Hood (24 page)

With nothing to eat,

And a couple days lack of sleep,

I hear the beat and still craft me a masterpiece…

SOMETIMES THE HARDEST
thing to imagine is your worst fear come true. Hood didn’t believe in karma. The type of life he lived demanded he handle his own destiny and kismet coincidence didn’t have shit to do with it. But there was no denying that the thing he had devoted his life to pushing off on others had reared up and claimed victory over those he loved.

There was blood in Hood’s eyes as Roman dropped him off back in the Ville. Blood in his eyes, and murder on his mind.

Hood cruised the neighborhood in the ice-blue Mercedes 550 that Dreko had bought him when he came down off the Rock. He sped down streets and whipped around corners in the luxury vehicle as his eyes scanned the bodies littering the streets for one person in particular.

He drove under the el slowly, glancing from one side of the street to the other. He spotted a slim figure wearing jeans and a white sweater, walking fast. He hit the brakes hard, swerving as he double-parked and quickly jumped out his ride.

She was striding toward a small crowd on the corner of Livonia and Watkins, outside of a community center where a meeting looked like it was about to take place.

Egypt looked up in surprise when she saw him coming, then shrank back. Busted.

“Get in the car,” he spit, even as he snatched her by the arm and yanked her stumbling into the street. He threw her in on the passenger side, then got behind the wheel and peeled out into the street, his tires smoking and screeching loudly on the pavement.

“I was going in there to find Zena!” Egypt panted, her guilty eyes wide and scared. “I swear to God, Mont. All I was doing was looking for fucking Zena so I can
kill
that dirty bitch!”

“So you’s a head, huh? That’s why ya ass couldn’t hold me down when I was on the Rock, huh?” He laughed bitterly. “All these weeks I been thinking you was out there suckin on some nigga’s dick, when it was them fish scales you had on ya brain.”

“No!” Egypt denied. “I swear to God I only smoked it a few times,” she insisted. “I’m not addicted to that shit, Mont. It don’t mean nothing to me and I can walk away from it anytime, baby!”

Hood let her beg, babble, and lie. He zipped through traffic and sped toward Eastern Parkway without saying a word. He couldn’t even look at the bitch. He couldn’t stand the smell of her lying, crack-smoking ass, either. His heart felt cut. Pain seeped from his pores. That poison he’d peddled had gotten all over his hands and under his skin. Hood felt his gat pressed against his side and he longed to whip it out and bust her one right in the grill. If she could suck a pipe then damn right she could suck a Glock.

“Mont, please! Listen to me!”

Hood tuned Egypt out as she cried and apologized, swearing on the soul of her murdered father that she loved him and had never meant to hurt him.

He took Eastern Parkway toward downtown Brooklyn as Egypt begged and moaned. He gave a fuck about any of that noise coming outta her mouth. Her mouth was contaminated. There was nothing she could say that he wanted to hear.

Less than twenty minutes later they were waiting at a traffic light on Tillary Street. Egypt was still crying and trying to explain.

“Mont, please!! You gotta believe me! I’m sorry. I’m really, really, sorry. Oh my God…I don’t even know how all this happened…and Zena…I just can’t
believe
her and Dreko did this fuckin shit to me! Mont, please say something, baby. Oh God…I might as well just
die.
Mont, please talk to me baby. Please forgive me.”

Hood never spoke a word until the wheels of his Mercedes touched the metal treads of the Brooklyn Bridge.

“You say you wanna die?” he asked softly.

Halfway across the bridge Hood pulled to the far right, then put on his flashing hazard lights and slowed to a complete stop.

“You wanna die?” he asked again, his voice just as vast and cold as the ocean below.

“Mont, please…” Egypt cried, reaching for him. “You don’t even know…”

He slapped her hand away brutally, then reached under his jacket and pulled out his gun.

Egypt’s eyes grew wide as she looked at the piece, then glanced around at the cars speeding past, those traveling in their lane cutting a path around them.

“Mont…” her voice came out a dry, cracked whisper. “Please.”

Hood cocked the gat, then held it out to her.

“C’mon, take it, Egypt. Finish yourself off, baby. Stick this metal dick in your mouth. It’s a whole lot quicker than the pipe and it sure ain’t as ugly.”

Egypt broke down sobbing even harder. Mont had never once called her anything close to ugly. She cursed herself for being so weak, and cursed the drugs for being so damn strong. She cursed Hood too.

“Well where the fuck was you when I needed you?” she screamed. “You think I wanted to fuck with that shit? Huh? You think I just went out one day and decided to cop me some rock and sit back and let it ruin my whole fuckin life?
I’m
the one who had the dreams, remember? I’m the one who stayed in school and worked damn hard to reach my goals! But I was hurtin, Mont. I was in so much fuckin
pain
! My father got murdered and I had to come home and find his dead fuckin body! So where were you, Lamont? Huh? Where the fuck were you?”

Out there trying to save your life,
is what Hood would have said if his heart wasn’t hurting so bad.

He held the gun out to her again, his hand cool and steady.

Egypt gasped. She searched his face and found a cold, brick wall. Unwaverable. She trembled as sweat ran from her hairline, between her breasts, and down her back. Her heart fluttered, and any hope for forgiveness she might have had dissipated into the air, gone. The look on Mont’s face said it all. She was foul and worthless. Her life had turned into a garbage can full of dirty regrets. A quiet sob tore from Egypt’s throat as her soul cried out for mercy. Mont would never,
ever
forgive her. It just wasn’t in him and she knew that without a doubt. But he
was
offering her a chance out, and she saw no reason not to take it.

Her lower lip shook as she reached for the heat and took it into her slippery hands. Zena’s letter of confession was in her back pocket burning a hole into her contaminated flesh. The thought of having to tell Mont about all the nasty, perverted sex with Dreko, Zena having the virus, and how she had laid down with both of them and opened herself up to all that…Egypt shuddered. She’d rather die. Because one more fuckin thing she had to be afraid or ashamed of would just break her back. She didn’t have that kind of strength left in her. Only weakness and fear.

Egypt slid the barrel of the gun between her lips and the cold metal clicked against her bottom teeth. She took three deep, heaving breaths and blinked her eyes against the sting of her sweat. Snot ran from her nose and she sniffed it back, then with one last sideward glance that was filled with love, remorse, and sorrow, she pulled the trigger.

Click.

Hood’s whole body jerked. The sound of a misfired gat sent an echo through the whip, and then there was silence. His eyes bored into Egypt. She was trembling violently and drenched in sweat. Her lips were slack, the barrel of the gun still clenched between her teeth.

“Girl…” he whispered, then swallowed hard in disbelief. What should have been certain death had been reduced to her ragged, desperate breaths and the hollow sound of a jammed pistol held in the trembling hands of a hopeless crackhead.

It all fell down on Hood at that moment. The craziness of it all. The senselessness of the life they were living and the agonizing need to get away from it all and save his own life. It was over. He was done.

“Get out,” he whispered.

His own hands were shaking as he snatched the tool from her wet grasp and tossed it under his seat. His face was harder than stone as he took a business card from the ashtray and pushed it at her. Then he reached over and pressed a button on the dashboard and unlocked the car doors, and turned to face Egypt one last time.

“Get out.”

Cars whizzed past outside and she stared at him pitifully through her tears.

“I said, get the fuck out.”

Egypt’s lips parted and a long, tortured moan fell from her soul. Moments earlier she’d been ready to die, but where there was life, there could also be repentance and forgiveness, and more than anything Egypt wanted that second chance. A galaxy of pain was in her eyes as she gazed at Hood and whimpered, “Don’t do this, Mont. Please. Don’t do me like this, baby. I’ll do anything to make this right. Anything.”

“Cool. Prove it. Get outta my ride.”

“And do what?” Egypt shrieked. “Look where you putting me out at, Lamont! What the fuck do you want me to do?”

“First I want you to get outta my ride. Then you can either walk over to the edge of that rail and climb ya ass up on it and…jump.”

Hood was silent for a long moment, then he turned his back on her. He faced completely away from Egypt and said, “Or…you can walk back to the Brooklyn side of the shore and call the number on that card. A lady named Miss Baker is gonna answer the phone, and she’ll help you get your shit together, if that’s what you wanna do. Either way, you gotta get the fuck up outta my life.”

Egypt whimpered. “Baby, you are all I got in this
world.
All I got! What do I have to do? You want me to kill myself? Huh? Then gimme the gun back, Mont. Is that what you want me to do? Look at me!”

Hood refused.

“You’re already dead,” he spoke quietly, his forehead pressed against the cool glass of his window. “Your weak ass died the day you chose to get down with a pipe.”

The sound of the car door opening then slamming shut cut through him like a sword. And only then did he allow his tears to fall.

Don’t never let nobody know you got a sweet spot.

Xan had been right, because predatory niggas and bitches would fuck with that sweet spot every time.

Hood signaled and pulled off slowly into traffic. He glanced in his rearview mirror only once, and when he did he could have sworn he saw Egypt climbing over the fence and heading toward the outer railing.

Hood’s heart lurched but he forced his eyes forward. He kept them that way as he drove toward the Manhattan side of the bridge and he was proud of the fact that despite the anguish burning in his heart, he never looked back again.

Back outside of Cypress Arms, Hood checked his piece and made sure the clip was full and there was one ready in the head.

His mind in a homicidal tunnel, Hood hit the streets and went looking for Dreko. If he had ever feared for his sanity before, there was no doubt about it now. He was past crazy. He was a raving fuckin beast. Lyrics raced through his head at mad speeds as he boiled over a cat who he had once loved like a brother, yet turned out to be lower than a fuckin worm.

Fuck fame, fuck glory!

When they bury Hood let my niggas tell my story!

Tell ’em ’bout the orgies

How I never snitched up! How I never bitched up!

True to my dudes, refused to ever switch up!

My band of brothers, haters plannin to slug us

Death before dishonor no traitors stand among us!

Hood rounded the corner on Rockaway Avenue and stormed into the pizza shop. The look in his eyes was enough to make niggas stop chewing as he scanned the crowd, searching for Dreko. He had held that nigga down during the early years. They ate off of each other’s forks and guarded each other’s backs. But one of them was a fuckin slug and a snitch, and that nigga was gone hafta die tonight.

Every step a nigga take, God tests a nigga’s faith

Ever notice the nigga kept a weapon on his waist?

Maneuvering thru the block, no hesitation in his pace

A chip on his shoulder and desperation in his face! What!

Hood stormed down the city streets on a manhunt. The el roared overhead, and it sounded more like a whisper. There was nothing louder in the universe than the kill bells ringing in his ears. No matter how much territory Dreko had conquered on the streets of Brooklyn or how many niggas he’d struck down with his grimy sword, he still wasn’t satisfied. He’d had to go and shit on his boy too.