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  Don agreed he had found what they needed. After cruising the block twice to make sure that everything was quiet, Weed-Eyes dropped Don on the corner.

  When Don got close to the car he saw the red warning light mounted above the dashboard that meant the car had an alarm. That didn't deter him—it was a simple matter to bypass them. Using his screwdriver, Don broke the driver's side taillight. He stuck the rubber-handled tool into the remainder of the broken bulb in the socket to complete the circuit and make the alarm short itself out. The alarm system gave two halfhearted chirps and the dashboard warning light indicator faded. He popped the door lock out and had the car started in under two minutes. Following the same routine as the night before, Don was nosing the steamer in the vacant lot twenty minutes later. He parked it alongside the Bonneville that had donated Monkeyhead's rims. With Weed-Eyes’ help the four rims were off the Cutlass twenty minutes later. The custom steering wheel had the same design as the rims, so Don stole that too. While Weed-Eyes was arranging the rims in his trunk, Don popped the trunk of the steamer.

  Inside was a huge kickerbox with two twelve-inch subwoofers, four six-by-nines, two amplifiers, and a crossover. Don speedily severed the wires of the components and snatched them out. Inside the car he found the snatch-out radio under the driver's seat and an equalizer mounted under the dashboard.

  Don was so frantic with their haul that he didn't go home to call Monkeyhead. They headed straight for Harper Court. It was an easy task to find Sajak. The boy was waiting, hoping that Don was coming that night. He was overjoyed with the rims, matching steering wheel, and CD player.

  Sajak paid him for the rims and Don had Weed-Eyes drop him off at home.

  At home, after taking a generous hit of crack, Don relaxed while Juanita tinkered with the car stereo components he had brought home. She was examining the speakers when she discovered something.

  “Don, baby, come look at this. There's something in there.”

  Cut into the side of the kickerbox were holes that let the speakers “breathe.” Don put his eye to the hole and could just make out some type of package.

  “Damn, girl, you ain't lying. There is something in this motherfucka. Reach in that drawer and hand me that Phillips screwdriver.”

  Don unscrewed and removed the speaker cover and the woofer. He reached into the box and pulled out the package. It was wrapped in brown paper and secured with masking tape. As if it were a Christmas present he tore the wrapper open. The next layer was a balloonlike substance. He ripped a hole in it. Another layer of thick packaging was underneath the rubber. He ripped through the plastic using the screwdriver's tip.

  Juanita had taken a seat on the bed and was hitting the pipe.

  “Juanita, come here,” Don whispered in awe.

  With the pipe still in her hand, Juanita crossed the room and stood by Don's shoulder. Curiously she looked at him as he looked at the package.

  “Baby,” he said, his voice still barely above a whisper. “This is a motherfucking kilo of cocaine.”

  Using the fingernail of his baby finger Don scraped some powder off the brick and tasted it.

  “Baby, this is cocaine. Taste this shit.”

  She obeyed and came to the same conclusion—cocaine.

  On instinct Don stuck his hand back inside the yawning hole in the speaker box and felt around. His hand rubbed against another package and he pulled it out. It was another package wrapped exactly the same as the first.

  Don took a seat on the floor beside the kickerbox. He had to think. This was too good to be true. He knew that there was a drug dealer somewhere kicking himself in the ass for hiding two kilos in his car. Fuck you very much for the two keys, he said to himself.

  To Juanita's astonishment, Don broke out into wild laughter and continued laughing until tears were rolling down his cheeks.

  12

  TEMPTATION TO TRY AND SMOKE THE BETTER PORTION OF the kilos was great, but Don resisted the urge; fear of a massive coronary prevented him from indulging too heavily. The cocaine was the best he had consumed in his short career as a clucker. It gave him the feeling of being superhuman— smarter, stronger, and cooler than everyone else.

  Still, he had problems.

  Not the ordinary problems that most crackheads are faced with, like the lack of money or crack. Don's problems stemmed from having too much cocaine. Never in his young life did he realize just how much cocaine a kilo actually was. It was way too much cocaine for personal use. The only logical thing to do was sell it. That led to another problem. Don didn't have the clientele to try and sell weight, plus he knew from experience that he didn't have the patience it took to build a clientele list.

  The more he thought about it, he concluded that his only option was to try and unload one or both of the kilos. The only person he knew he could try and sell a kilo to was Diego. He seriously doubted the half-breed had the currency to purchase both of them.

  He glanced over at Juanita. She was sprawled across the bed, finally passed out after a night of smoking crack. The soles of her small feet were filthy from walking around barefoot. He couldn't recall her getting in the tub or shower in the last forty-eight hours. Damn, she looking whupped, he thought, Imma have to hurry up and get this shit away from her before she OD in this motherfucka. Her once-luscious figure was quickly going out the window. She had become a total slob—never wanting to cook or clean the room. Lately it seemed the only thing that got her out of bed was crack. Ever since the night she discovered the kilos in the speaker box, she had been smoking like a broken stove. When he tried to slow her down she would pout for awhile or suck his dick until he conceded. To him it seemed that if she didn't have the glass dick in her mouth, it was his dick. Old-fashioned sex had almost became non-existent, only oral sex to get her way.

  At first his mother had protested about her staying there, but since she seemed to keep him in the house, she didn't put up too much of a fuss. His mother acted like she almost liked Juanita.

  Don was starting to look at Juanita in a different light and it wasn't a good one. He said to himself, when I get rid of this shit, I'm gone have to get rid of this bitch. With all the paper I'm gone have, I can find me a new bitch. One that don't fuck around with this crack shit.

  That was a matter for another day—one day soon, though. Right now, he needed to make an important telephone call. Downstairs in the living room he found the telephone and picked it up. He dialed the number from his head, but when he held it to his ear he could hear his sister.

  “I'm on the damn phone!” Rhonda yelled into the receiver.

  “Well get the fuck off!” he said harshly.

  “I ain't getting off nothing! This ain't yo phone, boy!”

  He calmed down. “Girl, yo always on the damn phone, shit. I just want to make a quick call, then you can get right back on the motherfucka.”

  “Girl, I'll call you back in a minute,” his sister said to her friend and hung up.

  Don dialed the number again. “Diego, my man, what's up?”

  “Who this?” Diego asked warily.

  “Don-Don, nigga.”

  “What's up Don. We working. Come through the Court.”

  “I ain't on that shit, Diego. I need you to come through my crib real quick, so we can talk business.”

  “What's up?” Diego asked suspiciously.

  “Nigga, it's all good. Come through my tip. Believe me, you don't want to miss out on this one.”

  “Alright, I'll be there in about twenty minutes.”

  “Make it ten.”

  “Cool.”

  To prepare himself for the meeting with Diego, Don smoked a healthy rock in his bedroom.

  The sound of the crack sizzling in the pipe woke Juanita. She sat up like a zombie and tried to snatch the pipe from his hand. They scuffled, resulting in Don's favorite pipe sailing across the room and shattering against the wall. A glass shard rebounded and embedded in Don's forearm. With a howl of pain he snatched the glass from his arm. A riv
ulet of blood ran down his arm and dripped onto the carpet.

  Totally pissed off, Don rained blows on Juanita's head and shoulders. She tried to grab his flailing arms and they both fell off the bed. Don scrambled to his feet and stomped her head into the carpet until she stopped moving.

  He went to the bathroom to clean his wound cursing all the while. He went back to his bedroom with a towel wrapped around the deep puncture in his forearm. In his room he retrieved his cigarette and a sample bag of cocaine. He ignored Juanita's crumpled form as he stepped over her and made his way downstairs to wait on the porch for Diego.

  Twenty minutes later, Diego's Chevy Blazer pulled up to the curb in front of Don's house. Along with Diego, Sajak and Lonnie disembarked from the sport utility vehicle. They stepped up onto the porch and exchanged greetings with Don.

  Diego took a seat on the porch banister. “Don, baby boy. What's so important that you needed me to come over here? It better be good 'cause you taking me away from my hustle.”

  “Diego, this is Don-Don you talking to. Shit, nigga, I'm a hustler too, so you know that this shit got to be 'bout some cash. I wanted to holla at you 'cause you the moneyman around this motherfucka. I got a sweet deal for you. Is you interested?”

  “I wouldn'ta came over here if I wasn't interested, nigga. Spit it out.”

  Taking his time, Don blew cigarette smoke into the gentle breeze. “What if I told you that I got my hands on a cake of the best yayo this side of Colombia.”

  “Bullshit,” Lonnie said.

  Don looked at him like he was a child that had spoken out of turn; he had never liked Lonnie much. “I'm talking to the boss,” he said. “You just the hired help so when I'm talking to the boss, please don't interrupt.” He turned back to Diego. “The shit is soft, untouched. It's so good that a chef could bounce this shit back to at least a cake and a half. The shit is ready to be delivered. All you got to do is say the motherfucking word.”

  “Hold on, Don. If ole Diego don't know shit else, he know that if something sound too good to be true, then it usually is. That's just the nature of the game. Answer three questions, then I'll know that yo fo’ real.”

  “Shoot,” Don said confidently.

  “How do I know that the coke is really that good? If it is, when can we see the whole slab? And last, but certainly not least, how much is you talking for the whole book?”

  Undaunted, Don pulled the sample bag from his pocket. “You know this game is cold but it's fair, Diego, but since you niggas is alright with me, I'm gone give y'all a sweet deal. See, you held me down when I was in a tight spot a couple of times and I ain't gone forget that shit. For twenty gees the key is yours. Here's a sample of it.” He tossed the Baggie to Diego. “Take you a bump to see what's to it. I'm telling you that the shit I got in my hands is good to go. There's a piece of crack I cooked up from the shit in there too, so you can have one of the geekers take a hit.”

  Don watched Diego take a snort from the bag and then hand it to Lonnie, who took a snort also. Sajak declined.

  Diego was the first to speak. His voice was gravelly from the raw cocaine in his throat. “Damn, Don. That shit taste like butter. If you got a key of that shit there, it's all good. Why don't you give us a minute to crunch the numbers.”

  “Ain't no thang. I'll be in the crib. Just ring the bell when you niggas is ready to talk business.”

  Don left the porch while the three dealers held a conference.

  Diego's face was frozen. He took another snort from the Baggie. “Man, this is better shit than we copped the last three times we went to the store. If this nigga got a cake of this shit, we could drop a half a kilo of B-12 on this shit and it would still be better than the shit we got.”

  Lonnie agreed. “You ain't lying, man. That shit would pump the set straight up. Cluckers would be coming from everywhere like when we had that shit from Kody and them before the feds got they ass.”

  Diego said, “You ain't never lied. But I ain't about to give no hype twenty gees of my scratch.” He motioned for Lonnie and Sajak to come closer. “Man, we could take this nigga's shit,” he whispered, his voice still raspy from the raw cocaine. “Don don't be with Big Man and them no more, so he ain't got nobody to ride for him. Why the fuck should we scrape up twenty gees when we can just make this nigga cough this shit up? That is if the nigga really got a whole key.”

  Lonnie was charged—as much by the cocaine as the thought of conspiracy. “Hell, yeah! Fuck this stud. I hate this nigga anyway. Shit, I'm with this shit. I'd pop the dog shit out of my auntie for a kilo of this coke!”

  Both Diego and Lonnie looked at Sajak. He was the youngest and most inexperienced among them. The youngster sorely wanted to live up to the thug image.

  “What you say, Sajak?” Diego asked.

  Sajak patted his short afro. “Whatever, yo. I don't give a fuck. I mean if this nigga do got a whole key of cola and it's as good as y'all say it is then we needs that.”

  Diego walked over and rang the doorbell. “Bet, we gone take this nigga shit. When this nigga come back out just follow my lead. Act like everything is all good.”

  When Diego rang the doorbell, Don was upstairs smoking a rock on a pipe considerably less elaborate than the work of art Juanita had broken. Exhaling the white-hot smoke from his lungs, Don went downstairs. Before he opened the door and stepped on the porch he tried to compose himself.

  His efforts were to no avail.

  The three drug dealers knew from the sweaty, geeked look on his face that he had just smoked some crack. Mentally, Diego chalked themselves a point.

  Diego said, “We discussed it and it sounds like you got yo'self a deal. We'll buy it from you tonight. All we need is a meeting place where we all will feel comfortable. You can pick the spot, Don.”

  Don mopped the beaded sweat on his forehead. “Down on St. Lawrence. You know that big abandoned building in the middle of the block? Be in the back of that motherfucka at twelve tonight. If y'all not there by one minute after twelve then I'm gone.”

  Lonnie was so happy that the unsuspecting Don walked into their trap he almost laughed, but a chilling glance from Diego made him straighten up. Still, he couldn't resist making a small threat. “Don, I hope yo ass ain't playing no games 'cause it'll get real ugly. If shit be looking shady I ain't gone hesitate to melt a motherfucka!”

  Don laughed at Lonnie's threat. “Don't even trip, nigga. I ain't finta play with no nigga either. Especially when it come down to a whole kilo. So I advise you niggas not to be acting shady. Just be the fuck on time or like I said I'm gone thin out.”

  Don shook hands with the three dealers signaling that the meeting had came to a satisfactory end. He stood on the porch and watched them climb into the Blazer and roar away.

  They got to be on some new shit that I ain't even tried yet if they think that I would trust them with a slab, he thought. They didn't know it yet, but he had the whole thing mapped out. He wasn't insane enough to try and control a transaction of this magnitude by himself. He needed a mule. And the only person he could halfway trust was Weed-Eyes.

  He took one more look up and down the block before he went inside the house, letting the screen door slam.

  13

  JUANITA SHOOK DON TO AWAKEN HIM. HE COULD TELL from the wide-eyed look on her face she had been smoking crack since he went to sleep hours ago. He started to whup her ass again, but he was already a little behind schedule, so he postponed it.

  He dressed rapidly and took himself a quick hit. His new pipe was still warm to the touch from Juanita's use. Grabbing the bag with the kilo in it, his pistol, and a few extra rounds, Don left the house. At a dead sprint he headed for the abandoned building on St. Lawrence.

  Don was in a good mood. He was slightly apprehensive about making such a large transaction, but the thought of acquiring $20,000 eased the tension. As he ran, his thoughts touched on the fact that he was broke—begging for credit a few weeks ago, but now he was about to come up. When he saw We
ed-Eyes sitting in his car a block from the meeting place he slowed down to a walk. He walked over to the car and got in.

  Weed-Eyes looked over at Don. He noticed Don's bucked eyes and smelled the burned crack in Don's clothes. “What's up, little brother. You a little early. Man, I hope you brought some of that good shit you been smoking with you.”

  Don smiled and sat the kilo on the car seat between them. “As a matter of fact I did, Weedy.”

  Don pulled a plastic bag out of his pocket with a little over two-and-a-half ounces of cooked cocaine in it. The only reason he was carrying such a large piece was because he had been afraid to leave it around Juanita. The way she smoked, leaving that much crack around her was almost assuredly a death sentence. Don dug into his pocket and pulled out a six-inch length of antenna he had broken off the television in his mother's room. He pinched a small piece of crack from the bag and placed it on the steel wool shoved into the largest end of the antenna. With his lighter he melted the rock to hold it in place. He placed the end of the antenna wrapped with masking tape to his lips. He held the lighter to it and inhaled. Satisfied with his hit, he handed the straight-shooter to Weed-Eyes and gave him a crack rock.

  Weed-Eyes skillfully followed the same procedure.

  “Damn, little brother,” he exclaimed, as he blew the crack smoke out of his nostrils. “That's some good smoke. Definitely that butter. That's better than the shit they be having over there on Harper. When this deal is over, I'm gone cop me a ball of that shit and take it out west to this bitch name Rachel crib. This little freak bitch will suck the sleeve off a nigga swipe for a hit of this good cola. Probably rent me a room for about a week and keep my swilla down the bitch throat.”

  Don laughed, then turned serious. “Yeah, that shit sound like a plan, but you got to put that shit out yo mind right now. Think about the shit that's about to go down. I picked this building 'cause me and my homies used to haunt this motherfucka. I know it inside and out. The shit is gone go down in the back. Right in the middle of the backyard is a Dumpster. It's still there—I checked. Keep the Dumpster between you and them studs.”