ANYTHING 4 PROFIT (ANYTHING FOR PROFIT) (8 page)

   The thought of shopping always lifted Meka’s spirits. Wondering exactly how much money was in that pillow case, she began to feel better already. She entered her mama’s house, and cracked a smile, thinking of all the new clothes she would cop from her favorite stores at Haywood Mall that week.

             “There she go again with that hot shit,” Mike said to Ant D. “A muh’fucka can’t tell her ass nothin’!”                                                                            

             “Yeah, I know, but shit, we good now, Mike. All the hard shit is behind us.  And while we sittin’ here bullshittin’ ‘bout what to do with this car, really all we gotta do is take this beat up piece of shit back to Lil’ Joe in the morning. The main thing is gettin’ rid of these clothes, and them hot ass pistols. ‘Bout how many bodies you think on them shits now anyway?” Ant D asked Mike.                                                                                                                                                       

              “Probably enough to get a nigga put on Death Row, or a few life sentences. They was already hot when I got ‘em. And with all the niggas we done put under the dirt, it would be damn near impossible to know fa sho’. But you right, these muh’fuckas got to go. They too hot to keep holding… like we got licenses for these shits or somethin’,” joked Mike.                                                                                                                

              After rapping with each other for a few more minutes and exploring the possibilities, both Ant D and Mike decided that breaking the pistols down, scattering the pieces, and letting their clothes go up in smoke would be the best move. 

              After mutually agreeing on what to do, Mike got out the car, closed the door, and walked up the road to Gloria’s house. Ant D waited in the car for about ten minutes before grabbing the pillowcase out from under the front passenger seat.  He buried his nose deep inside the top of it and inhaled deeply, relishing the rich aroma of the money.  That was the smell of power.  He became intoxicated with the aroma.

              Finally, he got out of the car with the pillowcase, and headed toward his mama’s house.  He decided to go in through the back door instead of the front like Meka and Mike had done, just incase anybody was watching. Once inside, Ant D walked down the short hallway to his room and dumped the contents of the pillow case onto his bed.

   Mike walked in behind him, holding a can of soda. He saw all of those dead presidents staring back at him, and went fool. “We rich, muh’fucka! We did it, nigga!” Mike yelled. “How much you think all this shit is?” he asked excitedly.

   His excitement was beginning to rub off on Ant. They had gone from stealing food out of grocery stores, just to have the proper nourishment to be able to think straight for the day, to sticking up the local gambling houses, to putting the extortion down on weak ass niggas.  They had done credit card fraud, and kidnapped niggas for ransom. You name it. Ant and Mike’s criminal history was extensive. They only involved Meka when it was really necessary.

This lick was their biggest to date. They had set up and robbed one of the city’s biggest dope boys…and had gotten away with it. Hot damn!                                                                        

             “I don’t know how much this is, but we damn sho’ fixin’ to find out!” said Ant D, now eager to know exactly how much they had licked for too.

   They both began to separate the money into stacks of 100’s, 50’s, and 20’s, and count their individual stacks.              

              “Goddamn, nigga, go ‘head and put some music on while we countin’ this shit,” said Mike.

   Ant D got up and walked over to his dresser where he kept his Sony CD changer. After selecting disc #7, he turned the volume up on that classic Jeezy shit, “Thug Motivation 101.”

             
The rough, gravelly sound of Jeezy’s voice came blasting out of the surround sound speakers mounted strategically around Ant D’s walls. 

“
The world is yours, and everything in it/ it’s out there, get on yo’ grind and get it/ The world is yours and every bitch in it/ get out there, get on yo’ grind and get it. Aaaaay” 

 
Ant D and Mike rapped along with “Mr. 17.5” while counting the blood money stacked on the bed.

             Two and a half hours later, Mike counted the last stack of currency, and wrapped it with a rubber band, bringing the total count to 635,500 dollars. There wasn’t any work inside the safe, but 635 stacks was more than they had anticipated getting from Twan anyway.

Tired and exhausted, Mike sat on the floor with his back against the bed. “Goddamn, that was a lot of work,” Mike said.      

             “You ain’t bullshittin’. It took mo’ work to count that shit than it did to get it
from
that fuck nigga Twan,” Ant D stated with a yawn. The exhaustion was evident in his voice, and on his tired face.

             “Yeah, we been plottin’ on that nigga for a lil’ minute. I ain’t think he would ever show Meka where the stash was at.”

             “Nigga, is you crazy? Man, there ain’t too many muh’fuckas on the face of the earth that can resist my sister, dog. I knew as soon as she got down wit’ that clown, that it was only a matter of time befo’ she broke his lil’ weak ass down.”

              Just then, Meka strutted into her brother’s room. Fresh out of the tub, and smelling like Johnson and Johnson’s baby lotion, she had on an old pair of orange    Carolina High School gym shorts and a tank top, with her hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her eyes got big as quarters when she spotted the large stacks of bills on the bed. “How much was it?” she asked, anxious to get her cut.

             “600 and some change,” Mike said, his voice betraying the fatigue him and Ant D both felt. Neither one of them had slept much the past few days, staying up on No Doze, coffee, and pure adrenaline.

             “So, how much is mine,” Meka asked with her hand on her hip, alternating glances between Mike and her brother.

              Ant D gathered up 150 of the thousand dollar stacks, and handed them to his sister. “That’s 150 right there, sis. That’s you. But Meka, don’t be spending a whole bunch of paper right now. This shit is still fresh in the streets. Give shit a minute to cool down.”

 Meka completely ignored what Ant had just said. She started to argue for a bigger percentage, but ultimately decided against it. Besides, she knew if she really needed anything, her brother and Mike would hold her down. She went ahead and took the 150 grand, and walked into her room smiling.  She was already making plans for the upcoming week.

              It was now 3:30 A.M. that Sunday morning. The strain from the previous day’s events was apparent on both Ant D and Mike’s faces. They gathered the remaining money together, and put it in an old book bag of Ant’s. Then they placed it in the back of his closet, under some old clothes.

  “Tomorrow we gon’ take lil’ Joe’s car back, and for the rest of the month, we just gon’ lay and chill. See what the word is on the street, ya dig?” said Ant D, tiredly.

              “I’m wit’ that homey. Ain’t no telling what type of fallout there gon’ be behind this shit. But as soon as shit cool off, you know we gotta take these lames to class, and teach ‘em how to stunt fa’ real.”

             “Oh, you already know that, my nigga, that’s mandatory. But right ‘bout now, I’m tired as fuck,” said Ant, his words beginning to slur. “We been up for damn near two days straight, so I’ma get at you in the morning…or afternoon. Or whenever the fuck I get up. Shiiiiiiiit, I might sleep all day tomorrow,” Ant D yawned.

   He lay down on his bed, not even bothering to get undressed. As soon as his face hit the cool surface of the pillow, he was out cold.

              Mike walked into the living room and stretched out on the thick cushions of the black leather couch. He kicked his shoes off and closed his eyes, playing back in his mind the numerous crimes that he and his homey had committed over the years.

              Like the time they had kicked in the door of a hustler by the name of Dog barefaced, while his wife and young children were in the house. Dog wasn’t really a major player in the game, but it was still a nice little lick for two young niggas trying to come up. They had hogtied Dog and pistol whipped his wife until he broke down and told them where the money and crack was at.

  Mike’s eyes closed as he took a sordid trip down Memory Lane. Getting comfortable, he thought back on the first major lick he, Ant D, and Meka had ever pulled together a couple years ago…

         
“Everybody on the muh’fuckin’ floor!!” yelled the two ski-masked figures standing at the center of Greenville, South Carolina’s First Union Bank. Both men’s attire was entirely blacked out.  They wore black hoodies, black cargo pants, and black Timberlands. Underneath their hoodies, they wore lightweight Kevlar bulletproof vests that were designed to protect law enforcement officers from high caliber handgun rounds. Black leather gloves covered their hands, which were tightly gripping AK-47 assault rifles. Their fingers rested on the triggers, ready to squeeze at the slightest resistance to their demands.

           “I said everybody on the muh’fuckin’ floor! Y’all know what time it is!”

  A tall, heavyset, White man, conservatively dressed in a navy blue business suit, looked at his watch as if that was a question. He was actually attempting to determine what the time was!

  “Man, get yo’ stupid ass on the ground!” the robber yelled, while pointing the chopper at him. Filled with fear, the White man’s eyes got big, and his face turned beet red.  He quickly dropped to the highly waxed bank floor, praying that he wouldn’t be shot.

          The taller of the two masked figures lifted the AK towards the ceiling and squeezed the trigger, letting off a barrage of high caliber rounds. The sound of gunfire filled the air, along with the heavy odor of cordite. Terrified screams of customers and employees filled the bank, and the few who were still standing dropped to the ground like sacks of potatoes.

          It was 9:30 in the morning, so the bank had only been open for business for thirty minutes. There were very few people besides the tellers and managers inside, and that was exactly how the men robbing the bank wanted it. Fewer people meant fewer bodies they had to keep their eyes on.

   On a job like this, there was absolutely no time to waste, so one of the masked men ran over to the long, marble teller’s desk, and slid over the counter. His partner remained at the center of the floor, making sure nobody tried to be a hero. Behind the desk, lying face down on the floor were the three female tellers who regularly worked at First Union Monday through Friday. One was a heavyset, middle aged, Black woman. The other two were young White girls, fresh out of college.

   Using his right hand to keep the assault rifle steady in his grasp, the ski-masked man reached down with his left, and grabbed a handful of soft blond hair. He jerked one of the tellers violently onto her feet. She screamed out in a combination of pain and fear. With tears beginning to ruin her make-up as they slid from her big blue eyes, she pleaded for her life.“P-p-please don’t h-h-hurt me!” she sobbed.

            “Bitch, shut the fuck up! Did I tell you to talk?”

  What little color her pale face possessed immediately drained from it when she felt the barrel of his AK being jammed in  her ribs. “Get a bag, and empty all the drawers into the bag. And hurry the fuck up!!”

   Nervously, the young woman got out a thick, clear, plastic bag, and began to do as she’d been instructed. She hurriedly emptied the contents of the first drawer into the bag, large stacks of fresh hundreds, fifty’s, and twenty’s falling inside of it. She then moved on to the next drawer. She began to empty it, but her hands were sweating and shaking so badly that it dropped to the floor. Bills scattered everywhere.

   She bent down to pick them up, but was interrupted by the masked figure holding her at gunpoint. “Next drawer! Next drawer!” Time was of the essence.