by Nikki Turner
Hassan looked up at the young face peering at him from under the helmet and was about to smirk until he noticed that the kid was holding a .38 short.
“Yo, what the fuck?” Hassan gasped as the girl with him began screaming as she ran up the street. The first bullet slammed into Hassan's upper shoulder, knocking him into the car door.
“Hold, hold up for a minute, man,” Hassan said as he stared into Antwan's hard, angry eyes. “What the fuck did I do, man? Yo, man, please.”
“No mercy, nigga,” Antwan snapped as he fired the next five shots into Hassan's face. “No mercy!”
During the next seven or eight months Rah Rah and Antwan committed three more contract hits, six shootings where they capped the dude in both legs, and one robbery at the Parrow Lounge where Rah Rah shot some cat in the ass for trying to buck.
“Yo, Antwan,” Rah Rah said with a mouthful of food as he took another bite from his corned beef sandwich. “What's the fucking deal with you saying that ‘no mercy’ shit every time we have to slump a nigga? What you think, you some kinda serial killer or some shit? Remember nigga, like they said in the movie The Godfather, the shit ain't personal. It's business.”
“Yeah, I know it's business,” Antwan replied, staring off in the distance. “But it seems like every time I'm about to bust a nigga, I get mad as shit. Especially if one of them muthafuckas be lookin’ at me like they expect me not to smoke their ass. So I just started telling them niggas ‘no mercy’ right 'fore I put them hot balls in they ass. Anyhow, Rah, why you asking a million questions and shit? Fuck you s'pose to be? Some kinda black Sigmund Freud or some shit?”
“Nah, I'm just wondering,” Rah Rah replied. “ 'Cause sometimes you seem like your ass be tripping the fuck out. Anyhow, nigga, let's roll. We got work to do. Niggas couldn't go put in work on an empty stomach.”
Antwan smirked as the two went to handle their business.
THE NEXT TWO YEARS flashed by in a series of shootings, car chases, stickups, blunts, and freaking with some of the project girls in the backseat of Rah Rah's car or sometimes at the Stinkin’ Lincoln Motel downtown.
One Friday in March, Rah Rah, a couple of other cats, and Antwan rented a minisuite at the Lincoln to celebrate Rah Rah's twentieth birthday. They bought twelve forty-ounces, an ounce of weed, and a bottle of Dom, and they invited some girls from Seth Boyden projects. The party had been going on for hours when Antwan decided he'd had more than enough to drink and went next door to crash for a minute.
Fully clothed, Antwan lay across one of the double beds in the room and soon he was sound asleep.
Once again in his dream he watched from under the quilt as the two men and the pretty lady marched his handcuffed mother, father, and brother down into the basement. Once again he watched and jumped as one of the gunmen placed a gun to his brother's head and pulled the trigger. But this time he was no longer the traumatized little boy looking up from under the quilt, shaken and scared. This time he saw the carnage with the eyes of an eighteen-year-old and the faces were not mere blurs. He could see their faces. Their features and images ingrained themselves into his memory as if they were being burned into his brain. The dream, however, had yet another dimension, one that had escaped his years of therapy, consultation, and even hypnosis. This time he could discern exactly what the killers were saying. He could hear his mother's moans and his father's pleas to the killers to leave his wife alone. And more important, he could hear the voices of the killers themselves.
“Listen, nigga, I see you think this shit is a joke. You must be trying to get your fuckin’ son killed,” the tall dark-skinned killer said as he leaned over Antwan's father. “I'm gon’ ask you for the last time. Where is the muthafuckin’ money?”
Antwan stared out from under the quilt, his heart pounding like a drum as he watched the gunman put the gun to his brother's head and pull the trigger. With tears pouring from his eyes even as he slept, he jumped as the bullet tore through his brother's head, pushing brains and blood into the blindfolded face of his mother. He heard his father's scream of pain and anguish as he watched his son's lifeless body slump from the force of the bullet.
He stared as a familiar face stepped from the shadows of the room and one of the other killers addressed him by his name: Malik. With tears flowing from his eyes, Antwan watched his father's face contort in dismay and confusion as he tried to make sense of what was happening to him and his family. All of this was at the hands of one of the killers, Malik.
Antwan trembled with emotion as Malik stood over his mother while she was begging for mercy and uttered the words that had been imbedded in his subconscious for fifteen years….
“No, Janet,” Malik said in a low and distant voice. “No mercy.”
When Antwan woke up his clothes were drenched in sweat. He looked around the motel room slowly, trying to get his bearings, trying to figure out exactly where he was. Then he heard the music coming through the walls from the room next door and everything began to make sense. For the first time in his life, so did the dream. He knew who the killers were, every one of them. He heard their names clearly and saw their faces. A smile danced at the corners of his mouth. He knew for certain that he would finally get what he had been praying for since he was a little boy. He was about to get revenge.
FOUR
WHEN RAH RAH NOTICED that Antwan was missing from the party he went over to the room next door to check on him. He found his friend in a cold sweat, coming out of the nightmare.
“Antwan, how you so sure that the nigga's name is Malik?” Rah Rah said, after listening to Antwan tell him about his dream. “Don't tell me just 'cause you dreamt that shit you ready to go slump any nigga wit’ that name.” Rah Rah tried to make sense of it all. “And you saying that you remember one of them, some Malik cat, saying he was your peoples? Your cousin and shit?”
“Listen, Rah, you either with this shit or you ain't,” Antwan said.
“All I need is a muthafucka to watch my back. I don't need no nigga to hold my hand if I'ma slump a nigga. Especially a muthafucka that slaughtered my whole family.”
“Yo, my nigga, that's not what I'm saying. You know I'm down for whatever. I'll slump the nigga for you in a New York second. You like my family and your family like mines, but if we s'pose to be downing three cats, I just wanna make sure we got the right muthafuckas fo we get three bodies on the house. You feel me, Antwan? This ain't about no cold feet shit. 'Cause you know I slump a muthafucka soon as I look at him. But it's yo call, my nigga. You call it. I'm wit’ it,” Rah Rah said.
“First, I gotta find out who this nigga Malik is. I don't really know none of my dad's or mother's people. You know I was raised in an orphanage and in foster homes and none of them muthafuckas reached out for me. But I know they had family in the city. I heard my aunts and uncles sold off the business, split the proceeds, and went on about their lives,” Antwan said, shaking his head. “Nonetheless, I don't think it's gonna be but so hard for me to find this nigga.”
“All right, Antwan, whatever and whenever,” Rah Rah said, reaching in his pocket for his room key. “Holla at me when you ready to roll.”
“Yo, Rah, let me get the keys to your ride. I'm too hyped to sleep right now. I'm gonna just drive. I'll pick you back up before checkout time.”
“All right, nigga. Don't leave me hangin’ in the front of the motel waiting on your ass like you did the last time you took my car,” Rah Rah replied, smiling as he tossed Antwan the keys.
Antwan caught the keys with one hand. “Man, would I ever leave you hangin'?”
“Hell, yeah. Didn't you just hear me say you did, fool?”
“Don't worry,” Antwan said. “I'll be back.”
OVER THE NEXT FEW weeks Antwan and Rah Rah tried to track down the people from Antwan's dream. They had so far checked on seven or eight guys named Malik, but none of them, to the best of Antwan's knowledge, was in any way related to him.
Friday night at the Zanzibar, Antwan kicked it with
an old head who knew his peoples and schooled him on what he knew about his cousin, Malik. He told him that back in the day Malik used to be a vicious stickup kid. The old head said that maybe fifteen or sixteen years ago, Malik suddenly hung up his guns, and the last he had heard he was a deacon in the church, living somewhere in Belleville.
Sunday night, Rah Rah and Antwan had tracked that Malik to a duplex on the Belleville-Newark line, where he lived with his wife and two sons. Every night Malik would go to work on the night shift as a security guard at a Secaucus warehouse.
Rah Rah and Antwan were sitting in the car down from Malik's house passing a blunt back and forth when the porch light came on and a man, who didn't look to be a lot older than forty years old, stepped out on the porch accompanied by a caramel-colored woman who kissed him on the lips and then stepped back into the house as he proceeded down the steps.
Antwan and Rah Rah had already flattened the back tire on Malik's Camry. Antwan planned to make his move once Malik got out to change his tire. Antwan, who was lying on the backseat in Rah's car, had disconnected the car's interior light so he could ease out of the car and come up from behind Malik as he jacked his car up.
Except for one streetlight, which sat at the end of the block, Gray Street was almost completely dark. Malik started the car and had driven less than three feet before he felt the thump, thump, thump of a flat tire.
“Damn,” Malik said aloud as he backed the car back into his space while hitting the trunk release button in the glove compartment. Except for a lone car that was stopped at a traffic light two blocks down, Gray Street was deserted. Malik was jacking up his car, humming his church's signature hymn, “Mary, Don't You Weep,” when he heard light footsteps approaching.
Malik turned around and saw Antwan standing over him with his hands behind his back. Malik looked into the large, pretty, yet angry, eyes of the young kid who stared at him, unsmiling.
“Can I help you, brother?” Malik asked slowly, looking around and trying to make some sense of the situation.
“Yeah, cousin, you can help me,” Antwan retorted, never smiling, never budging, never taking his penetrating stare from Malik's face. “I need something from you,” Antwan continued, without changing the tone of his voice.
“Do I know you?” Malik asked nervously as a car door opened and quietly closed and another kid walked slowly in their direction. “Listen, brother, I don't have any money,” Malik began. “I'm just a security—”
“I don't want any money, Malik,” Antwan said, cutting him off, “and I'm not your fuckin’ brother. I'm your cousin,” Antwan snarled, pulling his pearl-handled .38 special from behind his back and aiming it at Malik's face.
“Hold it a minute, brother,” Malik cried, throwing up his hands to cover his face. “I don't have any money, man.”
“I told you, nigga, I ain't your brother. I'm your cousin. Look at me, Malik. Look good and think back.”
Malik's mind raced back over the years as he looked into the large angry eyes of the kid pointing a gun at his face. The eyes, the eyes, he thought to himself. I know those eyes. Then it all came crashing down on him, and it felt as if he was being snatched into the mouth of a storm. Yes, they were the eyes of his dead cousin's wife. They were Janet's eyes, the woman he had killed those many years ago!
“Oh my God. Oh my God, for the love of Jesus,” Malik pleaded, his voice trembling, his eyes wide with fear. The barrel of the gun now touched his forehead. He knew that this was little Antwan, his dead cousin's remaining child.
“Listen, Antwan. Listen to me for one minute, please, son,” Malik begged, the tremor in his voice making his words barely audible. “Tell me what I can do. I know I can't bring them back.” A current seemed to move through his body and he trembled uncontrollably. “Please, Antwan. For the love of God, please have mercy.”
“No, nigga. No mercy,” Antwan spat while pulling back the hammer on the .38. “No mercy,” Antwan repeated, pulling the trigger. The first bullet shattered Malik's forehead and exited the base of his brain.
“No mercy,” Antwan repeated to Malik's lifeless body, which was now slumped down against the car. He fired five more shots into the mangled face.
WITH ONE DOWN and two to go, Antwan and Rah Rah were back on the grind a few days later. Tracking and finding Furquan didn't prove to be nearly as hard as tracking Malik. Furquan was still in the game. In fact, he had really blown up. A respected old head, Furquan now controlled building 178 of the Spruce Street projects. He had it locked down. His crew ran the spot wide-open twenty-four/seven and clocked between ten and fifteen thousand dollars a day. Furquan had purchased a $400,000 split-level home in South Orange, drove a big-body Benz, and wore a black diamond female-skin ranch-mink coat that he bragged he'd paid $10,000 for. Furquan also owned a detail shop on Peshine and Clinton Avenue. His bodyguard, a pitch-black nigga named Ali Mu, walked with a limp and had just beaten a double homicide the previous year.
“I'm telling you, Antwan, if we gonna knock Furquan's ass off, we gotta down Ali Mu first,” Rah Rah explained as the waiter in Copper's Deli brought over two corned beef sandwiches. “If we gotta wait for a minute 'fore we get Furquan's ass so we can get at Ali Mu first, then man, we just hafta wait. I ain't trying to get in no blazing shoot-out with Ali Mu's 'noid ass if he suspects we mighta had something to do with offin’ Furquan. Plus that nigga been death-struck ever since them cats from Hawthorne Avenue ambushed him and left his ass for dead.”
“Yeah, I'm up on all that, Rah, but I been waiting on this nigga for what seems like forever,” Antwan replied, staring out the window with a pained and angry look on his face.
“I'm feeling you, Antwan, and I know I'd be feeling the same way if I was you but think about it: Knocking off Ali Mu first will give us the ups on Furquan, 'cause without him the nigga gon’ be buck naked. Antwan, I know he killed your family, but the nigga ain't no killer for real. He ain't gangsta like that. He don't put in no work like that. That's what he got Ali Mu for. ”
“All right, Rah,” Antwan said, turning from the window, placing his sandwich on the plate. “I been waiting this long. I guess I can wait long enough to do the shit right. But how we gon’ get up on Ali Mu?” he asked, turning from the window and facing Rah Rah. “If the nigga is as 'noid as you say, I don't know how we gon’ get within twenty feet of him.”
“Me and the nigga stuck up a couple times together back in the day. The nigga is 'noid as shit, but he ain't gonna be on no super 'noid shit around me. Plus the nigga likes to sniff dope. He loves that P dope.”
Antwan was quiet for a minute. He stared out the window, watching two kids play-fighting in front of the store. Finally he spoke. “You know, Furquan and Big Farook is s'pose to be beefing, and I hear Farook is got some paper on his head. Since we gon’ knock Furquan's ass, we might as well touch base with Farook and get the work. Shit, we'll be killing two birds with one stone,” Antwan stated, turning away from the window to face Rah Rah.
“That's why I scooped your young ass up when I first met you,” Rah Rah responded with a wide smile. “You got something going on in that big-ass fuckin’ head of yours.”
ALI MU WAS STANDING in front of the movie theater when Rah Rah pulled up across the street in a car, waving at him and smiling.
“Yo, what's up?” Ali Mu shouted as Rah Rah waved him over to the car.
“Man, I got something I need to kick with you,” Rah Rah replied, hitting the door locks when Ali Mu came over.
“What's up?” Ali Mu asked, sliding in as he adjusted the nine at his waist. He leaned back in the seat to face Rah Rah.
“I got some work, Mu, if you down. It's like for between eight and ten grand and probably a half a brick. The shit is a piece of cake. But its gon’ take two people. Some West Indians over in North Newark projects is slinging outta building twelve. My cousin is the doorman for them. He searches everybody that comes in to cop to make sure they ain't strapped. He's gon’ let us in. The rest of the shit is cake.
I got a little kid who's my cousin. He'll do anything I tell him to do. He gonna sit in the car and wait out front for us. All we got to do is give him a couple hundred dollars apiece. Plus, I told his little dumb ass we'd buy him some Michael Jordan pumps when we come off. So the little nigga is hyped,” Rah Rah said, looking at Ali Mu, who was hanging on to his every word. “So what's up, Mu? You trying to get with this lick or what?”
Without hesitation, Ali replied, “Yeah, I'm down. The shit sounds proper. When you wanna handle it?”
“We can ride out there tonight and take a peek at the area. Then we can handle the shit tomorrow night after it gets dark.”
“All right, my nigga. That's money,” Ali said, looking out the passenger window as they drove up Springfield Avenue. “But, nigga, you ain't got no dog food?” Ali asked, turning again in his seat to face Rah Rah.
“No dog food?“ Rah Rah repeated with a puzzled look on his face.
“Yeah, nigga. No dog food, no P?” Ali asked angrily like Rah Rah was the dumbest cat he knew.
“Yeah, I got eight bags,” Rah Rah smirked, reaching into his pocket and passing the rubber band–wrapped package to Ali.
Rah Rah and Ali rode, sniffed, and swapped war stories for nearly two hours before they drove out to the North Newark Projects to take a look at the spot they were supposed to hit the next night. Before getting out of the car in front of the Magic Johnson Theater, Ali cuffed the remaining three bags of P, smiled to himself, and stepped from the car.
“Tomorrow night, round ten?” Ali hollered over his shoulder as he crossed the street and headed in the direction of the theater.
“Cool,” Rah Rah said as he drove away.
The next night Rah Rah and Antwan pulled up in front of the Magic Johnson Theater and Ali Mu was out in front waiting. When Rah Rah pulled to a stop, Antwan hopped out of the car to allow Ali Mu to sit up front.
“What the fuck you hopping in the back for?” Ali barked as he approached the car. “I don't want no muthafucka I don't know sitting behind me.” Screwing up his face, Ali lifted the seat to climb in the back.