Читать книгу Days of the Trap - Johnny Mitchell - Страница 8

This game is a motherfucker, and boy I ain’t never lied. You worship the ground it walks on all these years, and then finally it shows you some love back. Now you’re out here getting money — you probably even think shit is sweet, don’t you? That’s when the tax man appears, demanding his cut. He doesn’t send you a bill, either. Your money or your life, punk — one way or another, you’re gonna run that shit. Speaking of someone who owes too much to the game, this loaded .38 cocked inches from my face has me thinking I might have some unpaid debt.

His adrenaline is kicking, breath coming heavy, and through the eye sockets in his ski mask, I see his pupils darting frantically left to right. An old fashioned Jooks is underway — a jack, a lick, a kick-door — a motherfucking home invasion. I’d give anything to be on the other side of that gun, if only for the thrill. You have to admire the set of nuts on these two — broad daylight on one of the busiest streets in Eugene. Caught us with our pants down alright, but that’s how the game goes — always when you’re at your weakest.

We’d been in the living room at the time, four of us gathered around the TV playing a spirited game of Mario Kart for Nintendo 64 — our favorite pastime aside from the drinking and the whoring.

“Bet me fifty on this one, pussy,” CJ slaps down half-a-C on the coffee table in front of me.

“Make it a hundred,” I say, tossing out another fifty. “I get to be Toad.”

“Fuck that, he’s the best character. I’ll be Donkey Kong and you be Bowser.”

The gale banter of two assholes who have no clue their fortune is about to pivot on a dime.

Shit is good right now — too good, in fact. It’s spring of ’07 and Kenny and Walt’s bricks are moving like clockwork. We’ve leveled up alright — you want a bag of weed to smoke, you better call someone else. Our clientele has thinned to a handful of lieutenants who take the work from us in quarters, halves, and whole pounds, then disperse them onto the invisible market. It took a few months after our initial meeting in Southern Oregon to get straightened out, but once we were, it was full steam ahead.

Each week we rotate, CJ or myself, making the drive south under the protective blanket of darkness with a duffel bag full of cash, then return north hours later with ten fluffy pounds of immaculate merchandise stuffed inside of it. Once again, the plan is to undercut — I want all the pushers on my team. Soon, we’re clearing over $2,000 in profit a week, more than we could make in three months selling crumbs for Sweet Tea.

“We’re fucking rich,” CJ mused one day after throwing a fresh thousand stack into the fireproof safe.

He wasn’t wrong. Barely twenty-one years old, and we were each making a teacher’s salary off of our humble little trade. The way things are going I won’t even need to get a summer job. This is all I’ve ever wanted — freedom. I didn’t waste it.

I stopped going to class almost entirely — after all, what could my professors tell me if I’m already doing better than them? Besides, I’m probably hungover from last night when I drank until the lights went black. No more virgin Johnny, either — I’m stuffing my nub into every sloppy cow who will have me. Life is a feast and every day is like Thanksgiving.

No wonder I didn’t see it coming.

There’s a loud knock on the front door, and then the creaking sound of it swinging wide open. Nothing unusual about this — we often leave the door unlocked during the day for the constant stream of friends and roommates coming and going.

“Anybody home?” a man’s voice yells out.

“Who is it?” CJ calls back, but by then they’re already standing in the living room — two black-clad figures wearing ski masks and Timberland boots. The taller one’s got a .45 and the shorter one a snub nose .38, the midnight special. It’s an invasion alright — don’t get no realer than this.

“Uhhh, can I help you?” CJ says, like he’s waiting tables.

“Where the fuck is it?!” the tall one screams.

“Where’s what?”

He’s barely got the question out before a snuff across the chin sends him sprawling to the floor.

“The fucking work!” the man yells as he unloads his Timberland into CJ’s ribs.

“Check the basement,” the shorter one says.

Without hesitating, the tall one heads for the basement entrance next to the kitchen. Ah, so they’ve been in the house before? Makes sense — to have the drop on someone like these two have on us requires inside information. Could be anyone — a competitor, a disgruntled customer, or a pair of wolves who smelled dinner. Or maybe, just maybe, this is payback.

“Everybody on the fucking floor!” the short one commands.

Kissing dirty carpet now, I think back to the Oriental kid. Karma is playing out before my eyes.

After returning from our meeting with Kenny and Walt in Southern Oregon, we’d gone on the prowl for a victim. We needed investment capital fast — $13,000 — before they sold off their supply to another dealer. Since neither of us had a relative who would loan us the cash, that left only one other option: the Jooks.

The Jooks was common in the days of the Trap, accepted as a legitimate reality of the game like cops and droughts and price fluctuations. Even in an airy college town like Eugene, pushers were getting ripped-off on a weekly basis. For the small timers and the hobbyists, getting robbed usually forced them into retirement, either financially or because they lacked the heart for retaliation. But for career knuckleheads like CJ and I — men with stunted frontal lobes predisposing us to criminal behavior — the hunted simply became the hunters.

The most common form of this predation was the sneak attack, or the kick-door — stalk your prey and wait for him to leave the house, then bust in and snatch his work. The Jooks, on the other hand, was for adults only. The law of the jungle must be obeyed when committing armed robbery, namely, that you only Jooks someone less dangerous than yourself. Pull a Jooks on someone willing to die for their product, and you’ve got a dilemma alright — a choice to make. Are you bluffing, or are you prepared to kill? Herein separates a gangster from everyone else.

“That’s him,” I said, pointing to the short yellow man walking up to his building.

We were staked out across the street in Murph’s Oldsmobile, CJ behind the wheel and me and Murph in the backseat. Murph was a hitter we knew from the old neighborhood, a real grimy-type cat who didn’t bat an eye when I told him about the job. We decided to leave CJ in the car as a lookout — he might not know it himself, but he’s too clean for the dirt about to take place.

Murph let a Newport dangle from his mouth as he wiped down the barrel of his .22 Beretta.

“You say he’s got pounds in there?”

I nodded, “Indoor, too — straight fire. You could flip em’ for four grand a piece, easy.”

“And you sure he ain’t gotta crew?”

“Nope. Lives alone.”

“Two billion Chinese in this world and he’s the one with no friends?”

“I think he’s Japanese. Or Filipino, maybe.”

“Those are polar opposite Asians.”

“Why’s it matter what Asian he is?” CJ asked.

“Because, you ignorant mufucka,” Murph snapped, “the Japs have a docile culture. They’re raised to be obedient — comes from Confucianism. If he’s Japanese, he’ll give it up quietly. But the Filipinos are jungle Asians. They’re like us niggas — they roll deep and they’re scrappy. If he’s Filipino, he might put up a fight.”

“How do you know so much about Asian culture?”

“Community college. I took a class on Eastern philosophy last semester — fascinating shit.”

“Trust me, Murph,” I said. “I’ve been casing the spot for two weeks. The kid’s a loner — he doesn’t even keep his bricks in a safe.”

I should know, I used to do business with him. He would sell me work if I needed something in a pinch and Sweet Tea was unavailable. He was a nerd alright, but it’s always the unassuming one’s — not the tough guys — who make for great drug dealers. Pity I have to put him under now, but all is fair in love and war.

Murph flicked his Newport out the window, then reached over the seat and handed his gun to CJ.

“Hold this. I’m not gonna need it.”

Dressed in all black, we slipped on our leather burner gloves and readied our ski masks. I looked up at the light flickering on from his second story window.

“He’s Japanese,” I said. “He’s gotta be.”

Five minutes later, I was on the floor of this kid’s apartment — fighting for my life. Either he wasn’t Japanese, or I’d greatly underestimated the resolve of the Japanese people.

Ski masks down, we’d shoved our way inside of the apartment he hadn’t bothered to lock. We found the kid sitting on his couch smoking a joint next to another Asian man, only this one was built like a nose tackle. They sat there stunned for a split second, giving Murph time to take out his billy club — the kind the police use during riots. As the large one charged at us, Murph swung the club, connecting cleanly against the side of the man’s head. He dropped to the floor with no more than a grunt.

I looked over at the little one, who was reaching for something underneath the couch. I didn’t wait to see the gun, I just rushed — tackling him onto the floor. I tried to put him in a headlock, but he was slippery alright. He wiggled out of it and grabbed my arm, twisting it behind my back until it felt like it was about to snap. I managed to elbow him in the ribs with my free arm, breaking his hold, then I wrestled him to the ground. I squeezed his neck in the crook of my elbow as hard as I could, until I felt his body go limp. I eased up, but then he surprised me with a shot to the kidney that left me writhing in pain. He got up and grabbed me around the neck with both hands. Through the eye sockets of my ski mask I could see the boiling fury in his face. He was trying to choke me and remove my mask at the same time, but then the loud cock of a gun stopped him in his tracks. Murph had the barrel of the kid’s own jammy pressed against the back of his head.

“Get up, nigga,” he said. “Slowly.”

He did as he was told. I stumbled to my feet, panting horribly. I looked over at the big man lying on the ground — Murph had hogtied him with duct tape. With the gun still trained on him, I quickly did the same to the small one. Once we had them both on the floor incapacitated, we went searching for the goods.

Jackpot. In the kitchen below the sink, we uncovered the buried treasure — eight pounds of the highest-end Kush on the market, plus one pound of magic mushrooms. After selling it off and splitting the take with Murph, we’d have more than enough to make our first purchase with Kenny and Walt. It was a revolution alright — one that would launch CJ and I into a higher tax bracket.

We loaded the bricks into two separate duffel bags along with the men’s cell phones, and Murph stashed the small one’s piece inside of his waistband. I opened my knife and reached down, putting little cuts into the duct tape that bound their ankles. In an hour or two, they’d be able to wiggle their way free. Then we left as quickly as we had come, disappearing into the night.

Strange, isn’t it? How easily a man is able to forget his sins, and his audacity of indignation at the very same sins when they return to exact vengeance upon him. Just six months after we’d put the yellow kid out of business, now here we are, getting taken to the cleaners.

I look closely at the short one in the ski mask swinging his gun wildly left to right. They’d caught us slipping, whoever they are. Normally we’d never keep the work in the house like this — it had only been temporary while we scouted out a new stash spot. Must be six pounds in the safe right now, and another $10,000 or so in cash, a nice little haul indeed.

“Don’t look at me!” he yells and marches over to where I’m seated on the ground, shoving the .38 special so close to my face I could kiss the barrel.

The tall one comes lumbering up the stairs and into the living room.

“Found the safe!” he yells breathlessly to his accomplice. “I need the code.”

The short one turns to me. “Gimme the fucking code!”

I look over at CJ and my roommates, who look back at me. They aren’t scared, just waiting on me to decide. There’s four of us and two of them. They’ve got guns but we’ve got solidarity, like scrappy Frenchman resisting Nazi occupation.

Slowly, and with my hands in the air, I stand up.

“Sit your ass down!” the short one screams, but panic has audibly overtaken his bravado.

“Don’t anyone fucking move!” the tall one yells. He walks over to me and points the cannon squarely at my temple. “GIVE. ME. THE. CODE.”

Is he prepared to do it? And am I prepared to find out? That’s what this gangster shit boils down to. Since he’s the invader, the burden of proof is on him to show us the gangsterism he purports to have. Trouble is, he just might. And since I’m in love with this hustling shit, the important thing is that I live to hustle another day. Besides, my roommates are civilians, and I’ll have some explaining to do if one of them gets clipped behind a plant that old ladies smoke for their cataracts.

I stare down death through the barrel of that long-nose .45, looking as wide as a train tunnel. I nod my head slowly and let a smile curl onto my lips.

“Well done, boys. Well done.”