The Reason Why (11 page)

Chino placed the next chain around Rock's neck, then another around Chris J's neck, then Ant's, and then Corey's.

Pam produced a camera. “Let me get a picture of y'all.”

The crew gathered around Chino in front of the black BMW. Infa, Corey, and Chris J stood to his left, Rock, Ant, and Joe Bub Baby at his right. The crew had the latest gear on, from Gucci warm-up sets to Kangol hats to Gazelle glasses. They all had their large Triple Crown pieces and gold chains displayed prominently. None of them knew it at the time, but they had just taken the infamous Triple Crown Posse picture. It was a picture that would be splashed across newspapers and in magazines all across the country once the feds came down on them. But for right now, times were good.

“Let's hit the club and pop bottles, kinfolk!” Joe Bub said. “Moët and Cristal is on me!”

The crew headed for the club's entrance. Bystanders stopped and stared, and people stood to the side and let them pass. Many wondered aloud who they were. People knew them as individuals, and even as partners who hung out with one another, but now they were something different. The massive gold necklaces set them apart and told the world that they were special. The Triple Crown pieces told the world that this
was a crew that was down for one another, and that they were ballers in the first degree. The Triple Crown pieces put the world on notice that these niggas were not to be fucked with.

Haters in the club paid attention. Dayton, Cleveland, and NY crews as well as the scrubs inside the club all shifted their attention to these local niggas getting paper. The Triple Crown Posse now represented Columbus, and what getting money in Columbus meant. The women paid attention as well.

Women flocked to everyone in the crew except Chino. Pam walked arm in arm with her man, and guarded him like a watchdog. She was ready to whoop any bitch who disrespected her and tried to step up to what was hers. She had hid his gun and risked going to jail for him, she had set up in a dope spot and watched him cook, and she had almost taken a bullet while watching him shoot ball at the basketball court. He belonged to her. She had taken enough risk to claim him for life. Besides, she wore the Triple Crown piece just like the rest of them did. She was a part of the posse, and wearing that necklace made her feel invincible.

The sound system in the club was bumping. The club's multicolored lights were in full effect and the atmosphere was beyond hype. The stereo system was bumping Eric B. and Rakim's song “I Ain't No Joke.” It was the perfect song. The posse was no joke.

Chino led his crew up the stairs to the club's VIP section. Joe Bub had his arms wrapped around not one, but two honeys. Chris J had managed to round himself up a pair as well, while Infa chose quality over quantity. His girl looked like she had just stepped out of a music video. She had smooth vanilla
skin, and long silky hair all the way down to her waist. She also had a body that could make a grown man scream, shout, and holler for mercy. The rest of the crew hadn't done too bad either. Ant, Corey, and Rock all managed to pick up some nice little pieces.

“Three bottles of Cristal!” Joe Bub told the bartender. She nodded and disappeared. Joe Bub turned to one of his honeys. “There comes a time, in a man's life . . . ,” he started singing.

“No, no, no!” Rock shouted. “No Gerald Levert impressions tonight!”

“Hell naw!” Chris J shouted. “We gonna just chill tonight.”

The champagne and glasses arrived. Joe Bub poured everyone a glass of bubbly and lifted the remainder of the bottle in the air and toasted, “To the Triple Crown Posse!”

“Triple Crown Posse!” Chino said.

“Triple Crown Posse!” Pam toasted.

“To the Triple Crown Posse!” Infa shouted.

“To the moneymaking, bad ass, take no shit Triple Crown Posse!” Chris J toasted.

“Triple Crown!” Ant said, lifting his glass. “One love, homeys!”

The posse clinked their champagne glasses together in toast. As the night progressed, the champagne flowed, and more and more people flocked around the crew. They had truly become the heroes of Columbus, the new “it” crew. Everybody wanted to be a part of, or know somebody in the Triple Crown Posse. While celebrating the good life, spending money, and toasting their success, they became the talk of the town. Everyone knew where to go in order to get work. The
good came with the bad. The ballers in town knew that Triple Crown was where the dope was, but the jackers knew it too. It was the jackers, haters, and rival crews sitting in their corners that began to plot that night. These new niggas weren't going to steal their shine and they certainly weren't going to have all the money to themselves. The plotting and whispers began.

W
inter was now in full swing, and the streets of Columbus were dusted with powdery February snow. Pam was in full swing as well, but not with her classes. In fact, Pam's winter break had turned out to be a permanent one. With her attendance and grades failing, she was on academic probation.

Her attendance was terrible and had affected her grades even more. She faced looming midterms, which she surely wouldn't be prepared for. Even Erik and Tomiko were giving her grief. She had begun to avoid Tomiko whenever she could and stayed at Chino's most of the day and on the weekends. Pam had to return to her dorm room at night during the week because of a mandatory campus curfew for underclassmen, and that was enough of Tomiko for her. She was usually in there with her ex anyway, bumpin' and grindin' away.

Pam wasn't about to take shit from anyone else when her parents were already discussing her grades with the dean of students. Her mother had threatened to cut off her allowance and to take a trip to Columbus just to put Pam in check. Pam
had promised to work hard this semester, but she found ways around it.

She paid other students in her classes to give her their notes to copy and to turn in her homework for her. Pam was beginning to question whether college was right for her. She was head over heels for Chino and had made studying him and his game a priority over OSU. After all, who needed college when your man had money in the bank and plans for a bright future? In Pam's eyes, she was safe in Chino's arms. School wouldn't give her the love Chino had for her.

“Pass me that Pyrex dish,” Chino told Infa. Pam's thoughts were interrupted and she looked over at Chino.

“Which one?” Infa replied.

“The long one.”

Infa passed Chino a long, three-inch-deep Pyrex dish from the stove. Chino took the dish, opened up a kilo of cocaine, and poured it into the dish. He took a cup of water from the table and poured it into the dish.

“Pammy, pass me that baking soda, honey,” Chino told her.

Pam grabbed two boxes of baking soda from the counter and handed them to Chino. He punched open the boxes and poured them into the dish with the cocaine and water. He took a spoon and began to stir carefully.

“Baking soda?” Pam asked.

“Yeah.” Chino nodded, stirring, careful not to waste anything. “This is what makes the cocaine harden into a solid slab. Chemically, when you cook it together, all the impurities are removed, and the remaining product hardens into crack. And it also stretches it, so you get more coming back.”

Pam nodded. She understood some of what he was saying, but not all. Still, she didn't want to look extra lame in front of Chino's friends.

The crew was gathered at Corey's house to cook up the weekly score.

“Yo, how that shit coming?” Chris J asked.

“Stop asking questions, nigga!” Rock told him. He checked on the other kilo, which was already cooking in the microwave.

Chino stirred his mixture until it reached a thick, pasty consistency. “This one's ready, kinfolk.”

“All right,” Rock said. He opened the microwave and pulled out the other dish and placed it on the table.

“It looks like jelly!” Pam said. Her eyes were wide with discovery.

“It's supposed to look like that until it cools and hardens,” Chino explained.

“Put that shit in the refrigerator,” Ant shouted from the front room. He was posted up by the window as the lookout for police and jackers. Niggas in Columbus were notorious for robbing drug dealers. The cops weren't as big a concern, because Corey's house was in a nice area, and his parents never received so much as a parking ticket.

“You can't put it in the refrigerator, idiot!” Chino shouted.

“Why not?”

“Because, you'll fuck it up if it cools too fast, dumb-ass!” Rock shouted for Chino. “Let the niggas who know what they doing handle this shit. You just keep looking out!”

Rock took the dish that Chino had been working on and placed it inside the microwave. “You stirred it real good?”

“Yeah, nigga! You seen me stirring it, didn't you?” Chino said.

“I don't want this shit coming back with no holes and bubbles and shit in it,” Rock told him.

“Nigga, this shit is gonna come back butter,” Chino reassured him.

“Butter?” Pam asked, lifting an eyebrow.

Chino nodded and smiled. “You'll see.”

Rock touched the substance inside the other dish. “This shit is hard already.”

“We'll let it cool a little bit longer and then cut that shit up,” Chino said. “Get the scale out.”

Rock went into the cabinet and pulled out a food scale. Chino pulled out two single-edged razor blades and handed one to Rock. Pam watched as they pulled off the brown paper wrapping from the razor blades and then turned their attention toward the hardened substance.

“We gotta time this shit just right,” Chino told Pam. “We want it to be hard, but we want to cut it and bag it as soon as possible so that we can get the benefit of the water weight.”

“See that scandalous ass nigga you fucking with?” Rock said to Pam, laughing.

Pam shrugged. She didn't understand, but whatever it was, Chino was getting over on something.

Chino took his razor blade and ran it through the large square cookie of crack cocaine, sectioning it off into squares. After making several deep gashes throughout, Chino took the tip of his razor blade and applied pressure to the center of the substance. It snapped right along the fault lines of the gashes he had carved into it. He repeated the process several times,
until he had divided it into neat squares. He handed the squares to Rock one at a time and Rock weighed each of them.

“Damn, nigga!” Rock shouted. “You a fucking math genius or something! You gotta show me how you do that shit!”

“Do what?” Pam asked.

“This nigga know exactly where to cut this shit so that each one of these squares ends up weighing exactly twenty-eight grams! That's some creepy-ass shit!”

Chino laughed. “Real street niggas know how to do that shit!”

“That's some old lucky guessing ass shit!” Infa chimed in.

“It's simple arithmetic!” Corey told them. “Three-inch dish. You just cut the square accordingly.”

“Oh, shut up, silly-ass nigga!” Rock told him.

“Yeah,” Infa said, playfully slapping Corey on the back of his head. “You couldn't do it.”

“I'll bet you I could.”

“You ain't fucking my shit up!” Chino told him.

The crew broke into laughter.

“How much came back?” Chino asked Rock after handing him the last ounce.

“A key and a half.”

“Divide that shit up,” Chino said. “Each of y'all take nine ounces, and I'll take the rest.”

“Bet!” Rock told him. “Infa, check on that other shit in the microwave.”

Infa looked in the microwave. “That shit bubbling. It's done.”

“Take it out,” Chino said.

Pam thought about where she was and what she was witnessing.
For the first time in her life she was inside a cooking house. She had heard about trap houses and dope houses, but never in her wildest dreams did she imagine that crack was cooked inside of nice two-story homes in the suburbs.

She was learning a lot fucking with Chino. Maybe too much. Chino had promised her that being with him would never be boring, and he had certainly lived up to that promise. And she herself knew that it would probably be dangerous messing with someone in his occupation. But now she was all in. Chino had secretly stolen her heart, and now her future, her freedom, even her very life, were in his hands. It was too late for her to pull back, too late for her to leave him alone. She had stood at the precipice and fallen over the deep, dark, and dangerous cliff. The best thing that she could hope for now was that he would catch her. He was now her safety net.

“You better have good hands, Chino,” she whispered. “You better catch me.”