The moment we enter the front door, our eyes land on Betty sitting in her La-Z-Boy and eyeballing Wheel of Fortune. As usual, the house smells like a combo of Vicks VapoRub and Bengay.
“Hey, Ms. Turner,” Baby greets with a lazy wave.
Betty exhales a long breath and just ignores her.
We keep it moving and unload the beer in the refrigerator before we take out two cold ones that were already chilling in there.
“We going to be in my room, Ma,” I say, not expecting or receiving an answer.
“I hate to talk about your momma and everything, but that shit ain’t normal.” Baby pops open her beer.
“Normal?” I laugh, grabbing my Blue Magic hair grease and fat-toothed comb. “What the fuck is normal on Shotgun Row? This dirty, cracked-out muthafucka ain’t exactly what they put on postcards, now, is it?”
“Yeah. You right. You right,” Baby concedes. “But that woman ain’t said shit to me in the seven years I’ve known her. Nothing. Nada. I think if I waltzed in here on fire, she couldn’t be bothered to piss on me to put the shit out.”
“Don’t worry. You ain’t the only one.”
Baby shakes her head, chugs down half her can of beer in one gulp, and then burps so loud that the neighbors probably heard her.
“Gross.”
“You know that shit turns you on.” Baby winks.
“Stop playing and get your ass over here.” I say, sitting down on the edge of the bed and spreading my legs.
Baby rushes over and drops down on the floor in front of me. “Can you hook it up in that crisscrossed style Allen Iverson had in that picture I showed you last week? Remember that?”
“Yeah, girl. Hold your head still.” I start in on one end of Baby’s cornrows. I actually like braiding people’s hair. It is a surprising talent that came naturally to me. All I have to do is see a style one time and I can duplicate it, no problem. A lot of the girls in the set who don’t really care for me often cheese in my face, get me to do all kinds of complicated styles, and then pay me little or nothing for it. Everybody except Baby. She always breaks me off what some of those girls who work in the salons be charging—and most times a little more.
“Now this is what the fuck you need to be doing to pull you some extra money,” Baby says. “You know you got mad skills.”
“Sheeiit!”
“What?” Baby asks, trying to glance over her shoulder.
I jerk her head back around. “Keep your damn head still.”
Baby snickers. “Whatever. You know I’m right. You don’t need to be sliding your ass up and down no damn pole like the rest of those trifling hoes, tryna catch a dollar. You need to see if Ms. Anna will rent you a chair at her salon.”
“Please. I hear those bitches at the Pink Monkey be dragging in six to eight hundred a night.”
Baby’s head jerks back again. “In Memphis? At the Pink Monkey? And you believe that shit?”
I frown.
“See, that’s the problem with you, Yo-Yo. You’re too trusting. You believe every muthafuckin’ thing these trifling bitches be spitting. Six to eight hundred a night. Shit, this ain’t Vegas. Those same hoes be running up and down the Row tryna sell they food stamps for damn near thirty cents on the dollar.”
I suppose Baby has a point.
“Niggas around here always tryna act like people in those stupid-ass hip-hop videos when in reality they got they rims on some rent-to-own bullshit, and they gold chains are steady turning they necks green while slinging on the street corners.”
“Don’t hold back—tell me how you really feel.” I turn Baby’s head again.
“I’m just keepin’ this shit real. You know how I do,” Baby says, rocking her neck. “I hate this shit. I hate I ever joined up in this muthfuckin’ gangbang bullshit.”
“Girl, don’t let none of these niggas hear you mouthing off like that.”
Baby clucks her tongue. “Fuck them niggas. They can suck my dick.”
I mush her in the back of her head. “If you hate the shit so much, why did you get in? Or better yet, why don’t you get out?” I ask, since I can’t imagine anyone forcing Baby to do a damn thing she doesn’t want to, her size be damned.
“Shit. Everybody is cliqued the fuck up in this city. Disciples, muthafuckin’ Vice Lords, Crips, Bloods, and let’s not forget those grimy LMGs still floating around this sonabitch. A nigga always need somebody to have they back while they tryna make this paper. NahwhatImean?” Baby shakes her head. “Shit here in Memphis ain’t organized like it is up north or out west. Niggas be banging just ’cause they ain’t got shit else to do.”
I shake my head. “You looking at all this shit wrong. The Gangster Disciples is family. It ain’t perfect, but it’s better than the shit I grew up with in this muthafuckin’ house. I just need to lock down a chief, an enforcer, a governor—some damn nigga with some damn money, power, and respect so I can move the hell up out of here and I can get my damn kids back. And I’m going to make that shit happen. One way or another. Watch.”
10
Melanie
“We have an eleven-ninety-nine off the three thousand block of Sharpe Avenue. Car thirty-four, are you still in the area?”
I reach toward the center of the patrol car console and snatch up the hand radio. “Car thirty-four, roger. We’re on our way.” I quickly stand up between the open car door and yell to O’Malley. “We gotta roll!”
O’Malley’s head snaps away from the suspected drunk driver, who’s having a devil of a time getting through the first six letters of the alphabet.
“We have an eleven-ninety-nine,” I answer the unspoken question, and then jump in behind the wheel.
“You’re one lucky motherfucker,” O’Malley tells the red-faced driver as he shoves his driver’s license back at him. “Go home and get your drunk ass off the street!” He jogs back to the car.
“Yes, sir, officer, sir.” The good ole boy’s glassy blue eyes light up as he gives a two-finger salute and stumbles back to his black F-450 pickup truck. “Y’all have a good night.”
O’Malley barely gets his ass into the passenger seat when I slam on the accelerator and rip a sharp right to head out to the Orange Mound district to answer the call of an officer in need of assistance. Given the general address, there’s no doubt that we’re racing toward danger. Orange Mound is well-known Vice Lord territory.
I handle my cruiser like an Indy 500 driver and make the ten-minute drive in under three. The second we’re out of the car, a series of shots are either fired at us or around us. It’s hard to tell. Weapons out, I hear O’Malley speak into his shoulder radio and report shots fired with possible gang activity.
I’m more puzzled as to why the fucking street is so goddamn dark—that is, until I hear glass crunch beneath the soles of my shoes. I glance down and then up at the light pole. “Fuck!”
Instantly alarmed, O’Malley barks, “What is it?”
“These muthafuckas shot out the damn streetlights,” I hiss.
RAT-A-TAT-TAT-TAT!
I duck down and sweep my gun out in front of me.
RAT-A-TAT-TAT-TAT!
The blue track light on top of our patrol car shatters, and Sharpe Avenue is once again bathed in darkness.
“What the fuck? Guess they don’t want our asses seeing shit,” O’Malley states the obvious.
“Shhh!” I strain my ears to try and pick up any little sound. I’m not about to get my ass shot up because he wants to crack jokes. Tugging in slow, steady, deep breaths, I master keeping my heartbeat under control, but the adrenaline rushing through my body is the best kind of high I’ve ever known. I’m scared but my body feeds off danger. To my right, I hear the shuffling of feet. “POLICE. STOP OR I’LL SHOOT!”
RAT-A-TAT-TAT-TAT!
I have never moved so fast in my life, but I can hear the bullets as they slam into the concrete where I was standing just seconds ago. Together, my partner and I return fire in the direction of our shooter.
O’Malley and I rush to approach the sound; our guns sweep in circles. We reach the perpetrator moaning and groaning on the sidewalk but remain mindful that there could be others.
“Shit, man. Y’all muthafuckas shot me,” the dude moans.
“That’s what the fuck you get when you shoot at cops, you dumb motherfucker.” O’Malley delivers a vicious kick to the man’s side and then moves his foot around his moaning body. “Where the fuck is it?”
“Where’s what, muthafucka?” the perpetrator challenges through gritted teeth. “I ain’t got shit. You need to be getting my ass to the doctor.”
“Humph! Yeah, we’ll get right on it, asshole.” O’Malley kicks him again. “As far as I’m concerned, your life can bleed out right here on this dirty-ass sidewalk. That’s what most you niggers do out here, anyway, ain’t it?”
I grind my molars and cut a sharp gaze toward O’Malley’s dark silhouette while he whales on the guy. His slick mouth is exactly the reason I want to put a cap in his ass my damn self. It’s like he doesn’t see or care that my ass is black too. “O’Malley, ease the fuck up, man.”
“Yeah, O’Malley,” the perpetrator groans. “Fuckin’ ease up, man.”
“Shut up. Now where the fuck is the gun?!”
“I don’t have a goddamn gun, you stupid, racist fuck. I wasn’t the one shooting at your ass. I was tryna get out the goddamn way of you two nonaiming muthafuckas. Shit. Where in the hell do they teach you pigs how to shoot?”
At the very real possibility of him not being the shooter, my hackles jump back up and my grip tightens on my Glock. My partner grows quiet as well but removes his handcuffs from his hip. With one hand, he keeps his weapon and locks down the suspect with the other. Something shatters behind me, and I spin around shooting. I just barely make out a dark figure racing toward an old church.
“POLICE! STOP OR I’LL SHOOT!”
Our second perpetrator runs at top speed, and I take off after him.
“Johnson!” O’Malley shouts after me.
I don’t answer as I go full throttle, making good use of those many years of being a track star in high school and police academy. I close in and am just inches from reaching out and bringing him down, when suddenly both of us hit something that knocks our legs out from under us. Hitting the ground hard, I still manage to keep hold of my weapon, but the runner is able to scramble and bounce back up faster than me and is a ghost before I know it.
“Shit.” I look back down to see what I’d stumbled over, and I’m just mildly surprised to find that it’s a dead body.
To my great relief, more sirens fill the air, and seconds later a small army of lights wash the street in blue. Thirty minutes later, two ambulances arrive—one for our weaponless and wounded suspect and one for a fallen officer, Detective George Holmes, the cop we’d raced there to try and assist.
Detective Holmes’s body is pumped full of holes. I question what the fuck a plainclothes cop is doing in this section of town by himself. Judging by the expressions on some of my colleagues’ faces that very question is dancing inside their heads as well. I look around, trying to come up with a plausible scenario, but everything that races across my mind is shady as hell.
Detective Holmes had been hailed as the next supercop in the Commercial Appeal, someone the city hadn’t seen the likes of since my father’s heyday. But clearly his ass wasn’t bullet-proof.
“Everybody just wants to fuck the police in this motherfucker, right?” O’Malley roars, pained by losing one of our own. “Just fuck the police!” He starts marching toward the gurney on which our wounded suspect lies, waiting to be lifted into the back of the remaining ambulance.
I quickly jump into action and try to pull him back. “O’Malley, don’t do it. Walk the shit off,” I urge. This is the part I hate, always trying to rein in a partner who acts an ass before he thinks shit through. His specialty is blurring the lines of questioning a suspect and beating the holy shit out of them.
“Nah. Fuck that,” O’Malley roars. “I’m sick of these ignorant niggers terrorizing these damn streets. This damn city is like a fuckin’ war zone with these damn ghetto hamsters running around, thinking life is a damn video game.” He wrenches out of my grasp and keeps marching toward the gurney, which is surrounded by paramedics.
“All right, who is your friend out there?” he barks at our suspect.
I reach my partner’s side, hoping some more shit isn’t about to pop off, especially now that curious residents are starting to mill outside their houses, people who can be possible witnesses to what will undoubtedly be described as police brutality before the eleven o’clock news.
“Hey, hey. Get away from me, man. I already told you that I wasn’t the one shooting at y’all.”
“If it wasn’t you, then it was one of your fuckin’ homeys, right? Your partnas, your family?”
“Man, you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
“Oh? Is that right?” O’Malley challenges.
“Yeah. That’s right, asshole.”
My hackles start to rise again. O’Malley is definitely about to do something stupid.
“So you’re just a fine upstanding citizen out for a stroll in one of the most dangerous Vice Lord territories? You think I’m stupid enough to believe that, you dumb fuck?”
The tall brother shifts his incredibly big, brown eyes toward me. “Is he for real?”
As expected, O’Malley’s temper snaps and he delivers a hard right hook to the boy’s wounded shoulder.
“Aaaargh!”
The paramedics jump in shock, the group of nosy and curious residents gasp and point, and the boys in blue quickly form a protective ring around the back of the ambulance.
“What the fuck?!” our suspect yells. “Y’all just going to stand by and let this muthafucka treat me like Rodney King and shit?” He cradles his bleeding shoulder.
“That’s right, because you and your Vice Lord pussies just killed a cop!”
“Man, I done told you that I ain’t have shit to do with all that.”
O’Malley socks him another blow.
“Aaaargh! Shit! Shit! Shit!”
“Did you see that shit?” a curbside witness asks loudly.
People start shaking their heads, and the paramedics start looking jumpy.
“S-sir, I need to ask you to back away from the patient.” A paramedic attempts to push O’Malley back.
“Get the fuck away from me.” He smacks the man’s hand away. “I’m interrogating a suspect, and you’re interrupting official police business,” he yells. “Gangsta Homey is a fuckin’ cop killer.”
“I told you I ain’t killed no cop!” the suspect yells, his eyes blazing.
“O’Malley, you’re causing a scene,” I hiss. “We can do this another time,” I insist.
“If it wasn’t you, then it was one of your friends, and you both can go down as far as I’m concerned.”
Despite the pain, the boy manages to laugh in O’Malley’s face. “Whatever, man. You ain’t got shit on me and you fuckin’ know it. And don’t be false flagging me as some gangbanger ’cause I don’t rep no set, and you ain’t going to find nobody that’s going to say I do.”
I shake my head. The shit didn’t sound right. “You’re not Vice but you feel comfortable strolling through VL territory unstrapped?”
“That’s right. Ain’t nobody going to fuck with me down here—other than you two shooting-challenged muthafuckas.”
O’Malley cocks his fist back again. Our suspect flinches and the paramedics and I all move to shove O’Malley away from the boy.
“All right. All right. I’m cool,” O’Malley says, opening his fist as a sign of surrender.
Everyone eases back.
I look back at our suspect, who surprises me by flashing two large dimples. “You’re not Vice Lord but clearly you enjoy the luxury of their security. So who are yo
u?”
The kid’s lips spread wider as his gaze shoots back over to O’Malley. “Just another nigga, I suppose.”
“Give me a name,” I say, annoyed. “Your government name.”
“Raymond Lewis,” he says. “But my friends call me Profit.”
I almost shit a brick.
11
Ta’Shara
“Wake your ass up, bitch! Profit’s been shot!” Essence shouts into the cell phone. “Girl, all these people blazing up my phone saying that the po-po capped his ass over in Orange Mound.”
“Wh-what?” My eyes spring open as my heart leaps into the center of my throat. “Say that shit again.” I rip the sheets off my body and tumble out of bed.
Click. Click.
“Hold on, girl. That’s my other line.”
“Wait! No! Essence?” There’s no use; she has already clicked over to the other line. “Shit.” I turn on my night-light and then rush over to my chest of drawers with my cell phone still pressed against my ear. With one hand, I start pulling shit out and not really giving a fuck if it matches or not. “C’mon, E. Hurry the fuck up,” I hiss, impatient for my girl to come back on the line.
“T, you there?”
“Yeah, girl.” I stop with just one leg jammed into a fresh pair of jeans. “What the fuck is going on? Is Profit okay?”
Essence clucks my tongue. “Giiiirrrl, they saying that some serious shit was going down over off Sharpe. There’s a dead cop and everything.”
My legs nearly drop me on the spot. “But is he all right?”
“Everybody saying he’s still breathing, if that’s what you mean.”
Relieved, I close my eyes and whisper a prayer of thanks before I return my mind to some of the other shit my girl is saying. “They ain’t saying Profit killed a cop, are they? I know he wouldn’t do no shit like that.”
“Fuck, girl. Everybody saying different shit. One chick said that he went fuckin’ Tony Montana on their asses, and I had someone else tell me that he just got caught being at the wrong place at the wrong time.”
I’m stressed again. “Where is he now?”
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