Dollar Bill (5 page)

“What?” Klein asked as tears ran down his face.

“In a deck of playing cards, who does the King of Diamonds represent?”

“Man, I don't know.”

“Yes, you do! Yes you do,” Dollar insisted. “I got twenty-five dollars for you when I get back. Who does the King of Diamonds represent?”

“Julius Caesar,” Klein said as he began holding his mother to comfort her. “The King of Diamonds in a deck of playing cards represents Julius Caesar.”

The detectives cuffed Dollar's hands behind his back and began to read him his rights. They pushed and shoved him over to their car. Dollar was scared, but he wasn't going to let it show. He sucked it up and allowed the detectives to throw him into the back of the car.

The engine started and Dollar wanted so badly to look back up at his mother and brother who were broken up as they watched him from their apartment window. The car rode off. Even though it could have very well been the last time Dollar ever saw his mother and little brother again, he didn't look back at them. He didn't look back.

Dollar spent a total of fourteen hours and thirteen minutes being interrogated by the detectives. They asked him the same questions over and over again, sometimes switching words around in an attempt to catch him in a lie. Dollar stuck to yes and no answers. He didn't offer anything extra, which pissed the detectives off.

In the meantime, Dollar's fingerprints were being matched to those found on the cell phones in Woody's Garage. Once the detectives informed Dollar of this major piece of evidence, it was time for Dollar to start talking.

The detective suspected that Dollar hadn't pulled off the robbery and killings solo. No way did some young punk with no street respect take Cartel and two of his dudes down alone. The detectives wanted the names of Dollar's accomplices. If Dollar didn't tell, he would go down, taking all the heat alone for a triple homicide. He would very well spend the rest of his life in jail. If Dollar did give up the name of the triggerman and any other accomplices, he would go down as an accessory and walk away with a smack on the wrist as a first-time offender; that was the deal.

Although Tommy was the one who actually pulled the trigger, Dollar still knew that Ral would go down hard as well. Unlike Dollar, Ral wasn't in a position to be making any type of deal for himself. He had several strikes on his record that would guarantee him time in the slammer.

To Dollar, it didn't make sense for all three of them to go down. Besides, he couldn't see himself snitching on his partners and he especially couldn't picture Tommy spending the rest of her life in prison. He knew, without a mustard seed of doubt, that if the shoe were on the other foot, both Tommy and Ral would do the same for him.

Dollar had learned quite a few things about hustling. No matter the nature of the hustle, every hustle has the same rules. One can only get down with people whom they have 100 percent trust in. The clique had to be willing to die for the hustle, do time for the hustle, and Dollar was willing to do just that.

Dollar couldn't look at his mother after initially seeing her as he entered the courtroom in his jailhouse garb. When he first set eyes on her, she smiled at him. Her smile had always been a comfort to Dollar. Like the time he had a solo in the school Thanksgiving program. Dollar was so nervous as he stood on the stage. But when he looked out into the audience and saw his mother smiling at him, he knew that everything was going to be okay. That day, Dollar had a feeling that his mother's smile wasn't going to make everything okay.

Dollar's mother's smile quickly faded as tears began to fall from her eyes. Auntie Charlene sat next to her, hugging and comforting her as she wept endlessly. Dollar could see by the harsh look his Auntie Charlene was giving him that if by chance he did get set free, she was going to tear him a new hide no matter how big he was.

Dollar had to start thinking about things like sunshine and penny candy to keep from breaking down at the sight of his heartbroken mother. He had feared this day for the past few months that he had been in custody. Being charged with a triple homicide, bail wasn't an option for Dollar, so all he had was time in his jail cell to think about this day.

Dollar had failed his mother. He could only imagine the pain it was bringing to her. It was far worse than that D he'd gotten in Spanish when he was in the ninth grade. It didn't compare to the time he drank the last two cans of soda from the fridge and swore on Grandma Davis's grave that he hadn't done it. It was the type of failure that was an entire flight of steps up from telling a mother that her early teen child was about to become a parent.

If only it was as simple as Dollar impregnating some fast-ass chick from the block. Being incarcerated is the ultimate reflection of bad parenting to any mother. Dollar knew the years of his mother working so hard, even to the point where she lost a leg, were now proven to be in vain.

Dollar's mind was instantly taken over by the vision of Tommy sitting in the front row behind the defense table. “What is she doing here?” Dollar said under his breath. Tommy could read his mind as she quickly stole a glance at Dollar's expression and put her head down in disobedience.

Dollar made himself clear when he put the word out that Tommy and Ral were to lay low. Dollar had psyched himself up to take the fall alone. He'd feared that Tommy's female characteristics would deliver her to the Franklin County Courthouse in Columbus, Ohio on the day he was to enter his plea. Now there she sat.

Dollar stared Tommy down as he walked to his chair at the defense table. He knew she had to lift her head sooner or later, and just as soon as she did, Dollar's eyes would be pinned on her.

“Don't do it,” Dollar lipped to Tommy while shaking his head in the negative. “Don't do it.” He could hear his heart beating as he just thought about Tommy being all dramatic and just as they were sentencing him, she'd jump up and confess her guilt.

Just then the judge entered the courtroom.

“All rise,” the bailiff ordered.

The gallery stood up.

In Dollar's eyes, the man appeared to be moving in slow motion. He was the Grim Reaper in the flesh. This robed man held Dollar's fate in the palm of his hand and on the tip of his gavel. He would dictate the outcome of the robbery gone bad. Dollar's life, if there was to be any more to his life, was in the judge's hands.

As the judge began to read aloud all the specifics of the case, Dollar's body became ice cold. The judge's lips were moving, but Dollar couldn't hear a word he was saying. He was zoned.

“Dareese Ramelle Blake,” the judge addressed Dollar. “You have been charged with three counts of murder in the first degree. How do you plead?”

The courtroom filled with the sound of Dollar's heartbeat. The floor flooded with his pouring sweat. The time was now. If Dollar was going to vacate his commitment to the hustle then this would be his last chance.

“Your Honor.” Dollar gulped. “I plead—”

Just then Tommy stood up. Before she could say anything Dollar's mother began to cry out. “My baby,” Dollar's mother yelled. “I know my baby. He couldn't kill anybody. Please have mercy.”

“Order!” the judge shouted. “Order in the courtroom.”

Dollar turned to see his auntie Charlene caressing his mother. He wanted so badly to let his mother know that her labor was not in vain, that her firstborn son, although was capable of murder, was not a murderer.

“Is there a problem, young man?” the judge said to Tommy, who was still standing, mistaking her for a man. “And please remove your cap.”

This was the moment of truth. If Tommy was going to save Dollar from spending the rest of his life in prison for a crime that she had committed, then she had to speak up now.

Tommy removed her ball cap, balled it up, and stuffed it into the pocket of her oversized White Sox jacket. She and Dollar stared down one another like cowboys at a high noon shootout. In this case, though, no matter who let off the first round and no matter who was left standing, there would be no victor.

Tommy took a deep breath and spoke, “No, Your Honor. There's no problem.”

Tommy quickly walked down the aisle way to the exit door. The door closed slowly on its hinges until she could feel it hit her back. As Tommy stood there while her eyes welled with tears, she heard Dollar's voice speak the words, “Guilty, Your Honor.” Dollar confirmed, “I plead guilty.”

 

 

“Yo, Dollar Bill,” Ed, the coolest CO in the joint, shouted to Dollar. “She's back, man. What to do?”

“You know what to do,” Dollar replied as he kept his face buried into this novel being passed around the joint titled
Gangsta
by this kid named K'wan. “I'm refusing the visit.”

It had been five years since Dollar was sentenced to prison. It had been five years of his mother making attempts to visit him. Every month, Auntie Charlene, against her better judgment, drove her to Ohio, where Dollar was doing his bid, in hopes that Dollar would change his mind and join her in the visiting room. Dollar wouldn't pour salt into her wound by allowing his mother to ever see him caged.

Dollar had written his mother a ten-page letter apologizing and explaining why he couldn't bear to see her. Dollar wrote to his mother that if anyone asked about her eldest boy that she was to say he was dead. The same message was passed along to his brother. Life in prison, he might as well be dead.

Klein stopped trying to visit Dollar in jail a long time ago. He knew Dollar better than anybody did. When Dollar had made up his mind, there was no changing it.

Dollar wanted his mother and brother to continue life without the worry of him. He assured them that he could take care of himself and that they were to forget that he ever existed. There was nothing they could do for him while he was behind bars, so they need not waste time.

Although not having his big brother around hurt, Klein didn't sacrifice his education, something he had worked so hard toward. He continued schooling; as a matter of fact, he graduated high school a year early. Klein missed the hell out of Dollar, but now he was all their mother had. He had to be strong and move on, just like when their father left them.

Being sentenced to prison forever, forever ever, forever ever, was hard for Dollar too. He couldn't conceive trying to go on, especially knowing the hurt that he was causing his loved ones. The day the gate that separated him from freedom closed behind him was the day he considered both his mother and brother dead. That was easiest for him.

For some people locked up, it was their loved ones on the outside who kept them going, but not Dollar. He programmed himself to erase them from every seed of his soul. He had even gone as far as returning every single letter that anyone, including his mother and brother, had written him. Dollar waited for the month his mother would obey his wishes and cease her attempts to visit him.

Dollar hadn't communicated with his mother in years. Years, decades, or even centuries, though, could not have dissolved the deep-seated love and bond Dollar had with his mother.

“So, you plan on living the rest of your life not seeing your mama?” Ed asked.

“This ain't living, man,” Dollar replied with his back against the cell bars as his eyes scrolled the lines of
Gangsta.

“I guess you got me on that one,” Ed said, walking away, allowing Dollar to continue reading his book.

Just like every other cat who gets jail time, Dollar spent his days pushing weights and reading. He didn't get into the Muslim loop, but sat in on a couple of Jumans just to kill some time.

A religious man in prison,
Dollar thought.
Yeah, right. What I look like following the holy words of a criminal now claiming to be a changed man?

Dollar kept to himself. He didn't ride with any crew. He was the respected prison lone wolf. He didn't fuck with inmates and they didn't fuck with him. He didn't look their way and they didn't look his. This was how Dollar planned on serving his time.

In the beginning, though, Dollar wasn't nothin' but an eighteen-year-old fresh piece of meat, especially to the old heads. Niggaz placed bets on who was gonna get in his ass first and make him their bitch.

Wojo was the prison roughneck back then, before he was released. He was feared by most and challenged by few. Wojo was one of them pretty muthafuckas, half white, half black, good curly hair, and gray eyes. He had tattoos all over him, everywhere from his neck to his hands. Wojo loved boasting about all the pussy that fell onto his doorstep before he got locked up. He enjoyed mostly bragging about the two bitches who sliced each other up over him. Wojo had a nice-sized crew. Plenty of cats had his back, but his best friend was his dick. With Wojo portraying himself as such a ladies' man, Dollar was shocked and caught off guard when Wojo and his crew set up shop in the showers to rape him.

Right before entering the showers that evening, Dollar had an ache deep in the pit of his stomach. Dollar had only been locked up a little under nine months. No one had tried him to date, but on this particular occasion, Dollar could sense some foul shit was up in the air and about to come down on him.

When Dollar entered the showers, Wojo gave a look to the other inmates that immediately caused them to disburse. Before Dollar knew it, it was just Wojo, three of his crewmembers, and him in the showers.

Wojo watched Dollar shower as he stood across from him with a devilish look in his eyes. He lathered his private area and began to stroke his suds-covered penis.

Dollar became uncomfortable and sick to his stomach at the sight of a grown man stiffening up over him. “Who da fuck you looking at, yo?” Dollar shouted. He thought about what his words would mean, but it was too late; they had already made their way through his lips.
Fuck it,
Dollar thought.
These niggaz was gonna try me sooner or later. I might as well stand my ground now.

“I'm looking at you, bitch,” Wojo replied as he and his crew began to walk up on Dollar.

Dollar had to think quickly. He couldn't run. There was no way he could have gotten around the four buff men. The only choice he had was to fight.

“You want a piece of me, little nigga?” Wojo asked Dollar.

“Man, I think he do,” one of Wojo's homies instigated. “If he didn't, his dick wouldn't be hard.”

“My dick is hard because I'm thinking about how good it felt fucking your moms before I came here,” was Dollar's comeback.

Dollar knew the mama insult would get whatever it was that was about to happen to him started and over with. He braced himself as the four men rushed him hard. Blows punctured every part of Dollar's body. He fought back as best he could. The men had to have punched him over a hundred times before his naked, lifeless body slid down the shower wall and onto the floor. He watched his blood be carried downstream through the drain by the falling water.

Like a new gang member, he had been initiated into the system with his first beat down. Wojo and his crew stood over Dollar, asking him if he'd had enough. When Dollar finally decided to nod in the positive, Wojo reached his hand out to help Dollar up.

Before Dollar could even balance himself, he was spun around and slammed against the shower wall. He felt Wojo's penis against his buttocks as the crewmembers each grabbed his limbs and nailed him to the shower wall. He stood there pinned against the wall like Jesus on the cross.

Dollar was helpless. He couldn't move. He couldn't scream. He had no idea what he was supposed to do in that situation.

“I'm 'bout to shoot these nuts up off in that ass,” Wojo whispered into Dollar's ear as he positioned his penis to enter Dollar's anus. “When I get out of here, this is what I'm gonna do to your mama, you bitch-ass nigga.”

“I'll kill you, muthafucka,” Dollar shouted to Wojo. “I swear to God, if you stick your dick in me you gonna lose it. You gonna have to sleep with one eye open the rest of your bid. I swear, if it's the last thing I do, I'll cut your fucking dick off, chop it up in little pieces, and eat it over rice like fucking stir fry.”

Before Dollar knew it, he had broken free of the men. With his eyes closed, he stayed pressed against the wall. Eventually, he heard the men's feet pounding the puddles of the shower floor growing farther and farther away.

After a few moments, Dollar turned around to confirm that the men had in fact exited the showers. There was no one in sight, only a silhouette through the steam that Dollar couldn't make out. Dollar stood erect and mustered up enough strength to battle some more if he had to. Just as he positioned his dukes, the image vanished and Dollar was alone in the showers.