before the police came and charged us with assault. “They didn’t have to do that! They didn’t have to do her like that!” Tasha cried out.
Damn, this appeared to be the year of death for us. Death was all around us. And they say it comes in threes. I didn’t see it stopping as I wondered who could have done this to Trina.
24
TRAE
The Los Angeles County Jail was the worst. I had to get out of there. It was like going from the Sheraton to a Motel 6. Tasha was being true to her word. She stopped coming to see me. Benny had been working night and day to get me moved. The only good news there was that it looked like I was going to beat the murder case with the chick, Sabeerah, from Jersey. My print in a burnt-down apartment? Bullshit. But for this new one, they were talking about having a speedy trial. Benny had a fit when I caught this one, but what the fuck was I supposed to do? Just so happened that Dirty Harry got caught bringing a cell phone to me, and he had some other shit on him, that wasn’t mines. It could have been anybody’s.
This first nigga was poppin’ shit, saying my wife fucked it up for everybody. Then, when the nigga threatened to step to my wife, he crossed the line. We got into it, and when I finished with the nigga, he was no longer breathing. That shut all of them other muthafuckas up. All of this over a cell phone. But now this latest development had me stunned. There was another dude who stepped to me, supposedly sent by Li. He said he had a message for me, but I didn’t give him the chance to deliver it. Li went back on his word. He put a number on my head right there in the county jail. So, now I was locked down 24/7, sleeping with one eye open, and it was driving me mad.
Time was moving slow as fuck in there for me. But from what I was told, outside it was a whole ’nother game. They buried Kyron, and word on the street was that I took him out. I’m mad that I didn’t have the pleasure to do just that. As a matter of fact it depressed me. Kaylin went to Don Carlos, asking him to talk to Mr. Li, and just like I told them it would go down, it did. Mr. Li said he would assist me only if we put in some work for him. I’d been waiting for somebody to get word to me about what happened with that. The agreement put on the table was when they put in the work, I would walk outta here.
Politics and organized crime run this country. I hadn’t heard anything about Charli. I didn’t know if she was dead or alive. I did know that death had been all around us this year, more so than when I was out there hustlin’. However, nothing surprised me more than when I called home and they said that Trina, Tasha’s sister, had been killed; somebody had burned that ass alive. That was some Hollywood shit that made me smile. It reminded me of the movie New Jack City. How in the end of the movie, Nino Brown got shot and fell over the banister. Ice-T smiled, put on his shades, and kept it moving. Even through all of the grief that Trina caused her sister, Tasha still took it real hard. The chick was so damn grimy, I was not surprised that she got taken out like that in style. I applauded the nigga that did it. He took some work off my hands.
“Macklin, visit! Let’s goooo!”
“Did you say, ‘Macklin, visit’?” I was hoping that I wasn’t hearing things.
And then I heard it again. “Macklin, you got a visit! Let’s go!”
The first cat was an actual officer. The second cat yelling out that I had a visit was an inmate. A certified nut. All he did all day was mimic the officers. “Pill call, chow time, visits!” The joint was an insane asylum, and I was beginning to feel the pressure.
I walked into the visiting area, and to my surprise, who did I see? Kendrick. I thought to myself, What does this nigga want? I grabbed a seat and sat down.
We glared at each other for a couple of minutes. I grabbed the phone off the