AT 8 A.M. ON APRIL 3, 1991, THE FRONT GATE OUTSIDE Richmond Heights Middle School was packed with kids in green and yellow on their way to first period. Teachers rounded up stragglers under the sprawling ficus trees that lined the courtyard. I always daydreamed when I pulled up to that gate. Those kids looked so free, as if they were living in some kind of real-life fairy tale. Their days weren’t scripted by police chases and shoot-outs. They were doing kid things. I watched them exchange little love notes, the kind with two boxes sketched at the bottom that comes after the most life-changing inquiry for any adolescent: Do you like me? It’s the question that makes childhood special. I’d gotten butterflies in my stomach after the girl whose pigtails I’d been pulling all year finally checked yes. That’s the boy-meets-girl, coming-of-age, growing-pains tale most people tell their grandkids. Those kids in the courtyard talked about who’s taking who to the skate party. At lunchtime I’m sure they shot marbles behind the gym. The only mischief before heading to football practice was probably spitball fights in class. What if? I wondered.
“Can you put that out!”
Hollywood’s sister Keba was yelling at me. She always hated the smoke. The scent that comes from mixing cocaine with weed is atrocious. It’s a pungent, musty aroma that I learned to breathe in. The high, I felt, was necessary. At her age, she didn’t understand that if I didn’t smoke, I might lose the last screw holding my brain together. Keba needed to be protected from all the madness. Her world needed to be sketched in images of Barbie dolls and slumber parties.
“Oh, sorry, lil mama,” I apologized, and let the tinted window down in the black Chevy Blazer—Black Beauty, that’s what we called her—just enough so the smoke from my blunt could escape.
By now we were making so much money that my crew had graduated to trafficking. We made deliveries. Santana hooked us up with the Blazer. It wasn’t anything fancy. It was inconspicuous, unlike the dunks with spinning rims and all that. The corners were getting too hot anyway. As I mentioned earlier, when bodies dropped, the jump-out boys came snooping around. Looking back, it’s ironic we called that truck Black Beauty. The thing was an actual death deliverer.
One of our main spots to make deliveries was the Holiday Inn at Seventy-ninth Street and Seventh Avenue across from the I-95 expressway overpass. We called it the Carter Building. But not even Nino Brown had seen the amount of dope that used to run through that place. Whatever a customer wanted in the criminal world, he could find there. It’s where criminals from out of town came to do their bidding. It was the UN building of the streets in Miami. Hookers, contract killers, and dope were all on standby at the Carter.
Either the coke we shuttled around the city would lead to a slow death or the AK-47s we had cocked on a moment’s notice would blow a rival’s back out. We were a dope supplier’s dream; too young to get caught on any serious charges—we thought—and even more heartless than the average dope hustler. It was a simple but efficient drug-running operation. Drivers hopped out at various blocks so cops couldn’t ID one particular trafficker. Narcs had put surveillance on the truck cruising the hood. They were definitely onto us, but they could never catch us with the dope when they pulled us over. The stops offered comedy as always.
“Good day, Officer. Ain’t it just a nice sunshiny day out?” one of us would say.
The officer smirked. He tried hard to ignore our sarcasm.
We continued, “Damn, why y’all coppers always so bent outta shape. Oh, it’s probably because all these little hoodlums out here causing all these problems.”
“Y’all think this is one big joke, hunh?”
We wouldn’t let up. “You know, I heard getting high calms the nerves. I don’t know if it’s true though. You know how people gossip in the hood.”
Our truck usually smelled like marijuana or whatever other drug I was getting high on at the time. It was too small of a charge. These cops were after a bigger score. They had their eyes set on Santana. If they got lucky once and caught us with his product, they would try squeezing us to get to him.
Pistol-whip these little niggers. Ram their fucking heads into a windshield. We don’t give a damn about these welfare cases. They’re just pawns in a game of chess we’re not going to lose to some wetback coke suppliers.
For all they knew, Santana or any other of the Caribbean cats supplying the white could have gone back to the islands. Those dudes weren’t greedy. They were crafty in their dope slinging. Selling the powder served a larger purpose. Whether their funds were used as political leverage or to support families, those cats weren’t going to let the American government win this war.
The officer would try to explain. “Y’all either too dumb or just blind to see where this thing is headed. You think that little gold chain or Jordans on your feet makes you the man?”
We did. You couldn’t tell us we weren’t the best thing since sliced bread. You would feel the same way if you grew up on government cheese, packed your holey sneakers with cardboard, and played hide-and-go-seek when the lights got turned off.
It still shocks me to this day what people call the land of the free. My question is, for whom? We have multimillion-dollar homes in Miami and homeless folks a stone’s throw away on the other side of the street.
The only time I got a reality check that we were just pawns in a broken world was when we cruised down to South Beach on occasion. There wasn’t anything down there for us. We were just bored I guess. Black locals in Miami rarely visit South Beach. The powers that be finally allowed our blacks to stay at the hotels, but it was a forced welcome. I have family members well into their sixties who’ve lived in Miami all their lives and have never been to South Beach. It sounds crazy, but there are club owners who’ll use anything as an excuse to stop blacks from entering. They often say Dickies jeans or baseball caps aren’t allowed, knowing damn well a white boy just walked in wearing the same thing. Hip-hop on South Beach was something new. Strawberry’s, Miami Nights, Studio 183, and block parties were the few places to go to enjoy hip-hop. Since the mainstream started paying attention to our sounds, the club owners took notice.
I say fuck your ritzy nightclubs if I can’t get in wearing my Dickies and fitted cap. The black people who frequent South Beach are most likely tourists or had just moved here. When my crew drove down there and stared at the half-naked spring breakers, they got fond of what folks might call our Southern swag.
“Lil Mama . . . Lil Mama! . . . What dey do?”
They giggled. I don’t think they ever saw a Chevy sitting higher than three feet off the ground with spinners. Our gold grills were something out of the ordinary as well. We might as well have been from Mars. We turned right back around and headed on the I-395 causeway back to our side of the bridge. It wasn’t as rosy, but it’s where we felt comfortable. Gazing at all those yachts, sports cars, and mansions made me even more determined to be the best damn cocaine cowboy I could be. That cop’s advice definitely fell on deaf ears.