by Tranay Adams
His sights were set on his little homi e’s ride. “Damn, Cuz, I must be paying you pretty goddamn good, you rolling like that, Big Time?” he said,looking over Taco’s diamond necklace as he held it in his hand, admiring the sparkling diamonds in the Jesus piece.
“Nike and Supacrip fucked up. T hey missed. That nigga Booby is still alive,” Taco gave it to him raw and uncut. He said fuck it and decided to put it out there. “And a few of the homies got smoked last night.” He added.
“Who?” Nightmare’s brows furrowed and he blew smoke into the air.
“C-note, Crowand a few of the lil’ homies.” “Mothafuckaz!” he looked away pissed off, placing his hand on his hip. Turning back around, he bowed his head and massaged the bridge of his nose.
“Your cell is dead or something?”
“Yeah, I forgot it in the car last night, so the battery died. It’s at the house right now charging.” “I had just got off the jack with the big homie Cas; he had been trying to get in touch with you. He wanna have a sit down with you tonight, he said for you to holla at him.”
“Alright, you take care of that business for me?” “Yeah, I had the workers break that shit down last night and bag it. Shit is fire too, Loc. We might be getting our custies back off of this shit.” Taco nodded and rubbed his hands together greedily.
“For real?” Nightmare said, raising his brow. “For real,” Taco said, giving him a pound. Afterwards they chopped it up for a time and then he made his departure.
Nightmare watched the back of the truck until it disappeared down the block. He couldn’t help but thinking, What the fuck does this nigga Cas wanna talk to me about?
That night
Nightmare knocked on Cas’s apartment door and moments later the door was pulled open by the double O.G. He wore a silk button-down shirt, matching pants and loafers. Pistol dangling at his side, he gave his guests the once over before stepping aside to allow them to step inside. Once they were inside he closed the door behind them.
“Have a seat, make yourselves at home,” Cas told them. “Would you like some apple cinnamon tea?” “Nah, we good,” Nightmare said, looking over the apartment, Cas’s place was something else. It looked like it was an Asian Emperor’s palace. If he didn’t know the O.G lived there he would have sworn it belonged to a man of royalty. “You’ve gotta nice place here.”
“Thank you,” Cas grinned, laying his gun down on the counter and pouring himself a cup of apple cinnamon tea. Shutting his eyelids, he brought the cup to his nose and inhaled, taking in its tempting scent before taking a sip.
“What kind of incense you got burning in here, Butt Naked?” Nightmare inquired, loving the aroma that he’d gotten a whiff of.
“No, Black Love.”
Bobby leaned over and asked her man in his ear in a hushed tone,“What is he? AMuslim or something?” “Five Percenter.” “You smoke?” Cas asked from the kitchen as he rummaged through the vegetable tray in the bottom of the refrigerator, startling them.
“Come on, Cuz, you know I smoke. My bitch does, too.”
“Earth,” the O.G frowned, annoyed by the gangsta crip referring to his lady as a Bitch.
“Huh?” Nightmare’s forehead creased.
“Earth,” he repeated himself. “You will refer to the sister by her name, or as Earth while in my presence, sun.” “Sure,” Nightmare rolled his eyes. He wasn’t trying to hear that shit. He knew that the O.G was deeply rooted with his religion and all, but he felt that he had belittled him in front of his woman. However, out of respect, he decided to hold his tongue on the matter.
Cas emerged from the kitchen with a big red ceramic bowl of Purple Kush buds, a five pack of Grape Swishers in his shirt’s pocket, and his cup of tea. He sat the bowl on the glass table and tossed the box of blunt wrappers beside it.
“Would you do us the honor of rolling up, Mother Earth?” He asked Bobby. She told him sure and ripped the plastic off of the Swishers. She then removed them from their box and began rolling her first blunt expertly. Cas sat back and got comfortable in his seat before turning to Nightmare, crossing his legs like a gentleman,“Now about these red rags, I can see in your eyes that you have war on your mind, lil’ brother.”
“You fucking…” Nightmare cut himself short remembering how Cas didn’t tolerate cursing in his home. “I mean you’re right. I want the slobs that iced my homeboys’ heads hanging over the fireplace in my crib.” He replied honestly, eyebrows arched and lips twisted.
“I feel you on that, lil’ brother,” Cas took a sip of tea and savored the taste. “But starting up a war right now is only going to make the streets hot. The hood is going to be crawling with cops as soon as bodies start dropping, and with the pigs around, man, ain’t nobody gone be out in the streets tryna cop no drugs. And that’s gone fuck up the money.”
“All your worried about is money, man?” Nightmare became annoyed, nostrils pulsating. “No, I care about our young brothers, too. But like the man says ‘business before pleasure’.” He took another sip of tea, not giving a fuck about the gangsta crip being in his feelings. “We lost out on a lot of money since that young brother entered the fold. I’m tryna see what this new product you got can do. If the stuff is as good as you say it is I’m sure we can get our ends back flowing right.”
“Man, we’re sitting on enough money between us to last until the beef is over. We’re millionaires, Cas. I know you haven’t forgotten, look how you living.” He looked around at the lavish apartment and spread his arms wide.
“Lil’brother , you can never have enough paper, somebody told you wrong.” He sat his cup of tea down on the coffee table and cleared his throat with a fist to his mouth.
“Man…” “Look, the bottom line is, I’m not going to cosign your lil’ war. So if you go at these young brothers, man, you’ll be going at them by yourself. Remember there are still two members of the three headed monster left, so you’re going to need my go ahead before the brothers bear arms.”
Nightmare lay back on the couch, blowing hard and running his hand down his face. He looked to Bobby who was licking the blunt closed and then to the O.G. “You know what, Cas? You’re right. As long as you’re still breathing, Ican’t handle this thing how I want to,”In a flash, he drew his chrome Desert Eagle and placed it to one of the fluffy couch pillows. “So, it’s time you retire…”
Poof!
Poof!
Poof! The couch pillow muffled the barks of Nightmare’s banger as bullets tore through its suede fabric, knocking the stuffing out of it. Cas’s belly exploded into a mass of blood, saturating the lower half of what he was wearing. His eyes doubled in size and his mouth quivered. He touched his wound and looked at his crimson stained palm, then back up at the gunman. He couldn’t believe that Nightmare had shot him.
His eyebrows arched and his lips peeled back in a sneer. He went for the steel stashed in his pants and grabbed air. That’s when he realized he had forgotten it on the kitchen counter. Cas got upon his feet and staggered towards the gangsta crip with his arms out stretched like a grizzly, roaring. Before he could reach him, Bobby came from his blindside and shattered a ceramic vase over his head. The O.G fell to the floor unconscious, Nightmare stepped over him. He placed a fresh couch pillow to the back of his head and pressed his banger in behind it. He pumped two rounds into the back of his skull like it wasn’t nothing but a thang to him. He then stepped from over him and turned to Bobby. “Grab a towel and wipe down everything we touched. Do that now.” he ordered.
Bobby retrieved the washcloth and did as she was instructed. Afterwards she and Nightmare turned the apartment upside down; once they were done the place looked like the police had raided it. They took Cas’s stash, his flat-screens, and the few jewels he had. They then broke the chain on the door before they left the apartment. The plan was to make it look as if a couple of burglars broke into Cas’s place, killed him, and robbed him.
The next night
After the news of C-note,
Crow, Cas and the little homies murders had spread like a wildfire throughout the hood. The homeboys were pissed off and thirsty for blood. They wanted some payback. Seeing his set anxious and eager to lay down some bodies, Nightmare called for a meeting in the backyard of his home.
“T hese slobs think something is sweet over here?” Nightmare asked his blue clad audience from the roof of his Cadillac. Bobby was sitting on the hood of the car filing her nails and chewing bubble gum. “These fools think they can pop two of our shot-callers and four of our homies and get away with it? They got me, nah, fuck that, they got our entire hood fucked up. Niggaz gone pay for touching ours! Oh yeah, niggaz gone pay! That’s on my dead daddy and my dead homies. I’ma ride,but I need to know my G’s are with me.” He looked over his audience, hoping to hear the voices of some brave souls.
“Yeah!” the audience answered in unison.
“Are y’all ready to bring it to these slobs?”
“Yeah!” the audience answered once more. “I can’t hear you,” Nightmare said , cupping a hand behind his ear and leaning towards the audience. “Are y’all ready to bring it to these slobs?”
“Yeah!” the audience retorted as they fired their weapons into the air. They then chanted Nightmare over and over again. The gangster crip lifted his hands higher and higher into the sky, signaling to them to raise their voices higher. And they did.
There was about to be a lot of slow singing and flower bringing.
Chapter Seventeen
Nightmare had rallied his troops and so had Pavielle. With drive bys and walk-ups being executed on both opposing sides, bodies were dropping like flies and piling so high you could build a wall out of them. Pavielle was feeling the loss of every homie he lost but there was the death of one homie that really hit home for him.
Big Panic made his way out of Wally’s Liquor Store with a brown paper bag in his hand. Its contents were a bottle of Alize, a box of Swishers, a box of Magnums and two clear plastic cups. The big man was overly excited; he had some ass on the line he had been trying to get for a month now. A little fine, educated honey by the name of Remy. He had been trying to get baby over to the house, but she seemed to always have an excuse. If she wasn’t at school, she was at work, or taking care of her grandmother or babysitting her niece and nephew.
Panic was about to say fuck it and move along to this other broad he had bumped a week ago until he got a call from her out of the blue. He worked his charm and got her to agree to get a motel room with him. With images of her voluptuous, curvy body burned into his mental, he thought about how he was going to wax that ass like Mr. Miyagi. The thought alone had his dick nudging at the zipper of his jeans, trying to free its self.
Panic was so caught up in the XXX movie playing within the theater of his mind,that he hadn’t spotted the two suspicious characters that had followed him in and out of the store. They had clung to the shadows and masked up with their chrome Uzis. When the big man went to stick his key into the key-hole of the driver side door, he saw their reflection in the window. His eyelids peeled wide open and his mouth formed an O as he gasped. The killers had their automatic weapons out stretched and were about to spray him. He whipped around quickly, dropping his bag of goods while in motion; he reached for the strap on his waistband. But it was far too late; the masked assassins already had the drop on him. Their Uzis fired in unison waking up the silent night as bullets struck their mark, misting the air with his blood. Panic danced on his sneakers as the bullets entered him and exited out of his back, splattering his blood against the side of his ride. It looked as if the bullets were attempting to levitate his three-hundred pound body from the surface. Panic crashed to the asphalt in the liquor store parking lot, landing hard on the ground. His blood ran from under him and mixed in with the alcohol that was concealed inside of the Alize bottle. The masked gunmen fled into the night, letting the darkness swallow them whole.
Later that night
Pavielle lay in bed asleep beside Vayda. His cell phone’s screen lit up and it danced across the nightstand as a call came through. The young kingpin stirred from his sleep and turned on the lamp light. He checked the caller I.D, pressed talk and brought the phone to his ear.
“What’s up, Blood?” he asked groggily into the cell phone, wiping his eyes.
“Panic’s dead.” He spoke with a dead serious voice.
“Woo, it’s too late at night to be playing, fam.”
“I’m not playing, Bleed. Real spit, they hit’em tonight.” “Who?” Pavielle looked alive. His elevated voice stirred Vayda from her sleep. She narrowed her eyelids as she looked at him. By the look on his face she could tell something was terribly wrong.
“Nike and Supacrab from tramps,” Woo told him, his voiceslightly cracking under his emotions. “On Lil’ Face it’s on now, Blood, me and Big Head ‘bout to murder every last one of these niggaz. Dinosaurs ain’t gon’ be the only mothafuckaz that’s extinct,on the set.”
“Y’all chill for a sec,” Pavielle began , sitting up in bed,“I’m a sic old girl on lil’ homie. I’ma call her in the A.M and get the ball rolling, alright?”
“Alright, Blood. I love you, my nigga.”
“I love you, too, Duce Owe. Twenty minutes.” he disconnected the call. “Boo, what happened?” Vayda asked concerned, scratching her chest as she peered through narrowed eyelids.
Pavielle shut his eyelids and put his hands together in prayer, having a moment of silence for Big Panic. When he peeled his eyelids open, his eyes were glassy and attempting to accumulate tears. Seeing the hurt in her man’s eyes, Vayda sat up in bed and took him by the face staring into his eyes. “Babe, tell me what’s wrong, what happened?” she inquired, looking as worried as ever.
“My best friend was murdered tonight.” He told her , and as soon as he spoke the tears jetted down his cheeks. He shut his eyelids for a moment and bit down on his bottom lip, nostrils flaring.
“Panic?” “Yeah, go back to sleep , baby.” He kissed her on the forehead and then cupped her face, kissing her on the lips. He then turned off the lamp and rolled over to go back to sleep, his heart heavy with grief.
*** Killa Dre scaled the fence of Inglewood cemetery high and drunk out of his mind. Jumping down to the other side, he staggered forward and fell to all fours. Slowly, he got to his feet searching his person. He was relieved that he hadn’t dropped the 40 oz of Olde English malt liquor, but when he searched his ear for his half smoken blunt and discovered he’d lost it, he was disappointed.
“Shit!” he cursed. Wide eyed, his eyes scanned the grounds for the blunt he’d dropped. When he didn’t see it, he shut his eyelids and took a deep breath. “Fuck it.” He ran his hand down his face and pulled his bottle of cheap alcohol from where he had it stashed. After twisting off the cap, he took it to the head, guzzling it. The bubbles floated to the bottom of the bottle as his throat rolled up and down his neck. Taking the 40 from his lips, he wiped his mouth with the back of his fist. Shortly thereafter, he shuffled forward drunkenly. Using the illumination from his cell phone, he searched the cemetery’s grounds until he found his deceased brother’s grave stone. Coming across it, he put his cellular away and stepped to it.
“’Sup with it, big bro?” He took the 40 oz to the head guzzling it and then pouring some out into the lawn just below his brother’s marble stone. Having screwed the cap back on his alcoholic beverage, he went on to talk to his late sibling. Once he wrapped up their conversation, he made him a promise that he was definitely going to keep.
“The next time you see me here, big bruh, I’ll have your killer’s blood on these hands,” he held up his hands and looked between them. After balling them into fists, he focused his attention back on the stone with his brother’s name carved in it. “I swear to God…,” his vision was quickly obscured by the tears that accumulated in his eyes, outlining the rims of them. The teardrops fell hitting the grass and the tip of his right sneaker. “No,” he sniffled and snorted back some of the tears that want
ed to fall. “No, I swear to you, I’ma kill that nigga.”
Thunder rumbled and lightening flashed, hiding his face in darkness and then revealing it, each time it made an appearance. Suddenly, rain fell from the sky looking like falling crystals. Killa Dre threw on the hood of his jacket and sat the Olde English bottle down beside his big brother’s marble head. Stashing his hands in his pockets, he turned around and trekked back from where he came.
The next morning
“Thank you.” Black Jesus said to his maid, Marisol, as she sat his breakfast and his cup of coffee down on the table before him. He slipped on his glasses and opened up the news paper, reading over it. The doorbell chimed, but he didn’t bother to tell Marisol to answer it. The paper held all of his attention. Besides that, he already knew she’d get it, because it was just one of the tasks that he was paying her to do. Although he was focused on his reading, that didn’t stop him from over hearing the locks being undone on the front door and the maid greeting Tango as he crossed the threshold.
“Jesus Christ,are you, okay?” he overheard her. This caused the drug lord to frown. He folded his paper in half and set it aside.
“I’m fine,” he heard Tango say as he made his way through the living room. “Where’s the jefe?”
“In the kitchen.” Black Jesus turned around just in time to see his bodyguard making his way toward him. He looked like he’d been through hell and back and his arm was in a sling. When he saw this, he immediately thought, Oh, shit. The old gangster didn’t even have to say it, because right then he already knew that his shipment had been hit.