A Gangsta's Son Read online

  A

  Gangsta

  ’s

  Son

  By

  Rio

  Copyright 2013 Rio

  Published by Sullivan Productions LLC

  www.leolsullivan.com

  Edited by Mia Rucker

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written consent from both the author and publisher Sullivan Productions LLC, except brief quotes used in reviews, interviews or magazines.

  This is a work of fiction. It is not meant to depict, portray or represent any particular real person. All the characters, incidents and dialogue in this written work are the product of the author’s imagination and are not to be considered as real. Any references or similarities to actual events, entities, real people living or dead, or to real locations are intended for the sole purpose of giving this novel a sense of reality. Any similarities with other names, characters, entities, places, people or incidents are entirely coincidental.

  ~PROLOGUE~

  July 4th, 2013

  Chicago, Illinois

  “You alright, son?”

  “I’m good. Just hot as hell with this mask on.”

  “Well, it shouldn’t be much longer. That nigga got off work at six. It’s almost six-thirty now.”

  Adjusting my itchy black ski-mask, I leaned my shoulder against the side of Mone’s stainless steel refrigerator and gazed at my father, forty-year-old Michael Love, Sr. He was sitting on a crate beside me, right in front of Mone’s splintered back door, which I’d kicked in a few minutes earlier. Pops had his trusty old nine-millimeter Glock gripped tightly in his right hand and I was holding my AK-47. Both of us were wearing black Nikes, black jeans, black hoodies, and black ski-masks.

  “Man,” I said irritably, “why don’t we just search through the rooms now? We can find the work and get the fuck up outta here before that nigga get here.”

  Pops shook his head and stood up. At six foot two, he loomed two inches over me.

  “I just did eight years in prison ‘cause of three punk ass niggas—Mone, his cousin Manny, and that nigga David. Robbin’ these snitches ain’t enough. I’ma put the fear of God into—”

  He got quiet very suddenly.

  From maybe a block or two away, I could hear the rumbling bass in the trunk of Mone’s 1971 Chevy Impala. I knew it was Mone because there weren’t many banging sound systems in Englewood; and Mone was the only nigga I knew that drove around at six o’clock in the morning bumping Chief Keef.

  “That’s that nigga right there,” Pops said, turning to look toward the living room. “I’ll stand behind the front door and snatch him up soon’s he walk in.”

  I didn’t say a word after that. Pops had his mind made up and I was rolling with him regardless of how shit popped off, even if we had to kill a nigga at six-thirty in the morning.

  “Don’t know why you brought that big dumb ass gun,” he muttered as he strolled into Mone’s gray-carpeted living room.

  I studied the dark gray curtains that covered the wide window at the front of DaMone “Mone” Smith’s south side home. It was pretty well-kept for a stash-house that hardly received a visit. Pops and I had been scoping the place for nearly a month now, and we’d only spotted Mone’s candy-painted burnt orange Impala pulling up and leaving twice. Both times he had entered the house carrying large duffle bags and he’d left without them.

  As the sound of Chief Keef’s “Love Sosa” drew nearer, I walked into the living room, laid flat on my stomach behind the gray leather sectional sofa, and took a deep breath to calm myself down. My heart was racing, pounding my muscle-laden chest like a battering ram. My face felt hot and itchy behind the ski-mask. I focused my eyes on the AK-47 beside me and wondered if I had filled the fifty-round banana clip. I knew that I had, but my mind was in second-guessing mode.

  A minute later, I heard Mone’s car pull up and park out front. The music ceased and the car door slammed shut.

  Then came the sound of another closing door.

  ‘Damn,’ I thought, ‘he got somebody with him.’

  **********

  Lacresha Radcliff was all smiles as she stepped out of the old-school Impala and shut the door behind her. Cresha’s rich, brown, model-type frame was draped in a snug-fitting pink mini-dress. Her short hairstyle showed off her beautiful cocoa face. She was a project chick, hustler by day, stripper by night. She knew she’d struck gold a week earlier when she had slipped her phone number into Mone’s hand during a late-night lap dance at Arnie’s Idle Hour.

  “Nigga, how many houses you got?” She asked Mone as he joined her on the curb.

  He had his head down reading something on his smartphone. His Polo outfit was as fresh as the braids in his hair. The small yellow diamonds in his gold Rolex watch were glistening in the warm sunlight. His coal-black face was impeccably groomed and halfway attractive. But Lacresha wasn’t admiring his face; her eyes were glued to the bulge on the left side of his hip.

  ‘Damn,’ she thought to herself. ‘I gotta warn my brother. This nigga got a gun.’

  “This just one of my low-key spots,” Mone said. “You gon’ have to find us a bedroom set for this one. I only got the livin’ room and kitchen set up in here.”

  “Well I ain’t doing it today, not with the way my legs feelin’ right now,” Cresha said, glancing to her right and falling in step behind him as he headed up the walkway to his front porch.

  She spotted her brother, James’ dark green Tahoe parked at the corner of 64th and Peoria. James and five more Gangster Disciples were strapped up and waiting inside the old SUV—waiting on Cresha to give them the word.

  They wanted some of that money Mone was so fond of bragging about. The money that had paid for his 1971 Impala and the sparkling chrome 28-inch DUB rims it hovered over; the money that had him buying up to twelve kilos of cocaine every month or so; the money that had his entire click of Black Disciples riding around in foreign cars.

  “I hope them legs ain’t too tired,” Mone said looking back at Cresha’s lower half. “You know I just worked a twelve-hour shift. Gotta get me right before I go to sleep.” He smiled his ugly smile and opened the screen door. “I’ll take you shoppin’ when I wake up; spend a couple bands on you.”

  He put his key in the lock and turned it… But the door was snatched open before Mone’s hand could even reach the doorknob.

  Lacresha’s eyes opened wide with fear as she witnessed a tall masked man step from behind the door and raise a gun to Mone’s face.

  “Payback’s a bitch, ain’t it?” The masked man stated coldly.

  He snatched Mone into the house and, just as Cresha was turning to run, a second masked gunman grabbed the back of her neck, pulled her into the living room with them, and slammed the door shut.

  ~Chapter 1~

  Pops started pistol-whipping Mone as soon as I kicked the door closed. The first blow hit Mone’s jaw and put him to sleep, but Big Mike kept beating him with the gun until his face was hardly recognizable.

  I shoved the pretty girl’s face against the hallway wall.

  “Please don’t shoot me,” she cried hysterically. “I swear I don’t know nothin’ about nothin’. He just picked me up from the club.”

  “Sshhh.” I turned her around and studied her frightened brown eyes. “All we want is the drugs and the money, a’ight? Ain’t nobody gotta die about this shit.”

  “But I—”

  “Sshhh,” I repeated and pushed her down the short hallway to an open bedroom door. “Just help me find the work.”

  Tho
ugh my adrenaline was pumping rapidly through my every vein, I could not help staring at the girl’s generous curves as she preceded me into an empty bedroom; black curtains over the window, white walls, gray carpet, and nothing else.

  I looked at the closet and grinned. The door was wide open, and there were four gray duffle bags sitting side by side on the closet floor.

  “Unzip one of those bags,” I said, nudging the assault rifle barrel into the girl’s lower back. “And hurry up.”

  She rushed to the closet and dropped to her knees, sobbing and sniffling, and unzipped one of the duffle bags. The sickening sound of my father’s gun slapping against Mone’s head was still echoing through the house.

  The girl opened the duffle, dragging it out of the closet; she looked at me with tear-filled eyes. “Please tell your friend to stop beating on Mone like that. He’ll kill him,” she said.

  But her plea went in one ear and out the other; I was far too focused on the cash-filled duffle bag. The stacks of rubber-banded twenties and fifties held me spellbound.

  “Old man!” I shouted. “Come on! I found the money!”

  “Don’t kill me. Please,” said the girl.

  “Shut the fuck up and lay down… on yo’ stomach.” I aimed the AK-47 at her face. “Close your eyes and count to five hundred, a’ight? We’ll be gone by the time you’re done countin’.”

  She followed my orders quickly.

  I was already picking up two duffle bags when Pops walked in. The first thing I noticed was the blood dripping from his gun.

  ‘He probably did kill that nigga,’ I thought to myself as he grabbed the other two duffle bags.

  I took a moment to gaze at the girl’s ample thighs before following my father out of the bedroom.

  That’s when the gunfight started.

  ~Chapter 2~

  BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM

  The flashes stunned me. One of the bullets zipped past my left ear and the rest of them etched holes in the wall near my father’s head. Instinctively, I threw my arms around Pops’ shoulders and dove back into the bedroom. In the process, through a cloud of shattered drywall, I caught a glimpse of Mone’s horribly bludgeoned face as he sat with his back against the living room wall squeezing off shots from a chrome-plated nine-millimeter. Blood was spilling profusely from the numerous gashes in his grotesquely swollen head.

  As soon as my back hit the bedroom floor, I scooted away from Pops, let go of the duffle bags, lifted the AK-47, and opened fire at the bedroom wall hoping one of my bullets hit Mone before one of his could hit me.

  The girl curled herself into a fetal position and screamed.

  When Pops realized what I was doing, he started shooting at the wall, too. A dense fog of gun-smoke filled the room. Steaming hot 7.62 millimeter shells were spitting out the side of my assault rifle and my arms were jerking uncontrollably, but I kept pulling the trigger until I had emptied about thirty rounds. Then I stood up, ran to the door, and quickly peeked out into the living room.

  The sofa was full of holes, so was the wall-mounted flat-screen television above Mone’s head.

  And so was Mone.

  Slumped to the side, with a stream of blood pouring out his mouth, Mone was still breathing, but just barely. He had bullet holes in his chest, arms, and legs, and his blood was splattered all over the wall behind him.

  Pops peeked out beside me… which is when I noticed the gushing hole in the right leg of his jeans.

  “Pussy nigga shot me,” he said, touching a gloved hand to the bullet wound.

  “Come on, Pops. We gotta hurry up and leave ‘fore the law get here,” I whispered, picking up the two duffle bags.

  “Shit,” Pops muttered. He grabbed the other two duffle bags and limped out of the bedroom.

  I followed him, feeling more alert than ever. I kept the assault rifle trained on Mone as we approached him.

  Pops put his Glock to Mone’s battered forehead, and I did the same with my AK-47. We pulled the triggers simultaneously, blowing Mone’s brains out the back of his head.

  Then Pops and I rushed out the back door to the alley and hopped in my jet-black 2007 Monte Carlo. We snatched off our masks, and I sped away.

  ~Chapter 3~

  Cresha had let out another involuntary scream at the sound of the last two gunshots, and she held her breath until she heard a vehicle speeding away in the alley. She stayed silent for a moment, praying to God, trembling fiercely. Then she stood up and walked slowly to the bedroom doorway, stopping to pick up an ID card from the blood-spotted carpet.

  She looked out at Mone’s bullet-riddled corpse and gasped.

  “Jesus Christ,” she murmured, quickly moving her eyes back to the ID. ‘One of them niggas done dropped they ID,’ she thought, not even bothering to read it as she turned and ran to the window. “Lord, please just let me make it out of here alive,” she prayed.

  Lifting the window, she looked outside just as her brother’s Tahoe came screeching to a halt behind Mone’s Chevy Donk. Several neighbors and a clique of teenage gangsters occupied the length of Peoria from 63rd to 64th; they were all jumping into their cars and fleeing the area.

  Lacresha climbed out the window and sprinted to the Tahoe, tucking away the card in her bra.

  “What the hell happened?” Her brother asked as she dove head-first into the open rear passenger’s side door and landed on the laps of three of his friends. He sped off immediately.

  “They killed Mone and robbed his stash,” said Cresha.

  She didn’t mention the ID she’d found.

  ~Chapter 4~

  The bullet wound in Big Mike’s leg turned out to be nothing more than a deep gash on the side of his right thigh. While he held a stack of Subway napkins to the leaking wound, I drove nervously down Halsted, gripping the steering wheel tightly and holding my breath every time a CPD (Chicago Police Department) squad car flew by.

  “Wanna go to the hospital?” I asked, glancing over at him as we passed the Walgreens on 30th and Halsted.

  He shook his head no. The expression on his narrow brown face was a mixture of slight pain and resolute determination; we’d hit the lick and all he wanted was for us to get away with it.

  “Nigga, this ain’t nothin’ yo’ momma cain’t fix,” he said. “Just get us home so I can get cleaned up.”

  I nodded and moved my eyes back to the road. Thirty minutes later, I parked in front of our west-side home in the middle of 13th and Troy.

  My nineteen year-old sister, Latrice, was sitting in her dusty old Dodge Caravan in the vacant lot beside our two story home, smoking weed with a few of her friends. A group of young boys were lighting firecrackers on the sidewalk in front of our porch.

  I laid an old bath towel over the AK-47 on my back seat, handed Pops two of the duffle bags, grabbed the other two, and stepped out of the car. I was anxious to examine the stacks of cash I’d seen back at Mone’s place.

  Latrice—known throughout the ‘hood as “Treecy”—pushed open her driver’s door as Pops and I were jogging up the porch’s concrete steps.

  “Where y’all coming from?” She shouted loud enough for half the block to hear.

  Pops and I ignored her and hastily barged into the living room of our three bedroom first-floor unit.

  “Assata!” Pops shouted as he plopped down on his raggedy old Aztec-patterned easy chair. He dropped the two duffle bags next to the chair and pushed his jeans down to examine the wound.

  I was hunched over the duffle bag the girl had opened in Mone’s bedroom when my mother, Assata Love, entered the living room holding Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow hardback in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. Like Pops, she was tall and lean with brown skin, and she still had on her threadbare black robe.

  “What in God’s name are you yelling about, Michael?” She grumbled. Then she eyed his bleeding thigh and shouted, “If you don’t getcho black ass off my furniture! The hell happened to you?!”

  �
�Bullet grazed my damn leg,” he said, standing up and kicking off his jeans.

  While Momma rushed to the bathroom for her first aid kit, I locked the front door, sat on the plastic-covered black leather sofa, lifted the duffle onto my lap, and opened it.

  “Mmm, mmm, mmm,” Pops smiled as I grabbed a stack of hundred-dollar bills and fanned through it.

  “How much you think this is?” I asked, looking up at him.

  “Gotta be at least ten grand in that one stack alone. Ain’t no tellin’ how much in that bag.”

  “Michael!” Momma shouted. “You bett’ not be in there bleedin’ all over my carpet.”

  Pops chuckled. “Let me get back here and get cleaned up,” he said, and headed off to the bathroom.

  I got up and checked the other three bags. One of them held seven kilos of cocaine, another held nine pounds of what looked and smelled like Purple Kush, and the last duffle was stuffed full of cash like the first one.

  A nervous smile spread across my face as I carried the four duffle bags to my bedroom.

  ~Chapter 5~

  Three hundred seventy-eight thousand five hundred forty-two dollars is what the loot amounted to and Pops and I split it down the middle.

  It was a quarter past eleven when we finished counting the money on my bedroom floor. By then Momma was in the kitchen seasoning the meat for our Independence Day barbecue and Treecy was in the living room smoking weed with her friends.

  Pops sat on my unmade bed and stared down at the piles of cash. I leaned back against the bedroom door and did the same thing.

  “A little over a hundred and eighty-nine thousand apiece,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. He dug into a pocket of the jeans he’d changed into and pulled out a pack of Newports. “Listen to me, Junior. You can’t tell a soul about this money. And don’t spend too much at once. Go over to Kisha’s house and put this money up. I don’t want nothin’ here.” He paused to light his cigarette. “Just in case the law get onto us, you know? Proper preparation prevents poor performance.”