After leaving the projects, I jetted back to Frank’s crib. By the time I’d left the trap, a mere two hours later, all thirty bundles I had wit me were gone. It was 10:30 am. I’d made almost $4,000 dollars since 6 A.M. Not counting the hour I’d spent at Keisha’s. I left Frank with the coke, and two ultimatums. One. You’ve got almost six thousand dollars’ worth of dimes the size of most niggas twenties. Don’t try to get over. Sell them for dimes like I told you to. That was the way my people wanted it so that’s the way it had to be. Just bring me thirty - five hundred off the dimes. The other four and a half ounces he’d sell like he wanted to. Just make sure I got three stacks. $6500 dollars in all. Cliental and promotion is the key to any good business I’d told him. Whether selling candy or rocket ships. It doesn’t matter. Same rule. Yes, Nicky baby. I beez in the trap. Real talk. The Untold Truth. This was a test for Frank. Was he really ready to be “Frank Money” again? Secondly, I told him to call his cousin Dino. Dino was a live wire nigga who was known for clapping that iron. He’d just recently beat a body and was even wilder than Shell.He only smoked weed, drank and did a lil powder though, so I figured he could handle the job. His only job would be to work as security. In every city, most crazy ass niggas, know the next crazy ass nigga. With him out on patrol it would make it a lot less likely for niggas to run up in the spot. Don’t get me wrong though, anybody can get got because it’s always niggas that don’t give a fuck who you are, they’ll try yo ass. Especially if they think it’s a nice lick. But with him over there with Frank, it would make it a lot less likely. Plus, Frank won’t no soft nigga either, and I knew he’d bust his gun. Tika had called me and asked why I wasn’t answering my phone. I asked her if she was high on something because this was the first time she’d called. She said, “No, I’m not talking about this phone. I’m talking about the one Mishka gave you.”
Oh shit! I’d completely forgotten about that phone. I’d thrown it in my room at mom dukes crib and left it. I was curious though about that shit though, so I assured her that I’d go get the phone and check the messages, before she made me promise to call her that night then hung up. Dope sells were still blowing up my shit, but I told them, that this wasn’t the number for that any more, and to call me back in an hour and I’d have the new one. Thirty minutes later I was leaving Radio Shack with a new, Verizon pre-paid wireless. Strictly for business. I’d picked up a wino from Buy Quik store, paid him fifty dollars and two fifths of white Thunderbird, to go in and purchase the phone in his name. He didn’t know me, and I didn’t know him. Perfect. Now I had two phones. One for business, one for pleasure. Three, if you count the phone Mishka gave me. It took another hour or so but finally everybody I’d previously given my number to, had the new trap phone number with instructions to never call the first one again or they’d be cut off forever. Once I’d sent Bubba and Jill back to the hotel in a cab, where Jack should already have been, I’d walked the five blocks to pick up my car before I went to Radio Shack. And now I was back at my hideaway on Ross Road. Nobody knew about the spot but Tika, so If anything went down here, I’d know where it came from. My new phone was jumping already. The motherfucker wouldn’t stop ringing! In the next three hours between Maggie, Sandy, Kitty, Lisa and all the people they brought with them, I sold forty more bundles. Everybody they brought with them I gave my new trap number. Of course, they didn’t come to the hideaway. There was a cut a few houses down that led up into Rochelle Manor apartments. That’s where I’d have them meet me at. I actually had to turn the fuckin phone off, just to have time to smoke me a Dutch of the new shit Neese had, called “Cherry Trainwreck.” Tomorrow I’d have to go buy me a money counting machine. That shit was obvious. Before I go any further though, let me explain a couple things. First of all, in no way did I think or am I saying that I was about to sew the city up, or lock it down or no dumb shit like that. That’s impossible. That’s some T.V. shit. No one man or no one thousand men, can sew up all the drug money in Durham. It’s entirely too much of it. You can get your share though, and you can get rich, if you can stay off the radar of jealous, snake, and envious ass niggas. Fuck the police. You can get around the police. They don’t know shit, until somebody tells em. Unless you’re being a simple nigga and being too flashy and flaunting shit in their face. With no job and the fancy car with the big rims screaming “Hey look at me I’m selling drugs!” You’re rolling on twenty fours, just making it in the house as the cops are just going to work. You’re living lavish, while their barely making ends meet. They see this and this makes them hate you, and in turn come after you. It’s the same with the niggas in the street. Niggas can’t stand to see you doing better than they are. Most come from broken homes and while growing up, they see people getting outta the hood doing better, coming up while they’re stuck wearing the same hand me down clothes and shoes that are too small. Hatred becomes imbedded in them at an early age. They see their mothers constantly with different men running in and out of their lives. They hear her on the phone talking to her homegirl about the girl next door, saying, “Girl that nigga bought that bitch a car! And now she thinks she something, with her bald-headed ass. She thinks she’s better than us just because of this or that.” Growing up kids hear and see these things and it carries over into adulthood. The hatred and jealousy for anyone that they feel is doing better than they are. This is in any city in America. Not just Durham. The envy in them starts early. As the child grows into an adult, they take on the same traits that they’ve watched in their parents all their lives. Haters. Gossipers. But the key to beating this blatant hatred is simple. People only believe what they can see and hear. If they can’t see or hear you, then to them you don’t exit. Don’t show them anything and they won’t pray and pray for your downfall. They’ll be too busy praying on the downfall of the ones they can see and hear. Now, if you’re still not feeling my reasoning, then consider this example. In 1934 J. Edgar Hoover, then the Director of the F. B. I., declared one John Dillinger, a bank robber, Public Enemy Number One. It is noted that in this same year, it was Hoover himself which quoted, “That the Mafia,” a much more difficult target then Dillinger, “simply did not exist in America.” But yet just a few short months later, it was mob man “Dutch Schulz,” on orders from “Lucky Luciano” and what came to be known as the National Crime Syndicate, a nationwide Mafia board that which Dutch himself sat on, along with persons such as Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Vito Genovese, and Bugsy Siegal just to name a few, whom was gunned down along with his Lieutenants, in Newark, NJ, by the enforcement arm of “The Syndicate,” known as none other, than “Murder Inc.” Luciano was quoted in his own words as calling Schulz, a “loudmouth,” whom in the end sealed his own fate, by demanding the execution of a federal prosecutor, whom was building a case against him, named Thomas Dewey. Then, when refused by “The Syndicate,” Schulz became enraged and screamed, “Fine I’ll do it myself!” Dutch then, although of course not known by him, was ordered to be killed. For the plain and simple fact, that the syndicate, a group made up of the highest - ranking members of the five families, unanimously agreed with Luciano, that Schulz, was bringing entirely “too much attention,” to their cloak and dagger organization. In short, people only believe what they can see and hear. If they can’t see or hear it, then to them it simply doesn’t exist. And that ladies and gentlemen, is why the Mafia remains the most powerful, unseen, illegal force in American history. They don’t need to flaunt it, because they know they’ve got it. As the great Meyer Lansky, Lucky Luciano’s childhood running partner, and eventual right hand man, was quoted as saying one late afternoon in the mid 1970’s; “Were bigger than U. S. Steel.” And that was almost forty years ago. Their continuous success, is built on remaining “unseen”, and “closed lips”. With irrevocable consequences for breach of either one. The same could be said of John Gotti, and what eventually attributed to his inevitable undoing. Too flashy. Too loud. He caused the FEDS to hate him; too much. Although obviously one of the most brilliant criminals of his time, he was loved by few and hated by many. It is said, that when his right arm, and one - time lieutenant, whom will remain unnamed, would watch over him in his daily life; in his thousand dollar shoes, and four thousand dollar suits smiling for the cameras, he would be quoted as saying, “There he goes again. Acting like a nigger.” Please excuse me if I lose myself in the pages sometimes as I give you the real. You said you wanted it raw. So that’s how I’m giving it. If you wanna read some fairy tale shit, then go pick up one of those other urban novels. There’s been more than enough of that bullshit put out there over the years, for you to have plenty to choose from. I’m as real as it gets. And its time someone laid down the untold truth. One other subject that I’d like to briefly touch on. Is the fact that yes, as I’ve told you, Durham, (“The Bull City”) is the drugs and murder grandfather of North Carolina. Just because I don’t keep talking about it, doesn’t mean it’s not happening. I could go on and on about who killed who, and the dead bodies they found here and there, but right now I’m talking about other things. I will tell you this. Today is July 19th. There’s been 8 murders since June 18th. Five unsolved. Roughly two a week. Ask anybody in North Carolina about the “Bull City” and I guarantee you, the first thing they’ll tell you is, “Don’t go up there! They’re crazy! They’ll kill you!” I guarantee it. Most of my close friends that I had growing up, are dead. Violent deaths! If you’re out there in them streets getting your hands dirty, and you make it past the age of twenty - five, then look up to the heavens and thank god. Because you’ve just beaten the odds. Go to the video store or go online and watch the “Welcome to Durham” documentary. I gotta get back to my current story. My life. We’ll talk more about the murder rate later.
Now, as I was saying earlier, it’s completely fictitious for any man, or crew of men, to claim they’ve got any part of Durham on lock. I don’t give a fuck what you selling. It’s not gonna happen. You’ll get killed in the process of even trying. But if you act like you got some sense, then you can get your share. It’s out there. Millions are getting made daily. True fact. These days almost everybody has got some kind of hustle. Any stupid motherfucker can sell drugs, because the drug basically sells itself. It takes a smart and savvy motherfucker though, to divide, conquer and maintain. Whether it’s weed, coke, boy, crack, Percocets, Oxy’s, Ex, Molly, blunts, cigarettes, beer, liquor; there’s a market for everything. But you aint locking shit down. Period. So, ladies, if yo nigga come in the crib blowing smoke up yo ass about how he’s got this and that on lock, tell that clown to quit lying, and get his ass back out there on the grind. Because while he’s in there talking, niggas are out there trappin. I will say this though. If you move enough of your product in a certain area, niggas will feel it. In their pockets. Now let me tell you about Turnkey. Also, known as “The Key.” Turnkey is the last black neighborhood you’ll get to just before you head into Durham County. We’d stayed out there half my life although I’d never really hung out there. Most of my adolescent years were spent in McDougald Terrace Housing Project, where my Aunt Mable lived and where I went to every afternoon after school, until my moms came and got me around eleven thirty or twelve when she got off work. All my friends therefore, were in the projects. So, on the week-ends I wouldn’t have it any other way than to get dropped off in the projects. I also had cousins there. “The Key,” is a housing development, of which there are roughly about 350 to 400 houses, that are actually just a small step above the projects; because most of the houses are occupied by low income black families. I’d always done my hustling in the inner city, but now for the second time, I was hearing that there was “get rich” money, being made in The Key.