The Last Street Novel (32 page)

Sure enough, the car sped up the block behind him.

Motherfucker! Now I gotta outrun a car. I should have just kept running,
Shareef mused as he sprinted full speed down the block.

He thought,
I would have been at Adam Clayton Powell already.
And he couldn’t zigzag in the street anymore with a car chasing after him.

“Yo, Shareef, it’s cool, we got you!” someone hollered from the window of the car.

Shareef slowed up and looked back to see if he could see who was inside. He didn’t notice the driver. Or did he?

This guy look familiar, but I don’t know the motherfucker.

Then he looked to the passenger seat window behind the driver.

“Yo, I know you feel a little crazy right now with niggas shooting at you and everything, but it’s cool, man, we the good guys.”

Shareef recognized the young, charismatic Harlemite, Baby G, sitting in the back passenger seat and he froze.

Baby G raised his empty hands outside the window and said, “I’m not after you, player. I just want to meet you and get you out of this obvious shit your in.”

“Meet me for what?” Shareef asked him.

“We ain’t got a lot of time for this Q and A shit right now, but like I said, you good. We just want to get you out of here.”

Shareef said, “Aw’ight, well, let me walk to the end of the block, and I’m good. I don’t need no ride. My legs work just fine.”

Baby G smiled and said, “Yeah, I can see that. I saw them moves you made on them niggas back there. You looked like Curtis Martin from the Jets or some shit, breaking out for a touchdown.”

They all chuckled inside the car as if Shareef’s life was a joke. He wondered how many young guys were inside.

“Come on, man, I just want to meet you,” Baby G insisted. “I mean, you a writer, right? I got some stories to tell you.”

Another car pulled up behind their Chrysler in the street, while they held up traffic.

Baby G persisted, “Look, I’m not gon’ hurt you, man. Stop acting like that. Everybody know me. I mean, I know you saw me at the game yesterday. My young buck said he spoke to you and got your autograph for his girl.”

Shareef remembered that. And he had spotted Baby G at the game, and at the party on Wednesday night at Zip Code. The young charmer had snatched the California girl away from him. Shareef still wondered if he had slept with her that night. But he was still hesitant to trust the young guy.

“Yo, show him your face, man,” he said to someone else in the front seat of the car.

Shareef watched as the same pleasant, young man he had signed an autograph for at the Kingdome Tournament stood outside of the car with his empty palms out.

“Yo, Shareef, he just wants to talk to you, man. That’s on my grave. And I’m too young to die.”

Shareef heard the young man out and didn’t budge.

These motherfuckers are clever,
he told himself. He wondered if Baby G had told his follower what to say.

The young general continued to stare at Shareef through the opened window. He remained patient and poised. He said, “Come on, man, writers are supposed to be brave. Y’all ’sposed to be the first ones to investigate shit. I don’t let people ride with me every day like this, man. Consider this a privilege.”

The cars behind them began to blow their horns. Baby G didn’t respond to them. He was still waiting for Shareef. He had a quiet reserve about him that was unusual for thug types. Nothing seemed to faze him, not even the gun battle less than a block away.

Shareef took a long breath and made his final decision. He told himself,
I’m a fucking asshole. I deserve to die.
And he began to walk toward the car.

Baby G opened the door for him to get in and slid over in his seat. There was another young man who hopped out of the car on the other side to make room.

“Y’all know how to get home from here. Just call me up when you make it back in safe. Me and this man got some talking to do,” Baby G told both of the younger men who stood outside of the car.

They nodded, “Yes, sir,” and moved on.

That left Shareef alone inside the car with Baby G and his driver as they zoomed down 124th Street.

Shareef had no idea what to expect from the man. He didn’t even know what to say to him.

“Aw’ight, so you met me, now what?”

Baby G looked at him and nodded himself. He calmly extended his right hand and said, “Shareef Crawford, my government name is Greggory Taylor. But the streets call me Baby G. And I don’t know what it is, but ever since I was a kid, whenever I spoke, people liked to listen to me. They felt like I was an old soul out here, you know. So once I figured that shit out, I just told myself, ‘Well, since people love listening to me like that, let me make sure I always got something for them to do. And after that, all my uncles, cousins, and the old-timers on the block started calling me the Baby Gangsta. You feel me? That’s how I ended up who I am.”

He said, “But what about you, man? How’d you become a writer?”

Shareef shook his hand and was more concerned about where they were driving him. They headed straight down 124th Street with no turnoff.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

Baby G told him immediately. “Downtown. I don’t want you being nervous up here in Harlem, thinking I’m gon’ kill you or nothing. So if we ride downtown, maybe you’ll feel safer.” He said, “We need to get away from all this heat you just caused up here anyway,” and chuckled.

His thick driver smiled at it, too.

Shareef asked him, “You spend much time downtown?” He doubted if the young man spent much time downtown at all. Going downtown wasn’t a Harlem thing to do.

Baby G shook it off and answered, “I don’t. You know better than that. Harlem and Manhattan is like two different places. Did you go downtown when you lived in Harlem? And I’m not talking about for plays and concerts and shit. I’m just saying to hang out down there.”

“Nah,” Shareef told him. “We were too proud of Harlem to go downtown.”

Baby G nodded and said, “Exactly. Now downtown is coming back up to us. They know what time it is. Harlem is what’s up.”

Once they made it to the FDR Drive and headed south for downtown Manhattan, Shareef began to relax, just as Baby G had figured.

Then the cell phones began to ring. Shareef answered a call right after Baby G had answered his.

Baby G dealt with his call first.

“Yeah, I got it. We headed downtown right now. I’ll call you back later and tell you how it went.”

Shareef couldn’t trust everything he heard, but he didn’t have much of a choice at that point. He was already inside the car with no intentions of jumping out, or at least not yet.

Then he dealt with his own phone call. It was Cynthia again.

“Hello,” he answered.

She exhaled and said, “Thank God. You’re not out there with them anymore are you?”

“Nah, I’m safe,” he told her. Then he looked at Baby G to make sure. He said, “Or I think I’m safe.”

Baby G nodded his head with a smirk. He said, “You are safe, player. Just relax like you got a pen in your hand.”

On the line, Cynthia was confused. She said, “You
think
you’re safe. What are you talking about? Where are you?”

Shareef didn’t want her getting hysterical on him again. He wanted to get down to business with Baby G anyway. What were they there to talk about?

“Look, I’ma call you back. Just relax your nerves right now, I’m safe,” he repeated to her.

He closed his cell phone and smiled. It was personality time.

He said, “Women…when they love you they don’t know how to act. And when they hate you they don’t know how to act.”

Baby G and his driver both started laughing. The subject of gender psychology would always be a hit with men. The need to feed with sex was a constant hunger of masculinity.

Baby G added, “Yeah, they only know how to act when they don’t give a fuck about you. They be all strict with their rules and shit. And that’s generally when you care the most about them, right? That’s why I never let no girl know how much I like her,” he commented. “And if she even start off like she don’t care about me, I drop her immediately with no phone calls or nothing.”

He cracked a smile and said, “That’s when they come the fuck back.”

Shareef nodded his head in agreement. “Yeah. That’s the game right there. And it don’t change with these girls. That’s why they gotta learn how to be women, and take care of their man no matter what. Just like a real man gotta take care of them.”

Shareef silenced the air with that comment. He was the only married man with children inside the car.

Baby G looked for his ring finger and nodded. He said, “What does that feel like, man…to be married? I see you not wearing your ring no more.”

Shareef looked down at his left hand and asked him, “How you figure that?”

“I can see how skinny your ring finger is. And you old enough to be married, ain’t you? Writers always got women, them pretty smart girls who read.”

He said, “I had a couple of them. They good and nasty, too. They get all creative on a nigga.”

Shareef grinned and told him, “Don’t assume everything in this life, man. Just when you think something would never happen…it will. And when you think you know everything you need to know, life’ll throw your ass for another loop.”

Baby G grinned and started laughing. He said, “That’s what I heard about you, player. My peoples told me you a old-school nigga. You speak from what it is. A man gotta respect that.”

Shareef asked him, “But what about you? I mean, it’s obvious to me that you know more than the average ’hood. You a old soul, right? You got the charisma. You got the gift of gab. You got the looks. Fuck you wanna waste your life in this shit for?”

Baby G had not been around a strong straight shooter outside of the street life since his high school days. There were a couple of male teachers who always told him the same thing. But once the next class had moved up and his grade had moved on, the influence was lost.

He thought about it and had a story to tell. He said, “I remember this one time, man, when my mom bought me this new bike for getting good grades in school. And I didn’t have that bike for one week before somebody stole the shit from in front of the house. And I went around asking people with tears in my eyes if they had seen anybody with it or knew anything about it, right. And nobody knew shit. So then when I got pissed off and rounded up the thug niggas, we started roughing people up like the cops, and sure enough, man, my bike popped back up in two hours. Motherfuckers were apologizing and all kinds of shit. I even got some new wheels out the deal. And after that, I just knew it, man. Niggas don’t care about no smart shit.”

He stopped his conversation and said to his driver, “Yo, give me that up there, man. Pass it back.”

His driver passed him back a black pistol. Shareef watched the transaction and his heart rate increased again.

Baby G looked and told him, “Don’t worry about it, man, it’s on safety. But this is what niggas respect in the ’hood, B, raw power. This shit right here. It’s just like how Tupac kicked it; ‘
Once I got that Thug Life across my chest
…’ That was it, man, niggas respected it. Now maybe if I grew up in the suburbs or some shit it would be different. But you know how it is in Harlem, man. The strong eat the weak. That’s in every ’hood. And that’s why you still standing right now, Shareef. I gotta bigger squad than them niggas who after you.”

He said, “So, you try’na show them the right way. You try’na record history. You try’na do something positive. But when you deal with the wrong niggas, what do you get for it? They out here trying to kill you, that’s what. So you gotta take care of them first, then you can do what you need to do.”

Shareef couldn’t argue with that. How could he? He was still in the middle of the storm and had the young general to thank for bailing him out.

Another cell phone call hit Baby G on his hip before Shareef could get out another word.

“Yeah, y’all all safe?…Anybody get caught?…Any losses?…What about on they side?” He nodded and said, “Good. Spread the word though. Get out the street for the night. Sleep tight. And I’ll see y’all tomorrow.”

When he hung up the phone again, he said, “First problem solved, Shareef. We got them niggas for you. But the bigger problem is finding out who sent them and gettin’ to that nigga. But that’s homework time. We’ll work on that for you tomorrow.”

Imagine that? Shareef was blown away by it. But at the same time, he wondered what Baby G’s price tag was. He wasn’t protecting him for nothing.

Shareef said, “So…what’s up with this, man. Why you doing this for me? I mean, you don’t know me to look out for me like that.”

“Because I’m interested in what you doing,” he answered. “But why you writing a book about Michael Springfield? You think he the most interesting nigga in Harlem? I mean, come, man. He been over the hill a long time ago. Like my man Biggie said, ‘
Things done changed
…’ That’s classic. You gotta get with the new school now. So I want a book on me. Fuck them old-timers.”