Eraserheads

Genres: African American Urban

Synopsis

In Brick & Storm’s Hood Misfits series, the motto is ENGA: Every nigga got an agenda, and in this tale, things are no different. Everyone has a secret.

What do you do when your work is used against you? This is a question that Auto, leader of the Eraserheads, faces when an unforeseen and dangerous situation wreaks havoc on everything he’s built. It’s up to him and his right hand, Code, along with their team of expert car thieves to figure out who’s behind the attacks on their livelihood. When a crafty con woman named Smiley and a mysterious businessman named Boots step onto the scene, every player becomes a pawn in a war that is taking over The Trap. 

Experience the behind-the-scenes world of illegal racketeering, identity theft, and more in another Hood Misfits tale that will turn the very meaning of ENGA upside down. Step into the life of an Eraserhead.

Release date: September 25, 2018

Publisher: Urban Books

Print pages: 288

Sample

All that nigga had had to do was die.

All he had had to do was die in that fucking car crash after leaving my mama and me. He’d beaten her ass to a bloody pulp while I lay on the floor at her feet, with his boot print on my damn face. All he had to do, since we meant nothing to him, was die.

Then we could have gotten his military benefits. I wouldn’t have had to get lost in the streets just to keep a roof over our heads. Keep food on our table. Keep the bills paid up. Keep my mama supplied with the meds she needed for her sickle-cell anemia. Finish out my community college classes, which my mom had insisted I take. But no, he hadn’t even handled that right. He hadn’t died in the fucking car crash, like all drunk drivers should.

So I had had to snatch and take to the streets, while being smart about it, all because of that nigga. But had he died when he was supposed to? Nah. He hadn’t been able to give us that peace.

While chilling in the streets and taking care of home, I had to listen to caseworker after caseworker deny my mama what she needed. Because of my thieving habits, I had been put in a scared-straight type of juvie program at fourteen, and then I had got out and started the process all over again. Yup, that crap had had me abandoning my mama for a little bit, but it had only made me stronger in the process.

I used to listen to a badass street poet in Decatur whom my mom had a lot of respect for, and he influenced me a great deal. The poet used to say to us girls, “When a woman is a survivor, if she can make it through the shards of glass that are life, then she is a queen worthy to tackle the jungles of the hood.” So I remembered that. Well, I tried to at least.

Then one day, by the grace of God, I got an excellent piece of mail. One last reminder of that nigga who had skeeted me out in my mama’s womb. Info on that nigga registering in New York, at the VA. See, how it worked was, since he was still married to my mama, all that type of information still needed to come her way. So that meant that they had to update her too about the possible pension coming his way.

Yeah, that nigga had messed up with that little bit of info, and now his blood was on my hands.

But it was whatever. My mama was dead because he had refused to send money to help her. She had left me a little old ranch-style, white house with a wraparound porch and a couple of grand she had hiding in her account from when she used to work for the state. All of it just for me. I had also got that nigga’s pension money. Albeit a little late. Funny shit, that was.

Fuck that nigga. Glad I had watched him down too many psych meds mixed with coke and his favorite white Hennessy. Shit, what did you expect from a wife-beating, wife-raping, gloating sociopath with the mind of a marine?

Anyway, now, at age nineteen, I was about to get locked up for being stupid and trusting a bitch because she had said her baby needed some necessities, like milk and diapers. The little change I was making while working at Morton’s The Steakhouse wasn’t shit. Stealing was my forte. The more I stayed in the streets, the better I got it. I had learned how to skim ATMs from this white girl I used to run with. Most people did it the hard way, like busting the ATM open and taking the cash. Actually, those people were stupid.

The white girl had taught me how to skim. Skimming was like identity theft for debit cards. We used little hidden electronics to get the information stored on a person’s card and to record PIN numbers. Most people paid no attention to what was going on when their card didn’t work the first time around at an ATM. They’d take the card, look at it like something was wrong with it, then put it back in the slot to try to withdraw cash again.

It had started off small, a couple hundred here and there, and then I had started to go for more. When skimming got too hot, I had started swiping credit cards. Creating new cards with fake identities had become a hobby of mine. Mix that with joyriding in cars I would steal just to get around and I was good in my little gig, until this scared-ass broad had ratted me out. Now I sat staring at a sour-faced nigga who looked like Uncle Phil from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

Trick had ratted me out, and now I was stuck. I hated disloyal bitches, and it just proved again that the only person I could trust was myself, now that my mama was gone.

“You’re too pretty to be a thug. All that pretty hair on your head. And those big copper-brown eyes lined up like you’re some kind of Egyptian queen. Granted, you’re sitting here looking like some Afrocentric goth too. That black lipstick on those big lips of yours clashing with your cocoa-butter skin.”

Uncle Phil rubbed his double chin while eating me up with his eyes.

“Damn, you’re pretty . . . but you gotta be fucking stupid to be running the streets, stealing credit cards, Ms. Gaines,” he declared.

My nose crinkled up, and I felt sick to my stomach. This fool was watching me like he wanted to screw me. Matter of fact, I knew he did. It was all in his eyes. Yup, I was sitting there looking like an Afrocentric goth. It was my thing.

I sported a ripped-up black-and-white printed top that showed my bare stomach and a hint of my side tattoos, especially the ankh resting on my hipline. Ripped blue jean shorts with black leggings and black boots constituted the rest of my attire. The hair the detective liked, my black sister lock extensions tipped in purple, fell over one of my shoulders and hanged down to my breasts. Half of my hair was shaved off and revealed the hooped ear cuff in my ear. In my nose was a small gold hoop. I tapped my middle finger, the one that was missing the midi knuckle ring I usually wore. It was back in my locker at work. Assholes had snatched me up before I could change into my work clothes.

While Uncle Phil babbled on about how pretty I was, how well my curves went with my thin frame, and how he liked that I had tits big enough to play with but small enough that they weren’t smothering, I yawned. Dude was trying to get me to respond. I had nothing to say. Nada. I sat with my well-known blank stare and counted off the time. Five-o had me in here on suspicion. That had become apparent when the Michelin Man, the man sitting next to Uncle Phil, revealed that my supervisor thought he had seen me taking cards with Keisha on camera.

Shit was funny, because I never was that open with it. Why? Because I had a photographic memory, plus an app I had created on my cell. I took all the personal information I needed, then used it later to track them down on the Net and go from there. Sometimes I’d also overcharge a card by ringing up a greater amount, as if the customer wanted cash back. That way I could pocket a little change. Well, this time, I had been trying to get Keisha to charm and distract the customers as I worked their card and hit them with tiny surcharges. This broad instead had got scared and had freaked out in the restaurant.

I had had to stop what I was trying to do, clear out the app I had on my cell that was the hidden card-jacking program, and do things as normal. So what the cops had got on the cameras was really me acting normal and charging the customers as I usually did. I realized that Keisha hadn’t played me all the way to the left. She couldn’t have, anyway, as I had never told her how I took from the customers. Keisha had just said that I was helping her take cards, which was a damn shame since I had been helping that bitch out.

“So tell me, Nia, why would you mess up a good thing at Morton’s and steal from your employer and their customers? From your records, it looks like you’ve been doing right. You were raised well, and you’re going back to school too, little thief. Shit, what’s up your sleeve, then, little Miss Brown Sugar?” Uncle Phil said.

My eyes got wide. I looked away and bowed my head in fake shame. “I didn’t steal anything. Keisha is just tripping from all those hormones and stuff because she’s pregnant again. I promise. What you see is me doing my job. I’m not stealing from those people.”

Like hell I wasn’t. The customers I would steal from were mainly the rich assholes with the nasty attitudes and blinged-out wrists. So I was lying, and since Uncle Phil was all on my pussy, I figured I’d play the game. Besides, I was mentally freaking the heck out. I didn’t want to get caught. I didn’t want to be locked up again, and I really wanted to go home. But if I showed fear, these cops would chew me up. I hated cops, anyway, due to their crooked-ass ways.

Anytime my mama had called those niggas for help, it was as if she had called for nothing. My daddy’s last name being what it was, the cops were in his pocket. So I was playing hard just to figure out how to get out of this mess. Tears rimmed my eyes. I glanced up at him, then down again. I crossed my arms, then shook my head, as if I was angry. I was a good actress. Could get an Oscar for most of the shit I’d acted my way out of.

“I just lost my mama, okay? I don’t have time to think about taking shit. I mean that. I just want to go home and try to get my mama’s shit together so I can bury her peacefully,” I said, choking up. I bit my lip.

That was another lie. In keeping with my mom’s request, I had had her cremated and had snuck her ashes into the Atlanta Botanical Garden and had poured them out among the yellow lilies, her favorite. I checked out the detectives, but my stares were greeted with silence. I wasn’t sure if the punks believed me, so I turned in my chair, and that was when I noticed a new face. Some blond guy in uniform. He whispered something to the Michelin Man.

A frown formed on the Michelin Man’s face, and he addressed me. “Ms. Gaines. It looks like we can’t hold you any longer. This is your lucky day, but we will be looking you up again.”

Delight flashed in my eyes, but my face didn’t show it. My mama had called me Smiley. She’d given me that name when I was a baby because I was always smiling. But I had stopped smiling long ago, when my pops had started beating her. Those memories haunted me no matter how far I ran from my past.

I asked the detectives why they were letting me go. They igged me, but then the blond told me it was because they had nothing on me, except a camera shot of me that wasn’t clear. And, of course, the detectives then opened their mouths to let me know that they would be watching me and hauling my ass back in once the investigation was done.

I really didn’t care about all that. I just needed to get out of this place. I didn’t need these fools breathing all down my neck, all because Keisha had got scared and hadn’t been able to follow through. I couldn’t blame her for that, but there was something about her that was rubbing me the wrong way about the whole situation. But I didn’t have time to think about it.

Once the paperwork was processed, I was taken from one holding cell to another one. About two hours later, they finally let me out. I went back to my job, cleaned out my locker except for my uniform, and headed home. I didn’t want to talk to my bosses. I knew they already viewed me as sketchy due to all of this, but I kinda hoped that it all would blow over somehow. Maybe my mama would look out for me, because I was doing all of this just to survive until I figured out what I wanted from this life.

Back in my neighborhood, I clutched my bag and rushed past houses and neighbors, who always looked out for us in this dangerous but safe zone. I knew it sounded crazy, but even though this neighborhood was kinda dangerous, we weren’t the trap. My area was actually cool. Every Saturday there was an event called Spoken Word in the Park, with damn good barbecue, soul food, and all kinds of vendors.

That was where I’d listen to my favorite female MC and poetry chick, who was on another level. Too bad she had disappeared. At the local high school, where I used to go, we’d see the step squads battle the cheerleaders, as well as banging football and basketball games. Everything was cool except for the occasional shoot-outs, which involved niggas trying to create some turf war. I’d occasional spot these chicks, known as queens, who protected us.

Glancing at an empty, well-kept house, I smiled at the memory of the old lady who used to live there. I used to go to her church. She’d hand out bomb cookies and frozen slushies to us kids in the summertime. Was crazy how she was found dead in her home. Shaking off that thought, I kept going until I rounded the corner and ended up at my mom’s home . . . well, my house now.

After stepping inside, I glanced around at the familiar items all around me. Pictures of my mom and me during our happy times adorned the walls. Me at graduation. Me as a little kid. All the pictures of my father were gone, which was how we had both liked it, and now I was left with the reality that my mama was gone. Sadness filled me, and I went to my bedroom. The cops were on my ass. I knew my neighborhood inside out, and I always knew when people were watching me. I had some cleaning to do just in case.

So I left my bedroom and began rushing around my house. Went to my attic and basement to hide all evidence of my illegal activities. I cleaned thoroughly. Wiped my hard drives and then moved them. Broke down the machines I had around and placed them in spots where they blended in with the furniture in the rooms. If the cops decided to search my house, they wouldn’t find a damn thing. I’d been doing this long enough to know how to hide microchips in picture frames. I knew how to make my tiny ATM cameras look they were just a part of my home security system. If the cops searched upstairs, they’d just think I’d made myself a security room.

I then changed out of my clothes, showered, and went into the kitchen. The sound of my burner cell going off drew my attention. Keisha’s ugly mug, with her bubble gum–pink lipstick, appeared on my screen.

Annoyed, I snatched up the phone and sucked my teeth. “What?”

“Ah, ew!” she said in her nasal voice. “Oh my gosh, Nia. You a’ight? I’m so sorry I was scared, girl.”

Keisha had to be a stupid bitch. Why she would call me and try to talk about this shit over the phone was beyond me.

Bitch was killing my vibe and lying through her teeth. “Scared of what? We weren’t doing anything.”

“Nia, what you talking about, girl? Come on. We were going to grip those people, and I was going to be able to feed my kids.”

Again, that feeling that this chick was off her rocker was working on my nerves. “Keisha, what do you want?” The sound of Keisha’s babies crying in the background had me feeling soft for a moment, but the fact that she had played me pissed me off. “You know what? I should stomp your ugly, goat-looking ass for lying on me. Next time you contact me or come in my face, know you will get handled.”

It was almost as if Keisha hadn’t been sad just moments before, and I knew she hadn’t. I’d feigned hurt and regret enough to know when another bitch was faking it.

“Bitch, you ain’t shit any damn way, and I’m tired of your ass talking to my baby daddy!” Keisha shouted back at me.

I hung up on her face.

Fuck her, for real. She was another stupid bitch having sex with nothing-ass niggas and producing bastard babies who would grow up to be menaces to society. No one wanted that nigga. No one! I couldn’t believe that after whining to me about that nigga not paying her child support or handing her even a dollar, she’d play me like that.

Everything I had done for her was really for her kids, because I felt really sad about them not eating and not having diapers, so forget her. She could choke on that nigga’s dick as far as I was concerned. Ramon was her dude, and he kept flirting with me. He beat her ass, and I had tried to help Keisha. I hated niggas who thought using their fists on a woman would get them the glory, respect, and power they sought. That was why I had got caught up and had allowed myself to feel sorry for this broad.

Annoyance had me talking to myself as I cooked. I mixed together a cup of ground beef, chopped-up onions, and green peppers in a pot and cooked it on my stove until the beef had browned. I then drained off the fat and added onion soup mix. Then I opened a can of crushed tomatoes, dumped the tomatoes in the pot, and stirred in some ketchup, brown sugar, soy sauce, and hot sauce. I mixed it all up for ghetto sloppy joe’s. I hadn’t gotten a chance to cop any real groceries, and this was all I had found in my kitchen. My mom would try to eat healthy due to her sickle-cell anemia, so this stuff was left over from before she went into the hospital.

I grabbed some bread and a plate, I slapped everything together, and plopped down at my table. Chilling in my small T-shirt, bikini-cut undies, and socks, I thought back to all the bullshit Keisha would say about Ramon. She’d always yapped about his good dick, his tongue, and about how she missed him and how pissed she was that he kept flirting with me. My locks fell over my shoulder, my mouth was full of food, and my head hurt from her stupid bullshit. I didn’t want Ramon’s evil ass. Keisha should have been checking Trina. She was the one who wanted Keisha’s man’s dick, not me.

Dude was ugly as shit in the soul. So his dick was nothing I was thinking about. Fucking was nothing I was thinking about. Never had had time for it, anyway, or had wanted it, because my mind was on protecting my mama.

Every guy who tried to get at me, I ignored. I didn’t want to get pregnant. Didn’t want no STD and didn’t want to be Keisha, since all she talked about was dick. I had my mind made up to have a different life. Guessed that was why I was a virgin still. I didn’t care. But I knew if I got hot in the ass with the way chicks always came up missing in the trap, I knew I could be a target. I mean, I could become a target, anyway, but at least sticking close to home and not running the streets kept me safer. There were some guys I was into, but when my mama got sick, nothing else had mattered to me.

As I sat in the kitchen and ate my sloppy joe, the silence hit me. I was all by myself now. No one to take care of anymore besides myself, and it seemed strange. It scared me. Stuffing my face, I looked across the kitchen table at the empty chair that had been my mom’s, and my fork dropped, and the tears followed. I missed her. I just wanted some peace. I could tell by the way Keisha had talked to me on the phone that the bitch was trying to set me up. So I wouldn’t be talking to that raggedy ho again.

When I was finished eating, I tossed the leftover food in the trash. Cleaned the kitchen, then headed to bed. Wasn’t no need for me to sit and have a pity party.

I woke up the next day, knowing something was off. On my way to work, I used one of my dummy cards to get some money to stash, just in case I needed to hide and lay low. A dummy card was one that I’d made with someone else’s card number and information. Back in the day when I was stealing, you had thirty days to get three hundred dollars a day from a dummy card. It used to take thirty days for the billing cycle to come around or thirty days for the statements to be mailed. Before all the high-tech security shit took over, shit had been simple. Now, for those of us in the business I was in, you had only fifteen days, max. Banks and credit card companies were more alert and paid attention to suspicious activity.

In hindsight, I could see how fucking stupid I was to try to use that damn card. For some reason, I didn’t think the cops would really take the time to bother me when there were other, more serious crimes afoot.

People rushed past with no cares in the world. I stared at every passerby, because I kept feeling like I was being watched, and I hated that shit. Sliding my hands in my pockets and keeping my head down, I kept it pushing.

Cars zoomed past me, but it was the nice blacked-out Audi R8 that drew my attention. I couldn’t really see inside it too well, but then I did make out the top half of a dude, who locked eyes on me. He revved his engine, then darted his eyes before driving off. If that dude had parked that shit and had left it near me, I most definitely would have stolen it, checked out the engine, and enjoyed the pleasant weather. But I had work to do, even though the hairs on the back of my neck were standing up.

As I turned to head off, I stopped in my tracks when flashing lights quickly surrounded me. The police had me surrounded, guns cocked and aimed. People gave the police a wide berth. If they weren’t running and screaming, they were standing around, staring. I held my hands up and stopped. I didn’t want to end up shot.

“Get on the ground! Get on the ground,” a cop shouted.

I quickly dropped to my knees, then lay on my stomach. I swore, it felt as if those niggas were trying to paralyze me. Knees in my back and on my spine. My hands and wrists twisted awkwardly so they could get the cuffs on.

I guessed the investigation was over, because now my ass was being hauled back to jail. I sat in a holding cell at Clayton County Jail for a good three or four hours before I was pulled out and placed in an interrogation room.

“Look who we have back here with us, man. This lying bitch,” Mr. Blond taunted me sarcastically. I remembered him whispering to Mr. Michelin the last time I was here.

Guessed I wasn’t too sweet or too cute to be a thug anymore, because these fellas were all the way turned up, and Uncle Phil was nowhere to be found. They tried to get me to answer questions, but I refused. I had the right to remain silent, so that was what I did, until they got frustrated.

“Get her ass up outta here, and let’s see how she likes sitting behind bars. These goddamned kids are getting too smart for their own good, and we’re not about to have another punk act the hell up and tear up the interrogation room. Two is enough. Stop playing with her, Derrick,” Mr. Michelin barked.

So Mr. Blond is named Derrick, I thought.

“I will, but we should let her see at least a piece of the evi. . .