Читать книгу The Coming of Age - Vincent Montgomery - Страница 11

Chapter 5

A few days later, I started to see things more vividly. As I lay in my bed, waiting for the alarm to go off, I started putting everything into perspective. I was heading into my senior year of high school in a few months, my grades were good, I had some cash saved up, and the work was moving itself. I had no intention of selling drugs forever. I needed a way to get out clean and find a legal way to wash the money. College was also on my mind; however, I didn’t want to go out of state. I had so much going for myself here, and to be honest, this was home. I was still hoping to get into St John’s University out in Queens. That had been my dream school from day one.

All these things were in my head, and I finally took the time to actually give them some thought. As for the work, that shit was moving on the block real fast, so fast that I wondered if I should take a hundred grand from the stash and re-up with my workers with that and have them pumping coke and pills. My brothers were already moving mine and theirs, so I wasn’t missing anything. The money always came back correct. I didn’t want to throw all the bread that I’d saved up into one jar because if someone got caught, I’d be left with nothing.

Maybe I should leave the stash alone—just take the 30 from the 130 and whatever I get from the bricks I had on the street now. I remembered Risk telling me the street price for them joints were $95 a gram. I knew for sure I had 3 Kis on the streets right now. He also mentioned he could cut it down to make 1 brick into 3.

With that lingering in the back of my head, I started doing the numbers, and if my numbers were correct, that was $855,000. Shit, that was a lot of money! Could this actually be real? I had to beep Risk ASAP! We had to talk about this shit immediately! I wanted to know everything. As soon as the thought entered my mind, my alarm clock went off. I gained a boost of energy from the thought of all that money. If I were to stop right now, I would have close to a million stacked up.

All I could think was What the fuck am I going to do with the money? Where the hell am I going to stash it? That’s too much money for sneaker boxes.

I had to do some more thinking and had a million questions running through my mind. However, I pushed them to the back of my mind. I was focused on getting ready to see Sabrina at the bus stop. I threw on some Guess jeans and a Tommy Hilfiger shirt to go with my blue, red, and white Uptowns with the bubble checks. I brushed my hair and put my two-toned Durag around my neck. I was always dipped but low key with it. I had a Jesus piece, but I kept it tucked a lot, but not because I was scared. I wanted it close so that I’d feel protected all the time. I didn’t really care for the flash. All I wanted was the money.

I saw Sabrina, and she ran up to me still hyped from Saturday night. Her hugs were so warm and cozy that I couldn’t help but lean in and get caught up in her warm embrace. She was dangerous to me right now because I didn’t normally move like this. Yeah, she had the kid open. I’d never held hands with chicks, let alone kiss them in public, so this was all new to me. I couldn’t front; it felt good, so I was rocking with it.

It didn’t dawn on me until that moment, and I started thinking to myself why Sabrina’s parents didn’t trip about her not coming home Saturday. I found that rather odd, but I didn’t bring it up. It didn’t seem like a problem to her, so it was no problem for me. All I knew was that I wanted to see more and more of her. I was becoming addicted to her. She wanted to spend the whole weekend together, she told me. I didn’t know how I felt about that. A day was fine, but the whole weekend was nearly impossible due to my lifestyle. Plus, I didn’t want her to find out what I was doing.

I also didn’t know how to tell her it wasn’t possible. I told her to pick one day because I had some things I needed to take care of. She wasn’t really tryna to hear me though. I wasn’t tryna hear her either because one day was all I really had for this weekend. This was perfect timing to ask her why her parents didn’t trip about her not coming home Saturday. I also wanted to know how she was going to manage a whole weekend without going home.

So I just outright asked her.

She replied, “I rarely go out, and my parents aren’t as strict as you might think. I told them I was going out with you, and they didn’t question it.”

It sounded crazy to me, but okay, I’d rock with it.

“They’re going to want to meet you sooner or later, so be prepared for that.”

I knew that was coming since she was spending time with me and always on the phone with me, but was I mentally ready for it? Probably not. Fuck it, though, I had bigger fish to fry. I’d think about that later.

Where was I going to put this money? That was all I could think of on the bus ride to school. This shit might have to go in storage or something, I thought. Sabrina was talking to me, but I was really aloof to the point she started squeezing me and asked me what I was thinking about.

“Nothing. Just tryna figure out where to take you on the day you wanna chill.”

“Baby, in all honesty, I don’t want to do nothing. Your presence is enough for me.”

I knew she’d say that, but I still wanted to do something, so I told her I’d figure it out.

Our school was coming up, so I pulled the tab to alert the bus driver to stop at the next bus stop. We got off and stopped by the breakfast cart on the street. I got my regular bagel toasted with butter and jelly and also apple juice. I asked her if she wanted something, and she picked up a juice. I paid for our stuff, and we proceeded to the school entrance.

It was a nice-ass morning outside, and in two weeks, the school year would be over. I honestly didn’t really have to go to school anymore. I had finished all my Regents tests and handed in all my projects. Our grades were just about ready to be finalized in a matter of days. At this point, I only came to school because there was nothing to do at home when all your homeboys were in school.

I dropped Sabrina off to class, and I went to find my guys before the bell rang. I had no time at all. Stopping for breakfast held me up this morning. Fuck it, I’d get with them at lunch. Lunch came, and I saw them all standing by the door, waiting for me. I hit them with my long “Yoooooooooo.” They responded with the same call back. We dapped each other up and sat in our spot.

Risk started speaking. “Steph, I got your beep this morning. What’s up?”

I told him to break this coke shit down scientifically so I wasn’t missing anything. He did just that. He broke it down to every gram as I sat there in shock.

Stunned, I asked, “How much will my three Kis bring me back?”

“I broke them down to three for each brick. So that’s nine bricks for you, and the estimated total is about $850,000.”

At this point, I knew I looked visibly stupefied. I didn’t even try to hide it. I exclaimed, “Oh shit! Yo, that’s bread, son!”

He waited for me to calm down and then told us them shit was moving fast. Even though he cut them, they were still stronger than any other product on the streets uptown.

“Yo, I watched a feign come back for more like five minutes after one of the workers gave him the work.”

Satisfied, I turned to the rest of the crew and asked how everyone else’s shit was moving. They all said the same thing. It should be done by Friday or Saturday. We could have Harlem, Brooklyn, and Queens on smash if we worked it properly.

I told them I was going to talk to my workers and have them selling pills and coke. I was sure it wouldn’t be a problem since they loved money just as much as I did. Something kept popping into the back of my head though. When you were getting money like this, people would start noticing. We needed to not attract any attention in our direction. This went from living above what would be seen as “within our means” down to having any problems with other crews who were also pumping on the block.

The goal was to put people on and for us to not touch anything I told them. They all agreed. “No matter how much money we get, we will come to school every day and live regular. Nothing flashy to draw attention to yourself. Got it?”

They all nodded in agreement. If we were going to do things like this, we would have to be smarter than the dudes before us. We were hyped as ever now, and all I had was one more question for them.

“Where are we going to put all this money?”

We all started laughing.

“Seriously, though. If I’m bringing in 850K this go-around, I’ll tally up to almost a mil. I can’t put that in sneaker boxes.”

Risk replied, “Son, we might have to rent storage units.”

“Funny thing is, I thought the same thing earlier,” I told them. I didn’t know how secure I would feel with it in a storage unit. I was more hands-on when it came to money. It would have to be a short-term fix for the meantime. I was going to see how much I could get in these sneaker boxes until then.

I told them that further down the line, we would need to start thinking about business opportunities to wash this money. They heard me, but they weren’t thinking as far as I was.

The bell rang, and we all headed to class. Risk and I had science together, and we normally just slept in this class. It was boring for us because we already knew a lot of the shit the teacher was teaching. I didn’t want to sleep today, however. I wanted to talk to Risk more offline about future arrangements. We were always on the same page; plus I respected his views a little more. Not saying I didn’t respect the other guys. It was just that Risk had the same love of money as me and he stayed low key. I told him we needed to really get it and get out. He agreed and started talking businesses.

I laughed because I was thinking to myself, What seventeen-year-olds have you ever run across that wanted businesses this early?

We knew what we needed to do, so it was always an interesting topic.