“This an A and B conversation,” Bri replied, “C ya way out.”
Tone laughed at the childish statement. He hadn’t heard that in a while. The rapport between these two was comical, to say the least.
Sonya urged, “Please, Tone don’t encourage this heifer. It’ll only get worst.”
“Ha!” Bri laughed as she took a bite of the burger and drove simultaneously.
“Anyway, can’t that shit wait till tomorrow?” Sonya asked. “I’ll show you around then.”
“Nah, I need to see B-more the hood tonite,” Tone insisted. “Need to see what I’m dealin’ wit. I wanna see how different this hood is from mine. You know they say if you ever want to really know about a neighborhood, go around there at night. It’ll tell you everything that you need to know.”
Truth of the matter was Tone was on a scout mission. He was trying to locate a drug block where he could set up shop and sell his product. What he said out loud was misinformation. He knew he had to conceal his true intentions from her. He didn’t know if Bri knew he was a drug dealer. In case she didn’t know, he wasn’t going to tell her. That was none of her business.
“Bust that move, Bri,” Tone called out from the backseat. “Take me to the hood.”
“This nigga,” Sonya complained, rolling her eyes.
“I got you, kid,” Bri announced.
Since the city of Baltimore wasn’t big, the proximity from downtown to East Baltimore wasn’t far. Before Tone knew it the vehicle he was riding in arrived in the hood. The stark contrast between downtown Baltimore and East Baltimore was like night and day. He went from the clean, well-lit avenues of downtown to the dark, rat-infested streets of the hood. On almost every corner, Tone noticed a cut-rate liquor store or a Chinese carry out. It was like if the powers that be couldn’t kill black people with one form of poison, then they’d kill them with another.
“Fuck is wit’ all these fuckin’ cut-rate liquor stores? This how they livin’ out here?” he observed.
No one else in the car bothered to answer. If Tone didn’t know the level of affliction in Baltimore’s inner city, then he was about to see for himself. It was deeper than just liquor stores. Here Heroin was the black peoples’ Achilles Heel.
Tone didn’t know what to expect when he hit the hood, but this wasn’t how he pictured it. The hood was depressing. He had seen bleak and impoverished neighborhoods before in New York, but it seemed like Baltimore had its own monopoly on urban decay.
As the vehicle rode from hood to hood, Tone got a good gauge where the money was, which blocks were popping and which ones were dead. The streets of East Baltimore felt so vibrant to him. North Avenue was like a car show. He saw young dudes such as himself driving expensive foreign cars accompanied by some good-looking women. That sight seemed to repeat itself at every light.
Just a few blocks over on Greenmount Avenue, he had to admit, he never saw such a great disparity of wealth in one place. Tone saw luxury foreign cars parked in front of rundown row houses. Still, he got the idea from the looks of things that there was a lot of money to be made out here.
The tour of the hood continued, taking Tone pass infamous Baltimore housing projects like Latrobe homes and Lafayette Courts. These projects were much smaller than the one’s he was use to. But from what Bri was saying, they were no less dangerous. From what he was seeing, Tone couldn’t help but think that this might be his kind of town. Danger was like a rush of adrenaline to him. He was far too reckless to be afraid. Tone felt New York City had prepared him for everything and anything. He felt he had seen it all and been through it all.
In comparison to his hometown, physically the landscape was different. In terms of size, one could fit a few Baltimore City’s inside New York. Yet the hustle and bustle seemed to be the same. The streets of Baltimore were about a dollar. It just so happened that coke and dope were the main commodities on this market.
Tone’s brief tour of East Baltimore sobered him quickly to the harsh realities of the streets of Baltimore. The sights and sounds got his mind where it should be, into a hustler mode. He could envision himself getting money out here.
They drove through a few more crime ridden corridors and hotspots, places like Eager Street, Hoffman and Holbrook, Ashland Avenue. On these blocks Tone got to see large congregations of people and open-air drug markets that ran around the clock. He burned all these locations, streets and avenues into his memory bank. The information might be useful to him at a later date. He vowed to return to these blocks soon, next time without his two chaperons.
Bri continued playing the role of gracious tour guide, driving the vehicle at a moderate enough rate for Tone to scope the scene.
“I usta date a Baltimore guy from around here,” she admitted.
“Where’s here?” Tone asked, looking around for a street sign. “What’s the name of this block?”
“Federal and Chase,” she told him. “The nigga was major. One of the biggest d-boys in the city. I don’t know where he was gettin’ his shit from, but he was gettin’ it.”
“What happened?” Tone asked.
“What happened to what?… Oh, he got like fifteen or twenty years,” she replied nonchalantly. “Feds indicted him. He was under investigation, from what I understand.”
“Word?” Tone responded.
“That’s how the story goes out here,” Sonya hinted, as she looked at Tone. “It ends one of two ways, dead or in jail.”
Tone didn’t care what Sonya said. He had already sold himself on the idea of hustling drugs on the streets of Baltimore. He knew he was going to take that leap again, and dive head first into the
