Dutch

“Yo, nigga, where the fuck you been?” His tone was full of worry.

  “Man, I’m sayin’. I ain’t never killed no body before. I ain’t know what to do with myself. So, I figured I had better lay in the cut until I knew what was what.”

  “I know who he is, too,” Craze announced cryptically, finally knowing something.

  “Who?”

  “Chester.”

  “Chester?” Dutch repeated, thinking hard.

  “Chester, Sharice brother.”

  “Oh, dope-fiend-ass Chester! Always sellin’ his people shit. Word?” replied Dutch.

  “Word. You seen Roberto?” Craze asked with dollar signs in his eyes. Not only had he been worried about Dutch, he was also worried about the reward he knew Roberto would pay for such a job well done.

  “Yeah,” was all Dutch replied.

  “And?” Craze asked impatiently.

  “And everything’s everything. He let me come over his house for dinner to meet Fat Tony.”

  “Aw, man, word?!” Craze’s eyes bulged. He knew Fat Tony was a powerful man in the crime family. He knew they were going to get paid now. “What he give you?”

  “Nothin’,” replied Dutch

  “Huh?”

  “I said nothin’. I ain’t ask for nothin’, he ain’t give me nothin’,” said Dutch, knowing it was driving Craze mad.

  “Man, do you know what you did? What we did? Muhfuckers make livings off of shit like this and you ain’t ask for nothin’?” asked Craze disbelievingly, throwing his hands up in disgust. This nigga is really taking this working for free shit too far. Craze paced back and forth in a frenzy, calling Dutch any and everything he could think of while Dutch just leaned against the wall watching him.

  “Finished?”

  “Naw, I’m just catching my breath, you stupid muhfucker,” Craze retorted.

  “But I did get a connect. A chop shop,” said Dutch with a grin on his face.

  “A chop shop?” questioned Craze, answering for himself.

  They had been stealing cars all their lives as long as they could remember, but they never knew no chop shop. Craze could see how valuable this connect could be, but he still wasn’t convinced.

  “He put me on to a chop shop down North Newark. They don’t take nothing but Porsches and Corvettes, so you know they hittin’ niggas off for them shits.”

  Craze just eyed Dutch. You mean to tell me that’s all you got, a chop shop connect? Dutch could have done better, but Craze figured this would have to do. It was better than nothing.

  “Trust me, baby boy, for Tony to even give us that says a lot. I could be floating facedown right now, ya dig? But, since I ain’t I’ll see Tony again one day, on his level, and I promise you… we’ll never look back.”

  Craze and Dutch had been working through Dutch’s newfound connect for about seven months. They had even started to take other car thieves to the chop shop for a cut but never gave up their contact. The money was good for two fourteen-year-olds. For that matter, it was good for a grown man.

  Dutch had assembled a young team of raiders from all over Newark. One-eyed Roc from Prince Street, Qwan from down Bergen, Puerto Rican Angel, a girl from Dayton Street, Zoom from Grafton, and Shock from Seventeenth Avenue, all of whom were under fifteen years old, and Dutch was boss.

  They put together routes as far north as Connecticut, as far south as Virginia, and as far west as Ohio. The only trouble they had was when Zoom got caught in Ohio and did six months. Dutch kept his commissary flowing for that bid. Everybody got minibikes and baby Ninja street bikes and gained names for themselves. Older car thieves tried to pressure them for their connect. But these young wolves were far from timid and seldom unarmed.

  It was here when Chris began to transform into Craze, or rather Crazy. In fact, he was one of the first to ever pull a carjacking in Newark before the federal laws. Because of the nature of their connect, they never averaged fewer than four or five cars a week. BMW, Mercedes, Corvette, and other luxury cars had the latest in security technology, but it did nothing to deter the appetite of the young band of raiders.

  Craze sat back in the plush leather interior of his Porsche and nodded at the accuracy of Dutch’s words. Twelve years later, and they still hadn’t looked back. Even the present situation hadn’t completely stopped their shine, because Dutch had one more trick up his sleeve, and Dutch had seldom been wrong, except once, Port Newark.

  Port Newark was a large area that sat on the water. It was the size of a small town where big cars from all over the world were delivered on big ships. The entire area was sectioned off according to make. There were Toyotas, Hondas, Nissans, Mercedes Benzes, BMWs, and Chevrolets. The list went on and on. Every car manufactured sat at the port behind barbed-wire fences. Each lot had at least 150 cars of assorted models.

  City police rarely came through the port because the dock had its own security force. The armed security guards drove around the large port vigilantly watching for any unauthorized movement. They had to because the port was a car thief’s heaven. Young raiders would drool at the mere mention of the port but never attempted a heist. Security was too tight, tight like fish pussy, and that’s waterproof.

  “Word?” said Shock, expressing interest as the whole clique gathered before Dutch.

  “Fuck we gonna do, rob a bank?” Angel asked sarcastically.

  “No, the port.”

  “Port Newark? How the hell we suppose to do that?” Qwan questioned.

  “Because, I been watchin’ them. They slippin’. They think they untouchable and they startin’ to relax. See, four months ago when I first started scoping the shit, I timed the security cars. They was coming in circling every five to seven minutes, then last month they not showing up for say ten to fifteen minutes, and the last couple of nights, these guys been coming through like every twenty to thirty minutes. They even stop and eat. Now keep in mind they done cut back and it’s only two cars to a shift.”

  The young clique sat thoughtfully, contemplating the possibilities and the risk.

  “Hell yeah! Yo, fuck it, why not? Shit, I’m wit’ it.”

  “Nigga, you wit’ anything,” Qwan said to Craze.

  “Naw naw, this could work,” Angel said. “They ain’t expectin’ no shit like this right now.”

  “It could, but how?” asked Shock.

  “First of all, we gonna need at least six more heads ’cause if we gonna lick, we might as well make this shit count. Other than that, we need a blowtorch and some wire cutters for the fence and the parking barrier. Angel, we gonna get you a pair of fire-red fuck-me pumps and a skirt the size of a napkin,” Dutch said, his eyes filled with a playful lust.

  All the guys hooted and called to Angel in a teasing way, but Angel didn’t find it funny at all. She had the young blossoming body of a Playboy centerfold, yet the burgeoning potential of a dyke, which was still unknown to her young conscious mind.

  “Fuck you, Dutch. Why we can’t put the skirt on Roc? He look more bitch than me,” Angel sneered.

  “Fuck you, bitch,” Roc shot back. He was the quiet before the storm next to Dutch. In the end, Roc would prove to be the deadliest of them all.

  “Fuck wit’ me,” Angel challenged him.

  “I’m sayin’, y’all gonna play games or is we gonna get this paper?” Dutch asked as no one spoke. “Now dig, Angel, you and Craze are gonna be in the front car. Y’all gonna be parked right at the curb after you enter the port. I want y’all to front like you fighting. Angel, make sure you flash ass ’cause we all know security guards don’t get no pussy, ’cause if they did, they wouldn’t have night jobs.”

  Everyone laughed, and Dutch winked at Angel. Angel gave him the middle finger but cracked Dutch a little smile.

  “What if they don’t bite?” asked Craze.

  “Then we dead,” stated Dutch. “That’s why the second car has to pull over to give us enough time to get in the BMW lot, so make it look good, Craze.” Craze nodded in understanding.

&n
bsp; “As for the rest of us, we’ll be in another parked car behind the lot in the dead end. We ain’t gettin’ nothing but BMWs, ’cause the Chevrolet lot got too much shit to be runnin’ around lookin’ for Corvettes, so strictly Beemers. We gonna need time after the first car pass, I figure three minutes top to snap the fence and blowtorch a hole wide enough in the barrier to get out of. Once we in, we out. Keys sittin’ in the ignition, plastic still on the seats.”

  “Damn, fourteen BMWs. How much is that?” Qwan asked wistfully, daydreaming about cream.

  “My man told me he’d give us ten grand for coupes and fifteen for sedans, so you do the math,” Dutch replied.

  “So, when we gonna do it?” Craze inquired, already calculating that the take would be no less than $140,000 on the coupe end alone.

  “Wednesday night,” Dutch announced as everyone started counting the days. It was a Saturday.

  Four days later, they pulled off of Highway 1&9 and headed toward the port. Dutch checked his watch. It was 9:10 P.M. He wanted to drive through once to get his bearings and locate the cop cars. He pulled over before he reached the entrance to the port. Craze pulled up beside him with Angel in his car. Roc was riding with Shock and a few heads. And Zoom and the Zoo Crew were behind him.

  “Go on, get Roc and Shock in position and then you and Angel get your show started. Roc, you and Shock find a spot to hide until we get there. Zoom and the Zoo Crew can stay with me. Don’t fuck up,” Dutch directed.

  Craze nodded and drove off. Dutch just watched them as the taillights of the Delta 88 Craze was driving made a left turn into the port. He waited a few minutes then pulled off heading the same way as Craze.

  He saw the squad car and checked his watch: 9:16 P.M. He didn’t know whether it was the first or the second squad car until he pulled into the dead-end road directly behind the BMW lot and saw the second. It’s 9:25 P.M. That’s seven minutes, he thought to himself. That was a lot closer than the last time he checked on them, which was Monday night, but still a safe amount of time between the two. Everyone got out of the cars and stayed low, creeping around the BMW lot. Dutch had Qwan stay in the Cherokee because Qwan was one of the best drivers and Dutch wanted to be prepared just in case they had to bail out.

  Off in the distance he saw the taillights of the Delta 88. He could barely see Angel and Craze, just images that could be bodies of anyone. About that time, Roc and Shock crept up on him.

  “Whut up?” Shock asked, but Dutch didn’t answer.

  They waited as Craze saw the headlights of the second car slowly approaching.

  “Here they come, baby girl,” Craze whispered to Angel, and she went into her act.

  “Fuck you, puta! Fuck you! No me toque.” She swung wildly at Craze, who ducked and grabbed her by the waist, pushing her up against the car. By that time, the squad car was in full view of them.

  “The hell is that all about?” the middle-aged white man asked his equally pale partner.

  “Lovers’ quarrel,” shrugged his passenger, “fuck ’em,” he continued lazily, taking a hit off a joint before passing it to the driver. The driver took the joint but almost dropped it in his lap when he saw Angel half fall to the ground, revealing nothing but a pair of pink panties fitting tightly around her firm, thick ass.

  “God damn, did you see that?” the driver exclaimed, his dick instantly hard.

  “Man, with an ass like that, I’d be fightin’ too,” his partner commented, taking the joint back from him and putting it out. “Back up, man. Maybe we can help and be thanked at the same time,” he added, looking over his shoulder.

  Craze had almost lost hope until he saw their brake lights come on and the car begin to back up.

  “They backin’ up, they backin’ up,” he whispered to Angel.

  “Hell yeah! Hell yeah! Yo, let’s go,” Dutch exclaimed, whispering his words.

  Dutch, Shock, and Roc went forward to the barbed-wire fence with the blowtorch and wire cutters. They were in full view if anyone passed, but no one did. Roc quickly snapped through the fence and tore away an entrance.

  “Hurry up,” Dutch ordered, firmly but calmly, looking toward Craze and the guards as Roc and Shock lit the blowtorch to work on the metal barrier.

  The security guards had managed to separate Angel and Craze, each guard holding one of them. Angel was still yelling and cursing as the guard held his arms around her waist, pretending to restrain her. She pretended to reach for Craze to hit him, every time bending forward and pressing her ass against the guard’s crotch until she felt his penis harden.

  “Tu eres un enfermo! Get off of me!” Angel yelled, swinging on the guard.

  The other guard let go of Craze and tried to assist his partner, while Roc and Shock worked the blowtorch on the last piece of the barrier. Dutch waved for the rest of the crew and they scurried over. Dutch had hand-picked eight well-known car thieves to assist him and his crew.

  “Don’t forget, nothing but sedans,” Dutch reminded them as they hurried through the gate. He was the last to go through as he looked out over the lot, which was the size of a football field.

  It was like a car thief’s heaven seeing all those different-colored and different-shaped BMWs sitting there, waiting to be driven away. With the keys in all the cars’ ignitions, three dudes had already pulled out by the time Dutch made it to a piss-gold 740il. He looked back just in time to see the second guard’s car lights come into full view, flashing, speeding toward the lot. Dutch had misjudged the second car; he had misjudged time and it would cost him.

  “Damn, get the fuck outta here,” he yelled to the others as he hopped into the 740. Not everybody had time to get to a car of their own, so members of the clique were doubling down and tripling up in whatever was in motion.

  Only seven cars made it out. Dutch could’ve left first, but he positioned himself to be the last car, the sacrifice car. He floored the 740, leaving dust in the air as he tried to make it to the hole in the fence. He zoomed right by Angel and Craze as the security guards looked up in surprise.

  “What the hell? Come on!” yelled the security guard as he let go of Angel. The two guards ran for their car, pulling their guns to join the chase.

  Qwan, unable to see the security guard’s car traveling east as he was traveling south, rammed right into the passenger side of the guard’s car. Qwan jumped out and ran, only to be apprehended a few hundred yards away from his parked but still running car.

  With that scene in front of him, Dutch stopped short and hit reverse in haste. He spun the car around in a smooth 360 and headed toward the rear of the lot as the second guard car took a security road at the rear of the lot to cut Dutch off. Dutch saw them, made a sharp left, and skidded out of control to a stop. He jumped out and looked over his shoulder. The guards who had arrested Qwan were on Dutch’s ass. He tried to hop a fence, but the guards who had been entertained by Angel came out of a service entrance and were right up on him. Trapped, Dutch leaned against the fence as the security guards began going through their motions.

  “Freeze,” yelled the guard nearest him, his gun loaded and ready.

  “Get your hands up!” yelled his partner.

  Craze and Angel watched the commotion helplessly from afar. They couldn’t make out who got caught and who got away, but they knew the last driver didn’t make it, and Craze knew in his heart it was Dutch.

  Craze plucked his blunt from the window of his Porsche. Still parked in the courthouse parking lot, he sat quietly without the radio and reflected on his best friend. Always got to be the last man standin’, he thought to himself. He only hoped Dutch would be standing after the trial was over.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  LOCKUP

  Will you please state your name for the court, sir?”

  “Kenneth Jackson,” said the slim, lanky black man in the prison-provided polyester suit, the powder-blue suit that prisons gave to inmates going to court. Dutch looked at the joker on the stand. This nigga, he thought to himself.

>   Kenneth Jackson, aka Shorty, had been locked up with Dutch during an eighteen-month stint up in Annandale, New Jersey, twelve years ago, and he still looked the same. Kenneth Jackson was a petty thief, a wannabe con man on crack. He was still going in and out of prison on skid bids. He still had the nervous twitch in his right eye that became more rapid whenever he was lying. Still the same fast talker, spewing words so fast they often tripped over each other trying to come out.

  “And where do you currently reside, Mr. Jackson?” asked Jacobs.

  “In a halfway house off of Broad Street.”

  I wonder what case he got that his testimony gonna get ’em off of, thought Dutch as Jacobs got under way with his questioning.

  Dutch hardly knew the man, merely saw him from time to time. Kenneth Jackson was forever on his way to jail or coming home from one. They never spoke to each other in their infrequent meetings when Dutch would be ridin’ by or Shorty would be walking through a spot. However, each would always acknowledge the other’s presence.

  “And do you know Bernard James?”

  “Of course I do—who don’t? He’s sitting right over there,” Shorty said as he pointed his index finger at Dutch like he was viewing a police lineup.

  Listen to this muhfucker, thought Dutch as he sat with his finger against his temple thinking back to how he first met that nigga.

  Dutch had just been through the prison reception unit in Yardsville. He could see the sterile yellow walls and cold, metallic tile as if it was yesterday. Qwan, Dutch, and about eighteen other guys varying in age and crimes along with time, were all lined up in front of a thick yellow line drawn on the floor. No one spoke, but Dutch could tell who was scared and who wasn’t just by their demeanor.

  Qwan stood three heads down from Dutch, who glanced down at him as Qwan winked back. Dutch knew that out of everyone in his clique, Qwan wasn’t cut out for incarceration, and he was worried about him. He hoped that wherever he was transferred, Qwan would be with him.

  A sliding door clanked open and a corrections officer stepped through it. He had to weigh in at three-something and wasn’t more than five foot four.