Dutch (7 page)

“Nigga, you wit’ anything,” Qwan said to Craze.

“Naw naw, this could work,” Angel said. “They ain’t expectin’ no shit like this right now.”

“It could, but how?” asked Shock.

“First of all, we gonna need at least six more heads ’cause if we gonna lick, we might as well make this shit count. Other
than that, we need a blowtorch and some wire cutters for the fence and the parking barrier. Angel, we gonna get you a pair
of fire-red fuck-me pumps and a skirt the size of a napkin,” Dutch said, his eyes filled with a playful lust.

All the guys hooted and called to Angel in a teasing way, but Angel didn’t find it funny at all. She had the young blossoming
body of a
Playboy
centerfold, yet the burgeoning potential of a dyke, which was still unknown to her young conscious mind.

“Fuck you, Dutch. Why we can’t put the skirt on Roc? He look more bitch than me,” Angel sneered.

“Fuck you, bitch,” Roc shot back. He was the quiet before the storm next to Dutch. In the end, Roc would prove to be the deadliest
of them all.

“Fuck wit’ me,” Angel challenged him.

“I’m sayin’, y’all gonna play games or is we gonna get this paper?” Dutch asked as no one spoke. “Now dig, Angel, you and
Craze are gonna be in the front car. Y’all gonna be parked right at the curb after you enter the port. I want y’all to front
like you fighting. Angel, make sure you flash ass ’cause we all know security guards don’t get no pussy, ’cause if they did,
they wouldn’t have night jobs.”

Everyone laughed, and Dutch winked at Angel. Angel gave him the middle finger but cracked Dutch a little smile.

“What if they don’t bite?” asked Craze.

“Then we dead,” stated Dutch. “That’s why the second car has to pull over to give us enough time to get in the BMW lot, so
make it look good, Craze.” Craze nodded in understanding.

“As for the rest of us, we’ll be in another parked car behind the lot in the dead end. We ain’t gettin’ nothing but BMWs,
’cause the Chevrolet lot got too much shit to be runnin’ around lookin’ for Corvettes, so strictly Beemers. We gonna need
time after the first car pass, I figure three minutes top to snap the fence and blowtorch a hole wide enough in the barrier
to get out of. Once we in, we out. Keys sittin’ in the ignition, plastic still on the seats.”

“Damn, fourteen BMWs. How much is that?” Qwan asked wistfully, daydreaming about cream.

“My man told me he’d give us ten grand for coupes and fifteen for sedans, so you do the math,” Dutch replied.

“So, when we gonna do it?” Craze inquired, already calculating that the take would be no less than $140,000 on the coupe end
alone.

“Wednesday night,” Dutch announced as everyone started counting the days. It was a Saturday.

Four days later, they pulled off of Highway 1&9 and headed toward the port. Dutch checked his watch. It was 9:10
P.M
. He wanted to drive through once to get his bearings and locate the cop cars. He pulled over before he reached the entrance
to the port. Craze pulled up beside him with Angel in his car. Roc was riding with Shock and a few heads. And Zoom and the
Zoo Crew were behind him.

“Go on, get Roc and Shock in position and then you and Angel get your show started. Roc, you and Shock find a spot to hide
until we get there. Zoom and the Zoo Crew can stay with me. Don’t fuck up,” Dutch directed.

Craze nodded and drove off. Dutch just watched them as the taillights of the Delta 88 Craze was driving made a left turn into
the port. He waited a few minutes then pulled off heading the same way as Craze.

He saw the squad car and checked his watch: 9:16
P.M
. He didn’t know whether it was the first or the second squad car until he pulled into the dead-end road directly behind the
BMW lot and saw the second.
It’s 9:25 P.M. That’s seven minutes,
he thought to himself. That was a lot closer than the last time he checked on them, which was Monday night, but still a safe
amount of time between the two. Everyone got out of the cars and stayed low, creeping around the BMW lot. Dutch had Qwan stay
in the Cherokee because Qwan was one of the best drivers and Dutch wanted to be prepared just in case they had to bail out.

Off in the distance he saw the taillights of the Delta 88. He could barely see Angel and Craze, just images that could be
bodies of anyone. About that time, Roc and Shock crept up on him.

“Whut up?” Shock asked, but Dutch didn’t answer.

They waited as Craze saw the headlights of the second car slowly approaching.

“Here they come, baby girl,” Craze whispered to Angel, and she went into her act.

“Fuck you,
puta
! Fuck you!
No me toque.
” She swung wildly at Craze, who ducked and grabbed her by the waist, pushing her up against the car. By that time, the squad
car was in full view of them.

“The hell is that all about?” the middle-aged white man asked his equally pale partner.

“Lovers’ quarrel,” shrugged his passenger, “fuck ’em,” he continued lazily, taking a hit off a joint before passing it to
the driver. The driver took the joint but almost dropped it in his lap when he saw Angel half fall to the ground, revealing
nothing but a pair of pink panties fitting tightly around her firm, thick ass.

“God damn, did you see that?” the driver exclaimed, his dick instantly hard.

“Man, with an ass like that, I’d be fightin’ too,” his partner commented, taking the joint back from him and putting it out.
“Back up, man. Maybe we can help and be thanked at the same time,” he added, looking over his shoulder.

Craze had almost lost hope until he saw their brake lights come on and the car begin to back up.

“They backin’ up, they backin’ up,” he whispered to Angel.

“Hell yeah! Hell yeah! Yo, let’s go,” Dutch exclaimed, whispering his words.

Dutch, Shock, and Roc went forward to the barbed-wire fence with the blowtorch and wire cutters. They were in full view if
anyone passed, but no one did. Roc quickly snapped through the fence and tore away an entrance.

“Hurry up,” Dutch ordered, firmly but calmly, looking toward Craze and the guards as Roc and Shock lit the blowtorch to work
on the metal barrier.

The security guards had managed to separate Angel and Craze, each guard holding one of them. Angel was still yelling and cursing
as the guard held his arms around her waist, pretending to restrain her. She pretended to reach for Craze to hit him, every
time bending forward and pressing her ass against the guard’s crotch until she felt his penis harden.

“Tu eres un enfermo!
Get off of me!” Angel yelled, swinging on the guard.

The other guard let go of Craze and tried to assist his partner, while Roc and Shock worked the blowtorch on the last piece
of the barrier. Dutch waved for the rest of the crew and they scurried over. Dutch had hand-picked eight well-known car thieves
to assist him and his crew.

“Don’t forget, nothing but sedans,” Dutch reminded them as they hurried through the gate. He was the last to go through as
he looked out over the lot, which was the size of a football field.

It was like a car thief’s heaven seeing all those different-colored and different-shaped BMWs sitting there, waiting to be
driven away. With the keys in all the cars’ ignitions, three dudes had already pulled out by the time Dutch made it to a piss-gold
740il. He looked back just in time to see the second guard’s car lights come into full view, flashing, speeding toward the
lot. Dutch had misjudged the second car; he had misjudged time and it would cost him.

“Damn, get the fuck outta here,” he yelled to the others as he hopped into the 740. Not everybody had time to get to a car
of their own, so members of the clique were doubling down and tripling up in whatever was in motion.

Only seven cars made it out. Dutch could’ve left first, but he positioned himself to be the last car, the sacrifice car. He
floored the 740, leaving dust in the air as he tried to make it to the hole in the fence. He zoomed right by Angel and Craze
as the security guards looked up in surprise.

“What the hell? Come on!” yelled the security guard as he let go of Angel. The two guards ran for their car, pulling their
guns to join the chase.

Qwan, unable to see the security guard’s car traveling east as he was traveling south, rammed right into the passenger side
of the guard’s car. Qwan jumped out and ran, only to be apprehended a few hundred yards away from his parked but still running
car.

With that scene in front of him, Dutch stopped short and hit reverse in haste. He spun the car around in a smooth 360 and
headed toward the rear of the lot as the second guard car took a security road at the rear of the lot to cut Dutch off. Dutch
saw them, made a sharp left, and skidded out of control to a stop. He jumped out and looked over his shoulder. The guards
who had arrested Qwan were on Dutch’s ass. He tried to hop a fence, but the guards who had been entertained by Angel came
out of a service entrance and were right up on him. Trapped, Dutch leaned against the fence as the security guards began going
through their motions.

“Freeze,” yelled the guard nearest him, his gun loaded and ready.

“Get your hands up!” yelled his partner.

Craze and Angel watched the commotion helplessly from afar. They couldn’t make out who got caught and who got away, but they
knew the last driver didn’t make it, and Craze knew in his heart it was Dutch.

Craze plucked his blunt from the window of his Porsche. Still parked in the courthouse parking lot, he sat quietly without
the radio and reflected on his best friend.
Always got to be the last man standin’,
he thought to himself. He only hoped Dutch would be standing after the trial was over.

W
ill you please state your name for the court, sir?”

“Kenneth Jackson,” said the slim, lanky black man in the prison-provided polyester suit, the powder-blue suit that prisons
gave to inmates going to court. Dutch looked at the joker on the stand.
This nigga,
he thought to himself.

Kenneth Jackson, aka Shorty, had been locked up with Dutch during an eighteen-month stint up in Annandale, New Jersey, twelve
years ago, and he still looked the same. Kenneth Jackson was a petty thief, a wannabe con man on crack. He was still going
in and out of prison on skid bids. He still had the nervous twitch in his right eye that became more rapid whenever he was
lying. Still the same fast talker, spewing words so fast they often tripped over each other trying to come out.

“And where do you currently reside, Mr. Jackson?” asked Jacobs.

“In a halfway house off of Broad Street.”

I wonder what case he got that his testimony gonna get ’em off of,
thought Dutch as Jacobs got under way with his questioning.

Dutch hardly knew the man, merely saw him from time to time. Kenneth Jackson was forever on his way to jail or coming home
from one. They never spoke to each other in their infrequent meetings when Dutch would be ridin’ by or Shorty would be walking
through a spot. However, each would always acknowledge the other’s presence.

“And do you know Bernard James?”

“Of course I do—who don’t? He’s sitting right over there,” Shorty said as he pointed his index finger at Dutch like he was
viewing a police lineup.

Listen to this muhfucker,
thought Dutch as he sat with his finger against his temple thinking back to how he first met that nigga.

Dutch had just been through the prison reception unit in Yardsville. He could see the sterile yellow walls and cold, metallic
tile as if it was yesterday. Qwan, Dutch, and about eighteen other guys varying in age and crimes along with time, were all
lined up in front of a thick yellow line drawn on the floor. No one spoke, but Dutch could tell who was scared and who wasn’t
just by their demeanor.

Qwan stood three heads down from Dutch, who glanced down at him as Qwan winked back. Dutch knew that out of everyone in his
clique, Qwan wasn’t cut out for incarceration, and he was worried about him. He hoped that wherever he was transferred, Qwan
would be with him.

A sliding door clanked open and a corrections officer stepped through it. He had to weigh in at three-something and wasn’t
more than five foot four.

“All right! How you came into this world is how you’re leaving it too. Strip!”

Many of those in the lineup had been through this ritual many times, but Dutch was one of the ones who had not. New to the
bullshit, he began to undress, a little too slowly for the large CO who spotted him. The corrections officer came thundering
toward him.

“You!” the CO said as he got close up in Dutch’s face, so close Dutch could smell the man’s breakfast on his breath. “Didn’t
you hear what the fuck I said? You deaf or is you just retarded?”

Dutch’s whole being trembled in rage, but his composure remained unaffected. He merely continued to slowly unbutton his shirt.

“Listen here, you little black bastard, once you step inside these here walls you belong to
me
! You ain’t shit, wasn’t shit, and ain’t gonna be shit! When I tell you to strip, motherfucker, I mean strip, not no goddamn
striptease!” the CO shouted in Dutch’s face.