Paper Chasers

by Mark Anthony

Genres: African American; African American Urban

Synopsis

During the summer of 1991, the crack epidemic is destroying lives in cities across the U.S., and New York City is no exception. The members of Fourth Crew live in Queens, where crack addiction has swept through the ghetto and the dealers rule the streets. These young thugs come from middle-class homes in a middle-class neighborhood, but this doesn't make them immune from the lure of fast money and power. They enter the game with dreams of living the high life, but are soon swept up in the violence and betrayal that come with the territory. It doesn't take them long to understand that there are serious repercussions to chasing paper. Loosely based on the author's life, Paper Chasers takes us into the minds of these young hustlers and gives readers a realistic portrait of life on the streets. It's a tale of good and evil that chronicles the ways in which money can destroy friendships, challenge morals, and corrupt even those sworn to serve and protect. An Essence bestseller upon its release, Paper Chasers has become a gritty street classic.

Release date: September 1, 2007

Publisher: Urban Books

Print pages: 320

Sample

Not ironic at all was the fact that it had rained for the past three years on the same day that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered. It also rained on the day that marked the death of Malcolm X.

It was June 8, 1991, and again it was pouring rain outside. I usually slept good when it rained, but I knew I had to get out of my bed and get dressed. I was never one to be lazy, but today was different. I felt like pulling the covers over my head and sleeping until eternity. I was hoping that I had a bad dream or something. Unfortunately, I knew that was not the case.

Reality for me was looking across my room and seeing a neatly pressed black suit. That reality made me feel grim. It was only 7:15 A.M. Usually at that time I would have been asleep, but not today.

The rain outside my window wasn’t what woke me. The fact that I was about to attend a funeral in three hours is what was keeping me awake. That same thought kept me tossing and turning throughout the night.

Richie was dead! I had just walked and talked with him five days ago, and now he was dead. How would his casket look? What would he be wearing? Would he look the same dead as he did alive? Would everybody be able to see the cut on his throat, the same cut that allowed every ounce of blood in his body to shoot out like a water fountain?

Oh my God! I thought to myself. I couldn’t believe it. Damn! Another one of my homeboys was dead. And for what? For no reason at all.

There was really no time to dwell on the many thoughts that were racing through my head. It was time for me to peel myself out of the bed and get dressed. Why was I moving so slow? Maybe because I was thinking of a way to bring Richie back, but unfortunately I just simply couldn’t think of one.

“I’m sorry, Richie. I’m sorry. You know I’d bring you back if I could.” In spirit I knew he could hear me.

Maybe it was Richie slowing me down, making me take twenty minutes to brush my teeth. I knew he didn’t want me rushing to see him lowered into the ground with all of the worms and maggots—the same ground that gets cold and as hard as a rock in the winter months, and the same ground where Richie’s body would return to dust. Yeah, I didn’t want to see Richie like that no more than he wanted to be murdered.

My thirty minute shower was finally coming to an end. Ten thirty was approaching faster and faster. My black suit looked good but it had seen better days. I guess that this was about my tenth time wearing it. Funny, every time I wore it I was going to see one of my homies put to rest. And this day was no different. Or was it?

I guess it was different simply because it was Richie’s funeral that I was going to. Richie was my nigga. The most jacked up part about him dying was the fact he had just graduated from college. Yeah . . . he had his B.A. in Criminal Justice. And only two weeks after getting his degree he was dead. As the saying goes, “Ish happens.”

Richie was a young black man. He was the type of person who wore gold teeth, let his pants sag below his butt, and drank forties. I guess you would call him your stereotypical hoodlum, only he knew what time it was. His mind was always focused. Half of the world would look at him and wouldn’t think of him as college material. And that’s because he was constantly stereotyped. I’ll never forget what he told me one day when we were just sitting around talking shit.

“Holz,” Richie said, “I’m gonna change the minds of society so that black men won’t all be stereotyped, stereotyped just because of the way we look, or because we’re always killing each other. See, I’m gonna finish college, but not so I can come out and make a lot money, because anybody can do that. I could do that by just standing on the corner slinging dope. See, Holz, I want to finish school so I can better myself. Once I better myself I’ll be able to better the people around me. That’s what college and an education should be all about. It’s about bettering yourself as well as the people around you.”

Richie always talked about ending black on black crime in New York. Little did he know, as fate would have it, that he too would later be killed by a brother.

I was finally dressed. My father was going to drive me and some of the other cats from Fourth Crew to the funeral. That’s the same crew that Richie belonged to. We picked up Randy, Dwight, and Tee. They were down the block at Tee’s grandmother’s house. The next stop was Kwame’s house. We got Kwame and we were ready to roll to the funeral. The funeral was being held in a church located on Linden Boulevard.

On the way to the church we passed the spot where Richie had been slain. As we drove past the spot, the sight of his throat being slashed replayed in my mind over and over again like the scene from a movie. Everything had happened so quickly that day. On the day of his death, Richie and I both had just gotten haircuts. We went to pick up his girl Elizabeth. Elizabeth was the older sister of my girlfriend, Sabine.

You could tell that Richie was excited about the fact that he had finally graduated from college because that’s all he conversed about. I was happy for him because no one actually thought that he would make it. The truth was, nobody believed he would actually finish except Fourth Crew. All Elizabeth, who we called Liz, kept saying was, “I’m glad you got your degree, ’cause now you’re gonna be making mad money and I wouldn’t let myself marry you if you didn’t get your college degree.”

Richie kept trying his hardest to explain to Liz that the reason why he’d pursued his education had nothing to do with dollars. Liz didn’t understand. She just thought it equated to dead presidents.

After leaving Elizabeth’s house, which was located in Hollis, Queens, we caught the number five livery van to my house. Sabine was supposed to come by my house after she left work. Then we were all going to go out to the movies that night, but we never made it.

Liz had on these turquoise biker spandex shorts and this black spandex tank top which revealed her belly button. It was the type of outfit that showed off every curve and accentuated the gluteus maximus. She had a slammin’ body, so you knew she was looking good.

When we reached our stop we stepped out of the van. All of the guys who were on the corner hanging out were clocking Liz. They were all scoping her big booty. I wasn’t worried about any niggas out there that day trying to play us by flirting with Liz because I knew just about every head that was on the corner.

Richie and I went into the bodega on the corner. Liz stayed outside and waited for us, but after a couple of minutes she came into the store looking irate. She told us that one of the guys outside had squeezed her butt. Richie, who had a quick temper, quickly stepped outside.

“Yo, who the hell squeezed my girl’s butt?” he yelled.

There was silence. No one said a word. Annoyed, Richie exhaled as if he were exercising and he repeated his words in a more stern, serious, parent-talking-to-a-group-of-bad-kids kind of way.

“Yo! Who the hell squeezed my girl’s butt!?” Again there was silence. Nobody said a word. The heads on the corner just kind of lamped and twisted their upper lip as they sniffled a fake runny nose.

“Yeah, all y’all fake ass punk niggas is playing like girls now, and ain’t saying nothin’!” Richie yelled into the crowd. “That’s a’ight, though, ’cause y’all can’t do me nothin’ anyway!”

Finally Liz pointed out the guy who’d felt her butt. I had never seen him before, or maybe I had seen him once or twice but I knew for a fact that he wasn’t from our part of town. After a moment or so it finally hit me. I did know who he was. His name was Cory. He was from South Jamaica, Queens. He would come to Laurelton every now and then to knock off some work, aka, sell drugs.

“Yo, money did you touch my girl?” Richie asked in a screw-faced kind of way as he stepped up to Cory. Cory put his hands in Richie’s face.

“Yo, potnah, get out of my face. Don’t try to play me in front of your boyz, ’cause I ain’t having it!”

“If you disrespect my girl, then you’re disrespecting me, and I ain’t trying to hear that, potnah!” Richie yelled back.

Cory said again, “Don’t try to play me. I’m not the one. Now get outta my face, a’ight!”

Then Cory just swung from outta nowhere and snuffed Richie. He clocked Richie in the mouth. Richie stumbled back a little, regained his composure, and went buck wild, throwing a barrage of punches. In an instant he was whipping Cory like he’d stolen something. It seemed as if all of the people on the corner were magnetically drawn to the fight. They converged on the fight, making a jagged circle and leaving just enough room for two people to get at each other. Everyone watched and jeered as Richie proceeded to whip Cory’s black behind.

Then suddenly Cory pulled a knife and slashed Richie’s throat. He did it so quickly that I didn’t even see if it was an actual knife or if it was a box cutter. After he cut Richie’s throat, he took flight like Carl Lewis. He hauled ass down Merrick Boulevard. Nobody tried to chase him because everyone was in shock, myself included.

The knife had hit his jugular vein. There was blood everywhere. The blood was literally shooting out of Richie’s neck like the fountain of youth. I had seen niggas get split wide open in street fights before, but I had never witnessed anything like I was witnessing with Richie. I remember Richie grabbing his throat and running around panicking. Everytime his heart would beat, another stream of blood would literally shoot out of his neck. It was chaotic. Females were screaming and guys were howling in disbelief.

Before I knew it, Richie had collapsed. I ran over to him and put my fingers on his wound. In seconds my hands were slippery from all of the blood—too slippery to hold his neck. There was so much blood. I just couldn’t believe it. My shirt, pants, and sneakers were red from all of the blood.

Richie was soaking in his own blood. It was one of the worst sights a human being could possibly see. He was literally drowning in his own blood. I was doing the best I could to slow down the rush of blood. As I sat on the concrete and cradled Richie’s head in my arms, I heard Elizabeth in the background screaming hysterically.

“Richie! Richie! Richieee!” I pleaded for someone to call an ambulance.

Each time Elizabeth screamed his name, her voice would echo in my head. Tears rolled out of her eyes as she hopelessly watched Richie’s blood roll along the curb and into the sewer. Her man was dying a senseless death right in front of her eyes, and there was nothing that she, nor I, nor anyone else could do to help Richie. All we could do was hope for the best.

Finally someone grabbed Liz and tried to calm her down. By this time the whole block was filled with onlookers. Traffic on Merrick Boulevard was stopped in both directions. All eyes were on Richie. Richie’s eyes were open and he was silent. He had such a look of fear in his eyes—fear that I’d never seen before in any man. Then again, that was the closest in physical proximity that I’d ever been to a dying man.

Richie’s eyes stayed glued on Elizabeth. Wherever she went, his brown eyes followed. He didn’t even look at me when I told him that he was going to be all right.

“Richie, you’re gonna be a’ight,” I kept saying. “Just try to relax. The ambulance is coming for you. Just hold on, Richie.” People were everywhere.

“Where is this ambulance? My man is bleeding to death!” I yelled.

Finally, after what seemed like fifteen minutes or so, I heard sirens blaring. Sirens were coming from all angles. By this time Elizabeth had gotten lost in the sea of people and Richie’s eyes shifted away from the crowd. With the sound of sirens blaring in the background Richie looked at me. He was struggling to talk. All of the life was just about drained out of him.

“Yo, Holz,” he said. He was talking in a real slow and low tone. “Yo, Holz, don’t let me die, man. Please, Holz . . . Holz, am I gonna be a’ight? Don’t let me die, man.”

“I won’t, Richie!” I promised. “Richie, come on, just don’t die on me! Man, I won’t let you die, but you gotta help me out! Rich, be strong and hang on! Reach inside man. Man, hang on. I know you can do it! Richie, if anybody can do it, you can definitely do it! Just like you’re always telling me, Richie, you can do anything that you put your mind to!”

At that point, police came burling through the crowd, yelling.

“Everyone get back. Back the hell up! Give him room. Please, back up!”

“Officer, officer,” I screamed, “he’s been cut. He got slashed. Help him! Y’all have to hurry up, ’cause he ain’t gonna last much longer!”

The cops and paramedics started working on Richie’s neck. The paramedics cut all of his blood soaked clothes from his body, leaving him in his underwear. After working on him in the street for about five minutes, they lifted him onto a stretcher. His neck was packed with mounds of white gauze and all kinds of Band-Aid looking material.

As they prepared to lift Richie into the back of the ambulance he looked at me. His eyes locked onto my eyes. You promised I’d be all right, his eyes seemed to be screaming at me.

The moment they lifted the stretcher, I put up four fingers across my heart, which indicated the Fourth Crew sign. Richie just looked at me, then his eyes closed.

That was June third at around 5:00 P.M. That was the last time I saw Richie alive. Unfortunately, after his funeral I knew that I’d never see him again. All that would be left would be the memories.

Again and again, the entire tragic incident kept replaying itself in my mind. I just kept wishing that I could have done something to have prevented Richie’s death. Why did we choose that day? That time? That route to go to the movies? Why?

He asked me not to let him die. He asked me and I couldn’t help him. That was the most jacked up thing that kept racing through my head. It was as if I could still hear him saying, “Yo, Holz, don’t let me die, man.”

We finally reached the church where the funeral was being held. You could tell that Richie was well-liked because there were so many people entering the church. Black limousines draped with flowers were parked all along the street, and more were parked on a grass lot that was located nearby. For as far as the eye could see, people and cars were everywhere. Everybody had come to pay their last respects to Richie.

The moment I stepped foot inside the church I heard the sound of an organ playing that same sad funeral song that I hear at every black person’s funeral. I also heard loud wailing and sobbing all around me. Some people were so overcome with emotion that they fainted. Others had to be restrained from grabbing the casket. It was an extremely emotionally charged and sad situation. I guess when someone so young and with such potential dies so suddenly it has a greater shock on people’s emotions than when a person dies who has a disease or has lived a full life. Everyone was just in shock that Richie was gone so unexpectedly.

My head suddenly began to feel very light. From that point on I didn’t notice anyone that was around me. It was like I had slipped into another world. I heard people saying a bunch of that funeral mumbo jumbo such as, “Hi, how are you doing? How are you coping with it?” I would answer them, but my glossy eyes never made contact with the person to whom I was speaking. It was as if I was ignoring them.

My girl, Sabine, who was very emotional herself, stood next to me and escorted me to my seat. Elizabeth was already sitting down. I couldn’t bring myself to look at Elizabeth. I sensed she was also crying. There was just no way that I was gonna look at her.

I took my seat next to Sabine and Elizabeth. Randy, Tee, and Kwame also came and sat in the same pew as me. My body was getting numb. I was totally out of it. Someone was preparing to deliver the eulogy. I heard the speaker, but I really wasn’t paying attention. And I wasn’t even being a gentleman. I mean there was my girl, sitting there crying, and I didn’t even put my arm around her or help wipe away her tears.

Time was moving so slowly.

Then came the time for all of those who wanted to look at Richie’s body one last time to do so. Almost everybody got up and formed a line. One by one, people walked past his coffin. The coffin was money green—Richie’s favorite color. Elizabeth couldn’t get herself to walk past the casket. She said it was just too much for her to handle.

Others stopped and stared at Richie’s lifeless body. Some shook their heads in disbelief while others kissed and touched his lifeless body. This, by far, was the gloomiest part of the funeral. It was marked by observers who just couldn’t bear the grief and had to be restrained and led away from the casket.

All of Fourth Crew walked past Richie and said good-bye to him. I stopped at his coffin and stared at his body. I felt him looking at me. Although music was playing, I no longer heard it. My world was in total silence as I looked into his coffin.

Without blinking, I stared at him. Then I reached out and touched his hand. It felt somewhat cold and hard. I knew he could feel my hand. I kept my hand on his, then I started to break down. Ah man . . . Ah man, ah man, I thought. I had never cried at a funeral before. I’d never even cried in front of my girl. Sabine was right behind me and she just stared at me, but she didn’t say a word.

“I’m sorry, Richie,” I said very quietly as I cried. “Are you still my man? We still boys, right?” Why wouldn’t he answer? When was he gonna answer me? I waited for as long as I could for an answer but I never got one, so I prepared myself to leave the coffin. Before I left, I kissed Richie on his forehead. “Richie, I love you, man,” I said. “I’ll see you, kid. I’ma see you.”

Then I walked back to my seat. Sabine held my hand and followed behind me as we made our way back to our seats and sat back down. I was still crying. Sabine hugged me.

“It’s gonna be OK, honey. He’s going to a better place. He’s with God right now. It’ll be all right,” Sabine said. Then she wiped my tears away.

I was beginning to come back to reality a little bit, but not totally. We sat for a little while longer, and before long people were going to the microphone and speaking about the good times that they had spent with Richie.

After the last person spoke, someone sang “Amazing Grace” and “I’ll Fly Away,” and then people started slowly filing out of the church.

Everyone piled into their cars. Relatives and close friends got into limousines. Fourth Crew had two limos parked in front of the church, waiting to take us to a cemetery out on Long Island.

The ride to the cemetery wasn’t too long. But when we arrived at the cemetery, I just couldn’t get out of the limo.

While everyone else went to go see Richie lowered into the ground, Sabine and I stayed inside the limo. I was just about fully back from the shock that I had slipped into when I first walked into the church.

“Yo . . . I cried, Sabine,” I said with a slight smile on my face.

“It’s all right, baby. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“Yeah, there isn’t,” I said after I thought for a moment. “Sabine, I can’t watch them put Richie into the ground. I just can’t watch that!”

“It’ll be all right, Mark,” Sabine reassured me, calling me by my real name. “I’ll be with you.”

Again I started to cry as Sabine gestured for my hand and helped me out of the limo. Together we walked across the grass and toward the spot where everyone was standing. A cemetery service was taking place for Richie.

Since it was still drizzling from earlier, everyone was forced to stand under this tent. The coffin was decorated with all types of flowers. A few people spoke and then I realized that they weren’t going to put Richie into the ground right away, at least not until all of the rain had completely stopped. The electrical equipment which was used to lower the coffin into the ground might have gotten wet and caused problems.

As everyone started to disperse back to their cars, I took one more long look at the coffin, shook my head, and turned to walk back to the limo. Once inside the limo, I started to panic. Yo, I forgot to write Richie a poem, I thought. I didn’t have the time to write what I wanted to write and what I had promised myself that I would write, but I asked Sabine for a piece of tissue and a pen, and then I scribbled this poem:


I got out of the limo and ran back over to the gravesite. I tossed the piece of tissue and I watched it softly float to the spot where the casket would be set into the ground. That way it would be waiting for Richie when he got there. I looked at the coffin one last time.

“Richie, you’re with God now,” I said. “So don’t worry about a thing. You’ll be a’ight. We love you.” Then I yelled as loudly as I could, “Fourth crew!” as I jogged back jogged back to the limo.

The limo ride back home was slow because it started to rain very hard. It was raining about as hard as it did on the night Richie was killed. I remember thinking how it was a good thing that it had rained on the night Richie was murdered, simply because the rain helped to wash away the blood stains that were left on the concrete from Richie’s wound.

The funeral was finally over. I’d taken off my suit and I put on my baggy jeans along with my high-top green and white Nike Airs. I then placed my gold caps into my mouth and I clipped my beeper to my pants.

“Paula! Paula! If Ma is looking for me, let her know that I’ll probably be at Randy’s house, or I might still be over Richie’s crib eating dinner, a’ight?”

“OK, be careful,” my sister hollered back as she told me that she would be dropping by as well.

With that, I walked across the street to Randy’s house and knocked on his door. I called out for him to come open the door. Randy had been slow at everything he’d ever done in his entire life, so finally, after about five minutes of knocking, he opened the door for me.

“Yo, man, you ain’t change your clothes yet?” I asked as I followed him into his basement. Randy still had the same clothes on that he’d worn to the funeral.

“Yo, hurry up, man! Everybody’s already at Richie’s house. His family cooked dinner for us. We gotta bounce.”As Randy switched outfits we started kickin’ it with each other.

“Holz,” he said, “I can’t believe Richie is dead.”

“Word! I know what you mean.” Although death for us was nothing new—we all knew people who in the past had been killed—Richie was the first one from Fourth Crew to be exterminated.

The crew was so close that we might as well have been family. There were so many of us. We even had peoples in Virginia who were down with the crew. Aside from the females that were in the crew, the main members of Fourth Crew were as follows: me, Randy, Latiefe, Dwight, Kwame, Xavier, Donnie, Erik, Claudius, J.P, and Reggie.

My government name is Ma. . .