Chapter 13: Life In The Hood

Marcus and Tyrone Williams were teens growing up in the hood. They were loosely associated with the Crypts, but there was no local chapter. They were it for now. They’d started young, doing odd jobs for Wilcox. Wilcox pretty much ran the hood. If you did a robbery, he’d better get his cut. He had eyes and ears everywhere. Marcus and Tyrone had recently graduated to car theft. Wilcox paid good for the right car, but it was also high-risk: Wilcox and the police. Auto theft meant jail time if caught. Not getting the car Wilcox wanted had its own consequences. When he wanted something; he’d call Marcus and Tyrone; tell them what he wanted and when. You didn’t disappoint Wilcox.

On this afternoon, Wilcox’s boy Lester had called; said the Man wanted a black Mercedes GLS SUV for tomorrow. They’d be expecting it out front of his house at sunup with one of those legal plates on it. The boys got to work. First, they got their sister to give them a ride. They’d cruise around, looking for the right car. When they found it, they’d grab it and she’d get 20% for driving them all over. Rochelle was always wanting more money, so she readily agreed.

It was around 10:00 pm. They’d been driving around the malls and neighborhoods of Brentwood for three hours now in Rochelle’s maroon Chevy Impala. Nothing. They were getting impatient; Rochelle’s constant bitching was getting on Tyrone’s nerves. Then in a nice quiet subdivision, they saw a black GLS SUV idling by the sidewalk. It was on a hill, a brick road with fancy bushes on either side. Tyrone told her to stop, come back in ten minutes, pick them up if they missed it.

Rochelle snapped back, “You better not! I need my twenty precent!”

The two brothers, both dressed in black, ran quietly down the sidewalk. They stopped just short of the SUV in the shadow. The back door of the house suddenly opened; a woman said good-bye to someone and walked away from the door. They saw the light disappear when the door closed. Tyrone crept forward a step. The woman appeared in front of him, crossing left to right to the Mercedes door. He jumped up, hit her on her head as hard as he could with a brick he’d grabbed back at their crib. The woman went “Uh!” and collapsed to the ground, unconscious.

Leslie Martin had stopped briefly on her way home from picking up her daughter, Kelsey. She’d dropped off some books she’d promised Mrs. Ingalls, and now she was heading home. As she reached for the car door handle, something came up beside her and then everything went blank. She lay on the sidewalk for almost 15 minutes before a woman walking her dog found her. All anyone knew was that her car was gone. Nobody knew that her daughter was even in the car; not until her mother came to from her head injury almost an hour later in the ER.

Rochelle drove around the block, slowed. All she saw was a person laying on the sidewalk; the car was gone. She drove off.

“Ah’d better get my twenty percent,” she scowled to herself.

Tyrone had jumped in first; Marcus jumped in the right side. he quickly put it in gear and drove off. Tyrone turned right at the stop sign, then drove two blocks and got on the interstate. Up I-65 to I-190, then north and into the hood. It wasn’t far. Traffic wasn’t bad this time of night. As they accelerated onto the highway from Brentwood, they both heard a voice in back. A sleepy girl’s voice. “Mommy?”

Marcus spun around. “The fuck...?” he said. Tyrone kept glancing back; Marcus said to keep his eyes on the road. Marcus reached up; turned on the overhead light. A young girl lay on the back seat. She had on shorts and a winter coat. She squinted in the light, then saw the black man in the front seat staring at here.

Kelsey sat up quickly, eyes wide. Who was this man?! Oh my God, there are two of them! What, what was going on? Where’s mom? She quickly jumped to the left side of the back seat, started babbling, “Who are you? What are you doing? Let me out! Let out of here!” She screamed once. Marcus grinned, looking the girl up and down. He clicked off the light. She kept going on; demanding they let her out. Marcus turned to Tyrone;