Magic City

by Trick Daddy

  That night Wood studied me. He knew his younger brother was boarding a sinking ship. He hoped I’d jump overboard before it sank. People may say that Wood should have fought tooth and nail to keep me away from those streets. How could he? Hustling was in our DNA. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree. It landed squarely at the root.

  “I can’t come behind you and clean up the milk you spill, bruh,” Wood warned me. For all the love we shared, hustling was an individual trade. Any slick deals or shady business on my part might come back to literally kill him. In the streets, cosigning someone meant you bet your life on him. Another hustler would kill the snake as well as the person that put it in his midst. Wood knew he never had to worry about me snitching or the like. He feared my temper most.

  “Bruh, you gotta pick your battles out here,” he told me. “This ain’t like the playground where a dude knocks you down and you heal. Ain’t no coming back from a bullet to the head.”

  “These niggas can’t see me bruh,” was my foolhardy response.

  He tried to warn me against it, but I went to Santana Red’s warehouse. Santana was the man to see if any aspiring drug dealer wanted a piece of the white. I called up one of the older hustlers I knew was connected to him and we headed out.

  23

  Let Me Ride

  HANGING AROUND WOOD MADE ME WANT THE LIFE he was living. I was the poor kid who hung around the rich hustlers and wanted what they had. Wood was dating quality girls. He was younger than the other hustlers, so mothers didn’t mind him coming around their daughters. Innocent schoolgirl cherry is sure sweeter than some tired wench accustomed to being tossed around by gangsters.

  Wood’s main girl, Katrina, a majorette at Northwestern Senior High, was one such prize. Northwestern was the high school of high schools in Miami. All the fly chicks went there. Katrina was one of the flyest, ghetto yet classy in a Miami kind of way. I remember when Wood went to see her at the salon on Fifteenth Avenue where she and her mother did hair. Wood sure was getting the grade-A loving. The pleasures cocaine-pushing afforded a young brother were far too enticing. I couldn’t wait to meet Santana Red.

  Phantom. That’s the best word I can use to describe the Cuban kingpin that supplied the bricks to young hustlers in the Beans. Rumors ran rampant that he was one of the exiles in the movement to overthrow Castro. People said he used the dope money to further his cause. It didn’t matter to me. I knew he had the keys to heaven. I couldn’t wait to get there. It felt as if we drove for an eternity before we finally reached Santana’s outfit.

  The abandoned warehouse sat out by the swamps in unincorporated Dade. The Everglades swallowed the area whole. I had passed the place before, but never took notice. Plenty of warehouses sat along the Florida Turnpike South on the way to the Miccosukee Indian Reservation. I guess Santana knew the Feds would never suspect it either. They were probably looking for him in some Coral Gables mansion. No one knew where the hell Santana stayed. The less one knows about a person, the more one fears him. Unfamiliarity keeps people at a distance, so they can’t strategize an attack. The warehouse gave Santana a perfect vantage point to plan his attack. It offered him an unobstructed view for several blocks to see who was coming to conduct honest business or who was coming to rob or bust him. If someone was stupid enough to try the latter, it was their ass and the alligators. The Everglades is a wasteland. Except for rogue alligator-skin trappers, the place is desolate. A cry for help out there just fades into a haunting echo. If you die in those floating marshes, no one will ever find you.

  We parked out by the dirt road leading to the turnpike. Santana planned to meet us a couple hundred yards up ahead. The old-timer was methodical. He left no stone unturned. As we walked, his silhouette appeared, growing brighter as we drew closer. Then Santana stopped in his tracks.

  “Mi amigo, what’s this?” Santana said, gazing in my direction.

  “No, it’s cool. He’s Wood’s people,” my friend answered.

  “Hermano es de Hollywood?” said Santana, looking surprised. “Señor Hollywood y familia likes my business.”

  The older hustler who took me to meet Santana could have given me several of his own bricks to flip, but, like I said, dope hustling is an individual choice. I wanted to be my own man. I’m sure he consulted with Wood before taking me. They probably hoped such an introduction would scare me off. It didn’t.

  I soaked it all in. The coke life is addictive indeed.

  Santana gave me one brick to drop. If I made a quick flip in the streets, I would get more. I was insulted. He was treating me like I needed a babysitter. I tried protesting before my guide pulled me away.

  “Just make it drop, bruh,” he said.

  I did. I got the brick on Monday and gave Santana his cash Tuesday night. I may have been subpar in the classroom, but in the streets I was definitely an A student. My work ethic stemmed from the fact that I saw immediate results. The academic route was too long and offered nothing more than an uncertain future. I was tired of being piss-poor in the Beans. I wanted my cash now.

  The rewards from drug dealing were instantaneous. I didn’t see that train bearing down on my ass from miles away. I was living in the here and now. There wasn’t any waiting for a check to clear. The money is tax-free. They say money can’t make a person happy, but all that nice stuff it affords surely can make some of the things that make you unhappy disappear. I wanted my crew to reap the benefits as well. They were already hustling small-time. Like me, they had sold weed here and there. I always had a bit more than them because Hollywood kept me laced, but we were all broke the same. Convincing them was easy, and soon all of our fingers were stained with cocaine residue.

  We weren’t the only ones getting to the powder though. The strip of Fifteenth Avenue between Sixty-second and Sixty-fifth streets had become a catwalk of zombies and the dealers who fed them. The Beans had literally become a cracked-out dope town. A dope hole was on every corner. Traffic was routinely backed up by customers waiting to get their fix. The scene was more like an open-market food fair. Each dope hole was named after the hustler or the drug that was sold there. Addicts knew where to go to get that Criss Cross or Kilimanjaro. Kids sat perched out on the Twelfth Parkway as spotters. If narcs came crashing down the block, they sounded the alarm. Some dope boys paid the cops patrolling the strip to avoid the hassle. Everyone was on the crack payroll. For the right price a cop sat and watched your stash while you ran an errand. They passed the time getting served by schoolgirls on their way home from school. Those crooked cops used blackmail and all sorts of other tactics. A lot of kids in the Beans had parents with outstanding warrants. It was an easy pitch for cops.

  You wouldn’t want me taking your daddy down to central bookings, would you? It wasn’t out the ordinary to see a patrol car parked on one of the side streets behind the projects rocking back and forth. After several minutes a teenage girl would emerge, disheveled and embarrassed before shuffling down the avenue with her head down. At times those cops took turns with the dope fiends. That’s how hookers paid rent, so to speak, for working the officer’s assigned zones.

  Santana used Officer Tubbs to make deliveries. The first time that fat bastard pulled up to my crew in the park, I thought my burgeoning coke-trafficking career was over. He parked several yards away from the bench where we were posted and waved me over. I told Dante to use some of our rainy-day funds to bond me out of jail later. Everyday folks ride around with spare tires. Dope boys keep bond money on standby. It wasn’t out of the ordinary. Those cops took pride in the mental games they played. They could have warrants on the passenger seat and cuffs ready to haul all of our asses down to jail, but that was too easy. They toyed with you first. Sometimes they had nothing on a kid at all. They were just bored. Sometimes, though, we toyed with them and made those cops look like circus clowns.

  One time, the jump-out boys pulled up in unmarked cars outside Ghouls Park where I’d just started hustling, and we led them on a wild goose chase. My crew
knew the side streets and alleyways like the alphabet. The gate in front of the alley that ran behind Dante’s house was our favorite booby trap. So much hustling was going on back then the police force just let any old buster enlist, because the cops weren’t too bright. The powers that be hadn’t learned from the Miami River Cops fiasco. The jokers chasing us were seriously out of shape, gasping and wheezing within minutes of running behind our narrow behinds. Picture Humpty Dumpty chasing Speedy Gonzales.

  “You got the right to an ass-whupping when I catch you, nigga!” they yelled behind us. “Y’all lil niggas think this shit is a game!”

  We let them give chase until we reached the entrance to the alley. The gate was put in place to keep cars from using the narrow strip as a shortcut. With no streetlight, a number of assaults had occurred there. We knew how to jump the gate without landing in the thorny brushes surrounding it. Catch-n-keep is what the Caribbean folks called the prickly weed that grows in the wild down here. It’s a painful predicament for the unlucky soul who gets tangled in it. The posts the fence had been positioned on were cracked in half. We timed our jumps perfectly so we didn’t put too much pressure on the fence. Then we pretended to slow down, even cramp up, just to entice them.

  “Yeah, look at you now! I’m about to whup that ass! You think you can run from the police! Just wait till—“Aaaaaah! Aaaaaaah! Help!”

  The screams coming from that officer facedown and all distorted in that patch of catch-n-keep was worth the adrenaline rush. Seeing him all bruised and distorted was gratifying. In seconds he was the laughingstock of everyone who hung out around the alley.

  “Lay off the donut, sucker! Maybe you’ll catch me next time!”

  We taunted those cops until we disappeared around the block. It was temporary respite, a small victory in the face of the usual outcomes from our collisions with the police in Miami.

  Ironically, those subpar cops wouldn’t have had jobs if I wasn’t out committing crimes. If everyone lived by the book, there wouldn’t be a need for prosecutors, public defenders, judges, correctional officers, and cops. That’s why the system backs some people into a corner. You don’t need a justice system if you don’t have crime.

  For the most part there were no drug raids in the Beans. Dealers were slinging crack in broad daylight. Tubbs was just an opportunist trying to fit in. But he wasn’t as crafty as Officer Smith and the Wire Tap Squad. Smith took what the River Cops did to a whole other level. Even the dealers he ripped off had to give him props for the sheer genius of his scheme. Smith figured out a way to rip off hustlers with limited or no violence. His crew listened in on conversations local dealers had with their out-of-town suppliers, then offered the dealers more favorable splits on the product. When the supplier came in to Miami, Smith had his crew emerge on the scene. They arrested Smith, but allowed his supplier to flee. Then the crew laughed all the way to the bank. Instead of turning in the evidence they sold it to the dealers. Feeling they dodged a bullet, the suppliers didn’t realize they were actually being ripped off. Damn, that was some cold, hard shit.

  It’s why kids in Miami hated the police. Don’t get me wrong, there were and still are some officers out there striving to make a difference in the community. Some believe that giving a young brother a pass and hooking him up with a work release program instead of sending him to the chain gang is better for everybody. Those idealistic types are few and far between, but crazy as it seems, I tried to understand where a cop like Tubbs was coming from.

  An officer’s salary sucked. Cops were out in these streets getting shot at by teenage dealers who had flashier rides than they did and were getting girls that looked like the ones cops saw in magazines. Then if that overworked officer did score a big bust, some pretty-boy district attorney held a press conference and took all the credit. That reality made for some bitter and corrupt officers.

  As I approached his car, I could see that Tubbs had his pistol sitting in his lap. He was rolling several bullets in his hand. I had some crack rocks in my pocket, but wasn’t concerned. It wasn’t enough dope for him to go through the hassle of booking me.

  “You’re that little nigga they call Head?” he asked.

  “Yeah, that’s me,” I said.

  The more direct you were with cops, the quicker the mind fuck would end. It’s not wise to aggravate an already miserable soul. Furthermore, Tubbs knew it was damn near suicide for me to be out in broad daylight talking to him where everyone could see. I wanted to keep this short and to the point.

  “Look, you’re about to arrest me or what?” I said.

  “Maybe I am and maybe I’m not. All you’re gonna do is stand there and look stupid until you figure it out, motherfucker,” he fired back. “Yeah, you’re Wood’s little brother. You’re Pearl’s son. Your old boy is in the Feds.”

  I had visions of stabbing his fat ass and leaving him leaking all over the park, but Wood told me I had to pick my battles, and I needed to be mindful of that. However much of a lowlife, Tubbs was part of the machine, that well-oiled American justice system that took pride in destroying young brothers’ lives. I let Tubbs continue his prodding.

  “Look, there’s nothing I would like more than to haul your young ass to the country. Better yet, I’d love you to get slick so I can cap you. The world would be better without you little nigga degenerates.”

  I was boiling inside.

  “But the man say you’re holding down the white lady pretty well.” Tubbs motioned to the backseat. A brown paper bag was on the floor. I reached in, grabbed it, and started to walk off.

  “Aren’t you forgetting something, my nigga?”

  I paused to mull his question over in my mind. A bell rang. I reached in my pocket and handed Tubbs a $100 bill. Before I could say something, he sped off, damn near running me over.

  Tubbs was truly one low-down cop. Word on the street was that dope boys were paying him to serve warrants to rivals. But if Tubbs found out that rival had more loot to spend, Tubbs would flip the script on the dealer who approached him and arrest him instead. He was always setting up dudes for the fall. He offered his services to the highest bidder and was loyal to no one. Those Miami streets bred some messed-up individuals. My crew ran up to me. We opened the bag. Inside, our future lay stacked in neat, pearly white columns. I nearly fainted. At least ten pies were in that bag.

  24

  Who’s Selling

  IT WAS TIME TO GET OUT THE PARK AND OUT THIS nickel-and-dime hustle. We had to get our own corner. It meant loading up. The pistols we were packing weren’t going to cut it if we were really going to start pushing coke on a major level. We had to fend off the obvious threats from rivals. Having a brick in Liberty City was like having the only canteen of water in a crowded desert.

  The brick made you a target. Back then, dope boys rode around in Chevys with AK-47 and AR-15 assault rifles. They were living the same life as those Cuban and Colombian cats in the early eighties. If a rival dope boy caught you without your fire, that was on you. Miami’s streets exceeded the mayhem in John Wayne’s wildest westerns. From Opa-locka to Ghouls and all hoods in between, dope boys were setting the streets ablaze.

  As dope crews battled over turf in Miami, the streets remained stained in blood. The Beans was prime real estate. That’s where the smokers grazed. The rest of Miami went on with their day-to-day amid the sunshine while my corner of the city died a slow, crack-induced death. “I got that good green brown! Boulders, boulders!”

  Dealers sought customers around the clock. If a smoker overdosed, word spread like wildfire. That dope hole had the good stuff. Smokers would rush that dope hole like a moth to the bulb. We held Liberty City’s street corners hostage.

  Folks drove into the Beans from the suburbs, Fort Lauderdale, and other parts of the county just to get high. Liberty City offered one-stop shopping for all vices. If a customer wanted a blow job while he snorted some lines, we had that. Everything was for sale. Sadly, though I didn’t know this then, we were also se
lling our humanity. Pushers didn’t discriminate on who could buy nickel rocks. Pregnant women. Grandmothers. Schoolkids. If customers had the money, they could suck their life away on a crack pipe.

  Staking out a corner for my crew didn’t prove difficult. I was raised in the Beans. Furthermore, I was still tight with Darryl and O’Sean, who were now moving major weight. At first there wasn’t much beefing going on because everyone respected the rival dope boy’s hole.

  The Haitians had fought to gain their street credibility and did. When they first moved to the area in Liberty City known as Little Haiti during the late 1970s, we gave them hell. We bought into the hype mainstream American media was selling, like blaming them for bringing AIDS to America, and found ourselves fighting with the Zoes. Later I would learn that Haitians were the first black folks in our part of the globe to gain independence from white folks. They kicked the French out. No wonder the world is still giving them a hard time. A nigga that comes out on top is a hard pill to swallow for most folks. However, the global support Haiti received after the recent earthquake shows that the powers that be may finally be making reparations for the bad hand dealt to that country.

  Colonizers have always pitted colored folks against each other. It’s called divide and conquer. The media reports made us believe that the newly arriving Haitians had diseases and worshipped Satan. African-Americans bought into the lies, and soon enough we were battling with Haitians like pit bulls in a dog pound. Haitian kids were afraid to say they were from Haiti. They were getting jumped and beaten all throughout Liberty City. It was safer for Haitians to say they were from Jamaica or the Bahamas. So they formed a crew called the Zoe Pound to protect themselves from attacks from other black folks. Zoe in Creole means “bone.” And those dudes were hard as bones. When a Haitian kid was being picked on, the Pound would seek out the culprit and retaliate. It’s like I said: niggas don’t like niggas.