“Shit, ya peoples done set it out,” Top replied, pulling out an invoice. “We got all kind of shit up in this piece. Rifles, handguns, the whole shit, cuz. The regular shit is already sold on the streets, but we got some choice clientele for the pretty shit. We doing the damn thang, cuz.”
“That’s what’s up. Sell off whatever you can and hit the homeys off with the rest. I don’t want nobody on the set to be without a strap. You hear me?” Gutter slapped his hands together.
“I got you, homey.” Pop Top nodded.
“The boy, Diamonds, get wit you on that yet?”
“Yeah, he said he needs like seven and a half this rip.”
Gutter thought on it for a minute. “When he comes to cop, give him eight. I like that country muthafucka’s style.”
“Y’all need to let a bitch hold one of these down,” C-style added, picking up a nickel-plated.22. “I got some lingerie to go with this here.”
“Bitch, please.” Top snatched the gun from her. “You hoes ain’t trying to pop nothing.”
“Fuck you, nigga! Do you call your mama a bitch, bitch?” C-style had a supermodel figure and the features of an Egyptian princess. High cheekbones sat behind her cinnamon face. Though she was a fun-loving chick, she had a low tolerance for disrespect, which Top had to be reminded of all too often.
“Yo, cuz,” Young Rob spoke up. “I heard the young boys Hook and Noodles put the heat to them niggaz from over on Lenox last night.” His youthful brown eyes looked at Gutter eagerly for a response.
“Word?” Gutter replied in a very uninterested tone. When Gutter had gotten the wire the night before he knew it was a good move to bring Hook and Noodles in. They were like he and Lou-Loc had been when they were young and didn’t give a fuck, which made them the perfect proteges. He currently had them tucked away up in Yonkers until the heat in the city died down.
“Straight gangsta,” Rob continued. “Harlem ain’t to be fucked with.”
Gutter ignored Rob’s praises and continued to inspect the arsenal. He was pleased that two more “dead rags” had been taken out of the game, but he didn’t show it. To him, the movement wasn’t about praise; it was about power and old scores. Before it was all said and done, the other side would pay for his friend’s murder a thousand times over.
“I’m taking these,” Gutter said, holding up two German assault rifles.
“Drama, cuz?” Top asked.
“Nah, a birthday present for a friend. Let’s go, Danny.” Gutter said his goodbyes and led Danny from the unit.
NOT LONG after Gutter left, Sharell got ready to start her day. It was her day off and as much as she wanted to sleep in, she knew she couldn’t. After taking a long hot shower, Sharell sat on the edge of the bed and began to apply lotion to her body. When she got to her protruding stomach, she smiled.
She and Kenyatta were expecting their first child. The pregnancy wasn’t planned, but abortion was never an option. God had blessed them with the most precious of all gifts and she had no intentions on going against his will. With all the stress she had been under, it was a wonder she hadn’t miscarried. With Gutter being hell-bent on his insane quest for vengeance, she feared that the child would grow up without a father. She just hoped that fatherhood would get him to calm down.
Since Lou-Loc’s murder he had ate, slept, and breathed revenge. Diablo and Cisco were dead, but that wasn’t enough for him. In his heart, Gutter felt like he was responsible. Sharell tried to convince him that he wasn’t at fault, but he still carried the burden. He was determined to make anyone affiliated with the rival gang feel his pain.
“Pain,” Sharell said aloud. She was no stranger to it, physically or emotionally. Since she was a little girl it had always been with her and it probably always would.
Sharell was a devout Christian, putting God and family above all else, but it hadn’t always been like that for her. She came up hard on the Harlem streets, right off of 143rd and Lenox Avenue. Her father was a hustler and her mother was an on-again, off-again junkie. Daddy spoiled Sharell when she was little, making sure she was always fly and wanted for nothing. Though her mother spent most of her time nodded out, Sharell had a relatively pleasant childhood. But all that came to an abrupt end shortly before her thirteenth birthday.
Her father had been murdered by a rival drug crew over some money he owed them, or so the police had deduced. The streets told a different story: one where his right-hand man and lieutenant had set him up so he could take his spot. Her father’s soldiers promised to make sure Sharell and her mother were good, but of course it didn’t play out like that. For a while they would come by to check on things or drop a few dollars off, but as time went on and the memory of her father began to fade from the streets, the visits slowed and eventually stopped altogether.
Though Sharell took the death hard, her mother became completely unglued. She stopped going to work and let herself go physically. She wouldn’t eat or wash her ass for days on end. All she did was sit in her room shooting up. As her mother’s grip on reality began to slip, so did her hold on her children. Her younger brother, Malik, took to the streets, determined to pick up where his father left off, while Sharell was left to explore the very same ghettos her father had always tried to keep her sheltered from. It wasn’t long before she was staying out all night, trying different drugs, and living life at a million miles a minute.
It was the freest Sharell had ever felt in her life. For the next few years she was on a high horse that no one could knock her off. This newfound feeling of liberation lasted up until the point when they got the call that Malik had been killed. You would’ve thought that losing her baby boy would’ve sobered her mother up, but it didn’t. She would go to rehab just to come back out and relapse. What most people don’t realize about addiction is that it’s something that never leaves you. No matter how long you stay clean, you always hear the call in the back of your mind. There was only one real escape from addiction, and Sharell’s mother found it when her heart finally gave out on her.
Sharell now found herself a nineteen-year-old high school drop-out, alone in the world. She would spend her days hiding under the covers and her nights clubbing and smoking weed. Her life seemed to be heading in the same direction as her parents and sibling until a chance meeting with a homeless woman one night.
It was about three in the morning when she and her friends were staggering out of a club, drunk and high as kites. As was their ritual, they stopped by White Castle on 125th for a late night-early morning snack. Outside there was a homeless woman begging for change. Her friends passed the woman by, but Sharell stopped and gave her a dollar, which from the woman’s reaction might as well have been a winning lottery ticket.
“Bless you, child.” The woman smiled, revealing a mouth full of crooked and yellowing teeth. “Bless your heart.”
“It’s all good,” Sharell told her, about to rejoin her friends.
“The Lord is truly gonna shine on you for your kindness,” the woman called after her, stopping Sharell short.
“The Lord?” Sharell snorted. “Ma, your god ain’t got a whole lot of love for little ghetto kids.”
The woman’s face took on a look of shock. “No, child, you’re wrong. The Lord loves everyone, we are all his children. All we gotta have is a little faith.”
“Well, I guess that rules me out because I’m all outta faith.”
The woman looked at Sharell sadly. “Don’t fret, child, we all waver in the faith from time to time, but whether we know it or not it’s always there. But don’t you worry none, I’m gonna pray for you and the Lord will show you that he has not abandoned you, no matter how bleak it seems.”
“I hear that hot shit,” Sharell said, walking away.
“I’m gonna pray for you, child!” the woman called after her. “The Lord loves you, all you gotta do is let him in.”
Sharell was dead tired when she got home, but found that she couldn’t seem to get to sleep. The old woman’s words kept ringing in her head. “The Lord loves you,” yeah right. God had taken everything she ever cared about and left her alone in the world. If that was the kinda love he showed than she didn’t need it or want it.
Before she knew it, the sun had risen high in the smog-filled sky. Sharell decided to take a walk and try to tire herself out so she could crash. Though she didn’t have a particular destination when she left the house, she found herself on the corner of 132nd and Fifth Avenue, staring up at a huge stone church. For reasons that she still couldn’t put into words, she stepped inside the house of worship. Sharell hadn’t been inside that church in almost
