by Sa'id Salaam
“Surprised that nigga ain’t try to come with us,” Sparks said when Black returned to the car.
“You know he did,” he laughed as he put the kilo under his seat. “I told him we was hitting the club tonight.”
There would be no tonight or tomorrow for those two. The music blasting through the car was their going away party. The blunt they smoked was their one for the road. After that day, people would pour out a little liquor for them and speak of them in the past tense.
Trigga and Troy parked across from the ambush spot and waited. They chose that car wash because you couldn’t drive through. Once you pulled in, you were stuck.
“That them?” Troy asked when the Chevy pulled in. It was a rhetorical question so Trigga didn’t bother to answer. He put the van in drive and crept across the street.
“Car wash? Five bucks!” an industrious junkie announced when Black pulled in.
“Why not? Still got fifteen minutes,” Black miscalculated. He had two or three minutes tops left in life. He backed into the stall and the junkie got to work.
No sooner did he begin spraying the car, did the van pull up and block the exit. When the side door popped open, he had seen enough. Trigga and Troy jumped out as he scurried behind the car.
“What the…” was all Sparks got out before shots rang out. He lifted his arms to block the shots and quickly realized the fallacy in that. The huge slugs blew chunks of meat and bone from his forearms. When he dropped them, the bullets slammed into his head and chest making him a memory.
Black ducked down flat to escape the flurry of death crashing through the car. There was a brief pause and he made a dash. As soon as he opened his door, the firing began again. The bullets easily passed through the car door and knocked him down. Trigga walked forward letting off single shots.
“Hey man!” the junkie complained when Black picked him up to use as a shield. The bullets easily passed through his emaciated body and dropped Black again.
“Wait! Wait! I got a whole brick in my car. You can have it!” Black pleaded.
“Keep it!” Trigga barked and tugged on the trigger. Two rounds literally tore the top of his head off answering the question of if he actually had a brain or not.
“Let’s ride!” Troy yelled and jumped back in the van. Trigga was right behind him and pulled off. Once they safely made it to the highway, he pulled out his phone.
“Done deal,” Trigga reported proudly when Meisha picked up.
“All three of them?” she asked hopefully.
“You mean three as in the junkie that got caught up or was it ‘posed to be three in the car?” he asked even though he knew the answer.
“Aw man,” she pouted and hung up. On cue, Bad Ass came in from the trap to put the money up and empty his bladder. “A-yo, you seen that nigga Shawty out there?” she asked.
“Just seen the clown,” Bad Ass snarled twisting his face up. He felt some kind of way about getting knocked out and not being able to get some get back.
“Here,” Cameisha said extending her pistol.
“What’s this for?” he asked just to be certain.
“Time for you to bust your cherry. Time for you to get your dick wet!”
****
Self, Bad Ass, Angel, and Leera sat around smoking blunts while a DVD played. Only the girls paid attention because the boys had murder on their minds. Self knew Black was deceased so he waited for the official news to comfort his girl. The fact that it happened across town shifted suspicion from them. The fake kilo the police found allowed them to sweep it under the rug as drug related.
Meanwhile Bad Ass was mentally preparing to kill for the first time in his young life. Bust his cherry. Since Black wasn’t around to feed the trappers, he knew the trap would be slow. That was when he would make his move. He was a little antsy about it, but nothing more. He couldn’t wait to murder Shawty.
“Ugh! Let’s go upstairs!” Angel hissed when Leera ducked under a blanket on Bad Ass’ lap.
“Ugh nothing. You better stop being scared to suck dick! How you ‘posed to keep a man if you don’t suck no dick?” she shot back. It sounded good in theory but in reality, she sucked plenty of dicks and still couldn’t keep a man. They’d had that same debate so many times that Angel refused to go there again. “If you won’t, someone else will!”
“Whatever. If he wants some head he can go get some,” she said pulling Self upstairs.
“You know…”
“Shut it! Zip!” Angel demanded knowing he was about to side with her friend. She was far too high and horny to argue so she began to strip. Getting naked must be contagious because Self quickly followed suit. Once they reached their birthday suits, they climbed in bed and had sex for the third time that day.
“Man, I told you not to cum in my mouth,” Leera moaned once Bad Ass did just that. She really didn’t mind.
“Uh…” he replied not knowing what to say. And really, what was there to say? How can a woman suck, kiss, lick, and stroke a man’s penis and expect him to say ‘stop’, wait, I'm about to cum? Not going to happen.
“Your turn,” she said, trying him.
He frowned thinking about how much her name got tossed around the trap. Seemed every one of the trappers tossed her up. Meanwhile, none of them got close to Angel.
“Not today,” he declined like he did the day before and would do the next day. She twisted her lips as he rolled a condom on then assumed the position. Once Bad Ass entered her doggy style, he humped her hard and fast like a doggy does.
The sounds of sex echoed throughout the otherwise quiet apartment. Splashing, skin smacking, shit talking, and moans reverberated in the air. That was followed by the grunt of a good nut and the soft snores that follow a good nut. A couple of hours later both Self and Bad Ass popped up as if synchronized.
“You ready?” Self whispered when he met Bad Ass in the kitchen.
“Fuck yeah, that nigga snuffed me,” he whispered back and made sure a round was in the chamber.
“Want me to come?”
“Nah, stay here,” Bad Ass replied and slid out the back door. He slowly began to creep towards the back of the complex where Shawty lived with his mother. Actually, he lived in the unfinished basement with a lock on the door preventing him from stealing anything else. He wasn’t the only one creeping.
“What y’all doing?” Leera whispered when she snuck up on Self in the kitchen. He was startled by her voice and spun on his heels. Got startled again when he saw Leera was naked.
“Huh?” was all that would come out. For a reply, she dropped in front of him and went for his zipper. “W…wh…what are you…oh!”
He got it real quick when he entered her hot mouth. Instead of looking out for his partner, he watched her blow him. While she was sucking him, Shawty was sucking on a glass dick. He loaded a rock on his shooter and took a long sizzling pull.
“Mmm,” both Leera and Shawty moaned as their sucking paid off. She got a mouthful of cum while he filled his lungs with crack smoke. She swallowed, stood, and walked off. He wondered who the fuck was tapping on his door that time of night. Hoping they had more dope, he went to investigate.
“Who?” Shawty demanded. He was hot about having to release the hit from his lungs sooner than planned. A veteran crack head can hold a hit for up to seven minutes. They would make great pearl divers if they weren’t crack heads.
Bad Ass ignored the question and tapped again. His heart began to pound in his ears when he heard Shawty opening the door. He lifted the gun, closed his eyes, and fired twice. When he opened them, Shawty was staring back in shock.
“You…tried to shoot me?” he asked in disbelief. That time Bad Ass took aim and fired into his face. The shot dropped him in the doorway so he shot him again and took off.
Self was watching Leera play in her pussy when he heard footsteps coming fast. A second later Bad Ass rushed inside breathing heavily.
“I did that shit son! Knocked that nigga’s block off!” he wh
ispered loudly.
“Sh!” Self warned knowing Leera was awake. She had just proved to him two things at once. One, she could not be trusted and two, she had some good ass head.
Chapter 16
“You have been ducking me!” Anna bellowed when she finally caught up with her cousin at his condo.
“Obviously not well enough,” he shot back and shot Manny a cross look for letting her in. He shrugged helplessly and slinked away. “Now that you have tracked me down, what do you want?”
“Have you spoken to Mama Salazar?” she began. The secret of his sister was on the tip of her tongue waiting to escape.
“Por que?” he frowned meaning he hadn’t. “What do you want? Another hand out? The family is on the verge of war and you have your hand out! Another car? Money?”
“I…”
“You are selfish! They say the product is dangerous? Well fix it! Here!” he yelled thrusting a kilo of cocaine at her. He scrambled through his bag and came up with a CD containing Samantha’s formula. “If you’re not with us, you’re against us!”
“Si, I…” was all Anna could get out before Juan stormed off. He was plenty mad but part of the rush was some good white girl head across town. He had moved Samantha up to the master bedroom. She was still under guard and without communication, but Juan was spending all of his spare time over there.
Anna looked at the brick of pure cocaine in one hand and the CD containing the formula in the other. It was true that she could get anything she wanted from her drug dealing clan. If she could help them in return she would. Maybe it would prevent more dead bodies from filling the morgue. She put them in her purse and left right behind her cousin.
****
“Think there’s drugs in her bag?” Brice asked as he and Toshiba watched Anna come out of the condo they had been staking out. They both knew Juan wouldn’t have anything on him. The shell game of multiple stops at multiple houses made him hard to follow.
“And if she does have some? Possession, probation, slap on the wrist. I want the big fish,” she supervised from the passenger seat. “You like?” she laughed when Anna bent over her trunk. The move stretched her tight skirt against her round Columbian ass showing she was partial to French cut panties.
“It’s a’ight, not as nice as yours,” Brice chuckled. The compliment was meant as a joke even though the younger man and older lady would eventually fuck if they kept spending so much time together. His mind flashed to Cameisha for a second. That was the tail he really wanted to tail.
“Well, let’s follow her anyway so we can make our report,” she sighed. Part of their detail was to follow the boring girl once a week. She went to work, home, church, and to see family. Totally predictable.
****
“Remarkable!” Anna remarked as she read the formula on her computer. She tried to hate on her discovery but it was brilliant. “I have to try this! I’ll reduce the electrons and maybe, just maybe…”
The very bright girl realized it would be very dumb to try to use the lab at work. Instead, she hit the supply closet and loaded up on equipment. Beakers, burners, and assorted items went in a box. After loading the borrowed equipment in her car, she went back and got Harry. Harry was the resident lab rat who worked as a guinea pig.
Anna started with a gram and ended with four. She prayed a little prayer before injecting a rat sized dose in Harry’s leg. If rats can smile, that’s what he did before jumping on his little wheel. He ran for a while then got off and stared up at Anna for another hit like a little junkie.
“I think we have something!” she cheered and got back to work. By the end of the night, she had four kilos of synthetic coke. “Now what?”
****
Anna wasn’t the only one playing with drugs. Lisa pulled out the package of heroin daily and pushed it around with her fingernail. That went on for a week before she finally took a taste. Literally, at first, as she licked the bitter powder. That taste sped through every cell in her body and activated her addition. She used that same manicured nail to scoop a hit of Boy into each nostril.
“Oh boy!” she applauded as that old feeling came back. She went into a nod right there on the toilet. That was exactly how Dasia found her.
“Girl I know you heard me…you ok?” she asked confused by the curious angle.
“Mm, better than ever!” Lisa gushed. To prove it, she dipped between Dasia’s legs and ate her better than ever.
****
That was life for Dasia and Lisa. One big party, turn down for what? Like they say, it ain’t tricking if it’s stolen. The condo was full of different people all day and most nights. Rita and Tina popped through daily to smoke, snort, and steal as much as they could.
In the beginning, Dasia would pull an ounce a day from one of the two remaining kilos. Some days two, weekends even more. A cloud of weed smoke perpetually hung in the air like Beijing smog.
Nightly orgies became the order of the day. The libations fed libidos, which led to licentiousness. Cash Money would pop through from time to time to discreetly serve Lisa the heroin she was using more and more often. He or any other guys would be treated to blow jobs or pony rides by Rita or Tina. Dasia felt a stab of heterosexuality watching Tina slowly ride him on the sofa. For the first time in a long time, she craved some dick.
Yup, one big party. The girls maxed out the thousand dollar daily limit at the ATM every day. They ate, shopped, and partied like there was no tomorrow. The irony was that if you live life at that speed there won’t be a tomorrow. It couldn’t last; any day could be your last.
Yup, all bad until it got worse. Lisa hid her heroin use from Dasia as best as she could. She started off small by mixing the coke and heroin together in what’s known as a speedball. The volatile combination wreaks havoc on the brain as it pushes and pulls at the same time. It’s the same shit that killed John Belushi, River Phoenix, and a bunch of other people you’ve never heard of. Dasia stumbled across her new addiction quite by accident.
“Li-Li! All that gone from yesterday?” Dasia called out to Lisa in the shower. She’d pulled two ounces of coke out just the night before and couldn’t find a trace of it. She looked everywhere except in Rita’s purse, which is where it was. She’d cuffed it that morning before she went home.
“In the living room!” Lisa yelled from under the water and steam.
“I’m in the living room,” Dasia muttered to herself. A crystal candy jar that used to hold the coke sat empty on the glass table. Lisa’s purse was open on the sofa so Dasia checked there. “Here we go!”
The coke had an odd texture to it but it wasn’t the time to try to analyze. It was time to get high. She lit a blunt and took a hearty pull as she fixed two long lines to start the day off with.
“Oh my!” Dasia grimaced curiously when she inhaled the first line. She could tell immediately that something was different. What, she wasn’t sure so she leaned in and snorted the remaining line.
Ask any addict who is addicted to anything how they got hooked and most will tell you it was because of that first hit. That first blast of euphoria that they will never, ever, no matter how much you smoke, snort, or shoot, be able to duplicate. Most will spend the rest of their junkie careers pursing what they can’t catch. Chasing the dragon. Stalking a lie, they held as a truth.
“Mm,” she moaned as they life-altering chemicals sped through her system. She swayed gently to the sexy music playing in her mind and leaned into her first nod.
“Oh no!” Lisa said when she came in and found Dasia in the obtuse angle. Her eyes shot to her open purse, the open package, and then back to her lover. The moment of dread passed and morphed into relief. She would no longer have to hide. She spilled some of the dope on the table and lined it up.
After she inhaled them both, she joined Dasia in a nod.
Chapter 17
With Black now permanently in the past tense Cameisha was officially the man in Eastwyck. She directly supplied the trappers. The introduction of t
he good dope caused an influx of new customers. Crack heads from all over Decatur were finding out about the glass being sold on Candler Road. That was quickly going to become a problem because the supply was running out.
Trigga kept his word about locking down the west side of Atlanta. Westfield and Oak Tree Apartments exclusively sold his dope. The mid-level dealers felt the pinch and came to him to supply them too, but he too was running out of dope. The only thing worse than not having enough customers is having enough customers but not enough dope. He came home with sixty thousand dope dollars hoping to buy three kilos from Cameisha.
“No can do,” Cameisha said firmly when he rushed into the kitchen while she was cooking crack. She even shook her head ‘no’ so there would be no misunderstanding. Or so you would think.
“What do you mean no?” he whined like a five year old being denied a juice box. He had one kilo left and it would not last.
“No. It’s an adjective. Used elliptically as a slogan, notice, etc. To forbid, reject, deny, or deplore a thing specified,” she replied sarcastically, with her smart ass. She could hear music from “Jeopardy” coming out of his ears as he tried to translate what she’d said. He cocked his head curiously like a puppy does. “No means no babe. I ain’t got it. I’m at the end of the road!”
“Shit. I hate to have to whip this last one! I don’t wanna lose my new constituency,” he grumbled.
“Constituency! My baby been watching CNN!” she teased.
“Nah, my nigga Verb said it in a song. Real talk, we need a connect shawty!”
“I know, I know,” she said racking her brain for a source. She ran through her mental rolodex searching names and faces until she struck gold. “Oh, oh! I know who!”
“Who?” Trigga yelled behind her as she took off out of the kitchen. She ran into the living room and grabbed their photo album.
“Yo, ‘member that couple we met down in Belize? They had the little boy?” she asking fingering through the pictures.