Another Man's Treasure (Joey Bada$$ Story)

Part Trentuno

Joey and I walked hand-in-hand down the block, a smile on my lips, my hair blowing in the wind and brushing his neck. We were walking quickly, skipping even. People - his fans - waved to us as we went, and some of them even taking pictures of us (without permission). Everything was as peachy as it’d ever been, but there was so much irony. We were travelling with joy, even though we just got a call from Darius saying that they isolated the “enemy” and we had to make haste if we wanted this plan to work. Well, we were making haste, but going to handle a life-or-death matter didn’t appear to be our goal.

I guess it was a coping mechanism. To keep going, we had to act like we weren’t going to get there.

We did, eventually. It took a while since we made a stop at a local daycare to drop off Latara. Once we reached the block that Darius directed us to, our attitudes changed - we knew the guys meant business. They crouched between alleys and behind cars, against gates with hoods on their heads, patrolling the block like police officers. All fifteen of them camouflaged themselves on the block like this was a usual routine for them, like they weren’t amateurs. Maybe they weren’t; I still didn’t know everything about them, or these people we were about to pay a visit. This didn’t have to be their first run-in with each other.

Joey walked up to Dessy, performed a short handshake and then asked him something under his breath. Dessy pointed across the street at a two-story house: our destination, I suppose. Joey just stood beside Dessy and stared at it for a while, like if he looked long enough he could fast forward to the end of this ordeal. Then he left Dessy’s side, found Powers crouching in between two cars, and asked him to take something out of his backpack. Powers handed him the ‘something’ so discreetly that I didn’t even have to see it to know that it was a gun. I wondered if he had a backpack full of those or if the bag was just a disguise for the one he brought to Joey. There was no doubt in my mind that all of the guys had at least one gun on them. Maybe the more belligerent ones like Dessy and Jab had two. They were all prepared, all except me. That changed in a few seconds, though, when Joey made a gesture with his eyes from Powers to me. Powers looked at me, took something out of his backpack, and slipped it into the pocket of my jacket. No questions asked.

Now we were all ready.

Joey looked at all of his friends, all of his soldiers, and then in a slow-motion, movie-like moment, they charged. Every last one of them took flight at the very same time, pelting toward the house like it was a track meet. I ran with them, not as fast as Joey and Kirk and CJ, but fast enough to be step-in-step with Darius and Niles. It seemed like some of them were deliberately running slower, as if to guard the very back of the group. As much as I didn't want to be close to Darius right now (the distraction wasn’t what I needed), I decided to join this group for my own safety.

Jab kicked down the front door with a gun in his hand that was maybe five times the size of the one in my pocket. As soon as the door opened, there was only noise. Screaming and gunshots and loud, hard footsteps. My vision was hazy and I lost track of the others; I was very, very behind now, and even though I knew it wasn’t a good idea to lag behind them, I couldn’t help it. The rumbling, unsettled feeling of anxiety in my stomach made me feel like I was about to faint. I almost did collapse right there and then in the middle of what was becoming a gun brawl between the Pro Era boys and the others, but a pair of arms scooped me up from behind and carried me through it. Literally - he carried me through the entire thing, through the bullets and fists and action, until we reached the bathroom. It seemed we made it there untouched, unseen. My savior locked the door behind us and stood against it.

I sat on the toilet, trying to regain my breath, and looked at Darius. He was stressed, evidently, but not half as stressed as I was. This was hard for all of them, but even harder for me because I wasn’t exactly sure on what ‘this’ was.