Lust (16 page)

“This is Trey’s place. It’s where he sponsors basketball and boxing, and a lot of other programs for kids.”

I got out the car and stood on the sidewalk. For the longest time I just stood there staring at the wide building as neighborhood children ran in and out of the front door. From the outside it looked like a real cool place. Some of the kids were high-school age, and others were a lot younger.

“This is what’s up,” I said to Chiney. “I wish we would have had something like this when me and Jimmy was growing up.”

“Me too,” Chiney nodded. “All we had was a playground with some broken up swings and see-saws to keep us occupied. But kids around here got choices now, ya know? Irish Baines’ old joint No Limitz is only a few blocks away. His boy Menace is running it now. And Candy Montana is still mentoring girls over at Power Productions with her man, Knowledge. Between places like those and what Trey has going in the community, these kids don’t have no excuse to be scrambling and slanging out on the streets unless they want to.”

The front door swung open again as we were talking. This time, instead of a bunch of lanky boys in basketball jerseys pouring out, a tall, well-dressed brother with amazing dreadlocks and a curly goatee stepped out. His legs were all-day long in his expensive slacks, and his shoes were made of quality leather without going overboard with it like Flex did with his countless pairs of imported alligators.

He crossed his arms over his broad chest as he stared at me and Chiney. The look in his eyes was unreadable, but it was focused and intense.

“Sup!” Chiney said, sauntering over to her brother.

The contrast between the two of them was crazy. They looked alike, but they weren’t alike. Both of them had smooth skin, but Chiney’s was light and Trey’s looked like yummy milk chocolate. They both had the same nice features too, but that’s where it ended. Chiney was all street and Trey looked like he was all about his bizz. Chiney was small up top and round on the bottom and had on loose jeans and red and white plaid men’s shirt, where Trey was beastly, all dude. He had a muscled-up chest, broad shoulders, and banging arms.  

I watched as Trey reached out and hugged his little sister and then kissed her on her forehead. She threw her arm casually around his waist. I felt some kinda way inside as they approached me, and I realized it was jealousy. Trey and Chiney were a heart and a soul. I could tell just by the way they looked at each other. I wished my brother was still alive so we could show each other that kind of affection and he could look out for me. Even though I had been the oldest, Jimmy had always, always protected me. Hell, he had given up his life for me.

Trey never took his eyes off mine as he walked up on me and stared without speaking.

“Stop playing,” Chiney laughed. “Say hi to Juicy,” she said, nudging him with her hip.

“What’s up, Juicy,” he said quietly. His eyes were so dark and so damn sexy. “It’s good to see you again.”

He nodded toward the building. “Welcome to The Crossover. Come on in. I gotta finish up a couple of things before we head to the house.”

A cool blast of air hit me as soon as he opened the front door. I had expected to see a smelly, dusty gym, but instead it was bright and white and sparkling clean inside. A huge mural hung from a gold-trimmed board, and I could tell one of the dudes in the picture was Trey when he was younger. He was with another young dude who looked real familiar to me.

“That’s Mayhem,” Chiney said, standing next to me as I studied the picture. “Trey’s best friend. Messiah and Mayhem. You remember him?”

I nodded. I did. He had been real tall like Trey, and both of them had been real popular. I kept staring at the picture. Trey looked so young and innocent with his body covered in sweat as him and Mayhem hugged each other while walking off the court.

“Yo, y’all come on,” Trey interrupted us as he held the foyer door open and motioned for me to walk through. He led us up about four or five steps and directly into a large, open room that had most of it sectioned off as a basketball court. There were a bunch of kids running and dribbling and shooting the ball at the six rims they were sharing. Leaving me with Trey, Chiney ran out on the court and stole the ball away from one of the boys, and then she hiked up her pants and took him straight to the hoop.

“You a coach?” I asked Trey.

He nodded. “Yeah. We’ve got about ten teams we sponsor through our Crossover league,” he explained. “We catch these kids when they’re about seven or eight years old, and then we train them all the way through high school. It ain’t just about basketball, though. We teach them how to survive and prosper too.”

Off to the right was a raised boxing ring, and the floor area around it was cluttered with weight benches, speed bags, and a bunch of different sized kettle balls and other gym equipment.

“Over there is where we make men out of our boys,” Trey said, following my gaze. “We put ’em in the ring and give ’em a safe place to get all that anger and frustration out, nah’mean?”

     I nodded as he stopped in front of row of vending machines along the wall. Instead of being packed with the usual junk food these machines were full of bottled water, and apple, orange and grape juice.

“What’s ya poison?” Trey asked, clinking some change around in his front pocket.

“I’ll take an apple juice. Thanks.”

He put those eyes on me again, and then nodded. “Good choice.”

“Oh, I got a little change,” I said quickly, digging in my back pocket.

He waved me off. “I’m good. They only cost a quarter. We keep it cheap so our kids can afford to buy it.”

I stood there feeling kinda useless as he fed the vending machine. On the one hand, I felt like I had just dumped myself on some dude I didn’t even really know, but on the other hand I couldn’t get him out of my head.

Trey handed me an apple juice, and then he got a grape juice for Chiney and led me into his small office.

He nodded toward the couch and then went around and sat behind his desk. His office was painted in the Crossover colors of royal blue and white, had large glass windows that allowed you to look out on both the courts and the entire gym area. I sat on a soft white leather sofa and waited while Trey shuffled through a stack of paper that was on his desk. His phone rang and when he answered it I stood up and started checking out the hundreds of photos and plaques and awards framed neatly all over his walls.

I checked out some of the framed articles that were about an organization Trey had founded called The Talented Ten. The newspaper said it was an alliance of businessmen who worked together to keep the drug dealers from taking over the community and extorting money from legitimate businesses. According to the article they provided security in the neighborhood, mentored kids, and generally worked to take Harlem back from the hustlers and playas that had run the town into the ground.

There was another article about them on Trey’s wall, and this one said the Talented Ten was made up of a group of local entrepreneurs who owned barbershops, grocery stores, urban clothing outlets, communications franchises, fish markets, fast food restaurants, computer repair shops, dry cleaners, and check cashing places. They seemed to have their hand in a lot of pies, and although they ran on the right side of the street, they had a lot of clout and a lot of power.

“You ready?” he asked me when he finished his call. I held up one hand as I finished reading all the way to the end of the article. I could hear Trey behind me as he locked a few file cabinets and pulled down the shades and a few moments later he said again, “You ready?”

“Yeah,” I pulled my eyes off the wall and kinda smiled a little bit without looking at him. I never knew he was so large in Harlem, but after reading all that I was even more impressed.

We walked out of his office together and it was like I didn’t even know how to be around a man like him. He was hardbody and street, I could tell that. But he wasn’t rough or gutter like most of the dudes I had been exposed to were.

Just like Gino had been, I could tell Trey seemed smart and educated. He was also fine and his game was silky smooth, and he smelled so damn good…every time I looked into his eyes I felt like I was gonna drown in my own juices.

Stop playing yourself, stupid,
I fussed at myself. I’d seen plenty of cats like Trey before. Their fine asses had money, they had a little positioning in the community, and they were usually dirty as hell. And talk about women? They had chicks out the ass. A big, powerful man like Trey just had to be a pussy magnet. He probably had women hiding in his bushes, under his bed, and all up in his clothes closet too.

We were walking through the center when I noticed the crazy shadows that were being cast all over the floor.

“What’s that?” I asked looking up. A skinny dude was at the top of a long ladder. The ceiling was made of thousands of panes of glass, and almost every one of them had something written on it in shiny gold lettering. The noon sun was beaming brightly down inside the gym, and it caught the outline of the letters and cast them as shadows on the floor.

“That’s our roof of regrets,” Trey said. He touched my shoulder and we both stopped and stood in place. “Every pane of glass we write on up there represents the loss of a Harlem kid to street violence. Guns, knives, drugs, beatings, it don’t matter. If they die on our watch we have their name, age, and date of death inscribed on a panel of glass. Eli is up there giving Princess her pane. She was only thirteen when she overdosed and died.”

He shrugged and stuck his hands down in his pockets. “As you can see we’re running outta room up there. Once the ceiling is filled up we’ll have to start writing names on the windows.”

“Wow,” I said softly. My eyes scanned the endless written-in squares. “If those kids up there were still alive there wouldn’t even be enough room in this gym to hold them all.”

“Exactly,” Trey said. He put his hand on my arm again, but this time he kept it there as we started walking toward the door again. “That’s why it’s important to give a visual representation so people can actually see how many kids we’re losing. Just hearing a number doesn’t do their deaths no justice. You actually gotta see it to believe it, and then some kinda way you gotta work to change it.”

I nodded.

“Look, Juicy,” Trey said as we continued to walk. “Chiney put me down on your situation. I know what’s up, and I know all the people who’ve been fuckin’ with you. The good thing is, they know me too.” He gave me a serious look. “I ain’t saying you don’t have to be careful, but I don’t want you stressing about nothing either, a’ight? I got my whole team standing guard for you. We roll real thick, and we hold it down. Don’t worry about that lil niggah Flex, and don’t worry about the G-Spot crew neither. I’m about to put the word out on the street, and that means you’ll be safe as long as you’re here with us, a’ight?”

I was more than grateful, and I couldn’t help but compare Trey to Flex as I waited while he went and got Chiney off the basketball court. Both Trey and Flex had killed somebody and done some time, but they were nothing alike.

Flex was just a dumb kid running a drug empire and trying to take over the world like a mad scientist, and Trey was a grown-ass man who had done some bad shit in his past, but had survived it and made something out of his life. As I walked out of The Crossover and stepped into the bright sunlight under the Talented Ten’s protection I was thankful that I wasn’t gonna have to deal with Flex and his madness no more. But as I would soon learn, just because I was done fucking with Flex, that didn’t mean his crazy ass was done fucking with me.

CHAPTER 21

The early fall sun was beaming down on Harlem as Flex rode down the street in his brand new Hummer. He’d bought it for cash the day after his other one got towed out of a parking spot in the BK. Instead of sporting the whip in candy-apple red again, this one was money green with 18-inch shoes, and it was even fresher than the last one had been.

Music was blaring from the speakers as he surveyed his drug territory. He nodded in satisfaction as he checked on his trap boys as they manned the corners and hustled that yay.