The Reason Why (21 page)

C
hino passed out thirty keys the first day and moved six more the second day. He had four more keys to get rid of and the others, he would just have to sit back and wait for his crew to pay him the dope he fronted them. If all went well, he would more than double his weekly intake. He was at the point where he couldn't even spend money fast enough. His two safes were quickly filling to capacity.

Young Mike had moved five of the ten that he had given him and was proving everybody wrong.
That kid is a natural born hustler,
Chino thought. He could get Santa Claus to buy toys from him. The kid was cold-blooded. Young Mike was definitely doing his part, and so was Infa. Now it was his turn to step it up another level.

Chino was parked in an uptown park, meeting a new client. The cat's name was Malik. He watched as Malik parked his Delta 88 and walked over to him.

“What's up, black?” Malik asked, exchanging handshakes with Chino.

“What up, black?” Chino said, returning his greeting. He knew where Malik was coming from.

Malik had his hair in long dreadlocks and was wearing a red, black, and green patch of the African continent around his neck. He wore an olive green shirt with X-Clan on the front of it. He wore red, black, and green knit wristbands and black Dickies. He also had a red, black, and green beanie over his dreadlocks.

Chino had been briefed on what type of brother Malik was. He wore his black power T-shirt for the occasion. It was a shirt with pictures of Malcom, Martin, and Mandela on the front of it, with the words “Strong Men Keep On Coming” above the pictures.

“Love the shirt, black!” Malik told him.

“Same here, bro,” Chino replied. “I love X-Clan. I bump they shit all the time.”

“Yo, them, Professor X, Poor Righteous Teachers, and Afrika Bambaataa is my dudes,” Malik said. “That's all I pump out my system.”

“Word, word,” Chino said nodding. “Got that, black?”

“Got it,” Malik said, handing Chino a black shoulder bag full of money.

Chino peered inside the bag, counted the stacks, and ran his finger through each stack, making sure that each bill was in fact a C-note. When satisfied, he pulled a gym bag from the floor of his Benz and handed it to Malik, who looked inside the gym bag and then shook Chino's hand again.

“Bet! Got to fund the movement, my dude!” Malik told him. Chino and Malik gave each other dap. “Got to free Mandela, support Jonas Savimbi, and our oppressed brothers and sisters the world over.”

Yeah, five kilos at a time,
Chino thought. He glanced around the park. He had been there way too long. He was in another crew's territory and dealing with a third crew's customer. Malik usually scored from the Young Brothers Incorporated, or YBI for short. He said YBI had told him that their connection was dry for right now, but to hold tight.

YBI was a combination crew. They had niggas from Columbus, Dayton, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and all over Ohio. They pushed yayo all over the state, and were known as a crew of ballers and killers who didn't take no shorts. They were serious about their money and serious about their clients. That's why Chino knew that it was going to be some shit as soon as he saw some of them pull into the park in a dark blue Chrysler New Yorker.

“Damn!” Chino said.

Malik peered over his shoulder and saw the New Yorker. He ran for his Delta 88. Chino could hear someone shouting Malik's name, just before the gunfire erupted.

Chino climbed out of his Benz and fired his Beretta. He couldn't just sit and watch Malik go down like that. Besides, once they gunned down Malik, he knew that he would be next. He had to give Malik a fighting chance to get to his wheels.

Malik dove to the ground and pulled out a Sig Sauer 9 mm. He fired back at the dark blue Chrysler, leaving a trail of bullet holes on the passenger side of the vehicle. Chino added
his gunfire to the shootout, and Malik was able to rise and race to his vehicle. He fell and grabbed his leg just as he made it to the driver's side door.

Chino knew that Malik was a dead man. He poured gunfire into the New Yorker.

“Get up, kid!” he shouted, praying that Malik would pull himself up and climb inside his car. “Get up!”

Chino knew that he was running low on bullets and that if he stopped to reload, Malik was dead, and he was next. Suddenly, he heard gunfire to each side of him. There were park rangers in the park today and they were firing at the New Yorker, trying to protect a wounded Malik.

The New Yorker was riddled with bullets. Both tires on the passenger side of the vehicle were flat, and all the glass on that side had been shot out. But the big worry was the driver's side, the side facing Malik. The New Yorker had crept in between Chino and Malik and was now stalled out. The park rangers raced to the vehicle and surrounded it.

“Hands!” they shouted. “Let me see your hands!”

Chino tossed his gun inside his Benz and dropped inside.

“Freeze!”

Chino looked up. A third park ranger had his weapon trained on him.

“Shit!” Chino said, kicking the floorboards of his vehicle. He slowly raised his hands into the air.

“Don't move, muthafucka!” the park ranger threatened.

It was just his luck. He had gotten caught up in another crew's territory, gotten into a shootout, and now he was being arrested by some fake-ass wannabe cops. The good thing was that he had gotten rid of his yayo. The bad thing was that he
had over a hundred thousand dollars on him and Malik had five keys of pure Puerto Rican flake on him. The cops were going to put two and two together and figure out what was going on. He had a pistol case at least and had lost a hundred grand that the police were definitely going to seize as drug money. Pushing the dope for Dragos had caused him to take an unnecessary risk and get caught slipping. Now he was headed to fucking county jail. More courts, more lawyers, more judges, more bullshit. He had been involved in a shootout, so he could pretty much forget about bond. The gun made him a danger to society, and the money that he was dealing with made him a flight risk. No judge in the world would give him a bond.

“Damn, Pooh,” he said softly, shaking his head. Just when everything was going well. The shop, the money, the new apartment—within seconds, everything fell apart.

Chino was pulled out of his Benz, thrown to the ground, and handcuffed. He watched through tear-filled eyes as more police cars pulled into the park. He was on his way to prison, and nothing was going to stop that now.

P
am walked into the visitation booth, took a seat at the thick glass window, and waited for Chino to appear on the other side. Never in a million years had she thought that she would be making this kind of trip. She had always thought those women who spent all their free time running down to the jail to visit their men were weak bitches. Her philosophy had been that if he loved you, he would have stayed out here with you. He would have thought about the consequences of his actions and wouldn't have done what he did to get locked up. But now she was one of those bitches.

Pam looked around the visitation room. There were twenty glass booths, with a telephone in each. Each booth had a mirrored booth opposite it, for the prisoner to sit in and talk to them through another telephone. There was a steel wall with a thick glass window that separated them. There were numerous pregnant women inside booths today, several with children, some older women whom she assumed were mothers, and very few men. Was that the reason why these men
were in jail in the first place? she wondered. A lack of men in their lives? No fathers to kick their asses and keep them straight. Or did they have fathers who just cut them loose after they got locked up?

She assumed that it was the former instead of the latter. Chino grew up without his parents, and the streets had raised him. It was the streets that had made him who he was, it was the streets that made him hard. This was one of the reasons why Pam was determined to go to college and graduate. She had watched the news in Detroit and seen a constant parade of young black men being carted off to jail. They were losing an entire generation of young black men to prison, and she desperately wanted to do something about it. She went to college to change her destiny, but then she met Chino and got caught up. Her idealism seemed like it was years ago. And after a while, she had thought it to be so childish and naive. But now, now she remembered. She realized who she was, why she had gone to college, and what she wanted to do. Staring around that visitation room made her realize where she had gone wrong.

My God, Chino,
she said to herself.
How did we get here?

Chino walked into the visitation room and searched for the right booth. He found Pam seated in booth number fifteen, toward the end of the row. She looked miserable, as if she had actually been crying. Her appearance made him feel as if he were two feet tall.

He had never wanted this for his Pooh. He never in a million years imagined that he would put her through something like this. When you're young and balling, you feel untouchable,
invincible even. Death and prison were something foreign, circumstances for other people, never for you or the people immediately around you. He never saw Pooh as being one of those women who trekked off to jail or to a prison yard every Saturday to visit their men. His Pooh was better than that; she deserved more than that. And so now he had a major decision to make. Should he tell Pooh to go on with her life, so that she could have a better life? Or should he try to hold on to her, fight for their relationship, and hope that it survived the rigors of time, distance, stress, and loneliness? Prison was a lonely experience. It was lonely for the prisoner, and just as lonely for the loved ones left behind. He would be in there; she would be out in the free world. Guys would get at her. What would she say? What would she do? Would loneliness get the best of her? Having someone to hold, to talk to, to laugh with, to share things with was a powerful narcotic. Letters and pictures from a prison yard couldn't compete with physically being there.

Chino seated himself in the booth opposite Pam. He brought the telephone receiver to his ear so that he could talk to her.

“Hey, Pooh.”

“Hey, Chino,” Pam said. She tried to smile, but it came out halfhearted. “Love the outfit. Is that Gucci?”

Chino laughed. He was happy that she was trying to make him laugh. That meant that there was still something there. And whatever was there was something that they could build on. Most of all, he was relieved. Their first words since his arrest had just been spoken, and they weren't full of anger, and
she didn't say that she had told him so. She was trying to uplift his spirits. It made him feel good. He held back his tears and smiled at her.

“What, you don't like my outfit?” Chino asked. “This just so happens to be Versace orange, and I even have some Versace sandals to match.”

Chino raised his foot to the window so that Pam could see the clunky plastic jail sandals that he was wearing. She laughed.

“So, what's been happening?” Chino asked.

“Nothing,” Pam said, shaking her head. “Just missing you.”

“I miss you too, Pooh,” Chino said softly. “How are things at the crib?”

Pam nodded.

“Do you have enough bread?”

Again, she nodded.

“I'll let you know where the safe is so you can get some bread anytime you need it.”

“The shop is supporting everything,” Pam told him.

“It's making good money?”

Pam nodded. “It's doing real good.”

“That's good news.” Chino paused for a moment, then spoke seriously. “Hey, Pooh, I need for you to listen up real careful. These people might be coming at you with some bullshit, and I need for you to be ready for it.”

“Bullshit like what, Chino?”

“Like a conspiracy charge or something,” Chino explained. “They might try to put pressure on you in order to get to me.”

“Put pressure on me how?”

“Because the cars and the apartment and everything was in your name. They might come at you with a money laundering charge or something.”

Pam nodded.

Chino winked at her. “If they ask, just let them know that you got the paper from your parents, and if they trip, just make sure that you hip your parents to the game.”

Pam laughed. “They are going to love that. That's going to be one helluva phone call.”

Chino joined in the laughter. “I can imagine that one.”

A guard pulled up behind Pam and placed a pink cupcake on the counter in the booth she was sitting in. The cupcake had a single candle in it. The guard pulled out his lighter, lit the candle, and then gave Chino a quick thumbs-up before disappearing.

“What's this?” Pam asked.

“You didn't think I'd forget, did you?”