“Baby, where are you going?” Nikia asked. “I was going to cook.”
“Please, not right now, Nikia. I gotta go see, Gunna, then takes some work to the block, so we can have some bread to move.” He wrapped the towel around his waist. “I’m broke.” If she ever really truly faced the facts of life, she probably would skip getting her day started.
“Broke?”
“Yup, but I need you to start looking for us an apartment out Northeast or New Jersey.”
Nikia sat up and her perky breasts hung in the air. Her face showed a little excitement, despite her disappointment because he continued to sell drugs. “I guess I can do that.”
“You can. And you will,” he said, making his way to the bathroom to take care of his morning hygiene.
When he finished he threw on a crisp, brown Dickie set and some beef (brown) and broccoli (green) Timberland hikers.
“Lamar, you got mail,” Nikia’s mother called out to him from the living room. Oh, no, another postcard.
“Aight, here I come,” he yelled after putting his .40 on his waist and kissing Nikia on her forehead.
Down stairs, Nikia’s mother handed him the letter. It was from one of his homies at CFCF. He opened it, walked onto the porch, and read it:
Lambchop,
What’s up with you, bull? Hopefully, by the time this kite lands, everything will be everything. As for me, though, I’m chill. They finally marked my case MUST BE TRIED. That’s next month, so hopefully, I touch down. Insha Allah. Your name poppin’ in here. Ya girl, Ms. K, still be giving me cigarettes and weed to sell. She ‘bout her bread. Wassup with the hoes out there? Oh, yeah, I heard about your man, Gunna, as well. If he lives keep an eye on that crafty ass nigga, dog. Aight, bull, I’m out for now. Good lookin’ on that $500, too. Shoot me some flicks.
Bulletproof Love,
Two Can Ham
Lamar smiled as the letter came to an end. This nigga, Hamma, shot out, he thought, walking down the front steps of the house. He saw a strange white man circling his car. The car hadn’t moved since the night he and Gunna caught their last body in Upper Darby.
“Hey, how you doing,” Lamar asked, hoping the man wasn’t a cop. “You like that there?”
“Yeah, bud, I actually love these bad boys,” the man replied excitedly.
“Right. Right.”
“These things are hard to come by. Most guys go and get a Grand Marquis, change the bumper, and throw on an extra exhaust pipe.”
“And, then, think that they have a Marauder,” Lamar said, laughing.
“This one is official.”
“Yup,” Lamar said, smiling. A friendly salesman. “It runs great and I only want eighty-five hundred for it.”
“No way, kid. This isn’t your little guy?”
“Actually, it’s my mother’s, and she’s off today. We can make a deal, ASAP.”
“Well, shit. Yeah, I’ll buy it. I only have about eighty-two on me, right now.”
“No problem, we can stop at a bank on the way to change the title. Let me get my mom,” Lamar said, shaking the man’s hand.
CHAPTER 23
Jackson Bobb was set to be sentenced in courtroom 9-A of the United States District Cort for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in downtown Philadelphia. This morning US marshals shackled Bobb’s wrists and ankles, brought him down to the basement of the Federal Detention Center, shuffled him through a tunnel leading to the courthouse to the smelly prisoners’ holding cell on the second floor to await his four p.m. sentencing hearing.
A new friend of SA Livingston’s, AUSA John McGraw, stepped outside of the courtroom to take a phone call. When he was complete the agent approached him with a handshake.
SA Livingston asked, “Is there a way for me to be certain a drug defendant always draws a life sentence?”
The prosecutor raised one bushy eyebrow and looked trapped in a puzzle.
“I’m new to the sentencing phase,” SA Livingston said. He told the agent that, Baker Bobb, a Jamaican immigrant, given the moniker “baker” for his marihuana laced baked treats, had distributed six-hundred kilos of marihuana which carried a base offense sentencing level of twenty-six. “Look it up in the guidelines,” AUSA McGraw said, “its sixty-three to seventy-eight months for the first offense. Because this is his third offense, he’s a career offender, demanding a base offense level of thirty-four and the highest range for priors, six. But he carried weapons and employed teenagers, so his offense level is raised two for the gun and four for exploiting children. That’s level forty, for a sentencing range of three hundred sixty months to life.”
SA Livingston admired the prosecutor’s use of the word exploited, the tone, the agent was sure, it wasn’t in the guidelines. It was!
They walked back into the courtroom as a court supporter ushered Baker Bobb into the courtroom and seating him next to his attorney at the defense table. Four US marshals were in the room, along with the rows of spectator seats, like church pews, filled to capacity with the defendant’s friends and unknown drug associates, like it was Easter Sunday.
SA Livingston sat and wondered if the courtroom deputy had a spare copy of the sentencing guideline as he took in the room and hoped the courtroom with its twenty-five-feet high ceiling, cheap chandeliers, wood panel on the walls, and no windows was as packed when he got Lamar Dunken in a trial. Her Honor slipped in and everyone rose, sat, and the courtroom deputy called case number 07-X-4381, the United States versus Jackson Bobb to order.
Poor fellow, the agent thought, this whole rich country, against this poor little guy. Wait, this rich son-of-a-bitch, he thought as his defense attorney argued against the forfeiture of his Bentley, Jaguar, his homes in South Beach Miami, and the Hamptons, his yacht, and thriving bakery.
The forfeiture discussion railed on for twenty minutes, the brazen assistant United States attorney out for blood, contending that Baker Bobb’s possessions were illegally obtained with laundered money as outlined in the pre sentence investigation report, and the judge ruled in favor of the government.
The arguing went on, the defense attorney requesting a downward departure in the sentence, asserting that a life sentence was inappropriate because of the defendant’s contributions to the community and his age. The AUSA wasn’t having it, requesting an upward departure. Which SA Livingston understood to mean, pick up the book and hurl it at him.
