The Speed Chronicles (9 page)

When the summer had started I was 100 percent certain that I was headed for the straight and narrow. Meechie had gotten shot outside The Crab House on Georgia Avenue over some broad with more stretch marks than a bag of rubber bands. Our fathers were brothers. My pops had at least made it back from the war. Meechie's had stepped on a land mine. And that was that.

Meechie was the only dude in the world who always had my back. I mean, even when I used to hoop back in high school, he'd be in the bleachers right above the bench, ready to pounce on anybody stupid enough to start a fight with me in it. I was good. But he was better. The game wasn't going to be the same without him.

I had done all right in school. And there was a lady at my church who worked on Capitol Hill. They were short on minorities in the Congressional Page Program. It didn't pay much but she said it was a way into working for the government. I was so fucked up over Meechie being gone that I actually thought it might be for me.

I was used to taking orders and making deliveries. I'd done it all my life. So taking the blue line to Capitol South for the same seemed like a walk in the park. White people were easier to manage than crackheads. Give 'em a smile. Make a joke they understand and you turn into their main boy in a flash. It's even easier when you know how to get 'em what they want. They assigned me to someone named Guy Medscar. He was an assistant to somebody's assistant. But his cousin was a big deal over at the Capitol, a senator I think.

Medscar was one of those dudes who got married out of high school to a girl who didn't fuck him anymore. He had the four kids, the twin Beamers, the vacation house, all of that. But I could tell that it was more like a life sentence than a week in the Bahamas. My first lesson on the job was that the life everybody wants in the 'hood is a pain in the ass to somebody in the 'burbs.

Then he asked me one day, in a whisper, “You know where I can get some”—his fingers coming to together like they were holding an imaginary pipe—“meth?”

While I had a PhD in crack cocaine, meth wasn't big in my part of town. The way he asked was so funny to me that I thought he was making it up. Meth was for trailer park hillbillies and the fags in Dupont Circle. I might not have known much about it, but I knew where to get it. I knew where to get anything that wasn't nuclear or came with propellers.

“How much you want?” I asked him. His eyes lit up like the Washington Monument after six.

“How much can I get?” he asked.

It seemed simple enough. I went to see the guy sitting on Rico's stash out by Iverson Mall. I brought him a dub that Friday and he gave me a hundred dollars, five times what it was worth. That next Monday he asked me for an eighth. Every three days he'd page me after hours. The code after the number would say how much he wanted.

I hadn't been there two months before I was buying ounces to cover Medscar's orders. Then his boys got in on it. It got to the point where people in the building showed up at his office like it was mine. Since I didn't use (I didn't even drink), the money was all profit.

It really did seem like a foolproof situation. Then the fools got involved.

“So what we supposed to do once we get there?”

“We supposed to holler at this dude named Jeremiah,” I explained. “That's all I know.”

“You think they gonna have any food up in this jawnt? I ain't had shit since dem wings and fries I had for lunch.”

Jeremiah was a prophet. He believed in God so much that he went wherever the Lord told him to go. Sometimes it was places he didn't want to be. Other times it was places he didn't understand. I didn't want to be in Osito on a Friday night.

I had a chocolate star named Deidre sending me pics with her legs open, panties off. She was free for the night. But business was business. This was a run we had to make.

Now, as you might have imagined, it didn't take long for the other pages to see that I was getting special treatment from the boss. I took hour lunches that were supposed to be thirty minutes. I never buttoned the top button on my dress shirt, even though it was policy. And every once in a while, one of my girls would come through.

I made sure my broads knew the deal way before they came over to Capitol Hill. First and foremost, the invitations only went to the right ladies. I couldn't have anybody up in the office who didn't have the sense not to show up in sweatpants with her hair a mess.

Kina was probably my favorite girl. She didn't have much of an ass on her but her hips were lovely, the perfect handles to hold onto while I hit it from the back. She grew up on the block but she had worked at a bank. So she knew how to dress. She came in there one day in a pin-striped skirt and blazer, heels, and a real nice blouse. The blazer was one layer too many in the summer heat, but when she came in the office she was lookin' good, like she always did. Medscar damn near started jerkin' off the minute the girl sat her purse down. I gave him that special nod that explained what I was up to.

“I'm gonna need you to get these supplies for me,” he said, making sure to sound really official. Paper-clipped to the list was a key to the supply room. Every floor of the building had one. But only supervisors and the janitor had the key. It was almost as good as booking a room at a motel, without the room service.

He gave me a big wink as I motioned for Kina to follow me out the front and down the hall. I knew he'd studied every inch of the broad, imagining what he might do if her whole world was in his hands. I locked the door behind me once we were inside the room. She lifted her skirt up, flashing the fact that there was nothing between me and her wetness. And that's where I stayed, while hell broke loose all around me.

I had a couple of the other pages making runs for me. I mean, I kept the operation small but I knew beforehand that Medscar wasn't going to be able to keep his mouth shut for too long. White boys in places like that aren't good at keeping secrets. The ones who can work over at Homeland Security, or at the CIA.

So one of these kids, Jacob, a blond-haired, blue-eyed boy from out in Reston, decided that he was gonna start selling to some of the pages in the other buildings. They had a roll call every morning that he thought was the perfect place to do business. He was in college, after all. Who doesn't get high in college? Instead of selling his usual dimes and dubs, Jacob decided to get a bigger fish on the hook. Some page he'd never seen before pulls him to the side and tells him that he wants to buy a half. The kid, seeing dollars and stars (before the bars), says he can get it. He and Rory, my other guy, had about a half between them. They did the math, but not much else.

The only way to tell that Osito was even there was the lit-up sign at the city limits. The sign was made out of Christmas lights, even though it was just after Labor Day. Beyond it were just the silhouettes of buildings and small moving shadows, most likely raccoons and possums scampering around in the middle of the night. The Monrovia mobile community was about a mile in. The entrance was a concrete apron that led to a dirt road. Gary had to put the high beams on to cut through darkness. The thick dirt road had trailers on either side of it, sleeping souls who would barely remember the sound of our engine as soon as we'd rolled past them. Jeremiah's place was past those, a supersized camper parked beyond the mobile park, right next to a forest.

We were finally there. But I was still back in the supply room.

I can still remember the warmth at the back of Kina's throat; the Snoopy painted on each fingernail looking up at me as she held me tight, her mouth moving forward and backward like a well-oiled machine. She was reminding me of my prom night, and her prom night, and the way her mouth felt just like bona fide pussy when I was inside of it.

My fingers found their way through her (obviously dyed) fire-red hair. Her eyes were closed, like a monk in meditation. I ignored the first fist that came against the door. I was so close to getting
there
. Looking at her, on her knees in front of me, made me wonder what the blowjobs might be like in heaven. I came, just as the door opened, the bullet swallowed by my baby with impeccable technique. It was like a reunion. Jacob and Rory, both in cuffs, Medscar looking like he just got caught with his dick out, and me and Kina with my … well, you get the picture.

Jacob and Rory had apparently walked their entire stash right up to an undercover Capitol Hill cop. Of course, they couldn't even get in the squad car without putting me and Medscar's name into it. But as it turned out, the cops only came after me.

I was just another page. He was our supervisor, which gave him deniability. Two white boys selling drugs equaled someone more experienced on the next level up, which equaled me, the black dude from the wrong side of the bridge. The only card I had in my pocket was that it was my word against Jacob and Rory's. In my defense, there wasn't a second out of place on my time card. Plus, there wasn't anyone else to ID me as the top man.

So the worst thing they could do was fire me. I was pretty sad about it, mainly because I'd gotten to like being legit. I liked the check with my name printed on it every other week. But I didn't belong on Capitol Hill (or at least not at that low-ass level). They took my page jacket and my ID and told me that I couldn't come on Capitol grounds again, not even for a tour.

The train ride home was no different than on any other day. I didn't like the way I went out, but I was also looking forward to getting back to Garfield Terrace. Rico always had work there for me. No jackets and ties, no IDs and Capitol cops. There was only one thing I was really good at.

The trailer had one of those cheap locks on the door handle. You know, the kind you can do in ten seconds with some of those little screwdrivers. It was dark inside. The flickering blue light through the outer window was coming from a TV. I was about to knock when the door came open. The man standing there looked like Lil Wayne if Lil Wayne was forty, white, and had a ten-year-old for his tattoo artist. Were the five hairs at the bottom of his chin supposed to be a goatee?

“He must be Gary,” the guy mumbled. “I'm Jeremiah.”

“How you know
he
ain't Gary?” my driver demanded.

Jeremiah smiled enough for me to see in the dim light. “I just know,” he said, welcoming us in.

The chemical smell was everywhere, like those Korean nail shops in the mall. It didn't give me a headache though. Just this dull feeling. I felt like the temperature was dropping a degree at a time. In five minutes I was going to be able to see my breath.

Jeremiah flipped on the light and we saw that we weren't alone. There was a pair of teenaged kids, a girl with dark rumpled hair (and a pair of double Ds) and a white boy with a blond buzz cut and a tattoo of Optimus Prime on his left forearm. They continued to snore like there wasn't a bright light and three people standing over them.

On the other side of the room, a woman old enough to be somebody's great-grandma was asleep in a green recliner that looked older than she was. There was a double-barrel shotgun propped up against the wall behind her, the barrels pointing at the floor.

“So how you wanna do this?” Jeremiah asked.

“We only got a two-seater,” Gary shouted. Jeremiah and I both gave him that
Don't wake up the kids
look. Then again, it wasn't like it mattered.

“Where you got it at?” I asked.

“It's back here in the bathroom, brother.”

“I ain't your brother,” Gary yelled.

Jeremiah chuckled as we started to follow him. “I wasn't talkin' to you, big boy.”

There were about five feet between us and the bathroom. I was holding a .380, my favorite piece: light and compact, but accurate as hell. I put my fingers around the grip. 11.85 ounces. Less than a pound.

The tub inside of the bathroom was small. It was the only detail I could make out before the action. Jeremiah's eyes met mine over Gary's shoulder. The stiff-neck movement that was supposed to be a nod was all I needed. There was a single shot before Gary fell forward, his corpse tumbling directly into the tub, as we'd planned. The other players came in from the living room. The old woman and the MTV kids had given the best performances of their criminal careers.

Gary would have said that we deserved “one of those gold things they give for actin'.” Comments like those would make it hard for me to actually miss him.

I told you about my cousin Meechie and all that he meant to me. I told you what I went through when that asshole gunned him down in front of the strip club over that broad with more stretch marks than a bag of rubber bands. I just didn't mention that Gary was the one who did the gunning. I volunteered to do the business; Rico and I came up with the plan.

Jeremiah and his crew had gotten on Rico's payroll making D.C. bodies disappear out in the country. The drug shit was just a bonus for them. Those Pentecostal sellouts who gave us the info were Meechie and my cousins. They'd even sponsored us back in the day to keep us out of juvie for a summer or two. They knew DCPD would never think to go body-searching way out in Osito.

Everything I've told you is true, even the meth. Rico is the bank for one of the biggest meth holds in the area. But he knows better than to bring that white-boy shit any closer to the city than it needs to be. I ended up getting back into business with Medscar. But this time he was smart enough to run it all through the boys in the mailroom. My old boss, out of appreciation, pays for my golf lessons at the course uptown.

They say that God has a reason for everything. Maybe that's why I lost that job on the Hill two days before Gary got Meechie. Gary had been my muscle on and off for years. He would have walked anywhere I told him to.

“Anybody else you need to vanish, playboy?” Jeremiah asked, pouring bleach into the bucket of cleanser next to the toilet.

“I'll be in touch,” I said.