__Chapter One:______________
HOMECOMING
[Theme]
It was bright out. The sun reflected off of the custom green candy paint on Terrence’s Impala and blinded innocent passersby as he cruised slowly through Compton. He had one arm hanging out the open window with a dying cigarette clasped between its fingers loosely, and brought it back inside of the vehicle only to take a deep drag while rolling pulling off of the main road and into the smaller weaving network of avenues and streets that constituted west Compton. He parked on the side of the road next to his home and got out of the Impala—taking a second to squint and peer over the hood for any smudges or imperfections. Spotting a single thumb-print on the fresh green hood, he smoothed it out with a rag from the passenger seat and then tossed the cloth back into his car.
“You always stressin’ over that fuckin’ car,” came a surly voice from the other side of the fence. Terrence glanced up and saw his brother Nicholas walking towards him.
“Shit, man,” Terrence shrugged his shoulders a single time. “Don’t get all pissy with me just ’cause your bum-ass ain’t got a ride that looks half as good as my baby,” he grinned a toothy grin and reached an arm out to Nicholas; the duo clapped up and then Terrence’s brother jerked his neck, gesturing over his shoulder.
“Ya boy Mikey’s here. Brought some nigga named DeAngelo.”
“Yeah, DeAngelo, I know ’im,” Terrence said. He escaped his brother’s tight embrace and walked around the man towards the house. “He’s good people.”
Underneath a tarp just outside the threshold of the front door there was a half plastic-wrapped outdoor couch that had weathered some serious damage. Two lanky men sat on it, their feet kicked up on the patio table in front of it. They were passing some weak pot back and forth amongst themselves and taking quick hits.
“Hey,” Terrence said.
“W’sup?” one of the men asked before taking another hit. He held the smoke in his lungs and closed his eyes a minute before finally exhaling, and holding the joint out for Terrence.
Terrence waved his hand ‘no’. “I’m good,” he said. “What’chyall up to, anyway?” By this point, Nicholas had resurfaced over Terrence’s shoulder.
Michael—the man who’d offered Terrence the joint—leaned forward and grabbed a brown paper bag that was sitting on the table. He shook it a little; there was obviously something heavy inside. “My boy DeAngelo’s got a, uh, lil’ business offer for y’all. He’s tryna’ move a lil’ something and I told him y’all Freeman boys might be interested,” the man spoke through a wide grin.
Terrence glanced into the bag and arched a brow upon seeing what it held: two handguns.
“Nicky told me you two was going to maybe have to put in a little wet work,” Michael explained. “Figured you could probably use the heat.”
“Where’d you cop ’em?” Terrence asked. “I ain’t tryna’ get pulled over and find out the heat’s got a couple bodies on it already, knaw’msayin’?”
DeAngelo shook his head. “Nah. They fresh, my dude. Got ’em off some dude’s house out in the valley a coupla’ nights back. Gun-safe and shit with the safety manual right in there. Clean. As. A. Whistle,” Michael said, grinning and taking another hit through his teeth.
Terrence shrugged his shoulders, once, but there was an eagerness in his eyes. “How much?” he asked.
“Eight a pop,” DeAngelo finally spoke up from where he was practically recessed entirely into the couch.
“Eight?” Terrence repeated. He shook his head and closed the paper bag. “Fuck that shit, man. Fam or no fam—you tryn’a—” he was interrupted.
“—seven,” DeAngelo said. “Spare me the bullshit drama, a’ight?”
Terrence bobbed his head. “A’ight,” he replied.
He disappeared into his home and came back out a few minutes later with a bundle of cash in hand. He tossed it down onto the murky glass top of the table. DeAngelo snatched the cash up with surprising agility for a man who seemed to be struggling with his hand-eye coordination as he took puff after puff.
Terrence, a couple hundred dollars lighter, grabbed one of the guns from the bag and tucked it into his waistband. He tossed the bag to his brother who did the same. “You know,” Terrence began. “I’m only covering your half of the heat ’cause you said we gon’ make some serious cash on this job.”
“Yeah,” Nicholas shot back. “You don’t need to worry about it, nigga, shit. Some friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend, through-the-grapevine shit. They need the job done but it can’t roll back on ’em, heard? So they willing to pay a couple hood niggas real good to do the dirt,” he had already tucked his gun away, so he swiveled his arm around and held his hand out in the shape of a pistol, mouthing ‘pow, pow’.
“I dunno, man. Pulling some shit like that for some people we don’t know don’t sit right with me,” Terrence said.
“You always got your head in the clouds, man,” Nicholas said. “I’m sitting over here trying to get us some serious paper—some investment-level shit, so we can put some of them fuckin’ ideas into motion, and you just tryna’ poke holes in the plan. Help me help you help your damn self, a’ight?”
Terrence cracked a smirk but there was still some worry in his eyes. He plopped down into one of the plastic arm chairs on the other side of the table and kicked his feet up, too. “I’ll think about it,” he said.
“Yeah, you ‘think about it’,” Nicholas smirked to himself and rolled his eyes. He turned for a minute—and his expression suddenly sank. “Yo, it’s those fucking Mexicans again,” he said.
“Huh?” Terrence asked. Michael and DeAngelo had already risen to their feet.
“These fucking dudes from the East side,” Michael said, walking around the table and adjusting his waistband. “They keep rolling through here—” he gestured, and Terrence could see an all-yellow lowrider in the distance, slowly approaching their block. “Fuck they doing rolling through again? This is like the fourth time.”
All four men stood in the entrance of the driveway, looking out to the (otherwise, relatively quiet) street in front of them. The lowrider moved slowly but picked up as it rounded the corner. Inside, there were three men—they had tan skin and tons of tattoos and wore yellow bandanas like a couple of cholos straight out of the ’90s or something. They made it clear that they were sneering at the black men in the driveway.
Through the car window, they could see one of the men’s hands duck down towards his waist—instinctively, Michael and Nicholas did the same. DeAngelo even lifted his white T-shirt up to reveal the handle of the pistol he was packing. Only Terrence remained calm. No words were exchanged, but the lowride came almost completely to a halt.
The few people that had been on the street—a couple of kids bouncing a basketball and a homeless man chugging booze in a brown paper bag—all went silent and watched the show-down.
A beat.
Terrence could feel the sun beating down on him; a single drop of sweat formed on his neck and rolled down between his shoulderblades.
Nicholas’ index finger twitched, millimeters away from the handle of his newly bought pistol. The men in the car kept staring.
Finally, the lowrider rolled off without a word.
“Jesus,” DeAngelo mumbled. “What the fuck was that about?”
“They tryna’ get a feel for us,” Nicholas explained, making sure the lowrider had rolled completely out of sight before turning his back and starting to walk towards the lawn again. “All ’em fucking Mexicans and Salvadorans and whatever-the-fuck-else, them South Americans. They comin’ up here by the boatload, man. Fuckin’ South Central ain’t what it used to be,” he lamented. “They probably got a good connect on that yay, you know, tryna’ scope some more corners to slang on,” Nicholas said, shaking his head.
Michael smirked and patted the gun in his waistband again. “Well they ain’t gonna’ fucking find it here, I’ll tell you that much,” he mumbled, as the group moved back to the table and took their seats. This time around, they were a little more quiet—a little more tense. Their eyes lingered on the road.
“Ain’t like there’s anybody else out on these corners slanging, anyway,” Terrence said, kicking his feet against the dirt below. “Shit’s a fuckin’ drought these days. We gotta get them pipelines open, you know? Get some work for the niggas out here, get a lil’ cash-money flowing.”
“Yeah,” Nicholas said. “Another reason to put in this piece of work I was telling you about, man. We pull this shit, we walk off with a lil’ yay and a couple large. We can fold that shit over right quick, man. Right fuckin’ quick.”
“Yeah,” Terrence said, leaning over and spitting on the ground. He reached out to grab the joint that had been sparked back up. “Alright, fuck it,” he finally agreed. “I’m in. We’ll do the fucking thing.”
“Alright! My man,” Nicholas laughed, clapping Terrence on the back and standing up to walk into their house. “About fucking time...” he mumbled on his way in.
Terrence had taken a hit and finally exhaled, leaning back in the chair a little and glancing between Michael and DeAngelo. “Y’all two riding along on this thing?” he asked.
“Dunno,” Michael said. “Gonna have to see how it goes. Y’all said it’s a lawyer or summin’, right?”
“Yeah,” Terrence replied.
“You know the cops gon’ be all over that, right? Some rich-ass lawyer up in the valley gets got,” he shook his head. “Gon’ be on the news and shit. You ready for that?”
Terrence passed the joint to Michael and put his feet up onto the table—the gun in his waistband jiggled loose a little, he adjusted it with a shrug. “We’ll figure somethin’ out,” he said. “There’s more’n one way to handle the situation, you know? We ain’t got to be too specific with this shit: the dude’s just gotta go.”
“A’ight,” Michael said, killing the joint and snubbing it out on the table ashtray. “I’ma give it some thought.”
“Yeah, me too,” DeAngelo chimed.
“But we gotta get going,” Michael said. “Shit to do, you know how it is.”
“Yeah, sure,” Terrence leaned forward and extended a hand. He dapped up with Michael and then DeAngelo before the two men disappeared around the corner to where Michael had parked. Terrence crumpled up the (now empty) paper bag that the gun had come in and walked in towards the house.
“Yo, Nicky!” he shouted. “Got Mikey and DeAngelo in on that thing, maybe. We finna’ have the whole squad moving on this one...” he tossed the crumpled ball into the trash and headed for the couch.
- - -
(( Requests: ))
Nicholas Freeman as an NPC: Terrence’s older brother
in the possession of a Beretta 92FS
Michael Harris as an NPC: a childhood friend of Terrence’s
in the possession of a 1996 Hond Accord and a SIG-Sauer P226
DeAngelo Wilkes as an NPC: occasional burglar and a friend of Michael’s
in the possession of a Glock 17
Deduction of $1,400: paid to DeAngelo for the guns for Terrence and Nicholas
Colt Double Eagle: purchased from DeAngelo
1995 Chevrolet Impala SS: Terrence’s car
Statistics: Posted by Terrence Freeman — Thu Apr 02, 2015 8:05 pm