My Hustler’s Keeper Read online

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  “I don’t think she agrees with us Joe,” Mary says.

  “Never mind her. Let’s get down to business,” He says, handing Mary an envelope.

  “I want all these properties taken care of before the week is over with. Henry, Sincere, and Daniel, we must make a move on these drugs. I got a new shipment coming in and I’m trying to get it cut, bagged, and on the streets.”

  “Yo Pops, you know I can handle this,” Henry says, feeding into Joe’s orders like the slave he wants us to be.

  “Just front me the package. And I’ll take care of the rest.” He is putting on a show. Acting as if he is Daddy’s favorite just like I was during the service.

  “That’s what I need to hear son. Otherwise, all of you low lives are going down. I need loyalty on this team. Sincere, I’m going to need you to take care of those cats out south that’s been short on my money. Then call up Juno and see what is taking him so long to reach out to me. Daniel, I need you to watch over Harmony, and make sure she doesn’t try anything that will cost us this business. Right now she’s not in her right state of mind. And I can’t afford for her to go off and fuck up what I worked hard to maintain. Mary, come with me so we can work out the lesson plans for next week. I might be selling and moving dope by the key load but as long as I got my congregation you can’t tell me shit,” he says with a cocky smile.

  Ugh, I fucking hate him and everything he stands for. Joe needs to die and he needs to die fast. Otherwise we all will be in his control until the day we die. And I am not going to let that keep happening. Trying to keep my anger under control, I continue to listen as Joe controlled the ones I love, bringing them deeper and deeper into the mess he had created.

  “Now, I’d like to hear a report from you guys within forty-eight hours, then—.”

  “A’ight,” Sincere says, cutting him off.”

  “My son do we have a problem?” Joe asks Sincere.

  “Nah, no problem. Just ready to go.”

  “You all are dismissed.” Joe waves them off, like the servants we all are becoming.

  “Mary, I’d like to see you in my office in ten minutes.”

  “Okay. Let me go lock the doors behind them and I’ll be on my way, Mary tells him.

  “Gotcha.” Joe exits.

  After I finish listening to what is about to be going on I hurry out of the church doors and run to Henry’s car, get inside, and slam the door shut behind me.

  Joe is starting to become more and more controlling and if I don’t stop him now I know I’ll end up like my mother did for not following his orders. But as I said in the church in front of the Lord himself, I don’t care what Joe say’s; I’m not marrying Mary. If I have to pick between her and death, kill my ass. Shit, I’ll pull the trigger for you.

  Ever since that night Joe stood there and watched Mary kill my mother he’s been controlling my life. Yes, I said killed my mother, his wife, the backbone of this family, right in front of me, as if she was the sidepiece and Mary was the wife. I’ll never forget the day that she took her away from Henry and I.

  I laid my head back and let the scene play out in my mind as I often did whenever I thought of my mother, and how she tried her hardest to protect my brother and I. and how Joe and his sidepiece killed her in cold blood, leaving Henry and I to be raised by the most ruthless beast of them all—Joe Jones.

  It was February 13th, a day before Valentine’s Day and also my 15th birthday. I remember waiting on Joe to come home from the gym so Henry and I could head to the mall before it closed. They were in a heated disagreement about Mary’s and I situation, which Joe started years before I came into the picture.

  This was an every year thing around my birthday. My mother would fight with Joe, but in the end what he said was the order. I hated to see my mother waste her breath on Joe. He always knew how to get her going and he wasn’t worth the drama. But the picture I saw that caused me to have this even bigger hate for Joe and Mary will never leave my head.

  “That girl ain't marrying my baby,” my mother Keisha yelled, spitting into Joe’s face.

  “Why not Keisha? We had this planned for years.”

  “No, you had this planed for years. My daughter is not marrying her. She’s not gay. And I will not allow you to keep planning her life. You made a promise to that bitch. You marry her,” My mother said, emphasizing the word you as she spoke with anger in her voice.

  “You know what Keisha? I’m tired of your shit.”

  “Do something about it. Otherwise shut the fuck up. And I wish you would lay your hands on me. I’ll have your ass rotting away for life,” she said, stepping into Joe’s face even more.

  I saw his muscles in his jaws begin to tighten up. I knew the words she was saying were getting to him.

  “My brothers have been dying to kill you. Don’t let me grant them their wish, ‘cause you’re taking me there. For the last time my daughter is not marrying her and—.”

  Pop! Pop! Two gunshots went off, causing me to jump behind the couch and hide. Slowly standing, my eyes watched as my mother’s body jerked while blood dripped from her body, soaking up the rug.

  “MOM!” I screamed.

  “What did you do? What the fuck did you do?” I cried out, as I ran over to my mother, trying to stop the bleeding.

  “What the fuck?!” Joe screamed.

  “She was disrespectful. No one disrespects you,” Mary said, holding the gun and shaking.

  “You bitch!” I tried to hit her with the lamp but Joe caught me.

  “Sit the fuck down before you join her!” he yelled at me.

  “Come here,” Joe, said reaching out his hands to Mary.

  “She disrespected you. No one disrespects you,” was the only thing Mary kept repeating.

  “I know she did. I know she did,” Joe replied back, taking Mary into his arms and letting her cry on his shoulder. While moving closer towards the living room table, he grabbed his cell phone.

  “Stephanie, I need you to swing by my house ASAP,” he told Stephanie, my mother’s partner.

  “And come alone,” he stated before hanging up.

  “Try something fancy if you want Harmony, and they won’t be finding your body either,” he threatened as he saw me slide to grab the house phone.

  “I hate you. I’ve always hated you. You will pay for this Joe, you and your friend,” I told him, before stomping off towards my room, keeping my eyes on the crime scene and ears to their conversation.

  Upon entering I saw Stephanie throw up at the sight that greeted her on the living room floor.

  “What the hell happened here?” I heard her asked, while looking around.

  “We had a small disagreement.” Joe answered, while he sat the scared Mary down on the couch I had recently left off of.

  “But that’s nothing you can’t take care of, right?” he asked, placing his hand on Stephanie’s shoulder.

  “I don’t know Joe. The crime happened inside the house.”

  “Listen to me. Take her body and make it disappear. Call Juno. Him and his brother Frankie will know what to do,” he told a shaking Stephanie.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Stephanie said, grabbing my mother’s legs and dragging her out the front door without any care in the world.

  “Don’t see. Just do it,” Joe said to her before closing and locking the front door.

  “I’m going to prison. I’m going to prison,” Mary said, in a panicked tone.

  “Everything will be okay.” Joe walked over to her, placing his hands on her shoulder.

  “You all will pay for this shit!” I yelled out to them, before going into my room but standing by the doorway to hear the rest of their conversation.

  “What about Harmony?” Mary asked.

  “Don’t worry about her. I now got her and Henry for life.”

  “What about her brothers?”

  “I’ll take care of them. Trust me baby, this will work. You did well. You did real good.”
>
  I heard Joe and Mary talking and I knew right then and there I was trapped and wasn’t going to get out of this situation alive.

  I slowly opened my eyes, from doing back down memory lane as I felt the raindrop tears start to fall from them. Reality always hit me like a ton of bricks, whenever I thought of my mother. I am alone in this world and there is nothing I could do about it but obey Joe’s orders.

  I never made a wish for my birthday that night, but if I could go back and make one, I would have wished to meet the brothers my mother always talked about. Maybe they would have taken my family away from Joe’s painful and heartless ways?

  My Hustler’s Keeper

  -2-

  SINCERE

  I never chose this game. This game chose me. My life was mapped out and selling drugs for another nigga wasn’t apart of it. Shit, I could’ve easily got on considering who my folks is, but I wasn’t turning to go down that path until Daniel came into our dorm and sold me his wet dream, that I’m now paying for with my life.

  I remember the first night I came into this heartless business with Joe. I was working at Wendy’s and attending NYU studying to get my business degree. I met Daniel my first year entering school and with that I entered a game where I can’t win even if I try ‘cause I’m always playing my cards wrong and losing.

  Dragging myself deeper and deeper into hell’s kitchen, I’m burning up without a chance of getting out. If I’m not explaining it right to your acknowledgement, I’ll let you read about it for yourself.

  “Yo Sincere, aren’t you tired of working this bullshit ass job?” Daniel, my roommate, comes into the room and asks me.

  I had just got off from working back-to-back shifts and I was mad tired. But I had a test to study for, and I knew sleep wasn’t going to be my best friend anytime soon.

  “Shit, I’m always tired but it helps me. I’d rather keep work this job than selling drugs and risking getting caught like my parents any day.”

  “Help you by doing what?” He gives me a questionable look.

  “This shit isn’t gonna help you rise to the top,” he tells me.

  The thing is I wasn’t trying to rise to the top. I just wanted to make my granny and li’l sister and parents proud. Yet I got sucked into his game of bullshit trying to play super-save-a-nigga when I wasn’t getting saved back.

  “Man, I got one more final to take and I’m done with school. I’ll have my business’s degree and I’ll start my company. Shit, I’ve been in college since I was eighteen. I think I can handle a couple more months,” I explain to him.

  “Then what? What’s going to happen after you get this shitty degree? I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. You’ll be back to where you started. You're twenty-three and don’t have a pot to piss in.”

  I laugh at his quote of life. In reality he is the one who doesn’t have a pot to piss in.

  “What’s the moral behind all this? And for the record you don’t have a pot to piss in. I have plenty, I keep telling you. You better look me up nigga. I’m well known around these streets.”

  “We need to get some money. I’m tired of being broke. We need to make a quick come up,” he stresses to me.

  “This we thing seems like it’s all about you.”

  “Trust me Sincere, we’ll be set. My guy Honor tells me his cousin Henry’s pops is looking for some killers,” he informs me.

  I laugh harder. That nigga Honor is cut throat to the bone. Anything that comes out of Honor’s lips spells death. That cat is related to the Santana family and everyone in the NYC knows Honor and his cousins don’t give you information unless it is something in it for them. And that is money, blood, or both.

  My pops used to talk about Tone and his twin brother Twan all the time. He said he used to hustle with them back in the days when he was living in Chicago. Before he met my mother and decided to settle down and move to her hometown of NYC. If he was still alive, I know he’d laugh just as I am at Daniel, at how he’s too thirsty to make what he calls blood money.

  “Look Daniel, Honor and his family aren’t anything to play with. I know; I used to hang with them back in Chicago. I came back here for a fresh start. I’m not trying to revisit my past. It isn’t anything pretty,” I explain.

  “Bro, it’s a easy in and out job.”

  “What that got to do with me? If I wanted to kill and sell drugs, I’d do it myself. Not work for another nigga. When I came to this school, I promised my granny and sister my hustling days were over. And I’m keeping that promise.”

  “C’mon, Sincere, I need you with me. I need this money. Let’s just work with him for a few months. Then we’re gone like the wind. Easy in, easy out.”

  “There’s not a such thing as a easy in, easy out.”

  “C’mon, Sincere, I’m begging you. I need this money. And if I could do it without you I would. But I can’t,” Daniel voices.

  The pit of my stomach is telling me to say ‘NO, you wanna get rich, handle that shit like a man yourself.’ But my dad always taught me to never turn your back on family, even if what they’re saying is wrong. You might just need them in the long run.

  “How much is he charging?”

  “From what I was told, $50,000 each per body we get rid of,” he explains to me.

  “Damn, that ain’t shit. I can make a call to my granny and get double that right now. Stay in school kid. Education is the key to success,” I tell him, turning back to my desk, directing my attention to my homework.

  “C’mon, Sincere, you say you got money and what you can do. But I don’t see shit. We can do three or four hits and be out,” he explains, jumping up and down with excitement.

  “And the good news is, he wants to meet up with us today. C’mon, Sincere, It’s a win-win situation.”

  “You’re too money hungry. This is why I’ll never show you what I’m really made of. But when is the meeting? I’d like to see you enter a world you can’t come out of. And don’t say I didn’t warn you,” I explain.

  “Ten.”

  “It’s already 9:30,” I tell him, looking at the clock on the wall.

  “Well, we need to be moving,” he informs me, grabbing his jacket, and then turning his attention to the dorm door. He opens the door and waits for me in the hallway to walk out.

  “We’re just going to check it out. I won’t make any decision until I know more about him,” I explain to him as I stand up, put my jacket back on, and then tuck my .45 behind me before making my way towards the door.

  “Man, what the fuck you need a gun for?” he asks, looking at me as if I am a mad man.

  “He wants us to kill for him, not look as if we’re there to kill him.”

  “You never know what to expect,” I reply back, stepping out the room and locking our dorm door behind us.

  Something is telling me to turn my black ass back around and stick to being the good boy I promised my family I’d be. But I can’t let Daniel do this alone. I know he will get ate up in a heartbeat. He is book smart, but street smart, he lacks that.

  I’m not going to let my homie go out into the world to get killed knowing I could’ve been there to prevent it from happening. That is one of my pops’ codes of conduct to the street life. Never leave your friends hanging. I knew that street code would soon kick my ass. I know right from wrong and wrong from right, and I know this shit is wrong.

  I park my car in front of an abandoned building in Brooklyn just a li’l after ten. I watch as Daniel rolls the windows down and then wipes the sweat that is dripping from his forehead.

  “Man, if you’re this nervous, let’s turn back around.”

  “We can’t,” he whispers, as if they are going to hear us.

  “C’mon, don’t act brand new now. I thought you say you were tired of being broke? Wasn’t that the line you ran on me back at the dorm room? Now we’re here and you wanna bitch up. Let’s get this money.”

  “They’re looking at us,” he says, shaking his head.

 
; “Who? I don’t see shit,” I tell him, rolling down the window, and putting my head out the window.

  “Look up at the window,” he continues to whisper.

  “Man, you tripping. Let’s get this over with. He either wants us or he doesn’t, but we’re not going to find that out babysitting the car,” I tell him, stepping out the car and closing the door behind me.

  “Wait!” I hear him yell as he rushes to follow behind me.

  “These dudes ain’t no joke,” he tells me, grabbing my arm.

  “If you let these niggas see you’re shaken up, it’s over D. Don’t be the prey. If you’re having second thought, get rid of it now,” I inform him, pulling away.

  “I have never been the prey. Just ask my auntie’s boyfriend. And I’m not trying to be either. I just want some quick money.” He knocks on the door.

  “We in and out in ten minutes flat.”

  “I was about to tell you the same thing,” he says as the door flies open.

  “Hi, I’m Harmony. How can I help you?” I watch as my Heaven sent stands at the doorway with one hand on her thick hips, sending a tingle throughout my manhood.

  “You can help me by giving me your hand in marriage,” I boldly tell her, while I reach out to grab her hand and kiss her palm.

  “By the way my name is Sincere,” I introduce myself.

  “I’m not interested,” she replies back, giving me that ‘don’t try to spit game at me’ look, as she yanks her hand and wipes away the kiss I had placed on it.

  “Who you looking for Mr. Sincere?”

  “Joe Jones,” Daniel jumps in.

  “And what about Joe Jones?” she asks.

  “We were told to meet him here.”

  “Told by who?” she asks, placing her hands on her hips.

  “Umm…” Daniel starts to stutters.

  Damn, this nigga here. He is without a doubt about to become the fucking prey.

  “Yo, we were told to meet Joe Jones here. Is he here?” I step closer towards her, sticking my head over her and looking inside.

  “I’m not in a good mood Mr. Sincere. Please don’t get shot today. Now step the hell back and stand next to your friend,” she gives me that tough girl talk.