Dodson and the fellas dealt drugs out of an apartment on the backside of an old commercial building. The landlord had cut the building up into individual units, eight or ten people living in a tiny room, two bathrooms per floor. They called the apartment the House. They moved it every few weeks for security reasons but no matter what the location it was always the same. Cavelike and musty, windows too milky to see through, the drapes in shreds, black patches on the floor where the linoleum was torn off, the walls covered with gang signs and pictures of big dicks. The bathrooms were always terrifying. The rent was shared by Dodson, Kinkee, Sedrick, and Freddie G. Everybody strapped. Get bold enough to try a robbery and you’d be hard-pressed to get out alive.
Dodson got his dope from Kinkee, who got his dope from Junior, top of the food chain. Nobody knew if Junior was the name on his birth certificate or if there was a Senior Junior running around somewhere. Junior didn’t come to the House much and seemed to spend most of his time getting chauffeured around in a massive white Navigator with blacked-out windows, gold BBS rims, and a sound system you felt through the sidewalk before you heard it. Junior liked to use big words to make himself sound smart but it usually had the opposite effect. Once Dodson heard him say: “This female had the most magnanimous titties I have ever substantiated.” Michael Stokely was his wheelman, Booze Lewis rode shotgun, both of them looking like their mug shots and armed like SEAL Team 6.
Junior bought kilos of raw cocaine from a cartel connection in Boyle Heights. He added his cut and sold it in halves, quarters, and eighths to block captains like Kinkee. Kinkee added his cut, cooked the cocaine into crack, and sold it rocked up to low-level dealers like Dodson, everybody doubling their money. On most days Dodson made more than his colleagues. He never hyped his product, didn’t make fun of his customers or demand a blow job, and he put a little extra in the bag when the quality was low.
The worst thing about the job was the working conditions. Serving it up to a sad parade of glassy-eyed dope fiends; twitching, scabs on their faces, brown teeth gapped as gravestones, rambling on about a situation with their associates or the government drone that was following them around night and day. Some of the customers lit up right in front of you, the crack fumes smelling like burnt rubber, clouds of it swirling into an atmosphere already thick with weed smoke, Thunderbird, and body funk. It was a wonder you didn’t get cancer just being there. Most of the fiends came and went as fast as they could but there were always a few more discriminating shoppers who held the rock up to the light and said is this the good shit?
Dodson was bored and restless. The House was more suffocating than usual and business was slow. Kinkee was down to kibbles and bits, the crackheads finding better product elsewhere. Dodson went outside to get a breath of fresh air that smelled like dirt, weeds, and dogshit. There wouldn’t be any new product until Junior did his reup run to Boyle Heights. Until then, it was a lot of waiting around. Dodson knew he needed a new hustle, something more worthy of his talents; something that wouldn’t get him arrested, shot, or killed by asphyxiation. What exactly that hustle would be he hadn’t figured out.
An hour went by and no more customers came in so Dodson went back to the apartment. He took a long shower, scrubbing himself with a loofah to get the stink off. Isaiah was almost never home. On the rare occasions when they were in the apartment together they were self-conscious and careful, like there were hidden rules and neither of them knew what they were. It wasn’t hard for Dodson to figure out who the apartment belonged to. There was an older guy in the photos on the bookshelf who was probably Isaiah’s brother, who was most likely dead and that was no doubt the reason Isaiah was so messed up. His face was either blank as Dodson’s math assignment or his eyes were tight and his jaw hard-set like he was about to smack somebody. He stayed out on the balcony for hours, holding his head in his hands or staring into the dark. Late at night, Dodson could hear him pacing around the bedroom talking to himself; low and fierce with some crying mixed in. Dodson was afraid the boy was cracking up.
When Dodson got out of the shower, he changed and went to the kitchen to get something to eat. Isaiah was on the floor messing with the back compartment of the refrigerator. There were tools, wires, and electrical parts scattered around him and his hands were black with grime. “What’re you doing?” Dodson said.
“Fridge had a leak on the low side,” Isaiah said. “Condenser’s shot.”
“I got food in there.”
“Everything’s in the sink.”