Dutch (6 page)

“Naw, man, that’s what he expects, some little petty-ass black kid starvin’ for chicken change. Naw, when you dealin’ with
cats like him who outweigh you, always keep ’em off balance. ’Cause then the weight don’t mean shit to a muhfucka wit’ leverage.”
Dutch would always philosophically explain shit.

He had always been smart. In school—whenever he and Craze actually went—he would ace tests without even studying and devour
books while Craze chased girls and fought over candy money. But it got to a point when Dutch got bored and graduated himself
from school at the age of twelve. For Craze, school didn’t matter to him one way or the other. So when Dutch stopped going,
so did he. While Craze ran the streets doing the things ghetto kids do, Dutch put in time gaining Roberto’s confidence.

Craze didn’t know what to do with himself, and his small life felt monotonous. He was bored with stealing cars, joyriding,
and ducking the truancy officer, who had placed Craze on a 9:30
P.M
. curfew.

As he sat in his bedroom window smoking a cigarette one night, he heard Dutch’s bird-call from outside. He looked down and
saw Dutch.

“Yo! Come here! I gotta show you somethin’,” Dutch hollered.

Craze was out the window and down the fire escape as if it was the normal way to exit the premises. Moving like a cat, he
jumped down onto the ground and walked over to Dutch.

“What up?” Craze asked.

“Just come on.”

They walked around the corner and Craze saw Roberto’s white van sitting halfway down the block.

“You finally got smart and robbed his old ass, huh?” Craze asked as he lit another cigarette.

Dutch just looked at him and wondered why he would think that after everything he’d been trying to tell him.

“Yo, Craze, I love you like a brother, but once I open this door and show you what’s inside, ain’t no turning back, nigga.
You either wit’ me or go on and walk away now,” Dutch solemnly declared.

Craze looked Dutch in the face and in his eyes. He had never heard such words from him before. He considered Dutch his brother,
his heart. If he didn’t die for the motherfucker, he would certainly die with him, and he knew Dutch knew this. So, for Dutch
to say what he just said, Craze knew whatever was in the van was nothing like he had seen before. His stomach knotted at the
thought and tightened as he spoke.

“Yo, Duke, you know how we get down. You and I, do or die, you ain’t got to tell me to walk nowhere,” Craze stated with all
the sincerity his heart could muster.

Dutch looked him in the eyes and, when he was satisfied, nodded and opened the back doors of the van. He and Craze stepped
up into the van and Craze saw a long, bulky object lying between two garbage bags. Dutch snatched back the top-layer garbage
bag to reveal the dead gunman. Craze took one look and threw up all over the inside of the van.

“Damn, nigga! We got enough to clean up wit’out yo’ ass addin’ to it!” Dutch told him over Craze’s bowed head. For years after,
Dutch stayed in his ass, always teasin’ Craze about his first sight of a dead body.

“Damn, nigga, took one look at that shit and his whole asshole turned inside out!” Dutch would say among the trusted.

After Craze emptied his stomach, he turned back to the body in amazement. It was the first time he had ever seen a dead body,
but it wouldn’t be the last.

“What the fuck happened to him?” Craze finally got the wind to ask.

“Never mind. We need a whole lot of cinderblocks and some rope,” Dutch said, looking like they needed to find that shit right
now.

They ran through neighboring backyards, tearing down clotheslines along the way until they found some cinderblocks in a vacant
lot to carry back to the van. When there were enough blocks, Dutch told Craze to drive while he tied the blocks to the clotheslines
and secured the lines to the dead body.

“Go to Weequahic Park cross town,” Dutch directed from the back.

“Why you want to go all the way over there with them police they got and shit?”

“Will you drive?” Dutch asked, looking at Craze, questioning why he was being questioned.

It was a long and dangerous way to cross town to that side. Newark police were keen on stolen cars. They knew the young car
thieves running around and Craze knew they knew him. So, he took the safest, most direct route, Elizabeth Avenue, straight
out. The trip was tense but uneventful. He pulled into a secluded area of the park near the lake and pulled over.

“Help me drag this muhfucker to the water,” Dutch told Craze.

Craze jumped out the driver’s seat and made his way to the back of the van. Dutch already had the back door open. They began
to struggle with the body, but they weren’t strong enough to drag it out of the van.

“Damn, this muhfucker’s heavy,” Dutch huffed.

“Yeah, he is,” Craze agreed. “Untie the cinderblocks,” he suggested, wondering how the fuck they were supposed to carry the
motherfucker all tied to cement and shit.

He and Dutch first carried the cinderblocks to a wooded area near the edge of the lake, then came back for the body. It was
still heavy, but they managed to drag it over to the cinderblocks and reattach them. Then they rolled the body to the water
and carried it out a bit as it began to sink into liquid darkness. The two boys watched as the body quickly sank to its watery
grave. Dutch looked at himself, then at Craze, and saw they were covered with blood and sweat.

“Take off your shirt and go get those garbage bags out the van. Make sure ain’t no blood in the van. If it is, try and wipe
it up wit’ your shirt,” Dutch told him.

Within minutes, all the contents of the van were piled in a clearing in the woods. Dutch set the pile on fire and watched
as it was reduced to ashes. Then he and Craze returned to the van and drove off.

For the next three days, Craze was worried sick. He hadn’t seen Dutch and neither had Ms. Delores, who, unlike Craze, wasn’t
worried a bit.

“Bernard can take care of hisself,” was all she said, then hung up the phone in his ear.

Various scenes flashed through his mind about where Dutch could be. On the bottom of the lake next to the body they dumped
or on the run from Roberto and God knows who else, like the police. The only good sign was there was no mention anywhere in
the paper of any body or bodies found and there wasn’t anything in there about Dutch getting arrested.

Craze, through his own personal contact, learned the identity of the dead man he had buried in Lake Weequahic. He was a local
drug addict named Chester. Chester’s sister was one of Craze’s many young conquests. He had been pestering her about letting
him hold her pop’s handgun.

“Boy, is you crazy? You ain’t gonna get me killed. My daddy will go crazy. Besides, Chester took it and ain’t been home in
damn near a week,” she said as Craze pushed her head back down into his lap.

A light came on, though, as she was gunnin’ him.
Chester, that’s where I saw them old-ass Pro-Keds before.
He remembered them on the dead man’s feet. He hadn’t thought of it at the time, but it came through crystal clear now that
Chester’s sister mentioned it. He felt funny to have her giving him head after having gotten rid of what was left of her brother,
and he felt the vague sense of superiority you feel when you know the answer to the question that is perplexing to others.

“He’ll turn up,” he said with a slight smirk, amused at the hidden meaning behind his words.

“He better. My father gonna kill that boy one of these days.”

So, he knew where the body was, but where was Dutch? That was his last thought that night before drifting off to sleep, only
to be awakened in the middle of the night with the answer to his question. He heard the familiar bird call as if it was a
dream, and at first he thought he was dreaming until he heard it again.

Dutch.

He hopped up and was down the fire escape before he was dressed.

“Yo, nigga, where the fuck you been?” His tone was full of worry.

“Man, I’m sayin’. I ain’t never killed no body before. I ain’t know what to do with myself. So, I figured I had better lay
in the cut until I knew what was what.”

“I know who he is, too,” Craze announced cryptically, finally knowing something.

“Who?”

“Chester.”

“Chester?” Dutch repeated, thinking hard.

“Chester, Sharice brother.”

“Oh, dope-fiend-ass Chester! Always sellin’ his people shit. Word?” replied Dutch.

“Word. You seen Roberto?” Craze asked with dollar signs in his eyes. Not only had he been worried about Dutch, he was also
worried about the reward he knew Roberto would pay for such a job well done.

“Yeah,” was all Dutch replied.

“And?” Craze asked impatiently.

“And everything’s everything. He let me come over his house for dinner to meet Fat Tony.”

“Aw, man, word?!” Craze’s eyes bulged. He knew Fat Tony was a powerful man in the crime family. He knew they were going to
get paid now. “What he give you?”

“Nothin’,” replied Dutch

“Huh?”

“I said nothin’. I ain’t ask for nothin’, he ain’t give me nothin’,” said Dutch, knowing it was driving Craze mad.

“Man, do you know what you did? What we did? Muhfuckers make livings off of shit like this and you ain’t ask for nothin’?”
asked Craze disbelievingly, throwing his hands up in disgust.
This nigga is really taking this working for free shit too far.
Craze paced back and forth in a frenzy, calling Dutch any and everything he could think of while Dutch just leaned against
the wall watching him.

“Finished?”

“Naw, I’m just catching my breath, you stupid muhfucker,” Craze retorted.

“But I did get a connect. A chop shop,” said Dutch with a grin on his face.

“A chop shop?” questioned Craze, answering for himself.

They had been stealing cars all their lives as long as they could remember, but they never knew no chop shop. Craze could
see how valuable this connect could be, but he still wasn’t convinced.

“He put me on to a chop shop down North Newark. They don’t take nothing but Porsches and Corvettes, so you know they hittin’
niggas off for them shits.”

Craze just eyed Dutch.
You mean to tell me that’s all you got, a chop shop connect?
Dutch could have done better, but Craze figured this would have to do. It was better than nothing.

“Trust me, baby boy, for Tony to even give us that says a lot. I could be floating facedown right now, ya dig? But, since
I ain’t I’ll see Tony again one day, on his level, and I promise you… we’ll never look back.”

Craze and Dutch had been working through Dutch’s newfound connect for about seven months. They had even started to take other
car thieves to the chop shop for a cut but never gave up their contact. The money was good for two fourteen-year-olds. For
that matter, it was good for a grown man.

Dutch had assembled a young team of raiders from all over Newark. One-eyed Roc from Prince Street, Qwan from down Bergen,
Puerto Rican Angel, a girl from Dayton Street, Zoom from Grafton, and Shock from Seventeenth Avenue, all of whom were under
fifteen years old, and Dutch was boss.

They put together routes as far north as Connecticut, as far south as Virginia, and as far west as Ohio. The only trouble
they had was when Zoom got caught in Ohio and did six months. Dutch kept his commissary flowing for that bid. Everybody got
minibikes and baby Ninja street bikes and gained names for themselves. Older car thieves tried to pressure them for their
connect. But these young wolves were far from timid and seldom unarmed.

It was here when Chris began to transform into Craze, or rather Crazy. In fact, he was one of the first to ever pull a carjacking
in Newark before the federal laws. Because of the nature of their connect, they never averaged fewer than four or five cars
a week. BMW, Mercedes, Corvette, and other luxury cars had the latest in security technology, but it did nothing to deter
the appetite of the young band of raiders.

Craze sat back in the plush leather interior of his Porsche and nodded at the accuracy of Dutch’s words. Twelve years later,
and they still hadn’t looked back. Even the present situation hadn’t completely stopped their shine, because Dutch had one
more trick up his sleeve, and Dutch had seldom been wrong, except once, Port Newark.

Port Newark was a large area that sat on the water. It was the size of a small town where big cars from all over the world
were delivered on big ships. The entire area was sectioned off according to make. There were Toyotas, Hondas, Nissans, Mercedes
Benzes, BMWs, and Chevrolets. The list went on and on. Every car manufactured sat at the port behind barbed-wire fences. Each
lot had at least 150 cars of assorted models.

City police rarely came through the port because the dock had its own security force. The armed security guards drove around
the large port vigilantly watching for any unauthorized movement. They had to because the port was a car thief’s heaven. Young
raiders would drool at the mere mention of the port but never attempted a heist. Security was too tight, tight like fish pussy,
and that’s waterproof.

“Word?” said Shock, expressing interest as the whole clique gathered before Dutch.

“Fuck we gonna do, rob a bank?” Angel asked sarcastically.

“No, the port.”

“Port Newark? How the hell we suppose to do that?” Qwan questioned.

“Because, I been watchin’ them. They slippin’. They think they untouchable and they startin’ to relax. See, four months ago
when I first started scoping the shit, I timed the security cars. They was coming in circling every five to seven minutes,
then last month they not showing up for say ten to fifteen minutes, and the last couple of nights, these guys been coming
through like every twenty to thirty minutes. They even stop and eat. Now keep in mind they done cut back and it’s only two
cars to a shift.”

The young clique sat thoughtfully, contemplating the possibilities and the risk.

“Hell yeah! Yo, fuck it, why not? Shit, I’m wit’ it.”