Cartier Cartel (12 page)

"I'm over here on Rockaway, scheming on this bitch, Bam. You know
that bitch, right?"

"Yeah, that little nappy-headed bitch who thinks she cute. She hangs with
those other chicks who call themselves the Cartier Cartel, right?"

"Yeah, that's her"

"Now that we got that out of the way, why you scheming on her? What
that mean?"

"It means I'm about to give her a severe beat-down."

"For real? What she do to you?"

Donnie took another drag from his blunt and finally replied. "Those silly
bitches out here taking away my customers."

"They selling product? I thought they hustled the stores?"

"They do all that good shit. But today is gonna be a bad day. I promise
you that!"

"Whatcha gonna do?"

"Didn't I just say that I was gonna beat that bitch down!" Donnie barked,
suddenly irritated.

Ignoring his outburst, Pebbles replied, "You want me to come and whip
her ass 'cause you know I will snatch that bitch bald. I will rip her fucking
weave out of her head-'

"Yo, calm down! You carrying my seed and you getting all hyped for no
reason. I got this."

After Donnie ended his call, it was time to handle business. With his gun
tucked snugly in the back of his jeans, he crept up on Bam, who was oblivious
to her surroundings. He wondered how she managed to not get knocked by
Ds. She was totally unaware of her surroundings, and that was the first thing
you learn when slinging drugs. If you didn't learn, you died.

He was finally close enough that she couldn't ignore his presence. At
first, she was hardly fazed by Donnie. That was until she took a deep look into
his menacing eyes. She could smell his breath from a distance. Fear gripped
Barn, but she was determined to put on a game face. There was no way she
was letting down the Cartel. She was concerned about what Cartier would
do if she backed down from Donnie, especially after Cartier had blatantly
disrespected him. Barn decided not to go against the grain. She was Cartel,
and Cartel didn't back down from shit.

"Why you standing there looking all stupid-"

Before she could complete her sentence, Donnie smashed her in the mouth
with a solid left hook. Before she could fully process what happened, her left
jaw was assaulted with a right punch. As Barn stumbled backward, Donnie
grabbed her weave and held on tightly to keep her from falling. He wanted her
face to sustain as many blows as possible and give her a beat-down she and her girls would remember. He put her in a headlock and began to pound the top of
her head and face repeatedly while squeezing her neck tightly.

Barn tried to scream and wiggle out of his embrace, but Donnie was too
strong. In desperation, she tried to flail her arms and kick him, but to no avail.
Soon her eyes were swollen shut, and her whole body felt numb. She was
unaware of her surroundings. Donnie ripped her weave from her head, and
it lay on the ground.

When he was tired of using Bam as a punching bag, he reached around
his back and pulled out his burner.

Barn lay on the concrete sidewalk, knowing her life was over. She knew
she wasn't ready to die. What had she lived for? What had she done with
her life? She reasoned that everything she'd done up until that night wasn't
worth her life. She was dying over a corner. How fair was that? The money,
cars, clothes, and respect were all meaningless now. She thought about all the
warnings her foster mother had given her and wished she could go back in
time and heed her words.

Donnie lifted Barn by what little hair she had left.

"Please ... no!" Barn managed to scream before being silenced with the
butt of Donnie's gun.

With each hit, Barn's blood splattered everywhere. Once again, her
battered body collapsed on the sidewalk, and her voice whimpered for
Donnie to stop. Donnie wrapped his hand around her neck and picked her
back up. The last blow to the middle of her face knocked out her once pearly
white teeth and broke her nose, rendering Barn unconscious.

Donnie looked down at his handiwork. The young girl lay in a pool of her
own blood. Donnie stared at his blood-covered hands. If only they listened to
me, he thought.

Donnie turned to walk away and saw that he had an audience from the
neighborhood standing around, gawking at the drug kingpin and his victim.
They didn't see a drug hustler when they looked at Bam, only a young female beaten nearly to death by a drug dealer.

"What the fuck y'all looking at?" Donnie screamed, challenging anyone
to say something. "Anybody got a problem?"

"That shit ain't right," one young lady mumbled under her breath.

"What? What the fuck you say? Huh? I can't hear you!" Donnie pressed
her, still hyped from the beating.

The young lady walked away and once she was out of sight of the drug
dealer, she called 911. She didn't know if the young girl was dead, but she
knew she needed immediate attention. When the operator asked for her
name, she hung up, satisfied that she had hopefully saved a life.

t was almost midnight when Cartier was violently shaken awake by her
mother.

"Get dressed!" Trina cried out. "They done killed Barn, Cartier. They
done killed Bam"

"What? Who?" Cartier's heart began to thump. Her fingers trembled as
she grabbed a pair of jeans and sweatshirt.

"I don't know all that, just get dressed!" Trina snapped.

"Where are we going?" Cartier asked.

"Brookdale Hospital," Trina answered. "I already called a cab. We're
gonna swing down the block and grab Monya and Janet"

There was a million questions going through Cartier's head, but she knew
better than to irritate her mother. The loud honking of the gypsy cab made
Cartier more fearful. Visions of someone trying to rob Bam kept infiltrating
her mind. Cartier knew something must have gone wrong while Barn was
hugging the block. Guilt loomed over her head for coming up with the bright
idea of each member handling a shift alone. It now seemed irresponsible and
juvenile. If she had listened to Monya when she said it was a bad idea, maybe
Bam would be alive.

Janet, Monya, Lil Momma, and Shanine were downstairs and squeezed
into the back seat of the cab, while Cartier and Trina tried to squeeze in the front seat.

"Listen, y'all gotta pay extra for the additional passengers," the cabdriver
announced.

Everyone went berserk and began screaming at once. Stupid
motherfuckers, faggots, bitches, and crabs flew throughout the cab, words
the average New York cabbie heard once each week, if not once each day.

"Get the fuck out!" he roared to the ladies.

"We ain't going a motherfucking place," Trina roared back. "We got a
murdered niece and you better take us to our damn destination!"

"Y'all better get out or I'm taking y'all to the precinct!" the cabdriver
replied, matching Trina's intensity.

"I wish you would do some stupid shit like that," Janet threatened.

The cabdriver huffed, and put the car in motion. The car erupted once
again with a barrage of insults. Tuning out the ghetto-fabulous women, the
cabdriver almost wished one of them was his lady. He would have given her
a swift backhand in her smartass mouth.

"I should come up in that front seat and punch you dead in your face!"
Janet screamed.

The cabdriver deduced this loudmouth was the alpha bitch in the crew.
But the comment was the last one he was going to tolerate. He went ballistic.
He didn't tolerate being spoken down to by anyone, and definitely not by a
female.

"Bitch, I wish you would try it!" he challenged and hit the brakes,
stopping the car abruptly.

Again, the car erupted with insults. Trina fingered her blade that was
tucked snugly in her back pocket, but decided against it. There was too
much at stake. She motioned for Cartier to get out of the cab and everyone
followed. As he pulled off, Cartier picked up a bottle and launched it at the
cab, just missing the back window.

"I'm so fucking heated right now," Cartier stated to no one in particular as they forged on. "Ma, what happened to Bam? Is she really dead?"

"Cartier, I done told you I don't know any answers," Trina responded.
"Black Gena from the building said the ambulance took her away and they
said she was dead on the scene. That's why we're going to Brookdale to see
what's up."

They called another cab to take them to the hospital. This time each
person sat quietly, wallowing in their own thoughts about Barn.

Trina's mind was on Cartier. It could have been Cartier she was getting a
call about. Cartier was her daughter, the one she tried to make hard as nails, the
one she refused to raise properly, the daughter she let the streets raise for her.

When they finally reached the hospital, Trina once again took charge.

"Hi, my name is Trina Timmons and I'm here about my niece, Barn ... I
mean, Bernice Jones. Her name is Bernice Jones. Was she admitted?"

The young, exhausted receptionist hardly looked up to acknowledge
Trina as she punched Bam's name into the computer. You could hear the
tapping of each key as her extremely long fingernails hit the keyboard.

"She's in the OR," the receptionist stated.

"She's alive?" Trina asked, relieved.

"Obviously," replied the unenthused receptionist.

Trina couldn't resist a rebuttal. "What the fuck you say?"

"Excuse me?" the receptionist asked with attitude.

"Bitch, you heard me!" Trina screamed. "That's my niece you're talking
about?"

"And I told you what you wanted to know!"

Trina's eyes grew small from anger. Her patience was consistently being
tested tonight. "Where's your supervisor? I want to speak to your supervisor!"
she demanded.

"I am the supervisor," she replied, trying to minimize the situation. This
would be her third complaint within the week.

"Well, I want to speak to whoever's over you." Trina wasn't going to take the receptionist's word.

"Ma, come on," Cartier begged. Trina was seven months pregnant and
Cartier didn't want her to upset the baby. "Let it go. She ain't even worth it."

Trina glared at her new enemy. "Bitch I'ma see you when this is all over!"
Cartier pulled Trina's arm toward Bam's foster mother, Marianne. "Slap that
smile off your face, stupid bitch," was Trina's last jab to the receptionist.

It didn't take long for them to realize Marianne didn't have any answers.
She knew Bam was admitted and rushed into the operating room with severe
head trauma, but that was it.

Marianne felt as if she had aged ten years as she paced up and down the
waiting room. Bam was one of four foster children and the biggest headache
of the four.

Six years ago, Marianne had the brilliant idea to become a foster parent
in order to save up enough money to buy a house. It was her get-out-ofthe-hood fast plan. The state paid $552 per child each month, and coupled
with her own modest income, Marianne rationalized she'd be out the hood
in no time. She thought she had devised a brilliant plan to save twenty-five
hundred a month for two years. Since she had all girls, they could sleep in
one bedroom with two bunk beds. Additionally, the rent, utilities, food, and
clothing allowance were a drop in the bucket. That was six years ago and
Marianne wasn't any closer to purchasing a house. Those girls had managed
to drive her stress and blood pressure up, give her an ulcer and thinning hair,
and push away each boyfriend she managed to snag.