Previously: We got back to the projects after showing the cops poor Miss Mary and her grandkids, all dead and bloody. Within minutes, another grandma came crying her little grandson gone missing. I say to myself, Lord don’t tell me the killing got so close to us now. While I get searching on the third floor, the red emergency button on my walkie talkie goes dididididi. Calio say, “Come quick!” I enter the apartment Calio was in and he shows me a boy wrapped in a quilt and not moving. I think, Oh Lord, please please don’t let he be dead. When Calio said, “He’s breathing,” I prayed, God, please let this be the right kid. The grandmother and the mother come in a flash. We show them the boy in the closet. You shoulda seen the expression on them all face. The first thing out the grandma mouth, “Thank you Jesus.” The feeling of this family really touches me.
With so many scares, everyone on high alert. Before I even knew this day would bring yet another tragedy, I told my homies, “We gotta make everyone safer. We gotta go out and get more whistles, batteries and walkie talkies.”
Remember, the projects is a four-floor building. I said, “We need a safety plan. This is what we gonna do from now on: We gonna equip every family with whistles and those little string things you pull that go witibiti, witibiti and any other kind of security thing we can find.
We went to each floor and called a meeting with the families on that floor, letting everyone know that every 45 minutes, we gonna do a count on the floor. We want people to stay still while we count. That way we can keep track of where folks are.
We’ll be able to say, hey you seen Kevin? And someone will say he out playing cards or dominoes and we know he ok.
We not in prison, but that’s how they kept up with us there. You can use things you learn in prison and take them to another level.
So Calio and another friend went out lookin’ for more whistles, batteries, and walkie talkies.
Thirty minutes later, Calio hit me back on the walkie talkie. I responded quick, even though I was dozing off.
I’m like “Whassup?”
He responded, “Third, can you hear me good?” He called me “Third Ward,” because I was so well known there, in my uptown part of the hood.
I say, “Yeah man. What’s good?”
He panting like a pit bull in a fight and talkin’ real fast. He tell me, “I stop by my grandma, because folks say my cousin Tiffany hanging out on a balcony near my grandma earlier today. I went there looking for her.
“Outside in the backyard, the lady next door say she seen Tiffany an hour ago on the balcony. But I don’t see Tiffany.
“So I go inside my grandma house. You wouldn’t believe me, man, what happened. My cousin Tiffany right there dead! Stabbed up, cut up, dead!”
Calio crying and breathing all heavy, say, “It’s time to go to war.”
Anything move, look dangerous, he ready to rock it to sleep, but I’m like, “Man I not playing with no guns.”
He say, “They rock Miss Mary family to sleep. They just rock my cousin to sleep. You know they gotta have one of us on the list.”
I tell him, “Man I can’t play with no guns.”
He say, “Who gonna catch you?”
I say, “Y’all can do what you wanna do, but when it comes to guns, leave me out.”
I tell him to come get me. I can’t do nothing, but I wanna see it. When he come, we hugged each other and I tell him it gonna be alright.
We paddle to see Tiffany. I can’t believe it’s her all covered with flies and stinking like garbage that been out for a week in summer. I wanted to let her know something. Even though she dead, I whisper to her rotting body, I told you, Tiff, what you done in the dark, it come to the light.
To be continued . . .
