Magic City

by Trick Daddy

  “Oh, sorry, lil mama,” I apologized, and let the tinted window down in the black Chevy Blazer—Black Beauty, that’s what we called her—just enough so the smoke from my blunt could escape.

  By now we were making so much money that my crew had graduated to trafficking. We made deliveries. Santana hooked us up with the Blazer. It wasn’t anything fancy. It was inconspicuous, unlike the dunks with spinning rims and all that. The corners were getting too hot anyway. As I mentioned earlier, when bodies dropped, the jump-out boys came snooping around. Looking back, it’s ironic we called that truck Black Beauty. The thing was an actual death deliverer.

  One of our main spots to make deliveries was the Holiday Inn at Seventy-ninth Street and Seventh Avenue across from the I-95 expressway overpass. We called it the Carter Building. But not even Nino Brown had seen the amount of dope that used to run through that place. Whatever a customer wanted in the criminal world, he could find there. It’s where criminals from out of town came to do their bidding. It was the UN building of the streets in Miami. Hookers, contract killers, and dope were all on standby at the Carter.

  Either the coke we shuttled around the city would lead to a slow death or the AK-47s we had cocked on a moment’s notice would blow a rival’s back out. We were a dope supplier’s dream; too young to get caught on any serious charges—we thought—and even more heartless than the average dope hustler. It was a simple but efficient drug-running operation. Drivers hopped out at various blocks so cops couldn’t ID one particular trafficker. Narcs had put surveillance on the truck cruising the hood. They were definitely onto us, but they could never catch us with the dope when they pulled us over. The stops offered comedy as always.

  “Good day, Officer. Ain’t it just a nice sunshiny day out?” one of us would say.

  The officer smirked. He tried hard to ignore our sarcasm.

  We continued, “Damn, why y’all coppers always so bent outta shape. Oh, it’s probably because all these little hoodlums out here causing all these problems.”

  “Y’all think this is one big joke, hunh?”

  We wouldn’t let up. “You know, I heard getting high calms the nerves. I don’t know if it’s true though. You know how people gossip in the hood.”

  Our truck usually smelled like marijuana or whatever other drug I was getting high on at the time. It was too small of a charge. These cops were after a bigger score. They had their eyes set on Santana. If they got lucky once and caught us with his product, they would try squeezing us to get to him.

  Pistol-whip these little niggers. Ram their fucking heads into a windshield. We don’t give a damn about these welfare cases. They’re just pawns in a game of chess we’re not going to lose to some wetback coke suppliers.

  For all they knew, Santana or any other of the Caribbean cats supplying the white could have gone back to the islands. Those dudes weren’t greedy. They were crafty in their dope slinging. Selling the powder served a larger purpose. Whether their funds were used as political leverage or to support families, those cats weren’t going to let the American government win this war.

  The officer would try to explain. “Y’all either too dumb or just blind to see where this thing is headed. You think that little gold chain or Jordans on your feet makes you the man?”

  We did. You couldn’t tell us we weren’t the best thing since sliced bread. You would feel the same way if you grew up on government cheese, packed your holey sneakers with cardboard, and played hide-and-go-seek when the lights got turned off.

  It still shocks me to this day what people call the land of the free. My question is, for whom? We have multimillion-dollar homes in Miami and homeless folks a stone’s throw away on the other side of the street.

  The only time I got a reality check that we were just pawns in a broken world was when we cruised down to South Beach on occasion. There wasn’t anything down there for us. We were just bored I guess. Black locals in Miami rarely visit South Beach. The powers that be finally allowed our blacks to stay at the hotels, but it was a forced welcome. I have family members well into their sixties who’ve lived in Miami all their lives and have never been to South Beach. It sounds crazy, but there are club owners who’ll use anything as an excuse to stop blacks from entering. They often say Dickies jeans or baseball caps aren’t allowed, knowing damn well a white boy just walked in wearing the same thing. Hip-hop on South Beach was something new. Strawberry’s, Miami Nights, Studio 183, and block parties were the few places to go to enjoy hip-hop. Since the mainstream started paying attention to our sounds, the club owners took notice.

  I say fuck your ritzy nightclubs if I can’t get in wearing my Dickies and fitted cap. The black people who frequent South Beach are most likely tourists or had just moved here. When my crew drove down there and stared at the half-naked spring breakers, they got fond of what folks might call our Southern swag.

  “Lil Mama . . . Lil Mama! . . . What dey do?”

  They giggled. I don’t think they ever saw a Chevy sitting higher than three feet off the ground with spinners. Our gold grills were something out of the ordinary as well. We might as well have been from Mars. We turned right back around and headed on the I-395 causeway back to our side of the bridge. It wasn’t as rosy, but it’s where we felt comfortable. Gazing at all those yachts, sports cars, and mansions made me even more determined to be the best damn cocaine cowboy I could be. That cop’s advice definitely fell on deaf ears.

  28

  Pull Over

  THAT APRIL MORNING I HAD PLANNED TO SLEEP IN. There was work to be done later, but Hollywood had asked me if I could drop the girls off at school. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t say no. When Wood said ride, I rode.

  I brushed my teeth, threw on my black T-shirt and short, black Dickies jeans. It’s safe to say all I wore was black. Besides the gold glitter coming from my nugget bracelet, I was draped all in black, the color of a gangster. I’d like to clear something up. Cops kept harassing kids they saw dressed in all black. Word on the street was that cops believed a kid donning that color signaled that he was on the hunt to go wet somebody, that he was commissioned to kill someone. That’s a pile of cattle shit. In my neighborhood folks would cap you whether they were dressed in pink, yellow, green, or aqua blue. Black is just a G thing.

  I looked at my reflection in the bathroom mirror. The person staring back at me was lost. I had an oversize head resting between two pointy shoulders on top of a scrawny body. My appearance made me fodder for jokes. I wondered why I was born with such frailty in such a wild hood. If fate would have me born in the jungle, at least bless me with some size. I’m still only about 170 pounds sopping wet with bricks in my pocket. However, I made up for it. It made me bold.

  Tater kept the engine running in Black Beauty, a ’91 SUV, hollering, “Come on!”

  I bolted out the door barefoot.

  “Damn, bruh . . . took long enough,” he fumed as I jumped in the passenger seat.

  We called Dante, but he said he would catch up with us later after he met with his parole officer. The heat had been catching up to us for some time now. Dante had caught a charge.

  “Relax, bruh . . . you got that boonk for me?”

  There was no better breakfast than coke and weed.

  “What you think?” replied Tater, unwrapping a plastic Ziploc bag with tiny packets of marijuana and cocaine. I unpeeled a Philly blunt and filled it with marijuana and coke before sealing it with saliva. With one light the blunt sparked. I reclined in my seat and turned the volume up. JT Money erupted from two Pioneer wood-grain speakers vibrating in the trunk. JT and the Poison Clan had some hot street records coming out of Uncle Luke’s camp.

  As the SUV cruised down Northwest Fifteenth Avenue, the corners where crews were already setting up shop were waking up. The work began while most of the rest of Miami slept. Crews dressed in the same black T-shirts and short, black Dickie jeans as me held positions at virtually every intersection along the avenue.

  The spotters w
ere getting their orange juice and ham-and-cheese sandwiches outside the corner bodegas farther up the block. As the coke brought more and more money, it offered opportunities even for the smokers themselves. When they wanted to go fraternize with a schoolgirl at lunchtime, the spotters gave a couple of dollars and nickel rocks to Lu Lu and One Eye, two neighborhood homeless cats, to guard the stash.

  It took a while for those two jokers to realize some of those cops were suppliers themselves though. False alarms were routine. Since my crew graduated to making drop-offs, the younger dudes on the corner got crafty. Their stash was left in holes carved out in palm trees. It’s ironic how everything in life evolves. The dope boy coming after you learns from your mistakes and becomes a bit craftier and more efficient. That’s how trades are passed down through the generations. Dope slinging was a birthright in Liberty City.

  The lookouts nodded while we cruised past that April morning. They peered inside the jet-black tint, daydreaming of riding inside one day. The corners were quiet. Fiends usually flocked the corners by sunrise after passing out from a good trip, but that morning the usual rush-hour line was down to two or three.

  “It’s dem boys from Lincoln Fields,” said Tater, responding to the frown on my face. We crossed Northwest Thirteen Avenue and there they were. Addicts huddled outside the Lincoln Fields blue-and-cream-colored low-rises just one block west of Fifteenth Avenue.

  “This is ridiculous, bruh. I’m sick of these dudes, but I got the fire for them later. You just can’t let someone take your corner. Next thing you know they’re taking your house,” I said. “Might as well let them bone your wife while they’re at it.”

  We had already left those corners. I really had no stake in beefing with those guys. I was just more preoccupied with the principle of it. I didn’t like them.

  “Can y’all hurry up? We’re gonna be late,” whined Keba in the backseat. Her friend Chrystal was pouting alongside her.

  Tater jumped out at the corner of Sixty-second Street to handle the work. I bolted onto the turnpike heading south toward Richmond Heights Middle. I sped through the neighborhood and crossed over to Seventeenth Avenue.

  “Told y’all I’d make it on time,” I said, turning to the girls.

  In my childhood, there really wasn’t much happiness. The playground scene in front of the school always offered me temporary respite from the bullshit. Flashing blue and red lights in the rearview forced me back into reality. I had whizzed pass the stop sign at the intersection.

  “What’s happening?” Keba asked.

  “Don’t worry, lil mama, we good,” I told her. But sweat poured from my forehead as a female officer approached the Blazer. As I mentioned earlier, police in Miami had been watching the Blazer for months. They knew the truck. They knew what went down inside.

  “You’re in a hurry, young man?” the officer asked me.

  “Kind of, Officer. I didn’t want my lil sister to be late,” I answered. The girls flashed a broad smile at the officer.

  “Well, you sped past a stop sign in a school zone. That’s not safe,” the officer continued. “You girls go run along now. We wouldn’t want you guys to be late.”

  She let the girls head to class and asked me to step out the vehicle. She patted me down. “No shoes . . . you were really in a rush, huh?” she joked.

  I forced a smile. For some reason, Keba ran back to the car. She had forgotten her textbook on the backseat. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her freeze. She saw the nine-millimeter Walther PPK semiautomatic handgun tucked underneath her textbook where Tater had forgotten it. Her eyes locked with mine in the rearview mirror. She put the gun in a folder under her arm, then raced off. The officer gave me the usual lecture. She advised me to try to get my GED before writing a citation.

  “Okay, looks like you’re good,” the officer told me. “Now go put some shoes on.” She chuckled.

  I got in the truck and banked the corner. Suddenly, I heard officers shouting. Keba was facedown on the pavement with guns drawn to her head.

  29

  Ten-Twenty-Life

  KEBA, BEING THE HOTHEAD SHE WAS, GOT INTO AN argument with a classmate. In the melee, the gun had fallen from under her arm.

  “Nah . . . leave her go . . . it’s my gun!” I yelled as I raced back to the scene.

  The officers handcuffed me and searched the truck. My heartbeat pelted against my chest.

  We made that drop the other day. So I’m cool, these cops ain’t got anything on me. They can book me for gun possession. I’ll be out in the morning.

  They reached for a laundry basket that was in the trunk. An officer smiled. He waved his partners over. Tucked in the laundry basket, wrapped in towels, they found three kilos of cocaine. They hauled me down to that juvenile detention center once again. This time felt different though. No one had to tell me that my chances had run out. It’s like gambling. I kept on playing the slots until I lost. It isn’t rocket science. It’s a game of probability. And the odds were telling me, Not this time, buddy. You lose.

  All the trouble I had caused smacked me right in the face. I sat in the cell thinking about Fudge’s lessons. I thought about Old Man Booner and Junior. Why didn’t I listen? I was already getting beat up by regret, then Pearl and my stepmother showed up at the same time to get me out of the center. As much pain as I had caused Pearl, she never gave up on me. I gave up on myself. A mother’s love is long-suffering. A mother is always the last person to leave her son’s sentencing, the last one in the room when her kid’s life is evaporating due to complications from AIDS after a life of drugs and prostitution. Mothers never give up on their kids. A bell goes off when their offspring is hurting. It rings when their baby boy is stressed-out during his final exam in college. Fathers aren’t built with the same chip.

  Son, I’ve carried you as far as I can. I’ve given you a map, but the rest of the journey is up to you. You’ve seen me suffer from the bullshit decisions I’ve made. Hell, that’s how I ended up with you. Don’t be stupid. God speed.

  Isn’t that messed up? Most black boys begin with a cracked compass. It points you south when you’re supposed to be going north. Now you’re stuck in the marshes with alligators looking at you crazy.

  What, nigga? You’re in our swamps. Don’t get it twisted homey. You get a pass this time.

  Pearl and Lynn showing up at the jail was a disaster waiting to happen. All hell broke loose. They began fighting and caused all sorts of mayhem. I must be the only juvenile in Miami-Dade history who got stuck in the detention center because the people coming to pick him up got into a fight. Pearl had lost custody of me and she wasn’t having it. It didn’t matter how rotten a seed Maurice Young had become. I was her rotten seed. But Mama couldn’t save me now. I had to weather this storm alone. It’s like Wood said. This is grown man’s business.

  I spent twenty-one days in lockup waiting for the courts to decide whom I should be released to. I sat there in that cell thinking my life was over. I used to bite at my fingers until the flesh bruised. My cellmate had to point it out before I noticed my bloody cuticles. All those times I fired my gun I wondered why I didn’t get hit. The afterlife had to be better than this sorry one I was living. Surely my life couldn’t have got any worse than it was already. I cried inside but no tears came. It did get worse.

  He paid me a visit. I had seen this guy before. He was a white cat, rather portly fellow. He was at Santana’s warehouse on occasion and often cruised the strip in his gray Porsche. He was never much for words, just stared at me like he knew something I didn’t. Or at least that’s the way he tried to come off, all serious and enigmatic. He wore an Armani suit like a glove. Maybe Italian or Jewish, I couldn’t tell, but to a young kid in the Beans, a blue-suit-wearing white guy hanging with a Cuban dope king and kicking it in the Beans meant one of three things. He was either coming to the projects to get high, had a fixation for black hookers, or was the one calling the shots.

  I was wrong. He was Santana’s lawyer. My re
spect for Santana grew by the minute. That hustler came to America, got folks these sides all coked up, and had the white boy doing all his dirty work. He didn’t strike me as a lawyer at first, but now it all made sense. He was hanging around the projects to keep watch over Santana’s workers. Like I said, we were slaves on a cocaine plantation. We didn’t know just how big America’s crack problem was becoming. I had no idea the war reached beyond our street corners. Reagan put us up on that. America had put Manuel Noriega in Miami federal prison because of the powder. I think Noriega was using the drug proceeds to better his country. The U.S. government couldn’t get a piece of the proceeds so they locked him up. It’s all a game, and brothers get locked outside when the real decision makers are in the boardroom.

  Santana’s lawyer was a buffer. For a price he could bamboozle the justice system into an innocent verdict for Al Capone. He only came by to see if I was scared because Santana thought I may have snitched. I was a dead man walking if I did. At my age it was easy for me to crack. The cops already had me in that interrogation room. They played bad-cop, good cop. “Look, kid, we know the coke ain’t yours. You were just out there trying to take care of your family.” The soft approach was routine. “I grew up in the same projects. I know how it is.”

  Do you? Do you know how it is to walk with holes in your shoes until your feet blister where jigga worms reside? The other kids at school call you Pearl’s food-stamp baby. You shoot at boys who look like you because these realities make you hate yourself. No disrespect, Officer, but things sure have changed since you left the Beans.

  They offered me McDonald’s and any other treat they thought would sucker me into giving up the man, but they had already lost the war. The powder had given kids a chance even if the outlook was bleak. I sat there for hours and ignored their advances.