The second possible liability are what Clyde called the crabs, who feel that their jewelry is too precious to part with. Clyde heard everything from “I can’t give you this, man, my momma gave me this before she die,” to, “You might as well shoot me now, ’cause I worked too hard for this shit!”
Then there were the last, and possibly the worst: the sleepers. These are the ones who flop and fall out in fear from the robbery. They were easy to spot because they did their best Fred Sanford act feigning a heart attack before falling out, faking they were asleep or unconscious.
Clyde taught Keyshia that when she spotted these kinds to take them out hard and take them out quick. He told her to hit them hard on the bridge of their nose because that would cause them excruciating pain, making them forget all about being a hero, crab, or sleeper instantly.
Time is of the essence in any robbery. You want to be in and out in a matter of minutes, never giving the victims time to think. Never be greedy, take what’s obvious—rings, necklaces, wallets, purses, watches, bracelets, and money clips. Anything above that is too time-consuming and you risk losing everything because of greed!
Put Vaseline around your eyes. It can make you look lighter or darker, depending on the lighting in the area of the stickup. It also makes you look sadistic, which helps out the robbery tremendously.
Always have a plan B. In robberies always expect the unexpected. Nothing happens the way you plan, so you have to be flexible.
The more noise the better. When you enter your robbery scene, cursing, yelling, and making threats will make it seem like twenty deranged psychokillers have invaded their space, scaring them half to death.
On the getaway, be as calm and poised as possible. Many thieves are caught directly after the robbery because they panic. Ninety percent of police never even have a description of the perpetrators, only the area in which it happened. What they look for is unusual behavior or body language, which can be dead giveaways.
Clyde decided that they would go out that night to give Keyshia a test run, something small.
“Keyshia,” he said with a devious smile, “get dressed in your baddest outfit, we going downtown to get something to eat.”
Chapter 17
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Keyshia and Clyde sat in the upscale eatery on 40th Street in downtown Manhattan, feasting on New York strip steaks and having a ball. The eatery, Milo’s, was a popular restaurant for many celebrities and athletes. Milo’s was known for its pricey menu, but the food was good and the service impeccable.
Two couples in the far corner were enjoying themselves. They were having such a good time that they never even noticed the two pairs of eyes watching them. The two women looked like video bimbos and laughed at their suitors’ jokes every five seconds. The men wore oversize diamond-laced jewelry like they were rappers in the making. It was obvious that the women would be their dates’ desserts shortly.
The women excused themselves from the table and told their dates they were going to the ladies’ room. The men stood up and let them exit the table first and then headed to the restroom right behind them.
Inside the men’s room, their spirits were racing. “Yo, you see shorty’s lips?” one said as he unzipped his pants and used the urinal. “She look like she could slob a nigga’s knob something lovely by the size of them shits.”
His man agreed as he checked himself out in the mirror. “Fuck that, you see the size of my shorty’s ass? You know I gonna try my best to get all this dick up inside that shit.”
His partner grinned and said, “Knock the dook shoot out of her, huh, man?”
“You damn skippy! Bang! Bang! Bang!” he responded, unable to contain himself. Suddenly, the masked Keyshia and Clyde burst out of the stalls and pointed their weapons at them.
“What the fuck?” shouted one man as he tried to zip up his pants. Keyshia immediately played her position by the door and locked it, concentrating on one of the men as Clyde attended to the other.
“Say another word and I’m blowing your motherfuckin’ brains out, nigga!” They were instantly neutralized. “Now run them jewelry and your wallets!”
Both men complied quickly and willingly. Keyshia pulled out a bag and they dropped everything inside. Without a word, both Keyshia and Clyde raised their weapons and put them in their faces and said, “Strip!” While they were coming out of their clothes, Clyde recognized them and said, “Yo, I know you two. Y’all play for the fucking Knicks, don’t you?” Still nervous, both men nodded. Clyde suddenly flipped out.
“I should shoot y’all niggas right now. I hate the Knicks!”
Both men began to plead. “Man, it’s the coach, man, I don’t even like him,” said one man.
“Yeah!” said the other. “And the GM. We ain’t got nothing to do with the plays, we don’t even like ’em.”
Clyde suddenly laughed and said, “Na, I’m just playing! I’m just playing! Now go inside the stall and count to one hundred when I tell you.” He motioned to Keyshia to take off her mask and leave quietly. The he took off his mask and said loudly enough for them to hear, “Now, make sure these niggas count to a hundred, and when they get to sixty, you can leave.” Clyde yelled to the men, “Y’all clothes will be on the sink if y’all be good. Now start counting.”
“One, two, three, four . . .” counted the men. By the time they got to six, Keyshia and Clyde were already out the restaurant door and around the corner.
Keyshia and Clyde were in predator mode and were currently staked out across the street in a popular after-hours spot uptown called Bell’s. Cats from all over Harlem, mainly dealers and hardworking city employees who wanted to relive their “player, player” days, stopped by and posted outside with their fly rides and kicked it with the many honeys who were also looking to have a good time. Keyshia was the first one to spot their target. He was standing in front of his forest green Range Rover with the twenty-three-inch chrome rims and DVD monitors in the back of the driver’s and front passenger’s headrest, playing a movie, though no one was in the backseat. He was on his cell phone, and each time a group of girls passed by, he hollered at them without fail. He was begging to get stuck, so Keyshia and Clyde set out to accommodate him.
Keyshia wore her tightest black jeans with a matching blouse and high-heeled, knee-high boots. With the five-inch heels, she stood a towering six feet one as she walked stealthily toward their potential victim. As she got closer, she sized him up quickly. He was handsome, in his late twenties, and wore a modest amount of jewelry, including a twenty-four-inch gold necklace and matching cross and two gold rings on both hands. He was kicking it on a Sidekick 3. The man was a pure dog, ’cause he would try to talk to one girl and when she didn’t give him any rhythm, he would quickly try to kick it to her homegirl.
When he spotted Keyshia, he froze and eased up off his SUV and said, “Oh, shit!” He quickly told the person he was talking to on the phone, “Yo, nigga, I holla at you later. I got to catch up with this shorty.” He ended the call and stepped straight to up Keyshia. “Yo, ma, can I ask you something?” Keyshia played as if she didn’t hear him and kept walking past him. The man wasn’t letting her get off that easy, however. Her body was too tight to let her go without pitching his A-game at her.
“Yo, ma, slow down. You dropped something.” Now a good distance away from his Range Rover, Keyshia decided to play into his little farce and looked around on the ground. “What did I drop?”
He ran up to her and said smoothly, “You would’ve dropped an opportunity of a lifetime if you don’t stop and let a nigga holla at you for a minute.” He smiled and extended his hand. “My name is T, and I’m feeling you, ma, just that simple.”
Keyshia stared at him through her white Chanel glasses and decided to act coy. “Well, T, my name is Kashaun, not K. Do you mind telling me what your mother named you?”
He realized he’d underestimated this young’un and switched gears. “Oh, my bad, forgive me for my impertinence, Kashuan. M
y name is Terrence and you got me kinda twisted for the moment, but if you give me a second, I can come out of this daze you got me in.”
Keyshia smiled and wondered how many girls had fallen for his bullshit in the past. He continued talking as Keyshia looked over his shoulder and watched Clyde make his way across the street and toward his SUV.
“But what I really want to know is if you want to come with me somewhere, maybe get something to eat or some drinks?” He turned and pointed to his ride. “That’s my Range Rover right there,” he said proudly. “That’s to let you know you ain’t wasting your time with a broke nigga.”
Keyshia cracked a light smile and said, “I hope not.” She followed him to his SUV, and he opened the passenger-side door for her. He nearly tripped over himself running to the driver’s side, thinking all the while how he amazed himself with his wit and game on these young bitches.
He hopped in, oblivious to the unwelcome guest who lay in the backseat. He looked at Keyshia and thought how he should just take her to a motel and wax that ass instead of wasting time and money on her dumb ass when he already knew she was out trickin’ so she could get some money to pay for her cell phone or something. He pulled off and turned down the loud music and said, “Yo, ma, let’s talk real talk.” Keyshia nodded as he continued, “Why play games when we know what this is all about? I’d be a fool to insult your intelligence like that.”
Keyshia smiled and said, “I could respect that, keep talking.”
“You young and fine as a motherfucker, and I want some. What a nigga got to do to feel them insides?”
Without blinking an eye, Keyshia said, “Two hundred dollars.”
“Goddamn!” T said. “You ain’t bullshittin’, but why so expensive? I just want to hit them guts and be out. Shit, the hotel is gonna be another hundred.”
Keyshia gestured toward the back. “Shit, let’s just handle business in the backseat; it look big enough. It would save you from paying for a hotel.”
T smiled, ’cause he would never have thought a young fine girl like her would want to get smashed outside. Shit, he figured, by the time he would have wined and dined her, he would have dropped two bills anyway and still wouldn’t be sure if he was getting the pussy. This way he’d be coming out much cheaper and was sure of getting the ass.
“All right, that’s a bet. We can go to Morningside Park or sumptin’, and handle our business like that.” Keyshia nodded.
When they pulled up on Morningside, he parked his SUV between 119th and 120th streets where it was always deserted at that time of night.
“All right, so what’s up?” T said.
“The money, nigga,” Keyshia said sarcastically. He reached in a stash compartment in the vehicle, pulled out a wad of dough, and peeled off four fifty-dollar bills and handed them to her. Keyshia slowly put the money in her purse and then folded her arms and stared through the front window.
T was baffled. “Okay, what did I do?”
Keyshia continued to stare out the window and said, “You forgot to pay my man.”
T shook his head, thinking he hadn’t heard her correctly.
“What you say?”
Keyshia turned and looked him straight in the eye and said slowly and steadily, “I said, you forgot to pay my man!”
Suddenly, Clyde rose from the backseat and put the gun right under his nose. He looked at Keyshia, who had her weapon drawn and was smiling wickedly.
After they stripped T down to his underwear, Clyde got out of the backseat and pulled him out like a rag doll and hopped in the driver’s seat and drove off, dropping his shoes, shirt, and pants out the window along the way, leaving him to pick up each behind them.
They pulled off several small stickups over the course of the evening, and after they made it from the chop shop and Clyde’s jewelry connect to convert the jewelry into cash, they made it home by cab by four in the morning. After they counted that night’s take, they had made a little over twenty thousand dollars. Not bad for six hours of work.
Though they were happy, they knew they still had a ways to go to come up with another hundred and thirty thousand. Clyde knew that was just a test run to get each other in sync, to know each other’s instincts, each movement. They also knew that they had to step up their game to where the money was really at—drug spots—where it would become more dangerous.
Chapter 18
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Keyshia and Clyde sat in a stolen Buick on the corner of 112th Street and Seventh Avenue. Clyde got the word that some young boys were pulling in major paper pumping crack 24/7 in front of the hotel on the corner. He favored sticking up the young ones because they weren’t as organized as the older cats in the drug game. You could always catch them slippin’ because they were more interested in talking to girls than they were in making money. From what Clyde saw, there were two major players who oversaw two other workers who did the actual hand-to-hand sells. They also had two workers who stood on the corner and watched the traffic flow and alerted them whenever they saw police coming through. After they finished work about six-thirty, the two bosses hit off the workers and drove off with the money to the East Side, where they apparently lived. This was Keyshia and Clyde’s second night watching and following them. Just like always, they finished work and hit off each worker, and then the two bosses, who were no older than nineteen, drove off in their black Expedition. Following them uptown, Clyde made sure that he stayed behind them at least a block away so they wouldn’t detect them. When they got to 137th Street, they made an unexpected U-turn, causing Clyde to curse in fear of them suspecting that they were being followed. Clyde held his breath and continued driving past them without looking in their direction. When he drove two blocks up, he made a quick U-turn, afraid that he had lost them altogether. But when they passed 135th Street, they spotted the shiny black SUV parked in front of an IHOP. Clyde parked a block away and waited.
“You think they in there eating?” asked Keyshia.
“I don’t know. Maybe,” said Clyde as he looked through the rearview mirror. “Let’s just chill for a minute and see what happens.” Keyshia turned and looked out the back window and nodded. After about ten minutes of waiting, Clyde said, “All right, here’s what we gonna do.” He looked at Keyshia. “Go in there and look around, order some food if you have to, and find out what they doing and come back out so I can know what’s up.”
Keyshia smiled and gave him a kiss and said, “Yes, daddy.”
Clyde returned her smile and said, “Oh, I’m no longer a boy, huh?”
Keyshia smiled slyly. “Yes, you still a boy, but I got to switch up on you sometimes, and keep you on point.”
Clyde loved whenever he saw the twinkle in Keyshia’s eyes. “Yo,” he said before she closed the door, “be careful and put on your glasses, just in case.” She nodded and pulled them over her eyes and headed toward the IHOP.
As Keyshia approached the restaurant, she could see the two sitting at a table, chatting and joking. She walked inside the store and decided to get a better look, maybe get a little information on their next plan. She saw two police officers sitting in the corner, drinking coffee while they appeared to be waiting on some food they ordered.
“Welcome to IHOP, ma’am. Seating for how many?”
Keyshia was a little startled by the unexpected cheerful greeting of the hostess. “Uh, no,” she responded. “Can I have a take-out menu?” The girl smiled and pulled out a menu from behind the counter and handed it to Keyshia. Keyshia smiled and thanked her. She edged closer to the dining area where the men sat to get a better view and realized she recognized the faces of the men, but she hadn’t known where from—then suddenly, as if a ton of bricks hit her, she realized it was two of the four guys who’d raped her at her aunt’s house. Keyshia was suddenly overtaken by fear and had to get out of the restaurant. When she turned to exit the store, she bumped directly into a man’s chest.
“Damn, baby, where the fire at?” said the man she’d bum
ped into. She was preparing to apologize when she looked into his face and saw that he was none other than Omar. Air seemed removed from her lungs as she simply stood frozen, unable to move, unable to think.
“You all right, sweetheart?” asked her rapist, not recognizing her while looking her over. “Or do you want to sit at my table with my mans and ’em so we can break bread and get to know each other?”
Keyshia put her head down and found the strength to walk around him and head for the door.
When she’d made it outside, she used the wall for support to keep her balance. She closed her eyes and breathed fresh air and then staggered uneasily toward the car. Clyde must have seen her the moment she exited the restaurant because he was already out of the car and at her side.
“Keyshia!” he hollered. “What happened?” Keyshia was still unable to get a grip on things and continued to gasp for air. “Baby, what’s wrong? Somebody touch you?” asked Clyde with flames in his eyes.
Still unable to speak, Keyshia grabbed him for support and managed to say, “Get me to the car.”
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