by K'wan
“Just thinking how much I miss this place.” He stared up at a palm tree.
“Yeah.” She stood next to him. “There’s something about the West Coast that makes you fall in love with it.”
“True, if you can overlook all the dumb shit that goes on out here. This is the land of the heartless.”
“It ain’t the land, it’s the people that make it this way,” she said, watching a group of young men ride by in a Chevy. “Kenyatta, I’ve been blessed to have seen many different places in my short life, and they all fall short to Cali. This place is both the most beautiful of states, yet the ugliest.”
“Girl, you tripping.” He waved her off.
“I ain’t the one tripping. These niggaz that’s out here terrorizing decent folks and killing off all our young men are the ones that are tripping. Makes you wonder when all this will end.”
“Man, gang-banging ain’t gonna never end.” He stroked his beard. “This shit has been going on since before we were born, and it’s only gonna get bigger. Muthafuckas kill me talking that stop the violence shit. This ain’t gonna end until we wipe them out, or they wipe us out, period.”
“You don’t know how fucking stupid you sound.” She laughed. “Kenyatta, you don’t even believe what you’re trying to feed me. That’s just you trying to be difficult, as usual.”
“Go ahead with that. I’m just stating my case.”
“Well, if that’s your case, then that ass is guilty. Don’t try and front for me, cause I know you, Gutter. When you know someone is telling you right, you throw up this ignorant ass gang-banger persona. Nigga, please.”
“What you talking ’bout, woman? I’m a Crip to the heart. Don’t never forget that.”
“Oh, I would never doubt your love for your hood, but I also know that you’ve never been a dummy. If you were, I would’ve never given you any play.”
“Gave me no play?” He raised his eyebrow. “Monifa, don’t try that. If I recall correctly, you pursued me.”
“That chronic got you all twisted. I wasn’t the one at Universal Studios talking about, ‘Aye, sis. Let me rap to you for a minute,’” she imitated him. “You followed me and my girls around that whole lot, trying to get at me. You were so cute, with your starter kit braids.”
“Fuck you, Mo,” he joked.
“Fuck you right back.”
They both slapped at each other and burst into laughter. He instinctively reached out and touched her hand. It was warm, and smooth as silk. For a second, it was as if they were still teenagers, dating at Jack in the Box. Each one’s eyes shone with lost passion, creating an uncomfortable silence. Monifa’s eyes flashed indifference, and she quickly snatched her hand back.
“Mo…”
“Don’t.” She turned her back to him. “Kenyatta, leave it alone.”
“Monifa… we need to talk about it. There was so much left unsaid.”
“I think you said it all when you left me wondering what happened,” she said, a bit more scornfully than she meant to.
“Mo… I don’t know what to say,” he admitted. “Shit got a lil crazy. Things happened that I won’t go into, but I had to jet. You know how it get in the hood.”
“Fuck the hood!” she said heatedly. “You’re always putting the hood before me.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Then what was it like?” She spun around. “Gutter, please don’t try and feed me some shit that you had two years to mull over. I was supposed to be your girl, Ken. Your heart! ‘Be my forever lady,’ remember that?”
He turned his eyes away.
“Well, I do. You took me to up to Sacramento to celebrate my twenty-first birthday,” she recalled. “We had a beautiful dinner, and you fed me ice cream. Everyone at the restaurant kept saying how cute we were. We went for a walk on the strip and talked about a life together and how you wanted to do right by me. ‘Be my forever lady,’ that’s what you whispered to me… right before you pushed me to the ground and shot that boy, because he was an enemy as you called him. On a night when we should’ve been making love until the sun came up, we ended up fugitives.” She gave a weak chuckle.
Gutter was so overcome with shame that his head felt like a lead weight when he raised it. Tears danced in the corner of her eyes, and he could tell that she was doing all she could not to cry. All she had ever tried to do was love him and he’d shitted on her. He couldn’t help but feel like a real asshole. With some effort, he managed to swallow the grapefruit-sized lump that had worked its way into his throat.
“Monifa,” he began, “I never misled you, or told you anything I didn’t mean. You deserved way better than what I gave you. Believe me, I’ve thought about you and what happened to us ever since I left.”
“Did you think about me when you made that New York bitch your wife?” she spat.
He should’ve seen that one coming.
“Don’t get all quiet on me now,” she continued. “What, you think I didn’t know about her? People talk, Kenyatta. I might be naïve, but I have ears.”
“Monifa, let’s just go somewhere and talk,” he pleaded, while reaching for her hand.
“I think we’ve both said enough.” She stepped back. “I ain’t mad no more, baby. But I’m a lot wiser for the experience. See you at the house, Gutter.” Monifa strutted away.
Gutter was about to go after her and tell her how much he’d loved her and how the old feelings still lingered when his cell went off and the name on the screen brought him back to his senses.
“SHE WAS only seven,” Sharell sobbed into the phone.
“Baby, calm down,” Gutter said, not really being in the mood for hormones. “I know you’re upset about what you saw, but that’s why I don’t watch the news, it’s too damn depressing. Look, it’s a damn sad thing when a child is killed, but there ain’t a whole lot we can do about it. All we can do is say a prayer for the little girl and watch over our own family.”
“We can do something to stop it, Ken, but we don’t want to,” she shot back.
“You talking real reckless on the horn, Sharell,” he warned.
“Kenyatta, I’m upset not stupid. These kids are getting cut down left and right over this street shit, and everybody turns a blind eye as long as it’s not somebody they knew. It’s bullshit and you know it. I don’t want this for my family, Gutter, no white sheets.”
He sighed. “It’s not gonna be like that for us.”
“I can’t keep doing this.” She sounded exhausted.
“So what you trying to say?” he asked defensively.
“Calm down, Kenyatta, I’m not trying to say anything… Baby, we got a good life together. Kenyatta, you move my spirit in a way that a man hasn’t been able to do since my daddy was alive, but something has got to give.”
“Sharell, it’s going to get better,” he said as if the line had been rehearsed.
“Oh, I don’t doubt that, but in order for it to get better we’ve got to change the formula. In a hot minute, we’re going to be somebody’s mommy and daddy, and this child is gonna need us… both of us. I really ain’t trying to have the ‘your daddy was a good man’ talk with my baby, Ken.”
Gutter tugged at his beard in frustration. “Sharell, you know what it is, so don’t come at me with this. I know what you want, and I know what I gotta do to get it, but I gotta be who I am.”
“Ken, I know who you are and I’d never try and change that, but I’m asking you to look at the bigger picture. I’m tired of not being able to shop at the mall or go out to dinner without having a bodyguard. I want a life, Ken, a life and a family. I deserve as much.”
“I know,” he said, more to himself than anyone else.
“Then act like it.”
“A’ight, Sharell, we’ll talk about it when I get back. I gotta get back to the house, fam is waiting for me.”
“Umm-hmm.” There was doubt in her tone. “I know you’re in the middle of something right now, Kenyatta, but best believe when you get back from California
we’ve got some talking to do.”
“You got that, baby. I love you.”
“I love you too, Ken, and keep that in mind while you’re out there with them big braid-wearing West Coast broads,” she remarked. Gutter laughed, but she didn’t. “I’m serious, Ken. I’d hate to have to come out there and clown, you don’t wanna see my ghetto side.”
“Nah, I don’t wanna see that. Don’t even trip, ma, you know this bone belongs to you.” He grabbed his crotch as if she could see him through the phone.
“You better know it. Now go ahead and handle your business, I’ll talk to you later.” She ended the call.
Sharell’s ass is a trip, he thought to himself. She was the only person he knew who would use something she saw on the news to prompt a lecture on life issues. She had to know that the set flowed through his veins, and was a part of him. Still, hearing about that child getting caught up in his turf war struck him like a physical blow. Though he wasn’t the shooter, he still felt in some way responsible for her death. He had passed the death sentence on the other side, so whether he had been there or not, the blood was on his hands.
“Dawg, you tripping,” he said to himself. He was at war, and sometimes in war there were casualties, but that still didn’t justify that mother having to bury her child. “Fuck it, just one more I owe them hoes,” he reasoned as he headed back to the house.
chapter 16
“BACK ON the streets, straight blue and gray, cuz I rep-re-sent like every day,” Charlie sang along with the track. He loved to bump the Murder Was the Case soundtrack just before they went on a mission, and “Who Got Some Gangsta Shit,” had become his and Blue Bird’s theme song.
Lil Gunn sat as low as he could get in the backseat of a borrowed Grand Cherokee. His wool skully was pulled down on his head, nearly covering his eyes. He took long drags of his Newport, which had been dipped, and felt the fluttering of little wings in his gut. He normally didn’t smoke PCP, but the circumstances were anything but normal. He had shot at enemies in his lifetime, but that was always from a distance. He knew Blue Bird was an old-school killer and would want to make this up close and personal.
“Yo a’ight back there?” Blue Bird called from the driver’s seat.
“I’m good,” Lil Gunn said flatly.
“Little nigga, take you another hit of this stick.” Charlie tried to pass him another dipped cigarette, but Gunn waved it off. “Man, let me find out yo ass is claiming blue when you really yellow?”
“Fuck you,” Lil Gunn spat at Charlie.
“Don’t go bitching up on me, lil cuz,” Blue Bird added, taking the sherm stick from Charlie.
“He gonna bitch up.” Charlie snickered.
Lil Gunn continued to stare out the window.
After cruising for a while longer, Charlie suggested that they make a beer run. Blue Bird pulled into the parking lot of a local package store. There were several cars parked with people posted up and killing time. The Grand Cherokee bent the corner to park at the rear of the store. As they passed the last row of cars, Blue Bird recognized one of the loiterers. His name was Shorty and he was a respected member of Mad Swans.
“Say, there go some of them ho-ass niggaz right there,” Blue Bird nodded toward where Shorty was standing with two other men.
“Aye, pull ’round back and let’s creep on these niggaz,” Charlie said excitedly.
Blue Bird nodded and backed the car into a parking spot. He retrieved a Colt revolver from under the seat and got out, leaving the engine running. Charlie handed Lil Gunn the 9 from the glove box while he went with the bulldog. The three men skirted along the edge of the store, back toward the front. Shorty and his crew were sipping beers and trying to holla at some of the females in the lot. A five feet five light-skinned dude with caramel eyes, Shorty considered himself a pretty boy. One of the young ladies was in the process of writing down her phone number when she spotted the killers creeping. When Shorty turned to see what she was looking at, a bullet hit him in the left bicep.
“What’s up now, niggaz!” Blue Bird screamed, firing his Colt.
People began running for cover, trying not to end up on anyone’s wall. Shorty ducked behind a car, leaving his comrades stunned and on their own. One of the red-clad men tried to get Blue Bird in his sights, but Charlie laid cover fire and forced him back.
The sound of gunfire and the smell of smoke made Lil Gunn dizzy. The youngster fired his gun one-handed, feeling the rush of the hunt. Seeing the fear in his enemy’s faces was like a high for him, and in the name of his father, he planned to overdose that night.
A soldier, whom no one had noticed in the backseat, leaned out the window, spitting from his pistol. Lil Gunn dashed forward, military-style, and leapt behind a metal garbage can. Crawling on his belly he slipped up under the car the shooter was held up in and slithered out from under the other side. When the shooter looked down, Lil Gunn blew the top of his head off, raining brain matter all over his face. The goop was sticky and uncomfortable but Lil Gunn was so high that he didn’t even seem to notice. The only thing that mattered to him at that moment was the kill.
A man wearing an Atlanta Hawks jersey let off with his.32. The low-caliber bullets sparked off brick and metal as he tried to take Blue Bird out of the game. The seasoned warrior returned fire, hitting the shooter in the jaw. The man clutched uselessly at his jaw and spilled to the ground.
A second man managed to get to the driver’s side of the car and came up holding a Mac-11. He swept the lot, hitting glass and bystanders. Blue Bird got low just as he was making a second sweep, but Charlie got caught out there. Bullets danced up his chest, spinning him. Charlie was dead before he hit the ground.
The two men were exchanging fire with Blue Bird, so they never saw Lil Gunn creeping from the rear bumper of their car. He leveled his hammer and blew the back of the machine gunner’s head off. His partner spun on Lil Gunn and popped off. Lil Gunn would’ve probably been dead had Blue Bird not grabbed the shooter in a headlock just as he pulled the trigger. The heavier man grunted once and broke the man’s neck. To add insult he blasted him twice in the face with the Colt.
Lil Gunn took a moment to observe the scene, and found himself pleased. The lot was in total chaos. Bodies of the dead or dying were strewn all over, and the survivors were terrified. He noticed Charlie stretched out, and rushed to his side.
“Charlie, man!” Lil Gunn shouted.
“That nigga dead.” Blue Bird lifted Lil Gunn to his feet. “Come on, Shorty trying to lose us!” Blue Bird jogged back toward the car.
Shorty half ran, half hobbled down a dark backstreet. He would’ve stuck to the main road, but he didn’t want to chance being chased down. His lungs burned, and his whole left side was numb, but he wanted to live more than anything. It seemed like the harder he tried to run, the more his arm bled. He knew it would only be a matter of time before he collapsed from the loss of blood. He had almost made it to the end of the block when he heard tires screeching behind him.
“There that nigga go!” Lil Gunn pointed his gun excitedly, while bouncing up and down on the passenger seat like an unruly child. The sherm was now working in overdrive, making the whole ordeal seem like a video game. “Lay that pussy for my pa, Blue. Run that muthafucka over, cuz!”
The closer Shorty got to the corner, the weaker he became. By the time he reached the streetlight, he was seeing spots. Coughing up globs of blood, Shorty turned around just in time to see the headlights of the Jeep coming right for him.
AFTER SPENDING almost five hours in the emergency room, Pop Top was finally patched up and ready to be discharged. As per procedure, the police were brought in to question him about how he had gotten shot. The story he fed them was that he was walking out of a grocery store on 155th and got caught in a cross fire between two crews. Being that the bullet that struck him went in and out, the police had nothing to match against the shoot-out at the bodega.
He knew the police would want to question him about the s
hooting, so he had the homeys stay away so as not to arouse suspicion. When he came out of the examining room, Maxine was waiting for him. She was a high yellow chick who hailed from Flatbush. She was thick in the right places and didn’t talk much, which suited him fine.
“All done?” she asked, looking up from the copy of Hood Rat she was reading.
“Yeah, we can boogie now,” he replied.
The couple stepped out into the night air, and headed up the street in an attempt at catching a cab. Maxine stepped off the curb and tried to flag one, while Pop Top stood off to the side. A car slowed to a stop in front of them, but when Pop Top peered inside, he knew it wasn’t a cab. With limited mobility, he was slow on the draw. The occupant that aimed his shotgun out the back window wasn’t.
“I wouldn’t do that,” Major Blood said, getting out the passenger’s side. “You reach for that piece, and I’m gonna let my man air this pretty bitch out.” He nodded toward Maxine, who stood there shocked. “I came here to talk, but if you wanna make it a gangsta party, then reach for it.”
Maxine stood frozen in place. She got with Pop Top, hoping to get some action, but this was more than she bargained for. Her life flashed before her eyes as she stared down the barrel of a shotgun.
Pop Top looked from the car to the man standing in front of him, and weighed his options. He could take his chances and try to gun the man down, but even if he did, the shotgun would surely be fired. He really didn’t give a fuck if Maxine took it, but he was worried that he might not make it out of the line of fire. Reluctantly, he relaxed, but he still kept both the man and the car in front of him.
“You’re Pop Top, right?” Major asked, in an all-too-easy tone.
“Who the fuck are you?” Top shot back.
“Me? The name’s Blood. Major Blood. And I’m asking the fucking questions.”
Pop Top scanned through his mental rolodex and tried to remember where he had heard the name. There were several rivals who used Blood in their name, but there was something unique about this man. He remembered that Tito from L.C. went by that moniker, but he knew Tito when he saw him, and this was definitely not Tito. As he looked deeper into the man’s cold eyes, it dawned on him. He had heard tales about the notorious killer from Cali when he was still trying to come up. If this was the same Major Blood, he knew he was in a world of shit.