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  Once inside the back bedroom, all hell broke loose. Crazy Nine fell to the floor next to Rohan, rolled over and came up blasting. He’d had a small gun in an ankle holster. All of us blasted at him in unison, blowing five different size holes in the crazy Dread. I was worried that neighbors had definitely heard the short but loud burst of gunfire.

  Shit!

  Lonnie had been shot in the shoulder, and a bullet had grazed Delina’s face where blood ran down.

  Fuck!

  Kyree was slumped down against the wall by the door, a hole in the center of his forehead. There was no doubt he was dead or if he wasn’t, there was nothing we could do to save him. One of Crazy Nine’s desperate shots had hit him right between the eyes.

  I kept my heater trained on Murder Mike, who was still lying face-down on the floor with the others, while I told Pete to check Crazy Nine’s pocket for the keys to the van.

  I grabbed a pillow off the bed and covered the back of Murder’s head with it. Then I pressed the gun against the pillow.

  “It ain’t personal, main man,” I said in the same tone he used with me after I’d gotten out of the hospital with a broken jaw. “It’s just business!”

  With nothing to lose, he tried to wiggle from beneath the pillow with my knee in his back. But my trigger finger was instant.

  Blocka! Blocka! Blocka!

  The pillow muffled the sound of the .9mm and a pool of blood quickly formed on the carpet beneath and around my main man’s head.

  I could’ve let Murder Mike live. With the Dreads dead, I doubt he would’ve come after me, but I wasn’t about to underestimate him like he’d done me. I knew those platinum fingernails of his were real. That still wasn’t why I murked him, though. I put three in the back of his head because, as far as I was concerned, his fingers were wrapped around the lead pipe that broke my jaw. If the nigga really had hood love for me, he would’ve stepped to me with the real, before he went along with the Dreads’ intimidation tactics. But he’d chosen sides. Now he lay at the sides he’d chosen. Real hood justice!

  Lonnie and Delina were both bleeding. I told them to go start the car and wait for me and Shotgun Pete. As soon as they left the room, I used another pillow to execute all three handcuffed Dreads the same way I’d done Murder Mike. I hadn’t wanted Shotgun Pete to use the shotgun, it was too noisy.

  “Let’s go!” I said to Pete.

  He turned to leave the room just as I shot him in the back of the head.

  He fell on his face, body twitching. Another shot to the back of the head stopped that. I snatched the van keys from his dead man’s grip and ran outside to the van to get the duffle bag of money I knew Crazy Nine had locked inside. I hated leaving behind so much dope in the house, but there was no way to get the rest because both Lonnie and his lady were bleeding and, for all I knew, the police were on the way.

  I tossed the duffel bag in the back seat on top of several boxes of dope.

  “Scoot over!” I said to Delina.

  I hopped in the driver’s seat, squishing Delina over and against Lonnie’s injured shoulder.

  “Ahhh!” he yelped.

  I had to drive on the grass to get around Murder’s whip parked in the driveway, but I did so in a hurry and with no difficulty.

  “Where’s Pete?” Lonnie asked, obviously in pain.

  “I left him with the others.”

  “Huh?”

  “I left him with the others,” I repeated. “I figured he couldn’t be trusted. Besides, I owed him that.”

  The car was now leaving the subdivision. Inside of the van was complete silence. Maybe Lonnie and Delina were stunned by my revelation that I’d murked Shotgun Pete. But murking his punk-ass hadn’t been spontaneous on my part, I’d known the whole time while planning the deadly robbery that I was gonna blast Pete before we left out that stash house. He was a fool to believe that the beef had genuinely been squashed. He should’ve known that if we had beef one day, we would still have beef the next. The only mafucka who can get money with and forgive a nigga who had crossed him was a fake nigga who’d cross his man himself. Trill niggaz weren’t built like that. We loved hard and hated harder.

  Not hate as in being jealous of a nigga. I was speaking of a strong despise of the enemy. What? I’ma help a nigga come up who has done me a serious bad? Never!

  At Lonnie’s crib, I left everything in the vehicle but the duffel bag as we went inside to check the extent of their wounds. Delina’s face had almost stopped bleeding, her injury was superficial. The wound to Lonnie’s shoulder was more serious. After Delina cleaned it up, we could see where the bullet had gone straight through.

  “That is much better than if the bullet had lodged in his shoulder,” Delina said.

  Lonnie was still in pain and we couldn’t stop the bleeding. We all knew we couldn’t take him to the hospital. They would’ve called the police, as is their policy for all gunshot victims, no matter how minor the injury.

  Lonnie remembered that he knew a veterinarian, who smoked weed and snorted a little cocaine. He said he met the dude through Shotgun Pete, but he didn’t know the vet’s office or home phone number and could only vaguely recall where the vet had said his office was located.

  Anyway, it was nighttime now and the vet wouldn’t be at the office this late. All we could do was keep Lonnie’s wound cleaned and wrapped and feed my dawg extra-strength Tylenols until morning.

  CHAPTER 17

  Delina located the veterinarian early next morning and for a few grand and a half kilo of cocaine, he patched up Lonnie’s shoulder and sent him to a friend’s pharmacy for pain pills.

  We’d split the bounty sixty-forty. I kept sixty percent of the money and drugs we’d taken and Lonnie and his lady shared the remainder.

  My plan was to sell my kilos to niggaz I’d met while rolling as Murder Mike’s bodyguard. We hadn’t taken that much weed because cocaine was more valuable. The money from the caper went with my stash. What Lonnie and Delina planned to do with theirs was their own business.

  After I sold all the dope, my plans were to retire from crime and take a minute to figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to remain in Atlanta or not. I was thinking of moving away, maybe looking Juanita up, but she would have to be willing to accept Inez. There was no way I was cutting Inez off. She had held a nigga down like a real trooper.

  Toi’s death had taken a lot out of a nigga. It had made me realize that no matter how careful I was, those that I loved and cared for remained vulnerable to my enemies. I did not want to go away and leave any of my children sitting ducks for Rich Kid’s revenge. Although I’d never known him to go after an enemy’s children, I didn’t know for sure he wouldn’t. So whatever I did, I’d have to move my seeds away with me. Of course Shan would never consent to me taking Lil’ T.

  Speaking of Shan, two days after the caper, she began calling Lonnie, asking where Shotgun Pete was. Lonnie told Shan that he hadn’t seen Pete, but Shan didn’t believed him.

  According to Lonnie, Shan said that Shotgun Pete had told her about the hit on the Dreads. Now Shan was worried because Pete hadn’t called. He’d been missing for two days.

  The massacre inside of the house in Lithonia, miraculously remained undiscovered. Whenever the discovery was made, I knew it would be all over the news and the streets would be aflame with gossip and accusations. Fingers would automatically point at me since I was still standing. Shan would probably scream names once Pete’s body was discovered and identified. I didn’t think for a minute that the skank bitch would spare me because I was the father of her son. Cita would probably scream, too, now that her free ride to high living was deceased.

  Shit!

  I hadn’t anticipated stupid-ass Pete telling Shan about our plans. She could definitely point the po-po down the right trail. Lonnie and Delina’s blood had no doubt been left at the scene, probably dripped all the way from the backroom to the backyard. My fingerprints were everywhere inside
of the house, too.

  Shan had to die. Point blank period!

  We agreed that Lonnie was to murk Shan. He could easily get her to meet him on the premise that Pete had sent a message by him. If I had asked her to meet me, she’d be suspicious because I never wanted to see her unless it was to pick up my son. I could’ve used that ploy but then I would’ve had to murk the bitch in front of our son. Nah, I wasn’t that cold. Anyway, Lonnie said he’d handle it.

  In the meantime, I was selling keys cheap, just trying to get rid of the shit, stash the loot and vroom! I knew now that my future was not in the ATL. I had prepared Inez for the likelihood that I might have to bounce with no warning, I couldn’t tell her what had gone down, nor did she ask, which was true to her ways.

  Lonnie hadn’t slumped Shan yet, and I knew that the bitch was going to be a problem once the shit hit the fan, so I set out to do what had to be done, even though I had conflicting emotions about it. Not that I had any love for Shan, that was dead. But I did have love for Poochie, and I loved Lil’ T to no end. Murking Shan would definitely hurt them, which I didn’t wanna do. On the other hand, I believed that leaving her alive would come back to haunt me.

  Self-preservation, I thought, the law of the land.

  Little did I realize, at the time, how very true those words would turn out to be.

  I climbed through the window of the apartment, almost losing the wig that I was wearing. Once inside, I straightened the wig on my head and slipped the burner out of my waist.

  It was three am, so no one was outside of the complex. I was sure that I had entered the apartment unnoticed.

  The apartment was dark and quiet, but I’d been there numerous times to pick my son up, so I was familiar with the layout. I crept through the kitchen and eased to the stairs, which led upstairs to the bedroom. When I reached the top of the stairs, I saw light shining under the bottom of the closed bathroom door. The lights appeared to be off in the two bedrooms.

  I twisted a silencer on my Glock as I tip-toed to Shan’s bedroom door. Just as I touched the doorknob, I heard a noise behind me! I spun around, ready to blast.

  “Hey, Daddy!” said Lil’ T, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “Why you got on a wig?”

  “Shhh! I put a finger to my lips whispering, “I was just playin’ a trick on your mama. Go on back to bed.”

  “Okay. I had to pee. Is you gon’ spend the night?”

  “Nah, I gotta go. Don’t tell your mama I was here, okay?”

  “Okay, Daddy,” Lil’ T promised, staring at the gun in my hand.

  I sent him back to bed without further explanation. I damn sure wasn’t going to explain to him that he had just saved his mama’s life.

  A week after we completed the hit at the stash house, the bodies were finally discovered. Neighbors had telephoned the police, complaining about the foul odor emitting from the residence.

  “After police discovered the massacre,” the reporter said, “a neighbor who declined to be on camera recalled hearing what sounded like gunshots one night, almost a week ago.”

  From that moment on, shit went crazy.

  Lonnie told me that Shan called him crying, wanting to know if Pete was one of the yet to be identified victims. She’d seen the news. Lonnie tried talking Shan into meeting him, under the pretense of taking her to where Pete was hiding out. Shan agreed to meet Lonnie but not at night and not anywhere where there wouldn’t be other people. It was obvious that Shan did not trust Lonnie. Perhaps Shotgun Pete had told her something that made her leery of meeting him.

  Lonnie said Shan wouldn’t agree to meet him at any of the places he’d suggested.

  Poochie hadn’t raised no fool for a daughter. Shan got ghost all of a sudden. Now she wasn’t even answering her cell phone when Lonnie called, and no one was at her apartment.

  That night, the news station identified all seven victims of the drug-related massacre. I told Lonnie that the time had come for us to leave Atlanta. If Pete had told Shan what was supposed to go down, we couldn’t trust the bitch not to scream on us. She’d probably blame us for Pete being killed, might even suspect me.

  I was moving fast, getting shit in order to bounce far away. I told Inez I’d send for her once I touched down somewhere and felt it was safe for her to join me. My plan was to get ghost in about three days. I accelerated those plans when Lonnie paged me and said all of our pictures—his, Delina’s and mine were on the news and police had listed us as suspects.

  No one had to tell me that the police had been to any and every place I’d ever lived or hung out looking for me. They had surely done that before putting my old mug shot on television, knowing I’d disappear after that.

  What helped me elude arrest, even without knowing the cops were already looking for me, was that I wasn’t laying low at Inez’ crib nor was I being seen in the streets. No one knew where my crib was plus I hardly stayed there. And Lonnie and Delina hadn’t been staying at either of their cribs.

  I had to move fast.

  I called Keisha from a payphone on Old National Highway.

  “Hey, baby! I’m so worried about you.” Tears were in her voice.

  “I’m a’ight, shawdy. I need you to meet me.”

  “Okay, where?”

  “At Ryan’s on Old National.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  “Keisha, come by yourself.”

  “Nigga, you ain’t gotta tell me that. I’m on point.”

  Twenty minutes later, I saw Keisha pull into the parking lot in her Yukon Denali with the tinted windows. I wasn’t worried about being setup. I knew that lil’ mama could be trusted. She was ride-or-die.

  I slid into the passenger seat and closed the door.

  “What’s up, shawdy?”

  “Nigga, they got y’all all on the news! You gonna be okay, baby? You need my help? Just gimme the game plan and I’m down with whateva.”

  “Shawdy, I’m ‘bout to get ghost. But check this, I got about one hundred twenty-five bricks and fifty pounds of weed in storage down the street.” I reached in my pocket. “Here’s the key,” I said, handing it to her. “The storage is in a fake name but hurry up and get that shit out of there just in case the po-po stumbles up on it and links it to me.”

  “What do you want me to do with it?”

  “Do you, lil’ mama. All I ask is that you bless Inez. She’ll bless my Ma Dukes and my son.”

  “Okay.”

  “Don’t let me down, Keisha.”

  “Nigga, if you didn’t trust a bitch, you wouldn’t be sittin’ in my truck with the whole Atlanta police force lookin’ for your ass. Don’t worry, I’ma handle mines. Will you be okay, though?”

  “No doubt,” I assured her. “But when my time comes, you know I’m goin’ out like a G.”

  I hugged Keisha and then said, “Shawdy, take flight on those niggaz in the game. Don’t let Angel turn you straight veggie.”

  “Neva,” she vowed, squeezing my dick through my pants. “Can I get some of this before you bounce?”

  “Naw, shawdy,” I laughed, “a nigga gotta jet.”

  I hugged her one last time, then I slid out of her ride.

  I gave Lonnie the phone number where he could call Inez at work if he needed to get a message to me.

  “I’ll call her every so often to see if you’ve contacted her,” I said. “Just be sure to call from a pay phone. They may have her home phone tapped, eventually, but not her work phone.”

  “Can we trust her, dawg?” worried Lonnie.

  “No doubt,” I tried to assure him.

  “You’re positive?”

  “Trust my judgment, tight man.” Then I told him what Inez had helped me do. That shit with King in Kentucky.

  Lonnie said, “I guess she’s solid, then. Where you gon’ go? You thought about that yet?”

  “Probably to Nevada, Juanita is out there.”

  He told me he was taking Delina and the kids up to New York.

  “I’ll be in touch throu
gh Inez when I get where I’m going,” he promised. “Stay real, nigga. Much love,” said Lonnie.

  “You do the same, tight man,” I said sincerely. “If we never see each other again, you still gon’ be a nigga’s heart, dawg. You the realest nigga I know. Much love. Tell Delina I said the same.”

  “Lay low, nigga.”

  “I’m out.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Nevada felt like an oven even though it was past summer. Sweat from my forehead ran down past my brow getting under the leather eye patch and into my eye. The eye-patch, along with a short haircut, was just another measure I’d taken to change my appearance from the old mug shot pictures of me that the police had. It wasn’t much of a disguise but it was all I could think of.

  The long ride on the Ninja I’d purchased a few days before I’d left Atlanta had been tiresome, but a nigga on the run had to do what he had to do.

  I had made the journey with a fake ID and driver’s license, a backpack full of big face Benjamin’s and two loaded nines, with extra clips. The backpack of loot was mostly hundreds and fifties, enough to last a while, so I wouldn’t have to chance going back to my stash in Atlanta any time soon. Plus, the compartment under the bike’s seat was full of hundred-dollar bill stacks. The bike had a temporary tag on it, which wasn’t traceable to me because I’d used the fake ID when purchasing it from the Kawasaki dealership.

  I’d left my whips parked in the driveway of the crib. Them po-po mafuckaz could have all that shit whenever they found it. None of it meant anything to me now.

  I knew they would never find my money stash in Atlanta. I’d hidden it well. I’d go back for it one day, maybe in a few years.

  I understood I might never see any of my children again. The cops would keep them under surveillance along with Inez and my mother, expecting me to try to contact or visit them. That’s how fugitives always got caught, returning to visit family or a girlfriend. I wasn’t going out like that.

  I loved my seeds, cared for Inez deeply and if I overlooked my anger, I loved my Ma Dukes. But I wasn’t ever returning to Atlanta unless it was to get the rest of my stash or to murk Rich Kid if he ever resurfaced.