Paper Chasers (10 page)

“I want one of those condos over there,” I said.

“Holz, keep dreaming,” Xavier pessimistically said. “The rent in those buildings is like two thousand a month for a one bedroom apartment.”

“That ain't jack!” I said.

“Yeah, a'ight.” X laughed.

I had figured along with Latiefe, that Dwight had in fact made the purchase. Being that Xavier was in the car with us, we all knew not to discuss what it was that Dwight had in his hands. We didn't discuss anything because none of us wanted Xavier to think that we had used him. We also didn't want him to get nervous because nervous driving would have attracted the police. So our mouths stayed zipped. Although I must admit I had to catch myself one time. I almost let it slip. I was so anxious.

“Dee, what did you . . . ?” I started to ask. I almost blew up the whole script, but fortunately I caught myself and abruptly stopped speaking in mid-sentence.

As we arrived on our block, Xavier asked us what our plans were for the rest of the night.

“We'll probably just chill at Randy's crib or something like that,” I informed him.

After X parked the car, we got out and slapped and clasped X five before bouncing.

“Y'all be cool,” Xavier instructed.

We all said good-bye to X. As we approached Randy's house, Latiefe and I were both filled to the brim with excitement, but Dwight displayed no emotion whatsoever, nor did he say a word. He wouldn't budge on the subject of what he'd purchased.

“Call everybody down,” Dwight finally said in a classic
Godfather
kind of way.

Latiefe hustled to the phone and started sending for everybody in the crew.

“Yo, Donnie, what up? This is Tee, we got it . . . Yeah . . . Look, don't worry about all of that, just come down to Randy's crib right now! And yo, try to find Erik and the rest of them,” Latiefe instructed.

More phone calls were made and after about thirty minutes or so, Randy's basement was filled to the brim with Fourth Crew members. At that point Dwight was finally ready to budge as he continued to speak in
Godfather
-like tones.

“A'ight everybody, stand around the table,” Dwight commanded.

We all stood around as Dwight sat at the clear glass dinner table. Like hawks we watched Dwight's every move as we saw him unroll the brown bag. Our eyes were locked on him. It was as if everything was happening in slow motion. He reached his hand inside the bag and pulled out what looked like a white brick. After placing the brick looking object on the table, he again reached inside the brown paper bag, only at that point he pulled out what looked like three Ziploc bags filled with green looking dirty crap. Actually, it was marijuana packed in clear wrappings.

Dwight placed the weed on the table right next to the white brick looking object. Then he proceeded to turn the brown bag upside down, spilling the rest of its contents onto the table. Hundreds of tiny glassine envelopes poured out, as did a giant Ziploc bag filled with empty crack vials and there were plastic coated wire ties and much more paraphernalia.

The room was totally silent. None of us wanted to disrespect the Godfather by speaking out of turn. Dwight then crumbled up the brown bag which was now empty. He folded his hands together and placed them behind his head, while at the same time folding his right leg on top of his left knee.

“This is it, fellas. Dig in!”

Instantly we all started jumping around going crazy.

“Yes!” we were shouting and hollering like women. “We're gonna get paid. Fourth Crew! Fourth Crew! Roof roof roof!” We shouted and barked like dogs. We sounded as if we were in the studio audience at
The Arsenio Hall Show
.

“Calm down,” Earl said, as he tried to restore some type of order in the basement.

“Dwight, what's up? How much did they charge you?” Earl questioned.

“Well, for a quarter of a kee I paid sixty-five hundred, and for the three pounds of weed they charged me four thousand. All of the empty vials and empty nickel, dime, and twenty bags he gave us for free.”

Dwight explained that Mob Style had informed him that if we became regular customers, then they would give us better deals and cheaper prices.

“Bet,” Latiefe said. “So from now on we'll just try to deal only with Mob Style when we buy our work.”

“Tomorrow we're bagging this up,” Dwight stated. “Oh yeah, we need a triple beam scale. We also need some baking soda, but we're not touching anything until tomorrow!”

“Here,” he said as he proceeded to peel off forty dollars for each of us. That's what was left over from the money we'd gathered.

“Yo, I spoke to my cousin in Brooklyn,” Earl said. “And when we're ready to roll, they'll be ready. Everything is set up out there.”

“A'ight, cool. So tomorrow we'll get this ready to sell,” Dwight stated. “But as for now, let's all relax and go do whateva tonight. Let's hang out, chase some tails, I don't know.”

I really don't remember exactly where everyone went that night. Erik and Randy probably spent the night at some female's house. The rest of the crew probably went to a club in Manhattan called Bently's.

As for me, I went straight home to try to call Sabine. I tried unsuccessfully for an hour to get through to her. Her line constantly stayed busy. I always thought to myself that her house had to be the only house in Queens without call waiting.

After taking a shower I lay in my bed. I placed my right hand just above my eyebrows and slowly moved my hand back toward the top of my skull. Looking toward the ceiling I gazed into my dark bedroom. What in the world was happening to my life?

Lord, why am I letting this happen? What am I doing with my life?
I wondered.

I continued to lay with my eyes wide open. I would blink once every three minutes or so. I guess my brain and my body were exhausted from all of the recent going-ons. I finally closed my eyes and said a silent prayer before going to sleep for the night.

Sunday morning—the last day in June—and Fourth Crew spent it working. We worked all throughout the morning and afternoon. What exactly were our jobs? Well, there were many different jobs that needed to be carried out. I, for one, was a bagger. All I did was sit and wait for Dwight, the cook, to finish cooking up the crack rocks. After he finished, I would place the crack into vials, with some vials being worth ten dollars and some worth twenty dollars. After I put the crack into their vials, I set up packages. I made two-hundred-dollar packages. For example, I took twenty ten-dollar vials of crack and put them into one bag. Then that one bag would be a two-hundred-dollar package.

I also made packages that contained cocaine in the powder form. For that I would get the cut the cocaine that Latiefe or Earl had cut and measured out into half ounces and grams and even half gram measurements, which is known simply as a half. One gram of coke sold for about one hundred dollars and a half would run about forty dollars. With the halves and the grams I would do the same thing in terms of making up packages of two hundred dollars or more. But before I actually made the package, I would carefully place the small amounts of white powder into what is known as a twist. A twist is basically a snipped off corner piece of plastic that could hold grams and halves of powder cocaine, and it was bound with a plastic coated wire tie.

With a completed package, all one of the members of the crew had to do was take the package and deliver it or have it delivered to one of our dealers. After the package was delivered, we would just sit back and wait for our dealers to push it.

We planned to pay our workers forty dollars for every one hundred dollars that they sold. So calculations on a two-hundred-dollar package were simple to figure. No matter what the gross worth of the package was, we would always receive 60 percent, and our workers would get 40 percent.

So bagging was my job. Latiefe, Randy, and Earl's job was a bit more complex. They cut the cocaine and placed it on a scale. Being very precise, they would weigh out ounces and grams of coke. Those ounces and grams of coke were actually less than ounces and grams due to the fact that the coke was laced with something such as flour, soap powder, or baking soda. Baking soda, flour, and soap powder would water down the coke, so to speak. We had to lace the coke with something because pure coke could kill someone, which of course would have been bad for business.

Lacing the coke also allowed us to stretch our supply, which in turn generated larger profits. We had to be careful not to lace it with too much garbage, because we didn't want to diminish the power of the coke. Basically, lacing it with too much garbage would produce a weaker high, and a weak high would produce unhappy drug users, and unhappy drug users would produce a loss in sales, which would mean a drop in profits. Lacing was a tricky thing, and it required some skill because you had to realize that chances were when we purchased the coke from Mob Style, that they had already laced it themselves so that they too could make more money. It was safe to assume that we only had about 70 percent coke when we bought it from Mob Style, so to lace it some more had to be a careful process.

Anyway, those ounces and grams of laced coke were later bagged and ready to be sold. The net worth of one ounce of powder cocaine was about twenty-five hundred dollars. But keep in mind that that if we converted that same ounce into crack rocks, we could easily net three thousand dollars or more simply because one ounce of coke could cook up two hundred or more rocks.

Donnie and Erik were in charge of bagging nickel and dime bags of weed, which sold on the street for five dollars and ten dollars respectively. Kwame and Wiggie put together combined packages of crack and weed. A package of weed and crack consisted of anywhere between twenty nickel bags of weed and twenty dime vials of crack or more. Some packages were worth over a thousand dollars. In all, I would say that Latiefe, Earl, and Randy had the toughest job of all. The art of cutting and weighing out cocaine took a lot of skill.

J.P. cleaned up after us, making sure we didn't make too much of a mess. Every now and then he reminded us to go outside to get some fresh air. We needed fresh air more than anything simply because the smell of the narcotics, especially that of the crack that was being cooked, was enough to make anyone in the room feel high and drowsy. Taking a break to get fresh air was a good idea because if we were to get high and drowsy, it was sure to hamper production and diminish quality control.

The breaks were also used so that we could air out Randy's basement. We didn't want that smell getting trapped into the carpets and the walls. Plus, we didn't want the smell of drugs to build up to a point where the neighbors might possibly smell it. If any neighbors on our block had noticed the smell of the drugs, they would have definitely sought the assistance of the police. And believe me, a police presence was the last thing our crew wanted to see. There were enough drugs in Randy's basement to send us all to jail for a good amount of time. I mean two ounces of cocaine was a mandatory fifteen-year jail sentence. Mandatory!

Our hard work had finally paid off. After hours of working in the basement, our drugs were ready to hit the streets. It was pretty late—close to 7:00
P.M
.—but we had finally finished. We all assisted J.P. in cleaning up the basement. We restored the basement to a spit shine clean image. Cleaning up didn't take us long at all, I guess because there were so many of us.

“We're finished. Tomorrow morning this hits the streets!” Dwight emphatically stated. He also informed us that in the morning he and Donnie would deliver packages to our workers on Merrick Boulevard. He said that they would deliver it at a time when he thought all of our workers would be out on the street. Donnie advised him that our workers would be out bright and early and ready to hustle.

“Probably at six
A.M.
they'll be out there hustling,” Donnie said. “Hustlers are always up before the sun, getting their hustle on.”

Since my father was off from work every Monday, Latiefe asked me if I would be able to borrow my dad's car in the morning. I figured it would not be a problem, especially with him being off and everything.

The plan was for me to drive, escorted by Latiefe, Earl, and Randy, to our other two drug spots and make deliveries. We had nothing to worry about as far as getting caught was concerned because my father's station wagon wasn't flashy; therefore, we ran no risk of getting pulled over.

“First, we'll drive to Far Rockaway,” Latiefe said. “Then we'll hit Brooklyn.”

Even though the members in Fourth Crew weren't very important people, we all had beepers. For about the past two years we had all carried beepers just to keep up with the fad. But now with this drug thing we finally had a reason to get some real usage out of them.

Latiefe reminded us to make sure that all of our workers had at least one of the crew members' beeper numbers. That way if they ever ran out of drugs and needed to be replenished, they wouldn't have a problem contacting us. If they ever contacted us with the need for more drugs, we could then arrange somehow to get the drugs to them.

Latiefe also appointed himself as treasurer.

Every three days or so, he said that he would start going out to Far Rockaway and Brooklyn to collect our money from our workers. Donnie was put in charge of collecting the money from our twenty workers that we had stationed along the corners of Merrick Boulevard. However, once he collected the money, he would have to see to it that it was funneled back to Latiefe.

Latiefe told us that he would then count up the loot and divide it equally amongst those in the crew, and pay us accordingly. So every three days we expected to see dough in our pockets.

Personally, I felt that the job of treasurer should have been appointed to me. Not only was I better in mathematics, but I was the least likely to snake my boys by not dividing the money equally. I really feared that with Latiefe handling the money, we all wouldn't get our fair cuts.

Dwight reminded us that we had to flip our profits from the first week of upcoming business. It was all to be injected back into one big pool of money. That way, he said, we could purchase more drugs and purchase larger quantities of drugs, which in turn would mean more loot in our pockets.

We all agreed that the first week we wouldn't make any money. We were going to just pay our workers, and with the rest of the loot we were going to use it to “re-up,” a term which meant buy more drugs to replace the old supply.

Latiefe, the treasurer, said that after the first week he would start automatically deducting some money from us every three days. That money, he said, was to be set aside so that we wouldn't have to worry about needing enough money to re-up. In a sense, it would be like a forced savings, or getting taxes taken out of a paycheck every week.

So that was it. All was said that had to be said. The drugs were ready to be sold. Everyone knew exactly where they stood, and we all knew exactly where we wanted to go with our business. After tomorrow we would just sit back and wait for the money to roll in. But then Dwight made one more final point.

“We have to remember not to let our drug supply get too low. If it gets too low and our demand is high, we'll lose money. The moment we notice our supply getting low, we have to make a drug run in order to re-up.”

We all promised that we wouldn't get so wrapped up into the money whereas we would forget to keep a watchful eye on our supply.

July 1, 1991—I was up bright and early, dressed, and on my way to Randy's house. I knocked on Randy's door.

“Yo, who is it?”

“It's me, Holz. Are y'all open for business?”

“Yeah, we're open for business,” Randy answered. “What do you need?”

“Let me get four dimes.”

Randy opened the door and I slipped him forty dollars. He in turn gave me four vials of crack. Then we simultaneously started laughing.

“Open for business,” we said out loud as we slapped each other five.

It was already past nine in the morning. Donnie urged us to hurry up so that we could make our deliveries. Donnie and Dwight quickly departed for Merrick Boulevard.

“I got the keys to the wagon,” I said. “Come on, let's be out.”

We all piled into my father's car, each of us packing heat. We were each supplied with enough drugs to stockpile a pharmacy. We were headed to Far Rockaway, and then to Brooklyn's Flatbush section.

We dropped off our drugs to Gangsta in Far Rockaway and to Earl's cousin in Brooklyn. After being introduced to our workers, we stood around and cracked jokes for a while in order to ease the tension. Then we asked them if they needed anything like guns or beepers.

Latiefe informed them that he would be coming around every couple of days to collect our loot. He told them to make sure that they kept track of how many packages we gave them, and the amount they were worth.

“I'm paying y'all forty dollars for every one hundred dollars,” Latiefe said.

Since we were done telling jokes and snapping on each other, Latiefe gave a stern warning to the pushers.

“There's one thing I ain't gonna tolerate. I ain't tryin' to tolerate any of y'all cats coming up short with my money! I don't give a damn if y'all are only five dollars short! I ain't having that! And I won't be tryin to hear it! I'll know how much work I gave y'all, so all of y'all better come correct when it's time to collect!”

Latiefe then gave out the beeper numbers of some of the members in our crew and he instructed the workers.

“If y'all ever run out of work, beep one of these numbers. Tell the person where y'all are at, and they'll get y'all some more work. If y'all get robbed, beep one of us and tell us right away . . . And Yo! Word up! Word is bond! Listen real close to this. If y'all don't remember anything else that I say or what I have said so far, remember this: when it comes time to collect the money, I don't want y'all to give the cash to nobody but me! Me and only me! Not unless I tell y'all otherwise. A'ight!?”

All of them nodded their heads in agreement. Then one cat who was gonna be working for us sounded like a wiseguy, though.

“Yeah, yeah, a'ight, money,” he answered. “I'm sayin', we ain't got no problem with that. It's the same ol' same ol'. If you paying us forty beans for every hun-ed, then it's gonna be all love, knaaimean? You'll get your money. Don't worry about that.”

Latiefe had been brief and to the point. He sounded very hardnosed and serious, which was a good thing 'cause we wanted our workers to be loyal to us. The only way that we were gonna get that loyalty and gain the proper respect from our streetwise workers was if we let them know straight off the bat that we meant strictly business. Having their respect meant that they wouldn't try to run off with our drugs. It also meant that they would be very punctual with our money, making sure never to come up short.

Fear and control had to be instilled into our workers if we were going to gain their total respect. How was that fear and control going to be kept intact? One way was by giving anyone who came up short, what is known as a “crack smile.”

A crack smile was a deep cut that ran from a person's ear lobe all the way to the corner of their mouth. A crack smile, along with a good butt whipping, more than likely would do the trick. If that ever proved not to be enough, then the death penalty would have been the only other surefire way to gain maximum respect from our workers.

For the record, the average age of our workers was about nineteen. We had workers ranging from as young as twelve all the way up to cats who were in their early twenties. They all had to be treated the same. No one was to be treated special.