Bonded by Blood Read online

  “Naw . . . naw,” retreated B-Man. “It ain’t even like dat. I’m just sayin’—“

  “You just saying what? Shawdy, you ain’t said shit, yet. Just droppin’ salt, and spilling what sounds like haterade to me.”

  “You a see,” B-Man maintained.

  Khalil wasn’t feeling that shit. He turned up the volume on the sound system and listened to 50, even though he wasn’t feeling that nigga, either.

  B-Man hadn’t exaggerated Q’s crib, Khalil realized, as Persia let them in and escorted them to the den. The shit was plush, no denying that. The cream-colored wall to wall carpet was thick, and soft as a cloud; silk-covered living room set, oriental figurines. In the den where they sat was an over-stuffed sofa with twin recliners; plasma TV, high-tech computerized entertainment console—the whole shebang.

  Khalil was impressed but the splendor wasn’t beyond belief. He felt that the opulence of Q’s condo wasn’t anything beyond what B-Man should’ve been able to accumulate if B-Man was doing the smart thing with his chips. So why was B-Man so envious of Q? Khalil wondered.

  While they waited for Q to come down from upstairs, Persia brought them a fruit bowl full of dro and a box of Swissher Sweet cigars. Q definitely has himself a showpiece, ran through Khalil’s mind as he watched Persia walk over to the wet bar in a corner of the den. Even in a simple tennis skirt and baby tee, Persia looked delectable.

  Khalil declined a drink; it was too early for that. Besides, his head was still right from last night. He rolled a blunt of dro and fired it up. It was never too early to burn.

  Persia left so the brothers were free to talk without being overheard. B-Man apologized to Khalil for those times he had procrastinated on doing one thing or another that Khalil had asked him to do. While on lock B-Man’s slights angered Khalil more than a bit. At the end of the day, though, Khalil decided that it wasn’t poison in his brother’s heart that caused him to procrastinate. B-Man just wasn’t the type of person to handle shit promptly.

  Khalil said to B-Man, “Bruh, I ain’t stressin’. Y’all two niggas my blood. With mama dead, we’re all we got, besides Rapheal wherever he at.”

  B-Man snorted. As far as he was concerned, Rapheal was just another nigga. Q, on the other hand, had much love for their pop. He hadn’t been in contact with Rapheal in a while because he was embarrassed at what his pops had become. Plus, Rapheal had fucked him out of dope time and time again whenever Q gave him some work, trying to help him get back on his feet.

  “Anyway, what’s the business?” asked Khalil, changing subjects.

  “We gettin’ to the money,” Q spoke up. “I’m gettin’ five to ten bricks.”

  “On consignment,” pointed out B-Man.

  “You still working on consignment?” Khalil asked surprised.

  “Q, ain’t thinking large enough,” B-Man suggested. “We could be raping da game if shawdy wasn’t scurred.”

  “It ain’t about being scared, bruh,” Q quickly defended himself. “I ain’t tryna rule the world I just wanna get mine and not get caught up. Plenty greedy niggas done ended up dead or in the pen for life tryna get it all.”

  “The same way plenty niggas who thought small still ended up in a hearse or with an ass of time in prison. I say if you gon’ play the game, play to win it all. Be the world’s champ in this crack shit!” differed B-Man.

  Khalil just listened. It was apparent that there was tension between his brothers. Khalil recognized it and was determined to see that they not let it fester into something unresolvable. He felt that they each had valid arguments. However, he told them that if he was forced to lean one way or the other, he’d be inclined to agree with B-Man.

  “There’s no way to tip-toe in and out of the drug game and be assured that you won’t suffer the same consequences as those who play it to the fullest and lose. You either live it or leave it alone. Straddling the fence will just get a nigga bombed on from all sides,” Khalil said, recognizing that Q was wary of shining too bright.

  B-Man added, “The game ain’t for the faint-hearted, lil’ bruh. If you shook, get a job!”

  “Nigga, what you know about the game? Yeah, you fuck with a lil’ work, but you’s a jackboy!” responded Q, getting heated because B-Man was questioning his gangsta.

  Khalil listened to his brothers go at it. It was clear to him that B-Man didn’t respect Q’s leadership. Things would never go smoothly between them as long as that remained the case.

  Khalil had his own ideas, which he believed would maximize each of their strengths, including his own, and catapult them to the top of their respective hustles. If executed properly, he believed they’d be able to walk away from the streets young, rich and free . . . in just a matter of a few years. For now, he kept his ideas to himself. He didn’t want them to feel like he was coming home trying to run things.

  Khalil recalled that Q had written him saying that he was straight! Well, getting ten bricks on consignment was okay, but it wasn’t what Khalil would call being “straight”. He was about to allude to that when he remembered that Q had asked him not to mention it to B-Man.

  Khalil switched up, interrupting their argument and addressing their disagreements.

  “B-Man, the way I see it, you don’t feel you can eat good enough off of Q’s plate. Right?”

  B-Man stuttered something unintelligible.

  “That’s my point,” Khalil went on, correctly interpreting B-Man’s hesitancy to respond. “You can’t eat at all without him. Once you look at it from that angle, and set your pride aside for a sec’, maybe y’all can reach a compromise.”

  B-Man’s face turned up. The truth was a bitter pill to swallow.

  “Now, Q,” Khalil continued, “when you need a nigga to watch ya back or bust his gun, who you call on?”

  Q didn’t need to answer, Khalil’s point was made.

  “So, shawdy, you need B-Man just as much as he needs you. Maybe more. ‘Cause he can find someone else to hit him off with weight. Or stick to the jack game, and, instead of eating off another nigga’s plate, he can take the whole meal. But who else you gon’ trust to watch ya back and bust his gun for you like B-Man do?”

  “It ain’t like I won’t bust my own gun.”

  “Shawdy, I didn’t mean it like that. Still, a nigga need a second and third gun out

  there in those streets. Shit was like that before I went away, so I can imagine how grimy things are now. Think about this: Q, step ya game up to, say, twenty bricks, and try to get ya bank situated to where you can pay for ‘em up front. B-Man, lower your ambitions some. Instead of tryna rule the world, you might have to settle for ruling the “A”. Most important, though, when Q fuck with you, don’t be juggling his money,” Khalil suggested.

  The three brothers chopped it up for over two hours, until B-Man had to go handle some business.

  After leaving Q’s crib, B-Man drove to the Dec’. He was headed to the old Misty Waters apartment complex on Candler Road. The apartments, before they were renovated and given a new name, were like the projects moved in the middle of the suburbs.

  Though Misty Waters had received a face-lift and a name change, the crime and drug activity that the complex had been infamous for had not been totally eradicated from the property. B-Man was over there now to holla at Shawn, the big weed man in the complex. He had parlayed with Shawn at Khalil’s welcome home party last night, at which time he learned that Shawn was sitting on a lot of dro.

  B-Man’s mood was kinda foul after the discussion he’d had with his brothers. He felt Khalil was feeling him, but was too loyal to Q to go against him. B-Man detested the fact that Q was the one plugged in, thus the shot-caller. Not only did he not respect his youngest brother’s ambition, he didn’t respect his gangsta. Q was holding him back from attaining made man status.

  B-Man parked, got out of his whip, and headed up the walk to Shawn’s apartment. Before he reached his destination, he was approached by a fiend. She looked like her itty bitty ass already had
one foot in the graveyard. B-Man recognized the woman who had once helped raise him and his brothers for a year or so while Black Girl was serving a short bid for prostitution and simple possession of drugs.

  Sophie had been one of Rapheal’s hoes. Even when Black Girl had come home from jail Sophie had continued to live with them, as Black Girl’s wife-in-law, for a period of time. Rapheal had his game tight like that back then; he had his two best hos living together in harmony. For a while Sophie was a second mother to the three Jones boys.

  “B-Man! B-Man!” Sophie shouted, running up to him. “Lemme get something?”

  She held out a dirty palm.

  “I ain’t got no crack, Sophie!” he snapped. “And if I did, I done told ya a thousand times before; I ain’t givin’ you no dope!”

  “Well, gimme some money?”

  “Nah, Sophie—you can forget dat. You ain’t gon’ do nothing but spend it on crack.” He tried to walk off but Sophie grabbed him by the arm.

  “No the fuck I ain’t!” she snapped, dry-mouthed. “For your information, Mister Big Shot, I’ma buy me something to eat! Plus I need some clothes; I just got out of the county last week, and I ain’t got shit, but the clothes on my back!”

  B-Man considered Sophies predicament. She had been kind to him while she was with Rapheal. Even when she was no longer Rapheal’s ho, Sophie had kept an eye out on him and his brothers until crack rendered her incapable of doing so. Once, she had hid Q in her apartment when popos was looking for him.

  “Gimme your phone number. I’ma—“

  “Boy, I ain’t got no damn phone!”

  “Well, I’ma give you my number. Call me tomorrow, and I’ma have Gwen pick you up and take you to buy some clothes,” B-Man said. “You remember Gwen, dontcha?”

  “I know Gwen. But I don’t need yo bird ass bitch to take me no goddamn where! I ain’t no fuckin’ child! I don’t need no chaperone!”

  “Since you don’t know how to talk to me with respect, I’m not doing a damn thing for you.”

  B-Man knocked her hand off his arm.

  “You ain’t shit, nigga! You think you somebody? Your daddy used to think he was all dat—now his junkie ass ain’t got a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of! You just like his stingy ass. Ya mama should’ve flushed you down the toilet, trick baby!”

  B-Man slapped Sophie so hard that her mind went back ten or fifteen years to when Rapheal would pimp smack her for getting slick out the mouth. Shaking off the dazing effect of the unexpected blow, Sophie attacked B-Man with both arms flailing. She ran dead smack into his fist and ended up on the seat of her itty bitty ass.

  B-Man sneered down at his one-time surrogate mother. “You can cuss me all you want, Sophie. But don’t ever compare me to Rapheal! That bitch nigga helped kill my mama! Even at my worst, I’m better than him.”

  He threw two twenty-dollar bills on the ground next to her and pushed on.

  Khalil stood inside the storage bin with Q looking at the stack of bricks and two oversized detergent boxes full of guap. Q had just told him the details of how he had came up with it.

  “Dayum, shawdy, why you ain’t take it all?” he asked dumbfounded. “If you was gon’ take any of it, you might as well took all his shit ‘cause the consequences gon’ be the same if ya connect ever finds out you stole from him.”

  “All Q could say was, “I didn’t want to leave him fucked up like that.”

  “Dayum, shawdy. Why you ain’t dead the mafucka before you left out of there?” asked Khalil, but Q couldn’t explain.

  Khalil’s head was spinning. He had no intention of getting out of jail and doing 150 mph on the freeway of life, speeding back to the penitentiary. It was only his second day home and already shit was poppin’ off.

  “Alright, shawdy, this the business. We gotta knock your connects head off. Fuck you was thinking about?” Khalil shook his head in utter disbelief.

  “Naw, we ain’t gotta do that,” Q argued. “It’s been over two months and Fazio ain’t mentioned anything about it. He’s still hittin’ me off with work, so he don’t suspect me.”

  He fired up a Newport,Khalil’s apprehension was making him nervous about it all.

  Khalil fanned the smelly cigarette smoke from in front of his face, frowning.

  “You can bet ya man is watching your every move, shawdy. If he ever sees anything suspect in ya game, I’m telling you, he gon’ have ya bodied. That’s why I say we go ahead and do him before it gets to that.”

  Despite the wisdom in Khalil’s warning, Q stood firm on his assertion that it wasn’t necessary to kill Fazio.

  “Shawdy, if this what you was referring to in your letter, we gotta tell B-Man about it,” decided Khalil.

  Q took a long pull on the Newport, contemplating his brother’s advice. After several minutes Q said, “Naw, bruh. I don’t wanna tell B-Man. This some graveyard shit. You’re the only one I can trust on this. Real talk, Khalil. I’m afraid that if I tell B-Man, he gon’ cross me out somehow.”

  “B-Man wouldn’t play the game foul like that, shawdy. He has a little envy in his heart, but mostly he just don’t like playin’ second fiddle, especially to his lil’ brotha. Feel me?”

  “Yeah, I feel you. But if I follow B-Man’s lead he gon’ lead us straight into the penitentiary. He wanna kill up everything, strong arm the game. We can’t last like that,” Q explained.

  Khalil half-nodded. Too many reckless murders would definitely cement a nigga’s fall. Still he admitted that he approved of B-Man’s ambition if not his method. The streets gave you nothing worth having if you weren’t willing to go out and take it from destiny’s grasp.

  “Whatever you think of B-Man’s ambitions, we gotta tell him about this shit. ‘Cause if your connect ever come gunnin’ for you, best believe he gon’ aim his bullets at ya peoples, too. B-Man will fuck around and catch a hot one, he could’ve avoided had he known the deal.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  B-Man entered the apartment slamming the door behind him. He was still heated from his run-in with Sophie. Then, when he’d gone up to Shawn’s apartment to holla at the frontin’ ass nigga about that dro Shawn had claimed to have, the mafucka hadn’t been sitting on nothing but lil’ boy weight. It had been a waste of B-Man’s time to go holla at the lame. Last night at the club, Shawn had been poppin’ like he was a made man. So either the nigga had been frontin’ or he had gotten spooked about dealing with B-Man. Either way, B-Man was now even more determined to put that steel in the nigga’s grill.

  “You okay, baby?” Gwen asked as B-Man came into the kitchen, anger etched on his face, steam literally rising from his clean-shaven head.

  B-Man didn’t answer; his eyes locked on the woo-woo in Gwen’s hand. The pungent smell of the burning crack crushed and sprinkled over weed was unmistakable. Gwen was about to put the woo-woo out, sensing that B-Man was about to take his anger out on her. Her eyebrows rose in surprise when B-Man said, “Let me hit dat?”

  “This a woo, baby?”

  “I know dat. I could smell the shit soon as I walked in the door.”

  “You sure?” hedged Gwen.

  “Just pass me the woo!” B-Man repeated harshly.

  Until now he had only laced the weed he smoked with cocaine—never crack, and never in the presence of Gwen. Yet, he’d been curious about the high woo-woos produced. Now he was about to find out that the high was insatiable and would last a long, long time.

  Gwen passed her man the woo-woo with some trepidation. She knew that the first hit was a mafucker, and it would have her man chasing that same high for years. She smoked woo-woos all day long chasing that high she’d felt the first time she smoked one. Recently she’d thought of taking that next step; the one of no return—smoking straight on the pipe—to reach the ultimate high. But she was frightened of becoming a crackhead, woo-woos was already gnawing away at her physical assets.

  The mirror didn’t lie. Gwen knew she wasn’t as pretty or as fine as she used to be
. If she noticed it, she figured B-Man had to notice her fall-off, too. As his bank increased so would the number of young hoes trying to get at him. Though she had reservations about seeing her man hitting the woo-woos, Gwen did realize how it could prove beneficial to her for B-Man to get hooked on the shit. The more they had in common, the more secure her position. She knew already that B-Man was creeping with young hoes. That didn’t bother her; she had come to expect and accept infidelity in a nigga. As long as B-Man’s infidelities didn’t come knocking on her front door, she’d pretend not to know about them. She was thirty-five years old, while B-Man was a few months short of turning twenty-three; to expect his young, wild ass to keep his dick on lock would’ve been silly of her.

  Gwen watched somewhat incredulous as B-Man inhaled the crack and weed smoke without coughing, as if he wasn’t new to it. They smoked the first woo-woo then fired up another one. The high instantly gave B-Man the feeling of invincibility. He recounted his encounters with Sophie, animatedly acting out how he had knocked her to the ground for comparing him to Rapheal. Gwen listened without comment, already aware of her man’s dislike of his father. After finishing a third woo-woo Gwen began rubbing B-Man’s dick through his jeans. He responded instantly.

  Gwen unzipped him, got down on her haunches between his knees and then put him in her mouth. With years of experience she knew how to curl a nigga’s toes. Her mouth slid up and down him the way she knew turned him on most. B-Man’s hand gripped the back of her head encouraging her to take him all in; a feat that was damn near impossible because he was hung so well.

  While Gwen continued to test her oral expertise, B-Man, who was seated in a chair pulled out from the table, leaned over and retrieved the last ready-rolled woo-woo from next to Gwen’s purse on the kitchen counter. Simultaneous to getting his dick sucked, he fired up the woo-woo and got a multiple high.