Promise Kept, page 25
“Yo, I’m starving. You’ve been dragging me in and out of stores all day and ain’t even let a nigga stop for a food break. Let’s put this shit in the car and go grab some food somewhere,” Sin suggested.
Promise checked the time on her phone. “Maybe some other time, Sin. I got a move to make.”
“You know this is like the third time since we’ve been running together that you’ve turned down my invitation to break bread? What? My breath stink or something?” Sin blew into his hand and smelled it.
“No, Sin. Your breath is fine. At least, today it is. When you be chain-smoking them blunts, your shit does get a little tart,” Promise teased.
“I’m dead ass. Why you keep acting like you don’t know I’m trying to get to know you beyond what we do in these streets?” Sin asked. He had been courting Promise since he’d met her at the club, in his own way. There were times when he got the impression that the interest was mutual, but whenever he tried to cross that line, she’d put a wall up between them.
“Sin, I told you from the beginning that I don’t think it’s a good idea to mix business with pleasure. I appreciate the shit out of you for everything you’ve done for me, and under different circumstances, I might’ve given your little cute ass some play. We got a good thing going and us giving into our feelings would only complicate things. I hope you understand?”
“I can respect that,” Sin said, trying to act like his pride wasn’t wounded.
Promise could see the frustration in his eyes, and it pained her. Sin was a good dude and had really looked out for her at a time when she desperately needed it, but there was no way that she could give him her heart. It had stopped being hers to give long before they’d met. “Would it be trash of me to leave you to get this stuff back to the stash spot on your own while I go take care of something?”
“Of course, it would, not that you would care,” Sin half-joked. “The way you’re rushing off, you must have a hot date?”
“Actually, no. I’ve got a loose end to tie up.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Asher had one hand on the wheel and one hand on his gun when he pushed the Jeep Compass. He’d had the SUV only about a week. He got it on the cheap from a shady mechanic he knew in Elizabeth. It was a no-questions-asked purchase. Asher already hated the Jeep. It stank of cigarettes from the previous owner, needed a wheel alignment, and the check engine light came on two days after he’d purchased it. But for $1,500, he couldn’t complain. The Jeep was a downgrade from his Benz, and even his Accord, for that matter, but he hadn’t purchased it for style. He’d dropped the money because it would provide him anonymity. Being able to move with stealth was the only thing standing between him and the poverty line. He felt like a sucker for having to move so quietly through blocks where his presence had once been announced every time he touched the hood, but that was before Zul had stripped him of his crown and given it to a nigga who was less deserving.
For the last few weeks Asher had been trying to avoid Zul, but it had proven to be harder than he expected. Zul seemed to be able to find him no matter which rock Asher tried to hide under. He hadn’t gotten at Asher directly but had been playing mind games by having his people pop up at spots Asher was known to frequent. Fangs popping up in his hood, Baby Blue eating at restaurants that Asher liked. He even thought he’d seen one of Zul’s SUVs parked down the street from his mom’s condo. These sightings always occurred right before Asher left one of the locations, or just before he arrived. Asher had even changed up his routine, with the same results. It was like Zul had a low-jack on him. Asher knew that this would continue until he gave Zul what he wanted . . . blood.
Handling the situation with Cal had been tough for Asher. He had known the dude since forever, so when he stepped to Zul to inform him that Cal was dead, the words tasted like ashes in his mouth. Of course, Asher hadn’t really killed Cal. Instead, he’d found a way to take him off the radar. He sent him down to South Carolina to get things set up with a drug spot Asher was opening in Columbia. Of course, Cal hadn’t been happy about Asher sending him out to the sticks, but Asher convinced him that it was for the greater good of their business, and Cal was the only one that he trusted to oversee the task. He also made it a point to emphasize that they were making this move behind Zul’s back, and for both their health, they had to keep it quiet. Getting Cal out of town wasn’t an easy task, but to convince Zul that he was really dead, Asher had to perform a feat of magic.
Zul was far from slow, so Asher knew that it would take more than a well-crafted lie to convince him that Cal was dead. He would want proof, so Asher gave it to him. The body of a young man who was about Cal’s age and build had been found in Cal’s car. He had been shot through the head, and the car set on fire with him still in it. Cal had left his whip with Asher to look after, while he drove the rental down south. He would be pissed when he found out what happened to his car, but it beat the alternative. This seemed to appease Zul, at least for the moment, but it still left the issue of Saud to deal with, and that was proving to be the biggest headache of them all.
Asher had played phone tag with the old-timer for a while, trying to get a line on him, with little results. Whenever they spoke, Saud was always very cryptic about his whereabouts, and whenever Asher suggested they meet up, Saud always had an excuse. Asher suspected that Saud knew something was up by then, and the last time he called him, he found that the cell phone had been disconnected. Not even Shelly seemed to know where he had disappeared to. Saud had gone so far underground that it would likely take the devil himself to root him out. Asher was about to give up the hunt when, unexpectedly, his luck turned around. This is what had him riding through Newark in the Jeep.
Saud had finally reached out. He called Asher from a number that he didn’t recognize. He fed Asher a bullshit lie about having been locked up over an old warrant that he had to get straightened out. He was now ready to get back to business. He said he needed a fresh shipment, so he could get back on his feet, which meant he needed money to run. Asher could hear the desperation in Saud’s voice. He told him not to worry and assured Saud he’d take care of him. Asher knew the real reason why Saud had been MIA, and this was thanks to his partner, Vaughn, who was all too willing to double-cross Saud in exchange for his position and the pipeline to the pills Asher had been supplying them with. Vaughn confirmed what Asher had already suspected. Saud had taken a swing at the devil and missed. Asher wouldn’t.
Asher heard his cell phone vibrate. He peeked at the screen and read the text message: We still good? He smirked before replying: Fosho. Asher had a million things going on and really didn’t have the time to entertain anything that wasn’t about money or death, but he’d been trying to set this meeting up for a while. His plan of emancipation consisted of a lot of moving parts, and this was one of them. His heart beat with anticipation as he planned the rest of his day in his head. He needed to wrap this shit up in Jersey and get back across the water.
The thing that brought Asher out so early that morning was one of the few things that motivated him more than pussy, and that was money. Milk and the lieutenants had been handling the day-to-day operations of their drug business, but Asher still had a few side hustles going on. One of them was wholesaling weed. A dude he had become friendly with, the same one he had offered to introduce Cal to, had a mean weed connect. That’s how Asher had originally met him, copping a little weight here and there when he was in California. Music was his main hustle, but he had access to a damn near limitless supply of primo pot. Asher had negotiated a deal where he got shipped as much weed as he could handle on consignment to move on the East Coast. Asher would then turn around and put it on the streets for double what he was paying. None of the guys he supplied complained about the overcharge because the product Asher was hitting them with was way better than anything they could ever hope to get their hands on.
Over the last few weeks or so, Asher had been making the rounds to collect monies owed to him. He had about fifty grand floating collectively and needed every dime of it ASAP. He was building a nest egg in case his plan went left and he had to take a page from Saud’s book and run. Most of his clients had paid up, except for a cat they called Dirty, who was a cool cat, but he had some scandalous ways about him. They all did, if Asher was being honest. They were criminals after all. He’d been playing phone tag for the last couple of days to make arrangements to collect, but something always came up at the last minute on Dirty’s end. Asher felt like the dude was trying to play him, so he decided to pop up.
Dirty wasn’t hard to track down at all. This was due to him being a creature of habit. Dirty liked to eat in the same places, shop at the same stores, and fuck with the same types of females. You could set your watch by Dirty’s movements—or plan his execution. Asher hoped that the latter would be the case. Dirty wasn’t at the chicken spot, which is where he took his lunches most days. That meant he had a few dollars on him and told Asher where to look. Sure enough, he found Dirty at Applebee’s on Springfield Avenue. Asher could see him through the window, sitting at a table and enjoying a nice meal with some sack chaser that he recognized from the neighborhood. He parked his car and went inside, totally ignoring the hostess who was offering to seat him. The girl spotted Asher first, eyes lighting. She was now in the presence of hood royalty and knew it. Dirty’s reaction was one of shock.
“Oh, shit. Big Ash! What you doing down here in the slums?” Dirty, despite his name, was a very clean-cut dude. He took pride in being immaculately dressed at all times. You wouldn’t even catch him with dirt on the laces of his sneakers. They called him Dirty because that’s how he played in the streets. If he fucked with you, he fucked with you, but if he didn’t, you could expect him to try and beat you out of whatever you were trying to buy or sell.
“Picking through the trash,” Asher said coldly. “You got something for me?”
“Yo, you didn’t get my text?” Dirty asked him.
“Nah, and even if I had the only thing I’d accept is you texting me to tell me you got my bread.”
“Baby,” Dirty addressed the hood rat, “I gotta go outside and chop it up with my guy.” He made to stand, but Asher grabbed him by the shoulder and shoved him back into the seat.
“Ain’t nothing to talk about unless it’s you having my bread or how you wanna deal with this issue,” Asher told him. He was getting impatient. He needed that money probably more than Dirty understood.
Dirty looked from Asher’s angry face to the hood rat. She was watching in anticipation to see how Dirty would play it. Would he be a stand-up dude that she could brag to her friends about? Or would he go out like a sucker that she would complain to her friends about? Either way, the outcome of this confrontation would be neighborhood tea to be spilled as soon as she touched the block. Dirty thought about spinning a lie, but he didn’t have enough skin in the game to go through the headache that would result from it. In a rare act, he went with honesty. “I gave it to Milk.”
Asher blinked twice, as if someone had just snapped their fingers to bring him out of a trance. There was no way in hell Dirty just told him that he had given his money to Milk. “And why would you do that?” His voice was calm, but his brain was still trying to process it.
Dirty was hesitant to answer but eventually did. “Ash, you know it ain’t never been no bullshit between us. We always done straight business, so I’m just gonna keep it gangsta with you. Word in the hood is that you’re out and Milk’s in. Ol’ boy been around talking about how you on the outs with the plug. Milk found out about our arrangement and had some of the guys try and lay some pressure down over his new mandatory street tax. All independents in the hood gotta kick him up a taste to keep doing business in the area,” Dirty confessed. “I’m just one man, Asher. Milk got soldiers, and I ain’t getting enough money off this bud to even try to address those kinds of problems. I hope you can respect my position.”
Asher nodded, while processing everything Dirty had just told him. It was just as he had feared. Zul and his divisive games had blurred the lines as to who was really running shit. It obviously didn’t help that that clout thirsty muthafucka Milk was probably running all over the city pissing on Asher’s name. Asher’s rep was the one thing that he had left to hold onto, and he’d die before he allowed anyone to besmirch it. With this in mind, he picked up one of the water glasses from the table and smashed it against Dirty’s face.
Dirty howled like a whipped slave as he clutched his face. Blood poured down his clothes and over the table, and he was fairly certain that a piece of the broken glass had made it into his eye. “My eye . . . you took my fucking eye!”
Asher grabbed the plate of shrimp scampi that Dirty had been eating and smashed it over his head for good measure. “Pussy, you’re lucky I didn’t take your life. Shorty . . .” He looked to the girl who was frozen in shock. “Get this piece of shit down the street to UMDNJ. If he’s lucky, they’ll be able to salvage what’s left of his eye. And when you make it back to the hood, tell everyone you know what happened here and who did it. These streets still mine.”
“Forever miiiiiinneeee . . .” Atilla sang along with the O’Jays classic blaring in his ear pods. He had a pint of Rémy Martin in his back pocket and a tall can of Coors in his hand. He cracked the beer and took a deep swig, appreciating the coolness down his dry throat. It was a little early to be drinking, but that only counted if you had been to sleep, and Atilla hadn’t.
The previous night had been one of the best Atilla had had since his release from prison. This was thanks to his new position as one of the bouncers at Wiggles gentleman’s club. It was a job that Asher had hooked him up with. He knew somebody who knew somebody who was willing to hire the ex-con to play the door a few nights per week. The money wasn’t the greatest, but what the job lacked in hourly wages, it made up for in the free pussy that Atilla found himself buried in since he’d started working there. He’d learned that everyone loved the gatekeeper. From the dudes who would throw him a few extra dollars on the side to let them in with their drugs, to the strippers whose backs he guarded when they crept off between sets to make a few extra dollars in the backs of cars. He still hadn’t managed to crack Asher’s inner circle, which was his intent when he hooked back up with him, but the homie kept him in position to earn a dollar here and there. Atilla couldn’t even be mad at that.
He was bending the corner to go back to the crib when he spotted Milk and a few of the homies chopping it up. Milk was leaning against a forest green Ford Explorer talking to someone Atilla thought looked familiar. What stood out about him was the fact that he was missing two of his front teeth. He knew that fucked-up mouth from somewhere but couldn’t think where. As Atilla grew closer, he saw the kid with the missing teeth’s eyes drift to him, just before he tapped Milk as if he was signaling him to end the conversation. Milk turned, and when he saw it was Atilla, he flashed him all thirty-two of his teeth.
“The Mad-Hun . . . what it do?” Milk gave Atilla dap.
“Maintaining,” Atilla replied. He noticed the kid with the missing teeth giving him the once over and addressed him. “What’s good wit you, my nigga?”
“Everything and then some,” Fangs said arrogantly.
“I hear that hot shit.” Atilla pulled the Rémy from his back pocket and cracked it. He took a swig, staring at Fangs from over the neck of the bottle.
“Easy, Tilla.” Milk picked up on the tension. “This here is the homie. It’s him and his people that keep this hood fed.”
“I thought that was Asher’s job?” Atilla questioned.
“Asher’s been reassigned. I’m running things around here now,” Milk told him. He paused to gauge Atilla’s reaction. He knew that he and Asher were cool but wasn’t sure how cool.
Atilla shrugged. “Players on the team gotta play for whoever the coach is, I guess?”
“Glad you feel that way,” Milk continued. “Like I was telling my man over here . . .” He gestured to Fangs. “We doing like a corporate shake-up. Out with the old and in with the new. That kinda shit. I could use a man of your talents under my reign.”
“For as much as I appreciate the offer, Milk, I don’t wanna get in the middle of whatever you and Asher got going on,” Atilla told him. Asher had never spoken on it, but Atilla was far from slow. His ear was always to the streets, so he was aware of the quiet power struggle between the two upstarts. Asher had been good to Atilla since he’d come home, but not to the point where Atilla was ready to pick a side just yet.
“Ain’t but one side, and that’s mine. So, nothing to get in the middle of,” Milk said with a dismissive shrug. “Bottom line is, I’m in the big chair now and ain’t nobody knocking me off in the foreseeable future.”
The universe heard Milk’s proclamation and decided to call his bluff. The Jeep Compass with Asher behind the wheel came to a screeching halt near where they were standing. Asher jumped out and stormed in their direction, jaw tight and fist balled. Atilla had never seen him like this, so he fell back and watched the scene unfold, curious as to how it would play out.
“If it ain’t the prince of pennies!” Fangs greeted him. “You must’ve taken care of that business for the homie if you’re showing your face back on the set.”
