trying to find out what’s up on some money. I’m broke. Niggas is knocking down my door asking for the rent… The world didn’t stop when you went away. I still had to survive out here on my own.”
Free turned his back to her and headed toward the door.
“Where are you going?” she yelled.
“To the block,” he replied shortly. He was obviously steamed and wanted to get out of Six’s presence before the small argument escalated. That’s how they were…hot and cold…on and off…love and hate…their relationship wasn’t one that had been pulled out of the pages of a fairy tale, but at the end of the day, all they had was one another. Despite the petty fights their love ran deep.
“You just got home. Your boys on the block are more important than me?”
Here she goes with that shit, Free thought to himself. Without answering, he left the house to clear his head. He was well aware that he needed to get on his grind. He still had an unsettled debt to pay, but the last thing he needed was Six stressing him out more by bitching over cash that he didn’t have. He knew that she was high maintenance, but she would have to be patient until he came up with a hustle plan that would make him rich but wouldn’t send him back to prison.
“You good?” Big Lou asked as Free got back into the car.
“Yeah, I’m good,” he replied as he pulled away from the curb.
The liberated feeling that Free felt as he maneuvered his way through the city streets was better than anything that he had felt in a long time. The subwoofers in the car were on point as the two men pulled up onto Big Lou’s block.
Big Lou and Free exited the vehicle to approach Big Lou’s house. A familiar face called out to Lou.
“Big Lou! Hold up a minute, man,” a voice yelled from up the street.
Free noticed a familiar face jog up the block toward them. Ronnie was the local weed man in Detroit. He got his supply from Big Lou, who had a crazy weed connect out of New York.
“Look at this mu’fucka,” Big Lou whispered to Free. Ronnie’s pants hung below his waist, and it was obvious that he was still wearing yesterday’s drawers. The dingy color of the supposed-to-be white fabric and the dirt underneath his fingernails symbolized exactly how dirty the nigga was. His yellow gap-toothed smile and balled-up Force Ones were a dead giveaway to his grimy tactics. He kept looking behind him and from side to side as he approached. “This bum-ass nigga,” Big Lou mumbled as he shifted his stance. “What up, Ronnie?”
“Yo’, Big Lou, I need to holla at you about something, man,” Ronnie replied as he continued to look from side to side.
“What up, fam? Time is money, nigga—talk,” Big Lou stated.
Ronnie eyed Free suspiciously and then said, “Can we step inside or something? This a private matter, you know?”
“Nigga, you know Free. What’s good?”
“No disrespect, Free. I just need to holla at Big Lou on some private shit, you know. I mean, I heard about your beef with them Russians, and I’m not trying to be associated in that shit, you feel me?”
Free looked at Ronnie with a calm expression on his face and stated, “I don’t know what you talking about. Handle your business though, bruh.”
“Nigga, get the fuck out of here with all that privacy bullshit. Get at me when you ready to talk,” Big Lou stated harshly as he and Free stepped up the sidewalk and sat down on the porch.
“What is up with your people?” Free asked as he made him self comfortable on Big Lou’s porch, positioning himself so that he could see the entire length of the city block.
“Man, I ain’t want to be all in your business, but word is out about you and that Russian cat. Niggas gon’ be scared to fuck with you for a while. Word is you owe that mu’fucka like a mill or something.”
“Niggas talk too much about shit they don’t know, nah, mean,” Free stated with apparent anger in his voice.
“What really happened? What did you do that got those Russians gunning for your head?”
“You remember the day I got locked up?” Free asked.
“Yeah, you was driving up to New York, but got pulled over by a cop. I never understood why you took them mu’fuckas on a high-speed chase. You was playing with them pigs,” Big Lou stated with laughter in his voice. “Those crackers chased your ass all the way up Interstate 75.”
“I didn’t have a choice. I had fifteen keys in the car with me,” Free admitted. He had never told anyone the true story of what had happened that day.
“And you only did three years? Free, you snitching?” Big Lou asked, knowing that the excessive amount of cocaine that Free had was enough to have gotten him a life sentence.
“Hell, nah. Come on, fam, you know me better than that. They ain’t catch me with the bricks, just the pistol I had. I shook the police so I could get rid of the product. I tossed that shit. That type of weight would’ve put me under the jail. I didn’t have a choice.”
“What does all this have to do with the Russians?”
“It was their weight. Claude is out of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
“Damn! A hundred fifty?” Big Lou asked in disbelief.
“A hundred fifty,” Free confirmed. “I just got out, and I know he’s waiting to hear from me. I got to have something to offer when I call him, though. He gon’ be trying to speak money, and that’s something I don’t have right now. Six is stressing over money, and I got this shit on my mind.”
“Yo’, you know I got you, fam. Whatever you need…well, not whatever, nigga. I ain’t got a hundred fifty, but whatever else you need, I’m with you.”
“Good looking out,” Free said. “What I really need to know is how much the bricks going for?”
Free sat back on his best friend’s porch and watched as Big Lou’s block made money. Free could tell that a lot had changed since his reign had ended. The entire operation looked sloppy. Whoever was running things hadn’t trained his people well enough. These niggas is making transactions on street corners, and they keeping the work on ’em. Don’t nobody stand on corners no more, Free thought, disgusted at how off their hustle was.
“This cat named Brick got the joints for twenty-five a pop.”
“Damn, a quarter a key,” Free replied in disbelief. He had never paid more than 16.5 per kilo, and he didn’t intend on starting now. He came to the conclusion that Brick was definitely overcharging. “He’s taxing niggas like that?”
“Man, Brick the only one in the city that got ’em. There was a drought on the streets after you got hit. You know them Russians weren’t fucking with none of us, so nobody could get their hands on work. Brick came through a couple months into your bid and took over. He had them for sale, and even though his shit ain’t as good as the Russians, it was all we had to choose from. He knows he’s the only one in town with the weight so he charges whatever he wants.” Big Lou sat back in the white porch chair and smiled at Free. “You trying to get back on?”
Free shook his head and replied, “Hell, no, you know I ain’t working underneath nobody, and I’m not paying no outrageous prices for the work either. I’ll find another connect.”
“Well, you might have a hard time getting anything off in Detroit. That nigga Britain is nutty as hell. If you ain’t down with him, you ain’t eating. He got all these niggas around here shook. The only niggas that’s really getting money like that is Brick and his people. He’s spoon-feeding everybody else.”
“Fuck Brick. Ain’t no man gon’ stop me from eating, nah. mean?” Free asked as he thought about how badly he needed to come up. Just as the words came out his mouth, a caravan of expensive