“When I’m done,” Tone replied without looking back.
She shook her head. Sonya watched her boyfriend as he walked away. Tone’s over-confidence showed her that he needed protecting, if from no one else than himself.
“Yo, Shorty here?” Tone asked, staring at the skinny junkie who opened the door.
“Shorty!!!” the man hollered into the house. “Somebody here for you.”
“Let him in,” she called out.
Upon hearing her animated voice, the doorway opened up and Tone was allowed to enter. He was lead to the kitchen.
“You can have a seat. Shorty be right down,” the man said before rushing off upstairs.
Tone took a look at the raggedy dinette set and the flimsy mismatch chairs that looked too weak to hold up under his body weight. Immediately he decided against sitting. With no one around he was free to take inventory of his shabby surroundings. He looked up and saw paint chips dangling from the ceiling, grease stained walls and roaches roaming freely almost everywhere he looked. Tone made a point not sit or lean against anything. He didn’t want anything to crawl on him or take any roaches home with him.
This place was a crack house, a dope spot, shooting gallery or whatever else you wanted to call it. There was no way any human being not under the influence of drugs would willingly live here.
In plain sight on the kitchen table, he saw dozens of loose, multicolored crack vials scattered about. They were probably leftovers from a recent drug binge. Nearby an ashtray overflowed with cigarette butts and ashes spilling on the table. A few empty bottles of fifths of liquor, the inexpensive, strong kind that winos and junkies drink, seemed to litter the floor, cheap liquor with names like Night Train, Thunder Bird and Wild Irish Rose.
Tone had been in more than his share of drug houses back in New York, but this was amongst the worst. He could only imagine what the rest of the house looked like. In fact, he didn’t even want to know. He was at the point where all he wanted to do was handle his business and leave.
“New fuckin’ York,” Shorty smiled, flashing a mouthful of missing or rotting teeth. “You ready to get this money this mornin’, yo?”
“I was born ready,” Tone stated.
“Show me what you got,” Shorty told him.
Quickly, Tone stuck his hand inside his hoodie pocket and removed a clear sandwich bag. He handed the doubled sandwich bag over Shorty. It contained around a half an ounce of powder cocaine.
“That’s it?” she wondered as she took possession of the drug.
“For now,” he replied, seeing no need to explain himself further.
Shorty untied the knot from the outside bag then removed the bag that contained the cocaine. She held it up toward the light. Her eyes seemed to light up when she saw the silver shimmering particles of Fishscale cocaine. She opened the bag, dabbing a little bit on her finger to test its purity. It instantly numbed her tongue.
She proclaimed loudly, “New York, we gotta winner here!”
Tone was happy that Shorty thought so highly of his coke. If she felt that way about it, chances are customers on the streets would too.
Immediately, Shorty went to work. She quickly rinsed out the remnants of some left over Kool-Aid in a dirty jelly jar that lay in the sink. Then she went inside the refrigerator and grabbed a box of baking soda. Next, she dumped half of the product into the jar, along with a small amount of baking soda that she carefully measured with her eyes. Shorty poured some water inside the jar from the faucet, turned on the front stove pilot and sat the jar on the stove.
“We gone rock half of this up for the smokers and leave the other half just like it is for the shooters,” Shorty advised.
“Shorty, you ever did this before?” Tone asked, knowing there was a risk involved whenever coke was transformed to crack.
Shorty sucked her teeth. “I do this shit in my sleep, New York.”
The only reason Tone asked was because he was well aware that he could lose more than a few grams of cocaine in the process if Shorty didn’t know what she was doing. Tone was in no position to lose anything.
“I cooked up kilos for some of the biggest dope boys in the city,” she swore.
Tone had some reservations about that statement. But then again, he knew she had no reason to lie to him. Since she seemed to be telling the truth about everything else, he had no choice but to have faith in Shorty.
Tone’s eyes were transfixed on the stove where the water inside the jar began to bubble. Shorty began to stir it repeatedly. Once the baking soda burned off and the cocaine began to gel, she removed the jar from the stove and filled it up with cold water. When the cocaine hardened, Shorty placed it on a paper towel. She had successfully transformed Tone’s powder cocaine into what was known on the streets of Baltimore as Ready Rock.
“Waalaa,” she announced. “This what I do.”
“I see,” Tone remarked playfully.
“Brought it all back,” Shorty added, admiring the cookie shaped piece of cocaine inside the jar.
Tone nodded his head in agreement.
No sooner than the words were out of her mouth, Shorty did something strange, at least from Tone’s point of view. She produced a small crack pipe from her back pocket and broke off a small sample of the drug, placing it inside the stem.
“Ain’t no shame in my game, I do what I do,” Shorty said as she lit the drug and inhaled deeply. “Don’t you ever let me hear about you fuckin’ wit’ this shit, yo.”
“Never that,” he assured her.
With sympathetic eyes, Tone stared at Shorty, as if to say to each his own. This wasn’t a surprise to him at all. He had suspected as much all along. But to know someone is getting high is one thing. To see it is something totally
