by Erica Hilton
“Hey, Nut,” she said, glancing up at him.
“What’s up, Tamia?” Lil Nut asked as he walked through the living room and into the back guest bedroom.
In this room was a pull-out sofa, a table and two chairs, a television, and a stereo system. This was the room where Butter entertained his company and conducted business. Lil Nut sat in one of the chairs and waited for Butter to join him.
Finally Butter entered after several minutes. In his hands he held two shoeboxes. He placed them on the table in front of Lil Nut. Lil Nut opened the boxes and saw stacks of cash wrapped in rubber bands. Each stack contained ten thousand dollars. Lil Nut removed the stacks, counting each one. In total there were twenty stacks, ten in each shoebox, equaling two hundred grand.
“Not bad for two weeks’ work, huh?” Butter asked. He smiled as he retrieved a beer from the small refrigerator that sat in the corner of the room.
“It’s all good,” Lil Nut answered. It was indeed a great two weeks. It would normally take them a month to make two hundred gees. But since Lil Nut’s connect came up on a new and more potent product, business was really taking off. “So how we looking on the product?”
“I checked with them little niggas last night, and as of last night, we out,” Butter told him.
“Yeah, well I meet with the connect today, and as soon as I do, I’ll come through with some more of the new shit,” Lil Nut said.
He grabbed ten of the stacks and stood. He placed five stacks into a plastic bag and rolled it up, placing it in the inside pocket of his coat. He did the same with the other five stacks. While he did that Butter lit up a joint and began to smoke. Lil Nut looked up at him when he smelled the marijuana. He shook his head and continued what he was doing.
“I’m out, man,” he said to Butter once he was finished.
“A’ight, B, I’ll get up witchu when you get back,” Butter said as he blew smoke from his mouth.
“Yo, man, you need to leave that shit alone.”
“Ain’t nothing wrong with smoking a little cheeba,” Butter said.
“I’m telling you it’s fucking up your focus,” Lil Nut said, exiting the room before Butter could respond.
Nut walked through the living room where Tamia still sat in the same spot she was in when he arrived. She was watching the new video show called Yo! MTV Raps. A video by MC Hammer was playing on the television. Lil Nut stopped, looked at the video, and shook his head, laughing at the pants the rapper wore.
“Later, Tamia,” he said before stepping out of the apartment.
On the train ride to Harlem, Lil Nut’s beeper began to vibrate. He removed it from his waistband. Checking the number, he saw it was the connect letting him know that they were still on to meet at one pm. He and the connect had code numbers that they used to communicate.
Lil Nut put the beeper away and sighed. He was relieved to know that everything was still on, especially since he was holding a hundred gees on his person. In the past the connect had called and canceled or changed the time at the last minute, and Lil Nut would have to turn around and go back home. He thought about getting a car every time that happened, but quickly pushed the thought out of his mind when he saw black dudes constantly being pulled over by the police.
An hour or so later, Lil Nut walked up into the connect’s spot. He was greeted by the bodyguards and frisked. He was then escorted to a back room of the apartment where the connect sat on a sofa with two Dominican beauties.
“Lil Nut, my friend.” The heavily accented Dominican man greeted him with a huge smile.
“Luis, what’s up?” Lil Nut smiled back, shaking the man’s hand.
Luis didn’t get up from the sofa because of his obesity.
“Vamoose, chicas,” he said, shooing away the two women, but not before he hit each of them on the butt after they rose from the sofa. The two women giggled and left the room. The bodyguard closed the door and allowed Luis and Lil Nut to have their privacy.
“How are you, my friend?” Luis asked again.
“I’m good,” Lil Nut answered.
“Business good, no?”
“Business is real good,” Lil Nut agreed.
“Good, good. You a good man.”
“You too, Luis.”
“So what do you come for today?”
Lil Nut pulled out the plastic bags from his pocket. He took out the stacks of money and threw them onto the coffee table that sat in front of them. Luis reached into the cigar box that sat on the table. He grabbed a cigar and wet it, placing it in his mouth. Lil Nut continued to pull stack after stack out of the plastic bags. Luis lit the cigar, sending huge amounts of smoke streaming into the air. Lil Nut threw the last stack onto the table, balled up the bags, put them back in his coat pocket, and sat back on the couch.
“Yeah, I see, business is good.” Luis nodded his head, impressed. “OK, we do big business.”
“No doubt,” Lil Nut said.
“Hector!” Luis called out.
The bodyguard Hector entered the room again. “Come, Hector,” Luis beckoned.
Hector walked his huge, fat body over to the table and stood in front of it.
“Take dis money and get my friend his stuff.”
Hector did as he was told without saying a word.
“So, my friend, you still no have no car yet?”
“No, I don’t need a car,” Lil Nut told him. Lil Nut was getting tired of Luis’s nagging. He had heard that he needed a car a thousand times. Everyone told him he should get a whip. But he never wanted to bring unwanted attention to himself, and a car would definitely do that. Besides, he never obtained a driver’s license.
“Ah, but yes you do, my friend. You no can ride the train with this kinda money and product. It’s too risky. I can no take risks.” Luis looked at him seriously.
Lil Nut got the picture. He understood exactly where Luis was coming from. If he got busted, Luis didn’t want to take the chance of Lil Nut snitching on him. But Lil Nut was not a snitch.
“Yeah, I feel you, Luis. I will look into one soon,” Lil Nut told him.
“Good. For now, how you get home? Not train, no?”
“Naw, I usually take a cab home when I come to cop.”
“Tsst, tsst.” Luis made the noise with his mouth, letting Lil Nut know he wasn’t pleased with that idea. “I give you ride home this time, my friend. But remember before you come next time, drive your own car.”
Lil Nut nodded his head in agreement.
“I notice when you come, you come alone. You have security, yes?” Luis asked as he tapped the ash from the cigar into the ashtray that sat on the arm of the sofa.
Lil Nut shook his head.
Luis tried to turn his huge body to face Lil Nut, but failed. So he turned his head instead. “A man can live alone, a man can eat alone. But a man in this business can no be alone. He needs someone he can trust to have his back. You need to have muscle to help protect you,” Luis said while the cigar hung from the corner of his mouth.
“I can take care of myself, Luis, and in this business you can’t trust everyone.”
“True, son, but me no say trust everyone. Me say someone. There has to be someone you can trust. If you take care of your peoples, they will take care of you.”
“I am my own muscle,” Lil Nut told him with confidence.
“No, no, young man. Who will watch your back? I no see eyes in the back of your head.” Luis looked behind Lil Nut’s head. “No, you are businessman, take care of business. It’s OK to be able to protect yourself when the time comes. But it is important to have people around you to take care of you.” He blew a cloud of smoke from his mouth. “You see Hector?”
Lil Nut nodded as Hector walked in on cue, carrying a large brown shopping bag with handles.
Luis removed the cigar from his mouth before he spoke. “Hector will never let anything happen to me. He will fight to the end to protect me. Hector loyal to me,” Luis said, looking up at Hector.
“Always,” Hector bellowed before leaving the room.
“See?” Luis pointed toward the door after Hector. “You need loyal men on your team. Do you have loyal men on your team?”
Lil Nut figured this was one of those trick questions that Luis so often liked to throw at him.
“Of course, Luis. I was tryna respect you and not bring nobody else with me. I thought you wanted it that way.”
“Sure I do, but if you have people you can trust and is loyal to you, then you can bring them with you to watch your back.”
Lil Nut thought about it, and the only person he would bring would be Butter. But since Butter had started smoking weed, he felt that Butter had lost some of his focus, and he didn’t want to take any chances.
Luis’s driver dropped Lil Nut off in front of Butter’s apartment building. Butter was sitting on his car out front talking with one of their runners when Lil Nut got out of the car with the brown shopping bag full of cocaine. Lil Nut stepped away from the car and watched it pull off.
“Who was that?” Butter asked when Lil Nut approached them.
“That was the connect’s driver,” he said.
“What’s up, Nut?” the runner asked.
“What’s up? You a’ight?” Lil Nut asked.
“I’m good, man. It’s all good,” the boy responded.
“Cool,” Lil Nut said while walking past Butter.
Butter jumped to his feet. “A’ight, man, I’ll get up with you,” he said to the runner. He shook the boy’s hand and ran to catch up with Lil Nut. “Yo, when you gonna let me meet the connect?” Butter asked Lil Nut. “We partners and I should be able to meet with him too.”
Lil Nut walked up the stairs and Butter followed Lil Nut into the apartment where Tamia was still sitting on the sofa watching videos.
“I don’t know, man. He really don’t like too many people knowing about him. He don’t trust a lot of motherfuckers.” Lil Nut told Butter that to stop him from asking anything further about the connect.
“So hook me up. Let him know I’m ya right-hand man.”
“I don’t know. I’ll think about it.” Lil Nut sat down at the kitchen table and prepared to cook up the cocaine for crack distribution.
Butter stood there in the kitchen watching Lil Nut.
“Yo, man, sit yo ass down and help me do this shit,” Lil Nut said, noticing Butter standing there doing nothing.
Butter was feeling some kind of way. He felt he was an equal partner and should be able to meet with the connect as well. But Lil Nut was ignoring his request. He reluctantly sat down and began to help Lil Nut.
***
Three days later Lil Nut got a page on his beeper and he grabbed it from the counter. He looked at it and saw that it was a 911 call from Butter. He picked up his phone and called him.
“Yo, I’m on my way to come get you,” Butter said. “This cat owes me a gee and he was supposed to come see me last week. He been ducking me, but I got word where he at.” Butter sounded amped.
“A’ight, I’ll be outside,” Nut said. “How long before you get here?”
“Ten minutes.”
“A’ight.” Lil Nut hung up the phone. He scratched the hairs on his chin that were growing in. That damn credit, he thought. They had more money owed to them in credit than he liked.
Exactly ten minutes later Butter pulled up in his BMW 325i. Lil Nut jumped into the passenger’s seat of the luxury car. The first thing that hit him was a cloud of weed smoke. He immediately rolled down his window to get some relief. When he did this, protests came from the backseat as well as from Butter.
“Yo, Nut, roll that window back up. You letting all the smoke out,” Butter said.
“Yeah, Nut, we need the smoke to stay in the car,” a voice said from the backseat.
Lil Nut turned around to see two of his young runners in the backseat sucking on a joint.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Lil Nut screamed at Butter. “And you wonder why I won’t let you be more involved on the business side. It’s because of dumb shit like this.” Lil Nut was pissed.
“What, man? Come on, lighten up,” Butter said, looking over at him. Butter was leaning over to the right in a gangsta lean with his driving arm resting on top of the steering wheel.
Lil Nut didn’t even realize at first that the two young boys were sitting in the backseat because of the amount of smoke in the car. “It’s shit like this that can get us locked up. What the fuck, man!” Lil Nut yelled. “Roll these fucking windows down and put that shit out before I put a bullet in all y’all motherfuckers!”
The teens in the back put out the joints with a quickness. They had never experienced Lil Nut’s short temper before. They’d only heard about it from the streets before joining the team. Butter rolled down the window and turned up the music on the radio. Soul II Soul’s “Back to Life” blared from the woofer speakers.
Butter pulled the car over when he saw another vehicle pull out of a parking spot. He parallel parked the car, killing the engine. He reached into the middle console and pulled out a .45, placing the gun in the inside pocket of his raccoon jacket. Lil Nut checked the contents of his guns and cocked them.
“Stay here,” he said to the young boys.
They both looked at each other in shock, and then they both looked at Butter for assistance. Butter had told them they could rock with them when they found the cat that owed the money. But Lil Nut obviously had other plans that didn’t include them.
Butter shrugged his shoulders. “We’ll be back,” he told them as he got out of the car right after Lil Nut. Lil Nut stood on the sidewalk and waited for Butter.
“Who is the nigga?” he asked with a serious face, still disgusted with his behavior.
“That nigga Freddie.”
“Where he at?”
“He s’posed to be in the first-floor apartment,” Butter said.
Lil Nut walked back over to the car and opened the back door. The teens in the car looked at him with fear in their eyes. “If y’all little niggas do anything stupid, I’ma take this gat”—he showed them the gun he held in his hand—“put it in ya mouth, and pull the trigger. Y’all feel me?” He mean mugged the two of them.
They both nodded their heads in agreement, because they were too afraid to speak.
“Let’s roll,” he said to Butter and began to climb the stairs.
Once inside he held the two guns down to his side and slightly in back of himself, trying to conceal them. They passed a dope addict sitting in the hallway on the floor shooting up. He had his pants down around his ankles and sat on the floor in his dirty underwear while he looked for a vein in his thigh. He wasn’t concerned with Lil Nut and Butter, because he was too busy concentrating on the blast he was about to receive from the heroin.
“Knock on the door,” he told Butter.
Butter knocked. They heard noise behind the door. Lil Nut and Butter stood on either side of the door so no one could see them out of the peephole.
“Who is it?” a female yelled.
“It’s Pete. Is Freddie here?” Lil Nut asked in a deep voice.
“Oh, hey, Pete,” the female said. “Freddie, Pete’s here!” she yelled out to Freddie before opening the door.
Lil Nut looked at Butter and shrugged. He never thought it would actually work. But fortunately for them, Freddie had a brother named Pete.
Once the door opened and the woman realized Lil Nut and Butter weren’t Pete, she was about to protest until Lil Nut put his .357 in her face. Whatever words were going to fly out of her mouth quickly got stuck in her throat. Her eyes got
larger and she stood stone still.
“Get her,” Lil Nut told Butter. Butter grabbed the woman, wrapped his arm around her neck, and placed the gun to her temple, walking her back into the apartment.
Lil Nut looked down the hall to make sure no one was watching. He stepped into the apartment and closed the door behind him, locking it.
“Theresa!” Freddie called out from the back room.
Lil Nut’s demonic eyes burned a hole right through Theresa. From the look he was giving her, she knew not to say a word.
“Who else is here?” Lil Nut whispered to her. She shook her head from side to side, because she really couldn’t talk.
As Lil Nut crept along the living room toward the back room he heard footsteps approaching. Butter quickly moved the woman over to the side so she wouldn’t be seen by whoever was coming their way. Lil Nut stood back on the side of the doorway, waiting as well.
“Theresa! Did you say Pete was here?” Freddie yelled as he walked through the doorway.
All Freddie felt was a sharp pain hit him across the bridge of his nose, blinding him. He saw nothing but a bright light before his focus came back. Blood poured from his nose. Another blow to the forehead sent him sailing back through the doorway. He hit the floor with a loud thud.
Lil Nut stood over him. Freddie had passed out. Lil Nut kicked him hard on the side of his head. The female yelped as she witnessed this act of torture.
“I dare you to make another sound,” Butter warned her as he tightened his grip around her neck.
Freddie came to and looked up at Lil Nut. “Where’s my fucking money?” Lil Nut growled at him.
“Yo, man, I ain’t got it right now! But I swear I’ma get it to you tomorrow!” Freddie panicked.
“Bullshit! You been ducking me for weeks!” Butter cut in.
“No, I told you that I would have it to you by the end of this week!” Freddie tried to save face.
Lil Nut placed his foot on Freddie’s neck to hold his head steady. “How much you got on you now?” Lil Nut asked through gritted teeth.
“I ain’t got nothing, I swear!”
Lil Nut pumped two bullets into Freddie’s face with no remorse. He then turned to Butter. “Do the bitch and let’s be out,” he said, walking past them.