Anything for Profit 2: Nothing to Lose (7 page)

“Yeah… I’m straight,” he replied between breaths. “We gotta get mama up outta here though. Shit gettin’ crazy out this bitch.” He sniffed.

“I know, I know. Who do you think it was? Zulu and them M.B.M niggas?”

“Shiiit, I can’t even call it Meka. I ain’t even sure.” And he wasn’t. Over the past few years, he and Mike had done so much shit to so many people that right about now, it was impossible to put anything past anyone. “I know one thang though. If muhfuckas plan on killin’ me then they gon’ have to get better shooters than
them
non-aiming ass niggas!” He broke out into a hysterical fit of laughter at his would be killers’ ineptitude. Meka just looked at her brother like he was crazy.

After hearing the barrage of gunfire and all of the commotion, people began to cautiously emerge from their houses to see what the hell was going on. The more courageous of them actually came out of their houses while others stood in their doorways and peeked out from behind their curtains and blinds. Neighbors were appalled. Bellmeade was a predominately black, working class neighborhood. They weren’t used to hearing the sound of automatic weapons interrupting their afternoon court shows. They looked wide-eyed at the twins as they stood in the street still holding their guns. Meka noticed, and began pulling her brother by the arm. “Let’s go in the house Ant before one of these nosey ass muh’fuckas call the police.”

“Fuck y’all lookin’ at?!” Ant yelled out as his sister led him into the house.

Once inside with the door closed, they noticed Gloria sitting at the kitchen table amongst the ruin, trembling in shock. The windows were shot out, glass was scattered everywhere and there were countless bullet holes in the walls. Christmas decorations littered the floor. Glo looked up at her children through tear filled eyes and said “My God Almighty in Heaven. What’s going on? What’s happened to my babies?” she sobbed. The twins just stood there quietly, as neither one of them had an answer to their mother’s question.

CHAPTER 7

“I’m tellin’ y’all, I seen the whole thang go down! The whole goddamn
thang
! Wit’ my own two eyes!” said Dot as she pointed at her eyes, animatedly. She broke out into her ‘crack head shuffle’. Dot was a fiend who was notorious for two things: her willingness to do absolutely
anything
for a hit (she had once sucked a dog’s dick for a piece of hard). The other thing she was notorious for was her unbelievably unbelievable stories.

Dot was tall, sported a Jheri Curl and walked around with a plastic bag full of change that she used to try to buy crack with. A lot of the hustlers showed her love, just because she had been around so long. They saw her as kind of like the hood mascot. Her brown skinned face showed the signs of a hard life and many years of drug abuse. In fact she had taken a blast only seconds before, crouched down behind a dumpster. Though it was a cool December evening, her face was sweating profusely. Her eyes were bulging as she rambled on outside of the Lil’ Cricket gas station on Augusta Road.

“Some niggas pulled up in front of Ant and nem house and started shootin’ like pow, pow, pow!” Dot made her hand into a gun and imitated the sounds for her audience. “Then… that nigga Ant D came out the fuckin’ house like he was Rambo or some shit!” The crowd that had gathered around Dot broke out laughing at her theatrics as she re-enacted the scene, complete with sound effects and all. “He had a bandana tied around his head and two machine guns with that grenade launcher shit at the bottom! He started bussin’ on them niggas! Boom, boom, BOOM! Them other niggas was shootin’ back, but that nigga Ant kept bussin’ on em, just like Scarface!” As her audience grew, so did her story. “Ok, so then Meka—y’all know Meka his twin right?! She came out the house dressed in all black wit’ a gun in both hands, dodging bullets like she was in… what’s the name of that fuckin’ movie?” She mumbled something to herself. She cocked her head to the side and thought for a second. “Ummm, y’all know what I’m talkin’ ‘bout! The Matrix! She was bussin’ on them niggas and dodgin’ bullets like she was in the Matrix!”

Dot continued on with her story until somebody interrupted her. “Dot… now how the fuck you seen alla that and yo’ ass been out here suckin’ on that glass dick all damn day?!” asked one woman. The crowd erupted into laughter at the heckler’s comment.

“What? Oh, y’all thinkin’ just ‘cause Dot gets high that Dot don’t be seein’ shit, Huh? I’m tellin’ y’all muh’fuckas I seen that whole shit wit’ my own two eyes!” she shouted out over the laughs. She pointed at her bulging eyes again for emphasis.

Suddenly, the thumping bass line from UGK and Outkast’s hit song
International Players Anthem
was heard pounding from a 2007 pearl white, customized Cadillac DTS trimmed in gold. The Caddy pulled into the gas station sitting high on twenty-six inch chrome rims, wrapped in low profile Pirelli tires. The windows were darkly tinted. The music was so loud that the thick Texas drawl of rap legend Pimp C could be heard outside of the car:
“My bitch a choosy lover, never fuck without a rubber/ never in the sheets, like it on top of the cover/ money on the dresser, drive a kompressor/ top notch hoes, get the most not the lesser…
”

As the music continued to vibrate the pavement, the driver’s window rolled down and revealed the face of Devon Simms, better known as Fat Mack. A cloud of fragrant weed smoke drifted into the air. Fat Mack was 6’1, and weighed over three hundred pounds. He was dark skinned, had a lazy eye and would definitely never
ever
be considered for the cover of GQ. But he didn’t need to be. Despite being cosmetically challenged, Fat Mack had swag, confidence, and enough game to talk the drawers off a nun. He kept a stable full of bad bitches that kept his pockets almost as fat as his rotund stomach. He had his girls charge a hundred an hour to fuck, fifty to suck, and two hundred for anal. Pissing, shitting, or any of that other freak shit was extra.

Devon had first realized he had
the gift
, as he liked to call it, when he was still a freshman at Carolina High School. There was a girl in his homeroom class by the name of Africa who after years of being teased; despised her name, her looks, and herself. Africa was a sweet girl with a beautiful heart but she’d been told for so long that she was ugly, that sadly she’d begun to believe it. Devon used to sit in the back of the class with Africa and kick it with her. She was extremely shy and suspicious at first, but after a while, she opened up to him and they became good friends. In fact he might’ve been her
only
friend. So one day when Devon had asked her to do him a favor, Africa had readily agreed, without even knowing what it was.

After hearing what Devon wanted her to do, Africa became extremely apprehensive and wanted to refuse. But how would she look if she said no? Maybe Devon wouldn’t want to be cool with her anymore. Somehow she just couldn’t find the words to deny her only real friend. So later that day, during the lunch period, Africa found herself on her knees in a dirty bathroom stall in the boy’s bathroom with some random teenager’s dick in her mouth. It didn’t take him long to get off, and just when Africa was about to get up, another boy entered the stall with his dick in his hand. Already degraded by doing it once, she figured doing it again wouldn’t be that big of a deal. She closed her eyes and sucked, as tears silently streamed from the corners of her closed lids, down her innocent brown cheeks.

After the tenth boy had finished, Africa turned around and threw up a stomach full of semen into the toilet. Devon, who was already big for his age had stood at the entrance and made sure he collected ten dollars from every dude that had entered the bathroom. Devon heard Africa throwing her guts up and crying her eyes out in the bathroom. Far from the coldhearted pimp he would later become, young Devon wanted to console his friend. He really felt sorry for her… until he counted the hundred dollars he’d just made in less than an hour.

Fat Mack turned the music down and acknowledged the crowd with a slight nod of his head. Slowly, he raised his blunt to his lips and took a long pull, making sure everybody caught a glimpse of the huge rock on his pinky finger. All eyes were on him. His every move was calculated to place him at the center of attention. In Fat Mack’s mind, the entire world was a stage and he needed the spotlight on him wherever he went. He had his hoes convinced that they were privileged to be a supporting cast in the movie he was living. Young, naïve, and caught up in the smoke and mirrors of the fast life… they believed him.

“What’s up, Fat Mack?” yelled out one of the young dope boys who had gathered around Dot who was now fuming, as she had been telling her story.

“Well for the Album—‘cause the record is too muthafuckin’ short— pimps is up, these hoes is down, and money makes the muthafuckin’ world go round!” Fat Mack quipped.

“Yeah, well we getting’ this money out here too nigga,” responded another young hustler, flashing a stack of folded bills.

Fat Mack smirked. “Well it ain’t trickin’ if you got it, right?” Fat Mack laughed to himself at this saying, made popular by a bunch of lames who were clueless to the game. If you paid to play, you were a trick; point blank, period. But if it made them sucker ass niggas more comfortable with spending that cash for ass, Fat Mack would use it to his advantage. “And I see you got it playa, so let me know when you ready to spend it. ‘Cause for the right price I got bitches on my team that can do the shit you only seen in a wet dream.” The rear driver’s side window rolled down and sitting directly behind Fat Mack was Sassy. Sassy was a caramel bombshell with an innocent face and an abnormally long tongue. She slowly extended her tongue out of her mouth until it was touching the tip of her chin. Then she curled it up until it touched the tip of her nose. Once she was finished with her little freak show, Sassy just smiled mischievously and rolled her window back up. Fat Mack just chuckled at the lewd comments and looks of lust he saw on the faces of the many people (men and women) gathered outside of the Lil Cricket.

“You seen that shit homey? That hoe is a muthafuckin
magician
wit’ her mouth nigga! She’ll make your dick disappear down her throat and lick your balls wit’ her tongue all at the same time! So let me know when you ready to see some magic tricks,” stated Fat Mack. He enjoyed the attention he got from the people, but sitting around entertaining these niggas wasn’t putting any funds in his pocket. The night was still young and there was a lot of money to be made. He had a whole night’s worth of dates set up for his girls. Besides, any pimp worth his salt knew the game was to be sold, not told. He turned the music back up, pressed a button and the window closed as he slowly pulled off into the night.

As soon as Fat Mack had pulled off, Dot did her little ‘crack head shuffle’ and started back up with her account of the events that had taken place earlier that day. “So then Meka ran outta bullets and pulled two clips from out of her socks…”

CHAPTER 8

After the shootout, Ant D and Meka had quickly made the decision to put their mother up in a hotel in downtown Greenville until they had enough time to figure out their next move. It wasn’t like she couldn’t be touched downtown, but the chances of it happening were a lot less likely in an expensive hotel that was so close to the sheriff’s office. Besides, Zulu or whoever was gunning for them didn’t really want Glo anyway. They wanted Ant D and Meka. But if they couldn’t touch the twins, it was safe to say that they’d be willing to take their mother’s life instead. Ant was a killer and he knew how niggas like him thought. And God forbid, but if anything happened to Glo because of some shit they had done, neither Meka nor Ant would be able to live with themselves. She hadn’t been the best mother in the world, but she was the only one they had. Despite her neglect and all the bullshit they’d been through because of it, they still loved her.

So they had hurriedly packed a couple of suitcases full of clothes, toiletries and whatever else Gloria felt like she would need to maintain for a few weeks. Ant placed the suitcases into the trunk of Meka’s Chrysler 300. The Chrysler was far less conspicuous than her custom painted pink Range Rover Sport or his own flip flop Corvette. They were attempting to be as low key as possible. The last thing they were trying to do was attract attention right now.

Meka had assumed that Ant was coming with them to the hotel, but she wasn’t completely surprised when he told her that he was staying at the house instead. She knew her brother. She and Glo both had tried to talk him out of it, but Ant wasn’t trying to hear it. To him, going to the hotel with his mama and sister after somebody had just shot up their house felt too much like a bitch move; like he was running. In his mind it would be like saying that he was scared. Fuck that. Ant wasn’t running from nothing, or nobody.

Seeing that they weren’t going to change Ant’s mind, Meka and Glo both gave him a long hug and a kiss. Gloria stepped back with tears streaming down her cheeks. Neither knew for sure if this would be the last time they’d see each other. The mood was somber. He could see the trepidation in his mother’s eyes. “Look. Y’all trippin’. I got this here. Don’t even worry ‘bout me. I’m good. Im’a be up to the hotel in a couple of days to check on you. Ok mama?” He smiled, something Gloria realized that she hadn’t seen him do in a long time, then wiped away her tears with the tips of his thumbs. Gloria just nodded, not wanting her voice to betray her. His words did little to allay her fears as she and Meka headed to the car.