Welfare Wifeys Read online

  WELFARE WIFEYS

  ALSO BY K’WAN

  Gangsta

  Road Dawgz

  Street Dreams

  Hoodlum

  Eve

  Hood Rat

  Still Hood

  Gutter

  Section 8

  ANTHOLOGIES

  The Game

  Blow (with 50 Cent)

  Flexin & Sexin

  Flirt

  K’WAN

  WELFARE WIFEYS

  A Hood Rat Novel

  St. Martin’s Griffin New York

  Table of Contents

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue: Blood In, Blood Out

  Part 1 Drama for An Appetizer

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Part 2 Welcome to the Jungle

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Part 3 Hood Politics 101

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Part 4 Beauties & the Beasts

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Epilogue

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  WELFARE WIFEYS. Copyright © 2010 by K’wan Foye. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.stmartins.com

  ISBN 978-0-312-53697-8

  First Edition: October 2010

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For my girls

  WELFARE WIFEYS

  PROLOGUE

  Blood In, Blood Out

  It had been a long night. From the time they had opened up shop, fiends had been coming back and forth scoring slices of ready-rock happiness, lining the pockets of the death dealers who slung it. Rock Head had been beyond thrilled when 2:00 A.M. finally rolled around and he was able to close up shop. All that was left to do was lock the remainder of the drugs away and bag up the money before he closed down for the morning. Getting money in Pittsburgh was hardly as glamorous as what he was used to in Harlem, but he had to make do with it, at least until he figured a way out of the mess he’d managed to get himself into.

  Originally from Harlem, Rock Head was a mid-level nobody who was more of a thorn in the side of everyone who knew him. He made his money jacking and slinging, depending on however he was feeling that day, and blew his money frivolously on purple haze and chicks. Rock Head’s appetite for the flesh of young girls was almost insatiable, and this was the beginning of the end of his problems. Rock Head had developed quite a name for himself based on his exploits with underaged girls and it all came back to bite him in the ass when he woke up handcuffed to a hospital bed.

  Rock Head had been the victim of a robbery he’d orchestrated, that had gone horribly wrong, leaving several people dead and him shot. He’d initially thought the police were holding him in connection with the mass murder they’d found him in the middle of, but the rabbit hole ran much deeper. They had him on seven counts of statutory rape and seven counts of attempted murder. Rock Head was HIV positive and intentionally passing it to the young girls. Rock Head was able to offer up information on some cats he knew and barter himself a bail while he waited on his court date. Needless to say that he fled the moment he got out, but his new fugitive status with the police was the least of his concerns. In order to get his escape pass he had to lie on one of the illest killers in the five boroughs. He knew that for as long as the killer lived he would always have to sleep with one eye open.

  Trying to take his mind off his past life, Rock Head busied himself at stuffing the trap money into his Louis Vuitton knapsack and eating the last of the sausage pizza that sat on the table amid the money and drug packages. He wasn’t sure where the pizza had come from but he was glad to have it as it had been hours since he’d eaten. He had gotten to the last few bites when he felt his stomach starting to bubble. Leaving the money and the drugs on the table he bolted to the bathroom to relieve himself.

  Rock Head had barely gotten his pants down when a river of shit came spilling from his insides. The smell was so rank that he had to cover his nose while he took his dump. As he sat there reading a magazine he felt a cool breeze against his thigh, which drew his attention to the bathroom window that was just above the bathtub. He cursed under his breath as he had constantly told his workers about leaving the window open because it was broken and therefore difficult to close again.

  “Dumb muthafuckas,” Rock Head cursed as he reached for the roll of toilet tissue that was sitting on the edge of the tub. He leaned over to wipe his ass when the shower curtain flew back and he realized that he wasn’t alone.

  “Why don’t you hold that pose for me?” the man who had been hiding behind the curtain said in a low tone. His face was almost completely covered by the hoodie and sunglasses he was wearing, but Rock Head could see the sneer on his bowed lips. In the man’s hand he held a long-barreled .357 that looked like it had seen better days.

  “Chill, B, the money and the drugs are on the table,” Rock Head said nervously.

  The hooded man slapped him viciously across the face causing Rock Head’s head to bounce off the wall. “Oh, I’m gonna take your bread, but that ain’t what I came for.” The man grinned devilishly at Rock Head, letting his shaded eyes run from Rock Head’s sweat-covered face and linger on his exposed buttocks.

  Rock Head’s eyes went wide with shock. “Oh, hell nah, I ain’t off no homo shit so you’re just gonna have to blast me.” Rock Head tried to spring to his feet, but the man slapped him again and sent him spilling to the floor.

  “Don’t nobody want a taste of your shitty ass so calm down,” the hooded man told him.

  “Then what do you want?” Rock Head asked, terrified to hear the answer.

  The man smiled and showed two rows of diamond and gold teeth. “To make a point.” He grabbed Rock Head by the back of his shirt and yanked him to his feet. “Walk with me, my nigga, while I tell you a little story.” He shoved Rock Head out of the bathroom without allowing Rock Head to pull his pants up, making him waddle like a duck while he steered him toward the table and pushed him roughly into the seat. “The thing you niggaz don’t understand these days is that when you fuck around in the streets, then you’re married to the streets. She’s your mother, your lover, and your whore. Your everything. When bitch ass niggaz disrespect that code and pull some ho shit, it’s like pissing on the memory of every nigga whose movie ended on them same corners they were trying to get up off.”

  “Yo, my man—” Rock Head began, but the hooded man ignored him and continued talking.

  “I loved the cold streets of Harlem more than I loved my own mother, and someone tore us apart. Can you imagine what it’s like to be ripped from the bosom of your sweetheart without having a chance to make love to her one last t
ime?” the killer asked no one in particular. He was starting to make Rock Head nervous and he wasn’t sure how much longer he would be able to hold his bowels. “The hole it punched in my soul can probably never be mended, but I pressed on knowing that one day we would be reunited and all would once again be right with the universe.” He looked down at Rock Head who was sweating and squirming in the chair. “You don’t look so good, playboy. Judgment got you nervous?”

  “Nah, my stomach is bubbling, man.” Rock Head rocked back and forth with his arm wrapped around his gut.

  “Don’t tell me my gift didn’t agree with your stomach? I thought rats could eat just about anything.” The hooded man spun the pizza box playfully.

  “Oh, my God, you poisoned me?” Rock Head started sticking his finger down his throat to gag himself. He vomited pizza and liquor onto his legs and brand-new Jordans.

  The hooded man laughed. It was a familiar laugh, but Rock Head was so rattled that he couldn’t place it. “Relax, I just doused it with baby laxative. Poisoning you would’ve been too merciful a death, and for what y’all done to me mercy is not an option. You stole something from me and now I intend to steal something from you.”

  “Look, dawg, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t even know you,” Rock Head said nervously.

  “I think you know me pretty good.” The man removed the sunglasses so that Rock Head could see his lifeless eyes.

  “Oh, God, it’s you!” Rock Head panicked. He tried to leap from the table and bolt for the door, but the man tripped him and Rock Head went sprawling.

  The man picked Rock Head up and shoved him back in the chair. “Now why you wanna go and hurt my feelings like you ain’t glad to see me, especially with there being so much unfinished business between our respective peoples?”

  Tears ran freely down Rock Head’s face. “Listen, blood, I didn’t have anything to do with that. I’m just a worker.”

  The hooded man paused as if he was weighing the truth of Rock Head’s words. “Yeah, you ain’t never been much more than a lap dog, but now you’re gonna be a message.” The hooded man pulled a long kitchen knife from the pocket of his hoodie and began to trace a line down Rock Head’s face with it.

  “Please, don’t cut me,” Rock Head whimpered.

  “Nah, I ain’t gonna cut you, Rock Head, but I am gonna get my point across, literally.” The hooded man suddenly flipped the knife and stabbed one of the packages spilling cocaine all over the table. “Go on and get you a taste, blood,” the man urged him.

  “Nah, I don’t sniff,” Rock Head said.

  “You’re either gonna sniff or you’re gonna bleed, it don’t really make me a difference,” the man said while testing the sharpness of the knife with his fingertip. A trickle of blood ran down his middle finger while he watched it curiously. “I’m waiting.”

  With trembling hands Rock Head ripped off a piece of the pizza box and scooped a little coke onto it. He looked at his tormentor nervously before snorting it. He immediately went into a fit of sneezing and his eyes began to water. “Damn, you satisfied now?” Rock Head covered his nose.

  The hooded man glared at Rock Head. “You must think I’m fucking with you.” He grabbed Rock Head by the back of the neck and yanked him up from the chair. Rock Head struggled as the man forced his face down into the pile of cocaine. “Breathe, muthafucka,” the hooded man ordered as Rock Head continued to squirm. “Since you can’t seem to get it right on your own let me help you out.” The hooded man positioned the knife between Rock Head’s butt cheeks. Rock Head knew what was about to happen but it still didn’t prepare him for the pain when the knife entered his rectum and stole his breath. “That’s it, breathe real deep,” the hooded man whispered into the dying man’s ear, twisting the knife. Only when Rock Head had stopped screaming did the hooded man release his grip.

  With a focused look on his face he took the shit-stained knife and cut Rock Head’s tongue from his mouth and stuffed it in his pocket. “Blood in, blood out,” the hooded man said to the corpse before tossing the smeared knife into the pizza box.

  It would be almost twenty-four hours before Rock Head’s body was discovered. The story of his gruesome execution would make front-page headlines in several newspapers. When one of the detectives was quoted as saying, “This was the work of an animal,” he had no clue how close to the truth he had been.

  PART 1

  Drama for An Appetizer

  Chapter 1

  Traffic was pretty light at that time of morning on the Saw Mill Parkway. The south-bound lanes were just starting to become congested with cars and people making the commute into the city proper to start the workday, but the north was wide open, which was a blessing considering the way Brasco was driving. The engine of the Honda Civic whined as he sped up the road, weaving in and out of traffic and occasionally checking his rearview for troopers. He didn’t give a shit about a speeding ticket, but it would be hard to explain why he had a sawed-off shotgun stashed under a blanket in the backseat. After spending the last eighteen months on Rikers Island on a probation violation he had no desire to be caged again.

  That summer had been a bad one for his little family. China had been killed in a botched robbery, Silk lost her life in a shoot-out with the police, and Tech had been executed by a rival faction, leaving only the junior members of the group to carry on the legacy, but their reign was a short one. Acting on a tip from a confidential informant the police had closed the net on their little gang. Brasco, Nefertiti, and Ashanti found themselves snatched off the block and thrown into jail on what turned out to be a trumped-up charge offered up by a snitch named Rock Head from 140th Street. Brasco knew that they were clean and would beat the case, but what he hadn’t counted on was the warrant out on him. Needless to say it was considered a violation of his probation and an automatic ninety days. The extra five months came from a stabbing incident between him and a Crip who had been talking crazy. Brasco was eventually cleared of the crime, but it took time to prove his innocence.

  Nefertiti didn’t have any priors so they let him walk with a slap on the wrist, but little Ashanti had gotten the worst of it. He was a minor with no relatives who would claim him so he became a ward of the state, sentenced to a boys’ home until he turned eighteen, which would’ve been in another three years had it not been for the letter Brasco’s aunt had gotten in the mail.

  Resting on the dashboard was the latest issue of Don Diva. On one side there was a mug shot of a cat named Gutter who had been the Adolph Hitler of gangbanging before being murdered by his enemies. The reverse side was a crisp picture of Don B. and his Big Dawg Entertainment crew, which now included one of Brasco and Nefertiti’s closest comrades, The Animal. Animal looked like a little boy standing among the hardened soldiers of Don B.’s army, but he was arguably the most dangerous of them. Like all of them Animal had been a product of the streets and at the rate he was going destined to die in them, but fate had given him a pass. Brasco smiled proudly when he had received the issue in the mail and saw his friend posted up on the cover as a part of one of the biggest rap labels in the country, but it was the scribe inside the magazine that had him the most excited.

  “How much farther is it?” Nefertiti asked while fumbling with the CD player. Plies’s “Hundred Years” was replaced by Murs’s “L.A.”

  Brasco slapped Nefertiti’s hand like he was a child trying to touch a hot stove. “Nigga, have you lost your last mind?” Brasco snarled and switched back to the Plies CD. “Take Off” blared through the speakers, rattling the rearview mirror. “Nef, how you gonna change the CD when my cut is about to come on? You know I ride to this shit.” Brasco began mouthing the words.

  “Man, I don’t know why you listen to this country muthafucka. Shit, he ain’t even got a platinum album out,” Nefertiti said.

  “Because this nigga is talking to the cats like me. Plies might not have a number one album, but I’ll bet you hear this shit bumping in every rock house in the hood. Nef,
it ain’t always about what you sell, but what you represent. Although I wouldn’t expect a nigga like you to understand,” Brasco said and went back to concentrating on the road.

  “And what do you mean by that?” Nef turned to face him.

  “I mean what I said. Me and you are two different kinda niggaz, homey.”

  Nefertiti turned the radio down and got Brasco’s full attention. “Brasco, you acting like we ain’t been jacking together since we was shorties. Don’t my gun go off like yours?”

  Brasco looked at him, wondering if he should keep it a hundred or sugarcoat it. He reasoned that he and Nefertiti went too far back to dance around the subject so he spoke from his heart. “Yeah, ya gun go off, but you ain’t shooting to kill nobody. Nef, I ain’t trying to say you won’t lay your murder game down, but while I’m shooting to take a nigga outta the game, you’re shooting to get him off ya back.”

  “So now I’m a pussy?” Nefertiti was beginning to get agitated.

  “Never that, my nigga. Nef, I’ll take you and Ashanti in my corner going to battle over a hundred of the illest cats you can find, next to Animal of course. We family, blood, but I know if given the choice you would let a nigga live to keep that kinda evil off ya soul, whereas I’m going for the kill. A live enemy equals a loose end that you’ll always have to worry about. Nef, just because me and Ashanti are rotten doesn’t mean that you have to be. God makes us all different and I respect you for being who you are.”

  “Whatever, man,” Nefertiti said and occupied himself by staring out the window. For as long as he had been riding with the crew they had teased him about not being as bloodthirsty as the rest of the hounds. More often than not he would laugh it off, but he did have his moments where he could get caught up in his feelings about it. Nef was so caught up in his thoughts that he almost didn’t notice that they had exited the parkway. Brasco did the speed limit as they drove through the sleepy town of goodness knew where. They had gone west for about a mile when Brasco turned off on a dirt road that led deep into a wooded area. After moving deep into the shoulder he threw the car in park and started flipping through the magazine.