Dominion (32 page)

On Wednesday, Clarence sat through his third funeral service in the past four weeks. He didn’t want to come, but Geneva talked him into it. The boy killed in a knife fight Sunday night was Robby, a thirteen-year-old who lived just two blocks away. Geneva told Clarence he’d met him the day after they moved in, but he didn’t remember.

Clarence looked around in the funeral chapel at the number of blue bandannas around heads and knees, and clothing accents of every kind, from blue shoelaces to blue yarn on belts. Whoever this kid was, he obviously claimed Crip.

It was an open casket. Often teenage funerals weren’t anymore. When someone is shot at close range, it doesn’t lend itself to viewing the body.

The funeral was impersonal compared to Dani’s and Felicia’s. The minister didn’t know the boy. Apparently they didn’t go to church.

A young woman with a face aged more than her body stood up and said, “My Robby was a good boy. He jus’ hung with the wrong crowd. Some of
you
the wrong crowd!” She pointed defiantly at some blue-accented teenagers. “I know you his set, but you took my baby from me. Won’t never forgive you for that. Never.” Her lower lip quivered.

“I told Robby ten times if I told him once, ‘You tied your shoes this morning— maybe the funeral director’s gonna tie ’em for you tonight.’ Well, one of
you’s
gonna be next, you hear me now?” She pointed menacingly at certain faces in the crowd. “I know whassup. I know whatchu thinkin’. You boys thinkin’ no good. I see it in your eyes. You thinkin’ revenge. Don’t do it. Don’t go kill somebody else’s baby tonight. Let it end here. Let it rest. Just let it rest!”

She pled with them, as other mothers sitting in the crowd said quiet amens.

After the short service, Clarence watched as teenage boys and girls walked by the coffin, many of them dropping in blue flags. The girls cried openly, while the boys brushed off tears quickly, pretending they were reaching for their hair or swatting a fly. Some of the older boys looked grim and thoughtful. Their eyes suggested something was brewing. Clarence thought Robby’s mother might be right. Revenge. He shuddered at the thought. It was like the old feuds, but much worse—the Hatfields and McCoys with Uzis.

Clarence and Geneva were among the last to walk by the boy’s body. In the casket lay three of his favorite stuffed animals, most prominent a green camel with red balls hanging around its jaws.

He was just a little boy.

Geneva walked over to Robby’s mother, whom she didn’t know except for a brief conversation at Kim’s Grocery. She put her arms around her and hugged her and cried with her. That was Geneva.

After Geneva rejoined him, Clarence looked back at Robby’s mother one last time. She removed the blue flags from the coffin, handling them quickly as if they contained an airborne virus. She threw them on the floor, then kicked them for good measure. She looked at her baby, hugged the body that had once contained his spirit, and cried loud and long, as only a mother does who has lost her little child.

Meanwhile, on the streets outside the funeral chapel, the Rollin’ 60s Crips passed the word that at nightfall they’d gather at Austin Park. They’d be puttin’ in some heavy work against the Woodlawn Park Bloods and the Loc’d Out Piru Gangsters. The Crips would make them pay for what they did to their homeboy.

The Rollin’ 60s Crips met at the fringes of Austin Park, adjoining a Northeast Portland cul-de-sac where there were three R6C houses. They gathered with two sets of Bloods on their mind—the Woodlawn Park Bloods and the Loc’d Out Piru Gangsters. Crip intelligence knew Robby, a Rollin’ 60s baby gangster, had been put away by two Bloods from one or both of these allied sets.

The drums had been beating ever since the funeral, word passed everywhere about the meeting at Austin Park. The Rollin’ 60s Crips convened here when there was a gang infraction, discipline problem, or when Bloods needed to get kicked. They’d plan moves, hit tactics and strategies, and pump each other up. They’d choose a riding party, a group of shooters to invade enemy territory, to mount up, embark on a mission of revenge.

Forty or so homeboys had showed. Tyrone recognized most of them, though he’d never seen them together at once. He gazed in awe at the fashions, studying them as if he were a freshman girl on her first day of school.

Two homies wore baseball caps backwards, another tipped to one side. He saw three dudes with hairnets and others with a variety of bandannas, most of them blue with white swirls, some covering heads, others wrapped around knees. Some of the homies had long hair combed straight back into a tail or braided at the neckline, others wore pageboys, others “fades,” highly styled flattops with geometric designs etched into the sides.

Several guys wore huge Le Tigre knit shirts buttoned to the top and hanging loose, others pin-striped baseball shirts, still others oversized plaid Pendleton long sleeves. Ty could see many tattoos, most of them R6C. Footwear was all-white athletic shoes with black shoelaces or all-black athletic shoes with white shoelaces. Some sported Crip-blue shoelaces, mostly unlaced.

Black Raiders jackets were everywhere. Some homeboys wore overalls, partly unfastened. Others wore black, brown, or gray oversized Dickeys, khaki work pants, or starched and creased Levi’s. Most of the pants were worn low, sagging or dragging on the ground.

Serious soldiers dressed in combat black. Black leather, black shoes, black everything, to blend into the night and to confuse rivals and 5-0s. They knew home-boy blues made an easy target, so they weren’t flagged out. Even though it was almost dark, most of them wore shades.

The girls, outnumbered two to one, wore variations on guy clothes, leaning heavily to the darker colors and favoring jackets with fancy cursive or Old English lettering. They wore heavy makeup, with excessive dark eye shadow.

Blasters were everywhere, playing the latest rap, the latest funk, along with songs of sex and violence and cop-killin’. There was a Geto Boys song about women being whores, and raping a girl because she left her curtains open. The song ended with, “Then slit her throat and watch her shake till her eyes closed.”

The boys seemed to enjoy it, with no thought that the woman degraded and raped and murdered in the song could be their mothers or sisters. While some girls drifted away from this music, others stayed and gyrated to the beat. Ty glanced sidelong at his friend Jason, another fourteen-year-old wannabe, eyeing the Crip girls. Both felt tense, but tried to look cool.

Gangster Cool, GC, head of Portland’s Rollin’ 60s, was a transplant from L.A. His father had been an Original Gangster, an OG Crip with a bad rep, still serving hard time at Folsom. GC had seen him face to face as a six-year-old at a jail visit and never since. GC himself had gone to juvy for armed robbery at fourteen but was back out in a year and became a Ghetto Star by eighteen, earning OG status just like the daddy he’d never known. Now he was twenty-one, a streetwise veteran with charismatic charm, a high roller entrepreneur with a thriving crack cocaine business.

GC wore his hair in a g-ster do, with rows of skinny french braids secured with blue barrettes. A turkish rope, a thick gold chain, hung around his neck. He had the sculpted good looks of a movie star, a Denzel Washington image, with an unshakable street-smarts confidence. Ty stared at the most prominent feature of GC’s face, a four-inch scar he’d gotten in L.A. in a knife fight with Eight Trey Gangsters. GC started talking, and the homeboys listened in rapt attention, like they never did at school.

“Yo, 60s. Ready fo’ some action? Ready to be down fo’ yo’ hood?”

“Yeah. We ready, man. We down.”

“We kings of da turf,” GC said. “This
our
dominion.”

One of the homeboys was Mookie, who’d received a recent promotion. Behind him stood Shadow, GC’s lieutenant, minister of defense. He wore gray work gloves for handling weapons and doin’ work—which usually meant beating people up.

“Soldiers watchin’ fo’ Po Po?” GC asked Shadow, who nodded. Po Po was one of the nicer gang names for the Portland Police. “First,” GC said, “we got to do some discipline.”

Shadow yanked a young boy up by his collar. Ty recognized him. His name was Pete.

“Somebody say you snitchin’ on us, boy,” GC said to Pete.

“No way, man,” Pete said, voice trembling.

“Cops been talkin’ to you,” GC said.

“They talkin’, but I ain’t listenin’.”

“Well, maybe you talkin’ and maybe you not. We not so sure. So we gonna give you a reminder of what happens if you do.” The gang responded with grunts. Ty watched in fascinated horror as they beat up the boy and kicked him until he was almost unconscious. This was one of the cardinal gang rules, one step beyond pledging for a fraternity—you join and you have to submit yourself to any mistreatment the older gang members care to dish out. Ty noticed his friend Jason was nowhere to be seen.

“You next?” GC looked at Tyrone. “Sup, little man? Hey, I seen yo’ family’s car. Bumper sticker say ‘Proud parent of honor student.’” They all laughed. “Well, honor student don’t count for much here, boy. Street smart’s what counts. That’s what gets you your green and the homegirls, the best little Cripalettes. Don’t matter about math—’cept you know how to count up yo’ money!”

GC slapped hands with several of the homies, including Mookie. Shadow, the hard-faced enforcer, stood guard.

“Hear you been claimin’ us, honor student,” GC said to Ty.

“Well, uh…”

“You sound stupid, honor student. Claimin’ us or not?”

“Been doin’ some wallbangin’. Just strikin’ up the hood a little.”

“Advertisin’ the set, huh?” GC seemed impressed. “You just a toy or what?”

“I seen his piece on Miller,” one of the older boys said. “He fresh.”

“On Miller? Seen it too. That yo’ work, nigger? Nice piece. Def. So you wanna kick it with us? Wanna be mo’ than a tagger?”

“Yeah,” Ty said.

“Know how big this set is?” GC asked Ty. “Hundred of us. We stick to our own hoods unless a war’s on, then we join up, help each other.”

A hundred. Ty was impressed. It never occurred to him GC might be exaggerating.

“Hey, I’m a 60 from L.A. Set’s over a thousand deep there. Big sets join as nations for a major war and we could take the city apart. You should see the East Coast Crips. Go from 1st Street out to 225th. Harbor City! One set, takes five divisions of cops to invade their turf. Crips lots bigger than LAPD!”

More low whistles and hand slapping, like the punctuated
amens
at Ebenezer that encouraged Cairo Clancy to keep driving home his points.

“There be hood and there be N-hood,” GC said. “Take all the sets in N-hood, and man you got power, big time. Portland way behind—it’s L.A. twenty years ago. But our sets be gettin’ deeper every day!” He stared at Ty, as if trying to read what was inside him.

“Why you claimin’ us, boy?”

“Sixties is the main set in my hood.”

“That all?”

“Gangsters kill my mama and my sister. Maybe Spics or Bloods.”

“Heard about that. Nobody know who did it, huh? Hey, we kill somebody, we proud, don’t hide it. But we don’t just kill somebody’s mama wid no reason. They scum, Bloods are. Spics too.” He looked at Ty. “You ready to get jumped in?”

Ty swallowed hard, then nodded. GC slapped him to the ground, and the rest started hitting and kicking him. After thirty seconds, with blood flowing into his eyes, he started fighting back and got in a few good licks himself. They pushed him around for five minutes, and though he was bleeding badly, he’d drawn blood on a couple of them too.

“Okay, you all right, little homie,” GC said. “You fight back. Won’t be beatin’ on you anymore. Unless we bored and need a tune up for the Bloods.” GC put his arm around him. “You pretty low right now, what wid yo’ mama and all. But you want to show us you down? Wanna make a rep? That be good. You long way from OG. You just a baby gangster, a tiny. But you in now, you been jumped in. You a homie, a 60. It’s ‘Do or die, Crip or cry.’ But you want to be OG, you gotta build your rep. You gotta go head up on slobs. And you gotta do it with this set so when they speak yo’ name it’s like speakin’ the Rollin’ 60s Crips. You gotta promote the set, recruit for it, buy and sell for it, live for it, be willin’ to die for it. But you gotsta prove yourself, man. You down fo’ dat, honor student?”

“Yeah,” Ty said, filled with pride and terror.

“You strapped, little homie? You carryin’?” When Ty shook his head, GC said to Shadow, “Get me a gauge, road dog.” Shadow, in charge of munitions, pulled out from a military-green canvas bag a sawed-off shotgun, a twelve gauge missing most of its eighteen-inch legal minimum.

“This yo’ first time, cuz?” GC showed him how to handle the weapon. “Sawed-off’s easy to carry and sprays fast so you don’t have to be too accurate. It’s got double-aught buckshot. Only problem is, if you has to shoot more than fifteen feet, it’s a spray and you not gonna get a funeral out of it. But you can still do some damage, man. Understand?” GC spoke with the calm reassurance of a tennis pro instructing a child in the proper forehand grip.

Tyrone felt the shotgun, awkward in his hands. He’d never held a gauge before, much less fired one. He’d never shot any gun. He looked at GC.

“You got the gauge now. Make you a man. Go spray some Bloods, little homie.” GC held his hands up in the air like he was holding his own gauge. “‘Booyah! You dead.’ You wit’ me?”

“Righteous, man. I wit’ you.” The words sounded much more confident than the cracking voice that spoke them.

GC looked out at the group. “All right, cuzzins, we been clockin’ dese Bloods three days since they waste our little homie. We know right where they is tonight. They celebratin’ our tiny’s funeral. And we gonna pay ’em a visit, get some get back. For our homeboy. For the 60s.”

Skin slapping and numerous exclamations of “down” and “righteous” and “def” filled the air. Ty felt the anticipation.

“Remember,” GC said, “it’s all about droppin’ bodies. It’s all about Blood funerals. They been woofin’, the slobs. They dis you, they call you Crabs or Smuzz or Ricket. You gonna take that?”

“No way, man.”

“This our mission tonight, homies. You show ’em. Watch the sentries now. You get Pretty Boy, that big black cat, you ring up points! You see that nigga, you shoot him, hear me? You don’t see him, you shoot him anyway. You don’t get them, they get you. Got it?”

It felt like NBA players breaking from the huddle and heading out on the court. Ty felt the intoxicating surge of power, the sense of being part of the Rollin’ 60s dominion. Instead of being a victim, waiting for life to beat up on him, he could seize control.

They took five cars, all loaded up and lights off. Ty trembled as he found himself sitting right next to Shadow. He could smell the nuclear waste, the pungent grease in the defense minister’s cornrowed hair. Shadow was R6C to the core, tough as they come. They cruised up to a house on Loc’d Out Piru Gangster turf, where the Bloods were hangin’ and slangin’, a dozen on the outside and at least as many inside. GC was first to jump out of a car. With quick aim, he shot out two street-lamps with his gauge. Booyah! Shadowy forms ran in confusion in the front yard. Glass fragments rained all over GC, and it seemed to exhilarate him. One gangster let loose with what sounded like a cannon. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! Ty heard someone yell “Sixties!” but wasn’t sure if it was friend or foe.

The big bass of a .45 sounded off. Ty heard a Booyah. Another shotgun. The enemy flew off like starlings charged in the park, one screeching “Rollers!” Ty stood up close behind a Crip car, leaning over, terrified. One Blood turned and shot toward the car. The Crip next to Ty shot his nine-millimeter Beretta and the Blood dropped to the ground.