Hit Em Up

Hit Em Up-2

“f**k you and your bargain, b***h!”

Guns c****d from all around the room, even the man holding him down with the mini machete bore down a little more, digging the blade even further into his neck, but all were waved down at once by Haitian Jackee. She motioned for the henchman with the machete to give up his weapon, which she then accepted before turning back to address Rasheed.

“I think the devastation of your loss greatly affects your better judgement, but even with that fuel as your motivation, I find your “f**k death attitude” a little admirable . . . although it’s still misguided. Regardless, I will get what I want or enjoy myself while I try to. Since I see no reason to further prolong this, I will have Knotty assist with your gag before tending to your restraints.” She declared, sending Knotty silently into action. “For your thievery of my dope and the unwillingness to cooperate with me, I will take the lower half of your arm. . . As I said, you take, I take.”

Rasheed’s eyes grew wide as he struggled to pull his arm away from the unyielding strength of Knotty’s grasp. As Haitian Jackee raised the blade of the machete, he silently said a prayer to God, the one person he hadn’t spoken to in years, and asked him for forgiveness of his sins. As well as vengeance for the fate of Cassie and their child. And then the blade came down.

* * *

It was pre-dawn early morning in St. Martin and all was basically quiet, save for the few crack heads that shuffled about still tweaking from the previous night or anxiously waiting for a dope boy to finally hit the block. Within the next hour, the first wave of rush hour commuters would fall upon the city as the legal crooks hustled and bustled their way into the corporate and government districts eager to get a head start on their claim of things before the more ruthless crooks came along to have their way with the lay of the land.

But, as for now, the streets were calm. For now, there were no tired police officers that would sometimes rope off different parts of the city numerous times a day after a homicide. For now, there were no crackle of gunshots or wails from police sirens. For now, there were no signs of blatant criminal activity or security threat groups to the community. For now, St. Martin was just beautiful and peaceful.

It was usually during these times that Sauce looked to escape the chaos of the city and lose himself within his own thoughts without having to worry about the ills that surrounded him. He had been born and raised in St. Martin and the fact that he had made it to see the age of twenty-five spoke volumes of his ability to survive within the belly of the beast. As if the odds of being a black male from a violent inner city wasn’t enough, he also had to cope with losing both parents to a random act of violence when they were killed during a botched carjacking and left dead on the side of the road. Ever since that point on, it had just been him and his older sister fighting for every inch in a city that generally gave back nothing. Her, using school checks and insurance money to get them by and him, relying solely on the streets.

Somehow they had weathered the storm, although for him there had been considerably a lot less sunshine in the beginning. He had often times put his life on the line by jacking local hustlers and gang members as a means to get on. It was a lifestyle that had given him everything that he wanted and also things that he didn’t, in such as a body count. Yet he managed to claw his way up and place himself amongst the very people he had preyed upon. He wasn’t a major player in the area. It was very seldom that a place as cold and as callous as St. Martin would be able to have it’s strings pulled by a single man. No, it was the crews that held all the weight in this town. The Mexicans; the Islanders; the Russians; the gangs. Everyone else was just a mid level player at best, or else, bait.

There were far worse positions to be in, so Sauce didn’t mind his ranking too much. Being average in St. Martin kept the jackals off your heels and the feds off your back, not to mention it still turned in a pretty nice penny. He use to entertain thoughts of moving up the ladder, but the lack of trustworthy bodies around him had a way of curbing that hunger. Although he wasn’t completely naked out in the streets, his circle only consisted of two people, of which only one had any true desire to hustle narcotics, the other more than willing to simply play the role of a shooter.

A light rain had begun to fall, already managing to bring with it a low fog that pushed in off of the coast. Having rained to varying extents over the past four days, hurricane season had officially swept in and the worse was surely yet to come. Sauce lit up a stick of sour and rolled down the driver side window of his Dodge Challenger Hellcat and enjoyed the feel of the fine mist against his skin. He found himself being pulled into a zone when the sound of an incoming call cut through his sound system.

“Answer the call,” he commanded his voice activated interface.

“Sauce da boss. I figured you were still up.” It was Mikayla, the hustling half of his two person circle. “I did a tour of the clubs last night, so you know how that go.”

“You tapped out?” Sauce asked.

“ Pretty much. It was a slow night for some of the girls, but I was still able to run up a little more than seven bands.”

“Not bad, Mik.”

“

Not bad

? Let me see you make over seven bands while tryna duck every thirsty ass nigga that’s tryna stick his crusty fingers in your g-string,” she said in disgust.

“So, I take it that you ain’t make any tips tonight,” he joked.

“f**k you, Sauce!”

He laughed out loud at her response and hit the sour while she ranted a little bit. Mikayla was hustling out of the clubs as a part-time stripper, but it was more by force, than by choice. The strip clubs she worked out of were being ran by an ex pimp called, Sleezy, who had refused to let her operate out his establishments unless she was willing to f**k. Being that Mikayla was as thick and attractive as she was rude and fiesty, an agreement had been reluctantly made that she dance part-time in his chain of clubs and in exchange she could exclusively sell dope to and through all the girls that worked for him. That hadn’t made the idea of stripping for him any more sexier, but Mikayla had always been about her money before the bullshit.

“And this fat, black, ashy ass muthafucka gonna have the nerve to tell me that he would let me keep all my tips if I just let him eat my ass out. . .

What the f**k?

I'm like, b***h,

first of all

,

there wasn't even enough money in the muthafucka to be stressing 'bout no damn tips, and

second

, I wish I would let him stick his lil' dirty tongue in my ass after he done licked up every nasty dope sick b***h he ever had work for him.”

Sauce roared with laughter. “Yo, you got me dead as f**k over here”, he said, wiping tears from his eyes. “But on some real s**t, I’ma try to straighten you out today before we link up. It's starting to look a little ugly on my end, too”.

“Don't try”, she demanded.

“I'ma hit you as soon as I know something”, Sauce promised, ending the call.

To be honest, it was starting to look more than just a little ugly. He was basically down to his last and needed to get back straight ASAP. Sheed had made him give his word that he would give him a few days to come up with more dog food before he looked to re-up elsewhere, but he hadn’t heard from Sheed in two days and the way he was going about getting dope was by no means reliable. Still, $75k wholesale worth of dog food for only ten bands was a hard deal to miss out on, not to mention it was money that would also go towards helping out family.

Being that he use to play the same type of games Sheed was now playing, he knew about the risks that were involved, but he had been promised that everything had been cleaned, and a dead man told no tales as his homie, Drako liked to say. Somehow Sheed had discovered the Haitians drop off route and after a successful hit at the back end of the route, he had decided that the next time the hit would be at the very beginning. There would more than likely be at least a half million tied up in the route, but all Sheed was asking for was the $75k he'd basically lost out on for the first lick.

He flicked what was left of the stick of sour out the window. The sun was weakly beginning to cut it's way through the fog and dying rain and with the light came more activity around the city. The sound of an incoming call again came through the sound system disturbing the silence he rode in.

“Answer the call”, he commanded the interface for a second time.

“Hello. May I speak with a Mr. Deion Alford, please?” asked a tired but polite voice of an older man.

“Who is this and what is this about?” Sauce wanted to know, his questions laced with suspicion.

“This is detective Walter Roth of the St. Martin Police Department and I'm trying to get in touch with Mr. Alford because he has been listed as the emergency contact person for a Ms. Cassie Alford. Is this-“

“This is Deion Alford”, Sauce said, quickly cutting him off. “What's the matter with Cassie?”

“Sir, if you could please come down to the 84

th

precinct and-“

“What’s the matter with my Goddamn sister!” The detective as though unsure how to proceed, his silence suddenly becoming deafening before he cleared his throat to continue. “Mr. Alford, I'm sorry, but we need you to come in to identify the body.

CHAPTER 2

Sauce sat at his kitchen table completely numb, unable to see anything in front of him, unable to process anything around him. An almost finished fifth of Patron sat nearby, forgotten about for the time being. The ashtray overflowed with cigar guts and stubbed out blunt roaches, with the one burning in his hand on the verge of joining the others. He smoke and he drank but he felt nothing. Grief had robbed him of the ability to drown his sorrows with drugs and alcohol.

The images of what had become of his sister had been forever etched into the recesses of his mind. It was hard for him to even picture her as she were before. Every time he saw her, it was her crushed and deflated body laying on that cold gurney with what remained of his nephew inside her. He took a deep drag off the strong smoke and coughed it back up as he tried in vain to shake the thoughts from his head.

The police had told him as little as possible about Rasheed, which wasn’t very much. Aside from the severed part of an arm left behind, there hadn’t been anything more to go on. He had been declared missing but presumed dead, which meant the police wouldn’t waste any resources trying to find him, but would instead just wait for the rest of the pieces to start popping up. The police might not had any concrete leads to go on, but there was little doubt in his mind who was behind it. The question for him had been, which ones.