“Well”-Hollywood popped his collar-“I’d love to stay and chat with you fellas, but I got some new pussy to sample. Nice doing business with you, B. T.” Hollywood winked at him and went to join the young lady waiting in his car.
chapter 4
“LOOK AT this shit,” Ruby said, slapping a copy of the
“Relax,” Supreme said, tearing into a piece of chicken. “Their little run is gonna come to an end soon enough.” Supreme was a chunky cat who wore his hair in braids. The sleeves of his red shirt were rolled up slightly, advertising the iced-out watch on his right arm. He commanded a small army of soldiers from Hillside, Queens, that had been called in to lend aid against the rival set. Supreme and his soldiers had proven to be efficient killers, and were respected even by the Crips.
“I don’t see it,” she continued. “We’ve been dancing in place for damn near three years and we’re still getting our asses kicked. Then that stupid little fuck Cisco stirs up all this shit. ‘Once Lou-Loc is gone, Harlem will be wide- open.’ Bullshit. What we went through with him was like a light slap on the ass compared to what Gutter is putting down. He took that shit
“Yeah, I gotta give it to him. Gutter turned out to be a real headache,” Supreme confessed. “What I wanna know is, how the hell he got back up when Scales and them laid him out?”
“That’s what a lot of people wanna know,” Ruby said, pushing a strand of red hair from her face. “No one expect him to live, let alone be running around shooting muthafuckas. Shit, even the big boys are scratching their heads about this one. I heard a rumor that their thinking about calling in some help. Some of us are gonna find ourselves without a set to run.”
“Fuck it.” Supreme wiped his hands on a napkin. “We put him down once, we can do it again. Ain’t nobody gonna come in here trying to tell me how to conduct my shit. When I put a bullet in that muthafucka, they’re gonna give me a promotion.”
Supreme had already begun putting a plan together to get at Gutter. He had successfully murdered several key players in the Crip army and he reasoned it would only be a matter of time before he snagged the prize. After dropping some money on the table, he and Ruby exited the restaurant.
Supreme smiled proudly as he held the door for Ruby. She was hard as hell, but she still had it. Ruby was the color of a Hershey’s Kiss, with a body straight off sticky pages. The tight shorts she wore exposed just enough ass cheek to make a man do a double take. In addition to being set leaders, she and Supreme were also fuck buddies.
The sun was beginning to set, but Jamaica Avenue was still buzzing with activity. People were either going in and out of stores, or just on the strip stunting. Supreme smiled proudly as he followed Ruby to her car. No sooner than he walked around to the passenger side, a gray Honda skidded to a stop beside them.
“Say, Blood, you looking for me?” Gutter asked, aiming his.40 caliber over the roof of the car. When Supreme turned around, Gutter shot him once in the face and twice in the chest.
Blood splattered on the car as well as a shocked Ruby. Seeing Supreme get splattered stunned her, but it didn’t last long. She pulled her.380 from her handbag and returned fire. The back window shattered, but she didn’t hit Gutter or the driver. Ruby walked around the car and looked over what was left of Supreme. As she watched his life drain into the gutter she vowed that there would be a reckoning.
NIGHT HAD fallen and the fiends had come out to get their blast. In the depths of the jungle you cop whatever you needed to escape whatever troubles you had. They readily sold their souls for a temporary release. Even with the increased police patrols, business was still able to be handled. B. T. and China sat on the bench, passing a blunt back and forth watching it all.
“These niggaz is a trip,” China said, taking a toke of the blunt. “How can you know crack is gonna fuck your life up, and still smoke it? These people ain’t got no scruples.”
“Man, fuck these niggaz,” B. T. said, spitting on the ground. “They can get as high as they want as long as I got a fat pocket.”
“You’re a sick dude.” China laughed him off. “Say, what was that shit wit you and Top earlier?” Being fairly new to the set, China didn’t know B. T.’s story.
“Fuck that nigga,” B. T. replied. “He riding a dead man’s dick.”
“Everywhere I go I hear about this Lou-Loc cat,” China said, passing the blunt.
“Man, he wasn’t nobody. If he was so muthafucking hard, them brims wouldn’t have aired his ass out.”
A fiend walking up on them broke up their conversation. She was a Hispanic girl with a pretty, round face. The effects of drug abuse had begun to make her lose weight, but she still had a very nice shape. Her eyes held a look of hunger that both men understood.
“What’s up, fellas. Got some coke?” she asked, wiping her nose with her sleeve.
“Bitch, you better go see them lil’ niggaz like everybody else,” B. T. snapped.
“Come on, B. T. Don’t do me like that, you know we go way back.”
“Marisol, you better get the fuck away from me.”
“We can work something out,” she said, touching his knee.
“You must be out ya fucking mind.” He slapped her hand away. “You just as grimy as ya sister was. I slide with you, and I’ll probably wake up with a pistol to my head. Get out my face!”
Marisol sucked her teeth and walked away. She knew she was playing herself by being out there like that, but what choice did she really have? Her boyfriend had lost his position at the firm for drug abuse, then he up and left her to move back with his family. She found herself out on her ass and broke. The fall from diva to dopehead was a short but hard one. She started out snorting with her boo in the high-class circles then ended up stalking a fix on the block like the rest of the fiends. The sick part of her addicted brain told her that the actions of her sister Martina had cast a black shadow over her family.
The downhill spiral began when Lou-Loc was murdered. Though she knew her sister was hurt over the loss of her meal ticket she never thought she would take it to the extremes she did. Martina couldn’t accept the fact that Lou-Loc didn’t want her so she concocted a plan to punish him. Though Marisol and Lou-Loc had never seen eye to eye she still didn’t believe he should’ve been murdered, especially like that. After his death Martina was found dead. The police still had no clues as to exactly what had happened, but Marisol knew. The devil she had served for so long had come back to swallow her. It was just too bad that she had set him on everyone else’s heels in the process.
Marisol wiped the long tear from her cheek that the stroll down memory lane had left her and moved deeper into the trenches to see who else she might be able to offer her services to for a blast.
“YO, YOU twisted that faggot, son!” Danny squealed. “That boy head exploded like
“Danny, anybody ever tell you that you talk too much?” Gutter asked, lighting the blunt that was hanging from his mouth.
“It’s blue, cuz. I was just trying to give you your props. You pushed son’s wig back. That shit was dope!”
“Let me tell you something.” Gutter turned on him. “Ain’t nothing glorious about murder. Blood don’t wash off, lil nigga. You ever shot somebody?”
“Nah, but I would,” Danny quickly shot back.
“But the point is, you
Danny felt kind of foolish being chastised by his mentor. All he was trying to do was give it up to Gutter on his flawless execution of Supreme, but he ended up getting flipped on. Everyone doubted him because he was young,
