Trickery (6 page)

Freeze knew their young clientele could go through that much ice in just a day or so. Bizz was booming, and they were drawing in droves of white boys and Asian kids from colleges all over Manhattan and the Bronx.

“Let me see,” Salida sauntered over to the table where he was working. She tipped around cautiously on her toes, careful to avoid any of the chemicals and paraphernalia used to produce their lethal product.

“You burn any yet?”

Freeze nodded. He had burned a small amount, but he hadn’t smoked none of that shit. He mighta been a dope dealer but he wasn’t no fool. He had been around hardcore drugs all his life, but the most he did was fuck with a little weed and occasionally hit a couple of lines of blow. Besides, he was way too fuckin’ handsome to get high on his own supply. That shit woulda had him walking around digging holes in his face tryna get at the imaginary bugs crawling around under his skin. Nah, he was cool on all that. Give him some good Cush any day of the week, but smoking meth was for the dummies of the world.

“Want a tester?” Freeze asked Salida, partitioning off a small portion and scooping it into a small vial that was stamped with her custom-designed neon-pink serpent logo.

“Yeah,” she said. “Give me two. One crystal and one powder.”

“You need a dun dun?” he asked as he passed her the drugs.

“No. I already have one,” Salida said as she thought about Nooni who was still chained up in the Dungeon and jonesing like a feen. She took the first vial Freeze gave her and stuck it inside her jacket pocket, and she placed the second one inside the top drawer in the cut-room’s office. She glanced at Freeze and narrowed her eyes. This new shit better be as good as he said it was. Some of the early batches they had cooked up had just been pretty good in terms of quality, but Salida had wanted more than good. At the time wasn’t nobody complaining or coming back for a refund, but they weren’t turning flips over her product neither.

That didn’t sit well with Salida at all. She was a boss bitch and she wanted her customers to be straight up feenin’ for her shit. Itchin’ and scratchin’ for it. She had wanted they asses to turn flips, do headstands, and break out with some cartwheels too.

So that’s when she did some research and got creative and came up with a bright idea for a new formula. Yeah, it was risky, but so the hell
what
! Life was risky. She stared at the pink lump of powder sitting on the table before her. The sweet aroma of a strawberry milkshake rose to greet her nose and she grinned. It had been a kick-ass idea to start dying her powder and her crystals pink. She called her product Strawberry Snake, and between the sweet smell, the hot, tantalizing color, and the sexy dice-tossing snake logo on the package, it made her shit memorable and caused it to stand out on the market. Not to mention the special ingredient she had added to make the high it gave her customers simply unforgettable!

She laughed out loud. Her reorganization of the G-Spot was nearly complete, and she couldn’t wait to get this new batch out on the streets and to distribute it to her customers on Rave nights. Those mindless youngsters were going to suck her strawberry product up with a crazy straw!  Tapping the vial she had placed in her jacket pocket, Salida unlocked the cut-room door and tipped her hips down the stairs.

$$$$$

The minute Salida was gone Freeze Dodson jumped his ass into action. “Crazy bitch!” he growled under his breath as he glanced at the closed door and then jetted over to the stack of boxes that lined one wall. Salida wasn’t nothing but a troublemaker. A crazy-ass shit-starter! That toxic shit she was selling was gonna
kill
some goddamn body!

Freeze slid two boxes off the top, then dug into his front pocket and pulled out the carefully printed list of ingredients that he had written down. He folded the list and slipped it through the crack of one of the boxes, and then glanced at his watch and frowned as he shook his head.

C’mon, niggah
! Freeze muttered under his breath. His brother Naj was supposed to show up ten minutes ago, and even though he hated it that the boy was all the time runnin’ late, he was grateful that Naj hadn’t shown up while him and Salida was conducting their lil bizz.

As Freeze carried both of the specially-constructed boxes over to the window, he thought about his elderly grandmother who was back at the crib sitting in her wheelchair with a tool pressed to her dome. The boxes were light. Real light. He set them down gently to make sure the objects inside were in no danger of breaking. Freeze put one box on top of the other, then secured them together by wrapping a nylon cord around them as tightly as he could, and then he left one end real long.

He was a loyal soldier and he wasn’t tryna cross Salida, but he wasn’t tryna get his own fuckin’ grandmama popped neither. He remembered the look of stark terror in the old lady’s eyes when he walked into her crib that morning and found her trembling in her wheelchair as two of Flex’s capos force-fed her breakfast.

The smell of a shitty diaper was in the air, and the home health nurse who took care of the old lady six days a week was stretched out on the floor with her ankles bound and her wrists tied behind her back. A thick white gag had been stuffed in her mouth, and bloody knots had swelled up all over her forehead.

But them Divine Nine fuckers had done a whole lot more than just crack the young nurse in the dome with their pistols. They’d shot the poor girl through both her eyes, and half her brains had sprayed out the back of her head and splattered all over his Gramma’s swollen ankles and feet.

“Dig, I want two things,” Flex’s right-hand man Dre had told Freeze as he stroked Gramma’s face with his warm metal tool. Standing beside him, that crazy bitch they called Lil Lee was forcing spoonfuls of cold, lumpy oatmeal into the old lady’s mouth. “I want the formula for that shit y’all been cookin’ at the G-Spot, and about five hunnerd of them lil snake vials y’all be dishin’ that shit off in.”

There wasn’t a moment’s hesitation in Freeze when he agreed to their demands. His grandmother had raised him and Naj up from babies. Their own moms had taken them to McDonald’s for fries one day, then left them waiting for their order as she skipped town with a Panamanian drug lord and never came back.

Gramma was all they had in the world, and relief washed over Freeze as his cell phone vibrated and he read a text message from his brother.

Naj was downstairs, and he was ready for his delivery.

Raising the window up as high as it would go, Freeze looked down into the back alley below, and then pushed the boxes of vials outta the window and used the nylon cord to lower them down into the waiting arms of his baby brother.

CHAPTER 6

It had just stopped raining and the streets were still wet when Lil Lee stepped out of her little black hatchback on Lenox Avenue and tipped her round ass around the corner. Dressed in a thigh-baring lilac skirt, black tights, and a black off-the-shoulder tank, her hips swayed and her breasts bounced as she strutted down the block dodging rain puddles in her six-inch heels. She was rocking her accessories to the max too. She had an expensive silk stole draped over her shoulders, and twin 9mm Glocks were strapped to the outside of both of her upper thighs.

Earlier in the day she had attended an emergency meeting that Flex had called with her, Dre, and Chickie, and now she was hyped as fuck and ready to get some shit popping. Lil Lee was a loyal soldier, so when Flex told her what kind of caper he wanted to pull to run Salida McKay outta bizzness, she had been one hunnerd percent down with his program.

But a few minutes later, when she turned around and told that niggah Flex that she wanted to pull a slick move on Trey and Chiney Jackson, he had bucked on her and told her to stand the fuck down.

“Why I gotta fall back?” Lil Lee had barked with icy anger flying from her eyes. “That mothafuckin’ Trey snatched my fuckin’ daughter, Flex! He touched my
blood
. That niggah gots to pay for that!”

She had been stunned at the look that crossed her boss’s face when he waved her off and told her to forget about that what Trey had done.

“Fuck all that bullshit,” Flex had said with an unconcerned shrug. “You too focused on that niggah. Your numbers been sliding ever since that shit happened, and that’s what the fuck you need to be worrying about. Besides, it’s your fault you let somebody get that close up on your daughter. You need to keep a better eye on that little girl. Word.”

And even now, Flex’s reproachful words were burning in her ears as Lil Lee’s sharp eyes scanned her drug sector and she judged the level of heat on the streets. The rain had driven a lot of people indoors, but there was still a lot of die-hard meth addicts and pipe heads who didn’t mind getting wet just as long as they could get high.

Lil Lee’s face hardened as a dude-looking chick in baggy jeans and an oversized Polo shirt came around the corner and approached one of her best soldiers looking to conduct some business. The chick was light-skinned and had one of them telltale buzz cuts that a lot of stud females wore. Lil Lee’s mind whirred as she observed the deal go down. She watched closely as the girl copped her shit, and then dapped Maleek out like a man and bopped her ass back around the corner.

On the outside Lil Lee appeared to be handling her business like the cool professional that she was, but fumes were rising off her as she stared a hole in the girl’s back. When the dyke had disappeared, Lil Lee got with her trap boys one by one and discreetly went about picking up their excess cash and replenishing the street supply.

“Wassup?” Maleek greeted her as they walked up the steps of the drug spot and made their switch. Lil Lee frowned as she collected a thick knot of money from her very best corner boys. She was about to lose Maleek from her team, and she hated that Flex had chosen to promote him from a slanga to becoming a full member of the Divine Nine, because Maleek was one cutthroat niggah who truly belonged out on the streets.

“Nah, wassup with you? You getting ready to do big things, huh?” Lil Lee said as she grinned at the tall, lanky young boy.

“Yep,” Maleek said coolly. “Today is my last day hustling the block.”

Lil Lee was gonna miss her best street soldier when he took over Cee Low’s old drug sector, and she knew he would be damn good at controlling his crew.

“Yo,” check this out,” she told him smoothly as her brain kicked into deep-scheme mode. The details of her meeting with Flex churned in her mind and she felt a wave of defiance rise up in her. What better way for her to get some payback and profit-up her pockets at the same time?

“That was Chiney Jackson you was transacting with a minute ago, wasn’t it? She be hitting you up on the regular? I thought her brother put a stop to all her buys?”

Maleek shrugged and shook his head without a lick of concern over Chiney, Trey, or nobody else. “Yo, I don’t get involved in no family drama, man. If she buying then I’m selling. Word.” 

Lil Lee nodded and a spark of excitement flashed in her eyes as she saw an opportunity to give Flex her ass to kiss and to do unto Trey Jackson exactly as that mothafucka had done unto her.

“Damn right. Stacking cream is how you stay in bizz in this game. Check it out, my manz Fitted is gonna take over your spot when you leave tonight. And when he comes on, I want Chiney to cop all her packages from him and only him, you got that? I’ma tell Fitted, but I wish I woulda caught you before Chiney left so you coulda told her that.”

Maleek shrugged again. “It ain’t no thang. I’ll be conducting bizz with her again before the night is over. Chiney’s eating for two, nah’m sayin? Her bitch is a real feen. That jawn’ll be back as soon as her last hit runs out. I’ll tell her.”

With her eyes still on the corner, Lil Lee was thinking hard. This block used to be one of her top money-making territories, but business had been bad ever since J-Ugly had taken that ride off the rooftop of their main drug spot. Just remembering that shit made her frown up her pretty face and narrow her eyes into deadly slits. She didn’t appreciate what her drop in sales revenue had done to her ranking in the Divine Nine, and she damn sure didn’t appreciate what that niggah Trey Jackson had done when he snatched her little girl off a school bus and took her hostage neither.

But what she didn’t appreciate the most was what her fuckin’ boss had told her to do about it.
Stand down
. She smirked as she struck a sexy pose in her six-inch heels. Stand down, hell. Leandra Lee didn’t stand down for no niggah! Matter fact, she was about to raise the fuck up. And raise up hard.

“Cool,” Lil Lee told Maleek as she walked away with a grin. “Tell Chiney. Make sure you do that.” Trickery was about to be a real mothafucka! Lil Lee didn’t give a shit what Flex had said. She was making plans to go after Trey’s blood the same way that mothafucka had went after hers!

CHAPTER 7

It was dull and rainy the morning Slick Sallie finally arrived in New York City, and he was damn glad that the city of Los Angeles was finally a thing of his past. He had driven across the entire country and had been on the road for so many days that he’d lost count. At some point, while driving through the state of Colorado, he had put in a call to one of his old Asian friends from Brooklyn. Lin was the son of an intelligence engineer, and they’d run a couple of Internet schemes together in the past. His great-grand father had bought up patches of real estate in Chinatown in the early 1900’s, and Lin had joined the family business as a slumlord building manager.

Sallie was looking for someplace to stay that was out of sight and deep in the cut, and Lin knew just the place. One of his old immigrant relatives from China had just died in her sleep, and her one-room walk-up apartment above a Chinese butcher store was vacant. The place wasn’t air-conditioned, but it had decent heat in the winter and best of all, it was already fully furnished. Lin was careful to inform Sallie that he had a waiting list of Chinese families fresh off the boat who were willing to pay top dollar to cram ten people inside the one-room flat, but because of their friendship and the big money that Sallie had promised to pay him, Lin was willing to hold the apartment for him.