Trust in No Man

by Cash

  Everything was proper if po-po ever pulled me over. It had cost over ten grand and they made Blue sign all types of shit. In Atlanta, he just transferred the title to me.

  By now, Shan was letting Lil’ T spend the night with me from time to time, depending on her mood. She’d just drop him off at Poochie’s and I’d snatch him from there. I didn’t go to Shan’s crib and I didn’t want her or Shotgun Pete to know where I laid my head.

  Shan could see that I was comin’ up, pushing a fly whip and shit. A few times she made little comments like she wanted to get with me, but I squashed that shit. ButWhenever I brushed her off, the dirty bitch wouldn’t let my son spend the night with me until she was no longer mad.

  I should’ve chin checked that bitch, but I wasn’t trying to go there with her. When I beefed, somebody usually died. Shan wasn’t worth that, I had paper to chase. Shit to accomplish.

  That bitch had got on that powder, her and her nigga was strung-out on that raw. I wasn’t letting two powder monsters bring me down. I was already killing them two fools, Shan and Pete, by comin’ up and not letting ‘em figure out how.

  Small drama was trying to invade my space but I kept stiff-arming it away. Brenda came at me sideways, complaining that I never had time for her. I tried to handle her with kid gloves ‘cause she was Kyree’s peeps and even though he was locked down, I knew he talked to his sister regularly. I didn’t want Kyree in the joint thinking I was out here draggin’ his fam’. I had told him I would never get down like that. And if Brenda didn’t force my hand, I planned to keep my word.

  A coupla days later, she was all apologetic for snapping on me, telling me she had been stressed. I let her excuses roll off my back. I wasn’t trippin’ it. But I wasn’t feelin’ her anymore, either. She wanted some dick that night, but I wasn’t going out like that. I knew if I started back fucking Brenda, I would see her jealous side again.

  She was screaming that since I got my crib hooked up and my new whip I thought I owned the world.

  “When yo’ ass end up back in prison don’t call me!” Brenda ranted and raved.

  I squashed her anger with calmness. “Yo. What I owe you?” I reached in my pocket and pulled out some big faces and handed them to Brenda. “That oughta cover the loot you sent me while I was locked up.” I was sincere.

  Brenda went loco on a nigga. She threw the money back at me, started crying and cussing like that chick in the Exorcist.

  “Yo, calm down.” I reached for her shoulders.

  “Don’t fuckin’ touch me!” Brenda screamed.

  I had enough of playing Mr. Nice Guy. Kyree was my dawg, but his sister needed checkin’. I slapped that bitch so hard she did the snake. I backhanded her and she hit the floor.

  “I ain’t no weak nigga,” I said calmly but with force, a tone a bitch respects. “I don’t wanna cave yo’ face in, but you can’t come out yo’ mouth anyway to a nigga.” Brenda was holding her jaws in her hands, sniffing and looking dazed. I waited for her head to clear. “Damn! What’s your problem?” I asked after she’d calmed down.

  We talked for two hours. The bitch had issues only Jerry Springer could relate to.

  CHAPTER 15

  Lonnie put me down on a gambling house lick he was planning with two cats I didn’t know and didn’t wanna know. I trusted Lonnie, though. He could outline my role without me having to make friends with the other two dudes. Actually, it was four other cats, besides Lonnie and me, down on the lick. But two of them would be inside of the house gambling when the shit goes down. They were our key to getting into the house. So, only four of us would rock ski masks.

  We ran up in that spot at two in the morning on a Saturday morning. Lonnie had a nine and a German Luger. I had a 12-gauge in my hand, to put fear in their hearts

  Before we got everything under control in the house, a nigga tried to break for a mad dash to a back room, but Lonnie let the heater speak, stopping him in his tracks.

  He busted dude in the back and watched him crumple to the floor. Walking up and standing over the bleeding man, Lonnie let his eyes case the room. “Anybody else wanna run!”

  I then shot a fat man in the ass with buck shots just to let everybody know that at least two of us niggaz in ski masks would pull the trigger. I just hoped I hadn’t shot one of the niggas who had helped set up the lick.

  The two niggaz with us in ski masks started to take the jewelry off of the people in the gambling house. I shook my head at ‘em, I had taken a fall for a move like that before.

  I sliced at my throat, signing for them to kill that, but they took some jewelry anyway, despite my signal. Fuck it! They didn’t know me and I didn’t know them to really give a shit.

  We had to move fast ‘cause there weren’t any silencers on our heaters. The gunshots might’ve been heard. So we were out of there in five minutes or less. I was sure we’d left some money behind, but we had to get up outta there.

  The loot got split six ways evenly.

  The next morning, I was back at my crib counting my cut. I had $4,950 and six books of food stamps. I’d give the food stamps to Poochie later. I put three thousand in my freezer and I put the rest in my pocket with my other walk-around-with flow.

  From there, I popped three boneless chicken breasts on the George Foreman grill and zzz’d out afterwards.

  When I woke up later that Saturday evening, I took a shower and threw on some fresh gear and thought about some pussy. I could do that now. My freezer stash was a’ight. I still had loot left from that Alabama ordeal, plus the three G’s I put with it earlier today. My pockets were laced, and I had a fly whip.

  Who could I go fuck? Poochie, of course, but I wanted some new pussy—a young bitch with hard titties and a flat ass stomach. I dug around the crib until I found that red bitch’s phone number I had met at the game room that day.

  I looked on the piece of paper and found out her name was Cheryl.

  I jetted to the pay phone.

  “Hello?” A girl’s voice. Mature. Probably a woman.

  “Is Cheryl there?”

  “Cheryl! Come get the phone! Hurry up. I gotta make a call!” I heard the phone being passed.

  “This Cheryl. Who is this?”

  “Youngblood,” I answered.

  “Youngblood? Where I know you from?”

  I ran it down to her, explained when and how I had met her. The bitch met so many niggaz at the game room she couldn’t remember me. She said, “Who you be with?”

  “I be by my mafuckin’ self. Who I need to be with, shawdy?” I was ‘bout to blow.

  “What you whippin’?” she pressed on.

  “What?”

  Cheryl smacked her lips like I must be stupid. “What kinda car you got?” She explained. I knew what whippin’ meant, but I hadn’t heard the bitch clearly.

  “I ain’t pushing nothing but a Lex truck,” I understated.

  “You got a Lexus truck?” Her interest soared. “What year is it?” I laughed.

  “It’s last year’s,” I admitted. “What? That ain’t good enough fo’ yo’ ass to ride in?”

  Cheryl laughed at that. “That’s cool,” she said. “I was just making sure you wasn’t no buster.”

  I asked Cheryl if we could hook up and she told me I could pick her up in twenty minutes. I was like whoa! “That’s too soon. I gotta go get my hair braided.”

  “Just c’mon, boy. I know how to braid hair.”

  Cheryl gave me her address and directions on how to get there. I still didn’t think she knew who the fuck I was.

  Cheryl stayed in a nice subdivision neighborhood, so her family had to be at least middle-class. As soon as I pulled in the driveway, Cheryl, with her fine red self, came out of the house and bum-rushed my whip. Cheryl got in the front seat.

  “Hey,” Cheryl spoke to me.

  “Whud up?” I spoke back.

  Cheryl wanted to swing by the game room but I wasn’t having that. She wasn’t about to sport me like a new pair of shoes. Ain’t
no tellin’ how many niggas up in the game room had boned the bitch. They wasn’t gon’ be laughing at me. I’ll fuck with the biggest slut in Atlanta, but I wouldn’t sport her in public.

  I didn’t mind fucking a bitch with a ho’s rep. Poochie wasn’t Virgin Mary and Shan wasn’t either when I was holding her down. It’s all good to me.

  We rented some movies from Blockbuster; I drove to the hood to cop some weed and grab a coupl’a rib dinners and then went to the crib.

  I smoked two blunts with Cheryl while she braided my hair and talked my ears off.

  This bitch claimed to know everybody. She was dropping names left and right.

  Do you know such and such shot such and such over a bitch? Freddie and his crew almost got into it with some niggaz from New York in the game room last week. John Henry from Godby Road ran off with a block of Bay Bay’s dope.

  And on, and on, and on…

  “You know Rich Kid?” Cheryl asked, not stopping for breath.

  “I don’t know nobody, shawdy,” I said. My ears were smoking, begging for her to shut up.

  “You don’t know Rich Kid? Them boys you bought that weed from in Englewood work for him. He got that spot locked with weed and crack. He got spots all over.”

  “Do your mouth ever close?” I asked sarcastically.

  Cheryl shut up for a minute and kept braiding my hair. The silence was killing her ass, so she broke the silence after a while.

  “Well, if you don’t want me to talk, you say something, then.”

  “Something.”

  “Oh. You trying to be funny?” She pushed me in the back of the head.

  “A’ight, you gon’ get beat down?” I said jokingly.

  “I ain’t scared. As long as you fuck me good after you beat me up.” That fucked my head up more than the weed. Cheryl was cool, she just talked too much.

  When my braids were hooked up, we finished smoking another blunt, then Cheryl heated the BBQ dinners in the microwave, making herself at home.

  While we were fucking the ribs up, Cheryl said, “That was you talking to Freddie that day in the game room when he was gonna make that girl kiss you.”

  Her ass finally figured out who the fuck I was, I thought.

  “Yeah, that was me.”

  “You clowned the heck out of her,” she laughed, laying her head on my shoulder affectionately.

  “Nah, she clowned herself.”

  “Tsk!”

  “That’s exactly how I feel.”

  “I bet you do.” Cheryl smacked her lips.

  “Gimme some of those juicy ass lips you’re smacking,” I said.

  “Nope, I wanna watch TV.” She played hard but I knew I would break through her tough act.

  We watched half of a movie and then just like I thought, I was all up in Cheryl’s guts.

  I busted quick, but I was ready to go back again.

  “I gotta pee,” Cheryl said, making my dick deflate. She got up and headed to the bathroom.

  Almost fifteen minutes passed and she hadn’t returned, which seemed a little strange to me.

  I went to check on her, and Cheryl was all off in the bedroom I had fixed up for my son.

  I crept up behind her and asked, “What you doing?” She didn’t even flinch.

  “Making sure don’t no bitch live here with you!” Then she pressed her naked body against mine.

  “C’mon. Do it to me against the wall,” Cheryl whispered before sticking her tongue down my throat. She felt between my legs. “Can it get hard again?”

  “You gotta help it,” I hinted.

  “You trying to get me to suck yo’ dick,” Cheryl cooed before going to her knees.

  The sun was just coming up when I took Cheryl home. On the way to her house, she talked me out of fifty dollars to get her hair fixed. I was too tired to refuse her. I would’ve paid her five hundred just to shut up. The way I saw it, I saved $450.

  Before she opened the door to leave, I promised to get with her again later in the day.

  “I’ma page you this evening. Don’t be taking all year to call me back, either!” Cheryl said.

  “Just page me. I’ll hit you right back, shawdy.” I was tired as hell.

  She had drained a nigga. She leaned over and tried to tongue me before she got out the car. I turned my head. “Ain’t neither one of us brushed our grill,” I reminded her.

  “You trippin’, boy! Dag.” She got out the car. “Don’t forget I’ma page you later. You better call me right back, nigga! My code is three sixes.”

  “I know. Just like the devil,” I said.

  “Bye.” I guess Cheryl hadn’t heard my fly remark.

  “I’ll get at cha later, shawdy.” I dipped.

  Later that evening, I was rolling incognito in the Nissan when Cheryl paged me. I pulled up to one of those pay phones I could use without having to get out of my car.

  “Yo. Who paged Youngblood?”

  “It’s me! Cheryl! Who the hell else put 666 in yo’ pager?”

  “What’s up, shawdy,” I laughed. “Where you at?”

  “I’m over my friend’s house in College Park. You know where the K-Mart at?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She live in the apartments across from K-Mart. Building L. I’ll be on the porch. Hurry up, don’t have me waiting on yo’ ass all day! So tell that other bitch her time is up.”

  “What other bitch?” I laughed.

  “The one that can’t fuck like I can,” Cheryl said.

  I heard a bunch of girls laughing in the background.

  “I’m on my way, shawdy.”

  “You can’t be ‘cause you still on the phone,” Cheryl jammed.

  I couldn’t do shit but laugh. I couldn’t even front, I liked that pretty, red bitch. Not enough to lose focus on business and shit, never like that, but I liked her.

  I pulled up in front of the apartment where Cheryl and a bunch of girls were standing and honked my horn. They strained to see who I was. I guess Cheryl was expecting me to be pushing my Lex truck.

  When she realized it was me in the Maxima, she came over to the car oozing mad attitude.

  “Why you ain’t driving your truck?” Hands on her hips.

  I said, “‘Cause I’m driving this. I can’t drive two cars at once. I’m bad, but not that bad.”

  “Why you always trying to be funny? Dag. I wanted my girls to see your whip,” Cheryl admitted with no shame whatsoever.

  I hunched my shoulders as to say, Oh well.

  Cheryl told me she’d be right back and then she ran back over to her girls and told them something. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but I was betting she had explained to them that I’d left the Lex truck at home. Probably putting it in a way that left her girls thinking I pushed some kind of different whip every day and the Nissan was just for when I was handling business.

  I knew Cheryl’s kind. She probably bragged all day to her friends about my Lex truck, even probably hyped me up a little to make it seem like she had snagged a major baller. Cheryl had probably told her friends everything, and then some. That was, everything except that she had gave me some head last night. Then again, she might’ve told ‘em that, too.

  Cheryl talked the entire ride to my crib.

  Once we were inside of my apartment and chillin’, I asked her why she had got weave put in her hair. She hadn’t had any weave last night.

  “It’s just a hairstyle. Dang.”

  “But it makes you look ghetto. All that different color shit. I liked your shit natural.” I meant that.

  “You want me to get the weave took out?”

  “Nah, you ain’t gotta do that. But I don’t understand why shorties like you, from the suburbs, be trying so hard to look and act like y’all from the hood? Who told you it was glamorous to be a hoodrat?” I asked, hoping to get Cheryl to check herself.

  Cheryl wasn’t feelin’ me, though. Or else she was just committed to being a hood rat, like I was committed to the robbery game. She s
macked her lips, pulled a small compact mirror out of her Coach bag and checked herself.

  “Ain’t nothin’ wrong with my hair. Anyway, why you always got something smart or negative to say? Yo’ ass wasn’t complaining when we was fuckin’ last night.” Fuck it. I figured the hood ain’t the only place that bred rats.

  Cheryl was red, thick and fine, sucked mean dick and moaned like my joint was a baseball bat when I fucked her. I couldn’t judge Cheryl, though, my baby’s mama was a rat, too.

  Playgirl was cool to kick it with, and we hung out every day over the next few weeks. Cheryl wasn’t like most rats in one way, though.

  She wasn’t always beggin’ for cheese, which was fine with me.

  CHAPTER 16

  Rich Kid hadn’t got at me, yet. And although I still had a nice stash in the freezer, I was itching for another lick.

  A few nights me and Lonnie cased out this dope boy named Money Mark, but it was hard to follow him ‘cause he always rolled with a crew, four cars deep.

  The car with Money Mark in it would turn off from the other cars unexpectedly and then the rear car in the caravan would damn near come to a complete stop, making sure no other cars could follow Money Mark until he disappeared.

  I recorded his movements in my mental, and then sat robbing him on the backburner for another day. When I wasn’t plotting a jack move, chillin’ with Cheryl or rollin’ with Lonnie, I’d go by Poochie’s spot and play house with her. We had that kind of uncomplicated understanding.

  Poochie was staying off the pipe, working mad hours and getting her shit on point. Some days I’d wanna get with Poochie but she’d have to work, so I’d hit a quickie and drop her off at her job. I’d watch her walk away from my car, and I’d be thinking she really was starting to look like Toni Braxton. For real. And I hadn’t been high on weed.

  One day my pager started beeping and I recognized Rich Kid’s code. I dipped to a pay phone to hit him up.

  “Yo. Whud up, Money?” I asked when he answered.

  “Youngblood?”

  “It sho’ ain’t the Easter Bunny,” I cracked lamely. Rich Kid let my attempt at humor roll off his back.