Dollar Bill (3 page)

“Quit acting like a bitch,” Dollar said. “We got over $200,000 in cash and prizes and you back there crying.”

Dollar always had to break up arguments between Tommy and Ral. He was the peacemaker of the trio. Besides that, Tommy and Ral were like family to him and he didn't want to see family beefing.

“Man, I'm just saying,” Ral added. “Why I gotta be trailer park trash just 'cause I'm white? I'm just saying that shit ain't cool.”

“Well, don't just say shit. Tommy done had your back since she was whooping niggaz on the playground for your ass. You do owe her.”

Tommy looked back at Ral and stuck her tongue out at him.

“Well,” Ral said lightweight under his breath. “Just let a muthafucka die next time.”

“You think I won't?” Tommy said. “Talkin' 'bout some ‘count to a hundred Mississippis.' What kind of shit is that? White people, man, I swear.” She shook her head in dismay.

Dollar couldn't help but laugh as the three jumped onto 70 West, the interstate that would take them from Columbus, Ohio back home to Indiana. This was their first joint robbery and it looked like it would pay off pretty well. It was the end of a life of have-nots and the beginning of a life of having it all.

 

All Dollar wanted to do with his share was take it home to his mother. He was the epitome of a mama's boy. He felt just as proud to be in a position to give his mom some ends as a result of the Cartel stickup as he would have been if he were turning over a hard-earned paycheck to her.

Dollar hadn't thought of the lie he would tell his mother as to where the money had come from. If she knew what her son was doing, if the lack of will to live didn't kill her, the truth surely would. She had raised her boys to never put themselves in a position to encounter any sort of brush with the law.

Dollar had promised his mother that he would keep on a straight and narrow path and not end up like some of the other boys in the hood had: in gangs, in jail, or in the grave too soon. He had tried hard to be loyal to his words. His father had been anything but loyal to her and he never wanted to cause her that kind of pain again. Dollar's loyalty to his mother was fueled by his father's disloyalty to the family. Ironically, Dollar's loyalty to providing for his mother and brother would be the force behind him doing things that were against his mother's wishes.

Tommy and Ral, on the other hand, had engaged in some criminal activity before their task with Dollar, but nothing of this caliber. Tommy had a hustle flipping bank accounts. She would get people to give her their checkbooks and ID, make spurious deposits into the accounts right before the weekend, then spend the entire weekend on a shopping spree writing one bad check after another. She would purchase jewelry, clothing, food, and electronics, and use Ral on the instances when the owner of the checks was a man.

If the owner of the checking account was light skinned, Ral could get away with it by wearing a baseball cap. But being a white dude with red hair, it was hard for Ral to pass as a brotha. Nonetheless, he and Tommy would flip and split when they could.

After all had been said and done, Tommy would pay the owner of the account up to $1,500, depending on how much dirt she got away with over the weekend. Sometimes the collaborator would have special merchandise requests and Tommy would just shop for them instead of giving them money. Come Monday morning, the collaborator was to report their checkbook missing to their financial institution. By that time, Tommy and Ral had damaged the account severely.

When Dollar came up with the idea for the three of them to start robbing people, Tommy and Ral were game. They were ready for a bigger and better hustle. The shelf life of flipping bank accounts wasn't that long, so when opportunity knocked, Tommy and Ral were quick to open the door. Dollar, on the other hand, had just gotten his criminal cherry popped with the Cartel job. He had successfully robbed three occupational criminals. It wasn't in the plan to see them dead, but circumstance always determines the outcome.

No longer a pup on that night, July 4, 1994, Dollar became a Dawg. He, Ral, and Tommy had set the stage to become career hustlers. They had no intentions of stealing petty stuff or holding up liquor stores. Their hustle would be taking advantage of and profiting from other people's hustle. They would make a life for themselves by straight-out robbin' muthafuckas and pray to God that one day they never got caught slipping and had the tables turned.

The title of “Stick-up Kid” just didn't seem to fit the bill: the Dollar Bill. This eighteen-year-old kid stood six feet and four inches tall, weighing 200 pounds. Dollar appeared to be anything but a kid. He looked more like a man with an innocent baby face. His smooth, baby-soft, honeycomb complexion added to his innocent look. He never worked out, but God decided to bless him with a nice little build. He wore his hair in a low fro, of which he picked twenty-four/seven it seemed. There was a peculiar poise about Dollar, a mystery that the ladies loved and the fellas envied.

As far as haters, there were none; none who spoke their peace anyway. It would be hard to find one person in the hood to say something bad about Dollar. As far as the block was concerned, Dollar was that kid who would grow up to be something, like LeBron James or some shit. He wouldn't necessarily play ball, but everyone was sure he'd do something noteworthy.

People still pictured Dollar as that little kid in the neighborhood trying to make a dollar the honest way. He didn't fit the stereotypical, dark-skinned, nappy-headed description of a brotha that most people inconspicuously feared when walking down the street. Dollar was proof that criminals came in all shades and personalities.

Dollar's suave and honest-like appearance worked for him. It was most appealing to the ladies. Sometimes when Dollar strolled the Indiana University campus, the oncoming females prayed that Dollar's fine ass would approach them. Little did they know that once he did approach them, after only a very few kind words of flattery, Dollar was snatching off their gold chains and running off down the street with them. This shit was funny to Dollar. It wasn't intended to be a part of a major come up. He just did it because he could.

Once Dollar realized that he had gotten away with it, he would toss the chain to the ground. He never actually wanted the chain itself; he just wanted the confidence of knowing that he could get it. Dollar couldn't recall where he heard about chain snatching, but it became his way of practicing being surreptitious and flattering.

While Dollar was practicing for a life of crime, his brother was practicing for a life of lore. His love for knowledge was just as intense as Dollar's love of money. Although the two had two different means of seeking riches, Dollar supported his brother's ambitions and made sure he showed his support with his actions.

“I'll give you this twenty-five dollars I'm holding in my hand if you can tell me how many ways there are to make change for a dollar,” Dollar said to his sixteen-year-old little brother, waving the money in his face.

“293 ways,” Klein responded, almost without thinking, as he scooped up the money from Dollar's hand.

This was Dollar's way of making his brother earn money from him. At first, Dollar was going to deposit a lump sum of money into Klein's bank account. Their mother had seen to it that Klein started the account back when he got a paper route. But Dollar didn't ever want his brother to grow up thinking that anybody was just ever going to give him something for nothing. So instead, every couple of days Dollar quizzed Klein, after which he paid him twenty-five bucks for every correct answer.

Without fail, Klein headed to the bank with the money in hand. It was twenty-five dollars more toward his college tuition money. Up until he and Dollar started their very own ghetto rendition of
Jeopardy!
the balance of Klein's account was only $203.52. After a couple of months, his balance grew to the point that it could cover at least his first quarter at the community college.

This made Dollar feel good, and it kept Klein on his toes. He was already one of the brightest kids in his school. Dollar knew how important college was to Klein and wanted to do everything possible to see that it happened for him. Although Dollar graduated high school, he had no intentions of ever going to college. Klein still admired Dollar though, and in his eyes, his brother could do no wrong.

That's why it was important to Dollar that, other than Tommy and Ral, no one was to have knowledge of his underlying demeanor. Dollar never wanted rumors about him skimming the streets and getting back to his family. That's why Dollar wouldn't even entertain the thought of having anyone outside of Tommy and Ral in his circle.

Tommy's evil ass never spoke to anybody, so Dollar never had to worry about her running her jaws. That's what Dollar loved about Tommy most. She was a mean-ass bitch and always had been. She didn't allow new friends in her life. Even if she did, they wouldn't have been friends for long. Unless a person knew Tommy from way back when, tolerating her attitude was impossible.

Back in school, chicks, and dudes too for that matter, couldn't look at Tommy funny without getting a beat down. She grew up fighting, mostly her mother's abusive boyfriends, so she was always on the defense. She hated the world and trusted no one, with the exception of Dollar and Ral. Dollar never questioned why, of all the people in the world, she'd let him in. He didn't have to question it; he already knew why. As tough as Tommy was on the outside, she was still just a girl, and Dollar had a way with getting girls to trust him. Besides, Tommy saw that Dollar shared the same theory as she did: that no one really could be trusted. Trust definitely had to be earned. Ral had obviously earned Dollar's trust, so it was almost by default that he'd earned hers.

Ral, on the other hand, was the Gary Indiana Crusader on foot. Because he pretty much lived on the streets, which he felt was better than staying at home with his junkie mother, he knew everything that went on in the streets. It wasn't like Gary was this huge town anyway. Most of the folks there commuted to Chicago to work and play. But if an ant was fixin' to piss, Ral had already informed everyone before a drop ever hit the ground. He was good people though and not seen as a threat to anyone. Folks only paid attention to half of anything Ral said anyway. Ral was somewhat of a walking joke in Gary.

Ral, whose full name was Ralphie Kennedy, ever since grade school, tried to pass himself off as one of the members of the prestigious and infamous Kennedy family. He pretended to be one of the family member's illegitimate kid or something. It was almost believable. This fool had studied everything about the Kennedy family from the great-great-great ancestors to the young, bad-ass cousins. Whenever Ral did come into some money or material things, anyone who would listen to him boast surely thought one of his rich relatives had sent it to him.

Ral was a year and a half older than Dollar and Tommy, who were the same age. Since his early youth, Ral had been in trouble with the law; nothing serious, but enough to have done a few months in the joint over a time span. Whenever they booked Ral, the arresting officer would always say, “Make sure y'all give this kid an extra blanket; he's related to John F. Kennedy.” Of course everyone would burst out laughing, but underneath the laughter, a few were still curious as to Ral's bloodline.

The last time Ral was arrested was for petty theft, he had just turned eighteen so it was his first adult criminal offense. He had to do six months in the county. He ended up getting pinched because his loose lips bragged to some skank ho how he was the one who robbed a local electronics store of five DVD players in broad daylight simply by walking out of the store with them in his arms. When the owner posted a sign offering $1,000 in reward money, the slut dropped the dime on him.

During Ral's six months in jail he was raped. He learned the hard way about acquiring bragging rights. From then on, if he found a quarter on the ground he kept it to himself. He trusted no one; no one except Dollar and Tommy. They were the only ones who ever looked out for him and protected him. His own mother didn't even visit him when he got locked up. Dollar and Tommy were there for every visit. It was Dollar who did everything from yard work to cashing in aluminum cans to make sure that Ral had money on his books and soap to wash his ass. Dollar and Tommy were the only ones who ever wrote him a single letter. They were the only ones he ever told about being assaulted.

Dollar and Tommy ended up paying a visit to the chick who had dropped the dime on Ral. No one has seen her since. It was just unspoken that the three would never again discuss the girl or Ral being raped. This was the ultimate proof of loyalty in their friendship . . . or was it?

 

 

Since Dollar was the one responsible for setting their licks up, he was the designated purse holder of the Cartel robbery and any other robbery he, Tommy, and Ral were to engage in. Right after the stickup, Dollar distributed $3,000 to each of them to tide them over until they could split the entire pot after pawning, selling, and cashing in the material items. They had to either take the valuables they got off of Cartel and his partners to the pawnshop or sell them on the street. Once all the material items had been transformed into cash, the three were to congregate, cash in, and split the remaining proceeds.

At Chase Middle School, where the three met, Dollar, Tommy, and Ral would sit in the schoolyard and dream the same dream. With their dingy, torn-up clothing and holey tennis shoes, each of them would tell tales of how they would be “thousandnaires” (a thousand bucks was a lot of money to twelve- and thirteen-year-olds). Now, six years later, after the Cartel stickup, the three were thousandnaires.

Words couldn't describe how proud it made Dollar feel to be able to pay the rent for his mom. For his mother's sake, though, Dollar pretended to be going to work every day. He lied and told her that he had some construction gig laying asphalt. He would really be hanging out over Tommy's house all day or with some chick on the block who had noticed his new sophisticated, cocky demeanor.

Dollar had to let his mother think he was out making legitimate money so that she would take the couple hundred dollars a week he gave her. He went behind her back and paid off every debt she had so that the bill collectors would let her live in peace. He paid her utility bills down including the excessive balances that were accumulating in her PIPP accounts: accounts set up for customers below poverty level, which allowed them to only pay a small portion of their utility bill. She never seemed to pay close enough attention to the billing statements to even notice their depletion. Half the time she didn't even open the bills. She pitched them straight into the garbage knowing that she couldn't afford to pay them anyhow on her small, fixed income.

Dollar wasn't worried about filling his own pockets with his profit from the Cartel robbery. He was planning out stickups in neighboring cities and states that would give birth to his own personal come up. He would get his, no doubt, but first things first. He had to look out for his family. Since Dollar had officially become the true man of the house at the ripe age of twelve years old, he felt it was his duty to take care of his family.

Dollar was only three when his father abandoned them, never to be heard from again. Word on the street was that he got into the pimpin' game and mastered it. Dollar's father treated pimpin' like it was a franchise. He supposedly let one of his partners man his hoes in Indiana while he went to Detroit, Michigan to set up shop, and eventually to Ohio. Over a period of time, every ho in the Midwest would want his name tattooed on their pussy.

The authority of having the power over another human being's body went to his head. He became one of the most crucial cats in the game. Bitches, and his so-called assistants, feared messing up his money. Stories about Dollar's father and the pimp game were eventually overshadowed by success stories of the new entrepreneurial opportunity: slingin' crack.

Dollar figured that the hustle in him was the only thing he had inherited from that sorry excuse for a man known as his father. Dollar was determined to do for his family what his father didn't do. He would hustle, but only death or jail would keep him from taking care of his family.

Tommy was the complete opposite when it came to family. She'd bought her a little house right outside the hood in order to get the hell away from her family. Her humble abode wasn't in the suburbs or anything, but it wasn't suspicious either and that's all that mattered. Tommy didn't want anybody sniffing around trying to put the pieces together of her slight come up. She had to get a little job bartending on weekends to prove she had an income in order to keep Uncle Sam out of her business. The house wasn't much, but it was better than the two-bedroom house she had been living in with her mother, her mother's boyfriend, and her pregnant sister and niece. It felt good to just be able to kick back in her own place.

“Yo, T,” Dollar, who was sitting on the couch in Tommy's living room, called to Tommy, who was in the bedroom. “Let me cop another one of these sodas.” Dollar took the last swallow from the Coke can in his hand, pitched it in the trash, and grabbed another one out of the fridge.

“Nigga, you ain't gon' come up over here drinking up all my shit all of the time,” Tommy said, entering the room with a brown paper bag in her hand.

“Must be that time of the month,” Dollar joked, popping open the Coke can.

“For real,” Tommy continued. “You and Ral always coming up over here eating and drinking up my shit. Come over with some shit in hand next time. Replenish a muthafucka's kitchen.”

Dollar ignored Tommy as he watched her dump out the contents of the brown paper bag. Dollar bills flooded the coffee table. “Damn, T, have you spent any of your money?”

“Only what I've needed to spend,” Tommy said, licking her thumb right before she began thumbing through the money for a count. “Let me guess,” Tommy said. “You done tricked yours away like Ral, huh?”

“I'll beat my shit before I trick,” Dollar said. “I had to take care of family matters. I ain't spending my shit on no hoes.”