No Trail Behind Me

By Gary Ray

Andre Washington is a streetwise young thug with something to prove and attitude to spare. When he finally decides to step up to the Big Time, he doesn't care who pays the costs.

Marshall Hightower doesn't want to make any waves. Finally settled into a new home after years of foster care, he just wants to run track and avoid trouble in middle school but he quickly finds himself running from far more than lithe-limbed competitors.

Na’ohmi Lightfoot is more than just a pretty mixed girl with unsettling copper brown eyes. She’s the key to an impossible magic. One that can make or break empires. Though she desperately wants to find her missing parents, there are evil men behind her, men determined to see her captured, dead, or worse.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lionscourt Print, Inc
• Release date: Feb 2, 2015
• ISBN: 9780986276217

Book preview

No Trail Behind Me

No Trail Behind Me

Book 1

Of

The Bloodwood Chronicles

By: Gary Ray

Lionscourt Print, Inc.

PO Box 15704, Long Beach Ca 90815

www.bloodwoodchronicles.com

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to historical events, actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

ISBN 978-0-9862762-1-7

All rights reserved.  Published by Lionscourt Print, Inc.

First Edition, First Printing, February 2015

This book was originally published in paperback 2015

Copyright © G.Ray 2015

Cover Art by J. Morrow

Edited by Karye Luppen

Copy Editor

Printed in United States

9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

Ordering Information; www.bloodwoodchronicles.com

PO Box 15704, Long Beach, CA 90815

Distributor Lulu Press, Inc. 3101 Hillsborough St, Raleigh, NC  27607

Dedicated to all those students, the ones that never forgot my story…

CHAPTER 1

On October 7, 1992, the Burbank City Attorney and the Burbank Police Department sought an injunction against the Barrio Elmwood Rifa gang.  The target area consisted of an entire city block that the gang called home.  The injunction did not name the gang as a defendant.  It did however name 34 members of the gang.  This was the first injunction to include the No Association clause prohibiting gathering, or appearing anywhere in public view, with any other defendant anywhere in the target area.  The no association restriction usually contains wording that prohibits the gang members from standing, sitting, walking, driving, bicycling, gathering or appearing anywhere in public view with any other defendant herein, or with any other known gang member.  In Los Angeles today, there are 37 gang injunctions covering 57 gangs and 11,000 gang members in the City of Los Angeles.

SCPD Internal Memorandum, 1996

Zip, leader of C-MoB, forced each bronze-colored bullet down into the black, spring-loaded clip one at a time. His hands were big, with thick fingers and keloid-slashed knuckles that, despite this roughness, deftly manipulated the small projectiles.  A wide feral smile split his face as he worked in the semi-darkness of the car.  He had driven his four-door 65’ Impala down through an alley only half-paved, skirting ragged pot-holes large enough to damage the gleaming, mirror-like chrome undercarriage, and pulled in alongside the graffiti-splashed rear concrete wall of a dilapidated gas station.  A huge willow tree broke through an adjacent wooden fence and slashed above them from an apartment building’s parking lot.  Its wide trunk was riddled with knife-scarred writing and faded spray paint. The deep colors of the midnight-blue paint on his ride mingled with the fluttering shadows cast by the large tree in the waning day. This had always been one of Zip’s underspots deep inside C-MoB’s turf.  He paused in the loading of the clip and held the imposing black gun up in the dim street light coming through the windshield.  Zip wanted to make sure Lil’ Dre saw what he was going to be workin’ with tonight.  He twisted it proudly for a moment before setting it back in his lap and resuming the loading of the clip. Zip handled the black handgun casually with hands well experienced in the manipulation of violence and pain.

As they waited, the whole car vibrated and shook from more than just the large bass speakers in the trunk.  A throaty growl rumbled out from the bored-out, big block engine underneath the scooped and vented hood.  Just like Zip, the car felt impatient to begin the night’s work and seemed annoyed with having to sit idling in the growing shadows of the run-down alley.  Zip’s eyes caressed the wide dashboard and scanned the customized central console—his gaze taking in the multi-colored lights of his Kenwood graphic equalizer and brand new Alpine integrated cassette deck and cd-player. 

Just wait, baby, he cooed softly to the car, The hunt begins soon.  His words were lost in the throbbing base and hypnotic lyrics of the rap song.  He raced the engine several times, and his smile widened at the screaming whine that echoed down the dark alley.

The Impala was ill-suited for idling.  Zip spent most of his free time agonizing over the car and its engine, making sure it was always ready to run like a rhino.  Zip felt the same heady rumble pounding deep within his own self.  He knew this car like his own heart, both of them beating to the same, smooth power of iron pistons. 

Zip always drove fast.  At least, his boys said it was fast.  To him, it was normal.  It was like God had made Zip a skilled driver on a level above everyone else.  He prided himself on his driving even though some of the other G’s wouldn’t even ride with him, saying he drove with the devil in the front seat and an angel in the back.  Zip had been into cars since he was a kid, but this one he loved more than his previous cars.  It was linked to his spirit like birds to the wind. He believed that nothing could go wrong in it even to the point of evading the police.  He only felt really alive when he was driving crazy-fast; pushing both his own fascination with danger and the limits of the modified car he drove.  His was a spirit always ready to race, always on the verge of desperate flight through the gray streets that made up his city and, more importantly, the five or six blocks he considered his gang’s hood. 

He looked up in the rear-view mirror, glancing for a moment at the dark brooding eyes of young Andre Washington, known on the street as Lil’ Dre.  As he looked back down at the gun, his thoughts ran on for a brief moment.  Zip’s hands stilled for an instant, and his eyes became distant and unfocused behind the dark sunglasses.  He saw raging red flames burning a long black sedan, the flaming heat whooshing loudly as if it was alive with anger.  The gasoline had fed it quickly.  He watched until he saw the black paint bubbling and boiling away.  The heat was so intense it melted the front windshield, the glass oozing like melting wax down onto the dashboard.  Finally, only the charred steel skeleton of the car was visible through the streaks of blazing orange fire that seemed to reach the sky, and a thick tendril of black oily smoke crept eastward through a clear cobalt-blue sky. 

Zip shook the memories away and cursed the wack-ass KOD gangsters under his breath for making him make this move himself.  He’d much rather be out cruising tonight or kicking it with his girl, Tania. He usually left the drive-bys to the prospects and young G’s but tonight was special, and there was a lot at stake. It was personal and business. The KODs had been an itch in his craw for too long, and Andre was the perfect young G to make them pay.  C-MoB had to survive at all costs and this was M-O-B business, true and true.  The K-O-D crew had to pay tonight, and like everyone else that run up against C-MoB, they had to pay in blood.

Kings of Destruction, my fuckin’ ass!

Zip spat out the words like there was poison in his mouth, Dem bitches gonna to pay in blood for that name tonight.  Everybody gotta pay in time.  We just going to make their time tonight.

Big Hush, sitting next to him, nodded his head, pursing his thick lips at the same time.

Respect to the true OG’s! Zip was proud his boy Hush was here.  It was like having your favorite gun strapped at the hip, only better because Hush was more dangerous, more likely to truly set it ‘off.’

Zip was glad to be out on the hunt, glad to make anyone pay for Dorsey and all the other G’s that had fallen. Thinking of his true OG’s, his gangster brothers that he’d come along with, always brought his thoughts back to Dorsey.  Everything always came back to Andre’s older brother, Dorsey.

Zip couldn’t hate the KODs more. They’d pulled stunts on his crew for years.  Zip himself had been shot by them once.  And it was only a few years back they’d shot up Tania’s house, filling the dirty brown vinyl siding with twenty-somethin’ holes.  It was only luck that Tania and Zip’s four year-old son, Malik, had been chillin’ at a friend’s house late that evening.  To add fuel to the fire, Lil’ Dre and the rest of C-MoB had heard that it was the KODs that had murdered Dorsey a little over five years ago. Tonight he planned on wrapping up the whole business by letting Andre finally get his revenge.  Even now, he felt his head getting hot when he thought about his boy Dorsey and what had led to him being killed.  Images of them kicking it together flashed through his head as the dead weight of the gun sat in his lap and the sun continued to slip away to the west.

Dorsey Washington had been his boy from way back; nearly brothers in how hard they had rode together.  This was why he’d had to make this move tonight.  Zip had met Dorsey in Juvi when they were both only eleven.  They had first met in the cafeteria when a group of the older boys had put bets on who could beat the other one down.  Though neither of them had won the knock-down, drag-out fight that had lasted about fifteen minutes in an abandoned cell during recreation, they had gained respect for each other in the battle and several weeks later they jumped the older boys who had made them fight, catching one in the showers and the other minutes later in his cell.  After that, they’d been homies for real and had never stopped kicking it together.  Zip had gotten out first and then Dorsey a couple months after him. It didn’t take them long to start runnin’ the block. Zip forced his smile down as he thought of that time.  It was another time, a better time that he knew he’d never see again.  He and Dorsey, back then, had been through everything and more that two young thugs in their own hood—young princes ruling a couple concrete blocks—could get in to.

Even now, all these years later, when Zip looked into the shadows of the back seat and saw Lil’ Dre’s dark and angry eyes, it reminded Zip so much of Dorsey that Zip almost thought that Dorsey Washington was ridin’ with him again, like they used to back when Dorsey was alive and running with C-MoB. The kid looked so much like his older brother that, every so often, Zip was able to forget that Dorsey was gone.  So he kept the kid close, at least as close as he could without seeming to show favoritism within the gang.  Zip wanted to make sure that Lil’ Dre didn’t make the same mistake his older brother had made.  That could get him killed just as quick.  It was a cut-throat game. You are either down with C-MoB, or you’re dead.  C-MoB had its own princes, sergeants, lieutenants, and groups of ruthless young prospects.  If Zip focused too much attention on Lil’ Dre or one of the other prospects, that kid could be a target, not only of other local gangs but also of other ambitious and jealous gang members in C-MoB.

Zip was quietly proud of Dorsey’s kid brother. He was definitely gonna be a G. He wasn’t no punk.  That was for sure.  Most everyone in the crew and streets called him Lil’ Dre, even though he was taller and lanky now; not the little boy he had been just a year or two ago.

Zip, who was nearly six feet tall himself, knew Andre would be taller than himself in a few short years.  Sure, Andre was ghetto skinny—what Zip referred to as ‘project poor’—but Zip knew he was much stronger than he looked.  His long arms were wiry and strong like coiled rope, and his upper body was chiseled like one of those Roman statues rich folks had in their gardens.  Zip nodded to himself as he thought of the kid.  Lil’ Dre could have been called something close to protégé for Zip if C-MoB had that shit. He could see the kid taking over for him in a few years when Zip had made enough scrilla to retire on.  Lil’ Dre was young, but he was as tough as they come, and Zip knew that nothing would stop Lil’ Dre from trying to go out and kill some KODs on his own, so Zip had always kept him close and looked out for him as much as possible during these last few years when Lil’ Dre had shown promise.  Lil’ Dre was following the same path his older brother Dorsey had.  Zip knew he was a dedicated C-MoB prospect.  Zip just didn’t want Andre getting himself caught up in some of the petty shit that goes on in the hood, something small in terms of legality but big in terms of him getting serious jail time or even worse, someone looking to put a bullet in the kid.  As leader of the C-MoB, Zip had steered Andre away from all the stupid stuff most young G’s get into like beating up their girlfriends, jacking cars or armed robbery, and selling dope in the streets to people you don’t know.  Though Zip had kept him deep under the radar till now, he had known that there was no keeping Lil’ Dre from taking things into his own hands eventually.  Zip hadn’t wanted to risk that.  He saw everyone in his crew as part of a working machine.  Everyone had their function. And no one was allowed to leave, ever. Well, Zip smiled to himself under the darkening sky that mirrored the gray pavement, At least not without a lot of blood.  He chuckled quietly for a moment, and then bobbed his head to the driving beat of a DMX song.

Zip, though known for being a crazy-ass gangster with a trigger-quick temper, tended towards legitimate paranoia. He was always doing something illegal, and the police were always looking for him for some offense or another.  He was on edge most of the time.  His anxiety was often the spark that smoldered hot beneath Zip’s charismatic and cool exterior.  He had to be on point all the time because running C-MoB was a 24-7 job.  He had to check fools on a daily basis to keep the machine running smoothly or else somebody would think he was getting soft.  And Zip couldn’t have that.  He knew teachin’ respect was the name of the game.  The moment he slipped and let his guard down, it was over.  Being a rider was just a means to an end for him. It was really simple. The streets were crazy, so he had to be even crazier because he wanted control of the river of money he saw flow through his streets from drugs.  Maybe Zip could never quit looking over his shoulder, but he was going to make damn sure his enemies couldn’t either. 

Tonight the KODs were on his radar.  They had been disrespecting the spot for years, encroaching on C-MoB’s territory with muggings, jackings, home robberies, and murders.  Tonight would change things.  Zip looked down again at the gun in his hand as he handed the 40oz. beer to his boy, Ace, who was sitting just behind him in the rear passenger seat.  He needed to get back to business.

Zip pushed the last bullet into the clip, shoved the clip back into the grip and pulled the slide back.  He let it go, and it snapped forward, loading a bullet into the chamber.  He popped the clip back out, forced a last bullet down into the clip and pushed the clip back into the gun.

Here you go, Lil’ Dre, Zip said, passing the gun behind him to Andre, That extra bullet could save yo ass.

Zip glanced at Big Hush in the passenger seat and chuckled to himself as the gun slid into Andre’s grip.  Zip turned the stereo up louder. 

Let’s do this!  Zip said as they huddled in the sweltering shade. Them bitch-ass KODs going to pay tonight! 

Ace held the beer up for a second, then rolled the black-tinted window down and poured some of the beer out the window.  Big Hush, of course, stayed silent in the front passenger seat, though he did take the forty-ounce beer from Ace and drank fully from it.  He offered it to Zip, but Zip pointed back at Lil’ Dre.  Lil’ Dre put the heavy gun in his lap, took the beer from Big Hush, and drank the rest of it and threw the bottle out the window against the rear wall of the gas station.  It exploded in a hail of glass and beer, leaving a bubbling brown stain dripping down the wall.  Most of the broken glass fell into the large pile of dirty broken glass at the base of the wall.  Tonight it didn’t taste that good to him, settling in his stomach like a bag of rocks, but he fought the nausea down, and after a moment, he felt stronger and bolder, ready to do what he’d dreamed of doing for years.

Zip nodded his head in approval, and then put the car in drive. The car slid slowly out of the shadows of the alley.  Behind them, the thick, menacing slashes of purple spray paint on the rear concrete wall of the gas station made bleak pronouncements of both their territory and dark intent.

A rope of brown dust trailed out behind them as the car sped out of the alley behind the neglected gas station.  The clerk inside the graffiti-sprayed, barred and bullet-proofed windows didn’t even look up from his crossword as Zip’s tires bled angry rubber into the black pavement and disappeared down the avenue.  The gas clerk had learned not to look many years ago—you didn’t survive here long here in this part of LA when you saw too much.

The clerk did look up towards the setting sun in the west. It had been a sweltering day, and he was glad the sun was near setting.  Sometimes the heat made folks do things they normally wouldn’t do, he thought to himself as he noticed how the sun hung low and flat in the sky like the eye of some giant demon—a deep red color, not unlike the molten lava of a volcano, ran in horizontal cracks and edges out from the sun, a thick crimson scar across the darkening sky.  There were no wind or ocean breezes to disperse the day’s heated moments, leaving the heavy stagnant heat pooling across the cities of the LA basin.  The streets seemed quiet, though cars filled the highways and cities thoroughfares.  The clerk looked back down at his crossword and decided to close early that night.

Zip turned up his Alpine in-dash cd player, blasting DMX’s rap song Ruff Ryders Anthem out into the afternoon streets.  Only he changed the words as he rapped along with the song.  KODs wanna try, KODs wanna lie.  Then KODs wonder why, niggas have ta die!

The twelve-inch bass speakers in the trunk vibrated through the back seat and thrummed into their backs, filling the car with the booms of the heavy bass.

Zip, pumped up by the beer and music, quickly took them down side streets, alleys, and neighborhoods less traveled by police patrols.  The long black shadows of light poles flashed across the large windows and interior of the car, each one like the knobby, aged fingers of some giant demon trying to catch them.  But Zip’s car was too fast; even the shadows would be left behind tonight. 

Though the evening traffic was heavy as always, Zip thought the streets seemed quiet as if everyone out there was anticipating something.  As if they all were watching him and waiting for his next move.  He liked the quiet that usually came with the night.  Deadly things happened in the silence and darkness of the night. We bout to do these fools, Lil’ Dre, he bellowed out, just above the sound of the music. They bout to pay for ya brother in blood!

Lil’ Dre nodded his head, his dark eyes looking down the road ahead of him.

Most urbanites had just made it home and were just finishing dinner or drinks and relaxing on comfortable couches, exhausted from the heat or the heavy traffic that was part of daily LA life.  Every day could be a battle in all parts of LA, not just South Central.  Everyone had to deal with it in one way or the other; whether it was the heat, the traffic, the crime or the pervasive brownish-yellow smog that covered the city like a blanket on certain air alert days, you were going to have a battle on your hands no matter what.

Andre’s expression tightened even more at the mention of his brother, his eyes narrowed to slits of black.  He saw Zip looking at him, so he held the stare for a minute, then looked down at the gun he held in his right hand.  He turned it over in his hand, examining the black plastic slide and smooth black metal stock.  The gun was thick and heavy, and his long, thin fingers struggled to hold it properly.  This wasn’t the first time he’d held a gun, and he tried to act like it.  Guns had always been around him.  His mom had a little snub nosed .38 she’d kept high up in her closet until she’d needed a fix so bad that she’d sold it for thirty dollars.  He’d had his own little silver ‘shottie’ for the past year or so, a .32 Beretta he kept hidden in the bottom of  stack of Nike shoe boxes in the corner of his closet.  But this was his first ‘drive-by’, and he tried hard to hide the fear and anxiety he felt churning inside him. Or was it that nasty-ass beer?  He didn’t want Zip to know how fast and hard his heart beat as he bounced along in the back seat.  It was so fucking hot today.  How can it be so hot?  Andre wiped the sweat away from his forehead casually.  He wanted to make all of C-MoB proud of him, and his courage ebbed and flowed with the booming bass of the rap music, slowly growing in intensity with the song.  He wanted to make the only family he’d ever had proud. Still, he wiped his sweaty hands several times on his starched and creased Levi 501’s. He examined the thick .40 Caliber pistol, moving it from hand to hand.  It was big and cumbersome, but he managed to grip it with his right hand like he knew what to do with it. 

He felt more than saw Zip’s eyes on him through the rearview mirror, and he felt the ice cold weight of Zip’s stare.  Zip was everything to him, and he wanted to make sure that Zip, out of everyone, was proud of him.  He knew that Zip looked out for him.  He’d been the brother that Andre needed after Dorsey was gone. He gripped the gun tighter, as if that could show Zip that he meant business.  Andre would have preferred his smaller Berretta back at the house.  Zip had told him that it was too tiny for a real nigga, that it was nothing more than a kid’s gun.  Andre had left it at home, knowing that Zip would have a different one for him, a man’s gun.  He rested the big gun in his lap, leaned back against the seat and watched the end of day slide by the black-tinted windows.

It looked like a giant knife had slashed a hole in the sky high above the beaches to the west for the sun to fall into.  A long, red streak creased the scattered clouds above the Pacific Ocean.  The crimson dusk capped a typical day in the LA basin.  It had been sweltering hot all day, and the smog ceiling had kept the heat concentrated and stagnant all day.  Heat still rose in blurry waves like steam from manhole vents.  The wind that usually washed in off the Pacific Ocean had been as still and listless as the waves that had trickled in and collapsed in the golden-flecked sand along the beach cities to the southwest. The long branches of tall palm trees that lined the ocean boulevards in cities like Long Beach and Venice hung limply, almost desperately, from their perches high above the boulevard.  The ground near their trunks lay scattered with the dry skeletal remains of their siblings.

Andre’s heart thumped noisily against his chest, and small drops of sweat slid slowly down the valley of his back.  He felt as excited and as scared as he had ever been and he’d been in some shit before now.  Looking down the black metallic gun, he thought about blasting a wack-ass KOD right in the head.  Bam!  Bam!  Bam!  Now who the hell are the Kings of Destruction?!  Huh!

In his mind, he saw the KOD slump heavily to the ground, heard the ominous thud of a lifeless body slapping against the earth for the last time.  He had dreamt of this over and over for years.

The KODs ran the drug trade below E St. and had been trying to take C-MoB territory for the past 10 years, which was everything above the intersection of C St. and East 24th Ave.  They were the enemies of Andre’s gang, the C-Street Mobsters, aka C-MoB. 

As if they could mess with the C-MoBsters!  For the millionth time, he imagined pulling the trigger and shooting a gang of them down, killing as many as he could in one drive-by, erasing from life anyone who got in his way.  He knew he could do it.  There was little doubt about that.  The KODs had killed his brother Dorsey, and he meant to make them pay.  They had shot Dorsey down in the street and let his life run thin down the gutter.  Now it was finally payback time.  And, besides that, besides the vision of his brother dying at his feet, Andre knew that gunplay was all the real O.G.’s in the C-MoB talked about besides making money and selling drugs.  

You won’t really be in C-MoB till you take care of that business. They’d wink slyly, and then add, You know what business, right? 

Hell fuckin’ yeah! he’d answer bravely, knowing deep in his heart that the time was coming for the KODs to pay in blood for the dirt they’d done to his brother.

He idolized these older gangsters, most of who were known to have shot somebody; others had survived being shot five or more times in gun battles against other gangs.  Their tales of savage fights and long jail time, and even of the G’s who hadn’t survived, had captured his imagination for years.  He couldn’t get enough of it. Sometimes he would sit and listen to the O.G.’s all day as the thick smoke of barbecue stung his eyes or at night when the real G’s came by.  They recognized themselves in Andre, and they’d sit and tell him different stories about prison life or ‘drive-bys’ they’d never be caught for.  What he really sat up for was the gun battles.  They enthralled him to no end.  Sometimes at night, he’d lie awake in his bed—a mattress on the floor—plotting his revenge for Dorsey.  With the full moon shooting silver beams across his wall, he would imagine that he was the G in the stories gaining his street creds, his long dark fingers flicking through his gang’s signs faster than a deaf kid does sign language and creating shadow guns that poured dark lead into the rough drywall patches that covered his walls.

Still Lil’ Dre, about to pull the trigger for the first time, was excited and glad to be rollin’ out on his enemies, but deep down he was just a little nervous and more than a little afraid.  It didn’t feel like his dreams, the nighttime plans of revenge he’d dreamt of so often.  He didn’t understand why he felt this way.  It was too hot, way too damned hot today.  He blamed it on the beer.  It was roiling and bubbling in his stomach as he sat against the hard bench seat.  He kept his expression taut, but each sweat drop felt like a waterfall, and a thousand other thoughts were messin’ with his head.  Where was Zip going?  The KODs weren’t in this direction.  Zip had told him earlier that they were going after a punk named Tank, the leader of the KODs.  He must live over this way.  Zip knows what he’s doin’.

He also wondered if the KODs would see them coming and whether they would have their own lookouts with guns.  It only made sense.  He’d done the same thing for C-MoB when he was younger. 

Andre moved his finger closer to the trigger.  He would have to be faster on the draw than them and aim to kill.  He might not get out of this without getting hurt or even shot, but this shit was important to get right.  He had to make sure at least one of them got it too.  I have to get one for Dorsey, at least one for him.  After that, it doesn’t matter.  If I take a bullet, then so be it.  That’s the cost of the game.

He couldn’t help but to think about getting shot.  Already, he’d seen too many of his boys from the block buried six feet under from the constant gang wars that plagued his neighborhood. Yet the fear he felt could not outweigh the bitterness and hatred he held for the KODs.  Nothing was more important than getting even.  Andre had only been seven when the KODs had shot his oldest brother Dorsey down in the street like a dog. He remembered it like it was yesterday, even though he never talked about it, not to anyone.  He thought back to that afternoon, the day everything had changed.

He’d been bouncing a basketball back and forth between his outstretched legs, working on his crossover, the ball slapping rhythmically on the cracked concrete porch.  A wooden railing with slats painted gray hemmed the rectangular porch in and led up to a torn screen door and into his home, a small two bedroom house.  Dorsey lounged easily against a car in the street, talking to a girlfriend.  Andre had been waiting for Dorsey’s girlfriend to leave.  They were going to shoot some hoops down at the park.  He remembered a dark car suddenly coming down the street.  He kept the ball bouncing back and forth between his legs even as he looked up, his eyes following the unfamiliar sedan.  The double beat of the ball hitting the concrete under his legs echoed harshly on the enclosed porch and for a flash he wondered if his mom would yell at him to stop before his attention moved back to the car coming down the street.  It was long and black, with deeply tinted windows and spinning, silver rims that sparkled like diamonds as they spun round super clean, white-wall tires.  Andre didn’t recognize the car that was moving just a little too slow, as if they were beginning to look for a parking space. Slap, slap….Slap, slap went the basketball against the concrete as he moved the ball two quick times between his legs, then let it bounce higher before repeating the pattern. Slap, slap….Slap, slap.

The car slowed down all the way just before it reached Dorsey and his girlfriend.  He saw his brother straighten up in a sudden burst of movement. Dorsey must have sensed what was coming.  He shoved his girlfriend to the side just as two of the dark-tinted windows on the near side rolled down. In Andre’s memory, the windows moved achingly slow, but he knew that it had to have been much faster back then. An instant later orange flames burst from the darkness behind both windows, and thin puffs of white smoke rose above the roof of the black car as loud popping sounds tore apart the afternoon’s peaceful silence.

At first, he had thought someone was throwing firecrackers, but then he had seen Dorsey thrown back up over the hood of the car and slide slowly to the ground.  He remembered the guns retreating inside the dark windows and the black car zooming off down the street.  Dorsey’s girlfriend had run screaming down the street.  Andre had pushed the basketball away and started to run out to Dorsey, each step an eternity because he didn’t want to see what he was rushing towards, didn’t want to believe what he’d just seen.  The forgotten basketball kept bouncing behind him as he ran down the steps, each bounce just a little lower than the previous.  Slap..slap…..slap..slap…

When he had reached his brother, he couldn’t believe what he saw.  Blood had soaked Dorsey’s bleach white t-shirt a brilliant red, spilling thicker with every throbbing beat of his heart.  It even trickled out of Dorsey’s mouth and formed small red bubbles as he gasped desperately for air, his body shaking and jerking hard with the effort.  Dorsey looked right up into his younger brother’s shocked eyes.

Andre had stood over him frozen, not knowing what to do, not even believing what had just happened, and unwilling to believe his brother was dying.  It hadn’t seemed real.  It was like he was just playing some part in a movie. 

Andre had just begun to shift his body to run back into the house and call the police, when Dorsey had grabbed his ankle.  Even now, Andre remembered that his thick grip had been painful, like handcuffs tightened too tightly—something Andre knew much more about now than in those last moments of Dorsey’s life.  Andre couldn’t move even if he wanted to.  Dorsey’s cheek muscles throbbed and pulsed, and he struggled to draw breath, but he didn’t let Andre go. 

He had looked down at Dorsey, wondering what he wanted him to do.  Dorsey’s eyes were so wide and intense in that moment that it was as if everything they’d done together as brothers and everything he wanted to do with Andre was flashing through his mind. As if he wanted to impart some final gift to Andre. Andre couldn’t tear his eyes away.  Now when he thought about it, he thought that maybe Dorsey had been trying to tell him something really important like who’d killed him, but Andre wasn’t really sure.  It had seemed like something more than that.  Even now, Andre had a hard time thinking about it.  Dorsey’s eyes were like pools of midnight in those last seconds.  His pupils were a huge black sun that Andre rotated around, locked in their last moment together.  Andre’s hair had risen on his neck and cold chills had crawled up his back.  The different sounds around him—a screaming woman, people calling his name, a siren in the distance—became muted, as if he was wearing large headphones over his ears.  

Andre struggled to read the blackness of his brother’s tortured eyes while Dorsey stared bullets into Andre, his eyes tearing up with the effort to tell him something.  He opened his mouth to say something, and Andre crouched lower, but it was too late. A moment later, Andre had heard him gasp heavily once more, and he was still.  His clear black eyes weren’t moving.  Andre knew he gone, but his eyes continued to look directly at Andre.  The basketball dropped down the curb and into the street before coming to rest next to Andre’s feet.

Andre’s tears came quickly then, dropping to mix with the froth of blood and saliva on Dorsey’s cheek. 

The sound around him rushed back in a wave as he looked up from his brother’s body.  Their mother had run outside then, breaking through the screen door and streaking out into street screaming for Dorsey.  She’d pushed Andre hard to the side and lifted Dorsey’s limp head into her lap.  Hold on, baby, she kept whispering softly, in the faint hope of there being a chance of him being alive.  She repeated it over and over again until Andre had been forced to cover his ears.  The streetlights had flicked on as she lay there holding him in the street.  She wailed louder and louder at the setting sun.

That was a sound Andre didn’t like remembering, but he still couldn’t get it entirely out of his thoughts at times. Andre’s life also turned a corner that day, and he hadn’t looked back ever or shed tears over anything since that day. 

It was only in the past few years that his anger had grown to the point where he needed to vent on those around him in school and in his hood.  In the beginning, he had found Zip always there, telling him to wait and concentrate on getting through high school before he really started banging heads with fools.  Andre had listened to him as much as he could, but his anger would spill out sometimes unintentionally.  By the time he was in 7th grade, he had quit listening to his teachers and ditched school pretty frequently.  His policy was to miss at least one day a week. His teachers didn’t mind.  They seemed happy not to deal with his attitude and classroom outbursts.  The principal even more so as Andre often ended up spending more time in his office than in class.  He even quit trying in his computer class, even though his teacher Mr. Pierson was one of the few who seemed to care and had told him that he could have a great career and that if he kept up with programming and building his own computers, he would at least get a scholarship to a good school somewhere. 

Instead, his grades plummeted, and he got in more and more trouble.  He fought anyone that looked at him funny, often at the slightest provocation. His fiery temper and nefarious ways became the subject of gossip and hearsay among students at every school.  This was what he really wanted anyway, to gain a rep as someone not to mess with.  He saw that other students his age feared him, and he had to push guys to fight him.  He would just bully them into a corner till they had to come out fighting.  He liked the fear and respect he got this way.  More than that, he liked to fight.  He enjoyed it even when he got hurt.  The fights brought him closer to Dorsey as he was alive, not the Dorsey that fell in the street.  Dorsey had fought with him all the time, beating him up to make sure he knew how to fight, even though Dorsey was much older than him.  Eventually though, he’d had to quit fighting before and after school when he was sent to juvenile hall several times for misdemeanor assault.  They finally sent him to a continuation high school for bringing a knife to school.  He’d watched The Godfather a year or so after Dorsey died, and since then, he knew he was meant to be a Don, someone who called the shots and put out hits on snitches and bitches. He hadn’t seen anything wrong with bringing a knife.  The turf war between C-MoB and the KODs had spilled over into the public schools, and he had brought it to protect himself.  Zip had given it to him but told him to keep it at home.  He hadn’t listened and been sent to a continuation for being hardheaded. 

Since then, he began to constantly think about the day he would get ‘jumped in’ to C-MoB.  Tall and gangly for his age, he’d been running with them more or less ever since Dorsey had died.  He had seen members come and go—some to jail and, not a few, ended up dead—but it was all the family he knew or needed.  He hadn’t actually had to get jumped in because he’d been runnin’ with C-MoB already, and they treated him like one of them because of his brother.  He was already pretty much a bona fide member except that he didn’t get to hang with them too often, especially when something big was going down.  Zip didn’t want him near the action, said he should fly under the radar as much as possible.  He had always kept Andre separate from the dealing while supplying him with some spending cash.  Andre suspected that Zip knew he wanted to get back at the KODs soon.  Zip had always kept him back from that for some reason that Andre didn’t understand, giving him money to cover most of his needs and sending him away when things were really about to ‘go down.’ 

Finally, a few of the OG’s got together.  Andre had heard that it was Big Hush and a darker skinned bald-headed guy named Real, who’d been a star running back at the local high school before getting into drug selling, who had had gone to Zip and told him that Andre was ready.  They saw that he wasn’t going to wait forever.  They knew he was going to explode and kill some random KOD and go to jail unless given the opportunity to ride with C-MoB.  There were much younger prospects than him, but he was theirs through Dorsey.  He didn’t need a sponsor, which was how many C-MoB members got into the gang.  Plus, they all knew that he was Zip’s boy.  Zip had finally agreed with them one night as they were hanging outside on the corner, looking over Lil’ Dre with cold appraising eyes. You still gotta get jumped in, dog, Zip had told him.

Lil’ Dre had met his eyes then, daring Zip to question his readiness.  But Zip had said nothing at the time, knowing that sometimes there’s nothing to be said.  He just nodded his head once.  Later the OG’s had remarked privately over his ‘jumping in’, how he had taken serious lumps but knocked down Tweety and JaJa before going down himself.  That had proven to them he was ready. 

Getting jumped-in to C-MoB consisted of standing in a circle of the gang members, mostly younger G’s looking to make a name for themselves.  Zip called out Go!, and they closed in on Andre like hungry dogs on a bone.  They pummeled him savagely, reigning wicked blows on his head, his back, anywhere his own desperate retaliation left open.  He could barely throw a punch without one connecting with him.  He dodged and slid, jerked around and ducked wildly, but it was no good.  There was too many of them.  There was a tiny break, and he managed to give a quick overhand right to knock Tweety down to the ground.  He then ducked fast as JaJa swung wildly just over his head.  He felt the anger behind it and tiring quickly, he threw everything he’d had left into a right uppercut.  The blow snapped JaJa’s head back, and he staggered backwards. Andre heard several gasps of surprise behind him, and he let a quick smile flash across his lips.  Someone exclaimed loudly, Damn!, but Andre had no idea who it was.  There was loud thrumming in his ears as he struggled to catch his breath while fending off most of the blows.  Pain flared everywhere he left open.  His legs became rubbery with exhaustion, but he was determined to show them that he wouldn’t go down, that he would ever stop fighting.

But by then, one banger connected with the back of his head and dazed him good.  That was probably a good thing because then he barely felt the sharp, stinging blows to his cheek, lower back and chest.  As blackness began to frame his vision, he heard Zip’s voice.

Ain’t no mercy out there, Dre. You gotta roll with the punches and come up swingin’.  Zip’s voice was louder.  He had come closer.  The other blows tapered off and stopped.  Andre swayed unsteadily on his feet.

Bam!  A fist connected really hard with his temple, and he wondered why the gray concrete was suddenly jumping into the air as he fell fully into the darkness of unconsciousness.  His last thoughts before he hit the pavement were, Damn, that was a big ass fist!

He woke a short time later, groggy, bruised and swollen.  His body was throbbing in pain from a dozen places.  They had taken him to Zip’s house.  If Andre’s mom had seen the black eye, swollen cheek and bruises, she would have gone ballistic on Zip.  Well, at least for awhile.  Then she would have forgotten about it while she looked for her next fix.  For the next several days, he had partied and hung with his boys while his wounds healed.  He had drunk alcohol for the first time and smoked a cigarette that had made him throw up the alcohol he’d drunk earlier.  Slim, Ice, Worm, Ace, and Blackie all praised him while he was dealing with the physical pain of being jumped in.  Both Tweety and JaJa looked at him sideways with dark eyes.  Both of them had been surprised when Andre had hit them hard enough to knock them down.  Andre knew Tweety was always cool and would get over it soon, but JaJa had never liked Andre, and Andre guessed that now JaJa definitely hated him.

The older OG’s congratulated him enthusiastically, "Now you a real MoBster, fool!  You one of us…We got your back always…You going to be a hard little G, boy!...You a man now, niggaaa!"  

Those nights, his body had felt like he had been run over by a city bus, bruised and nearly broken, but he had recovered quickly.  Buoyed by his new status in the gang, he didn’t even seem to feel the pain of his injuries. One eye had been purple and swollen shut for a few days, but inside he had also felt strong and protected, like a new sun had risen in his life.  I’m in C-MoB now, and ain’t nobody going to mess with me again. Those days at Zip’s house had been the best of his life. At least he had thought so at the time.

Now, riding low in the back seat of Zip’s car with the sweat on his back making his shirt stick to his skin, he wished that Dorsey could see him now or even could have been with him on his first drive by.  Dorsey would have liked that. They could have ridden like G’s together and showed them bitch-ass KODs how the Washingtons’ do it. Andre doubted if Dorsey would have been as nervous as he was now.  Andre smiled as he thought of Dorsey tossing back a beer and telling Andre to "Man up! and to be Bout it tonight!" Andre straightened up just a little.

You lookin’ kinda funny, Lil’ Dre, chided Ace next to him.  You ain’t scared, are you? 

Ace had been jumped into the gang years ago, back when he was in juvi.  He had been only ten then and, over the first few years, had quickly become one of Zip’s lieutenants on the outside.  He had been heavily involved in the game, including several drive-bys.  He’d even had a shoot-out once with some KODs.  His car had been riddled with holes from their bullets.  Miraculously, he had survived without being hit.  He would get drunk sometimes and talk about how the bullets sounded as they tore thirty-three holes in his car.  He said the KODs were punks and always carried AK’s because they can’t shoot for nothing.  He was already an OG at twenty-three.

Andre twisted his lips into a smirk at Ace.  Hell naw, man! he said a little bit louder than he wanted to. I’m just thinking about how I’m going to smoke those fools. 

Ace smiled at Andre with glazed and knowing eyes.  Andre thought Ace looked like he was out for a ride in the country.  Ace was slouched down in the seat, a cigarette hanging from his full lips, and perm-straightened hair jutted out from a dark brown Kangol.  Dark sunglasses shielded his eyes from the setting sun, so Andre only saw his own reflection when he looked over at him.  Andre often thought Ace looked like an old pimp with the furry hats, straightened hair, and gold chains he wore, but Andre had seen him beat down several guys by himself just because they didn’t move out of his way fast enough on the sidewalk. He was the real deal. Ace hadn’t brought a gun, saying too many guns in the car wasn’t cool.  He just sat there watching Andre, the cigarette’s oily smoke curling lazily into the air above them.  

Andre pulled the brim low on his St. Louis Cardinals baseball cap and rolled his tinted window down to about halfway.  He needed some air.  But the air that came in was heavy with heat and dust from the street, and he coughed lightly to clear his throat.  He also didn’t want Ace to see how nervous he was.  He thought of the bullet that had killed Dorsey, and he wondered whose names did the bullets in his gun have on them tonight? What KOD would die tonight?

Big Hush, sitting silently in the front passenger seat, held up one finger to his lips, and the car fell silent.  The time had come.  Big Hush couldn’t talk.  He had been shot in the throat two years ago and had lost his voice.  The scar was nasty-looking; a jagged mesh of brownish-pink scar tissue that snaked from just underneath his chin to the top of his chest, and Andre didn’t like looking at it or him.  His eyes reminded him of the same unfocused look Dorsey had as he fell to the ground in the street the night he died.  Zip called it fish eyes, the death gaze of a killer. "The kinda G you don’t want to fuck with.  They don’t call his ass Big Hush just because he can’t talk.  His ass done put plenty of niggas ta sleep permanently."

It’s just around the next corner, Zip said flatly as he drove up the block.  Andre’s heart beat faster.  He didn’t see any lookouts or KODs prowling on the corners they passed, so he felt a little better.  He wanted to surprise one, wanted to see if they would fall like Dorsey had.  Surprise them like they did my brother.

Andre looked out the window at the houses they were passing by.  A few of them were well-taken care of; houses set well back behind their manicured lawns and trim hedges.  They reminded him of his grandfather Frank’s house.  He had gone there many times when he was younger, but his mom hadn’t gone to see her own father in many years.  Grandpa Frank had cut her off years ago because of her problem and wouldn’t let her come over anymore.  Andre remembered feeling good about going there when he was younger.  He remembered playing football on the front lawn that was soft, green and manicured, a lot like these. His grandfather had tripped him several times, and he landed on the grass, and it had felt good to fall and not get hurt. It wasn’t like the asphalt parking lot where he played football with his friends in the neighborhood or the unleveled basketball courts at the park that was full of shallow potholes and wide cracks.  The park even had a small field—if you could call it that.  It was better for the neighborhood kids to play in the street than there.  Most of the weedy lawns at the park hid hard, compacted dirt, broken glass and abandoned bike parts.  But that was another time. 

Tonight the stars hadn’t begun to force their way through the LA smog, though the day’s heat still hung heavy and foul in the air.  

Zip turned the corner, slowed down, and pointed down the street to a house in the middle of the block.  The beige one with the blue Mercedes in the driveway, he said flatly, without emotion.  They had rehearsed it beforehand at a different location, so Andre knew they would drive past the house first, and then come back down the street with the house on Andre and Big Hush’s side of the car.

Zip drove past the house once, then made a u-turn, turned his headlights off, and came back around.  Get ready to blast, Zip said as he looked at Andre in the rearview mirror. 

Andre could feel Zip’s eyes on him, and he sunk slightly lower into the seat as he rolled his window the rest of the way down.

The house was only a couple doors down now.  Zip slowed the car even more.  Big Hush stuck the nozzle of his Ak-47 out of the window, and Andre rolled his window down almost all the way.  His hand shook slightly with the weight of the gun in his hand, and his body stiffened in anticipation.

Zip eased the car into the shadows beneath the large trees lining the front yard of the house. It was dark in front of the house.  A thick maple tree stood over the house, throwing dark shadows over the front yard and a small concrete porch that led straight up to the front door.

Andre could have heard a pin drop.  A breeze rustled the maple tree, and several leaves dropped downward in slow fluttering spirals.  For a moment, the golden leaves caught Andre’s attention.  They seemed to pause in midair as he leaned forward to shoot the 45, as if the air had suddenly thickened around them at the moment he’d been waiting so long for.  He could feel the sun’s heat splashing hot against his brow and the one bead of sweat that began to fall from his temple.

The car crawled even slower, easing to a stop just in front of the house.  The rumble of the car’s engine sounded like tribal drums beating a call to war.  Andre’s finger tensed on the trigger.  This house was set closer to the street than the ones just to the side of it.  He could just barely hear the sound of a television being played loudly and a woman laughing.

Big Hush pulled the trigger on the AK-47, and for that one second, Andre froze.  Big Hush shot slowly, pulling the AK’s trigger deliberately and methodically. 

Andre counted four shots before he himself recovered enough to start shooting as well.  He saw little holes appear across the glass of the large front window, which fissured, then cracked and imploded into the house, the glass glinting like diamonds as it shattered.  Andre kept pulling the trigger, barely managing to keep the gun steady.  Several of his shots hit the stucco just above the large window he was actually aiming at. He quickly brought up his second hand to hold the gun.  He heard and felt the thunder of his gun and struggled to grip it tighter as his hands shook with the force of each shot; his only thought was that these guys had killed his brother. Die you bitches!  Die!

Andre saw the wisps of smoke come from his gun and heard the metallic ‘ching’ as expended shells hit the pavement outside the passenger door.  Suddenly the door to the house exploded open.  A large man appeared, his face set with anger. 

Andre couldn’t believe the man was that brave, to walk into a hail of gunfire.  Andre sensed more than saw that both he and Hush swiveled their arms towards the man.  Andre’s heart skipped a beat as he realized the man had a gun as well.  Andre shot wildly several times and saw the man stagger back into the house.  Then there was complete silence as both Andre’s gun and Big Hush’s automatic were empty of lead.  Andre’s ears were ringing loudly, but he heard something.  It became clear as Zip revved the engine.  A woman was screaming.  The semi-darkness was torn to shreds as porch lights from several houses on the street winked on.

Zip pushed down hard on the gas. His lips peeled back in a grimace to expose a bestial grin.  Got that sorry ass KOD! Let’s jet!

The tires screeched black rubber into the pavement as they sped down the block away from the house.   

Andre sat back staring at his gun, wondering if he had killed somebody.  I did it!  He flattened himself against the back seat, the empty gun limp in his hand.  A smile flickered across his face as he looked around at the houses racing by him.  He felt powerful and strong.  He’d finally done it.  An image of a lion crushing the throat of a gazelle flashed through his mind.  Then the woman’s voice he heard coming from the house echoed in his head and washed away his exultation.  The terror of those screams had been real, and he wondered if they had shot a woman or if he’d shot the big man, who had rushed out like he was going to do something brave.  The man hadn’t seemed like a KOD, but if Zip said that was the place, then it was.  Though he was glad that he’d done it right, especially in front of his Zip, he wondered again about the woman screaming.  It reminded him too much of his own mom, so he forced it from his mind. Wasn’t he supposed to feel good?  He relaxed even more, pursing his lips and nodding his head to the beat, and let the gun slide into the crease of the seat.  He listened to the rising scream of the engine as Zip accelerated down the street.  Andre’s own heart raced right along with it.  Suddenly, a young kid on a bike veered out into the middle of the intersection.

Swing right! yelled Ace.  Zip yanked the steering wheel hard to the right.  The wheels screamed in protest, leaving long skid marks on the pavement, but the large car was going too fast to make the turn, and the backend of the car fishtailed out to the left.  When Zip tried to straighten it out by turning quickly to the left, he lost all control of the car and it went into a wild spin and slammed hood first into a streetlight.  BAM! 

Zip heard metal shrieking as the wide streetlight ripped right through his chrome bumper, cracked his radiator in the middle, and crinkled the hood a quarter of the way back. It was as if he himself had been broken in two, as the pole ripped apart his baby.

Zip’s head hit the steering wheel and bounced back. The front windshield was cracked into a spider web of fissures as Hush’s forehead slammed into it.  Green coolant sprayed up onto the outside of the front windshield, and white smoke shot straight up out of the