Baltimore Chronicles (14 page)

“Yo…he said to kill this niggah,” Trail said with no emotion behind his words as he hung up the phone.

“No…please. Trail help me man. Sticks…please,” the boy pleaded as he sat on a small chair in the middle of the floor surrounded by members of the Dirty Money Crew. The boy's begging and pleading for mercy amused the crew. They were laughing and making light of his impending doom but he saw it as his last ditch effort to save himself. The boy was only fifteen and felt he was too young to die. The day he took Scar's offer to join the crew he had made the worst mistake of his life and he knew it now more than ever.

“Niggah your trap was short seven fuckin' times in a row. Then you show up in the hood with a fuckin' brand newass Escalade…paid out in cash! You can't afford that shit niggah. You ain't move up in this game yet. Ain't nobody gonna surpass Scar's status and when you stole from that niggah and tried to floss like you was larger than him…you sealed your fate. You thought a niggah like Scar was gone…vamoose and that you was gonna get away with having larceny in ya heart. Well, niggah I just got word from the king of these streets. Your order has been given…you're a dead man,” Sticks said, his face was curled into a hard scowl like stone—stiff and emotionless.

“Yo, I can pay it back. It wasn't that much I swear. I just been saving for a minute,” the boy begged, shaking his legs back and forth.

All of the Dirty Money Crew members began laughing uproariously. They thought this little begging-ass boy was amusing, and they were particularly anxious to see him get his punishment, even if it meant murder. In Scar's absence the crew all looked to Sticks for their orders. They all looked up to Sticks and he knew he definitely had something to prove.

“Yo, now a niggah wanna cop a plea,” one of the newest members of the crew named Timber said. “Let me kill him…slow and painful like. I will cut off his eyelids so the niggah can't blink! I will remove that niggah's fingernails and toenails one by one while he watch.” Timber continued, getting menacingly close to the boys face. Timber was a wild boy who was helping the Dirty Money Crew wreak havoc on the streets of Baltimore. He had relocated from Alabama to Baltimore with his mother and it wasn't long before he got knee deep into the streets. He had told Sticks and Trail that he got his nickname Timber because one night when he was eleven, he went out into his backyard, sawed off a tree branch and beat his step father to death with it for hitting on his mother. When the word spread about him to all the gangs in Alabama, they started calling him little Timber after that. “Tim-ber!” was what the tree cutters in Alabama called out when they cut trees down. The name stuck and after Timber felt the power surge from his first murder at age eleven it became nothing for him. In fact, he craved the sensational rush he got from committing heinous acts. He was ruthless and was into torture.

“Nah, I'ma do this shit Scar style. Short and sweet, no need for a bunch of blood and guts and shit,” Sticks said. He really just wanted to assert his power and show off his bravado in front of the younger dudes in the crew. “Murder and mayhem” was to be his moniker on his tomb stone.

“Yo, Scar always gives a niggah his chance to have last rites. So what is it gonna be?” Sticks said to the boy. You got a choice niggah—call a bitch, call your moms or you wanna chance to pray to God? Don't think too long niggah. I ain't got all day,” Sticks continued.

The boy was in disbelief, he was staring death in the eyes. This can't be real the boy thought to himself. Crying like a baby and trembling like a leaf, the boy agreed to a call to his mother to say good-bye. He figured at least she would know he was thinking of her before he died. He couldn't imagine how she would react if he had gone missing for weeks or when the police finally came to the door to tell her they had found his body. He wanted to tell her good-bye himself. It was the only option he would've chosen. In his mind he was saying fuck God because if there was a God he would save him right now.

“I'ma call my moms,” the boy whined through the tsunami of tears that covered his face.

Sticks kept his gun trained on the boy. “Tell this niggah the number to dial,” Sticks instructed the boy. The boy did as he was told and Trail punched the numbers in on one of their many disposable track phones. They used disposable phones to communicate about their business and to speak to Scar because they could not be traced.

Trail put the phone on speaker and after three rings the boy heard his mother's melodic voice filter through the speaker. “Hello?” she answered. “Ma! Ma!” the boy cried out.

“Anthony? What's the matter? Where are you?” his mother said, concern streaming through her words.

“Say bye niggah,” Sticks whispered, placing the cold steel up against the boy's temple.

“Bye, ma! I love you forever!” the boy screamed. “Anthony!” he heard his mother scream before Trail disconnected the line.
Bang
! One shot to the temple. The boy's body slumped from the chair and hit the floor with an ominous thud.

“One down…two more Frank Lucas snitch-ass niggahs to go,” Sticks said. He had been temporarily put in charge by Scar and he had vowed that the streets would be sorry for the day he was born. All the maltreatment he'd suffered at Scar's hands in the “training phase” of his come up Sticks would not forget. He would take it out on anybody that got in his way…even members of the crew.

Sticks, Trail, Timber, and four other new young members of the Dirty Money Crew loaded into two black Suburbans. Sticks drove slowly through the streets of Baltimore blasting Drake and Lil' Wayne.
“I am on a 24 hour Champagne diet spillin' while I'm sippin' I encourage you to try it I'm probably just sayin' that 'cause I don't have to buy it…”
The base and the lyrics had them all hyped. All accept Sticks. He was silent and intently focused on his mission. All of the other members were laughing and cracking jokes on each other.

“Yo! Y'all gotta shut the fuck up! We about to go handle some serious business. If Scar was here y'all niggahs would be like church mice up in this bitch scared to fuckin' make a peep!” Sticks screamed. An immediate hush fell over the vehicle. “Now, we gonna ride out slow and easy. This niggah Bam think shit is one hun'ed. I wanna scope out his spots first,” Sticks said, speaking calmly as if he didn't just scream on them. He was a perfectionist when it came to a mission. For him, failure was not an option. Sticks was a hungry dude from day one and that is why Scar had chosen him. Sticks never had shit given to him and when Scar met him he could tell that the boy would do almost anything to put food in his starving stomach. Scar groomed him much like a trainer groomed a prize fighter. When Sticks collected his first couple of stacks his loyalty to Scar was sealed. Scar figured he was the perfect one to run shit while he was laying low.

They drove down a block and were careful to stay two or three buildings away from their destination. “Look there go that niggah right there,” Trail said in a low tone, pointing out a hustler named Bam who had been on the crew's radar for some prime real estate he owned in the Baltimore drug trade.

Before anybody else could do or say anything, Sticks accelerated and rolled up on the rival dealer without warning. The truck tires screeched against the street, startling everyone on the block. Before anyone could react; Sticks threw the truck in park and was out in a mili-second. He ran up to Bam with his gun drawn.

“Yo, I thought I told you we staging a takeover of this set!” Sticks screamed as he rushed toward Bam. Bam threw his hands up to surrender. It was too late. He had been caught slippin' and clearly not prepared for the huge .45-caliber gun sitting in his face. “Your choice was to get down or lay down like that dude Beanie Seagal said…you chose to lay down mu'fucka,” Sticks growled. Then, boom! One shot to the dome and Bam's body crumpled to the ground. Screams erupted everywhere. The other members of Scar's crew were in shock.

“Go in the mu'fucka and clean it out…drugs and money!” Sticks barked, whirling around with his gun swinging to protect their surroundings. The rest of the crew members raced into Bam's trap house and looted as fast as they could. Sticks looked at his watch. He had always instructed them that they had eight minutes from beginning to end to do a jux. He had timed the 911 response; the time it took the police to get up and out on a response; and how long it took to get most of the loot. They were almost on schedule but not quite. Sticks could hear the distant wailing of sirens.

“Let's go!” he ordered. “We ain't got no witnesses…I saw all y'all faces. Anybody snitch, I will be back!” Sticks called out to the crowd of onlookers and to Bam's little crew.

Sticks and the rest of the Dirty Money Crew loaded back into their vehicle and rolled out. Trail was fuming mad. He didn't understand why Sticks didn't give him any forewarning or signal that he was going to murder Bam.

“Niggah how you just gonna jump the fuck out and not say shit? No heads up or nothing?” Trail huffed at Sticks.

“Hesitation leads to reservations. One ounce of doubt and you a fuckin' dead man on these streets,” Sticks said calmly. He didn't give a fuck about anyone's hurt feelings. This game and all its little quirks was all about a paper chase and power for Sticks.

“You could've still said something. Let a niggah know what you was about to do and shit,” Trail complained.

“Damn mu'fucka pull your skirt down. I can't take no bitchy-whining and complaining shit. If we gonna be on this new shit, taking down all the other niggahs in Baltimore we don't have time to run our mouths like bitches. Now drop the fuckin' subject and follow my lead niggah. I mean you either get down or lay down,” Sticks said with finality.

Trail did as he was told and shut his mouth, but he didn't like it. He twisted his lips to the side and bopped his head to the music in an effort to keep himself quiet. Shit was definitely different than when Scar was home. Trail noticed that since Scar left, Sticks was more ruthless than ever. He was letting the youngins run wild in the streets of Baltimore, killing any person—man, woman or child that got in their way. They were collecting money almost every hour. All of the street contracts and territorial agreements Scar had made with rival hustlers was out the window once he left. Sticks had single handedly dismantled a commission of hustlers who Scar had put together years ago to divide up the drug territories and put an end to a war that was going on at the time. Although Scar had assigned himself the most lucrative spots and the biggest piece of the pie; the other hustlers got down with the commission because they were afraid of the consequences if they refused. Shit on the streets was all good after that. There were a little jealous spats here and there, but whenever niggahs heard that Scar wasn't happy those little sidebar fights quickly turned into truces.

Now, Trail was worried that if Sticks wasn't careful he could start one of the biggest drug wars in Baltimore's history; even bigger than the one Scar put an end to where seventy street dudes had been killed in a five month span of time.

Finally, Sticks pulled the vehicle up on the other side of town. Trail bit down into his jaw. He knew that this entire south side belonged to Tango, another big hustler in Baltimore. Tango and Scar had finally settled their beef over streets years ago with the formulation of the commission and they had drawn imaginary lines in the Baltimore streets. Sticks was about cross the line.

“Yo, Timber…you ready to earn your wings niggah?” Sticks said slyly.

“I was born ready. Where' they at?” Timber asked with his thick country accent.

“That's their main hub right there. I heard they collect like six hundred thousand stacks every eight hours. We about to take their days work,” Sticks said, laughing like he was a damn maniac.

“A'ight let's get it,” Timber said, pulling on the truck's door handle with one hand while he gripped a stolen AK-47 in the other.

 

Danielle rolled her eyes as her mother rambled on with another lecture. She was thinking that her mother just didn't get it. The more Dana told her to stay away from things; like boys, sex, drugs, the more Danielle was drawn to them. Today though, it was a different lecture. Her mother was trying to convince her to go and spend more time with her older sister. Ever since she had turned sixteen, Danielle had begun to smell herself, thinking she was grown.

“Why should I go spend the weekends at her house, ma? She's a cop and I hate the police!” Danielle said. “Plus she's boring. Ain't nobody trying to sit up in her face all day talking about nothing at all.” She folded her arms across her ample breasts and shifted her weight from one foot to another. Her mother was determined to get her to focus on something other than the streets and she wasn't trying to hear it.

“First of all, your sister has a very good job. She helps pay most of the bills in here and keeps you in all of that expensive stuff you like to wear. You can show her you appreciate her. She loves you and besides you used to like to spend time with her,” her mother spat.

Danielle rolled her eyes as she applied a full face of makeup. At sixteen she resembled a grown-ass woman. Thirty-six D cup breasts; a small waist; plump round hips and an ass you could set a glass on, made Danielle a hot commodity in the hood. She got a million attempts to get with her a day and she knew just how to play the game. Danielle was from the “use what you got to get what you want” school and she had learned from the best—her mother. Danielle wasn't interested in traditional school and she damn sure didn't have time to spend with her lame-ass sister. “Look, you're becoming too spoiled Dani. One day your sister is going to cut you off and then what you gon' do? Huh?” her mother barked, taking a long drag off her cigarette. Danielle sucked her teeth. Ever since she could remember, Rodriguez had been like a second parent. Danielle always felt unloved because she never knew her father.