PO Box 469 Best Custo: Part 1: Crack Cocaine

By Patrick Taylor

Patrick Taylor, breaking onto the scene for the first time, brings a page turner that moves with such speed you will wonder where the pages went as he winds you through the streets tamed by code.

Who's his friend; who's his foe? Where murder is always an option and money is always the motive, Tay tries desperately to balance loyalty, family, the drug game, building an empire, and the two loves of his life--all while trying to get it in and get out before getting locked into a game where everyone has a hidden past or a secret. Nobody is who they say they are, and only a few understand why certain lines, like certain rules, have to be crossed and broken.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 6, 2024
• ISBN: 9798887630632

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Acknowledgments

Glossary

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

About the Author

cover.jpg

PO Box 469 Best Custo

Part 1: Crack Cocaine

Patrick Taylor

Copyright © 2022 Patrick Taylor

All rights reserved

First Edition

NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING

320 Broad Street

Red Bank, NJ 07701

First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2022

ISBN 979-8-88763-062-5 (Paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88763-063-2 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

This book is for and to my mother, my biggest fan and best friend: you truly give me life.

Thanks be unto God…

Acknowledgments

If it wasn't for SouthEast (Andrew Garcia), the cover of this book would never have gotten done. Just as the book itself would still be sitting on the back burner, if it wasn't for my mother, Cynthia Lou Schindehette, believing in me and constantly asking about the progress of my work.

I acknowledge God and give Him total credit. Thanks to Him for showing me the life He's shown me. Without His lessons and blessings, there would be no book to write because I wouldn't be who I am. I wouldn't have seen what I've seen or lived the way I lived.

I give thanks to my father for the hard lessons of discipline he instilled in me. I miss you, Dad.

Lastly to those who believed in me when I had truly lost myself, and to the publishers who put in the time and effort where I couldn't. Big ups to you.

Glossary

bang. To inject drugs directly into the vein.

bird. Kilo. See also brick.

blessing. A gift given.

blow-up. Diluted drugs.

bottom bitch. A trusted loyal female you can count on.

bounce-back. High-grade crack.

brick. Kilo. See also bird.

burner phone. Untraceable phone meant to be thrown away.

chicken. A female.

chickenhead. A hood rat.

choosing up. Pimp term; deciding what side you're on.

crackhead. An individual who is strung out on drugs.

cookie. Twenty-eight to thirty-two grams of crack. See also pie.

custo. A person buying drugs.

cutta butta. High-grade crack with a brown/yellow tint.

dead head. Money.

domino on his ass. To successfully best someone.

dope boy. A drug dealer.

dro. High-grade marijuana.

fein. An individual so strung out they will do anything for the next hit.

fix. A certain determined amount of drugs to be consumed.

game. The life of selling drugs.

glass dick. A crack pipe.

good. High-grade crack.

gutta cat. A grimy street-educated person.

hard. Crack cocaine.

hard knocks. Lessons learned in life from actual experience.

hit. A paid contract or a determined amount of drugs (usu. cocaine) that has been mixed with other substances to stretch work.

jacket. A label put on an individual by his peers.

M.O.E. Money over everything.

Molly capsule. A pill full of pure MDMA.

money on the wood. Giving back to the source of success or a source from which you took.

orbit the moon. To be insanely high.

pie. Twenty-eight to thirty-two grams of crack. See also cookie.

play him close. To keep an eye on an untrusted person.

quarter. Six to seven grams of crack.

rack. One thousand dollars.

siding. Riding in an aftermarket, old-school vehicle.

smoker. A person who likes to get high but still works to support the habit.

snow. A white woman. Snow bunny.

soul collector. A bullet.

stones. Pieces of crack.

stunt. Create a diversion, or show off in car or motorcycle.

swag. Style.

taste tester. A person given free drugs to determine quality of drug.

trap house. An establishment rented or owned to sell drugs out of.

what's Gucci? A greeting; hello.

whip. An aftermarket car, or diluted crack cocaine.

White Widow. A strain of high-grade weed.

whole. Ounce; twenty-eight grams.

Prologue

Tay… Mercedes said, trying to wake me. Tay, baby, get up. Everything was bouncing, shaking, rocking. Tay, please, get up. Someone is in our house. I could hear Mercedes, but her panicky voice was so distant. Everything was in a haze. Hold on, what did she say? In our house? Fighting the grips of sleep, I opened my eyes to see Mercedes standing over me, reaching for the broken handle of a David Bowie knife jammed between the wooden window frame and wall. Seeing Mercedes in a panic instantly brought me to life. Adrenaline pumping, I tried to get out from under the covers but found myself entrapped in the sheets.

Movement caught in my peripheral brought my attention to the dark-skinned figure standing at our bedroom door. He was dressed in more black than people wear to a funeral. Even in the early dawn, I could tell it was the frame of a very frail man. The frame of a man who was physically, mentally, and emotionally depleted. Totally from long days and nights of chasing the tiring life of a habit.

Looking at Mercedes, I saw a look I knew. A look of knowing, of recognition in her eyes. She knew exactly who this man in our home was. William, no, Mercedes yelled.

The man was fast. Fast like the renegades in the jungle in the movie The __un Down, his fist smashed into my face, rocking my every thought. Seeing his arm retracting to serve my face another blow, I crossed my arms in a defensive posture and put them in front of my face. I had to get free. With my arms deflecting his next lethal blow, I pulled both my legs back, and Donkey kicked my aggressor with everything I had in me. Stumbling back, the stranger invading my home crashed into the table that sat holding the flat-screen TV. Taking advantage of my assailant being on the losing end of the battle for the first time, I swung my feet over the edge of the bed, letting the bedsheets fall down around my feet, allowing me to escape my entrapment. I noticed Mercedes and her son, Chris, had taken shelter in the corner.

Stepping out of my restraint, this strange man and myself locked up like two red-nose pit bulls bred for fighting. I rushed my opponent, slugging like I was brawling in a mosh pit. I knew the safety of Mercedes, her son, and the house all depended on me driving this crazy, deranged man out of our home and out of our world forever.

One sure step at a time, one punch after another, we beat on each other. I escaped a right hook and came up with a left hook that staggered the stranger, dropping him to one knee. Looking up at me, I could see his eyes. Lifeless. Bloodshot, glossy, wild like a rabid caged animal after being poked at too many times. Gripping the shelf that had been built into the wall and using it as leverage, he lunged at me. Caught off guard by this sudden action, his blow landed, knocking the wind out of me. To my astonishment, he left me, turned, and ran. Stumbling forward, I reached the front door that had been shattered to mere splinters to see William, as Mercedes had called him, jumping into the bed of an all-white, late-model, short-box Chevy pickup truck.

I sat down on the steps of the front porch. I was spent, out of breath. My chest was burning, my mind still spinning, trying to wrap my mind around all that had taken place. I heard Mercedes still frantic, calling to me. Out here, I heard myself say. Mercedes shaking was there, David Bowie knife still in hand, looking me over.

I can't believe him.

All of a sudden, my anger surged. Hold up, what am I not getting? Who the hell was that?

Chris's dad. He's the one I told you was a crackhead. She turned to see her son, Chris, standing just inside the doorway, making Mercedes regret her words as they left her mouth.

How's he know where we live? I pressed.

Babe, your chest!

Damn it, answer the question, Mercedes.

I took this house from him in our divorce. Looking down as Mercedes reached for my chest, I saw life pouring from three puncture wounds. An ice pick.

If it wasn't the first thing we did, we were moving. History. Violent history I had no knowledge of and wanted no part of was at play. I didn't want any more part of it than I had already been forced to be in. I could hear the sirens. Mercedes, get everything out of the house now. They were coming. Someone had called the cops. I was getting weak; blood was still pouring out of me. Mercedes, help me stand up and get to the couch, I said pushing off to stand up.

I heard Mercedes cry out., Noooo, and it all went black.

Chapter 1

Stephen King or Spielberg's twisted mind could only begin to Picasso the images that were flashing on repeat behind my swollen eyelids. In the back of my mind, these images were familiar. I had seen them before somewhere. Somehow every part of my being was screaming that what was playing on the big screen behind my eyelids was more than some nightmare that I was in. This more than something, I could be a lucid dreamer too. This wasn't something I would be able to control. These images were the reason I was having trouble opening my eyes.

I had never been one to be told, You can't, or to give up easily and Just let it go. Playing Ali in his prime, I fought the grips of blackness that had its grasp choking me.

IVs in my arms, pulse monitor on my finger, the stale air in the room, the eerie feeling of death all around me, the wires running every place, and the steady beep…beep…beep of my heart being tracked by a machine. Let reality sink in like high tide at night; I was in the hospital.

Blinking away tears brought on by the bright light as I got my eyes to part, I did my best to make sense of my surroundings. I tried to rewind, to make sense of how I had gotten where I was. I saw Mercedes curled up in a ball, sitting in a chair across the room. Where was her son, Chris? How long had I been here? God, the mind really is a precious thing to waste. Mercedes, I tried to call through swollen, dry, cracked lips. It took everything I had and still it only came out audibly as a whisper. I tried again. Mercedes. This time, her head came up and she was on her feet coming to me.

Some people, some spirits, no matter the circumstances, were beautiful. At five foot five, Mercedes was the definition of exotic. Slanted eyes stemming from the Asian in her, Cambodian to be exact. Paper-sack-brown skin with kiwi breasts and enough ass to make Maliah exit the stage. She was aware of her physical appeal yet had had enough hard knocks in life to know that your inner can make your outer beautiful ugly. As a pimp would say, I had more reasons than one as to why she was my bottom bitch.

But right now,