The Dying Ground (3 page)

Oliver reached for the remote control, and all eyes turned to the television set suspended above the shampoo bowls. In addition to the grooming services of the salon, Cutty also ran what he called a “sporting establishment.”

“Show time!” We all watched the television screen as a string of Thoroughbreds stepped onto Bay Meadows racetrack in preparation for the opening race.

“All bets in, gentlemen,” Oliver announced, from the front of the shop.

On his cue the gathered men stood up, marked their seats with personal items, and placed crumpled bills inside an empty fish tank.

“Check out that specimen there. Number nine. Pharaoh’s Jewels. Have you ever seen horseflesh that pretty?” Oliver gazed in admiration at the favored horse.

“Those ponies ain’t got nothing on Maceo’s aunties. When
I was coming up we called ’em Redbone Redfield Racehorses. Fine, fine, fine, every last one of ’em.” Cutty licked his lips in admiration. “Hotbloods!”

The gamblers in the room chuckled at the racetrack term for Thoroughbred horses. I was used to the litany about my hard-living, hard-loving aunties, so I just smiled. The men on the streets knew them as the good-looking, hard-drinking party girls they were, but to me all five of them were my mother, my own mother, the third daughter out of six, having died of a drug overdose the day after my birth.

“Which one is your favorite?” Cutty paused to wait for Oliver’s answer.

Oliver considered for a moment. “The double whammy! Them twins, Josephine and Cornelia.

“Here we go!” Oliver’s yell cut through the banter. “Devil’s Folly!” He pointed toward the screen as a long shot crossed the finish line, a horse with a name to match my sense of doom.

“Who woulda thought.” He quickly scanned the list to see the lone name next to that of the winning horse. He looked my way. “Well, I’ll be damned. Somebody actually picked that old hag. The purse goes to Maceo …”

“… Albert Bouchaund Redfield the First,” Cutty finished. “What’s the total?”

Oliver flipped through the crumpled bills. “Ninety dollars …”

“… and a free haircut,” I chimed in, “and a jump to the head of this line.”

Before he could answer, the doorbell announced a new customer. I was surprised to see my best friend, Holly, stroll through the front door—surprised since he considered Cutty’s to be the birthplace of bad luck.

Holly’s feminine name masked the wild-hearted boy I’d known since second grade. His real name was Jonathan Ford,
but he was nicknamed, thus named according to the streets, for the East Oakland neighborhood where he was raised: Seventy-ninth and Holly, referred to as the Kill Zone even by Oakland’s young mayor, technically the 34th District and a plague to the police department.

At the age of seven, Jonathan saw a fleeting image of nearby Berkeley on the local news. He liked the tree-lined streets, the students walking down Telegraph Avenue, and the cleanliness. Simple as that, he decided Berkeley was where he wanted to live.

He walked to East Fourteenth and caught the first bus he saw. Pure luck had it headed to downtown Oakland, the point of exchange for many city routes. The 43 was the first bus to happen along and Jonathan climbed on. He jumped off at a park when he spotted a group of young boys playing bases. At that time Bushrod Park was second home to a ragtag crew of running buddies, led by myself and Billy Crane, my partner in crime since I’d learned to pick my own friends. It was at least a mile shy of the Berkeley border, but Billy and I welcomed him as a new kid in the neighborhood, and he let us believe that story. It was an entire week before we realized he was a stray, but by that time the three of us had melted into a trio. He was newly christened Holly and became a permanent resident in my Dover Street household. My grandparents, able to recognize need when they saw it, welcomed him with open arms.

He became an honorary Redfield so quickly that many people forgot we weren’t brothers, though we looked nothing alike. He lived in a long, lean frame and had the sharp, wolfy features of his own uncles. Even way back then he favored the simplicity of two colors, black or beige, and he mastered the art of girls years before I could even stumble through introductions.

In a flat-out foot race regarding women I came in dead last to Holly and Billy, but that meant nothing until it meant everything,
and Billy drifted away little by little while Holly remained family.

He was included and loved by my granddaddy until he was seen, at the age of seventeen, with a telltale wad of money in his hand. My word-stingy grandfather didn’t preach or yell. He simply looked at the roll of hundreds and said, “Looks like you got enough money to live on your own.” Holly moved out that night, too sensible to take it personally.

Holly’s foray into the drug game came after Billy’s and escalated once he moved out, but it never affected my love or loyalty to him. He chose his path, and I chose mine. And as he graduated through the ranks of his chosen profession, I entered my first year at UC Berkeley. We continued to navigate each other’s worlds with the confidence and ease of best friends who were really brothers. There was no place he couldn’t go with me, and I knew he believed the same.

As Holly entered Cutty’s, he lifted his chin in the silent Oakland greeting. I returned the salute and registered the shell-shocked look in his eye that years of friendship helped me recognize.

He looked at me across the crowded shop. “Man, Maceo.” His voice broke. “Billy’s dead, man. Somebody killed Billy Crane last night.”

“Where’s Flea?” I asked, not hearing the panic in my words.

T
he year 1989 was already shaping into a paranoid’s wet dream. Some doomsayers claimed that the world was racing toward its conclusion by way of Tiananmen Square, the Alaskan oil spill, AIDS, George Bush, Manuel Noriega, Howard Beach, and, in some corners, New Kids on the Block. But for me it was simply hearing Holly say that Billy was dead.

Billy had stopped being family long ago, at least by the strict definitions of friendship, but we were still related through the streets and memories, through people we loved and hated and a community smaller than either of us ever realized.

Billy was a drug dealer by trade but much more than those two words could describe. He strictly adhered to an honor-among-thieves code that had faded fast in the gangsta rap eighties. The creed “Vengeance is mine” had nothing to do with Billy or his way of doing business.

His legend was born when he was robbed after a drug deal with a new customer named Clarence Mann, a frowning,
serious-minded dealer from San Francisco’s notorious Hunters Point. Mann gave Billy forty thousand dollars toward a purchase of cocaine. Billy left to pick up the product, promising to return within twenty minutes.

On his way back to the meeting place, Billy was accosted at a stoplight by four hooded men. He was not harmed, but they got away with Billy’s money and an equal amount of narcotic. The obvious suspect was Mann, but Billy never voiced that thought. And while the unwritten rule of the street excused Billy the debt, he paid Mann’s forty thousand dollars out of his own money.

His reputation was made by that one act. There wasn’t a dealer in the Bay who would gain a thing by double-crossing the old schooler. The resulting enemies would run too deep to ever make a profit.

So, now, news of Billy’s death telegraphed the very real possibility of a street war; the deafening silence in the shop legitimized the fact. We all knew the town would divide into camps, either for or against the killers, and the vast drug territory that fell under Billy’s jurisdiction was up for grabs the moment steel met flesh.

I tried to walk toward Holly, but I couldn’t move. The news froze me in place. The doomsayers could scream all they wanted about an apocalypse, but closer to home the chaos of 1989 manifested itself to me in Billy’s murder. It also propelled Oakland into the big time. With his death we shot past our own personal best of 146 killings. In a year not yet over, Billy was the tie-breaker that guaranteed us the same notoriety as New York, Miami, and D.C.

Monty stepped in front of me, blocking my view of the door. “What happened? What you mean, he’s dead?”

“Just what was said. Somebody blew the motherfucker’s brains out.”

I couldn’t see the door, but I immediately recognized the voice.

Orlando “Smokey” Baines stood behind Holly, grinning and savoring the news of Billy’s demise. He looked like a coal mountain, six five, a solid three hundred and twenty pounds constantly stuffed into green tailored suits, sloe-eyed, with gold hoops in each ear and the canines missing on either side of his mouth.

He wore his size well after years of high school and college football, but his career had been cut short at blond blue-eyed Arizona State after too much hand-to-hand combat with women a third his size. Rumors persisted that he still hadn’t mastered that nasty habit. In short, Smokey was a goon, and there were few people who welcomed his company on this or that side of the grave.

It was a crime to hear of Billy’s death in his presence.

Smokey inched forward and blocked out all the customers gathered at the door, clamoring for any news Holly had to offer.

“I heard the same thang myself.” Smoky ran his hand over his goatee, barely suppressing the grin at his lips. He made a pistol with his diamond-clad right hand. “Pow!”

I saw Monty shaking in agony. Fury raced through his body, but it would take every man in the shop to save him from Smokey if he decided to make a stupid move.

“Man, shut the fuck up.” Holly turned to Smokey with pure anger replacing the white in his eyes. Holly’s odds, one on one, were about as bad as Monty’s, but Holly had always loved the edge and the charge of danger.

“Oh, you wanna get bad, huh? Act all upset. You should be upset. You was the one talking all that ying-yang about hooking Billy up with Mexicans.” Smokey paused effectively, then grinned. “What? Didn’t think I knew?”

Holly’s stance was still aggressive but Smokey’s knowledge
of his business plans had taken the air out of his menace. Smokey’s words were true. Holly had been the first to approach Billy about moving toward Mexico, but their styles and beliefs, and Billy’s refusal to take the backseat, had killed the deal at its inception. No one knew that but us—or so we had thought.

“Man, what happened?” Monty’s voice was a plea.

Smokey spit at his feet. “Yeah, tell this whining bitch something before I knock him out.”

“Why you bringing all that drama in here? Speaking ill of the dead.” Cutty gripped a natural comb in both hands.

“Old man, please,” Smokey responded.

“Old man nothing! This is my place of business!”

Smokey laughed at him and took measure around the room. Very few people met his eye. He smirked. “Oh, it’s like that, huh? Just like that.” He snapped a finger. “Billy a kingpin, up there with Felix Mitchell, Nicky Barnes, and all them. Don’t work for me, but y’all can spread your ass cheeks if you want to.

“Billy was steadily shutting people down. He had every corner of this town sewed up. Couldn’t nobody make a move or get near his connection, but now y’all gonna sit here and make him a hero.

“I ain’t gonna front now and act like he was my ace. Didn’t like him yesterday. Don’t like him today.”

“Now ain’t the time, Smokey.” Monty tried edging toward the door. Smokey stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

“Your boy thought he was better than people.” He tried to mimic Billy’s sleepy speech pattern and his strict work ethic. “Won’t sell to pregnant women, won’t come off no rock to get my dick sucked, ain’t selling to people wit’ kids in the car. All that. Bullshit. He was selling cocaine. Crack! He wadn’t no better than the next nigga.”

Before Smokey finished his speech, Monty had muscled his way blindly out the front door.

“Where’s Flea? Is Flea dead?” My own voice sounded like it belonged to someone else.

“I ain’t heard nothing about Flea.” Holly flicked his eyes toward Smokey in warning but I couldn’t stop myself.

“Nothing?” I asked again.

“Oh, that’s right. You had a jones for Billy’s girl.” Smokey threw his head back and laughed.

Holly ignored the disrespect. “All I know, Billy was at a stoplight on Alcatraz and College. Somebody shot him in the head. They found him slumped over the steering wheel. He had his pistol, money, and gold on ’im—everything.”

“Then it wasn’t a jack?”

Holly shook his head as patrons rushed from the shop, shocked by the news, feeling the old tentacles of Cutty’s curse.

Cutty spoke up as his shop bled customers. “What you talkin’ ’bout, youngblood? Where you hear this?”

“Just heard it.”

I grabbed my cap, forgetting my winnings and everything else as I rushed toward the door. “I gotta find Flea.”