used to keep citizens and other dealers in check. If guns didn’t scare them then maybe evil would. Neither scared me. Scratch’s smile just looked ridiculous to me. Gold fronts went out with Flava-flav.
“Does it matter?”
“Fuck yeah it matters. I ain’t tryin’ to get killed for nobody. You don’t pay that much.”
We were doing sixty up Lincoln drive and Scratch took his hands off the steering-wheel and turned to look at me.
“I don’t scare you at all do I?”
“Man, I ain’t down for this shit. Put your hands back on the wheel!”
“Do I scare you?”
“Fuck no! Don’t nobody that breathes the same air as me scare me.”
“Are you sure?”
I pulled out the Beretta and jacked a round into the chamber. Scratch looked at the gun in amusement.
“What you gonna do with that?”
“I’m gonna put two in your forehead if you don’t put your hands back on the goddamned wheel!”
I didn’t raise the gun or point it at him. I just held the gun in my lap and glared at him murderously. You didn’t point a gun at someone until you were ready to use it and I wasn’t there yet. If I were to raise the Berretta up and put it to Scratch’s dome I’d have to pull the trigger or else I’d be dead before the end of the night.
“Really? And how will that keep us from crashin’?”
The road turned and the BMW headed straight for the big concrete barrier that separated the Eastbound traffic from the Westbound. In seconds we would have been bright stains on the road. Scratch stepped on the gas, but still did not reach for the steering-wheel. Nevertheless the car turned and continued safely up the road. Scratch laughed.
“See, boy? I’m fuckin’ magic! Relax, bro. You think I would kill us? We both got too much to live for.”
My heart was still thundering in my chest as Scratch finally regained control of the car.
“Don’t do that shit again, man. That shit ain’t cool.”
“I was just testin’ you, man. It takes some balls to pull a gun on me. You would have killed me huh?”
“Believe it.”
“That’s good ’cause I need a muthafucka with heart. There’s a war goin’ down and I need to know who’s on my side. I need to know if you’ve got the stomach for the things I’m goin’ to be askin’ you to do in the coming weeks.”
“Why me though? I thought Yellow Dog was your boy.”
“I’m talkin’ about specialty work here. This shit is too deep for Yellow Dog. He’s getting’ too old for wet work. There’s other things I need him for. I’m talkin’ about frontline soldiers. I need assassins. Are you down?”
“It don’t sound no different than what I’ve been doin’ for you the last few years.”
“True. But it’s all a matter of degrees. Like this business we got to handle today. You might think this is deep, but this ain’t shit compared to what’s coming. The whole world’s about to change.”
“What are we goin’ to do?”
Scratch’s smile faded away and he just stared out the windshield. It was several moments before he spoke again. When he turned to face me there was something cold and dark in his eyes.
“You and I are going to kill the head of the Junior Black Gangsta Lords. Just the two of us.”
“Man, you are crazy? Us? Goin’ after Jah Warrior by ourselves? Man, that crazy ass Jamaican and his crew will laugh their asses off while they saw our heads off. You must be sick.”
“I thought you had heart? You ain’t scared of me, but you scared of some punk ass Jamaican?”
“I ain’t scared of neither one of you, but I ain’t suicidal or stupid neither. How the fuck we supposed to kill that nigga?”
“The same way you kill anybody. You just keep puttin’ bullets in his ass until his heart stops beatin’. I’m serious, bro. I know where Jah Warrior’s bitch ass is holed up and I know where he’ll be goin’ in about twenty minutes. See, that muthafucka is an undercover faggot. He’s got this Filipino ’mo he’s been tappin’ for a few weeks now. He can’t let his boys know about it ’cause they’d take it as a sign of weakness and cap his ass. So he sneaks off by his self like everyday. This muthafucka is a fiend for that boy-pussy. This kid he’s fuckin’ is only sixteen years old, the sick fucker!”
“And how do you know all this shit?”
“’Cause I know the little Flip that he’s been fuckin’. We go to church together you might say?”
“Man, don’t start with all that Satanic shit. You know I don’t buy that crap. Just ’cause you ain’t crash the car don’t make you Mephistopheles.”
“Yeah, I know you don’t believe. But a lot of folks do and they’re loyal to me, which is good for both of us. Once we smoke this muthafucka we ain’t got shit to worry about. With the Gangsta Lords gone we own the streets. You won’t need to wear that Kevlar vest no more. Ain’t that shit hot?”
I peeled up my shirt and ran my hand over the vest I had strapped on underneath.
“Yeah, but them bullets is hotter.”
“You should really think about joining the faith, bro. There’s a lot more power to be had than what comes out of the barrel of a gun.”
“Yeah, there’s what comes out of a wallet. Now how much is you payin’ for me to do this shit?”
“Two gees. Same as always.”
“Naw, man. This here is too big for some measly ass two gees. You need to come up off like ten for this one.”
Scratch looked at me long and hard. He reached into his shirt and pulled out a dried cobra’s head that he had dangling from a necklace. He rubbed it, seemed to be fondling the thing as he stared right through me. I could almost feel his eyes in my chest fluttering around my heart. I could feel his breath inside my head crawling over my brain.
I wanted to yell for him to cut it out, but he wasn’t doing anything. He was just rubbing that nasty snake head. Still, if he didn’t stop I
“Alright, playa, you got your ten gees. Now, is you ready to do this ’cause we almost here?”
We pulled off the freeway in North Philly and cruised down Columbia Avenue. Children, mothers, grandparents, hard working honest citizens, walked the streets right alongside gangsters, drug dealers, prostitutes, and pimps. Half-dead crackheads and junkies mingled freely with churchgoing Christians and killers and predators stalked unnoticed amongst their prey. Here crime was so normal that criminals blended seamlessly into the fabric of everyday life.
I was surprised when we parked the Beemer in front of a dilapidated row home with boarded up windows and crumbling front steps that could only have been a crackhouse. The front door was missing and shadows shambled about just beyond the light of day. I had been expecting to pull up at a motel or an apartment building or something.
“They fuck in here?”
“No. I just need to check something out first.”
Scratch hopped out of the Beemer and I quickly followed. I didn’t know what we were doing here, but it couldn’t be good. The smell of burning cocaine mixed with the rancid stench of unwashed bodies and surrounded us like a fog. I covered my nose and breathed through my mouth.
“Don’t act like a pussy, Snap. These people pay your bills.” Scratch hissed as he walked from room to room looking over every female in the place.
“Who are you looking for?”
“I’ll know when I see her.”
“Don’t tell me you lookin’ for some pussy up in here? I know you can do better than this.”
“Some of the best pussy you will ever find is right here rotting away in these places. Models, cheerleaders, porn stars, school teachers, doctors, lawyers, nuns. Yeah, they all wind up here and they do stuff for this rock that you’d be ashamed to ask a regular whore for. But no, I ain’t lookin’ for pussy. Let’s go.” Scratch looked around one last time and I could tell he was clearly disappointed about whatever he had been hoping to find in there. Then he led me back outside.
We crawled back into the Beemer and sped off. A few minutes later we were pulling up in front of the Richard Allen Projects.
