Pitbulls in a Skirt

by Mikal Malone

  “What up, Critter? You know you ain’t supposed to come up here like that,” Yvette reminded him with her hand tucked in her coat, holding her weapon.

  “I know...I know…but Derrick won’t give me a tester!” he said. He looked bad. The effect the withdrawal was having on his body was evident.

  I asked him, “What you talking ‘bout, Critter?”

  “Me and Rod went up to him to cop a piece. He gives him three, and turns around and tells me to get the fuck outta his face.”

  “Why he say that?” Mercedes asked.

  “He said I got one already.”

  “So just get one from Rod!” I told him, trying to prevent what I knew was getting ready to happen, which was more drama with Derrick’s ass.

  “I tried to ask him, but Rod took off running the moment Derrick hooked him up. Ya’ll know you can’t catch no fiend,” he laughed trying to make a quick joke. “Can you please talk to him for me? I ain’t feeling too good.”

  We all knew why Derrick did that shit to him but he was being real petty, because although it wasn’t the law, he was supposed to be servicing all of our customers. Not just the ones he liked or better yet, the ones that didn’t look out for us.

  Critter was valuable to us when it came to getting the word out to other fiends when we had new product. He was our eyes and ears in places we couldn’t or wouldn’t dare go to, and because of it Derrick couldn’t stand him.

  “Don’t worry ‘bout it, Critter. We got you,” Kenyetta said turning her attention toward the soldier at the bottom of the stairs. “Hey, DJ! Come up here for a sec.” DJ ran up the steps to see what was up.

  “What up, Vette? Want me to carry his ass outta here?”

  “Naw he cool. You got anymore testers on you?”

  “Yeah I got a few.”

  “Well hook Critter up, and if you see Derrick, tell him we want to talk to him for a minute.”

  “Cool. Come on, Critter. I’ll give it to you down there.” DJ knew better than to exchange drugs in our presence and he was following procedure. We didn’t want to ever get caught with dope on or around us and run the risk of being locked up. That would put the entire operation in jeopardy.

  “Thanks, ya’ll,” Critter said. “I ‘preciate this and if ya’ll need me to wash your cars tomorrow, bring ‘em ‘round front.”

  “It’s cold as shit out here, Critter,” Yvette laughed. “Just get us next time or something.”

  “You got it!” He continued running down the steps.

  Derrick was becoming a pain. He couldn’t seem to understand that things were the way that they were, and there was nothing he could do about it. It was better to go with the flow than to go against it. He did everything we told him to, but in his own way and in his own time and frankly, he was getting on my fucking nerves.

  When Derrick walked up the stairs, he already looked like he was gonna give us trouble. His face was twisted with aggravation.

  “Derrick…why you fucking with Critter? You know he brings us a lot of business around here,” Mercedes asked shoving her hands in her pockets.

  “I ain’t fucking with him. I thought he already had one and I wasn’t giving him another one.”

  “Look, Derrick, stop fucking with him. Treat him the fuck like you treat everybody else!” Mercedes yelled. “He a customer just like these other mothafuckas out here.”

  “Man, what you want me to do? Give him whatever he wants whenever he asks for it? We won’t never make no damn money fucking with his ass.”

  “That ain’t what she saying, Derrick. She saying stop giving people who you know look out for Emerald City bullshit,” Yvette was about to get in his shit for the disrespect. If he said one more word, he could possibly be cut off. “And since you here, what’s up with them girls you had coming through here yesterday? They almost got fucked up for real.”

  “Man, that’s my girl! What you saying? Ya’ll controlling who I fuck with too?” he asked, obviously upset.

  “We ain’t saying that shit. What we telling you is to control your bitches!” I screamed. “Now if you fuck with her like you say you do, I’m sure you want her breathing.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Yeah what the fuck ever! Get back to work, nigga.”

  He looked back at me like he wanted to kill me, and as far as I was concerned, if he wanted to bring it, I was ready. With Yvette and my girls backing me, he would have a hard time. The bottom line was I was tired of his blatant disrespect to everything we said to him. He wasn’t running Emerald City, we were! I made a mental note to tell Lavelle to cut his ass off the moment I talked to him ‘cause I was tired of his shit.

  One of our lieutenants from Unit A, Doctanian, came up the steps. “Carissa, we 569.”

  That meant they were low on supply, and because shop wasn’t closed for another three hours, we had to replenish him. There are three stash houses in EC, one in every building. Since I was going home anyway, and lived in Unit A myself, I decided to hook him up.

  “I’ll handle it, ya’ll.” I told them as I zipped my coat and ran down the stairs to my car.

  “You want one of the soldiers to go with you?” Yvette asked.

  “Naw I’m good. Anyway, you know the rules. They can’t know where the stash house is so I’ll be aight,” I told them as I walked toward the building.

  “You got anything on you now?” I asked Doctanian as I approached the door to Unit A.

  “Yeah we got a little something, but for real we butt naked as shit out here!” he said as he served a head, who was mad that he’d taken a few seconds to give me the status.

  “I got you,” I told him as I went inside.

  Once in the hallway, I made sure no one followed me, or noticed me heading toward the stash house. We made it a point to change them up on the regular to keep people off our track, and to prevent niggas from robbing us like they did a few years back at Tyland Towers. When I saw the coast was clear, I walked toward the elevator and pushed the button for the fourth floor.

  Kristina ran the stash house for Unit A, and only eight people had the key. Originally, it was only the Emerald City Squad but since they were away a lot running other shops, they had four keys made for us too. Besides the eight of us, only Dreyfus, Dex and Kristina, who had been working with him for years, knew where we kept our product.

  When I opened the door to A46, Kristina, who was 60-years-old and had been in the game all her life, stood up and held the end of the gun she carried in the holster. Her fine, thinning hair was pulled tightly into a ponytail, and she had a cigarette in her mouth like she always did every time I saw her. The apartment looked just like a factory. There were boxes and boxes of empty vials, rolls of glassine paper, and money wrappers everywhere. The other two stash houses looked similar, and were ran by other loyal workers too. She managed all of them but only worked the one in Unit A.

  “It’s just me,” I quickly told her before she let one loose from her gun.

  “Oh…Carissa. What you here for? They low already out there?” she asked as she sat down.

  “Yeah…I need to get a little bit of everything. We closing shop in a few hours anyway, but they still need something right now. The testers killed us today ‘cause they were buying two and getting one free.”

  “If they smart they would,” she said as she put out her cigarette and moved toward the packaged supplies.

  When she handed me enough dope, crack, weed and E pills to last them a few hours, I chilled for a while to make sure no one was on my trail. When I felt I waited long enough, I stuffed the product in the inside of my Eddie Bauer coat, and looked out the peephole before opening the door.

  I was halfway to the elevators when I saw three figures in dark clothes with their hoodies pulled over their heads quickly moving in my direction.

  “There she go right there!” One of them whispered as they ran toward me. “Get that bitch!”

  I know this ain’t happening! I couldn’t believe somebody would be bold e
nough to rob me. They had to have a death wish. With my heart in my throat, I took off in the opposite direction knowing that it would eventually lead me to the other side of the floor by another elevator. The coat was weighing me down, but I moved as fast as I could. I was willing to bust my gun if I had to, and was prepared to take as many of them with me as possible.

  One of them yelled as the other took off in the opposite direction. “One of ya’ll go the other way, so we can catch that bitch in the middle!”

  Now what was I gonna do? They were trying to block me in. Constantly checking my back, I was running fast enough to put a nice amount of space in between us. The faster I ran, the more I moved out of their sight. I noticed the janitor’s closet but didn’t go in right away. I wanted them to think I went down the stairwell so I opened the door and slammed it. Then I turned the knob to the closet and prayed that the door was open. It was!

  I quickly but quietly squeezed myself into the closet, and locked the door behind me. There I was in a closet with over $1000 worth of shit in my pockets. I knew if they tried to open the door, I’d be dead. And if they decided to fill the closet with lead, there would be nowhere I could run. There was hardly anywhere in the closet for me to move. Not to mention, the mop bucket filled with soiled water next to me reeked of piss and Pine-Sol mixed.

  I tried desperately to stop my heavy breathing, and hoped they would think I went down the stairway, which was through the door directly across from me. When they stopped in front of the closet, I was scared. I covered my mouth when my teeth began to rattle. Please, God, get me out of this. I could see them a little through the slats in the door, but not clearly. Completely out of breath due to chasing me, they talked in low voices.

  “Where…you…think she went?”

  “I heard her run out the door! I hope she ain’t see our faces,” the other said.

  I tried to see them, but from where I sat, no one looked familiar. The slats blurred their faces. Maybe it was the adrenaline, but my mind was completely messed up. By that time, the other guy who ran in the opposite direction reached them.

  “Where she at?” he asked out of breath.

  “We don’t fucking know.”

  “Well let’s get out of here before she tells them Emerald City niggas! Damn! We should’ve waited for her to come to the elevators!”

  “We can’t worry ‘bout that shit now. Let’s roll!” they said before running down the stairway.

  I sat in the closet for ten more minutes before moving. I waited until their footsteps completely faded. When they were gone, I called the first person I thought of…Lavelle.

  “Baby,” I said in between my tears. “I was set up. Some niggas just tried to rob me.”

  “I’m on my way!” Lavelle yelled through the phone.

  Shit was about to get real deadly in Emerald City. I just knew it.

  Chapter 5

  The Emerald City Squad

  December, Friday, 11:45 p.m.

  Emerald City

  The passengers in the Black Ford Excursion 4X2 XLS were completely silent.

  Lavelle, Thick, Dyson and Cameron were all inside, as the sounds of “Hail Mary” filled the air as if Tupac himself was riding with them. They already discussed the robbery situation at Thick’s slide’s house. Thick’s slide was a broad out in B-More that he fucked on the side. They expected niggas to try something sooner or later, but they didn’t expect it to happen this soon. And they never expected one of the girls to be the target.

  “I’m telling ya’ll, if they would’ve hurt Carissa…I’d have lit that whole mothafucka up!” Lavelle said breaking the silence.

  “I feel you, son, but don’t worry ‘bout shit. We gonna handle them mothafuckas,” Cameron promised.

  Lavelle was crushed. He would’ve murdered everybody in Unit A if something had happened to Carissa. The thought of almost losing her was causing him to lose his temper. Out of all the squad, he loved his girl the most. He meant what he said when he told her the moment the money was good, and they trusted and trained someone else to operate the control station at Unit C, that he would move her out. This incident made him want to move her out of Emerald City even more. In fact, the only thing he loved more than her was his squad, and in his heart, he knew that one day he would have to choose between the two.

  When the truck pulled up in front of Unit C, the women let out a sigh of relief. It had been just twenty minutes since Carissa told them what happened, and already their men were there and on the job. The sparkling black truck and spinning chrome wheels represented safety and peace of mind to them.

  One by one, they all hopped out of the truck to reassure their women that they had everything under control. Just their presence alone made them feel better.

  “How you doing, baby? They touch you? They ain’t put their fucking hands on you, did they?” Lavelle asked.

  “No, baby! They ain’t get me, but I was so scared,” Carissa cried in his arms.

  Lavelle and Carissa looked so good together that they could be brother and sister easily. His Hawaiian colored skin, matched hers perfectly. And right there on Unit C, they held and kissed each other as if it could’ve been the last time they saw each other.

  “You okay, Yvette?” Thick asked, his large and tall body covering hers like a warm blanket.

  “I’m fine, daddy. I know you gonna handle them niggas so I ain’t even worried ‘bout it.” She tried to convince her man she wasn’t punking out or nervous at the turn of events. “Just come back to me in one piece.”

  “No doubt, baby! I ain’t letting nothing keep me away from this ass,” he said pulling her closer to him.

  “I want you to go in the house, Mercedes. We gonna have Derrick and them look over the control station for the rest of the night. We gonna handle them niggas. Believe that,” Cameron said as he covered her lips with his. “We putting shit down tonight so mothafuckas know we ain’t playing out here!”

  But in all the excitement, all Mercedes could do was cry.

  “Come here, baby,” Dyson said as he grabbed Kenyetta. “Shit is all good so don’t even worry ‘bout it. Keep my side of the bed warm, ‘cause I’m coming home tonight.”

  In five minutes, the Emerald City squad had managed to eliminate all their fears. But just as quickly as they came, within minutes they were gone. Gone to handle who tried to take from them what they worked so hard to build.

  One by one, the men covered in thick North Face, Sean John and Eddie Bauer coats ran toward the truck with their heat tucked closely against their bodies. Each of them vowed to put as many bodies on their pieces as necessary. Strapped up and mad as hell, they drove to Unit A and each of them was ready for war.

  Chapter 6

  The Right Place at the Wrong Time

  December, Saturday, 1:18 a.m.

  Emerald City

  The heroin was coursing through Critter’s veins as he sat hidden against the washing machine in Unit A, on the cold dirty floor. Roaches, ants and other bugs ran all around him as he injected the heroin into his body. Although he never felt the original feeling he felt when he first shot dope, everyone knew that Emerald City had the purest shit in the D.C. area.

  With his head against the dusty wall, he let the euphoria take over his body. He could have easily spent the rest of the night in the same position, until he saw the lights come on in the laundry room, and heard several voices. Recognizing CJ and Charles’s voices, he froze and stayed quietly in his position.

  “They fucking here, man! I’m telling you they know something!” Charles, one of Doctanian’s runners whispered loudly.

  “What the fuck you talking ‘bout, Charles? For all we know, they could be here looking for just somebody, and not necessarily us. So stop tripping and shit! You making us look hot,” CJ said. CJ was also a member of Doctanian’s team.

  “Well we have to be cool but careful too. You think Doctanian know something?” Charles asked.

  “Naw, but if we start running and shit, they go
nna know something’s up. If they even think we had something to do with it, they’ll kill us,” CJ said.

  “I hope you ain’t playing, young. ‘Cause I can’t go out like this. You said it was gonna be easy. You said your girl saw them running out the stash house earlier, and that the shit was in there,” Charles said, clearly more upset and nervous than the others.

  “I know what the fuck I said. Just chill out and stop tripping. Let’s get back out there ‘fore they really start suspecting something,” CJ said.

  They were almost out the door when they heard movement in the corner. Slowly and carefully, they pulled out their weapons and moved toward the sound. They saw Critter laid up against the wall, with the dirty shoe string still wrapped around his arm that just moments earlier was used to find his vein. But Critter didn’t move. Like a possum in the woods trying to avoid his attacker, he remained still. He hoped they would think he was so doped out that he didn’t hear anything.

  “You up, nigga?” Charles asked holding the gun nervously in Critter’s direction. He was so scared that he would’ve pulled the trigger the moment he exhibited consciousness.

  “That nigga not up! He a dope head that just got high! Dirty mothafucka,” CJ added.

  “I say we kill his ass anyway. We was talking a lot of shit in here just now. What if it gets back to them Emerald City niggas?” Charles asked, ready to be the one to do the job.

  Hearing this, Critter was so scared that he was almost taken out of his high. Still, he remained in the same state they saw him in. Dear God, please don’t let me die like this. Please don’t let them kill me, he thought. Just like so many other people, he found religion only when his life depended on it.

  “Do it then. I’m outta here,” CJ said as Erick, who was also there, looked on. Before leaving Charles alone, Erick took one last look at Critter.