Chino 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.