Criminal Minded: A Novel - Softcover

Brown, Tracy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312336462 ISBN 13: 9780312336462

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin, 2005

Synopsis

Lamin Michaels learned at his mother's knee the importance of chasing paper, so it's no surprise he gets into the drug game when he's just a teenager. When he meets Zion, a product of the New York City foster care and prison system, Lamin knows that he has meet the perfect partner in crime. Together, they build a huge narcotics empire.

Then, Lamin falls hard for a beautiful girl named Lucky. Lucky makes Lamin realize that there is more to life than cash and more cash. When Lamin goes legit with a career in the entertainment industry, Zion tries to keep their business going on both the street and the boardroom. It's not long before Zion becomes the target of a corruption scandal involving murder, extortion and money laundering. Once the dirt is exposed, will Lamin and Zion be able to remain one step ahead, or will their paper chasing days haunt them forever?

About this title

About the Author

Tracy Brown is the Essence bestselling author of Aftermath, Snapped, Twisted, and White Lines. Writing has always been her passion, and she finds it an honor to depict for her readers the things she's seen and heard. She is a native New Yorker, born and raised in Staten Island.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

  ONElook through my eyesLaminMy cousin Curtis is more than just my cousin. He’s my right-hand man. His moms (Inez Michaels) and my moms (Nadia Michaels) are sisters. But they rarely speak. I like to think of them as flip sides of the same coin. Both of them were single mothers trying their best to raise their children in the midst of a storm. Crack was at epidemic proportions. The Rockefeller drug laws were guaranteeing you a mandated prison sentence of fifteen years (minimum!) if caught with even small amounts of narcotics. And we were sixteen-year-old black boys growing up in the ghettos of New York.Aunt Inez always worked hard for what she has. She had Curtis when she was fresh out of high school, but she never accepted any type of government aid. No welfare, no WIC, food stamps, Medicaid ... nothing! That type of pride caused her to have to work two and sometimes three jobs to make ends meet. That meant that Curtis spent a lot of time at the home of our grandparents—we call them Grandma and Papa. Curtis’ father has kids all over the place and he don’t do shit for none of them.My mother, on the other hand, could never imagine a life without government assistance. From the moment me and my sister, Olivia, were born, she supported us with the help of Uncle Sam. She gets it all: food stamps, Section 8, Aid for Dependent Children, Medicaid, disability ... you name it, she gets it. My mother also participates in these scams they call “fair hearings,” which she usually wins.For example, in our house on Grandview Avenue (which we rent with the help of Section 8), we had a fire in the kitchen once. It was a small one, but it was enough to cause my mother to apply for a fair hearing six months later. Her argument? She claimed that she couldn’t prepare meals for her children in the kitchen (which was bullshit ’cause we had steaks, fried chicken, and baked macaroni all the time) and was forced to use her cash—since she claimed that the food stamps they gave her were not enough—to purchase meals for us outside. She won that hearing to the tune of $4,700. That paid for the fifty-five-inch television she bought for the living room, and the leather sectional we sat on. As for the house we lived in, it’s a three-bedroom duplex with a sunken living room. Hardly what you would expect for a single mother of two on welfare. God bless America.My moms always felt that Aunt Inez thought she was better than us. “Just ’cause she got a job and I get welfare don’t mean shit. If you ask me, she’s the fool! I never have to worry about where my next meal is coming from.” My mother’s logic was always questionable.My mother also has a brother named Eli. It wasn’t short for Elijah or Elias or anything like that. Back in the day, black folks would name their children what most would consider nicknames, sometimes even initials (T. J., A. J., etc.). My uncle’s name is simple. So is his life. He has never lived anywhere except my grandmother’s home. In ’89, he was forty-two years old and had not had a job in his life. Him and my mother got along just fine.Curtis and Aunt Inez lived modestly. They had a two-bedroom apartment on Continental Place, which was right around the corner from our house. Both of our houses were a stone’s throw away from the projects. I always felt that our houses might as well have been part of the projects. We went to school with all the kids from the projects. We played with all the kids from the projects. Ultimately, we found ourselves knee-deep in shit with kids from the projects.Curtis is his mother’s only child. I always felt bad about that. Even though Olivia, my little sister, is a girl, she is still good company. She’s one year younger than me (despite the fact that we have different fathers), so the two of us are very close. Olivia and I never had a problem doing what we wanted or going where we wanted. Our moms didn’t care, as long as her government check came on time. Our fathers were both nonexistent. Mine left the minute my moms told him she was pregnant, and Olivia’s died in ’79 from some kind of cancer. As we got older, I became Olivia’s unofficial guardian. I took that responsibility very seriously. My moms never offered us any type of guidance. But the bills were always paid, and we both sported the hottest Adidas, Reeboks, or whatever was popular at the moment. I guess that contributed to our obsession with money. Money bought the finer things in life. And to us, nothing was more important than that.Curtis also had a lot of time on his hands, since his moms was always at work. Not wanting Curtis to get caught up in the ever-present street life, Aunt Inez sent him to stay with our grandparents in Park Hill for the summer. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and although I knew I would miss him, I figured Curtis would have a good summer eating Papa’s delicious cooking. (Contrary to the stereotype of grandmothers who throw down in the kitchen, Papa was the chef in the family. That was how he’d made a living all of his life and his meals could make a grown man cry!) But, despite Aunt Inez’s good intentions, Curtis found himself at the first major crossroads in his life.OliviaFor me, ’89 was the year I lost my best friend and the year I met the love of my life. Curtis was my best friend. He’s also my first cousin. Even though he’s a year older than I am, he always had time for me. Growing up, I was the biggest tomboy! And I constantly followed my brother Lamin and our cousin Curtis wherever they went. If they were climbing trees, so was I. If they were catching fireflies, I poked the holes in the jar so that the fireflies could breathe. If they played basketball, I had to be down. It seemed like only yesterday when we were carefree little kids. Today, that couldn’t be further from the truth.See, 1989 was like a golden age for me. Rap music was the sound-track of our inner-city lives and everyone was learning how to floss. Gold chains and gold fronts, designer shades, expensive shoes, Kangols, Adidas, Bally’s, MCM and Dapper Dan suits ... everybody was stylin’. But stylin’ cost major cheese and that meant that most people were frontin’. Most people were living beyond their means and spending the rent money to look nice. But me and Lamin learned early how to hustle. We got it from our moms. Mommy always kept money pouring into the Michaels’ household. Most of it came from government benefits. But a lot of it was from doing what she had to do to get money. Mommy had every dude she dealt with eating out of the palm of her hand. I wasn’t happy about all the men she brought into our house but I enjoyed the shopping sprees and trips to the hair and nail salon that followed. Lamin hated that shit. The older we got, the more I saw how bothered Lamin was by my mother’s revolving bedroom door.But we were able to keep our minds off of all that by spending our time with Curtis. Being with him and Lamin taught me so much. I learned how guys talk to one another about girls. I learned what guys look for in a girl. I learned how to survive in the streets. Lamin was my brother and I loved him dearly. Curtis was my very best friend. But, ultimately, I learned the hard way that even Curtis—my hero—could fuck up so bad that his life would never be the same.LaminLike me, Curtis had to attend summer school. I went to my regular high school for the summer. But Curtis had to go to the school closest to my grandparent’s house—New Dorp High School. None of us anticipated Curtis running into any trouble. Papa and Grandma lived in a modest house on a quiet street in Park Hill called Vanderbilt Avenue. It was close to the notorious Park Hill Housing complex, but far enough away that it felt a bit safer. However, since Curtis wound up in summer school, he also wound up in the midst of some of Park Hill’s biggest knuckleheads.On the first day of summer school, July 5, 1989, Curtis called me.“Yo, La,” he said. “These niggas out here think they real hard! Most of them mu’fuckas just stand around giving me the screw face. But this one nigga ... they call him Jah like he’s God ... he rolled up on me today, La!”I had never heard my cousin sound so anguished. I knew he could handle himself since the two of us had gone toe-to-toe with our share of assholes in the ’hood. But this time, Curtis sounded like he wasn’t so confident.“Jah, huh?” I asked. “What’s this nigga look like?”“He’s about my height ... six feet tall I guess. But this dude is a fuckin’ menace. All he keeps saying is, ‘You ain’t from around here, muthafucka. This is Killa Hill. We’re murderers out here. This is Killa Hill, nigga.’ His boys just follow him around and look hard but this muthafucka got a lot of mouth!”I thought about what Curtis was saying. I was big for my age and I could be intimidating. I’m about six feet four inches, and my love of sports has blessed me with an athletic build. I thought it might be wise for me to round up some of the neighborhood thugs and take a ride to Park Hill to show support for my cousin. But then, he dropped a bomb I wasn’t expecting.“La, the nigga pulled a gun on me.”My whole demeanor changed when he told me that shit. “He pulled a gun on you?” I asked to be sure I had heard him right.“Word, La! The nigga pulled up his shirt and showed me the handle of a gun in his waistband. He said, ‘...

About this edition

• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0312336462
• ISBN 13: 9780312336462
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304