Cracked Dreams Read online

  Together, they were the Time Bombs. The name came from the idea of being unstoppable. It was only a matter of time before they “blew up” and when they did, niggas would know they weren’t to be fucked with. They’d all planned on wearing tattoos with “TB” engraved, and had also planned on getting crew rings with “TB” in diamonds once they’d gotten to where they needed to be. It was perfect.

  They met at Spits’ crib. For a few months, Spits—along with his mother and little brother—had occupied an apartment just off of Gun Hill Road and Onlinville Avenue. It wasn’t much: two bedrooms, a bathroom, a small kitchen, a dining area and a medium-sized living room. Spits and his brother, Henry Banner, shared a room and his mother had the other. The meeting was scheduled for nine in the morning because with his mother at work, and his brother at school, they could have some privacy to discuss their plans.

  The first to reach Michael’s place was Trigger. Only a few minutes later, came Cee accompanied by Pop. Once together, they went to the liquor store, then to the weed spot. They would need some of these necessities if they would be deliberating for the remainder of the morning and into the afternoon.

  Once back at Michael’s, they all sat around the kitchen table, poured drinks for themselves, and toasted, “Moe’s, hoes and zeros,” and officially began the meeting.

  “I-ight, my niggas, let me paint this picture for ya’ll,” Spits began. “Now we all know the game. We’ve watched the older niggas do it throughout our entire lives. From Edenwald to Gun Hill, we’ve watched niggas get money. We’ve seen the real niggas get cake, and we’ve seen the other niggas get killed. We’ve grown up directly in the middle of all this shit, and now it’s our turn. I think I’ve found the perfect spot for us to start.” Everyone looked at Spits as if he was about to tell them the meaning of life when . . .he took a breath, looked around and said, “Yo, let’s roll up, and go up to the roof to blaze. You can see what I mean better from there.” They all began rolling up weed in Phillie Blunts and White Owls to go smoke on the roof.

  As he would soon explain, Michael’s whole visualization devised from Bronx Park. That’s where the customers were, so that’s where they would set up shop. Just on the other side of Gun Hill Road was a back block street on one side of the Bronx River, and a seating area on the other side with a little track for racing remote-controlled cars. From these two points, plus the overpass that crossed the river, they would have the street shut down. Gun Hill was already infamous for drug trading, but no one had ever thought to bring the product directly to the customer. White Plains Road was the intersecting street where hustlers from all over the Bronx could be found selling, but Gun Hill Project cats mostly ran it. They controlled the street, no doubt about it. What Spits had planned was to control the park, where the customers would actually go to smoke. The way he saw it, when you’re a nervous ass crack-fiend, you don’t want to walk all the way to a busy street to buy drugs where you don’t know who could be watching. Nah, if the opportunity presented itself, you would buy whatever you needed right there in the park where you smoked. Made sense when you thought about it. Besides, it was only supposed to be temporary anyway. In and out, right? Whatever!

  From the roof, Spits began pointing and describing the way things should be run. Trigger came up with the idea that they could make drop-offs to re-up the workers from the overpass. Cee and Pop went on to point out where the lookout points should be. They all agreed that if they controlled the traffic to the Avenue, they would have the whole shit sewn up. They all continued to pour drinks and light weed as they came up with more and more ideas for their new enterprise.

  CHAPTER 2

  The first week we made a little over four thousand dollars. We should’ve made more, but us being new and all, we had to establish clientele. With the two thousand we had for the buy, we were able to purchase a little over two ounces of coke. When we broke that down we were looking at about five grand gross, but we decided we should bag up a grand worth in samples. The only part that bothered me was that we were bagging up the same work as everyone else, so it basically only came down to convenience. The customers that came to us did because we were the closest to ’em. That was the original plan, but now it wasn’t enough. So before the re-up, we decided that we needed a new connection.

  I got a call on my cell phone at about three o’clock in the afternoon. As the voice on the other end started, I realized that it was my girl, Ginger. She said she had some news that I might be interested in. But whenever I heard her voice, I seemed to lose focus and drift off. I didn’t even hear what she’d said at first. Ginger, or just Gin, wasn’t actually her real name, but that’s what I called her. I‘d given her that name because when I’d first seen her, she’d reminded me of a character in a movie that had come out in ’95. She stood about five-four, with an hourglass figure, caramel skin, and the prettiest eyes I’d ever seen. But you couldn’t let the pretty face and the girly attitude fool you; she was still my little gangsta bitch. She didn’t like the fact that I was putting the street life before school, but I’d reassured her that it would only be temporary.

  “Are you listening to me?!” she asked in an annoyed tone of voice. She hated it when she didn’t get enough attention.

  “Yeah, I’m listening, Gin,” I said, trying to make her feel appreciated.

  “I have something to tell you,” she said, starting from the beginning.

  Ginger lived in Cornwall, New York. And the news she had was exactly what I needed to hear. She told me that she’d heard crack heads in Newburgh, a town that neighbored hers, were just dropping dead out there from some new killer shit. I was like, “I WANT THAT SHIT!” The next day, I sent Vision to scout and ask around.

  After a few days, Vision reported that the coke came from some new Puerto Ricans dealing exclusively in weight. Two crazy ass mu’fuckas named Louie and Rob. When I say these motherfuckers were crazy, please believe it. They’d grown up in Carolina, Puerto Rico, just east of San Juan, with their father, Romero Ortiz. Romero, or Mr. Ortiz, was directly connected to Colombian kingpins, and controlled the drug trade in the Northeast part of Puerto Rico.

  What I liked the most about Louie and Rob was that everything was fifty/fifty, and both opinions held the same amount of respect. Louie, standing at about five feet five inches, was a pretty boy type, but it didn’t take from his integrity. If you let the mousse in his hair throw you off for a second, he could spit a razor out of his mouth and give you a buck-fifty (150 stitches) across your face. Rob stood about five feet eleven inches, and he was stocky. He was the complete opposite of Louie. You could see Rob’s gangsta from a block away. He had an intimidating persona, and he perpetuated it.

  The only problem was that they didn’t want anything to do with the city. They wanted to maintain the position they’d set up for themselves in the upstate part of New York. As their father had taught them, they were trying to keep their current situation under control until they were ready to expand. Plus, they didn’t trust New York City mu’fuckas one bit.

  The way I looked at it, that would be perfect for us if we could convince them to deal with us, ’cause then they wouldn’t deal with anyone else. That meant that we’d have the whole borough under pressure. I found that it didn’t take much work to influence Louie and Rob to become our associates. When we finally met, it was like we’d known each other for years. We’d clicked right away, so Louie and Rob were considered another branch of the TB family.

  I sent Vision to get an eight ball (4 grams) for starters. With the proceeds from that, plus the four grand we’d already grossed, we could get a big eighth. A “big eighth” is an eighth of a kilo of coke (125 grams), and is considered the first step to being big time. So we cut up the eight ball and put it on the block. Once that shit hit our little part of the Bronx, these custees couldn’t get enough. We had the whitest shit out and everybody instantly knew it. When we went back to Louie and Rob for the big eighth, they gave us what we could pay for, plus fronted a kilo o
n consignment. We were ready for expansion.

  The first thing we had to do was secure our relationship with those Rican cats. That way we made sure they dealt exclusively with us as far as the city sales went. Next, we got a couple of workers for the spot on Gun Hill Road while we scouted for new territory. Plus it didn’t hurt to have the extra heads for protection. The newest additions to the family were these two cats El Don and Poncho, or just Don P. Those niggas were some Jamaican cats that Trigger knew from down South. Although they looked like twins, they were two years apart as El Don was eighteen while Poncho was sixteen. Both were light-skinned and short with braids. Trigger had become familiar with them when he was younger. He had family in Atlanta, Georgia and used to spend summers there. Now Don and P. were up in the Bronx for the summer, and they couldn’t have come at a better time. We welcomed them to the family with open arms.

  The next day was spent cooking, cutting, and bagging up 1.125 kilos of the purest coke in the Bronx. It wasn’t easy at all, but we were so excited at the progress we were making in such a short period of time, that it didn’t even feel like work. There was weed in the air, Hennessey in our glasses, and NAS’ debut album, Illmatic, bumped from the stereo. When track nine came on, we all went crazy singing in harmony.

  “Represent! Represent!”

  Once we’d done the final total, we’d bagged 3,000 dimes, and 3,225 twenty-sacks, equaling $67,500 worth of crack cocaine. When Trigger said how much we’d bagged up for the first time out loud, silence fell over the room. No one could say anything to fill in the blanks, so we just stared at one another. Finally, Cee put his glass up for a toast. “Moe’s, hoes, and zeros.”

  We hit the block that night. Don P. and Ceelow manned the spot on Gun Hill Road., while Trigger, Pop and I went to the new spot. It was located on 224th Street and Bronx Boulevard. Pop thought that it would be a nice place to set up shop. That’s where we’d all grown up, but he was the only one that realized the traffic controllability from that point so he’d presented the idea to the rest of us. Each spot was in possession of two G-packs each. A G-pack was a thousand dollars’ worth of work. Re-up bundles were left in the parking lot behind my building in case either of us ran out. We kept contact through payphones and beepers.

  Between eight-thirty and midnight, we’d finished both our packs. It had started out slow, but once the first few sales were made, they kept coming. It started moving like hotcakes, a five-sale here, and a twelve-sale there. We needed to re-up fast. I immediately got in a cab to Gun Hill to get the stash. I had the cab drop me off on the overpass so that I could check on the others.

  “What the fuck?” From the overpass, I could see two guys with guns pointed at Ceelow, Don and P., plus one more waiting in a beat-up, charcoal-gray Honda Accord.

  “Where the paper at, dog?” said one guy to Cee with a chrome .9mm pointed directly between his eyes. “Give that up, little nigga. Don’t worry, you’ll live,” said the other to Don.

  My first instinct was to run down there and beat the shit out of those bitch-ass niggas, but that wouldn’t have been the smartest thing to do. So, I did the sharpest thing I could think of. I stood at the top of the stairs leading down from the overpass, pointed like I had a gun, and screamed, “You bitch-ass niggas want it with the Time Bombs?” When they saw me, they automatically anticipated me firing, and fired first in my direction. When the first shot went off, I hit the pavement. Then two more went off.

  Ceelow took advantage of the situation like I had hoped he would. Realizing what I was doing, he acted on it without missing one beat. When he saw that I had all of their attention, he hit the guy closest to him with a left hook, dazing him. Don immediately spit out a razor he had hidden inside of his mouth, and split the right side of the other guy’s face open, sending blood flying through the air. By now, Poncho had gotten hold of the black .38 Special that was just pointed at his face and began striking him with it until he hit the ground. Cee did the same with the .9 mm.

  All I heard were the car’s tires screeching as the driver fled, leaving his boys behind on the floor bleeding. I rushed to the bottom of the stairs, where we continued to beat on the remaining two so-called stick-up kids. Assuming enough stress was relieved, and that the culprits had taken enough of a beating, I attempted to calm everyone down. Cee, on the other hand, didn’t agree and continued violently beating the guy with the butt of the gun. When I tried to grab him, he pushed me off and pointed the gun at the back of his head as he lay face down on the floor. I looked in Ceelow’s eyes, as they opened wider and wider, and saw an expression I’d never seen before. He looked as if excitement filled his entire body, from his fully extended eyebrows all the way into his fingers, which were twitching on the tip of the trigger.

  “My nigga, relax yourself and think, dog,” I said in the calmest voice I could. “This nigga ain’t worth it, son. Not here . . .not now.”

  He made eye contact with me and slowly took the gun from the back of his head. I put my arm around him and attempted to walk away when, suddenly, he broke free of my grasp, running back to where they still lay on the ground and put the gun right back to his head. BOOM . . .BOOM! He shot him in the back of his head twice. He then turned the gun on his unfortunate partner in crime. BOOM! BOOM . . .BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! He put five shots in his back and dropped the gun as he walked away.

  “Ya’ll ready?” Ceelow asked, trying to conceal the fact that he was still shaken up.

  I couldn’t believe it. I just stared at him in amazement, unable to move. Police sirens gave me back focus as they could be heard from above us on the overpass getting closer and closer. We automatically took off running. It was almost impossible to see much down there, in the darkness of Bronx Park, so the police didn’t get a glimpse at us fleeing. When we got back to 224th Street, I told Trigger and Pop that we should pack it in for the night. They asked no questions. They just nodded in agreement, as they had seen a few police cars pass them with sirens blaring. We spent the rest of the night drinking and smoking in the lobby of the building that we’d all grown up in. We spoke nothing about it the entire night. It took me until the next morning to actually realize what had happened. We’d reached another level of the game that night. We could never go back now, and that’s just what I was afraid of.

  CHAPTER 3

  Two months had passed since Spits and the rest of the Time Bombs had started their drug enterprise, and it seemed as though they had seen the worst of times. They had really come a long way since that early morning on the roof. In only two months their growth and maturity could’ve taken the average sixteen-year-old the rest of his life. Soon after the robbery attempt on the crew, they’d all gotten arms of their own, and rarely were they without them. All that happened that night would never happen again if they could help it. They also stopped using the spot on Gun Hill Road because the two dead bodies put the area under close observation by the NYPD. So along with the spot on 224th Street, they had Vision rent a room on 219th and White Plains Road on the top of a candy store. The rent was cheap, and the door was reinforced with steel. They cut down the access anyone had to them so they wouldn’t find themselves in the same predicament as in the park. Besides, they had the fiends on lockdown. Wherever they moved, the customers were sure to follow.

  Now with the new school year right around the corner, Spits found himself in a dilemma. He’d originally planned on putting school before the drug game, but he also couldn’t have imagined in a million years that he would profit as much he did. In two months TB moved about seven kilos collectively. That’s about four hundred and twenty grand. Personally, Spits had over twenty thousand saved, but only a portion of the family’s proceeds went to individual members. Besides a car they’d bought for business purposes, the lump of the profit got reinvested. It was imperative that they had enough product to supply the many customers they’d obtained in the past couple of months. On top of the two spots they had under control for hand-to-hands, they also started making weight sales. The be
st thing about buying weight from them, besides the fact that nobody had better work, was that they delivered. If you called Spits for a small eighth, you would have it within thirty minutes. That saved you the time it would take to go to the weight man. That way, you could anticipate when you’d be finished and give them a call. By the time they came, all you’d have to do was buss it down, and get right back on your grind.

  Things were looking so promising for them with all of the advancements they’d made. Maybe I can just postpone for a year, or maybe two, Michael thought to himself time after time. I’m still young. I have enough time to go back. He tried over and over to justify to himself that he was doing the right thing, until finally he just said, “Fuck it.”

  As Spits slid in and out of highway traffic on the Bronx River Parkway in what they all called “The Family Car”—a 1992 white Nissan Maxima—he found himself zoning. The sky was a light shade of gray, and the air had a hint of moisture as if rain were near. Spits was on his way down to 169th and Simpson Street to make a drop, and had been studying his options. He still had some regrets as far as his decisions regarding school, and it was on his mind twenty-four hours out of the day. He’d decided that he needed a vacation. Some time away from New York would be just what he needed to get his mind right.