Carl Weber's Kingpins: The Dirty South

Book 2: Kingpins

by Treasure Hernandez

Genres: African American Urban

Synopsis

Carl Weber presents the second installment of an eight-book series, Kingpin. Carl Weber brings the best of urban street lit authors together, all telling their own dramatic tales of life in the streets in known cities across the USA. The second installment continues with Treasure Hernandez telling the tale of the Dirty South.

Release date: November 24, 2015

Publisher: Recorded Books

Print pages: 288

Sample

1995 . . .

“Fee, I want you to put all of these ones together for Daddy,” thirty-four-year-old Kafis Jackson instructed his daughter, Kafisa Jackson. “Take your time and count to a hundred. Then put one of these rubber bands around each stack and put ’em in there.” He pointed to the black drawstring bag lying on the floor of the living room in their Brooklyn brownstone, next to a mountain of singles.

Kafisa listened as her father gave instructions. At ten years old, she thought the assignment was the most important task her dad had ever asked of her. She was always ecstatic when he asked for her help. Since she was old enough to crawl, she had been curious about her father’s job. Every chance she got, she managed to make her way into their living room or kitchen while her father worked.

She reflected on the times when her father picked her up off the floor and sat her on his lap while he was working. One time when he was counting money, he grabbed a brick of bills and said, “This is all for you, baby girl.” Another time, when they were sitting at the kitchen table with product in front of him, he warned her, “Don’t ever let me see you use this. It would break Daddy’s heart, you hear me?” And like an obedient little girl, she nodded her head yes. Still, she would try to reach out and grab the substances and objects on the table, like any little child would do. She remembered how her father would pop her hands and then put her down, sending her off to her mother. Now, years later, Kafisa knew better than to disturb anything without permission, let alone touch it, when her father was “at work.”

“This pile right here.” Kafis pointed to the stack of five-dollar bills opposite the singles. “I want you to do the same thing, but count by five. “Can you do that?” he asked his daughter.

“Uh-huh!” Kafisa shook her head repeatedly. She was determined to prove to her dad that she was now old enough for him to count on her.

She had never seen her mother help her father with his work, not one time, and she was happy that her father had chosen her over her mother for such an important task. Kafisa believed her father took his job very seriously. She couldn’t understand why her mother did not understand. She recalled staying up and listening through the wall that separated her bedroom from her parents’ to the arguments they would have over the late-night hours he kept. She remembered hearing her father telling her mom, “I’m out here puttin’ all this work in for you and Fee, and all your ungrateful ass can do is complain? I work hard for the shit we got, and instead of you appreciating it, you worryin’ about what time I’m comin’ in the fuckin’ house.”

Some of the words Kafisa was too young to understand the meaning of, but in her young mind, her father was right. He did work hard at what he did. She couldn’t figure out why her mother couldn’t see that. Kafisa resented her mother for the way she stressed out her dad. The feelings drew her closer to her father. In her eyes, Kafis Jackson was the best daddy in the world.

“A’ight. I’m going to be in the kitchen, baby girl. If you make a mistake or forget your count, start all over again, okay?”

“Okay, Daddy.” Kafisa nodded. She tried to match her father’s stony facial expression.

Kafis smiled at his daughter, seeing what she was trying to do. There was no denying, even if he wanted to, that Kafisa was his child. When he looked at her, all he saw was a female version of himself. She had inherited his deep-set brown eyes and his wide-flared nostrils, along with a mouth that was the same shape. She even had his dimples when she smiled. Like him, Kafisa was dark skinned and had dark brown hair. Over the years of traveling the continent, both Kafis’s skin tone and his hair had darkened, but still anyone could see that Kafisa was all him. She was a certified Jackson, one he had made.

Kafisa began to smile to herself when she saw her father shoot her his famous wink, followed by a smile all his own. It was times like this when they shared a father-daughter moment.

“Come here,” he said to Kafisa.

Kafisa moved closer to him. Kafis bent over and gave her a kiss on the forehead.

“I love you, Fee.”

“I love you too, Daddy.”

After flashing another smile at her, Kafis turned around and headed for the kitchen. For a brief moment, he wondered whether it was a bad idea to have his ten-year-old daughter counting his blood money, but just as quickly as the thought had appeared, it excused itself.

He knew that he was pressed for time and couldn’t count money and do the other thing he needed to do all at once. He had been up most of the night, counting all the hundreds, fifties, twenties, and tens. The count had reached 380 Gs. He still had to cook up the last ten bricks of cocaine he had sales for, so he could meet his quota and pay his connect. By two in the afternoon, he had to come up with six hundred thousand dollars to give to his Colombian coke connect.

To cut corners, Kafis took the one hundred thousand in cash he had inside his safe and added it to the 380 stacks he had counted, but this still left him with 120 Gs to come up with. In singles and fives alone, he had over two hundred grand, but his connect, Pepe, would allow him to give him only fifty thousand in small bills. Kafis had already intended to get the other seventy from the three bricks he would sell, which would be at around 1:00 p.m. He knew his options were limited. The only way he could pull everything off in time, and effectively, was if he let Kafisa count the money while he finished cooking up kilos of cocaine. She was the only person in the world he could truly trust.

Camilla, who was his longtime girlfriend and the mother of his only child, on the other hand, could not be trusted when it came to his money. Camilla’s behavior had led Kafis to this conclusion. He knew he was somewhat to blame for this, because he had practically raised Camilla and had made her the way she was by spoiling her and refusing to let her work a regular nine-to-five.

Kafis was three years Camilla’s senior. The two had known each other forever but got together when Kafis was on the rise. When he’d come up and made it out of the projects, he’d taken Camilla with him. In the beginning, everything had been all good. He’d spoiled her rotten, lavishing her with gifts, trips to anywhere she desired to go, and vacations beyond her wildest dreams. He’d put her up in an American dream house, bought her an expensive car, given her an unlimited credit card and access to a healthy supply of cash, all on the basis that she had been with him from day one, when he’d first got in the game.

She’d known him before the streets named him “Big Fis.” She had been there when he was just little bum-ass Kafis from the projects. Once upon a time, she had known him for him, and not for what he had or what he could do for her. When the paper started rolling in, Camilla had begun to change. Instead of sending her back to the ghetto, like he’d wanted to, Kafis had let her stay, especially after she told him that she was six weeks pregnant with his child. It was because of that, and that alone, that they stayed together for the last seven years of their eighteen-year relationship.

Kafisa took her time, just as her father had suggested. With each hundred-dollar stack of singles she rubber banded, she felt confident she had not messed up the count. There must be millions of singles in this pile, she thought to herself, deciding that the twenty-five rubber-banded stacks she had already counted didn’t even make a dent in the pile. She had yet to start on the pile that contained only five-dollar bills. She wondered if her dad was a rich man, like all the kids at her private school talked about their dads being. She figured that he had to be. She drew her conclusion based on the elite school she attended and the clothes he could afford to buy her all year round, along with any and everything a young girl her age would want.

Kafisa was just about to rubber band her twenty-sixth hundred-dollar stack when she heard her mother’s voice. The unexpected sound startled her.

“Kafisa Martisha Jackson!” her mother shouted, calling her by her full name. She could tell by her mother’s tone that Camilla was angry at her. She had no clue as to why, though.

“Ye—” Before she could get the words out of her mouth to answer her mother, she was met with an open-hand slap to the face. The blow sent her flying across the room.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, little girl?” Camilla Daniels yelled. She was now standing over top of Kafisa.

“Nothing!” Kafisa cried. She honestly had no idea what her mother was talking about or what the cause of the slap was.

Tears had already begun to stream down Kafisa’s face. She grabbed her right cheek. The pain from her mother’s slap was intense. It felt like her right cheek was on fire. She feared what her mother would do next. She had never seen her mother so upset at her before. She didn’t know what she had done to deserve a slap to the face like that. Neither her mother nor her father had ever beaten her or even slapped her in her life. Whatever the cause, she knew it had to be something serious for Camilla to react the way she did.

Camilla snatched Kafisa by her arm and yanked her up off the floor.

“Mama, I didn’t do anything!” Kafisa sobbed innocently, fear and shock in her tone.

“Shut up, Kafisa! Don’t you ever let me catch you . . .” Camilla’s words were drowned out by Kafis’s.

“Yo, what the fuck you think you doing?” he barked. He had entered the living room after hearing Kafisa’s cries from the kitchen.

Camilla swung around in Kafis’s direction, still holding Kafisa tightly by the arm. “What does it look like? I’m chastising my daughter!” she spat.

“Take ya muthafuckin’ hands off of her!” Kafis spat back as he moved in closer to Camilla.

His request went unheeded.

He repeated himself, only this time he made sure Camilla knew how serious he was. “I said let my muthafuckin’ daughter go!” Kafis grabbed Camilla by the throat.

Instantly, Camilla released Kafisa’s arm. She gasped for air. With one hand, Kafis seemed to be choking the life out of her. He had cut off her air passage. Were it not for his daughter’s cries, he would have surely killed Camilla in front of his only child.

“Daddy, no!” Kafisa cried out.

As much as she was angry with her mother for what she had done to her, Kafisa did not want to see her father hurt her. She loved them both, but she loved her dad more. She knew that when it came down to her or her mother, he loved her more also, which was why she believed he would listen to her cry.

With his hand still wrapped around Camilla’s throat, Kafis looked over at his daughter. He could see the hurt and the fear in her eyes as he applied more pressure to Camilla’s larynx.

“Daddy, please! Please stop, Daddy!” she begged and pleaded with her father.

Kafis removed his hand from around Camilla’s neck. He tossed her backward like a rag doll. He picked Kafisa up and hugged her.

“It’s all right, baby girl. Everything is all right,” he said to Kafisa as he began rocking her the way he did when she was just a baby. “Daddy’s sorry,” he continued. “I didn’t mean to hurt Mommy. I didn’t mean to scare you. I love you and Mommy.” He wiped her tears.

“You don’t love me, nigga!” Camilla shouted. She had just regained her breath. “You gonna put your fuckin’ hands on me for doing what’s right for my daughter? Oh, hell no! You must be out yo’ rabbit-ass mind if you think I’m havin’ that shit.”

Keeping his composure, Kafis put Kafisa down. “Fee, go to your room. I need to talk to Mommy,” he told his daughter.

“You not gonna hurt Mommy, are you, Daddy?” Kafisa asked.

“No, I’m not going to hurt Mommy. I promise,” he assured her. “Now, go on in your room.”

“You damn right you ain’t gonna hurt me, muthafucka!” Camilla bellowed.

Camilla had been brought to tears, not because of what Kafis had done to her, but rather from how her daughter had chosen sides without even realizing it. For the past eight years, she had watched the little girl she’d carried for nine months and given birth to grow attached to her father and pull away from her. She had tried to be the best mother that she could possibly be, especially since she herself had never had a mother who cared for her, but from day one, Kafis had interrupted her parenting methods. When she told her daughter no, Kafis would go over her head and tell her yes. When she tried to reprimand her, Kafis would go behind her back and tell her not to worry. From the day Kafisa was brought home from the hospital, Kafis had let her have her way.

In his eyes, she can do no wrong, Camilla thought as she wiped her face.

She noticed her daughter staring at her. The look was so hateful that it caused Camilla to lose control. “You little bitch! Who you think you lookin’ at like that?” she shouted at Kafisa. “I’ll kill you in here, you little black-ass heifer! You mean nothing to me!”

Kafisa’s eyes widened at the sound of her mother’s words. Her mother made her regret coming to her defense. She wished she had never stopped her father from choking her. Kafisa shot her mother a look that cut deep into Camilla’s heart. At that very moment, Kafisa decided that she hated her mother.

“Go to your room, baby girl,” Kafis instructed Kafisa again.

Kafisa did as she was told without a care about her mother’s fate.

Once Kafis thought she was out of earshot and in her room, he started back up. “Yo, I don’t know what the fuck your problem is, but if you ever talk to my daughter like that, put yo’ hands on her, or threaten her again, you’ll be the one that’ll be dead up in this muthafucka. You hear me?” Kafis spoke with conviction in his tone. It was more of a promise than it was a threat.

Camilla could see the rage in Kafis’s eyes. She thought better than to challenge him, but she was determined to address the issue that had caused her to put her hands on her daughter for the first time.

“Yeah, I hear you, Kafis! But you want to know what the fuck my problem is? Huh?” she yelled, lashing out. “My problem is, you have our ten-year-old damn daughter in here countin’ your damn drug money, exposing her to all this shit, like it’s cute,” she began. “Did you ever stop to think what type of effect all of this will have on her in the future, Kafis? What do you think you are teaching our daughter? That it’s okay to have a man that sells drugs and has guns and money laying around his family? Is that what you want to teach her? So it’s okay for her to see all this shit you’re doing?”

“You don’t know what the fuck you talkin’ about,” Kafis interjected dryly.

Camilla rolled her eyes. “I sure do.” She wiped her face for a second time. “I watch how you are with her. I hear the things that you say to her, quotin’ those fake-ass rules of the streets and shit, but I haven’t heard you tell her that money is the root of all evil. I thought our reason for moving out of the ghetto and putting our daughter in private school was so she can have a better life than the one we had when we were kids. You still teaching her things with your ghetto mentality, though.” Camilla let out a light chuckle. “I guess it’s true when they say, ‘You can take the nigga out of the hood, but you can’t take the hood out of the nigga.’” She shook her head in disgust. “Kafis, our daughter is not from the streets. We are. That doesn’t mean that we have to instill them in her.”

Kafisa listened to her mother as she hid behind the wall. She was surprised to hear some of the things she heard her mother say to her father. It was the first time she had heard her mother talk like that to him. From what her little ten-year-old mind could compute, based on what her mother was saying, Kafisa drew the conclusion that her dad was someone who made his money by selling drugs. This was something she was taught in school to stay away from, say no to, and she believed that drug dealers were bad guys.

She didn’t want to believe her father was one of those people. After all, those kinds of people didn’t have a family. After hearing her mother refer to her father as one of those types of people, she knew that there had to be some type of exception to the rule, because her father was not a bad person. She had no idea about the lifestyle her father lived. Had Kafisa known, though, there was no doubt that she would have loved him just the same. She continued to listen as her father began to speak.

“All that shit you talkin’, save it.” Kafis jumped closer toward her. “Don’t ever question my methods as a father or as a man. I know what the fuck’s best for my daughter.” His words were stern and uncompromising.

“Nigga, please! You don’t know shit about raisin’ no damn kid, especially not no girl.” She rolled her eyes at Kafis and dismissed him with a wave of her hand.

“I know I can do a better fuckin’ job than you,” Kafis shot back. He tore into Camilla like hot slugs. “You think I have her around all this shit because I want her to turn out like yo’ money-hungry ass? Not at all. I have her around it so she’ll be used to seeing it. So she won’t be impressed when she gets older by some nigga who pulls up on her in a new truck or coupe, flashing money in her face to manipulate her into whatever. You never had nobody to teach you about the power of the dollar. That’s why you don’t respect it,” Kafis said, pointing out Camilla’s shortcomings. “And that’s why you reckless when it comes to handlin’ it, and I would never let you run things as you want to.”

He paused. “A lot of that is my fault, though, because I could’ve taught you, and I should’ve taught you, but I didn’t. My daughter, on the other hand, she’s going to know everything that I know. She ain’t gonna be no square. She’s going to be both book smart and street smart, the best of both worlds. Whatever she wants to do or be in life, she’ll be able to do. The choice will be hers, and hers alone, so don’t come at me with all this bullshit, ’cause I ain’t tryin’a hear it.”

Camilla let out an insane laugh. “Save that shit for them other bitches that don’t know no better,” she snapped. “Just like her father, she ain’t gonna be shit if you raisin’ her!”

Kafis shook his head. He couldn’t believe Camilla had just said that with a straight face about their daughter. It took all his strength not to wrap his hands around her thin neck and choke the life out of her. Instead, he went a different route. “If you don’t like the way I’m raising my daughter, then you can get the fuck out and take yo’ ass back to the projects, where you belong! If you can’t handle this life, then get off the muthafuckin’ pot, bitch!” Kafis told her. “Matter of fact, that’s exactly what your dumb ass gonna do.” He made Camilla’s decision for her without any compassion or empathy.

A big lump formed in Camilla’s thro. . .