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  “Oh, yeah?” Fat Daddy mused, his eyebrow raised. He followed the boys with his eyes. Kraft had more trap boys than a little bit. Most of them had been kids sitting in Fat Daddy’s chair just yesterday, and today they were the same niggas who would shoot him in the back for a wrinkled dollar bill.

  He watched as the two boys walked back and forth, up and down the street. He swigged from his bottle as the older boy pushed the younger one up against the wall of a building like he wanted him to stay put. The kid gazed at the pedestrians real hungry and desperate-like, as if he was searching for something to steal. Fat Daddy took a long pull from his stick and sucked it deep. He was still holding it in when he opened the shop door and let in a blast of frigid air.

  “Hey you! Brang yo ass over here boy!”

  The older kid looked up and grilled him, then moved forward, placing himself between Fat Daddy and his young brother.

  Fat Daddy narrowed his eyes. “Don’t gimme no fuckin looks, son. Get it over here.”

  The kid didn’t move.

  “All right,” Fat Daddy shrugged and made like he was about to close the door. “I was gone give your little brother a sandwich but I guess he ain’t hungry.”

  The littler kid took off. He broke free from his brother and ran toward Fat Daddy so fast it caught him off guard.

  “Whoa, hold up there lil man,” he chuckled. “Don’t knock Fat Daddy on his ass. That sandwich ain’t going nowhere.”

  “I’m hungry,” the little boy said without shame. His face was narrow and he had a familiar little funny-colored mole under his left eye. He was just a baby, but he looked Fat Daddy right in his eye. His brother caught up with him and cursed and tried to pull him away, but the kid wouldn’t budge. “I’m hungry.”

  Fat Daddy took the small boy’s arm and pulled him inside the shop, knowing his big brother wouldn’t let him come in alone. He led them past Kraft, Chop, and Felton, and into a small kitchen behind the shop.

  “Come on back here. Hungry ain’t no good thing to be. But you gone hafta work for your food, boy. Around here we scramble hard. Don’t shit come free.”

  In the back, the little one stared at a pot of stew on the stove with big, greedy eyes.

  “Uh-uh,” Fat Daddy checked him. He handed him a roll of paper towels and a bottle of window cleaner. “Grab that broom over there,” he told the big boy.

  He took them back into the shop and was about to put them to work, but stopped when he saw who was sitting in his chair.

  He smiled at his little girl, then bent over and smoothed her dredlocks. He kissed her forehead. She looked so small sitting in his big barber chair with her legs dangling above the floor.

  “Hi, Daddy,” she said grinning. Egypt was a tall, bright-eyed child. Chocolate brown with glasses and a slight overbite. She was a daddy’s girl and Fat Daddy spoiled her rotten. Gymnastics, dance class, piano lessons, he drove her out to Canarsie and signed her up for every damn thing under the sun, whether them white folks wanted her in their classes or not. Her mother had died from a blood clot when she was three days old and there was nothing too good for his little girl. She mighta been a motherless child of the ghetto, but she sure had herself a daddy. One who adored her and protected her and gave her everything her sweet little heart wanted.

  But spoiled or not, Egypt was a smart girl who had grand dreams of a future that just tickled the shit outta her father. Almost from the time she could talk she declared she was gonna be a doctor someday, and she’d broken every single doll baby Fat Daddy had ever bought her, just so she could tape bandages all over them and make them well again.

  “Who’s that?” She looked curiously at the two strange boys, then grinned and nodded at the bigger boy.

  Fat Daddy looked at the kid and was startled by the expression on his face. As cold, wet, and hungry as the boy must have been, he was looking at Egypt like he’d just discovered the eighth wonder of the world.

  “Nigga say ya damn name,” Fat Daddy urged him. “When a female wanna know who you be, you better make yourself known.”

  “I’m Lamont. This my brother, Monroe.”

  “Moo!” the four-year-old piped up. “My name Moo.”

  Fat Daddy nodded. Lamont’s eyes had never left Egypt’s face, and for once the outspoken little girl had nothing to say. The way she stared at the boy with her mouth open had Fat Daddy wondering if something invisible was going down between them.

  “All right.” He stepped between them and shoved Lamont toward the door and thrust the broom in his hand. “Break that shit up.” Then he muttered, “Lil nigga.”

  With one last smile at his baby girl, Fat Daddy sprayed some glass cleaner on the towel for Moo, then told Lamont to get to sweeping.

  “Slide that broom all up in the cracks between them stations, too. Make sure you get deep in the corners and don’t you miss not one goddamn hair.”

  Two hours later Fat Daddy sat in a back room wondering what the fuck he was doing bringing Marjay’s kids up in his shop. All around him were boxes of shit that had fallen off the back of various trucks and had been sorted and cataloged for resale through New York City’s home-boy shopping network. He had taken an old pastrami hero he’d had in the refrigerator and cut it in two. The bigger boy, Lamont, took his half, tore it in two again, and passed half to his brother. Then he scarfed his down in two big bites.

  Somebody banged on the side door and Fat Daddy stood. He glanced toward the front of the shop, then reached into his pants and pulled out his piece. He went to the door and stood beside it.

  “Yeah!” His voice boomed.

  He listened, then unbolted the door.

  A young fiend walked in looking wild as fuck. Ice chips were frosting his lopsided afro, but sweat ran down the sides of his face like he’d just run a race. He grinned at Fat Daddy as he stomped snow from his feet. “I got some good shit for ya, Fat Daddy,” he said, holding out an appliance with the cord dangling from it.

  “Junior, what the fuck is this? Boy what I tell you? Don’t be bringing me no shit like this! What the fuck I’ma do with a goddamn VCR? Take that shit back home and plug it up for your grandmama, nigga! Next time you come to my door with some slum I’ma put something on your ass.”

  Fat Daddy slammed the door and bolted it, then looked at the boys.

  “Fuckin crackheads. Don’t nobody fuck with no VCRs no more.”

  Back in the shop, Fat Daddy saw that Kraft was gone. The cold had driven most folks inside their apartments, and since business was light Fat Daddy decided to give both boys a haircut. But the minute he sat the younger one in his chair, he regretted that shit.

  The child stank. He had grime all over him and a horrible cough. The back of his neck was black with caked dirt, and his little red ears had sticky wax crawling up out of them.

  But it was his scalp that fucked Fat Daddy up.

  The boy was wearing two hats, and when he took them off and raised the kid up in the barber chair, Fat Daddy frowned and shook his head.

  “Boy what you done got into?” Fat Daddy had seen some bad heads in his lifetime. He’d started cutting hair in the joint, and some of them inmates had head lice, others had sores and nasty, moldy fungus growing down they face like sideburns. But this kid had the worst case of ringworm he’d ever seen. There were round, weeping patches on his scalp with clumped hair permanently plastered down in dried pus.

  It took him over an hour to wash and trim their heads, then to sterilize every damn tool at his station. He even sprayed bleach all over his barber’s chair. “Can’t have no shit like that growing ’round here,” he muttered as he washed his hands with some of the solution.

  The boys looked a lot warmer and a whole lot cleaner, but Fat Daddy knew that shit was only temporary. For one thing, they both needed something to wipe out the shit that had taken over their scalps, and for two, they needed to get ready to get the hell up outta his shop because Egypt had a gymnastics class and Fat Daddy had dollars to catch.

  He thought
about Marjay, then looked at the two boys again. Life was brutal for boys like them but Fat Daddy didn’t have no damn soft spot for kids other than his baby girl. Shit, there wasn’t no such thing as being “just a kid” no more anyway. These lil muhfuckas running the streets these days was ruthless and he’d blow a cap in one of their asses in a quick minute. The older boy looked back at him with familiar eyes. Fat Daddy knew his story well, because he knew their mama well. He knew her very well. Marjay had been the finest thing walking the streets of Central Brooklyn back when they were coming up. A sweet, light-skinned honey with stacked hips and a cute reddish mole on her pretty face that made folks call her Red Dot. They’d done a little something back when Fat Daddy was still that slim, handsome, panty-busta nigga called Butch from Blake Avenue.

  It had started out as a childhood screw in a pissy staircase, and Marjay had cried so bad afterward that he almost felt bad about cracking that cherry. Still. She’d been a real nice girl, somebody who’d never really left his mind, and years later he caught some kind of jealous feelings when he heard she hooked up with some cop from the Bronx. They’d gotten married and had a couple of kids, then moved out to Mount Vernon. They’d stayed out there living the white-picket-fence life until her man got smoked in a suspicious police-on-police shooting, and that’s when Marjay went mute and outta her mind with grief, and dragged her boys back down to Brooklyn. By the time she got her voice back she’d gotten something else along with it. A crack habit. She was lost after that. Just like the rest of the fiends.

  Fat Daddy looked at his watch. These lil niggas was gone have to bounce. The smaller one was cozy and had a full belly. He had nodded off to sleep and was leaning on his brother’s shoulder, wheezing like he had asthma or some shit.

  “Hey now,” he said. He got his nine-hundred-dollar mohair coat off a hook and grabbed their dirty jackets up too. Fat Daddy cursed under his breath. It was one of the coldest winters on record and Marjay had her kids out there dressed in some raggedy-ass windbreakers. Shit.

  “Wake up now,” he said. “It’s time to go.”

  The little one sat up and opened his eyes and started coughing real hard again.

  “Gotta make moves,” Fat Daddy said, pushing them out of the back room and back through the shop. He hustled them over to the door and handed them their jackets. Lamont took his and put it on, but the baby boy stared up at Fat Daddy with tired old man eyes.

  “But where we gone go?” he asked coughing and scratching his scalp at the same time. “Don’t nobody want us.”

  His brother stepped between them. “Shut up, Moo. Stop all that jaw-jacking and put on your coat. We got a lotta shit to do.”

  Fat Daddy watched as they left the shop hand in hand. The streets were cold in this hood, but that nigga Kraft was right. The boy Lamont had something steely in his heart. As little as he was, he looked like he could handle his. But the baby boy. Fat Daddy shook his head. That little one wasn’t gone last long out there. Too many sharks swimming in these icy waters to let a lil nugget like him be.

  Chapter 4

  Nobody better move!

  Give up the jewels, shit’s hard now!

  Niggas shootin in the air like they ain’t scared

  to bring God down!

  THE WARMTH OF the barbershop had only been a temporary comfort, and the little bit of food in their stomachs wasn’t gonna hold them for long. Lamont held Moo’s hand as they walked the neighborhood, staring into storefronts and trying to come up with a plan. He led his brother past the avenue and down a side street where rodents swarmed in and out of a stretch of overflowing Dumpsters. It was dangerous down here, and most people would rather toss their trash out the windows than risk the wrath of the rats that ruled the alley: both animal and human. But that pastrami sandwich Fat Daddy had given them wasn’t gonna last forever and Lamont wanted to find something else for Moo to eat before it got dark.

  They leaned into the wind as they rounded the corner, and they were less than five steps deep in the alley when Lamont realized they’d made a mistake.

  “Shit!” he snatched Moo by the front of his jacket and ducked down beside one of the big brown Dumpsters, fighting hard not to fall flat on the ice.

  Lamont clamped his cold hand over Moo’s mouth, stifling his startled cry. He pushed his brother all the way down to the ground, dragging him into a small space between the Dumpster and the wall of the building. Lamont slipped his hand into his pocket and gripped his knife as they listened to the sounds of the lick going down directly ahead of them.

  It was Postal and Dante. The two crackhead fiends who had chased them out into the streets and threatened to set him and Moo on fire. They were playing stickup kid with that dealer they called Kraft, the one who had been at Fat Daddy’s earlier. Signaling Moo to hold still, Lamont peeked out from behind the Dumpster and watched the lick go down.

  “Yo!” Kraft said, with a slight chuckle. “You gone wanna put that tool away, son. You fuckin with the wrong man’s shit, baby. Xan a fool. You might not wanna slide up on none a this shit right here.”

  Postal swung his burner and Kraft folded over grunting in pain. He reached for a piece he had under his pants leg and the crazy dude checked him by pressing the Glock to his temple.

  Kraft tried to stand upright and Lamont watched as Dante pulled out a knife and started jabbing him wherever he could get him. The blade was shiny and quick and this time Kraft went down to his knees, moaning and clutching his stomach.

  “Bitch nigga!” Dante stood over him with bloody hands and breathing hard. He nodded toward his partner in crime. “Go ’head, Post. Get them fuckin tan goods. Them jewels too.”

  Lamont held his breath as they went in Kraft’s pockets and under his jacket, popping the platinum off his neck. They didn’t find no money, but they stripped Kraft of his shine. All the way down to the rings on his fingers.

  “Yo where the fuckin money?” The fiends had gotten the product, but of course they wanted more. “Where the doe at, nigga?” Kraft took a boot to his gutted stomach and Lamont saw bright red blood seeping through his jacket.

  Kraft rolled around on the ice, holding his stomach in agony. His moans were deep and miserable but his gangsta was still going strong.

  “Suck my dick!” he gasped, pressing his hands deep into his bloody midsection. “You want my money?” he moaned. “Then you gone hafta suck my fuckin dick!”

  The cats swung on him with their pistol and their fists, working Kraft over until he lay stretched out on his back, bleeding badly and nearly dead. Postal had just cocked his tool and aimed it down at Kraft’s head when a woman screamed out of a window in a fifth floor apartment above them.

  “Don’t you do that!” she warned, her voice panicked and high-pitched. “I done called the fuckin cops! Get your asses outta here ’cause the cops is on they way!”

  Lamont’s eyes widened as Postal pointed the gat away from Kraft and raised it toward the woman in the window. She yelped and quickly ducked out of sight. Dude laughed, then aimed his hammer at the sky and popped one off, and behind him Lamont felt Moo’s body shake at the retort.

  Kraft moaned a little and his foot jerked twice in his death throes, and then it was all over. Police sirens sounded in the distance.

  “Aw shit,” Dante said, and then both fiends tore down the street heading north.

  Lamont moved without the slightest hesitation.

  “Stay here!” he whispered to Moo. He crouched down and was moving before the fiends were even out of sight. He crept from behind the Dumpster and immediately Moo tried to follow him.

  The sirens were getting louder. Closer.

  “Mont, no! Don’t!”

  Lamont waved him back and ran over to Kraft’s lifeless body. He looked around twice, then reached down and stuck his cold hand down inside the front of Kraft’s pants until he touched his dick. Snatching what he wanted, he stuck it up under his jacket. Then, with the sirens almost on them now, he yanked up Kraft’s pants leg and snatche
d his burner from its holster. Pocketing the gun, Lamont looked up in time to see a curtain flutter in that fifth floor window as the woman jumped back again. Cursing, he jetted back to get his brother. Damn, he said to himself as he ran and dragged Moo the best he could. Times was bad and the game was real hard now. Niggas shootin in the air like they ain’t scared to bring God down!

  Lamont ran from the alley pulling Moo along behind him. He was pretty sure Postal and Dante were walking and trying to look normal instead of running like they stole something. That would cast too much attention on them. He was also pretty damn sure about where the two fiends were heading and he cut through the projects trying to get there before they did. Minutes later Lamont and Monroe stood outside the abandoned building on Chester Street that they had once called home. The city had come out and reboarded up the windows, but that didn’t stop the hardcore squatters and the fiends. No sooner did the city workers leave with their hammers than the walking desperate were seen pulling out nails and making their way back inside.

  Lamont knew his plan was dangerous, but it was a chance he had to take. There was a lot riding on this shit and if he succeeded him and Moo would be set for a good minute.

  He looked down at his brother. The icy wind had tears flowing down Monroe’s cheeks, and he was wheezing real bad from running so fast.

  “I want you to wait right over here, Moo. Okay? No matter what happens, don’t you move. Just be quiet and wait for me, you got that?”

  Monroe’s eyes were big and scared and his frail body trembled, but he trusted his brother. He wiped his snotty nose with the back of his hand, then nodded obediently as Lamont showed him how to squat down between two parked cars and hide under the back fender of the bigger one.

  With Moo safe, Lamont crept around to the side of the house and hoisted himself up. He pulled the window board back just like he’d done before, then swung his legs over the ledge and dropped down inside the dark, abandoned house. Huddled in a near corner, Lamont allowed his eyes to adjust to the darkness, then waited. He didn’t have to wait long neither.