones, scheduling meetings, and has better people skills than me. No matter how hard I try to work on it, I’m always very short with people. I don’t like phones at all. Maybe it goes back to my days hustling when we looked at every phone call as a liability. When you’re hustling you try not to say shit that could be recorded or intercepted by the cops. And as so many gangsters found out, being too chatty on the phone can get your fucking ass locked up for life.

  PEOPLE ALWAYS ASK COCO and me, “How do you keep it hot? How do you keep things exciting in the bedroom?”

  It’s very simple. I have to find out what turns her on and I’ve got to be willing to do it. And she has to ask me what I like and be willing to do it.

  If you find somebody you’re attracted to, you’re going to have to tell them exactly what buttons to push. You can’t expect them to know it. If you’ve both been through serious relationships previously, remember that what worked in the past isn’t necessarily going to work in your current relationship. If you’re willing to give that person what he or she needs, your sex life will always be good.

  If your mate wants something but you’re not willing to give it, do you think he or she stops wanting it? Hell no. You’d better recognize that this is something that your partner will keep looking for—outside the relationship if necessary.

  Hopefully, you’ll find someone who can accommodate everything you need.

  One thing about Coco: She’s very in touch with her sexuality. I don’t understand why a lot of women see that as a fault; I see that sexiness as her power. The details of our relationship and how we’ve made it work—giving each other satisfaction, happiness, and peace for ten years now—is enough to fill a whole other book.

  IT’S NOT ALWAYS EASY to have two interlocking show business careers but it helps to remember one thing: At the end of the day, we’ve got one bank account. If that account is fat, we livin’. If it’s short we ain’t. We both have to generate money. Coco is not one of those chicks who feels comfortable with the man making most of the money. That’s why she’s got a clothing line and runs her website, because she likes to put money in the kitty. I respect that. She even appeared on Law & Order and landed a couple of small speaking roles. And it wasn’t like I was angling for her to get any parts. The producers would be looking to cast a chick and they’d say—“No, she can’t be too skinny, can’t look like a fashion model. She should be blond, fit, and have curves—you know, like Coco.”

  And they’d point at Coco, since she’s almost always by my side on the set. One time, instead of saying, “You know, like Coco,” a producer said, “Hey, why don’t we just use Coco for this?”

  She made me run lines with her for days in our crib. She rehearsed her lines about a hundred times more than I’ve ever rehearsed mine.

  We had an episode with a mixed martial arts theme, and Coco had the part as UFC fighter Forrest Griffin’s girlfriend. She played a gold digger who was just into Forrest for his dough. She was great. I teased her about it, too: She played the gold digger part a little too well, as a matter of fact!

  COCO WAS THE FIRST WOMAN I dated that Little Ice ever met. I’d seen other women before Coco, but I never felt that another woman was the right one to meet my son. People are funny like that. Take a single woman with children; she can date a lot of guys before one of them gets to meet her kids. And I was the same way with Little Ice.

  But luckily we did it the right way. Darlene was mad cool. She briefed Little Ice before his first trip to stay with us. She said, “Look, when you’re with your dad and Coco, the one thing they don’t need is to hear all about me.” And Coco’s such a sweetheart, they just hit it off. Little Ice knows karate and the first day, I’ll never forget, they were stretching, limbering up together.

  Now that’s tough to do, but it takes three adults—Darlene, Coco, and me—to make that work. I made that clear to Darlene from the jump. Look if you and me become enemies, then who’s going to lose? The dude. Little Ice is the one who’s going to take all the collateral damage.

  Not to say everything’s roses. Like others, my ex and I still have our moments when we get into it. But it can’t affect our son. We know we’ve got to solve it, we’ve got to get it together so he doesn’t take it to heart.

  Boundaries are essential if you’re going to make this kind of situation work. Coco doesn’t try to play the mom role. Never. She doesn’t try to discipline him. Doesn’t get in his face. If Little Ice and me are having conflict, or Little Ice and Darlene are having conflict, she steers clear of it. Coco knows she’s my partner. So if she has any issues with my son, she’s very careful to relay it through me. And then I bring it to Ice.

  MATTER OF FACT, I had to bring it to Little Man not long ago. Ice lives full-time with his mother in Los Angeles. I’m the first to say Darlene does a tremendous job, making sure his grades are tight, that he walks a straight line, stays out of trouble. I see him as much as I can, but with my shooting schedule during the Law & Order season, it can get hectic. When I’m not shooting, Little Ice comes to visit us every time he gets a break from school. Last year—spring break of his junior year—he came out to stay with Coco and me at our house in Arizona.

  One night during that break, Darlene started blowing up my cell late at night. She sounded shaken up.

  “What’s wrong, D?” I asked.

  “They just towed Ice’s car out of the driveway.”

  “What? Pol
ice?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You sure it was the cops?”

  “It was the cops. They came to talk to me. I wasn’t here, but the neighbors saw them hooking up Ice’s car.”

  Darlene was concerned, of course, but not too worried. She figured it was either a misunderstanding or something involving unpaid tickets. But knowing the game, I got concerned.

  “Dig, that ain’t no traffic ticket bullshit,” I said. “The cops do not come and tow your vehicle at night unless that car was involved in a crime.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “If your car is parked at home, in your own driveway, and the police come to tow it, that can mean only one thing: The car was linked to some serious criminal shit. Let me handle this,” I said. “But this ain’t a joke. Ice might be coming straight home to you.”

  Little Ice was psyched up because this was just the start of his vacation in Arizona, so I knew it was going to blow his mind when I got in his face.

  “Yo, Ice!” I called out. He came and found me in the living room. I sat him down. “Look, dude, I’m about to talk to you, for real. But before we even talk, I advise you one thing: You better tell me the truth.”

  “Okay, Dad.”

  “The truth, you dig?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m a fucking career criminal and I play the police on TV, so I know how this shit goes. Don’t even waste my time or your time with some bullshit.”

  By now, of course, he’s scared as hell. His eyes are darting back and forth, and he’s fidgeting with the brim of his fitted ball cap. He’s trying to play it off, like he doesn’t know what the fuck is going down. But I know he’s guilty of something. He couldn’t even look me in the eye.

  I let him sit there in silence for a long-ass time.

  “What’s up, Dad?” he said, still playing dumb.

  “Just got a call from your moms. The cops just came and towed your car out of the driveway.”

  “Oh, that must be some old tick—”

  “Shut the fuck up and listen. The only reason the cops would come to your mom’s house at night and tow your car is that a crime was committed involving the car. Now before you say anything else, you just might want to think—take a minute—because I’m gonna wanna know what exactly you did in that car.”

  Another long-ass pause. I could tell he wished he could just scramble up the wall like these little lizards we got all over the yard in Arizona.

  I was almost doing my Fin routine, giving a suspect the third-degree in the interview room.

  “Now you want to tell me what happened?”

  Little Ice sat there, nervous, then started to spill.

  “I know what happened,” he said. “The other night we were at a party and my friend”—see, it always starts out with some fucking friend—“busted into the car parked next to us and stole a laptop.”

  “Your friend?”

  “Yeah, my friend.”

  “Which friend?”

  He told me who and I recognized the kid as this wiseass in his class. I’m getting half the story, but that’s cool: I don’t get him copping to the break-in or anything, but at least we’ve established that some criminal shit went down.

  The wheels in my hustler’s brain are spinning. I already knew that if the cops knew the make, model, and plates on Little Ice’s car, that could only mean one thing: He was on film. They had that videotape and they’d seen the whole shit go down, captured the break-in and watched my son and his friends get away in Little Ice’s vehicle. Every-fucking-thing is videotaped now in California.

  “Maybe you’re telling me the whole story,” I said. “Maybe you’re telling me half the story. I don’t really care. But you know what? You probably were videotaped by surveillance cameras, so it’s all going to come out in court anyway.”

  “What’re you talkin’ about—videotaped?”

  “Your car just got towed, dog, and shit’s going down. So I’m about to call the detectives and find out what the fuck’s up. Anything else you wanna tell me about what your friend got into that night?”

  “Naw, naw. That’s just what happened.”

  I know his mentality perfectly—I’ve been this kid. He doesn’t want to tell a syllable more than he has to.

  I called up LAPD and reached the detective who had the case. He told me what I’d suspected: it was a burglary from a car, all the kids were caught on videotape, no ambiguities about it.

  “Okay, detective, how do we handle this?”

  “I advise you to get an attorney.”

  This cop ain’t giving me no slack and no easy way out. So I hang up, go back and find Little Ice.

  “Dig, man, you probably going to have to pack yo’ shit ’cause you gonna have to go back to L.A. and handle this.”

  I called up a defense attorney known for taking criminal cases in Hollywood. I heard he had some other celebrity clients. He’d got some movie star’s kid out of a jam—more dumb-ass teenage shit—for breaking into the student store at his college.

  The lawyer jotted down all the details and then he called the cops. The LAPD gives him the straight dope—since there wasn’t any violence, it wasn’t that serious. And if we could get the stolen material back, return it all to the owner of the car, we might even be able to make the case disappear.

  I asked the attorney if he could handle it. “Yeah,” he said, then asked me for a ten thousand dollar retainer.

  That’s American justice for you—as long as there’s no violence (and sometimes even if there is)—if you got enough paper, you can smooth over almost any legal jam. The most important thing, the lawyer tells me, is that we keep this off Ice’s permanent record.

  “You guys are going to have to follow my instructions to T,” he tells me.

  For ten G’s, I expected this cat to know what the fuck he was doing. I tracked down Little Ice and yanked him off the fucking Xbox. “Look man, they want that laptop back,” I said. “They want anything else you might have stolen. Return all that shit and maybe—maybe—they can make this go away. Other than that, you’re looking at probably a year in jail.”

  Little Ice froze: freaked the fuck out.

  “Might as well come clean now. Is there anything else that came up missing out of that car?”

  There was about sixty dollars cash in some Asian currency that these knuckleheads took just for the hell of it. And then Little Ice was mumbling … “Yeah, well, Dad … I took a tennis racket …”

  “A fuckin’ tennis racket?”

  Once my son told me he stole a tennis racket, I understood the whole game.

  “So you was just tryin’ to be down? A tennis racket? What the fuck you need with a tennis racket? I’ll buy you any tennis racket if you want. Naw, I know. That was you just tryin’ to prove you could be down with your boys.”

  I’m getting heated now. The father in me is pissed. But the ex-criminal in me remembers all too well that peer pressure I used to hear back in South Central: Nigga, you scared of money? You scared of money? And how many of my homeys got locked up doing serious bids because—just like Little Ice—they was trying to be down.

  I was pacing in our living room, mulling over our next move when I noticed Ice, sitting on the sofa, staring at me with this strange, wide-eyed expression.

  “What?” I said.

  “Naw, nothing, Dad.”

  “Spit it out, man.”

  Finally he said what was on his mind.

  “How’d you get away with it?”

  I almost lost it—the fuckin’ balls on this kid!—wanting me to give him pointers on the game. I sat down next to him on the sofa and stared him dead in the eye.

  “You want to know how I got away with it? Okay. Number one, you fuckin’ dumb-ass: You never commit a crime in your own car. Let’s start with that. Two: When I was doin’ it, they didn’t have surveillance cameras mounted on every fucking palm tree in California. Three: I didn’t have a rich father who could buy me the shit. I don
’t know if there’s a God up there, but if there is, then He knows you knew what the fuck you was doing, and you should get caught. How’d I get away with it? I don’t fuckin’ know. I think I got a pass because I was poor, broke, and halfway-homeless—idiot!”

  I started laying it on him now. Giving him the scared-straight treatment—Iceberg edition.

  “You go to jail, Ice, remember this: You’re privileged. Muthafuckas don’t respect the privileged in jail. Plus, you’re Mexican and black. So you don’t have a car to be in: Who the fuck you gonna be with? Niggas ain’t going to cosign. The éses ain’t going to take you. Sorry, man, you’re royally fucked.”

  He was on the verge of real tears now.

  I said, “What’chou weigh now, son—’bout a buck-thirty? You might want to do some pushups ’cause you’re light in the ass and you’re gonna end up someone’s bitch in there.”

  I ended up having to put him back on a plane from Phoenix to L.A. One of his friends—that smart-ass kid—wouldn’t come in to ’fess up. He was trying to play hardball. Probably because he was the supposed mastermind of this shit. The third one is one of Ice’s closest friends, a pretty good kid whose moms ended up talking to the other kid’s parents.

  Ice thought he was on some “code of the streets” shit; he didn’t want to spill too much; didn’t want his friends to see him as a snitch.

  “Man,” I said. “Let me tell you about the code of the streets. You done told your mother. Once you’ve told your mother, your mother can’t snitch. Your mother is the mother. She doesn’t stand by that code-of-the-streets shit. That’s her job: She tells the other parents.”

  We get the smart-ass kid and his parents to come in to talk to the detectives. But the biggest deal was now we had to recover the laptop—that thing made the case grand larceny—but the knuckleheads were playing hot potato. The laptop was over at some other kid’s house, and these guys were so terrified they didn’t want to even touch it anymore. Afraid of fingerprints or some shit, even though they’d already handled the motherfucker.

  We’ve only got twenty-four hours to get the computer back. I reach out to some of my original crime partners from South Central. Takes a minute but we get a lead on where the kid holding the computer lives. Then I put Sean E. Sean on the case. So Sean E. Sean—all swoll-up with his prison muscle from his most recent bid—shows up at the kid’s door unannounced.