Four Feet Tall and Rising (6 page)

That’s when
I adopted my first pit bull. I named him Coco. Yes, the same name as Mom’s Doberman. Mom’s Coco was with them in Texas. I wanted my own dog in Los Angeles.
Coco, the pit bull, was chocolate brown, too, but a male, about six months old when I got him. I took a lot of crap for naming a boy dog Coco, but I didn’t care. Coco was my right-hand man. Me and Coco were the shit going through the neighborhood. We were inseparable.

The first time I saw a dogfight was in the projects. I couldn’t understand why they’d train their dogs to be mean, to be evil. I saw guys put gunpowder in their food. It did something to them and messed with their mind. They’d let them go at it and just rip each other apart until the weakest dog died. It happened on the sidewalks, in the streets. There were so many dogfights, I lost track. No one called the police. Dogfighting was just part of the culture. It wasn’t hidden away. It wasn’t taboo. It was out in the streets, where money changed hands.

Though they fought other breeds of dogs, the majority of the dogs used were pit bulls. They were matched against other pits of similar size and weight and conditioning. Most dog handlers thought it was “unfair” to fight a sick dog against a strong dog, although I thought it was unfair to fight them at all.

Two handlers or owners would bring their dogs into the ring or the pit or whatever area they were using. Some guy would act as a referee. If a dog was hard to handle, or bit his handler, they’d just kill it. The dogs were trained to be loyal and subservient to their owners, but to be dog-aggressive, to kill other animals. It was kill or be killed, so I didn’t blame the dogs. They were just doing the job they’d been taught.

The owners would wait on opposite sides of the pit until
the referee said, “Release your dogs.” Then the fight started. The dogs would be pulled off each other during the match, returned to their “corners,” and then released again. Just like human boxing. Fights lasted anywhere from a few minutes to over two hours. I refused to stay and watch. I couldn’t stand to see those dogs with broken legs, or disemboweled, or faces half ripped off, struggling to survive … I couldn’t stand the cruelty. It made me sick.

During the fight, dogs had to cross over what was called a “scratch line” before a certain amount of time passed, or else be disqualified. If a dog didn’t wanna fight, wouldn’t cross that scratch line, he was considered a coward and he was killed. There was no need to keep him around. He wasn’t a pet. He was a product. Dogs that survived or won a match were “rewarded” by having to fight again and again. If they were successful every time, they’d become stud dogs. They were money-making machines.

Everything in the projects was about money. Everyone was hustling to make an extra dollar. To survive. If you weren’t selling drugs or fistfighting or both, you were a gambler. You were playing dominos or spades or rolling dice. Pit fighting was just another way to make money, but I wouldn’t even think of fighting Coco. He was my best friend and you don’t fight your best friend. I preferred cuddling with Coco in my bed at night.

I was still
enrolled in high school … well, high schools. After leaving Marshall High in Texas, I went to Locke High for one semester before I got kicked out for being an ass. I got mad at one of my teachers and took a baseball bat to his car, bashed in one of his windows. My anger was out of control by then. I was shipped to Cleveland High and got busted there, so they shipped me to David Starr Jordan High in the most dangerous neighborhood for me: rival gang territory. Getting on that bus to David Starr Jordan, me and my boys, we had to stick together and practically run after the last bell rang. Getting from the front doors of the school to the L.A. Metro bus stop was a danger zone. Crips would pelt us with rocks or throw M-80s at us. Making it onto the bus was no guarantee of safety. One time, they got ahold of a fire hose from the gym, plugged it into a fire hydrant, ran onto the bus, and hosed everyone down. This wasn’t a school bus. Regular people were on there, just trying to live their lives. Every day, I felt like a sitting duck. It was the most dangerous two miles I traveled in my life.

There was a teacher at David Starr Jordan who tried to make a difference. He taught economics and actually put faith in me. He was an older, baldheaded black guy. He sat me down and said, “You’re smarter than you appear to be with your devious ways.” He made me wanna learn more. He actually cared about his students. He was really involved not just in my school life, but also in my personal life, in everything I was doing. ’Cause of that econ teacher, I got on the Dean’s List for my first semester ever. Before that, I’d never been asked to
use my talents. I had only ever gotten D’s and maybe C’s. He showed me I was capable of a lot more. Then someone took a shot at me and tried to kill me, so I had to leave David Starr Jordan High for good. I ended up, my senior year, at Fremont High. I dropped out, three credits short of graduation. Biology was never my thing.

As a dropout, I had a lot more free time on my hands. I had transferred from my Carl’s Jr. job in Texas to a location in Los Angeles, but got fired for being late for my shifts. I wasn’t interested in showing up on time. I was more interested in hanging with my roll dog, Jeremy Lucas. I called him Jerry. He was a couple of years younger than me, a friend from the projects. We were busy getting drunk, smoking weed, and getting laid. It was easy for me to get girls. Easier for me than for Jerry. There were a lot of girls who just wanted to see what it was like to sleep with a midget. I benefited from their curiosity. Once you go small … you never go tall.

I wasn’t a committed boyfriend to any of them, not even my fiancée, Liz Evans. Liz was older than me by nine years. She was twenty-seven. I liked them older. I made it a policy to never date girls my own age or my own height. When I was sixteen, I’d hooked up with a woman who was thirty-two. In the projects, you had people of every different age hanging around each other. It didn’t take much to meet them.

We’d go out to nightclubs. It was easier then to get into clubs and drink. It’s harder now. I used to go to the liquor store; they never questioned me. They thought I was older. We
would go to World on Wheels or Skateland USA or someone would set up their own block party and charge ten bucks. All the places were dangerous. We had to stop going to World on Wheels ’cause the Crips took it over. It had originally been a roller rink, but they’d renovated it and turned it into a dance club.

I didn’t meet Liz at the clubs. She was related to the Evans family, but they weren’t major players in the projects. I just knew her from around the way. We started talking and hanging out and I fell in love a little. Marriage, in the projects, wasn’t taken as seriously as it should have been. Guys married and divorced all the time, so it seemed like the thing to do. She wasn’t pressuring me. I was the one who decided that this was what I wanted. I was stubborn and I wouldn’t take no for an answer. I was a big asshole and I got my way. I told Liz we were getting married. She said yes.

We went to the St. Vincent Jewelry Mart in downtown L.A. to get the ring. That’s where we used to buy all our jewelry at the time. Gold nugget rings and gold rope chains around our necks. That was the style. I had more expensive jewelry on me than I put on her finger. My little ass could be cheap, a remnant of growing up with Dad. I bought her a band, not a diamond, and I got a matching gold band, too. We may have had the wedding bands, but we never made it to the ceremony.

The engagement lasted about four months. Liz didn’t know I was sleeping around, so she kept planning the big day. We got real close to walking down the aisle before I decided
marriage wasn’t for me. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision to marry, and it was a spur-of-the-moment decision to call it off. It got a bit ugly. Liz heard about the other girls after we broke up. I started making sure to look both ways before crossing any street. Liz had threatened to run me over if she ever caught me in a crosswalk. Some people get pretty mad when you hurt their feelings.

Once I was disengaged and fired, I didn’t have much to do. I’d get up, take Coco for a walk, watch TV, and play video games in my room. Then I’d walk over to Grandma Bailey’s house or one of the other aunts’ and uncles’ places. I’d hang out with my buddies on 115th and wait for something to happen. Then something did. A man I’ll call Uncle D. pulled up in his 280Z.

Uncle D. was literally an uncle. He was the brother of Mama Myrt, and made his money dealing crack. One night, Uncle D. rolled up and stuck his head out the window, asking, “Shorty, you wanna go for a ride?” What else did I have to do? Nothing. So I got in. We crossed the border into Tijuana into this scary-ass area. I hadn’t spent any time in Mexico, so it seemed rough ’cause it was foreign to me. Uncle D. went into a raggedy-looking building, came back out, and put something in the back of the trunk. Then we drove back, through Los Angeles and all the way north to Atascadero. Uncle D. lived there with his wife. He had a whole setup in Atascadero where they made crack, divided it, weighed it, and packaged it for sale.

The first time I got into his car, I had no idea what I was agreeing to. I knew what Uncle D. did for his business, but I was just along for the ride. It didn’t cross my mind that we might get busted. I didn’t think about the bigger picture. I didn’t think about what I was doing, or how I was getting involved. By then it was too late, I was in. People who live in the projects know what I mean. When you are surrounded by this shit all the time, it becomes part of your life. Seeing people get stabbed, killed, get the shit beat out of them, watching a carjack—you become a product of the environment. Everything you are and you do is part of what is going on around you. Only a small percentage of the people who live there make a success out of their lives. Everyone else is fucked.

From the outside, it’s easy to blame people, to believe they had chances. But you’re telling some kid to go work at the pool in the park and make $50 a day when he can make $500 a day selling dope. What’s his option? We’re a country of greed. That’s what we are taught, to want more and more and more. It’s not an excuse, but you have to be some super-strong kid to be in that environment and not end up like everyone else. You just don’t see any other way around you. I didn’t move to the projects so I could hold money for a drug dealer, and carry a pistol. I wanted to get away from my father and my family and be happy around the friends and people I liked. The more I hung around the gangbangers and the drug dealers, and the more I saw, the less illegal it seemed to me. I didn’t even realize I was into dirt until I was in up to my neck.

Uncle D. brought me in ’cause he caught his own cousin stealing from him. He said, “Shorty, can you count this money again?” I counted it and told him what I came up with. He said, “No, that’s impossible. That means there’s $6,000 missing.” I said, “I counted it three times. I know how much is missing.” He said, “You counted that three times? That fast?” He sat down and counted it with me, which took twice as long as when I counted it myself three times. He goes, “You nailed it right on. How’d you do that so quick?” I had no answer for him. I was just good with numbers. That’s when he offered me the job. There was no application process. This was no Carl’s Jr.

He trusted me not to steal. Apparently, he’d seen me return money to some guy that dropped it on the street. That made a big impression on him. Later, he told me he’d even tested me a few times, leaving me alone with big sums of cash to see if I took a skim off the top. I never did, so for the next year, before he was arrested, he paid me $1,000 a week to count his money and track his books.

I never told anyone, not even Mama Myrt, Cerisse, or Little Al, that I was holding money or drugs for him in my bedroom. On some days, I’d have as much as $100,000 under my bed. Once a week or so, I’d travel with Uncle D. to Atascadero to sit and count out the money. I’d never seen so much cash in my life: $350,000 in cash and it wasn’t in $100 bills. It was dollar bills, fives, and twenties. I begged him to stop selling nickel pieces and start selling bigger bags. All those singles got on my nerves.

You would think that I had learned my lesson all those years ago when I tricked the bank into giving me an ATM card and ended up getting beat to hell for it. But nope. I spent the money as fast as I could make it. On clothes, on jewelry, I even bought a junker of a car. That ass-whooping Dad laid down hadn’t taught me one damn thing. Mama Myrt got suspicious. She asked me, “Where do you get all this money?” She kept pounding it into my head, “Don’t sell drugs! Don’t sell drugs!” I told her, “I promise you, I’m not.” But she didn’t buy it. “Then what are you doing?” I couldn’t think of nothing else, so I told her, “I’m a Little stripper!” I thought Mama Myrt’s face was gonna fall off, saying, “Shut up!” I convinced her that ladies would pay big money to watch a Little Person shake it and strip. It was such a crazy story, she had to believe it.

In reality, while I was working for Uncle D., I also had a job working at a law firm called Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP. Even though I’d dropped out of high school, I still had my dream to be a lawyer or a corporate boss. I thought I could work my way up the ladder the hard way, no college necessary. I started out as a mailroom clerk, then was promoted into the accounting department. I had big hopes for the job. I wasn’t gonna be a dealer’s bookkeeper forever.