Hood Read online

  “I know,” Hood said. Yeah, he had a big hand in the drug game and the guilt was definitely there. He took a deep breath and the set of his jaw looked harder than concrete. “But I’d give up everything, the slanging, the clothes, the jewels, the fuckin status and the long papers just to have her off the pipe and Moo back in my life. ’Cause this shit didn’t have to happen, E. My fam was rolling before she picked up that glass dick. Even with my pops gone, we was still rolling.”

  He raised his head and looked Egypt full in the face. “I ain’t gone never forgive her for being so fuckin stupid and so fuckin weak. For loving that shit more than she loved Moo. More than she loved me. Never! No bitch should let herself rot so low in the gutter that she jumps totally out of pocket just to worship a little piece of rock! I’m telling you, E, no matter how much piff I pass, or how much yay I sling, I’ll never understand a bitch who puts her lips on a pipe. Never!”

  Chapter 13

  Before death grabs me,

  God please hold me,

  I’m done with the days of saying my soul’s lonely…

  TIME FLIES IN the hood when you’re making money, and six years after coming on board with Xanbar, Hood and everybody else associated with Xanbar’s crew was yanking in plenty of doe. The drug business was booming and Xan was looking to diversify his holdings, eyeing other areas where he could make his money work for him. He’d had a long run holding down the streets of Brownsville, and like most good gangstas he knew that the sweet shit wasn’t gonna last forever. The way Xan saw it, he could either get knocked and sent upstate or get caught out there by some hungry young come up who felt his time on the throne had passed. Or, and this was his favorite scenario, he could score one more big win and retire somewhere down south like a fat muhfucka living in a house made of cake.

  His mind was in business attack mode when he called Hood down to Baller’s Paradise to have a little chat.

  “Dig,” he said, nodding to the barmaid who had just brought two shots over to his private booth. “You been with me for a long minute now,” Xan said swirling his finger around in his shotglass. “You was what? Twelve when I put you on? You about eighteen now. I practically raised you up on these streets. Put you in a prime position and taught you everything you know about the game, right?”

  Sensing some real gutta shit coming, Hood just listened without responding. Yeah, they’d been doing business together for a long time now. Xan had put him on and set him up lovely, no doubt. But raised him? Nah, the streets had done that all by themselves.

  “Check this shit out. And the only reason I decided to put you down on all this, to give you this big opportunity really, is because I know how tight you is with Fat Daddy. But that nigga been fuckin up in the worst of ways, so I also know you’ll appreciate the seriousness of what I have to say.”

  “Aiight.”

  “Dig man. Fat Daddy gone fuck around and get hit. The nigga got his head on the chopping block, ya heard?”

  Hood gazed at Xan evenly, giving nothing away. He’d grown into a hard-body man over the years and was nobody’s fool. He knew a lot of shit about street life today that had escaped him years ago, and the truth of the matter was, Fat Daddy was a gambling junkie. He would turn a fuckin trick just to place a bet, and over the past couple of years his craving for the game of chance had gotten him in the red with gamblers and gangstas and grandmothers too.

  But what the fuck was Hood supposed to do about that? Xanbar had already taken over Fat Daddy’s shop and exiled the man up into his apartment while he raked in his profits. What the fuck else did he want?

  “Man, that nigga’s dick is in the hole way past his fuckin nuts,” Xan said. “Deep in that shit. Real deep. We had a little business venture going, you know. He signed over the deed to his apartment and the shop, and I spotted him some cash so he could go down to Atlantic City and make a payoff.” Xan shook his head in disgust, then downed his drink in one swallow. “That old fool shit on me and them Italians. Gambled my entire investment up in less than an hour. Now cats is getting cranky. They want their money and I want mines too. Difference is, them cats don’t feel for him the way I do. They ready to take they doe straight outta his ass, nah mean?”

  Hood felt his stomach sink although not a single thing about him changed on the outside. He’d seen Fat Daddy in action and knew his gambling habit had an addictive pull that was just as strong as crack. The nigga would bet on two raindrops hitting the ground if he could. Over the past couple of years he had overstated so many bets that he had some big willies gunning for him in Vegas, and was completely barred from two casinos down in Connecticut. Fat Daddy had lost almost all of his fenced inventory in a single poker game, and his cash flow had gotten so raggedy that niggas who used to pay big dollars to get into one of his cee-low games were now acting as bankers and could walk through the door for free.

  “What all that shit got to do with me?”

  Xan sat up straight. “You his boy, right? He been daddying ya ass all these years in the back of his shop, correct?”

  Hood remained silent, giving up no leverage.

  “I tell you what,” Xanbar said. His whole demeanor had gone from easy to deadly in about three seconds. “Fat Daddy in the hole so deep he’d have to hit the number ten times straight to pay me and them Italians off. I ain’t taking no heat for that fat fuck and I ain’t taking no loss on my investment neither. That old fool either gone pay his fuckin debts or pay the fuckin cost. Now since we all know he ain’t got no change, then that means he eligible to get crushed. Nah’m sayin?”

  Hood shook his head. “That man been real legit with you over the years, Xan. You can do that kinda shit to him?”

  Xan didn’t even blink. “That and a whole lot more, my nig. You the one love that old baldhead muhfucka, not me. Fat Daddy came and asked me for help, then he tampered with my doe. That means he gots to go down hard. But you know,” he shrugged, “it ain’t just Fat Daddy who I’m worried about. You know how these gambling cats is. Ruthless. They ain’t got no love for nobody. I’m thinking Egypt could fuck around and get in the way and then they might look at her like she eligible for some get back too.” He swigged back his second shot of yak and grilled Hood with deadly eyes. “That is, unless you and Dreko gangsta up and give the old guy a little help. I got a small job over in Ocean Hill with that pussy nigga Chaos that needs handling. The proceeds should snag us about a cool half-mil. Five G’s go to you, and five to Dreko. The rest will be just enough to pull Fat Daddy through and square him with me and them Italian cats. I bet it’ll keep Egypt safe too. So you ready to talk some business, or what?”

  Chapter 14

  You my sister and my soul at the same time

  One of the reasons I’m going so hard when it’s game time…

  ZENA BLOW-DRIED HER just-shampooed hair and admired its thickness in the mirror. It felt clean and healthy as it bounced around her shoulders like a golden halo. She fluffed it from the roots with her fingers making sure it was completely dry, then unplugged the dryer and picked up a comb. Her hand shook as she leaned close to the mirror and pressed the tip to her scalp. She slid a straight part along the left side of her head and combed her hair downward around her face. With that done, she straightened up and put on a pair of gold clip-on earrings, then carefully picked up her false eyelashes from their case. Her fingers were sweaty and she dropped the spidery-looking things three times before she was able to get them on.

  She’d been Dreko’s bitch for over three years and the whole experience had been brutal and destructive. Sackie had tried to warn her but she’d been blinded to her man’s true nature, and every single thing her brother had predicted had ended up coming true. With Dreko ruling and ruining her life, Zena had gone from a pretty white chick with a cute smile and a banging ass, to a washed out pipe fiend who got her grill smashed on the regular. Her slide downhill had been painful to watch, especially for her brother. Fucking with Dreko had put a wedge in their sibling relationship that left
Zena feeling guilty and ashamed, but unable to find a way out.

  “Aiight, you the one whose gotta live with your choices,” Sackie had told her after rolling up on her high for what seemed like the two-hundredth time. Him and Dreko had beefed and almost come to blows over Zena on more occasions than she could count. Sackie was furious because Zena had let Dreko talk her into giving him a key to their apartment, and then the fool came up in there with his boys and did any damn thing he felt like doing.

  But if she thought the beatings were bad, sex with Dreko was the ultimate punishment. It may have started out hot and fabulous, but these days it was just full of depravities. Zena knew her man was wrong to be filling her up with liquor and drugs, but she had to get high just to force herself to do the sadistic shit he demanded. One time Sackie had come home and found her naked and high and fucked so bad she lay bleeding on their kitchen floor. He’d flown into a rage and gone looking for Dreko with his gun. Luckily, Hood was able to step in and shut shit down before it got ugly, but the bad blood between her brother and her man was almost always on boil.

  Eventually Sackie had grown fed up. At a certain point he gave up and didn’t even try to keep her away from Dreko anymore. In fact, he told Zena she was a lost cause and said she should go for what she wanted with gusto.

  “I’m out here deep in this game slinging rock to take care of us every day, and you out there smoking that yay just like you one of my customers? Fuck it. Do you, Z. Do you to death, baby sis.”

  Yeah, the years of drugs, beatings, and torment with Dreko had just about sucked the life out of Zena and turned her into a shell of her former self. But things had changed for the better when she told Sackie she was pregnant. Sackie had offered to help her take care of the baby, and Zena was happy to have her brother back on her team. Sackie was showing affection and concern for her again, and she had promised herself that she wouldn’t let him down.

  But today was a bad day, and that promise was feeling like a hard one to keep. It had been months since Zena had touched the pipe, and right now she felt so nervous and scared that she needed a hit and she needed one bad. Crack memories swelled inside her brain, giving her get-high flashbacks so vivid they made her shiver with desire.

  Sackie had the music turned up loud in the living room, and Zena sang along to a Thug-A-Licious song being spit as she tried to distract herself and take her mind off both the pipe and the letter sitting on her dresser.

  I got the haze, a whole batch to puff out

  Goons in the back waitin for cats to stunt out

  Ladies in the dugout,

  Big breasts and butt out,

  No names needed

  That takes the fun out!

  With the fake eyelashes secured, Zena pencil-darkened the arch in her eyebrows and then drew a faint line around her lips. She was bullshitting and wasting time and she knew it. Makeup wasn’t even her thing. She was just stalling and trying to find a way to convince herself not to do what she knew definitely had to be done. She covered the two steps between the bathroom and her bedroom and stood facing the dresser. The folded sheet of paper she had been trying so hard to ignore sat harmlessly beside her radio.

  Zena touched her thick stomach and lost every ounce of her false bravado. For the third or fourth time she fought the urge to show the letter to Sackie. She was too pregnant and too scared to go through something like this by herself with no drugs or drink to help her. Zena wished there was someone she could depend on for comfort and help. Anyone. She’d wanted so badly to confide in Egypt, but shame had kept her lips locked. Besides, Egypt was busy all the time. She was hardly ever around. It was her last year of high school and she was taking pre-college night courses at a school downtown. The two of them were still really close, but Egypt’s life seemed to be going somewhere while Zena’s had stalled and felt like it was about to fizzle out.

  Deep inside Zena hated that she’d ever gone to the clinic in the first damn place. Most girls she knew never bothered to get any prenatal care at all. They just showed up at the emergency room when they went into labor and it was time to have their baby.

  And hell yeah, she’d seen all them stupid commercials on BET talking about wrap it up and know your status, but that shit wasn’t for real. Those was just paid actors up there on a screen who weren’t even facing what she was facing, and Dreko wasn’t the kind of guy who would ever agree to use a condom anyway. The truth was, she felt better not knowing her status. She could have lived the rest of her life not knowing, and been cool with that.

  But it wasn’t just about her no more. At the risk of pissing off Dreko, Zena had put the brakes on all that partying and getting high and drinking and unnatural fucking stuff. For the past seven months she’d had something other than herself to think about, and unlike some girls, she had wanted the best for her baby and that meant putting down the crack pipe and seeing a doctor and getting a checkup and some vitamins. She’d gone to her first prenatal appointment when she was four months along, and had submitted to all of the necessary blood tests and stuff with no problem.

  Ignorance had been a good thing at the time, and even though she had her suspicions about Dreko, she had no idea they’d be giving her that particular test. But the nurse at the clinic had filled up quite a few of those glass vials for blood, and when they’d called her a couple of weeks later she’d sat there dumbfounded as the doctor patted her hand and told her that one of her important test results had come back abnormal.

  “Don’t start worrying yet,” he had reassured her. “There are a lot of factors that can cause a false positive response. We’ll take another blood sample in a few weeks and go from there.”

  Zena had forced herself to go back and be tested the second time, but now her fear was strangling her and she was too scared to return to the clinic for the final results. She’d been getting out-the-ass phone messages from the nurse instructing her to come in to the clinic immediately, and when she didn’t respond they’d sent the certified letter she now held in her hands.

  Zena unfolded the letter and a shiver ran through her as she read the words that had been neatly typed in the center of the page. “We have been attempting to contact you regarding the results of your laboratory tests. This could be a health care emergency detrimental to you or your unborn child. Please contact the clinic immediately.”

  Panic held her in a tight grip. Fear of the unknown. But for her baby’s sake she had made herself call the clinic this morning and had quietly agreed when the nurse demanded she come in today. Right away.

  All kinds of twisted images were running through her head as Zena left the apartment without confiding in her brother. She walked past the projects slowly, heading toward the health clinic and remembering every horrible thing she had ever heard about people who got caught out there with this particular disease.

  She’d taken a couple of sex education and health classes before she dropped out of high school, and there were enough people walking around with it right here in Brownsville for her to know what the future held. It might take a long time, but unless you were Magic Johnson or somebody rich, eventually it showed up on you in unmistakable ways. She’d seen the kind of damage the sickness could do. Stick figures with sunken eyes and skin stretched tight over their skulls. Wasted-looking skeletons walking the streets filled with hopelessness and despair.

  Zena raised a hand to the thick, bouncy hair she loved so much. All that shit would be gone. Either on the floor or down the drain, leaving her with nothing but a few scraggly strands floating around on her pink scalp. And what about her baby? Would it be sick too? If something happened to her, who was gonna take care of her child?

  She was scared out of her mind, but a part of her was mad as hell too. The moment she got with Dreko she had stopped fucking around with ten and twelve different dudes like a cheap jump-off, so if she had caught some scary shit it wasn’t her fault. It had to be Dreko. It could only be him. Him and that grimy shit he did when he didn’t think nobody was watc
hing.

  Zena had faked confusion the first time he made her wait downstairs as he took a young pipe-head cat up on the roof to get his top done. She had gotten her ass kicked good that night too. The guy she never saw again, but Dreko had come back down fifteen minutes later sweating and looking fucked-out in the face, then started a fight with her over something stupid. By the time the night was over Zena had a split earlobe, a busted lip, and a loose bottom tooth.

  Another time he had gotten a set of SUV keys from Lil Jay, then made her stand in the lobby of the building while he put a neighborhood cat named Turtle in the front seat and made dude bob his head to pay off a ten dollar debt.

  “Wait ya ass right here,” he told her as he pushed Turtle toward the whip. Turtle stumbled over to the Expedition with his head held down, and Zena felt sick as she watched Dreko toss the young man inside the ride and then climb in beside him on the other side.

  She was really sick when she saw Turtle lean over as his head disappeared in Dreko’s lap. Zena watched wide-eyed as Dreko lounged back in the seat and Turtle’s red skully appeared and disappeared, like he was bobbing for apples.

  There was no mistaking what was going down. Especially since Dreko had yelled like a girl the moment he nutted, and even though she was standing inside the foyer behind a pane of glass, Zena had heard him hollering loud and clear.

  “Mind ya fuckin biz and keep ya gums shut,” was what he told her when she got up the nerve to question him later on that night while he lay across her bed waiting for her to toss his salad. “What I do is what the fuck I do.”

  “But—that guy’s head was going up and down. He was in there sucking—”