Cracked Dreams (7 page)

That night, while Spits lay beside Ginger asleep at her place upstate, it was nowhere near bedtime on the streets of the Bronx. What El Don and Poncho had planned, the streets wouldn't even be ready for. As they sat in Poncho's black Expedition on 227th Street between Barnes Avenue and Bronxwood Avenue, they were patiently awaiting the arrival of one of their workers, Roscoe. They'd been waiting almost two hours for him to show up, and there was still no sign of him. It had gotten as late as 2:45 a.m., and his ass was nowhere to be found. Then after a quick glance at the side-view mirror, without saying a word, El Don opened his door on the passenger side of the truck and exited the vehicle. He walked down toward Barnes Avenue and made a right at the corner. Ten seconds after that, Roscoe came walking past the truck. Poncho saw him pass, but waited for him to get three-quarters of the way down the block before making a move. He then opened the door, got out of the car and called to him, “Yo, Roscoe! What's up, nigga!” Roscoe, a little tentative, turned around and tried squinting to clearly see whom it was that called his name. As he stood there uncertain, the figure that he saw from up the block uttered the words, “Let me holla at you right quick, nigga!” Still confused, he reached for his waist where he had a Glock .9mm tucked under his belt. Suddenly, all he saw was black. El Don came from behind him and covered his face with a black laundry bag. When Poncho saw his brother make his move, he made his way to where they were, and proceeded to assist in getting Roscoe in the back of the truck. Once they got him in the truck, they took the gun he had hidden underneath his shirt and struck him on the back of his head with a crowbar. Roscoe lost consciousness once he was hit with the blow and could give no more resistance as they tied his hands and feet, and gagged him. When they were done, they closed the back door and drove off.

“Mommy,” I said, trying to get Ginger's attention, as she lay next to me peacefully asleep. “Gin, are you awake?”

“What's wrong, Daddy?” she asked as she yawned and turned over to face me.

“Nothing, I was just thinking; that's all,” I responded.

“Thinking about what?”

“I was thinking we should go away somewhere, just me and you. Like Bermuda, or Jamaica, or to the Bahamas. Just somewhere far, you know.”

“But, Daddy, you know how terrified I am of airplanes. Why can't we just go to Miami or something like that?”

“Come on, fuck Miami,” I said, a little annoyed at the familiarity of the conversation. “I want to see other kind of things, Mommy. I want to go somewhere exotic for a real vacation. I want to go somewhere that can make me completely forget about all this shit that happens every day in the streets of the Bronx. That's how it was in Cali, but I still missed you. I want you right there with me.”

“So, Daddy, you can go to all of those places. Don't let me stop you,” she said, trying to conceal the fact that she wouldn't rather be without me.

“Listen, I ain't goin' nowhere like that without you, Mommy. That's for real. If and when I experience that type of shit, I want you to be right there beside me. What's wrong with that?”

“Nothing, I guess. But what about the flying part?”

“Mommy, don't worry about that. You think I'd ever let anything happen to you?” I asked, looking directly in her eyes waiting for a response.

“I know, Daddy. I know you'd never do anything that could hurt me. Well, just let me think about it, okay?”

“That's good enough, Mommy. Just think about it and holla at me.”

“I love you,” she said with an innocent little smile on her face.

“I love you, too.”

“Yeah, mu'fucka. You thought that you could just rob us blind and never face the consequences, huh?” asked Poncho with a black Tec-9 at the side of Roscoe's head.

“No, please,” pleaded Roscoe with his shirt drenched in sweat and his
face covered with blood. “I never once stole anything from you. I swear it.”

“Uh-huh, you a lyin' mu'fucka, ain't you?” asked Poncho. “You tried to be slick, but we got ya fuckin' pussy ass now though.”

“No, I didn't. Please, you have to believe me. Don, please tell him I'd never do something like that,” he said to El Don, as if he could get sympathy from him.

“Oh, you wouldn't, huh?” Don asked. He walked over to them and took the Tec-9 from Poncho, lowered it away from Roscoe's head, and then he lifted it back up quickly, swinging it across Roscoe's face in a downward motion. “Why the fuck should we believe you?”

“It wasn't me. I swear it wasn't me,” he went on with his mouth now full of blood and running down his jaw.

As Roscoe continued to profess his respect for the Time Bomb Family, and how he could never have done what they were accusing him of, Poncho pulled Don to the side as if trying to conceal the topic of conversation. When he felt they'd put enough space between them and Roscoe he questioned him in a voice that didn't suggest he was trying to keep him from hearing anything at all. “What you want to do with him?” asked Poncho to El Don.

Roscoe stopped pleading while El considered a suitable punishment. As he looked around the room, he could see no exit available for the situation they had him in. He was on his knees tied to a heater in the corner of a room in what seemed to be an abandoned building. He was also left clueless as to his location due to the boards on the window. It would've been completely pitch black if not for the flashlights they had. His strength was fading; he wouldn't be able to take much more beating. His mind was racing and he didn't know what to do, until he came to the conclusion that there was nothing he could do . . .but listen, and wait for his fate.

“I don't know,” El answered, pausing, and then taking a glance at Roscoe until his attention was at its peak. “We could cut off the nigga balls and feed those shits to him. Or we could pull out the nigga's fingernails with a pair of pliers and shit. Or we could take his ass down in the basement and feed him to the mu'fuckin' rats.”

As Don went on and on about the different things they could do to Roscoe
before putting him out of his misery, he began to grow more and more terrified. He couldn't take it anymore. He was ready to tell them everything he knew with the small chance that they might let him go, or probably just kill him quickly. Even as he was ready to talk, his hesitation left El enough time to figure out the perfect way to make him talk. He left the room and when he returned, he had a grin on his face that would've done the job all by itself and in his hands a canister of gasoline. After lighting a cigarette he walked over to Roscoe and began pouring the gasoline all over him and on the walls next to him. His attempts to halt El's actions went unanswered until the canister was completely empty. When he felt Roscoe was ready to tell all, he got down on a knee and let him sing the song in his ear. As the information began to flow, Roscoe asked that if he told, that they'd just kill him quickly and El agreed. When the questioning came to an end, El walked away from Roscoe while he was still dripping gasoline, and went over to Poncho. They conversed for a moment amongst themselves as Roscoe sat silently, watching, waiting for his death.

“What are these fuckin' bastards talking about?” he asked himself as he began to get impatient. He knew his fate was leading toward his demise, and it was just killing him to wait any longer. It was torture for him to just sit there not knowing what they were going to do to him, and to know that he would have to bear with whatever they had planned. As his thoughts started getting more and more rapid in his mind, his entire body grew tense and he began to cry uncontrollably. When he looked up at Don P., ashamed of his appearance, they'd begun making their way to the exit. He suddenly became calm, let out a sigh of relief, and then thought to himself, Thank you, God. They're going to let me live.

Just as Roscoe's hysterical cries came to an end Don P. stopped at the doorway. They stood there for a second before El turned around and looked into Roscoe's eyes with a grin on his face.

“Oops,” he said, snapping his finger as if he'd forgotten something. “It almost slipped my mind. Catch this, you rat mu'fucka.”

He flicked the cigarette at him as they both laughed wildly. They watched closely as Roscoe yelled and fought to get free, just to make an attempt at
putting out his flaming carcass. He pulled at the pipe he'd been tied to as pieces of his skin burned to the wall and peeled off his body. The smell of burning flesh and the screams he let out didn't break Don's and P.'s concentration once, as they left conversing of their findings. They left him on the floor ablaze with no regard, and with only one thing in mind: contacting Spits as soon as possible.

My cell phone rang around 4:40 a.m. as Ginger and I were about to roll over to go back to sleep. It was Poncho. He sounded a bit distracted and confused as he spoke, but I knew it had to be serious. He said that he had something important to tell me, and that it couldn't even wait until later in the morning. Disregarding the numerous requests by Ginger for me to stay in bed, I got dressed and ready to leave. I had business to handle. I reassured her that I wouldn't have kept it from her if something were wrong and that there was no reason to worry. I told her to go back to sleep, and then yelled a promise to speak to her later as I shut the front door.

Roscoe had made some serious accusations after the beating he'd taken that night. He'd said a lot of shit that Don P. didn't want to sit on—not even for the rest of the night. When I finally met up with them, it was 6:00 a.m. We met at Baychester Diner on Baychester Avenue and Boston Road.

“What's good, son?” I asked as I walked toward the entrance from the parking lot.

“Good?” asked Poncho. “Ain't nothin' good, dog. Your boy Roscoe made sure of that shit.”

“Where that nigga Roscoe at, anyway?”

“Oh, you don't have to worry about him, dog,” answered El. “You won't ever hear any more negativity from that hot boy, feel me?”

Don P. chuckled a bit, and then we all went inside the diner for breakfast. After we'd been seated and placed our orders, Don P. began to run down the specifics of the get-together from earlier in the morning.

It seemed as though Little Jay had noticed that the profit from the spot he worked on 227th Street had been coming up short the last couple of
weeks. What stood out was that the amount was always the same, five percent. If they estimated thirty grand, at the end of the night they would only have $28,500. The rest of the Family never noticed this because Little Jay would always make up the difference out of his own pocket. He wanted to find out who was the thief before he raised any eyebrows, and then he'd report them. He figured out that whenever he sent Roscoe to drop off, that's when their profits took a loss. The night he was arrested was the first night he'd decided not to send Roscoe on the drop-off, but he never got a chance to report because he was taken through the system that night. When Don P. were done explaining the story up until this point, I was surprised but didn't feel that it deserved as much importance as they were placing on it.