Gangster's Daughter

1

My Life and My Dreams

Miami, Florida

On that sunny day, the world seemed to pass by as I daydreamed. A million thoughts entered my young mind. The chatter of my little sister, Keona, and Daddy’s voice murmured in the background. I sat on the backseat of his 2012 brick-red Mercedes Benz G-Class SUV, thinking. My life had been unpredictable and full of many twists, turns, and surprises. That’s how I became the young woman that I was.

Normally, Keona and I would have argued over the front seat, or I would have strong-armed it. That day was different. This was to be ‘our’ day, my daddy had declared. Ironically, Keona’s birthday fell on the same day that I graduated from high school. I was smart as a whip and graduated with Valedictorian honors. Thank God, I was blessed with brains. When I was in the fourth grade, I was so intelligent that I was promoted to the sixth grade that same year. That made my father proud.

My mother had turned her back and walked away from us. She didn’t even have enough decency to show up at my high school graduation. That hurt me to my soul. Anyway, during my sophomore year my father encouraged me to take online classes. That’s when I earned my associates degree. Some of the most prestigious universities offered me several academic scholarships. Harvard and Yale were a few well-known names among the many.

My dream was to become a surgeon. However, Daddy was adamant that I go to a historically black college. He felt that America chose the most brilliant African American minds from the ghetto and offered them opportunities at their universities. Daddy believed that the students’ minds would become like Europeans. They served no purpose to their communities. Not only did he say they thought they were white, but they talked and acted white too. Which he was right in many ways, because those graduates would not come back to the hoods and support their communities. They would use their huge incomes to support Caucasians and forget where they came from.

I ended up being accepted to Florida A&M University. I was so thrilled and so was he. Daddy had his mind set on me running his business one day. He owned Ike’s One Stop Grocery, located in Liberty City. He also owned Ike’s Detail Shop located across the street from the grocery store. Actually, when he was younger he would hustle out of the detail shop. He invested his money in real estate. I was shocked when he continued to prosper even when the market crashed. My daddy’s name is Ike Spenser and his life is a true rags to riches, hood legend story…

 The streets knew, as they always did, when one of their own climbed out the unpleasantness of anguish and sat on a throne in the height of Miami’s notoriously violent drug trade. He started out as a corner hustler. He sold crack and weed in the projects. He was a fourteen-year-old father who was in the streets and caught up in the vicious drug wars. He quickly earned the infamous nickname, Monster. Actually, a police lieutenant named him that after a violent series of grisly murders. In one incident in particular, three rivals lost their lives in broad daylight, execution style, and plod down with an AK-47 at a funeral as they carried the casket of their dead homie. Mourners looked on. The same crew had also murdered the man in the casket. Lieutenant Basdin went on national television and said that my father, Ike Spencer, was a suspect in the vicious killings and that only a monster could do such a despicable and hideous act. From that day forward, both friends and foes called Daddy, Monster. By then the streets, caught up in the vicious yoke of Miami’s gangland violence and its illicit drug trade, groomed him.

During those years, Miami led the nation in two categories: the most seizures of cocaine ever captured and homicides. Rumors spread that Daddy organized a crew of killers called The Booby Boys. They were young gangsters that killed over territory and control of the drug trade. Eerily, I remember on more than one occasion that my mother and I would be terrified as we watched the news. The slain bodies scattered in the streets, at clubs, and gas stations. They dealt with the enemy wherever they caught them slipping. Mama knew many of the victims, and she would always cry. In my mind, I knew the murders had something to do with my father. I think my mother was afraid of my daddy. I often believed that he was the main reason she left.

Recently, the rapper, Rick Ross, was doing some name calling in one of his songs and mentioned Daddy’s name. I was ecstatic about it. However, Daddy was furious when I told him about it. He thought about serving Ross a courtesy call in person. He said name dropping was a violation and disrespectful. My father had been out the game for years. Most of his old crew was either dead or serving life sentences in the feds. Daddy now lived his life as a reputable businessman. He even attended church regularly. He mentored troubled youth. He had a youth basketball team called the Junior Miami Heat. My baby brother, Ike Jr., was on the team. I was the assistant coach. We had a blast. Daddy had become a great role model to the community.

 I should have been happy that day, but I wasn’t. Something was deeply troubling my father and that affected me as well. Every so often, I’d catch him looking out the window as if he was waiting for something to happen. Also, I’d noticed Big Bee’s pearl-white Escalade truck trailing us when we left the mall. That also disturbed me. Big Bee was like an uncle to me. He was a bear of a man. He stood six feet eight and weighed over three hundred pounds. He had a violent reputation in the streets for putting in work. Some thought he was involved in the brutal murder of Clay Jackson. Jackson was a dopeboy from Goulds, Florida. He and my father had been beefing, hard.

Clay saw my mother at a shopping mall one Saturday. He walked up to her and pimp slapped her. He then threatened to fire off on my father when he caught him slipping. She was five months pregnant with my little brother at the time. Three weeks later, Mama and I were walking to the corner store. We spotted Clay with his two small kids, about to walk in the barbershop. Suddenly, a green four-door Buick LaSabre drove by and opened fire. Mama and I fell to the ground. Several bullets flew through the barbershop, struck three cars, and barely missed hitting the two small children. Clay jumped in the line of fire to protect his kids. He grabbed them, dropped to the ground, and the assailants fired bullets into his back. I had an expression of utter shock and felt grief for those kids. Big Bee was a suspect in that slaying.

The next day, you could find bullet holes and crime scene tape on the door of the barbershop. The whole incident was something that would scare me for the rest of my life.

I remember a time when I overheard Big Bee and my daddy masterminding a heist in which the two of them robbed a shipment of coke from some Cubans. The drugs were in a cargo boat, concealed in barrels of coffee that were on the Port of Miami’s dock. I was about eight years old then. That too resulted in many drug wars with Daddy’s crew, The Booby Boys, and the Cubans.

  This day, Big Bee was acting like a bodyguard. Daddy strangely continued to look out the window with an odd expression on his face.

            I began to ramble through the shopping bag of items I had purchased from Macy’s. One of them was a Louis Vuitton purse and matching boots, which Daddy had bought for my graduation. The purse and shoes cost over a stack along with the other accessories I had bought.

            Kadisha, baby, I’m sorry your mom couldn’t make it to your graduation, Daddy said in a soft voice filled with sympathy. He made eye contact with me in the rearview mirror. I saw the hurt in his eyes, but I also saw something else as he scanned the cars