The Holy City
Chapter 19
Despite receiving several letters and recruitment calls from different Catholic schools, Chris rebelled and insisted on attending a popular public high school by the name of Westinghouse, which produced many college players over the years. Of course the athletic staff was extremely excited to be receiving one of the highest prospects out of the city since Mark Aguirre. Even a few of Chris’s teammates and close friends followed suit and convinced their parents to allow them to attend the much more aggressive public school system.
“I’m tellin’ you now; you do not wanna get on coach’s bad side. Believe me, he’ll put them hands on you in’a minute,” One of the varsity players lectured Chris and his friends on their first day of school as they strolled down the crowded halls during the passing periods.
“Haaeeey, Chris!” a few gorgeous higher-classed young women seductively chanted as they passed by.
“Wassup!” Chris responded, immediately turning his attention in the direction that they were headed.
“You might as well forget about it,” Chris’s train of thoughts was interrupted by his fellow teammate. “Those hoes ain’t nuttin’ but’a distraction. They’ll be the reason you won’t make it far on this team. Believe me, I don seen it happened to the bests of’em.”
What he thought was helpful advice; Chris took it as a form of jealousy. As they went their separate ways to attend their next class period, Chris spotted the young ladies entering the cafeteria. He and his friends glanced at each other before blurting out; “Fuck that!” as their attention quickly turned to having an early lunch period.
It was obvious that Chris was recruited to come in, being a positive impact to the basketball team, unlike most freshmen. In most cases, juniors and seniors are against freshmen, or what they call “fresh meat.” They felt like freshmen should earn their spot on the team no matter who they were, instead of coming in, taking one of their positions. This situation was no different, and little did Chris know, he was in for a rude awakening!
“Man, I ain’t tryn’a here that shit, cuz! Next time I see that nigga I’mma kill’em. That’s on every thang I luv!” Peanut dramatically lashed out while speaking to his cousin, Spoonie, on the corner of Twenty-first and Homan.
“Listen, man! I gotta plan for that ma’fucka, jus’ chill,” Spoonie countered, attempting to calm his cousin’s nerves. “Once I get him out the way, we’ll have control over all this shit!”
“This muthafucka jus’ put’a pistol in my mouth in front of everybody on Lawndale and you talkin’ ‘bout chill?” Peanut aggressively spoke with an expression of disbelief covering his face. “Look man, you gon’ let me hold the thumpa’ (gun) or what. I’m fenna’ go get this nigga!”
As the two of them continued to discuss the situation, Spoonie was seriously contemplating on whether or not he should put himself in what he knew would be a bad predicament, even though Spoonie was jealous of the higher position Marcus was placed in, due to the fact that he was the one who gave Marcus his first hustling opportunity.
Spoonie knew in the back of his mind that it would be a huge loss to the nation if Marcus was prematurely killed; but at the same time, the other elites weren’t as powerful as Marcus, nor did they have the mind-set of a chief, so he felt it was impossible for him not to be next to sit in the highest seat for the IVL nation.
In the midst of them going back and forth with each other, at the same time the both of them noticed the suburban truck that Marcus was last seen in, two blocks away, slowly driving down St. Louis. Marcus slowed down into a sudden stop when he saw Peaches walking down the street with her three kids.
“Wassup, baby!” Marcus shouted seductively while leaning toward the passenger side with his hands still steering the truck. In the same breath, he greeted all three kids, “Haeeey, Tierra, Shae-Shae, and Bri’!”
“Haeeey, Marcus!” all three children chanted back all at once.
“Marcus, can I have five dolla’s?” Tierra, the oldest out of the three, blurted out innocently.
After everyone in the truck had a brief laugh from the innocent request, Marcus responded, “You sho’ll can, baby. Come get it.”
Tierra looked up at her mother, and after being given a nod of okay, she anxiously raced toward the truck; the other two followed suit. Marcus pulled out a thick knot of cash from his pocket and began peeling off ten-dollar bills for each kid. That’s when Peaches hollered out, “Where mine at?”
“Baby, you know you can get whatever you want,” Marcus replied sarcastically.
“Yeaah right!”
Since Marcus moved up in rank, his availability had been slim to none for Peaches. His class of women had escalated tremendously since he started making major money, but the fact still remained; for Peaches to be a female from the ‘hood and stuck under ‘hood circumstances, her beauty was on the same level as some of the women Marcus was involved with. Anytime Marcus would bump into Peaches while rotating in the streets, if she needed something, he gave it to her with no questions or strings attached because of the love he accumulated for her over the years. Peaches didn’t mind not being Marcus’s main lady; she understood how the game went. Her loyalty to Marcus still remained the same; whatever Marcus would ask of her, she would stop everything in a drop of a dime to get it done.
As the children happily marched their way from off the curb back onto the sidewalk where their mother stood, Peaches stated, “I what’nt playin’. Where mine at?” She said with a roll of the neck in a sassy manner.
“I’ll be back through here later on to take care you.”
“If I had a dollar for every time you told me that, I swear I’ll be rich!”
“I’m for real. I’ma be in the neighborhood for’a minute. I gotta handle a few things.”
“Whatever’! Come-on, y’all, let’s go,” She said with a slight attitude as she aggressively gathered her kids, preparing to walk off while the three of them were attempting to wave bye to Marcus.
Throughout the entire ordeal, Spoonie and his cousin Peanut stood where they couldn’t be seen on Homan and quietly witnessed the whole scene. Before Marcus was able to pull off good, Peanut began applying more pressure to his cousin.
“Wassup up, cuz! Let me gon’ ride down on this nigga. This the perfect time!” Peanut claimed as he spoke in a devilish tone while trying to convince Spoonie to give him a pistol.
Peanut was definitely a vicious killer and had been on plenty of missions for his respected mob from out of K-Town. Spoonie knew if he supplied Peanut the weapon that he was going to make something happen “by any means necessary.” Even though they were affiliated with different organizations, they always were down for each other before anything.
“Shit!” Spoonie hollered out in an irritated tone while looking from side to side. “Do it right! I don’t need this shit comin’ back on me at all, you hear me?!” Spoonie angrily commanded while untucking the twelve-shot Glock nine from under his shirt.
“I got this shit,” Peanut reassured him while attentively looking around while stuffing the pistol on his waistline. “When have you ever known me not to take care that bin’nis,” he said while quickly backing his way toward his car.
Spoonie stood there emotionlessly as he watched Peanut burn rubber out of the parking space. Not only did he put his first cousin in harm’s way, knowing how dangerous and risky the mission was, but he also jeopardized the growth of the nation by allowing an attempt on Marcus’s life. Spoonie greed to have complete control over the nation was so great that it didn’t matter whose life was on the line to make it happen, not even his own blood.
“Hello,” Marcus answered a call with Lil G and Pee Wee riding alongside of him while driving down Sixteenth Street, a main street in the Holy City area.
“Yea, whudd up, boa’. Where ya at?” said the voice on the other end, obviously being that of Shawn’s.
“Jus’ bendin’ a few blocks around Sixteenth. Wassup, everything a’
ight?”
“Hell nawl. I need to get wit’chú as soon as possible.”
“Meet me somewhere around here,” Marcus said.
Before hanging up from each other, Marcus couldn’t resist asking, “At least give me an idea on what this shit about?”
“Maaan, that nigga Dre had me meet him by the spot, right. When he pulled up, he gets out the car wit’ B-lo”
The minute Marcus heard the name B-lo; he simply shook his head, sensing trouble.
“B-lo talking real reckless, telling me how I need to pay homage and some shit about keeping you and the rest of the lords from off Division.”
“I knew them muthafuckas was gon’ try to pull a stunt once we started making progress!” Marcus said harshly, turning the attention of everyone in the car to his phone conversation.
“I don’t know, man . . . ,” Shawn said with a sense of uneasiness. “But you know how that dude gets down. He don’t give’a fuck about shit.”
“So that right there should let'chú know what time it is,” Marcus said, making references that a war was necessary.
“I was thinking we can sit down and talk someth—”
“Talk!” Marcus slightly snapped as he cut him off. “You know damn well that dude ain’t tryn’a talk about shit! Aey, jus’ hit my phone when you get in the area!”
Marcus seemed agitated after ending the call. From the conversation, Shawn seemed nervous and a bit timid. Marcus’s reaction to the situation let it be known that he was down for whatever. His attention turned back to his guys in the car; they easily sensed a problem.
“Lord, what’s wrong?” Pee Wee asked half breathing after taking a pull off the rotating blunt.
While reaching for the blunt, Marcus replied, “If it ain’t one thing it’s another, ” He went on to explain. “It seem like since I took the seat, bullshit has been coming from everywhere. But'chú know it ain’t nuttin’ that can’t get handled,” Marcus said while giving off a slight stare in Pee Wee’s direction before taking a pull off the blunt.
The three of them continued to rotate down Sixteenth as Marcus explained the situation about Shawn and the operation they had in progress across town on Division. Little did they know a crazed, pride-crushed Peanut had been trailing two cars behind the Suburban for the past four blocks.
“Bitch-ass nigga don met his match now,” Peanut muttered to himself while puffing on a Newport with a .9mm pistol resting in his lap. “I’m fenna’ wet his ass up!” he exclaimed in a devilish tone with the look of a lunatic in his eyes.
For the next three blocks, he patiently followed his target. Marcus made a sudden left turn onto Ridgeway, a side block off of Sixteenth Street.
Their conversation in the Suburban had lightened up from the previous talk of what needed to be done about the situation on Division. “Yeah, that hoe was tryn’a play hard to get at first. Now I got her ass hangin’ by a string,” Lil G stated in a pimpish manner from the backseat after ending a call from a young lady he encountered.
Before making it to the stop sign on Fifteenth and Ridgeway, one block down from Sixteenth, Marcus’s phone rang in the midst of them talking.
“Yeah, where ya at, man?” Marcus answered in an irritated tone, recognizing the number before speaking through the receiver.
“I’m gettin’ off at Independence right now,” Said Shawn.
“Meet me in front of my momma house.” As soon as Marcus instructed Shawn on where to meet him, he instantly made a sharp left turn on Fifteenth Street, not knowing possible trouble was directly behind him.
Peanut allowed a car to get behind the Suburban before making a left turn. Once turning onto Fifteenth Street, Peanut noticed his target turning left one block away onto Hamlin Street, the side block that would lead him to Marcus’s mother’s house on Nineteenth and Hamlin.
As he continued to pursue his mission, Peanut witnessed the Suburban get stalled up behind a car at a stale yellow stoplight that turned red seconds later.
“Showtime!” He hollered out with a crazed smirk covering his face as he cocked the nine.
Two cars ahead, Marcus and his guys had their mind set on the matter at hand. The situation that happened with Peanut on Lawndale earlier that day was momentarily erased out of their memory bank.
“Yeah, I might have to cut this sof’-ass nigga off,” Marcus recited while ashing out the last of the blunt into the ashtray. Marcus and his two guys were so much into a zone from smoking some of the finest weed Chicago had to offer at the time; they didn’t pay attention to the sounds of a car loudly burning rubber from afar. “This nigga sound like he scared to stand up for a spot that’s making us damn near a hunit thousand a week!” he stated with a sense of disbelief.
Instead of Pee Wee having his eyes in the side mirror and out the window to be aware of their surroundings, he turned his attention in Marcus’s direction to respond to the comment that was made. By the time the first few words was able to come out of Pee Wee’s mouth, his entire thought process was interrupted by a ‘93 black four-door Cutlass Supreme. The car was able to slide up so closely to the Suburban that the driver could’ve actually reached out and touched the truck without getting out the car.
“Aey, lord!” Peanut yelled out while hanging the top half of his body outside the driver-side window with a mischievous grin covering his face.
In the motion of turning around to look out the passenger-side window, it was too late, the first rounds were busting through the front and backseat windows viciously! Without having time to draw down his heat, all Pee Wee was able to do was try to get out of the line of fire.
“Awe shhhiiit!!!! I’m hit! I’m hit!” Were the words out of Pee Wee’s mouth as he vigorously attempted to jump toward the backseat. Lil G was able to dodge the rapid shots by instantly falling facedown on the floor of the truck, but Pee Wee on the other hand wasn’t so lucky. As he was wildly climbing his way to the back of the truck, bullets kept ripping the flesh of his back. In the midst of the shooting, Marcus somehow was able to swerve onto the sidewalk and burn rubber while making a left down Sixteenth Street, escaping the tirade of bullets. Before getting away from the scene, at least twelve rounds were fired inside the Suburban, leaving two shattered windows and a few holes on the interior.
“Lord, hurry up and get to a hospital. Wee back here fucked up, man!” Lil G spoke hysterically while Marcus drove a hundred miles per hour, swerving through traffic, running red lights, and even driving on the wrong side of the street, trying to make it to the nearest hospital in efficient time.
“Wee...hold on, man! Fight! Fight! I’m gon’ get us there!” Marcus dramatically exclaimed while swerving through traffic like a madman on a police chase. “Lil G, hold his head up or some’nt! Keep’em breathing!” Marcus nervously demanded while taking slow, deep breaths himself.
“Hold on, Wee, man! We almost there, baby, hold on!!” Lil G spat out while holding Pee Wee’s head in his lap.
By the expression on Pee Wee’s face, he showed signs of being in a state of shock, and at the same time he was trying strongly to stay alive.
In the midst of pulling up to Mount Sinai’s emergency room, Marcus began feeling a burning sensation coming from his abdominal area. When he glanced down, blood was gushing out of his side like a small river flow. He immediately put his hand down by his stomach, trying to make an attempt to stop the blood leak. Marcus’s intensity level was so high from the bad condition Pee Wee was in that he ignored his pain and didn’t realize he was hit.
After recklessly pulling up as close to the emergency room door as he possibly could, Marcus quickly jumped out the truck and limped his way inside the automatic sliding doors while grabbing hold to his right side.
“My friend out there dying! Somebody go out there and help’em please!” Marcus dramatically hollered out before staggering to the floor and passing out. Before the paramedics were able to make an effort to rescue Pee Wee, Lil G had him straddled in his arms,
rushing him inside while demanding for help.