Zero Degrees Part 1

Chapter 2



With their immaturity, Blake King and two members of his trigger happy clique,—the Dub Life Goons—were all staring attentively at the screen of his cell phone, ogling the new girl’s incredible body. They were standing in the trash-littered living room of Blake’s crack house, a sparsely furnished dungeon of dilapidation that catered to a smorgasbord of addicts.

On average, Blake’s crack house raked in about $1,500-a-day in sales, which meant that he needed at least an ounce of crack-cocaine on hand every day to supply the demand. Currently there was a pocket-flattening cocaine drought all throughout the Midwest and many hustlers found themselves paying upwards of a grand for a single ounce. Blake was one of them, and he hated it. He had four thousand dollars stowed away in a shoe box in the hallway closet of his girlfriend Ashley Joy’s apartment, and every dollar of it had come from selling crack-rocks.

Blake thought about tricking off every dollar of his savings on the new girl up the block form his crack house. For the umpteenth time Blake restarted the video on his cell phone. I could watch this all day, he thought.

“That lil sexy bitch look like Nicki Minaj, don’t she?” Young-D asked, as he lit the end of a blunt.

“Bitch grabbed my dick and said she wanna taste it,” Blake said. He whistled through his teeth, shook his head in disbelief, and kept his eyes on the girl. “She fresh-to-deaf, too. J’s on her feet. Apple Bottom jeans. And that’s a Fendi jacket she got on—pro’bly cost ‘bout three racks.”

“And she got a fat-nigga fetish.’’ Young-D chuckled and took a few puffs from the blunt.

Jokes made at Blake’s expense—particularly when pertaining to his weight—had always had a way of angering him, usually to the point of violence.

This time was no different.

Blake straightened his left hand and chopped it across Young-D’s throat; Young-D’s blunt plummeted to the multi-stained carpet, and he doubled over, clutching at his neck with both hands, gagging and choking and gasping.

“Stop f*ckin’ playin’ with me so much,” Blake scolded. He did his cell phone into its clip-on carrying case on his waist.

Lil Mike picked up the smoldering blunt and smiled. He took his fair share of inhalations before passing it off to Blake. Then Lil Mike was at the back door, ushering a pair of crackheads—an older white couple—into the kitchen.

“One twenty-five,” Lil Mike shouted a moment later, indicating that the addicts had $125 to spend.

Blake went to the small gray card table that was in the center of the tiny dining room and seated himself in one of the four matching fold-out chairs that surrounded it. Atop the card table was a circular gray digital scale, thinly veiled with a film of crack-crumbs; a box of sandwich bags; a scattered pile of cash and coins; a bag of crack-cocaine, filled with about twenty grams of the hard yellowish-white substance, and a glass ashtray brimming with cigarillo tobacco, cigarette butts, and blunt roaches.

As Blake King weighed up then bagged 1.8-grams of hard, he observed Young-D—Dante Roscoe-hoist himself up onto the raggedy old sofa with one hand, his other hand still massaging his slender neck. Young-D shot Blake a look full of contempt, but held his tongue. Maybe because it would have pained him to speak, but more likely due to his first-hand knowledge of Blake’s angry capability.

Thirty minutes and five drug deals later, things returned to normal. Blake and Lil Mike were sitting on the couch with Young-D, their thumbs hammering away at PlayStation 3 controllers, their eyes stuck to the fifty-inch screen television that Lil Mike and Young-D had stolen from a stripper’s house. They were playing “NBA Live 2010,” Blake had the Lakers and Lil Mike –born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee—had chosen the Grizzlies, who were now busy being victimized by Kobe Bryant’s effortless jump shots and indubitably superior ball-handling skills.

In the kitchen, the back door issued a slight, barely audible creak as it was pushed open.

The creak sounded just as the halftime horns of the poignant basketball game blared. So deeply focused on the television screen, Blake and Michael “Lil Mike” Lane failed to hear the opening door.

Young-D thought he heard something—like the squeak of a shoe on the linoleum kitchen floor—but figured it was probably Alonzo “Blubby” Jones, the Ugly-Duckling of their crew, returning with their Taco Bell orders.

Neither Blake King nor his comrades could have guessed that a team of three doped-up masked men had just entered their trap.

“Face-down, nigga!” Bookie shouted aggressively, as he rushed into the living room carrying a twelve-gauge Mossberg pump-action shotgun in his gloved hands. “Play if you wanna, homie!”

Bookie’s thick black lips curled up into a sarcastic grin, behind the black cotton ski-mask. He was juiced off cocaine and ready to shoot some-damn-body. Hell, everybody.

Two of his closest guys—Kevin “K.G.” Goldman, who was just as high as he was; and Johnny Lay, a lanky dude—stormed in behind him, aiming their semi-automatic guns at Blake and his crew.

“Ain’t this a bitch,” Blake muttered, as he looked up at the armed robbers.

“Damn, mane,” seconded Lil Mike.

Bookie landed a glancing blow across the side of Lil Mike’s blue mesh Bubs cap with the butt of the gun, opening a deep and old wound that instantly gushed blood down the side of his neck.

Within seconds Blake, Young-D, and Lil Mike were on the floor, and K.G. was dropping the money and crack from the card table inside the backpack he’d brought with him.

“Take everydamnthang,” Bookie said. “The PlayStation, too. We need all this shit.” He kicked Blake’s head and smiled when he heard the painful grown that followed. “Punk-ass niggas think y’all ballin’, huh?” Bookie’s voice was high-pitched.

Johnny crouched over Lil Mike and began searching through his pants pockets. After retrieving a hefty bankroll and a baggy containing about a half ounce of marijuana, Johnny dropped it all in K.G.’s backpack and went on to search Blake and Young-D.

Bookie and his east side crew, who were better known as the Tenth Street Hustlers, left Blake’s crackhouse with over three thousand dollars in cash and drugs.

Today was the last day Blake would ever leave home without his forty-caliber Smith and Wesson gun.