Partnerz in Crime

by Kareem

  “Man, y’all a mess,” I told Hammer. “Why is she upset, though, Ham?”

  “She just need some dick, K. That’s why you shoulda put that dick fresh out of prison on her last night!”

  “You a mess, yo.”

  “Real talk, my nigga. I love my sister-in-law, don’t get me wrong. But her ass need to be fucked! She hear me and her sister getting it in all the damn time. Shit, I keep this dick up in Kolanda! That’s why I have to turn my music up loud in the house sometimes. Kolanda’s a screamer!”

  “So you actually think that’s what she needs, huh, Ham?”

  “Know so. Listen, man. Imagine how it was for us when we were in the joint and couldn’t get no pussy. We were miserable as a mu’fucka. Women are the same way.”

  “You got a point,” I agreed. God knows doing time was killing me, not being able to touch, kiss, and put this dick up in one.

  We took a seat inside the car. That’s when it hit me to ask my brother something I’d been wanting to ask him since he showed me his narcotics stash. “Hammer, I got something I wanna ask you. I have to.”

  “Then ask, Korey. What’s up?” He gave me his undivided attention.

  “I think I know the answer already, but until I hear it directly from your mouth, I won’t know for sure.”

  “What’s up?”

  “The question is, are you back like knee-deep in the game? ’Cause, dawg, I mean, you haven’t been out a whole year and you rolling like a mutha!”

  Hammer started laughing when I asked that question. “K, man, your boy ain’t faking. I’m trying to get filthy rich or, like my man 50 Cent say, ‘die trying!’”

  “So you knee-deep in this shit, huh?”

  “I am. But, K. This time I didn’t choose the game. It chose me. And, bruh, that’s on my solid.” Whenever Hammer and I said that something we said was on our “solid” that meant it could be supremely trusted. No exception.

  “How so?” I asked, wanting to know. I had to know.

  “It’s sort of a long story. But when the Feds had me in Edgefield, South Carolina, I met an old man from Matthews, North Carolina. He didn’t have any homies on the compound, so I used to go up to his cell and kick it with him. You know how we do the older cats. We make sure they okay. Well, I used to help the old man out a lot. Like I would carry his commissary bags for him. I would help with his laundry and all that. Whenever the old man needed me, basically I was there. He told me that I was like the son he never had. He began sharing personal shit with me, like how he lost his beautiful wife giving birth to their twins. When he showed me his girls, man, I was in love! He ended up letting me write Kolanda. She and I hit it off immediately like it was meant to be. When she and Keisha would come see their father, Kolanda would call me out. Their father used to speak highly of me in their presence. He was good people, my nigga. I didn’t know until later that he was one of the biggest drug dealers in Matthews! Pops was stacked like that, yo!”

  “Word?” I interrupted.

  “Dawg, that’s on everything. Pops was knee-deep in this shit! The Feds gave him life! All type of niggas he helped out and shit snitched on him.”

  “Dayum!”

  “Yeah, he was that dude,” Hammer carried on. “He was also bad off sick, Korey. One night, he and I were just kicking it in his cell, and he started coughing and wouldn’t stop. I went and told the dorm officer, who checked him out, then called medical. They took him out and, dawg”—Hammer paused and looked somewhere left of me with tears in his eyes—“that was the last I saw of him. He passed away from lung cancer. That man was like my father, K. And you know I never knew my real father and mother. I fucking grew up in foster homes and shit. So, to be honest, I clung to the old man. He was my fam, like you. His death hurt me.”

  “Man, I’m sorry to hear that, bruh,” I told him as he wiped a tear from his eye. I knew this guy meant a lot to him because I’d never seen him get emotional like this.

  “It is what it is, Korey. Shortly after his death, I was released. When Kolanda and Keisha came to get me, me and Kolanda locked it in. We got married. Later that same day, she told me that her father knew that I would come home sooner than I thought I would. He always kept up with the crack law and shit. That’s when she took me in that same room I took you in. The one with the safe. She handed me a piece of paper with the combination to the safe and told me that whatever was in it, her father wanted me to have. It was full of heroin and two hundred thousand!”

  “Wow!”

  “That’s why I said the game chose me. I wasn’t expecting this, Korey. I actually thought I was gonna faint when I saw all that shit! I couldn’t keep the money and flush the drugs, my nigga. So, I did what any hustler would do and started grinding!”

  I sat looking at my brother, who looked me in the eyes the whole time. How could he have known that the game would come to sit on his lap like a very beautiful woman and flirt with him beyond what he could fathom? Again, I didn’t know how to respond to this.

  “Everything I just shared with you is the truth, Korey. And, dawg, I’m not trying to pull you into my newfound world. But, at the same time, I trust you more than anyone. You’re my dawg. Ride with me on this shit if you’d like. But if you don’t wanna roll, hey, I can’t make you do what you don’t want to do.”

  “Just tell me what you plan to do once you get rid of all of that dope. Are you done? What’s your plan?” I asked.

  “The plan is to stack the dough until we can’t stack no more, my nigga. ’Cause you can never have enough money in this world. It’s what makes the world turn. After we hustle off everything, though, we’ll invest in some legitimate shit. You got any ideas?”

  “I’ve got plenty.”

  “Well, don’t lose them. For now, I need you to ride with me to go pick something up.” Hammer ignited his engine. 50 Cent’s “Hustler’s Ambition” began playing.

  “Something like what, yo?”

  “You’ll see.” He backed out of the lot and hit the road.

  * * *

  “I got this whole little area over here sewn up, K,” Hammer said to me after we rode about thirty-five minutes out to Lake Norman. We had pulled into a nice, seemingly quiet trailer park. I saw sprinkles of whites throughout this huge trailer park.

  “By that, you mean—”

  “Got a chick over here running things for me. Man, K, heroin move over here like a muthafucka! Cats over this way can’t get enough of that good-good I got. Right now, though, I need to step inside that trailer over there,” Hammer said, pointing at it. “Gotta pick up some loot as well as make this here drop.”

  “A drop?” I shot back. I had no idea he had dope in the car.

  He retrieved a brown paper bag from under his seat and tucked it under his arm. “Also, my nigga, hear me good. If I’m not out of that trailer in five minutes, you come in the muthafucka to see what’s up. Now, here.” Hammer again reached under his seat. This time he pulled a Mac 10 from it. He placed it in my lap. “Five minutes, my nigga.”

  “Yo, what’s this?”

  “You know what it is, K.”

  “What you want me to do with this?” I gripped it to give it back. Before I could, he was getting out of the car.

  “You know what to do with it. Have my fuckin’ back!” He exited the car and walked to the trailer he pointed at. He was looking both to his left and right as if checking for the cops, just like we used to do back in the day while hustling hard on the corner. I couldn’t believe he had put me in this position so damn soon. But what the fuck was I supposed to do? I had to back his play.

  Chapter 10

  Don’t Test Me

  I cocked the Mac to make sure it was ready to fire in the event I needed to handle business. I checked my watch. Hammer had been inside now a little over two minutes. My phone vibrated. I checked it. It was Keisha. I sent her to voice mail when I saw this middle-aged white man approach the same trailer Hammer entered. The guy entered with the butt of a revolver sticking ou
t of his back pocket. My heart rate began to increase, and my hands began to perspire. They always did whenever I was faced with involving myself in dangerous situations.

  Figuring something might not be going right with my brother inside this trailer, as well as seeing that he’d been in there for five minutes now, I exited the car with the Mac under my armpit. I stepped to the door and knocked on it.

  The guy I saw enter cracked the door open. “Can I help you with something?”

  “Sure you can.” I yanked the door open and aimed the Mac at his face. “You can take me to where Hammer is inside this trailer,” I spat, looking around. I didn’t see him anywhere. The guy quickly threw his hands up. “Where is he?” I shouted, before reaching for the pistol in his back pocket.

  “He’s in the back, man,” he stuttered.

  “All is well, K,” Hammer said, walking out of a room carrying a small garbage bag. An older petite blonde was following him. “I was just on my way out.”

  “Hammer, what’s going on here?” the man I had the gun on looked over at Hammer and asked.

  “It’s cool, K. You can let him go. Larry works for Sheila here.”

  I pushed him over toward Hammer and the white bitch next to him. Hammer reached inside the front pocket of his jeans and put a wad of cash in this cat Larry’s hand. “Sorry for your troubles,” he told him. “C’mon, K. Let’s get out of here.”

  I dumped the bullets from Larry’s revolver onto the floor, then tossed him his pistol.

  “Sheila, call me when you run out. And, by the way, no need for y’all to be alarmed. This here is my brother. He was just looking out for my best interests.”

  We rolled up out of that trailer. The moment we got inside Hammer’s car, he looked over at me and said, “Nigga, you still on point just like you used to be in the old days!”

  “Man, why the fuck you put me in that position? You could have gotten that cat Larry shot.”

  “He’ll be all right.” Hammer burned rubber out of that trailer park. “My nigga, I’m glad your ass home!”

  When he said that, my phone vibrated. I retrieved it from my pocket. It was Keisha. She was calling, wanting to know what time I planned on seeing my daughter. I told her after six. At the moment, it was a little after one. When I got off the phone with Keisha, I told Hammer to pull over and stop the car. I had something to say. He reluctantly pulled over in spite of us being dirty with guns and a car full of money.

  “Yo,” I said to him. “Look at me.” He gave me his undivided attention. “I just got home from giving the fucking Feds twelve long years of my life. I wanna see my daughter, and I want to take shit slow. I told you this already. Don’t fuckin’ put me in a situation like that again, dawg. Besides, you know me. You know I’ll be there for you through thick and thin. I’ll never leave you hanging if I can help it. But you also know that I’m not the type who likes exposing my hand before it’s time.”

  “I know, K. And, yo, my apology. Real talk, dawg. My apology,” he looked me in the eye and said to show that his apology was genuine. “I just needed to see if you still had it, my nig. That’s all.”

  “Don’t test me. Never. ’Cause you already know how I get down. In the future, tell me what’s up your sleeve. And, if I choose to take part, respect that. If I don’t, respect that too, yo. We’re men, Partnerz in Crime kings, remember? Not peewees. Peewees slip out here and end up in prison or fucking laid out for a coroner to come pick ’em up. That’s not for us.”

  “I got you, K. One love, my nigga. That’ll never happen again.” Hammer locked trigger fingers with mine, Partnerz in Crime style. “I love you, K, man. Boy, I love you to death!” he said the thug way.

  “The feeling is mutual. That much we should never get twisted or misunderstood.”

  Chapter 11

  Visiting My Daughter

  “That’s where my li’l daughter and her mother live, right there, Keisha.” I pointed to their place as we were going through Double Oaks Apartments neighborhood. Being in this area on the west side of Charlotte brought back so many memories. Mainly because just a few blocks away from Double Oaks Apartments was a neighborhood Hammer and I both hustled in day and night: Fairview Homes. Hammer and I both gained street reps on Kenny Street as being young, ruthless drug dealers who cats didn’t play around with when it came to paying up money owed to us.

  However, no matter how bad you may be in the streets, someone will always try you. One cat snatched an ounce of powder coke from me one day and ran. When I caught up to him, I shot him in the face three times, poured some coke over him, and left his ass laid out like a rug next to an abandoned school building. His death was seen as drug related by authorities. Luckily for me, no one was around to witness the shooting. No one but my partner in crime, Hammer. That’s how I got the aka Killa Korey. Hammer gave it to me.

  Back in those days, it was nothing for someone to come out the house and step on an addict’s thrown-away dirty needle if not careful. It was a common sight to witness crackheads ripping and running up and down the street and throughout the neighborhood in search of their next fix, like zombies!

  I suddenly felt bad thinking about how it used to be and how my thug associates and me kept the elderly up all times of the night with our around-the-clock drug dealing and with the reckless shooting of guns. We were all just a bad influence on the kids and our whole community. One thing I was glad to see, though, was this whole area over here now had been cleaned up and remodeled for the better. The apartments and houses had been upgraded. No one was on the corners like back in the day, selling drugs.

  “That apartment right there, with the MERRY CHRISTMAS written in different-color Christmas lights. That’s where my daughter and her mother live,” I reiterated after briefly reminiscing over how it used to be over here.

  Keisha pulled up directly in front of my daughter’s mother’s apartment. “Okay, then,” she said. “Are you ready?”

  “Not really.”

  “Why? What’s wrong?” She looked over at me with concern.

  “I haven’t seen my daughter in years, Ke. Her mother stopped bringing her to see me. Just stopped everything. Olivia was about to be eight the last time I saw her.”

  “Why did her mother stop bringing her to see you? What did you do, Korey?”

  “I don’t know.” I ran my hand over my head, wanting to know the answer to that one myself. “I guess she just wanted to move on. After all, I had a lot of time to do in the fed.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “I know, Ke. She should have still kept in touch for our daughter’s sake, right?” I cut in.

  “Yeah.”

  “Shit happens. I know that it hurt me not hearing from them. At least the number and address hasn’t changed, though. Matter fact, after we got back from Geneva’s last night, I went to my room and called my daughter’s mother. She answered, but I hung up.”

  “Why you do that, Korey?” Keisha asked with a chuckle.

  “Fear, I guess. I don’t know.” I shrugged.

  “What is there to fear?”

  “The unknown. Rejection after all these years. For all I know, Shamika, my daughter’s mother, might be married with another child!”

  “Look. The fact of the matter is, Korey, the two of you have a daughter together. You’re home and want to be a part of her life. There’s nothing to fear. If your daughter’s mother has moved on, hey, wish her the best and do what you can to be a good father to your daughter. That’s all you can do, Korey. That’s all you can do.”

  I nodded in agreement with Keisha’s advice. And seeing that it was after 6:00 p.m., I reached into my pocket and retrieved my address book to double-check my daughter’s mother’s address so that we could be perfectly sure we had arrived at the right apartment. It was the correct address.

  “Would you prefer I wait here in the car?”

  “I don’t know yet. Hold on.” I whipped my phone out and dialed my daughter’s mother’s number.

  Th
e phone rang four times before I heard a soft female’s voice. “Hello?”

  “May I please speak to Olivia?”

  “Speaking.”

  “Hey, baby girl. You know who this is?”

  “Voice sounds familiar, but no, I don’t. Who is this?”

  I didn’t know whether to say “Korey” or “your daddy,” being that I hadn’t been physically in my daughter’s life for a long time. Since she had my blood running through her veins, though, and she dayum near looked just like me, she was mine and, like Keisha told me, I had nothing to fear.

  “This . . . this your dad.”

  “Yeah, right! My father’s in prison, and I haven’t heard from him in five years. So whoever this is,” my daughter said, stretching the word, “find someone else to play with, please!”

  “No joke, Olivia, babe. This is your dad. I’m home.”

  “Dad, is this really you? Or is this somebody playing with me? Mama, I think one of your friends playing games on the phone, talking about they my daddy! Isn’t Daddy still in prison?” I heard her say to her mom.

  “With all the time the judge gave him, the last I looked, yes, he’s still in prison. Give me the phone,” her mother replied. She grabbed the phone from Olivia. “Hello, who is this?” she said.

  “The man you left hanging in the joint.”

  “Korey, is this you?”

  “Unless you got a baby by another cat under the same name, it is.”

  “Where you calling from, Korey?”

  “My cell.”

  “Jail?”

  “No, my cell phone. I’m in your driveway.”

  Seconds later, she was opening her living room door and stepping out on her porch. I stepped out of Keisha’s BMW and stood in her driveway with my hands lifted skyward.

  “Oh, my Godddd!” I read her lips as she stretched her neck forward. She looked back into her crib and motioned for our daughter. Olivia ran to me with her mother following.

  “Daddy, I thought someone was playing with me!” She smiled, wrapping her arms around me. “I didn’t know it was you, for real!” She hugged me tight.