Chapter 7
Trigga
The sun was barely up, but the room already felt too bright.
Light cut through the broken blinds, and it stretched across the table like it was trying to expose everything we had going on.
There was money stacked in sloppy piles.
The sound of rubber bands popping could be heard, and the faint smell of oil and metal still clung to the air from the auto parts we dragged in.
When I say that we cleaned house, I mean it.
Ghost’s ass even took the Keurig coffee maker out of the break room.
I sat there on a folding chair with my elbows on my knees as I thumbed through a thick stack of hundreds.
The crisp sound of a new bill could be heard with every flick.
That was the only thing breaking the silence.
We came up on money, and a whole lot of it at that.
“Damn,” I muttered under my breath, more to myself than anything. As I looked over the table, I cracked a slight grin. “We cleaned house.”
Across from me, Ghost didn’t even react.
He just kept stacking his piles neatly and precisely.
He hadn’t said much since we finished the robbery.
For a nigga who always had much to say, he resorted to silence whenever we finished a job.
I guess that was his own personal way of coping with the crime we had committed.
At his feet, a black duffel bag sat halfway unzipped.
Ten bricks of cocaine were tucked inside that now belonged to us.
I glanced at it for a second longer than I meant to, then leaned back in my chair while stretching my neck side to side. A nigga was truly exhausted.
“Let me guess,” I said, my voice coming out rough from being up all night. “You already got something lined up for that, or are we just going to be sitting on it looking stupid?”
Ghost didn’t answer right away. We were naturally born stick-up kids who knew nothing about moving coke. So, although we were sitting on enough weight to change our lives, if we didn’t put it in the right hands, it meant nothing to us.
I knew that Ghost was thinking before he responded, just by the way his face turned up. I knew that nigga inside and out. After letting me sit in silence for a few more moments, he finally responded.
“I made a call.”
I let out a short laugh while shaking my head.
“A call ain’t a play, bruh.”
That made him pause, just for a second, before he wrapped a rubber band around the stack he had just finished counting, and looked up at me.
“Who I spoke to is interested.”
“Interested?” I repeated while raising a brow. “Man, we ain’t got time for interested.”
I leaned forward and rested my forearms on the table while lowering my voice a little.
“That’s ten bricks, Ghost, not no corner baggies. If we move that wrong, we are going to have folks talking. And we damn sure don’t need people knowing what we got if they aren’t going to be a guaranteed buyer.”
He held my gaze, and he was calm as ever.
“The dude I spoke to is solid.”
I studied him for a second and then nodded once. If Ghost vouched for him, it was worth the risk. I reached over, grabbed the stack of money I had just finished counting, and tightened the rubber band around it until it snapped snug.
“Set it up then,” I said. “As soon as possible.”
My eyes flicked toward the duffel again, then over to the pile of car parts we had stolen. It consisted of rims, speakers, and anything we could flip quick without question. We would have taken some cars too if we had more niggas with us. A slow smirk pulled at my lips.
“Between this money, that dope, and them parts…” I exhaled. “We up.”
Ghost ain’t smile much. He never did during the aftermath.
But I caught that slight nod, and that was enough to let me know that he was indeed satisfied.
By the time we finished counting, the sun was damn near high in the sky.
It took us a little over three hours to get through everything.
Once it was done, we split everything down the middle.
We both walked away with ten thousand dollars.
That was PPP loan money made in just one night.
I had grabbed a nearby empty duffel and started tossing my share inside.
Ghost moved the same way, quietly and precisely, like this was just another day at the office.
Now that the table was clear, we had to pull the real problem out.
The contents of that black duffel bag. We were both silent in the room while we waited for his man, Chino.
Ghost leaned against the wall with his arms folded, while I paced the floor, glancing at the door every couple of seconds. This wasn’t my lane, and I was trying my hardest not to show it.
“Man, how long he said?” I asked as irritation crept into my tone.
“Soon,” Ghost replied.
I sucked my teeth.
“Everybody says soon. That nigga was probably just now getting up when he told you he was on his way.”
Right on cue, there were three knocks on the door. The sound was firm, and in the methodical rhythm he had told Chino to use. I shot Ghost a look and then nodded at the door for him to go and get it. He pushed off the wall and then headed that way.
I saw him checking the side window next to it before cracking it open.
Chino stepped in like he had been here before.
Once Ghost told me who he had called, I knew exactly who he was talking about.
I had only heard stories about Chino, but from what I gathered, he seemed solid.
He had been out in the streets moving weight since I was a young boy.
But now I was able to put a face to the infamous name.
He walked in and scanned the room. He had a medium build with a hard-stoned face that looked like he had seen some shit in his life.
He was wearing a clean fit, and his eyes were sharp, too sharp.
They were small and beady but looked like the type that noticed everything.
He dapped up Ghost first, then looked at me.
“You his mans?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
I kept it short because I honestly wasn’t with the formalities, so we didn’t waste time with small talk.
Ghost bent down, dragged the duffel bag onto the table, and then unzipped it slowly.
The second Chino looked inside, his whole facial expression changed.
That interest that Ghost was speaking of, I literally saw wipe clean off his face.
It was replaced with something else. You would have thought Jeepers Creepers was in the damn bag the way he looked inside of it.
He reached into the bag, pulled one brick out, and turned it over in his hand.
He was inspecting the shit out of it. That’s when I saw it, the red stamp of a cocoa plant on the wrapping.
Chino let out a low whistle while shaking his head before setting it back down into the bag like it burned his hand.
“Nah,” he said, stepping back. “I can’t touch this.”
My brows furrowed in anger.
“Can’t touch it… or won’t?”
He looked at me with a serious glare.
“Both.”
The room went quiet, and when it did, I folded my arms in frustration. I needed to know what the fuck was going on.
“You mind explaining?”
Chino rubbed his jaw and then let out a breath like he was debating even saying it.
“When I was younger,” he started, “back home in the Dominican Republic, my Papi, before he died, had ties out there.”
He nodded toward the brick.
“I used to hear stories about them. The Ruiz Cartel. Them boys run the DR. Shit, they run this side of the states. They don’t play fair, and they don’t forget.” He shook his head again. “For anybody moving they work without permission, that’s a death wish.”
I glanced at Ghost and then back at Chino.
“So, you scared?”
My statement earned a slight smirk, but the curve on his lips never reached his dark eyes.
“I’m smart.”
His gaze dropped back to the bag and then lifted again.
“Where y’all even get this from?”
Before Ghost could open his mouth, I stepped forward to answer the question. My tone was flat.
“If you ain’t interested, you ain’t got no reason to know.”
That hung in the air for a second. Chino studied me before nodding once.
“Aight.”
He backed up toward the door.
“Word of advice? Get rid of it fast… or don’t get caught with it at all.”
And just like that, he was gone. Once the front door was shut, silence filled the room again, but thicker this time. I dragged my hand down the side of my face while pacing off my frustration.
“Man… what the hell are we supposed to do now?” I asked.
Everything else we stole was easy to get off.
But now things were different than our normal licks.
We were sitting on ten bricks and suddenly had nobody who wanted them.
Chino was high up on the street food chain, and if his ass said no, then I knew that everyone else would follow behind him.
I looked at Ghost when he didn’t answer my question.
“We just supposed to sit on this?”
He didn’t look worried. He didn’t even flinch or bat an eye at the realization of what Chino had told us. Whoever this cartel was seemed like they didn’t play. And here we were, the dummies with their product.
“I’ll break it down,” he said simply.
I stopped pacing.
“Break it down?” I asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Yeah. We can move it ourselves.”
I stared at him for a second… then let out a short laugh.
“Nigga, you don’t know the first thing about selling dope.”
Ghost shrugged my statement off before responding.
“I watched Snowfall.”
That caught me off guard. I couldn’t stop myself from laughing.
“Man, get the hell outta here.”
He cracked the smallest smile. I shook my head while still laughing a little, then I pointed at him.
“You ain’t even got clientele. Who the fuck are we supposed to move this shit to?”
Ghost looked at me like I was the slow one. Then he gestured around us.
“Have you looked around where we live, bruh?” He paused. “The clientele everywhere.”