Baby Brother (9 page)

A
ntwan paced the floors of Brookdale Hospital, wondering what was taking so long. He glanced at his watch every few minutes, then again at the closed doors at the end of the hall.

At seven minutes past two the hydraulic doors whooshed and swung outward. A young black nurse appeared, pretty dreadlocks flowing around her heart-shaped face.

“Hey,” Antwan said, grinning widely.

“What’s poppin’?” asked the younger man being pushed toward him in the wheelchair.

The men shook hands briefly, then Antwan reached down and put his arms around Farad and held him close.

They’d almost lost him. The bullets he took had ripped through his spine, nearly demolishing his intestines on their deadly path through his body.

Antwan had barely understood what Finesse was telling him when he called from the emergency room. When he realized Farad had been shot, shame immediately overtook him. Instead of watching out for his brothers, he’d become a monster. Invincible. Impenetrable. He’d been so consumed with exacting wrath that he had allowed rage to rule him and put the lives of his brothers in the path of vengeance.

Farad had endured hours of surgery, and each of his brothers were at his bedside when he opened his eyes.

“Bad?” he’d asked in a hoarse whisper.

Antwan had nodded as Finesse touched his twin’s arm and Malik moved closer to his side.

“You’re paralyzed,” Antwan told him simply, giving it to him all at once without any pretenses. “From the waist down. Could be permanent, might not be. The doctors said it’s day to day. We gotta wait and see.”

Farad had closed his eyes momentarily, and when he opened them again Antwan saw real strength there.

“Borne?”

Kadir made a noise in his throat and Finesse shook his head and answered the question. “Murked. Slumped. Cheese, my niggah. Shredded cheese.”

“Yeah,” Raheem added, “that kid Rayz gonna get his too. He’s getting sent to Elmira. Tony got a crew of Puerto Ricans runnin’ shit up there and they already planning his welcoming party.”

Farad nodded, satisfied.

And now, two months after his shooting, the pretty black nurse smiled as Antwan moved behind his brother’s wheelchair and grasped the handholds. Farad had endured several weeks of physical therapy, and today would be the first time he felt the warmth of the sun since being wheeled into the hospital flat on his back.

“Where’s the posse?” Farad asked as they rode downstairs in the elevator.

“They’re all here,” Antwan told him.

Farad nodded, then spoke again. “Where’s the Monster?”

It took Antwan a long time to answer, but when he did his voice came out strong and sure. “He’s gone, man. He died the night they brought you in here.”

Thirty minutes later Antwan and his five brothers were riding through the gates of Evergreen Cemetery. Finesse was behind the wheel of the custom van they’d purchased, and when they arrived in the Gibron section he pulled over and helped Raheem unfold the wheelchair and settle Farad down into it.

They walked together over to the plot that had been in their family for the past eighteen years. Standing at the grave site in silence, they stared down at the headstone that read simply, “Father” “Mother” “Baby Brother.”

“Pops was a crazy cat,” Antwan reminisced, the fall sun warming his face.

Farad chuckled in his chair. “Yeah, he was. He was a wild dude who did his thing regardless…but he dug his little cats, though. We was his lucky seven, remember? He used to say he could bet his last dime on his seven boys.”

“I miss Mama,” Malik blurted out. “If she was here she would be mad as hell with all of us.”

Antwan agreed. Each of them had stood around her bed on that last night. They’d put their bonded word on her soul and sent her out of this world with some bone-deep promises that they had all failed to live by.

Finesse looked down at his twin and put Antwan’s thoughts into words.

“We failed her, man. We swore we would keep her with us. Swore we wouldn’t let the streets suck the life outta us.”

He put his hand on his twin’s shoulder.

“We still some hard niggahs, bruh. Soldiers. But we outta this shit, man. Cool?”

And when Farad nodded, Finesse turned to Antwan. “Your offer still good, man? You still thinkin’ on expanding them barbershops and breaking off a few franchises?”

Antwan grinned. They said God worked in mysterious ways, and this change of heart was one mystery he was gonna roll with and not question.

“Yeah, I might wanna get down on summa that too,” Kadir spoke up. “It’s getting hot in A.C., man. I gotta find another hustle. Mama would turn over in her grave if the same thing that happened to Daddy ended up happening to me.”

Still battling his guilt, Raheem gave his younger brother some love, then gazed toward the grave and spoke for the first time since they’d arrived. “We didn’t watch out for Baby Brother like you wanted us to, Mama. But we loved him. You know we did. And even though he’s gone, the rest of us are still here swinging, and that means we can still make something outta what we got left.”

Antwan gathered his brothers in his arms and agreed.

T
he fruit-punch-red Impala had gold Dayton rims. The car gleamed so much, you could see your reflection in the hood. The interior was cream-colored leather. The car had been totally restored. The Impala was the only one that Butter owned and he cherished it. He and Seven sat on the hood of his car, smoking purple haze, listening to Mobb Deep’s “Shook Ones Part I.”

“This was my shit back in the day and those niggas was from round my way,” Seven said.

Butter puffed the blunt. “You knew them?”

Seven reached for the blunt. “Well, not exactly. My manz in’nem used to hang with Prodigy; but, naw, I ain’t know them, but I seen them a few times.”

“I listen to them, when I’m about to do a lick, you know?” Butter pulled out a .380 and cocked the hammer. “It gets my adrenaline going, you know?”

“Man, put that gun away,” Seven said.

“What, nigga? You scared of guns? How the fuck is you from New York and you afraid of guns?”

“Naw; I ain’t afraid of guns—just high, careless niggas with guns.”

Butter put the gun on safety.

“I didn’t know niggas in the South was into that Mobb Deep shit.”

Butter looked confused. He didn’t say anything, he just puffed. Finally he couldn’t control his thoughts or his tongue.

“You know what? Y’all New York niggas always think that we slow down here. I can relate to Mobb Deep.”

“I feel ya,” Seven said. “Calm down, son. I mean, I ain’t mean it like that.” Seven did think southern niggas were slow, once upon a time, before he’d gone to Virginia. He’d met some real gangsters in Virginia. Butter seemed to be through. He’d met him at a temp agency where they both were applying for a job and started talking. After a fifeen-minute conversation he realized they had a lot in common: They both were street niggas and ex-cons.

“So what your all-time favorite gangster movie?”

“Dead Presidents.”

“I expected you to say
King of New York, New Jack City, Menace II Society.
Never did I expect you to say this.”

Butter inhaled the haze and then coughed. “Yeah, I liked that movie.”

“I liked
Paid in Full,
myself,” Seven said.

Butter coughed again. “Yeah, that shit was crazy; those mufukas was making a lot of money.”

“You know what my favorite scene was?”

“What?”

“You know the scene where Mitch calls Rico and tells him he has coke and Rico flips and kills his man for the work?”

“Why is that your favorite scene?” Butter asked.

“Because the lesson learned is niggas will kill you for life-changing money. My daddy always told me two things: Your friends will kill you for the right price, and every bad guy likes to think of himself as good,” Seven said.

“Was you and your pops smoking weed when he told you that shit? Sounds like that weed philosophy,” Butter commented.

“That’s real talk, man, from a man who’s doing life in the pen.”

“That’s why you gotta watch everybody.” Butter blew out a huge smoke ring, pulled the gun out, cocked it again, then kissed the barrel. “I’m ’bout hit a lick tonight, man. I needs some money in a major way.”

“I ain’t got shit myself, and that motherfuckin’ baby mama is nagging the shit out of me. My son is two and can’t walk—he needs physical therapy. The bitch ain’t got no insurance.” Seven thought about his boy and other problems he was having. He hardly ever had money. Sometimes he would detail cars for hustlers but he didn’t have any real paper—not like he was used to—hell, before he’d gotten locked up he had thousands of dollars on him at all times. Now it was down to this petty-assed car washing—he felt like a sucker.

Butter sat back on the Impala. Young Jeezy was now coming from the Chevy. “You know what? I thought you were locked up three years ago in Virginia. Right.”

“Yeah.”

“How the fuck did you get her pregnant, anyway? I mean, I was thinking about that shit one night. I was high as fuck, sitting outside, looking up at the sky and shit. You know that’s when you high; you have the strangest thoughts.”

“Now that’s got to be a weed-induced thought.”

“I was on that purple haze and my mind was just racing and shit, and I was thinking of all kinds of stupid shit.”

“Well, Adrian was actually a guard that I met while I was on the inside. I started banging her and the warden got wind of it. Fired her and put me in solitary confinement,” Seven said.

Butter’s eyes grew wide. “Nigga, quit lying.”

“I’m serious. One thing about me, man, is that I’ve never had a problem with the ladies, I’ve always been able to pull them.” Seven was indeed a ladies’ man. Very attractive dark smooth skin, wavy hair; his body was well-defined and his teeth were eggshell white. The women loved him.

“Damn, that’s an amazing story,” Butter said.

“Yeah, man. That’s how the shit went down. I got her pregnant. We kept in touch while I was in prison and she moved to Charlotte, N.C., so that’s why I relocated here.”

“Why did you relocate here?”

Seven inhaled the blunt. “Damn, nigga, you a news reporter? Motherfucker, why so many questions—you the FBI or something?”

“Naw, just making sure you ain’t FBI,” Butter replied.

“I mean I got three sisters and three brothers in New York, but I ain’t really fucking with them like that. I mean, the whole time I was down only one of my sisters came to visit me so I ain’t really have no reason to go back to New York and I ain’t going back to Virginia cuz all my niggas locked up.”

“Damn. You came all the way down here not knowing anybody.”

“I wasn’t afraid. The only thing I was worried about was that bitch tripping, and she tripped and put me out. But it’s okay, I got my own room in the boardinghouse and I got some pussy, so I’m good.”

“Nigga, you must not be used to having money.”

“Now that’s where you’re wrong at. I made a lot of money. Ran with a fucking crew—and most of them niggas that I ran with are either dead or in jail.”

Butter rolled another blunt, lit it and inhaled, then blew another smoke ring before coughing loudly.

“What the fuck were y’all doing?”

“Coke, heroin, e-pills…all types shit.”

“I can’t believe that shit, man, cuz it just seems like you are so content with being an average motherfucker.”

“Nigga, you average,” Seven said.

“But I ain’t never got no real money, nigga. I bet y’all seen millions.”

Seven thought back. A few years ago he was driving Porsches, BMWs and shit with expensive rims. Ever since he’d been released from prison a year ago, it had only been a bus pass. He really wanted money too, but he didn’t know anybody who would give him drugs. He was in Charlotte. Nobody knew him. This was both good and bad. It was good because he didn’t have a reputation to keep, but it was bad because he couldn’t get anybody in Charlotte to supply him.

Butter passed Seven the gun. “Got this motherfucker for two rocks, nigga, it was brand-new in the box.”

“What you mean you got it for two rocks, you ain’t no hustler.”

“I know but I have drugs because I’m the type of motherfucker that takes shit from the dope boyz, you know, if they making money I’m making money because they have to give me money or else I’ll rob they punk ass. I actually took the dope from a nigga, gave it to another motherfucker for the gun and when I got the gun I robbed the nigga that sold me the gun and got my rocks back…that’s how ya boy Butter gets down.”

Seven laughed but he really didn’t think that was funny. He’d been around niggas like Butter before and knew he could only trust him as far as he could see him.

“So—do you want to help me with this lick?”

“So, who is this cat, Caesar? And does he have money?”

“He has a Colombian plug, and word in the street is he gets those bricks for thirteen five. He just bought this stripper bitch a Benz for her birthday.”

“How can we get at him?” Seven wanted to know. He remembered the days when he was dealing in Richmond, Virginia. He knew that the streets talk, especially in the South; news spread like wildfire. Things that were just ordinary conversation could be made into major news. He also knew that whoever Caesar was, it wasn’t going to be easy to get to him.

“One thing you have to always remember is that most of these major drug dealers are cowards. You don’t have to worry about them. It’s the niggas around them that you have to worry about; the enforcer-type niggas. Those are the hungry mufuckas that will do something to you,” Butter pointed out.

“Exactly. I know this. I mean I ain’t never stuck nobody up, but I know the fuckin’ streets. I know legendary stickup kids in New York. I’m talking about kidnap-your-mom type niggas, son.”

Butter chuckled to himself. He never understood why New Yorkers called everybody “son.” A motherfucker could be seventy years old and still be called son.

“I know what ya mean. But—back to the business. You with me or not?”

Seven thought for a moment and took a puff of the blunt. He knew that if what Butter said was true, he would be doing a lot better than he had been doing. Hell. He lived in a boardinghouse with twelve other sweaty men and one crackhead woman. He wanted out of that place more than he did prison. He envisioned taking kilos of coke from the drug dealer with the Colombian connection. “Yeah. I’m down, son.”

Butter tossed him a pair of gloves and a ski mask and a sawed-off pump shotgun. “Let’s get that money the fast way the ski mask way.”

“The ski mask way…Hell yeah,” Seven said. He and Butter high-fived.

The subdivision was called Peaceful Oaks. A quiet neighborhood in the southeastern part of Charlotte. It was predominantely white, which meant they had to be very cautious. White people called the police at the slightest bit of suspicion. Two black men rolling through suburbia after midnight was not a good look. Butter and Seven rolled through the neighborhood looking out for Good Samaritans—people that wanted to be on the news saying that they tipped the police.

Caesar’s street was Peaceful Way Drive. Butter went one street over, to Peaceful Pine Drive, and parked the car in the driveway of an abandoned house. He and Seven hopped over the privacy fence in the backyard into Caesar’s backyard and looked around, but didn’t see anybody. Then Seven saw the sign that read
ADT
in front of the door.

“He has an alarm. Man. What do we do about that?”

“He has a baby, too.”

Seven looked confused. “What the fuck does that have to do with anything?”

“Don’t worry about this shit. I’ve done it before. I got this player.”

Seven put on the mask and the gloves. He thought about prison; the sick old men there, the perverts, the liars and the snitches. He didn’t want to go back to that place. They went around front. Nobody noticed them and the street was dark.

“On the count of three, I’m going to kick in the door. I want you to go in one room and I go in the other, just in case there is somebody else in the house.”

“Nigga, you’ve done this shit before for real?” Seven said.

Butter’s face hardened. “This ain’t no fuckin’ game to me, man. I need to eat.”

“Okay. Let’s do it.”

Butter kicked the door in and ran into the first bedroom.

Seven ran into the second bedroom and found a man and a woman on the floor, naked. He pointed the gun at the man. “Okay, I need you to get the fuck up and your bitch to stay on the floor with her hands on her head.”

The man was shaking and it looked as if tears were in his eyes.
Damn, what a bitch-assed nigga,
Seven thought.

“Nobody is going to get hurt as long as you do what the fuck I say.”

Butter walked into the room with a little boy wearing Elmo pajamas.

“Look what I have.”

The little boy began to cry.

The alarm went off. Caesar said, “The police will be here soon. You don’t want to go to jail, do you?”

Seven said sarcastically, “Yeah. That what we came here for…to get caught and go to jail.” He slapped Caesar with the barrel of the gun.

“Don’t you say a motherfuckin’ thing.”

He walked Caesar into the hallway to the alarm keypad.

“Disarm the alarm,” Seven ordered.

Caesar punched in the code.

The telephone rang. Butter picked it up without answering it. The caller ID said ADP.

“The fuckin’ alarm company.”

“Well, we knew they had an alarm,” Seven said.

“Don’t worry,” Butter said, and he walked the phone over to Caesar with the infant still in his hand, crying. “Tell them everything is okay,” Butter said. “If you try some slick shit, I’ll blow your fucking block off, nigga.”

“Hello,” Caesar said.

A female voice said, “This is ADP. Is everything okay?”

“Yes, everything is fine. I just didn’t get to the alarm pad on time.”