Corruption Officer (18 page)

BUMP, BUMP, BUMP,
BUMP
!

I could hear my heart beating loud and clear.
 
I’m outside by the bowling alley close to
Rikers Island about to meet Flocko’s sister for my first pick up.
 
I’m a little nervous because this is my first
trip picking up coke.
 
Cigarettes and
pouches of tobacco were different because if I get stopped in the street with
those it’s no charge but if I get stopped with a half ounce of cocaine, I am
screwed.
 
I am sitting there sipping when
my phone rings and it’s her telling me that she is pulling up.
 
I have not seen her in years and really
forgot what she looked like.
 

I exit my van when a female parks and walks towards me.
 
Then she stops a few cars from mine and I
walk up to her.
 

“Hey, what’s up?
 
Long
time no see,” she said.
 

I still didn’t recognize her but could see the likeness in
her face and Flocko’s so I went along just to complete the transfer so that I
could be on my way.
 

“That’s a half,” she said, and I just nodded acknowledging
that I knew while taking the bag that she was handing me.

“Okay.
 
I got it,” I
told her.
 

Then she walked back to her car and I got into mine and just
like that I became a drug dealer.
 

I drove off and got on the Triborough Bridge on my way home.
 
There wasn’t any music playing.
 
I wasn’t drunk.
 
It was just me, the wide open window with the
wind blowing in.
 
It was just me and my
thoughts.
 
I just made fifteen hundred
dollars in less than fifteen minutes and it felt good.
 
As my adrenaline slowed down, I started
calculating my future earnings; thinking to myself that all I had to do was
make one trip a week with this and I am good.
 

I pull up into my neighborhood and as usual there is no
parking.
 
So I find the nearest fire
hydrant and park, putting my Rikers Island parking pass in the window.
 
I proceed upstairs but I am cautious because
it hasn’t been normal since that attempt on my life.
 
It’s been real stressful coming and going,
always thinking that this fool Biz is lurking somewhere in the cut.

I’d been creating different routes for going home so that I
couldn’t be tracked.
 
I would never come
home at the same time.
 
I would always
enter my building at different entrances.
 
And I would do things like press the elevator
button of the floor above or below mine so that I could come out of different
exits to reach my apartment.
 
The shit
was getting hectic and crazy and I was frustrated and most of all angered that
it had to come to this point.
 
I didn’t
like having to be on point like that all the time; holstering my weapon,
putting it in my jacket pocket so if it came down to him or me, it was most
definitely going to be him.
 

I cautiously entered my building and surprisingly an
elevator was on the ground floor waiting.
 
I run and jump inside just as the door closes
behind me.
 
I press the button this time
for two floors beneath mine because I know that a certain staircase door on
that floor makes no sound when you open it.
 
When the elevator arrived to the floor, I pressed the door open button
and I stood there inside the elevator and did not move.
 
I purposely waited for the door to automatically
close and when it did, I jumped out.
 
This
maneuver would throw-off and surprise anyone who might have been waiting there
for me.
 
I was taught these maneuvers
from one of my gambling spot siblings that had beef in every Project.
 
I remember him saying, “Whatever you do,
don’t make it easy for them, Gee.”
 
And I
wasn’t.
 
I slide open the silent door and
entered the exit.
 
It’s a good thing I
had on my uniform with my wind breaker jacket and my work boots that were more
like sneakers, they didn’t protect my feet from shit but they didn’t make a lot
of noise either.
 
As soon as I was inside,
I heard someone talking on the floors above me.
 

I took my gun out of my pocket, put it to my side and began
to creep up the stairs.
 
I took two steps
at a time because I wanted to get closer to the voices that I was hearing
quickly.
 
The closer I got the more I
could hear that it wasn’t voices, it was just one voice.
 
This someone wasn’t talking but singing; singing
a song that we used to sing when were kids,
“Am
I my brother’s keeper!”
 

It was Biz.
 

Now my adrenaline starts flowing, heart starts pounding and
my palms get sweaty.
 
This was it!
 
As I got closer, step by step, all I could
think about was him trying to kill me and me being stressed out trying to duck this
fool all the time.
 
All the stealth
training I received from the marines came into play because I was going to put
an end to this shit right here right now.
 
My conscience starts to talk to me, ‘Gee, are
you really going to do this?
 
Is this
what it has come to?’
 
I crept closer and
his singing got louder,
“Am I my
brother’s keeper!”
 
I think some more
and question myself, ‘What are you going to do?
 
Are you going to shoot him?
 
Are you built like this?’
 
Everybody in every hood knows that old saying -
“Don’t pull a gun out unless you plan to use it.”
 
I am contemplating now and ask myself, ‘Should
I do this?
 
After all this time I have
the drop on this fool and it’s late night in the hood and that makes for a
perfect opportunity.’
 

I stop and can still hear him singing.
 
He’s right above me.
 
I had my gun raised but now I bring it down to
my side.
 
The stairs are built with a
landing between floors and I am standing there silently with my gun and my
target right above me.
 
I think of everything
again and then anger comes over me as well as a sense of urgency as I remember
the ultimate no-no that
this fool
committed that would
send me over the deep end.
 
He threatened
my family, most of all, my momma in that elevator!
 
I am nervous.
 
I am scared, and right now my stomach is
filled with rocks but I answer my conscience with a, ‘Yes!’
 
For my family, ‘Yes, I am built like this!’
 

I raise my gun and lean to the side so I can peer up the
steps to see what he is doing.
 
He’s
sitting there with his back to me singing and doing something with his hands
that I could not see.
 
I got him.
 
I could blast his ass right now, right in the
back and get away with it.
 
No, I want
this fool to see me.
 
I want him to know
that I did this to him.
 

I take a step closer then out of nowhere he says, “Remember
that song, Gee?
 
We used to sing it all
the time.”

It seemed like an eternity had gone by as I stood there, gun
in hand, frozen by the fact that he knew I was there the whole time.
 
No need for stealth now I thought as I
came
the rest of the way up the steps to position myself directly
in front of him.
 
I still had my gun
pointed at him when I noticed what he was doing.
 
He had a cardboard box lay across his lap with
a cut opened
blunt
already filled
with weed.
 
He then took a vile of crack
from his pocket and sprinkled it into the blunt, mind you, never once looking
up at me to see that I had my gun pointed at him.
 
For some reason I felt that he already knew.
 
He began to hum that song again as he brought
the
wooly
to his mouth.
 
He wet it so that it rolled tight then, and
only then, did he look up at me to see my menacing stare.
 

“You ain’t never been no killa’, Gee.
 
And you sure don’t look like one now,” he
laughed.

“What does a killa’ look like Biz?” I asked with venom in my
voice.
 

He put his blunt in his mouth, lit it and blew out some
smoke at the same time nodding at me like he gets my point.
 

“Now what?” he asked, “Ya’ got ya’ little pea-shooter
pointed at me like ya’ ready to end me.
 
Now what?”

He throws his arms in the air and I jump back at the sight
of a sawed off shot gun.
 
I had not seen it
as it lay across his lap under the cardboard.
 
He laughed again as he put his arms down and took some more puffs.
 
While exhaling he said, “Don’t be scared now.
 
Ya’ should have been scared the other night
when you came out of the gambling spot at 2:00 in the morning or the other
night when you parked on 153rd Street and walked to the back of the building
entrance.”
 
He saw the dumbfounded look
on my face and said, “I could have gotten you anytime I wanted to.”
 

At this point I put my gun down, not away, just down.
 
Truthfully, he and I both knew that I wasn’t
going to do shit.
 
He takes his blunt out
of his mouth and points it at me.

“Why you do that shit to me, Gee?
 
I mean I’ve been jailing my whole life and I
know how dirty C.O.s can be but I never thought that you would do me dirty like
that.”
 

“I did not know it was you under that same dirty Hoodie that
you’re wearing now,” I tried to explain, “How was I supposed to know that they transferred
you to my jail, huh?”

He jumped up and said, “You know how it felt seeing that it
was you who did this to me?”
 
He pulled
his hood off showing his permanent scars.
 

“And then you just stood there!” he shouted, “Stood there
and did nothing!
 
You did nothing while
those White boys pounded on me.
 
Was that
that blue brotherhood bullshit?
 
You beat
on me to prove to the White man that you had no problem beating on a nigga?”
 

I saw the pain in his face and I decided not to
respond.
 
What
was
you afraid of, huh?
 
He answered his own
question and said, “You were afraid that if you stepped in to stop them that you
would not be respected as one of them!”
 
Now
he was sweating and he had his hood halfway off his face staring up into the
light fixture.
 
My assumption was that
the drug was kicking in and he was high.
 
I put my gun away and leaned back against the wall sort of in my own
thoughts questioning myself as to whether he was right about some of the things
he was saying.
 

“Were your C.O. buddies there, Gee?” he asked, “Were they
there when we had to share clothes?
 
When
I would come to your house and you come to mine when our families did not have
food?
 
Were they there when we got jumped
by some guys trying to take your sneakers?
 
Who took that ass-whipping with you, who?”
 

Now we were both staring hard at one another, both of us
knowing the answer.
 

“You think this shit is easy,” I yelled, “You think it’s
easy seeing your friends and loved ones come to jail?
 
Seeing them go back and forth all the time not
learning their lesson the first time and constantly fucking up in life?
 
Just imagine busting your ass trying to stay
out of trouble in the neighborhood and area that we came up in; landing this
job and then seeing your people get their ass beat not by you but by other
people,” I laid into him, “Look at you Biz, you want to blame everyone but
yourself for you coming back and forth to jail!
 
Do you ever think of the shit that you do
while you’re out?
 
Do you think of the
people that you hurt when you get locked up?
 
Huh!?
 
You know what your moms once told me?”
 

He froze, looked at me hard and began tearing up at the
mention of his mother Ms Daniels.
 
I
found a soft spot and now I am going to twist my knife.
 
I continue, “She told me one day that if I saw
you in there for me to tell you that she loves you and that she is getting old
and that she
don’t
know how much longer she can take
you being in there.”
 
Now he had his head
down and he began to sway from side to side.
 
Then I said in a low tone, heartfelt voice,
“
It was a mistake, man.
 
I did not know that it was you until your Hoodie
came off.”
 
Then he
said without looking up at me, “A mistake, huh?
 
So what would you
had
done had you known it was me before they started whipping my ass?”

Dead silence.
 
I had
no response.
 
Then he said, “Them
mothafuckers are going to pay.
 
Them C.O.s
think that they can do anything to a person while they are in prison and that a
person won’t come after their asses when they get out.
 
They think moving up to Middletown or out to Long
Island will stop an inmate from finding them, humph, I got something for their
asses.
 
They’re going to pay for what
they did to me.”
 
I then ask him, “What
are you going to do, sue them?”
 
He
responded by handing me a piece of paper out of his pocket and when I looked it
had a list of C.O.s’ names with their addresses next to them.
 
My first thought was, ‘Oh shit, how did he get
this info!’
 
Then I thought, ‘I can’t let
this happen.’
 
I begin to yell at him frantically,
“See this is what I am talking about!
 
You
still on some bullshit that’s going to have your ass back in jail or worst!”

He wasn’t paying me any mind.
 
He was gathering his things and taking long
pulls from his blunt.
 
Meanwhile, I
continued to yell, “Why can’t you just let this shit go and get your shit
together!”
 

He just smiled at me and he picked up his sawed off shot gun
and put it over his shoulder as if it was a mere handbag.
 
Then while walking halfway down the steps and
totally ignoring everything I said, he said, “I love you Gee.”
 
I just continued to yell at his back, “What
about your moms?
 
Don’t you think that
she’s had enough?
 
You’re going to put
her through this shit again?”
 

He stopped in his tracks, turned around and looked up at me.
 
He was crying.
 
I saw the tears running down his face.
 
Then he pulled his Hoodie all the way over his
head and said, “She won’t be going through anymore pain because of me.”
 

“Why you say that?” I asked, “Do you think this time will be
any easier?”
 

“She died this morning,” he said without looking up at me.
 

Then he walked down the stairs, exited onto one of the
floors and was gone.