IT WAS ALL A DREAM (1) (18 page)

“OOOOOH, you were so cute,” Liza said laughing until she had tears in her eyes. K slid down on the couch and covered his head with one of the big pillows in embarrassment.

“Yes my baby was cute and he still is,” K heard his mother say from the basement doorway. His Pops dogs had obviously felt the wrath of moms because they didn’t make a sound.

“Ma!”
K said as he quickly hopped up to get him a mom’s hug.

He introduced her and Liza and they hit it off from the beginning. Not long after, a few of his sister’s girlfriends came over to hang out and
girl talk
for a while. K asked Liza if she felt comfortable enough to hang out at the house while he went through the hood to go
holla
at his boys. She said she felt more than comfortable and of course she didn’t mind. She knew he hadn’t kicked it with his boys since he left town, So K gave her a kiss, hopped in the truck and went to go check his niggahs.

His first stop was the candy store/weed spot/gambling spot. It was on the corner of a row of stores on the main drag and had pool tables, clear canisters filled with various candies on the counter that you had to buy at least a dollars’ worth, along with however many dime bags of weed you wanted. There was also a big dice shooting table in the back where you could always place a bet and try your luck. Because it was the holidays, the spot was packed with locals and other hustlers
returning to the hood from out of town. As soon as he walked in he got crazy love because his peoples hadn’t seen him in a while.

The parking lot and curbside was lined with Benzes, Beemer’s, Lexus’s, and Jeeps. Old school cats and new school cats were kicking it and bottles of liquor were in heavy rotation.

A few of his boys asked, “When you gone bring us with you to get some of that PA money?”

K looked at his man’s Tommy and Irvin leaning on T’s Lex and said “shit, it looks like
yall
niggahs is doing pretty good right here.”

It was all love through. They liked to fuck with him about shit like that. He dropped a couple of hundred dollar bets on the
Cee
lo table, and on the way out, the house man said,” hey where you going
wit
all that coke and music money after a couple little hundred
dollar
bets?”

“I got places to go, people to see and hot spots to get out of,” he said joking, but was dead serious. “I just came through to show my face in the hood. I got plans on doing some big things if shit keep going smooth and I want my niggahs to be a part of it. “

K slapped everybody five with a half hug showing love and rolled out. When he stepped outside the spot he bumped into
his  niggahs
Pook and Blass.

Blass said “Yo K-MO, what up nigga, what you doing back in the hood? You must be up here for the holidays.”

“Yeah, no doubt.
What
ya’ll
niggas up to?” K asked.

“You know we out here grinding, we both got mouths to feed,” Pook said. “Hold up K, let me catch this dough real quick.”

Just then one of the regulars K had known for years because she had been one of his old customer’s, came walking up. Her face lit up with a big crackhead smile and you could tell she had been a beautiful black
woman at one time. She had a daughter that was even more proof of that.

“Hey big man, where you been? You always got it good. You
workin
?” she asked him.

“Nah, I’m just passing through. But my man got you.”

“Come here
Goobie
! How much you got? “
said
Pook.

“I got $50, but I want a slab,” she said.

“We got you. Give me the money and grab that piece out of the change slot in the payphone.”

She did as she was told and as she was walking off she said “I’ll be back in about half hour. I got this trick at the motel and he got a pocketful. This is just to get him started.”

“Hold up!” Pook said, and scribbled down the number to the payphone.

“Call this number and if he’s spending more than a hundred we will bring it to you.”

“Aight, aight,” she said and scurried away eyes bulging, and ashy lips twisting. After she was gone Pook said, “K man, we
tryin
to get up outta the hood. Niggahs is
catchin
sales left and right.”

“I know
,
I heard this shit was on flames. But you know
I’m  still
in the process of laying the foundation?”

Right after he said that the police pulled into the parking lot across the street. It was cruiser number 105, better known as the marine
cops
. K knew them harassing bastards and they knew him, so he knew it was time to get gone. K gave all his boys contact numbers and told them to get at him before he left town. The police turned on their overhead floodlights and lit up the entire side of the street everybody was standing on. K gave his niggas some dap and was out.

As he pulled away from the curbside he reflected on the experience his life had been up to that point and thanked God that he had made it this far. He’d lost a lot of cats, real good dudes, to this crazy game. Crimedanch had lost some thorough hustlers like Herman The Stranger and Keith Money Green, thugs like Tim Williams and
Taheem
, and up and comers
Karim
, Ed
Nitty
, Allen Parker  and Ira aka Young
Iroc
.

Just as he turned the corner onto his block, he saw the red, white, and blue strobe lights illuminate in his rearview mirror. He knew he hadn’t done anything illegal, signaling or otherwise, but he was in a brand new truck in the hood. So it was business as usual for Suffolk County’s finest, with the same old bullshit! The officer driving approached the vehicle’s driver’s side with his hand on his Beretta 9mm, as the other officer did the same on the passenger side shining his flashlight through the back window of the Tahoe.

Shit, he knew the routine so he turned off the truck with his left hand while his right hand was in the air where they could see it, extended his left hand out of the window so they could see them both. Now in the hood they don’t ask for the usual License, registration and insurance. It just didn’t go down like that. And it doesn’t matter if it’s the uniformed cops, or the undercover, they address you the same.

“Step out of the vehicle with your hands in the air where we can see them.”

So on cue, K followed the usual procedure, and once they saw who it was the whole scene changed.

“Look who we got here, Mr. K-Money. So Mr. Johnson, where h
a
ve you been? We heard you took your drug dealing business elsewhere. Smart decision,” said one officer.

“I live in Pennsylvania and own a record company now. Why are busting my balls officer
? “They
checked out the truck while eyeing him suspiciously.

“Oh we not busting your balls, we just wanted to see who was driving this pretty truck with the PA tags. So you have any guns or drugs on you Mr. Johnson? Do you mind if we search your vehicle?”

“Do you have probable cause?” K asked.

The main asshole of the two gave him a look that he knew all too well. It was a look where no words were needed, that blatantly said you know how we get down. They always keep a couple of rocks for guys who wanted act up.

“Now we can do this the easy way or we can d
o this the hard way,” said one o
f the officers.

K recognized the look because he knew these two very, very well.  They were just as crooked as the pigs they’d bodied before he bounced.

“Ok, ok. Do what you got to do. Just remember I aint never gave you guys a hard time.”

             
They proceeded to search the vehicle and he stood there nervous as fuck. Halfway through the search they got a 911 call over the radio.

”All units respond. There’s
been a shooting on north 15th S
treet and two people are down,” said the dispatcher.

They stopped in the middle of their search and ran to the cruiser.
But before getting in the driver yelled over his door.

“Watch yourself and where you hangout Mr. Johnson.” The officer slammed his door shut, and brutally jerked the transmission into reverse. Burning rubb
er, he backed out onto Jamaica A
venue and sped away to answer their call.

K got in his truck and drove up two stop signs to his family crib and his niggah Ike Mitchell was there standing in the driveway laughing.

“What up my nigga? What’s so funny? “K asked.

“My bad niggah, I aint laughing at you.
I was riding by when
them
crooked ass faggots had you pulled over, So I dipped to the phone booth and put in that bogus 911 call to the switchboard. I saw it was you from the spotlights they had on you and I saw the Pa. tags.”

“Oh shit! That’s good looking, aint no telling what them hating ass police would have tried to pull. Why don’t you come in? Pops is cooking.”

“I gotta go pick – up wifey fr
om work then we going to spend N
ew Year’s with her peoples. How long you in town?

“Two or three days at the most.
Take my cell number and hit me when you get back in town. Maybe we could hook up and do something.”

He took K’s number gave him a pound,
then
bounced. K entered the house to the welcome familiar smells of home cooked Alabama soul food compliments of chef pop
dooks
. Liza was at the kitchen table with his sister and her
friends
playing cards, talking and smiling ear to ear.

“K, I love your family. Your mom wants to know how long we’re going to be in town” said Liza.

“I’m not sure but I’ll make sure we stay long enough for you two to get acquainted well enough.”

K asked Liza to take a ride with him and told his family they would be back shortly. K had grabbed a couple of sacs when he was at the weed spot, and due to the shit he had just went through with the police, he needed a little smoke session to relax his nerves. They g
ot in the t
ruck and headed to a store that was nowhere near the hood. K pulled up to the 7 eleven went in and brought a box of dutchmasters. When they returned to the house K twisted up a log, sparked it and let the mean green mellow out his mental.