by Cash
“Richard,” I whispered in a real menacing voice, “I came to collect that eighty grand you owe my man. Now, unless you owe more than one person eighty grand, I’m sure you know who I mean?” I pulled a machete out of the gym bag and ran the sharp blade across Richard’s sweaty forehead. Blood trickled down immediately.
I said, real calm-like, “Now, Richard, I’m either leaving here with that eighty grand, or I’m leaving here with your head inside this gym bag. One or the other. I’m not taking you anywhere to get the money so don’t insult me like that. For your own sake, the money better be here inside this house. You get one chance, only, to tell me the truth. You tell me where the money is, I’ll take the eighty grand you owe my man, plus ten grand for making me come to collect it like this, then I’ll leave. You live.
And we never see each other again. My man just wants his money, that’s all. One lie, you a dead mafucka, you understand? I’ma remove this tape just enough so I can hear you. Richard, don’t be stupid. I will kill you.” I placed the gat, the heater with the silencer against the idiot’s forehead. “Time to tell the truth.” I said in a sing-song voice. I was betting that Richard kept a stash of loot inside of the house.
Sweat dripped from his forehead and his lips quivered when he replied. “I’ll tell you where the money is at. Just don’t do me dirty,” he cried.
“Talk muthafucka,” I growled menacingly.
“I’ma talk, man. Please don’t kill me, though.” He was so nervous his voice came out in a shaky whisper.
I leaned closer to him in order to hear his response.
After he divulged the whereabouts of his stash, I chuckled. “I lied about letting you live. Blame it on my upbringing.”
I placed the banger against his head and squeezed the trigger twice. With the silencer, the gun barely made a coughing sound, but his blood splashed all over me. I ignore the sticky mess and rushed to retrieve the loot from where Richard said it was hid. If he had lied, I’d just have to search the entire house or take Richard’s hands back to Rich Kid.
We didn’t get back to Atlanta ‘til four thirty in the morning. I went straight to the crib and crashed the fuck out. I had already showered thoroughly at the flop house in Alabama, so I was good on that.
I guessed that King went to report in to Rich Kid. And I figured since Rich Kid had my pager number, he’d page me when he was ready.
I slept ‘til noon, woke up and went outside to a pay phone to call Lonnie. I let Lonnie know I was back and okay but I didn’t mention anything about what had gone down.
I just said, “Everything is good.”
“True dat,” Lonnie replied. We hung up. I’d get at him later.
I went back to the crib and handled my hygiene, threw on some fresh gear and grilled two boneless chicken breasts on my George Foreman grill. I guzzled down a forty ounce with a grilled chicken breast sandwich.
I had stashed the upfront loot Rich Kid gave me in the freezer part of my refrigerator, inside several TV dinners. I retrieved all my loot and hit the streets ready to stunt.
I stopped by Brenda’s and she wasn’t home. At least that was what the dyke-looking female who answered the door said. I wasn’t trippin’ it. I ain’t have no locks on Brenda.
I then dipped over to Poochie’s thinking I’d jump up and down in her guts right quick, but Shan, my son, Shan’s newborn brat and pussy-whupped ass Shotgun Pete was over there. Shotgun Pete was grilling me hard, like he wanted to test my hands again.
I stared him in the eyes and said, “Nigga, you don’t want none of this.” I lifted my shirt and gave him a glimpse of the tool on my waist.
Before things could escalate, Poochie pulled me aside. “Don’t go back to prison over his punk ass,” she whispered.
“I will if he make me. Fuck that lame!” I made sure my tone carried over to where he stood.
“Nigga, you’re just bumping your gums. You know how to get at me if this is what you really want,” he challenged.
“Oh, your time is coming. You can bet dat!” I said, and then I turned my attention to my son. “What’s up with you, man?” I had Lil T a big smile.
“Nothing, Daddy.” He smiled back.
I talked with my son for a few and jetted. Poochie hit me up an hour later and told me the coast was clear. I went back over there and fucked Poochie’s ass damn near to death.
I bailed from her crib about midnight, stopped at the bottom of the hill on my way out of Englewood and bought some weed. Then, I went to my crib and got high by my damn self. Fuck it, I’d stunt some other night.
The next morning, the sound of my pager woke me up. The clock on the TV displayed 10 a.m.
Who the fuck is paging me so early?
I walked to the pay phone in the apartment complex in the same gear I had on yesterday. My braids were fucked up.
“This Youngblood. Who paged me?”
“Hey, baby. This is Brenda. You came by yesterday?”
“Where you paging me from?” I ignored Brenda’s question to ask my own ‘cause I hadn’t recognized the number she was calling from.
She said, “I’m at home. I got a new number.”
“Why you change your—nah, strike that,” I said. “It ain’t my business.”
“Naw, it ain’t even like that. It is your business. I just wanted a new number,” Brenda lied, I assumed.
Why the fuck would anybody just want a new phone number? Whatever. I didn’t own her ass.
Brenda stuttered something about why the girl answered her door yesterday.
“Yo, playgirl. I ain’t keeping tabs on you. It’s all good, you don’t owe me no testimony.”
“That’s the problem!” Brenda cried. “I want to owe you an explanation. I need more from you than just sex and a phone call! Where you been the last few weeks? I been paging you and you don’t call back. If all I’m going to ever be to you is a hole to stick your dick in, we might as well not see each other anymore!”
This bitch had caught me all off guard and hit me with a flurry of emotions.
“Slow down, shawdy.” I said, hoping Brenda would pause and calm down. “Where all this drama coming from?”
Brenda snapped some more. “I was good to yo’ young ass while you were locked up! Is this how you repay me? You think all I need is to get fucked once in a while? Is that what the fuck you think makes me happy?”
This bitch is bananas. I hung the phone up on her ass.
As I walked back to the crib I laughed so hard I was crying.
Mafuckaz outside probably thought I was crazy. What I was really trippin’ on was that the only sure pussy I had now was Poochie. My baby’s mama’s mama. A forty-year-old crackhead trying to stay clean.
Ain’t life a bitch?
Rich Kid paged me later in the day and told me he’d be at my spot in thirty minutes.
Twenty minutes later, I answered the knock on my door and let in Rich Kid and King. The mattress I slept on in the living room was stood up against the wall, the way I kept it in the daytime.
I had no furniture so I couldn’t offer Rich Kid and King a seat, unless they were gonna sit on the big screen television.
Rich Kid made no comment about my empty apartment. He must’ve figured I liked living grimy or I’d furnish the crib when my pockets got heavy. The three of us stood in the living room, just us and the big screen, and the king-size mattress propped against the wall.
Rich Kid acknowledged that I’d done a good job in Alabama.
I’d brought back both the loot and the hands!
Acknowledging it now, I could still remember the feel of Richard’s blood and bits of his wrists bones splattering up in my face as I hacked his hands off with the machete.
Rich Kid handed me the rest of the money he owed me out of his pocket. A wad held together by a thick rubber band. I didn’t bother to count it. The nigga was too large to have to short me. I put the wad in my pocket. Rich Kid nodded at King and his loyal, big, black ass, right hand man tossed a brow
n shopping bag at my feet.
“That’s yours, too,” King said. He had a voice like a Rottweiler that matched his name and his face.
Rich Kid explained that the money I got from Richard had been way more than eighty grand. I had counted close to 200 stacks when I found it exactly where Richard told me it would be.
Rich Kid was saying, “You’re entitled to everything over the eighty grand you were paid to collect.”
“What about King?” I asked, wondering if King was entitled to a portion of the extra loot.
“He’s straight,” Rich Kid said. “I blessed him well.” King nodded down toward the shopping bag. “It’s all in there, everything over the eighty G’s.” I held my excitement in check while Rich Kid told me he’d be in touch soon.
The only thing I was thinking about was all that money inside the large shopping bag. I kinda wondered what Rich Kid had done with Richard’s hands, but I wasn’t about to ask him.
I walked Rich Kid and King out to the car. They were rolling in a plain whip today, keeping it low-key.
As soon as they turned out the complex’s parking lot, I dashed inside of the apartment to count the loot inside the shopping bag.
It came to fifty-three thousand dollars. Fifty-three neat stacks of a thousand dollars each.
I should’ve been gassed up, right? Fuck no! I was steaming. Rich Kid had said I was entitled to every dollar over the eighty grand he’d sent me to collect. Those were his words, not mine. And I held a man to his word.
Well, Rich Kid or King was full of shit. One of ‘em was shorting me. And they claimed I was the stickup kid? Rich Kid or King had just robbed me! I wouldn’t have sweat it if Rich Kid hadn’t said I was entitled to all the extra loot. I hadn’t expected anything more than what he’d originally agreed to pay me. I figured every dollar I recovered from Richard was rightfully Rich Kid’s loot since he’d spent mad time and cheddar looking for the idiot and had paid me, not knowing if I’d recover a dime of the eighty grand he was owed. But since Rich Kid said all extra was mine, I wanted my loot, all of it!
But which one of them had shorted me, Rich Kid or King?
One thing I was mafuckin’ sure of: There’d been close to two hundred stacks of money in Richard’s dryer in the basement. If all the stacks were a grand each, subtracting Rich Kid’s eighty grand and the fifty-three grand they’d just given me, I’d been shorted about sixty thousand dollars.
Niggaz just won’t keep it real. A’ight, they wanna play it like that!
I’d let it ride until I could figure out exactly which one of them niggaz had played me for a fool. I knew that if a nigga tried me once, he’d try me again. I’d be on point next time and the guilty one will find out that Youngblood don’t take no shorts.
I packed the money inside some shoe boxes and stuck them inside the closet in the empty bedroom. My pockets were still swole with all the loot Rich Kid had paid me, as promised.
I dipped to Winn Dixie and bought two large boxes of frozen fried chicken, two half gallons of Minute Maid, some bread, ketchup and some more shit. I grabbed a notebook tablet, a small tablet of carbon paper, a box of envelopes and a Bic ink pen.
After paying the cashier, I stopped at the stamp machine and bought five postage stamps. On the way back to the crib, I stopped at Majik Market and filled up my gas tank, went inside and bought 5 five-hundred-dollar money orders. The cashier sweated my knot all the way back in my pocket.
At the crib, I put the groceries on the kitchen counter and pulled out the two boxes of frozen fried chicken. I popped six big pieces into the microwave and set the timer. I emptied the other pieces of chicken out the box into a large freezer bag. I did the same with the second box of chicken.
Then I went into the bedroom and got the money. I stuffed twenty-six stacks into one chicken box and closed it.
The other twenty-seven stacks of loot went inside the second chicken box. I took all the food out the freezer, put the two chicken boxes in the back of the freezer and then replaced the other frozen food back in front of the chicken boxes.
While the chicken in the microwave heated, I arranged carbon paper between four sheets of notebook paper so I could write five identical letters at once. I was just keeping my word. Keepin’ it real.
Before I left prison I had promised five of my homeboys I would send them some loot as soon as I built my weight up on the turf. They were Brenda’s brother, Kyree, the twins, Rafael and Rufus, two real soldiers from Bankhead serving elbows life for drug-related murders, a fool ass nigga from College Park named Tony, that sick nigga kept me trippin’ the whole five-year bid and my lil’ homie, Shortbread, who had life with no parole for killing and raping a white girl.
I had promised them I’d do something for ‘em. I hadn’t promised nobody else in there shit.
I began to write:
Yeah Nigga,
Whud up? I know y’all fools been draggin’ my name in dirt (don’t front!). You thought I was like those other fake niggaz who got out and didn’t remember his dawgs still on locks. I told y’all I don’t roll foul like dat. It took this long for me to get at you ‘cause a nigga had to start from the ground up. Here’s $500 to give you a little grip in there.
I ain’t gon’ tell you not to gamble with it, ‘cause we all gotta do our own thing. Feel me?
I’m not rich out here, I ain’t gon’ even front like I am. I’m gonna maintain, though. I haven’t even explored the rap thing. Fa real, as soon as I touched down I forgot all about becoming a MC. Shit, you know how I get down.
I didn’t send no flicks ‘cause I avoid cameras at all cost! Y’all know my steelo. I’m good, though.
I wish I could tell you I been fuckin’ hos left and right, but that shit ain’t a priority to me. I hit some guts, here and there, but for now I’m on a paper chase. I can’t say when or if I’ll holla at you again, dawg.
You know how uncertain the streets is. I just wanted to keep my word and do something for you. I ain’t got no phone or address to give you to contact me. I got my own spot but I ain’t putting that info on paper!
The address on the envelope is mad fake.
Yo, I’m ‘bout to fuck this chicken up I just microwaved. I’ll holla when I can. No more promises, though. You know how I roll. I might be dead tomorrow. Put blood on thi,s though, I ain’t ever coming back there. From now on, court gets held in the street. Ya heard! I’m out.
Peace,
Youngblood.
On the letter addressed to Kyree I wrote:
P.S. Dawg, your peeps snapped on me! We gon’ work it out, though. She’s good people.
I took the chicken out the microwave and let it cool off, it was piping hot. I then found my five dawgs on lockdown info in some papers I kept in a leather pouch inside a pair of socks. I filled out the envelopes and put a letter and a five-hundred-dollar money order in each. I sealed each letter and put a stamp on them. After I finished eating, I took the five letters to the mailbox.
Now niggaz on locks couldn’t say I was fake like the other cats that bounced and never kept their word or sent their homies in the joint shit.
I had kicked it with Kyree, the twins, Tony and lil’ Shortbread every day in the joint. I knew they were bailed up with time and couldn’t count on their fam’ to always send them loot for commissary. The six of us put pain on some niggaz, so I couldn’t just renege on my word to them.
Now my pockets were laced and my weight was up for the time being, but I wanted a fly whip, furniture and some other shit. Maybe I could afford to chill for a minute since money wasn’t a thang. If Rich Kid hadn’t brought me in on that work, I would’ve been hunting niggaz who slung rocks on the corner, trying to touch them for their lil’ pocket stash.
My first inclination was to go to the rent office and pay my rent for about a year in advance. That way if hard times came, at least I’d have a place to lay my head, but I squashed that idea, though, ‘cause how a stickup kid know if he’d still be alive in a year? Fuck it. I wasn�
�t gon’ jinx myself.
CHAPTER 14
Poochie got a three-bedroom, Section Eight apartment out in East Point. The neighborhood was slowly becoming ghetto, too, but for now it was way better than Englewood.
She told me her sons would be coming back to live with her after the school year, so I bought her new bedroom and living room furniture and gave her money to get a phone installed. I got a discount on her furniture ‘cause I also bought furniture for my apartment.
I fixed up the one bedroom in my apartment for my son Lil’ T, for whenever he came over. I would sleep on the couch in the living room. It costed me less than ten G’s for all the furniture, Poochie’s and mine. It wasn’t like a nigga went furniture shopping out in Buckhead, at Haverty’s or someplace like that.
After showering, I went by Lonnie’s. There, I offered him some grip, but he said he was straight. “Keep your bread, fam. I’m sure you got plenty of shit to spend it on. I’m good.”
“I feel you. But if you need anything, you know I got you. Anyway, I need to cop a whip. Something real nice,” I told him.
“I know just the place you need to go. Let me hit my girl up and let her know the business so she don’t be worried about a nigga. Then, we gonna take a ride,” said Lonnie.
An hour later, we were on the highway.
We rode down to Fort Lauderdale, Florida to a DEA auction and I bought a Lexus truck for a bargain. It was silver with white interior and already rimmed-out. We took Blue, Delina’s crackhead ex, with us to put the truck in his name. Then we hooked up the papers when we got back to Atlanta, like Blue had gave me the Lex truck as a gift.
Blue was just happy to get $250. None of that would’ve fooled the feds had they wanted to track the ownership of the truck. Blue would’ve certainly told them the deal had they stepped to him. But for now I was pushing a fly whip. The papers were all in my name.