Part 2
"The Good Life"
After robbing the drug store earlier in the day Willie, Juan and me were in good shape and good spirits. We had money in our pockets and plenty of drugs to use and to sell. After we got back from copping in New York we got rid of Virgin and then we all got high and talked shit for a while. After that we walked to the White Castle in Belleville for a dozen cheeseburgers and an extra-large Coke.
Later I went over to Building Number 2 to holla at my girl, Sheila, but her brother said that she had gone to Jersey City with her mom and wasn’t expected to be back until just after midnight.
It was about 10:30PM at that time so I headed over to the lobby of Building 6 to checkout the Homies who are usually loitering there and to try to sell some of the heroin I was holding. Willie and Juan went there own ways.
The entranceway or lobby of Building 6 was where you could find many of the neighborhood dope fiends hanging out at anytime of the day or night.
You enter each of the buildings through 2 large steel doors with 2 big vertical Plexiglas windows on each of them. You step inside into an area about the size of a large living room with walls of tan painted cinderblocks and 2 light fixtures on the ceiling. The floors were a dark brown vinyl tile and on the left wall is a large steel grate that covers a big radiator recessed into a space in the wall. The radiators were one of the attractions of hanging out in the lobbies, other than the fact that there really were not any other places to hangout. The radiators in the lobbies kicked out big-time heat, sometimes year-round. It could get so hot that it could seriously burn you if you touched the grate.
In one corner hanging over the radiator was a red steel box with a glass front door that held a large fire extinguisher.
The wall on the right side, immediately as you enter the lobby is covered with 64 small bronze colored mailboxes. Each mailbox, one for each apartment in the building, was about the size of one of the red bricks that made up the outside walls. There were thin slots cut in the doors that allowed you to see if you have mail inside. The lobbies were always crowded with women waiting for the mailman to bring those welfare checks on the first of the month. Inside the mailboxes, if there was still a door and lock on it and you could get a key, was also a safe hiding place for our drugs, in case the police ran down on us. Straight ahead, as you enter the lobby past the mailboxes and the radiator was the elevator. There were passageways to the right and left of the elevator that led to doors to the stairways and to the first floor apartments.
Building 6 was also the place where you could always find the drugs you wanted to buy. Heroin, cocaine and marijuana were the predominant drugs of choice in the projects and the people who purchased there. White folks came from all the wealthy suburbs surrounding North Newark to buy drugs at Building 6. They came from Forest Hills and Silver Lake Sections of North Newark and places like Belleville, Nutley and Bloomfield. Upstanding, respectable white folks would even cross the Passaic River from Kearny and Harrison to cop at building 6.
The lobby of Building 6 was preferred as a hangout for us dealers and crooks because of its location and it had good view of the street. The hangout spot migrated from building to building over the years, but 6 seemed to remain a mainstay. Buildings 6 and 7 sat opposite sides of Grafton Avenue facing one another. Grafton Avenue was the main road that cut straight though the center if the projects complex from Broadway to McCarter Highway where it ended. These were the easiest buildings to get in and out of without coming too deep into the complex. It was also a perfect location for a quick stop and cop curbside drug service, where customers could purchase whatever they wanted without ever leaving the safety of their fancy cars.
Building six was, usually, the best location to see the police coming and give us a chance to run up the stairs and escape. We would either go up to someone’s apartment, or any other number hiding places in the building before the cops could sneak up on us. If they didn’t get you in the lobby you were home-free. The police were not running upstairs into the hallways looking for anybody. Since the voodoo apartment were I was staying was there in Building 6, it made it that much more convenient for me.
When I got to 6 there were 4 other people already there in the lobby, Wayne, T-Tom Gremlin and Roz. Wayne and T-Tom were there dealing heroin, same as I was at the time. Gremlin and his wife, Roslyn, were ol’ head junkies in their 40s.
T-Tom and Gremlin were over near the right stairway entrance talking when I came in. Roz, who was probably supposed to be looking out the door for the cops, was standing on the wall in front of the radiator. Wayne was sitting on the short steps near the elevator reading a comic book, as he was known to do a lot. T was leaning with his back against the wall facing the door. He was holding his hand in front of his face so that only his eyes were exposed to Gremlin’s juices. Gremlin had his back to the door, talking to T-Tom and didn’t see me come in and head for the radiator to warm up.
“Come on, T”, Gremlin whined, while he held a watch close to T-Tom’s face as if to give him a good look, “You can do that for me, baby.”
“I don’t need no fuckin’ women’s Timex watch, Gremlin”, T-Tom said, sounding exasperated, frustrated and irritated by Gremlin’s begging and his juicy dialog, “I need cash”.
Apparently, Gremlin was trying to get 3 dimes ($10 bags of heroin) for $21.78 cash and a used women’s Timex watch and it didn’t look like T-Tom was going for that deal.
“Check out the watch”, Gremlin persisted, “It’s worth at least 20-30 dollars, muthafucka”.
“Grim, man, I told you”, now T-Tom was pissed. “I can’t do nothin’ with that damn watch. What the fuck you think, I’m gonna do, go out on the street and try to sell a fuckin’ Timex to get my money? You sell the watch for 30 bucks and then you can come back to me right and have cash left over. I don’t want no watch!”
“Aw, T, you can help me out”, Gremlin mumbled, fumbling to put the watch into his coat pocket.
They had probably stolen or found the watch somewhere, because it had been a long time since Roz and Gremlin had sold the last of their own personal jewelry and valuables.
“Okay, fuck it then, can I get 2 dimes for 15 dollars?” Gremlin asked T-Tom, as if he was letting him know that he may not have got over with the watch, but he was determined to get a bargain.
“Grim, you showed me that you had 21 dollars”, T-Tom said, not believing the audacity of Gremlin to try and short change him on 2 dimes when he knew Gremlin had right money.
“I didn’t want 21 bucks and change and a watch for 3 dimes, so why the fuck would I give you 2 dimes for 15 bucks? Especially, since I know you that you have the correct money in your pocket?”
“Damn, baby”, Gremlin shot back at T-Tom. “Me and my wife have to get something to eat!”
T-Tom looked over at me standing there against the radiator, with Roz, and rolled his eyes. We both laughed. Hearing my voice, Gremlin turned around and saw me.
“Yeah, yo, what’s up MJ?” Gremlin acted like he was really happy, even relieved, to see me.
“What’s up, Grim?”
I was very cautious because I knew what was coming.
“Mike, I heard you was holdin’”, he spit as he gave up on T-Tom and rushed over to me near the radiator,” You holdin’, my brotha?”
As I said earlier, Gremlin was in his late 40s and he spit when he talked. He couldn’t help it, since he had sold his dentures years ago to buy drugs. Gremlin and his wife, Roz, used to be Junior High School Teachers and had a house in Belleville, before they took on heroin 5 years ago. Now they lived in Gremlin’s mama’s basement on Chester Avenue.
I really did not want Gremlin coming over and getting in my face with that spit spraying shit. I was about to tell him to back off when the lobby door swung open and before any of us could react,“ALRIGHT MOTHER FUCKERS, EVERYBODY FREEZE!”, the police got the drop on us.
The first cop through the door was dressed for the streets, with a baseball caps turned backwards and blue jeans, sneakers and a hoodie sweatshirt. “Everybody put your hand up and face the wall!”
For a quick moment I thought it was some stick up men there to rip us off for our dope, because of the way cop #1 was dressed. But, I knew these were the cops. No doubt in my mind. Cops carry themselves differently and have more style than your average stickup dudes when they run down on a chump. Plus, 3 of the 5 guys who came in behind him, also with their guns drawn, were wearing trench coats and ties – like detectives.
The baseball cap cop, who was standing their in the crouched position, holding his gun with both hands, first pointed at me and Roz and than swung around to Wayne who looked like he was ready to book up the stairs.
“Don’t think about it, motherfucker”, he warned, like Dirty Harry. “Run and you’ll die right here”.
Anyway, when the cops busted in I was holding eight bags of the heroin inside the fingers of the gloves I had just taken off. I dropped the gloves on the floor at my feet and attempted to kick the gloves away from me. It was a futile attempt because 3 cops were looking right at me when I dropped it. T-Tom was also holding 3 dimes and tried to dropped his stuff on the floor and walk away from it. It didn’t do him any good both because they busted us all and took us all to headquarters and charged everybody with joint possession of the drugs.
Everybody, except Roz. The police let Roz go. They said she was clean. I wonder if the fact that Roz also happened to be a white woman had anything to do with her going home. Especially since Wayne didn’t have anything on him and he didn’t have any outstanding warrants either, but they locked his ass up that night. I’m just saying.
Gremlin had an outstanding warrant for failing to pay child support and he was pissed as hell about it. Gremlin was especially pissed and didn’t stop letting us know about it.
“Yeah, you cheap muthafuckas, I bet you wish you would have sold me that shit now, huh?” Gremlin spit. “Now the po-lice got everybody’s shit”.
Gremlin’s ranting was not the worse of the bumpy ride in the back of the police wagon with our hands handcuffed behind our backs and shackled together with leg irons. The worse part was that we were in such close quarters and Gremlin tends to speak extra juicily when he is mad. Gremlin just kept on grumbling and spraying around the back of that police van like a lawn sprinkler.
“I was in there for a half hour talking with you, niggah", he said to T-Tom. "If you would have just made the deal I would have been gone long before the cops got there!”
It was T-Tom that Gremlin was really mad at because T-Tom was in control of whether the deal went down or not.
T-Tom and Wayne were brothers. T-Tom was 21 and a couple of years than Wayne. Wayne was more-or-less a runner for T-Tom than a dealer. Wayne Had Attention Deficit Disorder or A.D.D. Except in those days we just said he was retarded. He liked to look at comic books and would look at them for hours. I say, “look at them” because he couldn’t read.
It turns out that T-Tom had 3 dime bags in the hallway and that is exactly how many Gremlin wanted to get from him.
“Man, Gremlin”, said T-Tom who had just been taking Gremlin’s verbal assault like a man and remaining quiet. “If your wife had been looking out for the cops like she was supposed to be doing, the cops might not have been able to sneak up on us. Shit, plus it ain’t my fault you don’t pay your child support, niggah!”
Gremlin hesitated for a second and had a look on his face as if he was offended and considering responding to T-Tom’s comment about Roz slacking up on the lookout tip and causing us to get busted. Or maybe he was offended by the child support crack that T-Tom made. Perhaps Gremlin thought better of it because the shit was true that his girl was supposed to be looking out for the cops and he don’t pay his child support.
“Shit the watch itself is worth 30-40 dollars”, Grim said, “Now the man got everything, fuck!”
T-Tom, Wayne, nor I, said another word to Gremlin the entire ride downtown, but he just kept going. Since our hands were handcuffed behind our backs we could not cover our faces against the onslaught of spit. The only thing we could do is try to turn our bodies as much as we could away from Gremlin and let the backs of our heads take the drenching.
Life had taken an unfortunate turn for the worse…
Copyright © 2011 MBJ
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