CRAZY TIME
After the war, I decided I needed to hustle if I was going to make it to the college by eight a.m.. When I got to my car, I realized that my plans were about to change.
The phone held a message that would change my life forever. Those three little words, " new voice message", shown on my phone were about to be the catalyst to a bad scene. The message was from No. He told me he knew where the Double B's were.
No Joke had waited almost six months to find out where the Double B's were hiding. By chance, the girl that No had been kickin' it to that night lived upstairs from the apartment that the B's rented. No called me right away, told me where the apartment was and that he would expect me as soon as possible. I wanted absolutely no part in this escapade, but No wasn't asking a question, he was telling me what to do. No is my brother, so I had no choice. I was on my way.
The reason I was now on my way to help No get his long sought after revenge against the Double B's stemmed from an incident six months before. No had decided that he wanted to add to his income. No knew that he would never make phenomenal amounts of money in our business, because that's what I was doing, and he was only second in charge. No was trying to go off on his own and try to get into the ecstasy business. He figured that if he got the right connection, he could buy the pills for six dollars each, and sell them for at least fifteen dollars each. That's a very substantial profit. No asked me if I " was down" to make that money with him, but I refused. I had three reasons why I couldn't work for him.
The first reason was that I really didn't want to have anything to do with "E". If a person was caught in possession of twenty or more pills, that was a felony offense. They cops called it " drug trafficking", and I was all set with catching a bid.
The second reason I didn't want anything to do with this new venture had nothing to do with the drug. The reason was, that I had never heard of No's connection. No said they were a couple of kids from the suburbs that had put a chemistry major in college to profit. As a general rule, I didn't trust a suburban kid. They never understood the scale of the drug business, and because of that, they didn't respect it. They always assumed that their parents could get them out of any problem. Most of the time, they were right. But what could be seen as good luck for the B's, was actually more dangerous for us city kids. This was exactly the mindset that No's connections had.
The third reason that I wanted to stay away from this venture was because I looked at ecstasy as a drug. I know, you're probably shaking your head in disbelief because of my job, but, I am not a drug dealer. I sell marijuana. All I do is provide a mental enhancement/relaxation service at a reasonable price. What I don't do is sell gawky boys and horny girls, twenty-dollar pills of love and confidence.
No had no such hang-up's about the new source of income, and as a result, he contacted the Double B's.
The Double B's were two suburban kids named Brian and Bruce. They were rich kids that planned to lounge off their father's hard work and ample income. They had never worked a day in their lives, but still felt as if the world owed them money. They had a plan to sell the drugs out of their parent's house while they were at work. Let me repeat that. They were going to sell drugs out of their parent's house. Mom and Dad. Selling drugs in their house. Did I really need to elaborate on how far over their heads these kids had gotten themselves?
Anyway, No found these two idiots and they said they had one thousand pills to sell for six dollars each. No figured he could sell them to a couple of club kids and make a five dollar profit every time. It was a good plan. The only problem was the Double B's wouldn't accept the thousand up front and the rest on the cuff. No agreed to give all six thousand right away, thinking that these suburban kids didn't trust the shady city kids. No underestimated the stupidity of the Double B's.
When No went to the Double B's home, he went alone. I was out of town with Boo, and couldn't get away from her to have No's back. No walks into the house and the B's immediately shove a pill in his face and tell him to test it out. No pops the pill and thirty minutes later, he is rolling his face off. He exchanged the money for the product and promises to be back at least once a week for more.
Later that night, No sells two hundred of the pills to the first of his five club kid connections. The kid takes the pill right after he gives No the money. The club kid spits it on the ground in front of No and asks why he is trying to sell him baby aspirin? No realizes that the Double B's, suburban kids, had just beat him for six thousand dollars.
Fifteen minutes later, No is fifteen minutes away from the Double B's home. He is hoping, for their sake, that it is some kind of mistake and they give him back every penny.
No approached the door, fuming with anger, only to see a middle aged man open the door before No even knocked. The man was a bit curious why a young man was at his house on a Tuesday night after midnight. The old man told No that he had never heard of Bruce and Brian, and that he didn't have any sons. The man did tell know that if he stuck around long enough, he would call the cops, and maybe one of them would be named Bruce or Brian?
The distorted look of rage on No's face was probably the same look that he had on his face when I looked at him sitting in his car six months and one voice-mail later.
I opened the door and easily slid into the passenger seat. It was seven in the morning, but No, like myself, had never gone to sleep the night before. You see, if we had a normal, nine to five jobs, we could sleep normal hours. But we didn't. We are hustlers, and hustlers have no set hours. At some points, we would go three days without anything more than a quick nap, but then we could disappear for a week, any week, to recuperate. People infuriate me when they assume that I don't do any work. Trust me, it's hard work. Being a hustler, is a hustle. For example, let's examine the story I just told you about No. Try to tell me that he wasn't working hard. No had tried to engage in a simple, honest transaction, and here he is, six months later, sitting in a parking lot at seven in the morning waiting for a couple of posers. It is all a hustle.
I'll be totally honest with you at this point. I was scared as hell when I got into the car and saw the look on No's face. I knew that he was all about business today. He was here to make his money back. If the B's didn't have his money, he was going to take anything they had instead. He might still take everything, even if they had the money.
I kind of felt sorry for the Double B's. I mean, they were just two naïve kids, who came up with a clever scam one night while they were driving around in dad's Lexus. I would bet that they never thought about the consequences of their actions, especially if they beat the wrong person. Believe me, No was the wrong person. No is the only person who could put an action on One Punch. Many times I had considered asking him for help with One when he found out that I had deflowered his baby sister. I decided that I would have to deal with that like a man. Whenever No got involved in a situation, it always became much more serious. A good example of that, is, right now.
There was five minutes of awkward silence between us as we sat in the car. I decided to try to lighten the mood by teasing No. I started to nod my head and suck my teeth before saying, in a disappointed tone, " beat by suburb kids". If my intention was to get a rise out of No, I failed miserably. He didn't say a word. The only reaction I received was that No pulled back the blunt he had just finished toking on, and was about to pass to me.
After two more minutes of silence, No finally told me that the Double B's were inside the apartment across the street. He suggested that we go over there, quietly slip into the apartment, and immediately take control of the situation. Even though I thought the plan seemed rather military, I thought it was good enough to try. I suggested that we might want to call a couple more guys, considering that there was only the two of us, and we had no idea how many were in the apartment. No told me that the kids were pushovers, and I shouldn't worry. No also said he believed that the B's were un-armed, and better yet, unsuspecting. I agreed, but thought that the real reason it was just the two of us had more to do with No not wanting anyone else to know that he got beat by suburb kids.
Be that as it may, within seconds we were off to put out plan into action. As we ran across the street, I looked around to see if there were any cops in the area. There weren't any cops, but I should have been looking at No. If I had been watching No, I would have seen the gun he was tucking into the back of his pants. But I didn't.
We ran to the back of the apartment, and each stood on one side of the door. We had both watched a lot of the show, "COPS", and we knew how to approach a door. No turned his body in front of the door, and prepared to kick it open. I reached forward and turned the knob, and the door slid open easily. I made the same face as in the car as I sucked my teeth in disappointment, again.
We walked in quickly, and were met by an empty room. A further inspection of the apartment brought us to the conclusion that we were all alone. We started to look around and hoped for a profitable scavenger hunt. In the living room, we found a top of the line lab top computer that we could sell for a grand. In the bedroom there was a lot of jewelry. We found necklaces, watches and earrings. All of them were made of real gold. All in all, it was about three grand worth of jewelry. If we could find at least two thousand dollars more in "scavenging", we'd be straight.
Satisfied is the best word I could use how we felt when we found a couple of pairs of jeans in the bedroom that were bulging with cash in the pockets. There was thirty-eight hundred dollars in cash all together. I was happy because I had just made about a grand just for a favor. All of my joy went out the window when I glanced at the bottom of the jeans.
The bottom cuff of the jeans was covered in blood. No and I were frozen in shock as we, for the first time, looked around the room and saw all the blood on the floor. That was when we heard the commotion from downstairs.
Take my word for it, I am not a hero. I had no desire to go downstairs. No, on the other hand, seemed to have no other plan besides inspecting the ruckus. I will also tell you that No was the first to go downstairs, and I was glad to let him.
At the bottom of the stairs, it was noticeable that this wasn't the kind of basement that kids, and sometimes adults, would be scared to go into. The basement was large, well lit and just about empty. Upon my first glance, I wondered why there would be a blue and red tarp on the floor. I thought they only made blue tarps? But, for some reason I didn't find that troubling, just new and different. It wasn't until that I got to the bottom of the stairs and saw one of the Double B's tied to a chair, that I realized why the tarp was red. The tarp was covered in blood. Only a little of the blood was from the B in the chair. Most of the blood was from the other B, who lay dead and destroyed on the floor behind the chair. He had bled so much that the tarp had a large puddle on top.
As we stood in awe at the drama that had unfolded for the Double B's, the murderer approached from behind the stairs. We wouldn't have seen or heard him at all, had it not been for the muffled shouting of the B in the chair. The commotion made us look behind the stairs and into face of a man wearing a ski mask and holding a machete. I almost jumped out of my skin. I started to back up from this psycho. I tried to back away from my impeding death.
The man with the machete was also wearing a butcher's smock, and like a butcher, the smock was covered in blood. It reminded me of Leatherface from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but this certainly was time for Movie Trivia.
I figured I was a dead man because the psycho was holding a machete, and I was holding my dick. Fortunately, No was holding a gun.
The ski-masked man stopped in his tracks. No motioned for him to back up, and clear a path to the stairs. The psycho complied. Behind us, in the chair, the commotion started again. I turned and looked at the other B. He wanted the gag off his mouth. After I removed the gag, he seemed to take in as much oxygen as his lungs could hold.
No was still holding the gun on the psycho. I started to un-tie the B. When I finished, I looked at No. He looked at me, the body on the floor, and then back at ski mask. No fired two shots. I expected yelling and screaming at the impact of the bullets, but there was none. The man fell silently to the cold basement floor.
No and I left the basement, ran up the stairs, and left the way we came in.
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