Tales from da Hood (19 page)

Antwan swallowed. Though he never spoke to anyone first, and barely spoke even if he was being spoken to, he couldn't keep the words from spilling out of his mouth.

“Is he dead?” Antwan asked. “Did you kill him?”

The boy looked over his shoulder at the lifeless body lying in the alley behind him. He nodded and then replied, “Yep.”

Antwan looked over at the body, paused, and then gave a simple, “Oh.”

“He deserved it though,” the boy said in his defense. “Fool try to get me for my sneakers.”

Antwan looked down at the fresh new pair of Air Jordans the boy was wearing.

“Yeah, them some phat shoes, too,” Antwan said as if to let the boy know that he didn't blame him for killing ol’ dude.

Just then there was a sound of sirens. Neither boy knew where the sirens were headed, but just in case they were headed their way, they knew that they had to get out of there.

“You hungry, kid?” the boy said to Antwan.

Antwan overpowered the smile that wanted to creep across his
face. He thought it was funny how the boy had taken a life and all of sudden felt like a man, calling him a kid and shit.

“Yeah,” Antwan replied.

“Then let's go around the corner to KFC and grab something to eat.”

Antwan sucked his teeth. “I ain't got no money.”

“Damn, that's right,” the boy said, snapping his finger as he had a sudden thought. “Hold up.”

The boy ran back over to the body and proceeded to go through the dead boy's pockets. The closer the sound of the sirens came, the faster Antwan's adrenaline rushed. His little peter was tingling in his pants.

The boy walked back over to Antwan with a fistful of crumbled bills that panned out to be nothing but $1 bills. “Good lookin’ out. I almost forgot to check that fool's shit in. I would have forgotten if you hadn't mentioned money.” He continued unfolding and counting the money. “Only twenty damn dollars. No wonder dude was trying to take my shoes and shit. Broke-ass nigga can't afford to buy his own. What a dude that ain't got nothing but twenty dollars in his pocket got to live for anyway?”

Antwan just stood there with envy as he looked at the boy. Here he had been brave enough to stand up to someone bigger than him who was trying to take something from him, something that was his. If only Antwan could have stood up to those three people who had tried to take something of his, who did take something of his.

“Here you go, kid,” the boy said to Antwan, handing him ten dollars of the twenty. “Let's go eat.” They headed off out of the alley toward KFC. “By the way, I'm Rah Rah,” he said, extending his hand to Antwan.

“Antwan,” he replied, shaking Rah Rah's hand. The boys continued walking. Again, Antwan looked down at Rah Rah's shoes, the shoes that had cost another boy his life. “I know your moms had to
work hard to get you those shoes. I would have killed anybody who tried to take them from me in a heartbeat.”

“Oh these,” Rah Rah said nonchalantly, looking down at the shoes. “I just jacked some clown yesterday for these.” Rah Rah looked down at Antwan's beat-up sneakers. “After we eat we gon’ go find you a pair, too. You wit’ it?”

Antwan just looked up at Rah Rah, the boy he knew was to be his new best friend, his only friend, and replied, “I'm wit’ it.”

From that point on they started doing stickups together. It had started with gold chains, sneakers, and whatever money a victim happened to have. Later they graduated to sticking up the dope kids off Clinton and Avon Avenue. They had done their first contract work for Big Farook in December of last year.

“Yo, Rah Rah, slow down. That look like green-eyed Hassan standing over there in front of the record shop,” Antwan shouted over the roar of the bike's engine. Rah Rah slowed down to get a better look.

“Yeah, that's him, Antwan. What you want me to do?” Rah Rah asked as he slowed the bike down even more, waiting for his instructions.

“Just let me off, pull around the corner, and be ready to roll as soon as you see me bend the corner coming back.”

Green-eyed Hassan was a stickup kid. He'd been sticking up the crackhouses in Seth Boyden projects and the Little Bricks projects, then camping out in the North Newark projects until shit blew over. Three weeks ago he had stuck up a crackhouse run by Big Farook's people on West Kinney Street. Big Farook had put a contract on him, and Antwan had gotten the work.

Hassan and some girl were leaning against a green Acura Legend when Antwan walked around the corner and headed casually in their direction with his motorcycle helmet still on and his hands in his pockets. Antwan sang a song that was on the radio all the time.
Slight of build, and weighing little more than 130 pounds, Antwan didn't appear to be anybody's idea of a contract killer. When Antwan was directly in front of Hassan and the girl, he stopped.

“Yo, Has,” Antwan greeted Hassan as he eased his hand behind his back.

Hassan looked up at the young face peering at him from under the helmet and was about to smirk until he noticed that the kid was holding a .38 short.

“Yo, what the fuck?” Hassan gasped as the girl with him began screaming as she ran up the street. The first bullet slammed into Hassan's upper shoulder, knocking him into the car door.

“Hold, hold up for a minute, man,” Hassan said as he stared into Antwan's hard, angry eyes. “What the fuck did I do, man? Yo, man, please.”

“No mercy, nigga,” Antwan snapped as he fired the next five shots into Hassan's face. “No mercy!”

During the next seven or eight months Rah Rah and Antwan committed three more contract hits, six shootings where they capped the dude in both legs, and one robbery at the Parrow Lounge where Rah Rah shot some cat in the ass for trying to buck.

“Yo, Antwan,” Rah Rah said with a mouthful of food as he took another bite from his corned beef sandwich. “What's the fucking deal with you saying that ‘no mercy’ shit every time we have to slump a nigga? What you think, you some kinda serial killer or some shit? Remember nigga, like they said in the movie
The Godfather
, the shit ain't personal. It's business.”

“Yeah, I know it's business,” Antwan replied, staring off in the distance. “But it seems like every time I'm about to bust a nigga, I get mad as shit. Especially if one of them muthafuckas be lookin’ at me like they expect me not to smoke their ass. So I just started telling them niggas ‘no mercy’ right 'fore I put them hot balls in they ass. Anyhow, Rah, why you asking a million questions and shit?
Fuck you s'pose to be? Some kinda black Sigmund Freud or some shit?”

“Nah, I'm just wondering,” Rah Rah replied. “ 'Cause sometimes you seem like your ass be tripping the fuck out. Anyhow, nigga, let's roll. We got work to do. Niggas couldn't go put in work on an empty stomach.”

Antwan smirked as the two went to handle their business.

THE
NEXT
TWO YEARS
flashed by in a series of shootings, car chases, stickups, blunts, and freaking with some of the project girls in the backseat of Rah Rah's car or sometimes at the Stinkin’ Lincoln Motel downtown.

One Friday in March, Rah Rah, a couple of other cats, and Antwan rented a minisuite at the Lincoln to celebrate Rah Rah's twentieth birthday. They bought twelve forty-ounces, an ounce of weed, and a bottle of Dom, and they invited some girls from Seth Boyden projects. The party had been going on for hours when Antwan decided he'd had more than enough to drink and went next door to crash for a minute.

Fully clothed, Antwan lay across one of the double beds in the room and soon he was sound asleep.

Once again in his dream he watched from under the quilt as the two men and the pretty lady marched his handcuffed mother, father, and brother down into the basement. Once again he watched and jumped as one of the gunmen placed a gun to his brother's head and pulled the trigger. But this time he was no longer the traumatized little boy looking up from under the quilt, shaken and scared. This time he saw the carnage with the eyes of an eighteen-year-old and the faces were not mere blurs. He could see their faces. Their features and images ingrained themselves into his memory as if they were being burned into his brain. The dream, however, had yet
another dimension, one that had escaped his years of therapy, consultation, and even hypnosis. This time he could discern exactly what the killers were saying. He could hear his mother's moans and his father's pleas to the killers to leave his wife alone. And more important, he could hear the voices of the killers themselves.

When Antwan woke up his clothes were drenched in sweat. He looked around the motel room slowly, trying to get his bearings, trying to figure out exactly where he was. Then he heard the music coming through the walls from the room next door and everything
began to make sense. For the first time in his life, so did the dream. He knew who the killers were, every one of them. He heard their names clearly and saw their faces. A smile danced at the corners of his mouth. He knew for certain that he would finally get what he had been praying for since he was a little boy. He was about to get revenge.

WHEN
RAH
RAH NOTICED
that Antwan was missing from the party he went over to the room next door to check on him. He found his friend in a cold sweat, coming out of the nightmare.

“Antwan, how you so sure that the nigga's name is Malik?” Rah Rah said, after listening to Antwan tell him about his dream. “Don't tell me just 'cause you dreamt that shit you ready to go slump any nigga wit’ that name.” Rah Rah tried to make sense of it all. “And you saying that you remember one of them, some Malik cat, saying he was your peoples? Your cousin and shit?”

“Listen, Rah, you either with this shit or you ain't,” Antwan said.

“All I need is a muthafucka to watch my back. I don't need no nigga to hold my hand if I'ma slump a nigga. Especially a muthafucka that slaughtered my whole family.”

“Yo, my nigga, that's not what I'm saying. You know I'm down for whatever. I'll slump the nigga for you in a New York second. You like my family and your family like mines, but if we s'pose to be downing three cats, I just wanna make sure we got the right muthafuckas fo we get three bodies on the house. You feel me, Antwan? This ain't about no cold feet shit. 'Cause you know I slump a muthafucka soon as I look at him. But it's yo call, my nigga. You call it. I'm wit’ it,” Rah Rah said.

“First, I gotta find out who this nigga Malik is. I don't really
know none of my dad's or mother's people. You know I was raised in an orphanage and in foster homes and none of them muthafuckas reached out for me. But I know they had family in the city. I heard my aunts and uncles sold off the business, split the proceeds, and went on about their lives,” Antwan said, shaking his head. “Nonetheless, I don't think it's gonna be but so hard for me to find this nigga.”

“All right, Antwan, whatever and whenever,” Rah Rah said, reaching in his pocket for his room key. “Holla at me when you ready to roll.”

“Yo, Rah, let me get the keys to your ride. I'm too hyped to sleep right now. I'm gonna just drive. I'll pick you back up before checkout time.”

“All right, nigga. Don't leave me hangin’ in the front of the motel waiting on your ass like you did the last time you took my car,” Rah Rah replied, smiling as he tossed Antwan the keys.

Antwan caught the keys with one hand. “Man, would I ever leave you hangin'?”

“Hell, yeah. Didn't you just hear me say you did, fool?”

“Don't worry,” Antwan said. “I'll be back.”

OVER
THE
NEXT FEW
weeks Antwan and Rah Rah tried to track down the people from Antwan's dream. They had so far checked on seven or eight guys named Malik, but none of them, to the best of Antwan's knowledge, was in any way related to him.

Friday night at the Zanzibar, Antwan kicked it with an old head who knew his peoples and schooled him on what he knew about his cousin, Malik. He told him that back in the day Malik used to be a vicious stickup kid. The old head said that maybe fifteen or sixteen years ago, Malik suddenly hung up his guns, and the last he
had heard he was a deacon in the church, living somewhere in Belleville.

Sunday night, Rah Rah and Antwan had tracked that Malik to a duplex on the Belleville-Newark line, where he lived with his wife and two sons. Every night Malik would go to work on the night shift as a security guard at a Secaucus warehouse.

Rah Rah and Antwan were sitting in the car down from Malik's house passing a blunt back and forth when the porch light came on and a man, who didn't look to be a lot older than forty years old, stepped out on the porch accompanied by a caramel-colored woman who kissed him on the lips and then stepped back into the house as he proceeded down the steps.

Antwan and Rah Rah had already flattened the back tire on Malik's Camry. Antwan planned to make his move once Malik got out to change his tire. Antwan, who was lying on the backseat in Rah's car, had disconnected the car's interior light so he could ease out of the car and come up from behind Malik as he jacked his car up.