'Don't get caught in the game of the eighty-five It didn't stop with Tuskegee,' Knowledge Allah said, either out of steam or wishing to move on to a more receptive congregation. 'It's all about the third eye. Remember who you are. G is the seventh letter made.'
Before Knowledge Allah had strolled even partway down the block, the slow roll of the squad car — once a half-hour — paused their conversation. Timeout. The officers, that cracka devil and house nigga pair, engaged them in a mutual eye fuck, challenging their right to the corner. Their glare read contempt, but it, too, was part of the game.
'What's all the drama about?' Loose Tooth asked.
'Someone probably shot Trevant,' Miss Jane said. Her breasts hung like floppy hound ears, the nipples poking through her grungy golf shirt. When times got hard, she was the neighborhood ho, but times were rarely that hard for her. She had a hunter's instinct and had been known to run game on folks. Only in her late twenties, practically fifty in street years, she was the picture of a haggard party girl, partied out. Rail thin, many wondered if she had the bug.
'Who would waste a bullet on him?' Tavon asked.
'Probably got shot up over selling burn bags. Everyone told him to quit sellin' that Arm amp; Hammer shit so often,' Loose Tooth said.
'Yeah, he'll be back on it in a few days.' Miss Jane focused on Tavon. 'Tae, lemme hold twenty for a minute.'
Tavon did the ghetto math. A minute in CP time was bad enough, but in fiend time, shit, that money was hitchhiking to Neverland. Besides, it was time to go. He could parlay aluminum cans into vials with the industry of a fiend. 'No need. It's time to go to work.'
Negotiating the minefield of broken bottles, newspapers, cigarette butts, stray couch cushions, and burnt- bottomed bottle caps, Tavon and Loose Tooth stalked through the alleys that were the arteries of Li'l Nam. The hunger drove them. Tavon didn't even know he had a habit until the first day it wasn't around. Now all he had was the hustle, the part of the game that had its own adrenaline rush. Always thinking of the latest dope-fiend move and its accompanying childlike thrill; like when he was a kid and used to boost Star Wars figures from Toys 'R' Us or smuggle comic books out of Lindner's Ice Cream Shop to read then sell.
They scanned the streets for any house undergoing any kind of remodeling. Their hopes were dashed after their escapades on Talbot Street. Rumors of the city's plans to redevelop the area had already made it fashionable for young yuppie couples and homosexuals to buy up the old, stylized homes. Talbot was now a show street — a well-patrolled show street — but when it was first being gutted, fiends were all over the place. Contractors couldn't walk into a house for thirty seconds without all their tools being stripped from their trucks. Copper piping grew legs and walked off every night. The discriminating fiend, such as Tavon, even took off with antique fixtures.
But niggas got too bold.
The story went that some contractors spent the day putting up siding on a house. They came back the next day and the siding had been stripped off and by strange coincidence, the Jenkins' place a few blocks up had about a day's worth of new siding on their house. After that, lockdown: constant patrols and overnight guards.
After a half-hour of scooping up aluminum cans, Tavon was the first to hear it. He caught Loose Tooth's attention and the two of them crept behind the bushes to get a better look at the scene. Dollar and his boys squared off against Miss Jane and her latest dupe.
Tavon knew Dollar, from another life it seemed. They were childhood friends, having grown up in Section 8 housing back when the Phoenix was still called the Meadows, back when life was all potential. He lived two houses down from Tavon, but they might as well have shared a room for all the time they spent together. In another circumstance, Tavon might have admitted to loving him. Boys never said such things, but they fit, despite how most thought they shouldn't. They liked different teams, different television shows, different music. But they shared copies of Player magazine stolen from his dad's closet. They skipped classes together. They ran from the police, after hitting a passing squad car with rocks, together. They played roof tag, diving into snow banks during the thick of winter. Always together.
Dollar gave himself his own nickname, reasoning that it was better to fashion your own legend than leave it to chance. Soft-spoken and calm, he turned cold and all the way hard, embracing the quiet unnerving certainty of the inevitable. He had an upper-management resume that anyone could admire: he monitored sales and mitigated product loss (no one messed up a count or snorted his product on his watch); he tabulated product (handled distribution); he invoiced shipping (got a package, broke it down, and re-upped); he arranged staff (set up lookouts, runners, touts); he organized and motivated staff (often by the barrel of a gun, but mostly by the implied threat of such); and he oversaw several branches (ran two corners — here and at Breton Court — and had his eye on a high rise). And he was a marketing genius. He was all about brand names, having successfully launched Widowmaker (it helped that it had been spiked and killed a few fiends the first day. Fiends flocked to it the next day, assuming that their dead friends simply couldn't handle their high); and all the fiends were a-buzz about his new product launch, Black Zombie (call the fiends what they were and they would still snatch it up). So excited, that it led one of the more ingenious fiends, namely Miss Jane (behind the body of her dupe) to sell burn bags with the Black Zombie skull and crossbones stamp.
Tavon had seen this kind of Mexican stand-off before. Dollar — with his roughneck gait, all stiff-legged and locked jaw — waited wordlessly with his hard stare. A pantomime of threat, neither side could back down without losing face, though Miss Jane had a lot more to lose than face. She and her stick-figure physique had only daring for strength, her implied craziness returning his cold glare. She brazenly stood eye-to-eye, even leaning into Dollar's boy, Prez. A bold tactic for sure, but someone had to pay for this sojourn into Dollar's market.
Dollar gave a rueful nod.
With a rancorous snarl, his boys pushed Miss Jane to the side and sprang on the fool who still held the forged product in his hands. He raised a lone hand, a drowning man beneath a tidal wave of fists. Tavon turned his head from the worst of it, settling for listening to the sounds of weakening frantic pleas and the thwacks of flesh pummeling flesh. Loose Tooth scrambled for a better view. Not a peep from Miss Jane. She was a hard one. When Tavon turned to look again, Dollar had his back to the display. He'd settled into an odd posture, as if resenting his own soldiers. They were the new breed, who enjoyed violence for violence's sake. They didn't care because they had no future, no connection to anyone beyond themselves.
'Don't let me catch you again,' Dollar said, pulling on a pair of gloves as Miss Jane scuttled down the alley. She didn't even help her played paramour to his feet, but he nipped at her heels anyway. Dollar muttered, 'Dusty- ass heifer.'
By all rights, Miss Jane earned a beat down. It wasn't like Dollar's crew was above hurting women, but not in Dollar's presence. Tavon wondered if the rumors were true about Miss Jane and her boy being untouchable.
Dollar and Tavon were the only family each other had, really. Most of the kids on their block regarded Tavon as soft; he always had problems hitting other people. Dollar, on the other hand, loved it. He thought of Tavon as a dog, faithful, following him around only for the beggin' bits he had, or rather, the vials at his disposal. Even if Tavon turned on him, as all bitches eventually did, all Tavon was capable of was the occasional buzz of an irritating gnat.
Dollar dropped out of school to pursue his ambitions, which involved a lot of sitting on a front stoop, running the streets and getting his head up in chronic. Tavon joined him. It was like they ran out of imagination and couldn't see a life for themselves outside of the streets, like they didn't have any ideas about what to do.
'You can come out now, Tae,' Dollar said casually. His boys reached into their waistbands, but Dollar waved them off.
'How'd you know we was here?' Tavon asked, Loose Tooth standing silently behind him.
'My alley. You see anything interesting?'
'Naw.' Especially not anything he'd report back to the police.
'Good. How about I set you all up tonight. Testers for the new line. Come morning you all spread the word that Black Zombie's the shit.'
'For old times' sake?'
'Yeah, for old times' sake.'
• • •
Michaela hated being referred to as one of the Durham Brothers. But life was all about marketing and the Durham Brothers was a solid brand. Not that she was ladylike, but she hated being discounted as a male because
