Boogie down bronx, p.4
Boogie Down Bronx, page 4
“Hold up!” Whitey barked storming over. He was dressed in a real expensive suit like he’d just come from a business meeting. He slammed his palm into Slick’s chest and wedged his body between the two men. “Put the fuckin heat down!” he raged at Slick. “Put that shit DOWN!”
“Nah, Whitey, man…he shoulda been there,” Slick moaned with his face contorted in grief as a single tear gathered in his left eye. “Noodles is dead, yo…this bitch-made show off shoulda been there, man!”
“Yeah,” Whitey nodded. He snatched the tool outta Slick’s hand but kept it aimed in Wild Man’s direction. “He fucking shoulda been there,” he said glaring at Wild Man with heat in his eyes. “He’s a shifty-ass hothead, but he’s still your brother. So you can’t fucking kill him.”
“Fuck all of y’all!” Wild Man sneered then took a step forward and pimp-smacked the gat straight outta Whitey’s hand. “All of y’all blind bitches can suck my dick! Get the fuck outta here with that dumb shit!”
“Nah you get the fuck outta here!” Slick barked on his former manz as Whitey struggled to hold him back. “You’s a fuckin problem child, you wild-ass muthafucka! A wanna-be fuckin renegade! You off the team, pussy! You ain’t dependable and can’t nobody count on you! Now step the fuck off before I fly you over that railing and send you downstairs the short way, nigga!”
“Fuck you, Slick!” Wild Man barked again. His rage was subsiding but there was deep pain in his eyes. “You playing that “Mr. Perfect” role but ere’body on this team got skeletons in they fuckin closet, man! Everybody! Noodles knew something was up! He was tryna get up on that shit when he got rocked! But you so blinded you can’t even tell when you getting fucked over backwards, homey!”
“Get gone! You don’t mean shit to me no more, nigga!” Slick hollered as Wild Man whirled around and stormed toward the roof’s door. “You better get the fuck gone and don’t bring ya ass up on this roof no more neither! Stay the fuck away from my click! If you show ya mug around here again I’ma man-down ya ass, bruh! Just like Noodles, you gonna be a dead man!”
“Suck my dick!” Wild Man yelled as he busted through the door like he was greener than the Hulk. “That’s why I ain’t putting you down, and I ain’t telling your blind ass shit, muthafucka! Figure it out by ya goddamn self! I ain’t telling you shit!”
As he stormed down the stairs the last three members of the Zip ’em up Crew stood on the rooftop either consumed with grief or shocked into silence. But the cold hard fact was not lost on any of them that they had just lost Noodles and Wild Man at the same damn time.
$$$$$
Wild Man’s rage was damn near as big as the pain that was gripping his heart. He wasn’t no punk in these fuckin streets, and when bitten by a pit bull his natural instincts were to bite back even harder.
I ain’t telling him shit!” he vowed as he took the stairs down from the rooftop where his former homey had just kicked him off the team and barred him from all activities with the Zip ’em up Crew.
Stay the fuck away from my set! If you show ya mug around here again you’s a dead man, muthafucka!
Slick had spit those words at him right before he left, and that statement alone was enough to blow Wild Man’s fuckin mind.
This shit was insane! He had been out there tryna do a solid for the whole fuckin team! The very thing that had made him late getting back to Noodles coulda been the very thing that saved Slick’s life, but nah, fuck that idiot! Calling him jealous and accusing him of setting Noodles up to get murked?
“Fuck I look like?” Wild Man fumed as he rounded the stairwell on the fourth floor. “Slick’s punk ass better hope he can stay ten toes down! As long as I been riding for him he oughtta know me better than that!”
He was racing high on anger but the pain in his heart was the true source of his fuel.
“Let his funny-actin ass find out the hard way!” Wild Man slammed his fist into the concrete wall, sending a welcome explosion of pain radiating through his entire arm.
“Let that smut-ass bird Honore plant some truth right in his fuckin forehead! Mister Perfect is about to take a fuckin fall ’cause I ain’t putting him down on shit!”
CHAPTER 2
Switch Siders
Slick adjusted his tie and buttoned the jacket of his midnight-black Armani suit. It was windy outside and the clouds cast a sullen look on an already gloomy occasion.
They were at Woodlawn cemetery in the Bronx, and Slick stared down at the shiny blue casket containing the body of his homey Noodles as they lowered it into the ground.
Ayesha and the kids were totally broken up with grief. All four of them were standing nearby and crying with looks of shock and disbelief on their faces. Noodles had never gotten a chance to propose to Ayesha and ask for her hand in matrimony. In fact, she didn’t even know he had bought her a ring. He had asked Slick to come to Guatemala and be his best man, and it broke Slick’s heart to have to tell Ayesha about the wedding she was never gonna have.
Noodles’s mother in Guatemala was technically still his next of kin, but she was on the waiting list for a heart transplant so she was way too sick to fly in. She had cried pitifully over the phone when Slick called her to notify her that her cherished son was dead. She gave Slick permission to make all the arrangements for the funeral and burial, and Slick had shared those responsibilities with Ayesha.
The whole click knew that Noodles had not only taken care of Ayesha and the three kids that weren’t biologically his, but he had also been his mother’s financial lifesaver too. Every month he sent her the money she needed for the barrage of drugs that kept her weak heart beating. Slick had vowed to continue those payments for as long as Noodles’s mother lived, and he also vowed to make sure Ayesha and her children were set for life and never wanted for a damn thing.
It was hard to come to grips with Noodles taking a bullet, but Slick knew it could have been any one of them. He fully accepted the risks that came with his lifestyle, but losing his friend made him think real hard about the moves he was making.
The type of work the Zip ’em up Crew did caused other people to have funerals every day. It was different when it struck close to home though. It cut deeper when it was you who had to say goodbye to somebody that you loved.
But the good thing was, there wasn’t a damn thing left unsaid between him and Noodles. No final words or feelings that Slick wished he woulda had a chance to express. Him and Noodles had loved each other like brothers. And the two of them had shared the only fuckin thing that mattered in the street-life they lived.
Loyalty.
That shit was solid and true. Slick had went all-out without a second thought for Noodles and vice versa. Fuck what death said. They were gonna be homeys forever.
Slick stood there with the wind whipping around him and he thought back to the day his brotherhood with Noodles was forged. Everything in life happened for a reason, and if it wasn’t for that charge he had taken for Noodles, they never woulda got put on with the BBU in the first place...
They called it the Devil’s Asshole.
Slick was entombed at the bottom of a hole so dark and black it felt like the earth had cracked open and swallowed him whole. It was so fuckin black that he couldn’t see his hand right in front of his face or tell if his eyes were open or closed.
But it wasn’t a jail cell that they had thrown him into. Nah, that woulda been too merciful. The hole they’d buried Slick in was built to shatter a man’s psyche. It was a cold, damp place with no light, no sound, a thin lumpy mattress for a bed, and a reeking hole in the ground for him to piss and shit.
Slick huddled there as naked and helpless as the day he had come into the world. He had no perception of space or time. Once a day, at random times, a tiny slot in the door opened and a sandwich made of stale bread and mystery meat was thrown in. A cup of warm water followed.
Over time, even the strongest of men were reduced to crazed lunacy by this type of sensory and food deprivation. It was a technique meant to torture, degrade, and drive a man insane. And it worked.
Surrounded by men who wanted him dead, Slick knew full well that his own mind was his worst enemy. In the silence of the darkness he was alone with his personal demons and he was forced to battle them to the death. But Slick also knew that if he fought wildly, like so many others before him, he was sure to lose. Just as they had lost.
So Slick embraced that shit. He embraced the darkness, the bitterness, and the hopelessness of it too.
He immersed himself in every ounce of pain, suffering, and rage that he had ever endured, and he let himself be swept up in its current and thrust into an ocean of nothingness. He replayed his entire life from as far back as he could remember, like a movie rolling in slow motion. Even the most painful parts. He forced himself into a state of suspended animation and floated between the scenes of his own existence. Slick welcomed the hallucinations and met his fears head-on as he reminded himself:
I am Samir Williams, Junior. Son of Samir and Kea Williams. I’m strong. I’m a muthafuckin man! I will survive!
Slick was serving hard time for the murder of a fellow soldier. His boy Noodles had committed the crime, but Slick was taking the charge. For years he had been searching to find meaning in the cold desolation that his life had become, He had gone into the military to satisfy a recklessness that was left inside him, but even danger and top-level training wasn’t enough to plug up the holes that the murders of his family had left in his heart.
Ever since basic training Slick had displayed a superior level of ability in everything from sharpshooting, to land navigation, to physical training. Slick was not only the best soldier in his entire military company, he was fearless and better at everything than most of the men who held rank over him and who were considered the nation’s top-level elites.
This had created a lot of envy and hostility in the ranks, which was further fueled by the fact that Slick was vocal and unapologetic about his superior skills. The good old boys couldn’t stand Slick’s cocky attitude and they hated the fact that they couldn’t break his uppity black ass down.
Any and every test that was put in front of Slick he passed with flying colors, and then he dared his superiors to do that shit better than him. He was undermining and openly challenging his higher-ranking officers to the point where the other soldiers had a lot of respect for him and they held his words in the highest regard.
So when Slick suddenly confessed to a heinous and highly publicized murder in an attempt to save his right-hand-manz Noodles’s life, the senior officers started salivating at the mouth because they finally had him by the balls.
Normally, Slick would have been placed in a regular military holding cell. But because of the enemies that he’d amassed from almost day one, the powers-that-be decided to punish him harshly. They decided to send him to a place where if he refused to bend then he was guaranteed to break. With the utmost glee and delight, they shoved him into the deepest recesses of a place they called The Devil’s Asshole.
It was solitary confinement to the tenth power. Trapped in complete darkness with no outside interaction and a bucket of water for a shower every other week, it was the harshest punishment available and it was every inmate’s nightmare.
But one day the door slid open and Slick was snatched out of the Asshole with no warning. A black bag was pulled over his head and he was led into a room and forced to sit at a metal table.
The bag was yanked off his head and Slick threw his hands over his eyes and recoiled in pain. He had spent so much time in darkness that the light was excruciating. He struggled to sit upright. His body was weak and malnourished and his bones ached when he moved.
A door opened and a well-dressed white man with a cold look in his eyes walked in and sat across the table from him.
“My name is Walter Reynolds. I’m an attorney with the Department of Defense and I’m here to offer you representation at a new trial.”
Slick peered at the man in front of him through squinting eyes before he responded.
“You, Mr. White Boy, are a goddamn liar. I know DOD when I see it and you’re not it. So how about you run that bullshit by me again.”
“You’re pretty sharp,” the white man responded. “And that’s why I’m here. You’ve been inside the Devil’s Asshole for nine months. I’ve been monitoring you the entire time. Most men scream, mutilate, or even try to cannibalize themselves under those extreme conditions but not you, Mr. Williams. You’ve displayed a will and a patience that I haven’t seen before. I’ll be done with my stint of working for the government in just a few months and then I’m going into business for myself. I need a solid team and I can use a man like you to lead it.”
“What do I have to do?” Slick asked warily.
“Let me file an appeal and a request for a retrial on your behalf. And then let me defend you. I’ve studied your case and I guarantee that I can get you off on a technicality and have your sentence overturned. And once you’re free, I’ll advance you a hundred thousand dollars and pay you more in one weekend than you were making in six months of Army pay. I’ll even let you recruit the rest of the team.”
Slick rubbed his long, dried-up beard as he thought it over. His mind calculated as crusty flakes of dead skin and sour dandruff fell onto the table between them. “Damn, nigga!” he finally said to the white man. “Fuck I gotta do to earn all that?”
“You’re a killer, right?” the man who Slick would come to know as Whitey Reynolds said with a grin as he opened his briefcase and slid Slick a stack of papers to sign. “All you have to do is that killing thing that you do best.”
Slick stood looking down into the six-foot hole containing Noodles’s casket. It seemed like so long ago that he been granted an unconditional release after his retrial. Whitey was a brilliant fuckin lawyer and strategist, but Slick knew the fight had been fixed from the gate. The BBU had been in control of the judge and of the appeal panel too, and once he’d accepted Whitey’s proposition it had been a done deal.
Slick had been revitalized by the overturned verdict, and he had walked outta the Devil’s Asshole and recruited Noodles, Wild Man, and later Jewelz, for his team.
He’d always known there was a possibility that one of them could catch a bullet on the job and get taken down, but he never thought it would go south like this for Noodles. His manz had survived so much, only to get hit up for something that none of them even understood.
And that was the hardest part. Why? Why? Why was Noodles dead? Who killed him and what the fuck was it all about? Slick stood over his friend’s open grave and said a silent prayer:
I’ma miss you, Noodles. You was always barking about that lil bid I did for you, but I can’t count how many times you saved my ass out there on the job. Your momz and your fam are gonna be straight. I promise you they’ll never go without for as long as I’m drawing breath. When you see my family up there… tell them how much I miss them. Let my mother and father know that I think about them everyday. Let my lil brothers and sisters know that I’m sorry I wasn’t big enough and strong enough to protect them. Tell my father I squared shit up with Haz for him, and that Dirty Mike is gonna get his next. Hold it down in Heaven for me, bruh. I’ll see you when I get there, my nigga. Till we meet again.
Slick finished up his short prayer for his homey and then he stepped back and gave Jewelz some room to step up and say a prayer of her own. He could see how bad she was hurting and it was hard to even look at her in such intense pain.
Funerals were tough on both of them. After his family was murdered, him and Jewelz had sat through the combined funeral service clinging to each other and crying pitifully the whole time.
There had been a long row of white caskets stretched out before them containing the bodies of his mother and father and the mutilated bodies of his young siblings too.
Terrified, Slick and Jewelz had snuck a million looks over their shoulders expecting Crazy Haz to bust into the church and finish what he’d started.
But even as scared as they were, they were project kids and they knew better than to open their mouths and tell the cops who had stabbed them. Him and Jewelz had just sat there shell-shocked in the front pew together, holding hands and moaning and grieving. When it came time to close the caskets Slick had broken down like a motherless child and Jewelz had fallen to the floor and cried even harder than him.
And now, Slick gazed into her eyes knowing that she was sharing his memories. He was shocked by how weak and fragile she looked. Like she was tired as hell.
Slick was tired too. He had been speed racing through life. Gunning his motor and flying fast. His gut instinct was telling him that him and his crew could easily collide and crash into the concrete walls of destiny. He just hoped it didn’t end up with every last one of them stretched out cold in a box. He shook his head. He didn’t have his ten million in cream stashed away yet, but maybe it was time to think about an exit strategy for getting outta the game.
“This is fucked up, bro,” Whitey said as he came up behind Slick. “Noodles was the heartbeat of the crew and we all loved him. The only thing we can do now is try to hold it all together. We both know that’s what Noodles would’ve wanted.”
“Yeah,” Slick said quietly. “But payback is a bitch and Noodles woulda wanted us to get summa that shit too!”
“Damn right,” Whitey agreed. “When the time is right we’ll raise some hell.”
Slick shook his head. “Why we gotta wait? We can’t just sit back and take this shit in slow-motion, my friend. We gotta roll up to Westchester and lay a bunch of muthafuckas down, homey. We need a name and a face. We gotta make somebody pay for this shit!”
