CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
2007 – Just Rhymin’ With Biz
The next afternoon, I scooped Biz up from his apartment over in Prospect Heights.
“Damn, bwoy,” he laughed, as he climbed in to the Land Cruiser. “How do you get this thing parked every night? It’s bigger than a Hum Vee!”
“It’s a pain in the ass,” I admitted. “I’m considering moving over by Hopeton, just so I can steal space in his driveway.”
I was actually serious about that. I’d been living with my parents for going on six months, and it was time to get out on my own. I’d stabilized, and they were no longer concerned for my mental well-being.
Bed Stuy as a neighborhood and home base was feeling very stale to me.
I needed to get away from my ghosts.
I popped in a Young Jeezy CD and turned the music up. We rode towards Manhattan, speakers booming. We didn’t even bother trying to find parking by Fourteenth Street- I just sucked it all the fuck the way up and hit a parking garage.
The Apple store was insanity. Sparkling white and filled with gadgets. Packed with people. Good thing I brought my credit card. It took a minute- people were still in a frenzy over this whole smartphone thing- but I eventually walked out with an 8GB phone, a Macbook Pro with maximum memory and an 80GB iPod. Oh, and a pair of Bose speakers and a pair of Bose headphones- “you are definitely gonna want speakers and a good pair of headphones,” Biz informed me.
I got Biz, who’d given a lot of solid input on the laptop purchase, a 30GB iPod as a thank you. I still felt like my five years on ice had left me at a serious disadvantage, technology-wise and I knew Biz was the gadget king.
Biz volunteered to come over and help me set up my new equipment and I took him up on that kind offer. While we were in the middle of setting things up, I took the time to ask Biz a question that had been burning in my mind for years.
“Yo, Biz, what do you want to do with your life?”
He’d been fiddling around with the speakers and looked up at me like I had lost my damned mind.
“I mean, you’re really fucking smart. What’s your end game?”
“I oh know,” he replied. “I loved that EBT shit. And that skimming thing was fucking crazy- the money was bananas, but me and Lucci knew it could never last.”
“But what about in the future?” I pressed. “Right now, you’re doing the real estate thing with Hopeton, but what if that goes away?”
Biz shrugged and went back to fiddling with the speakers.
“Seriously though, Biz,” I persisted. “You a smart mahufckah- you know what I’m getting at. You went to Brooklyn Tech. You told me you got into Bronx Science! You could have gone to college right out of high school just like I could have. “
He shrugged again.
I doubled down.
“Biz, man, seriously. You’re a white-collar criminal with blue-collar qualifications. That’s the type of shit that gets you jail time. Why don't you go do white-collar crime at a real company? Just go and work on a degree while you do this shit with Hopeton, and whatever little crimey shit you and Luciano got going on, on the side.”
Biz sucked his teeth and shook his head.
“Yeah, I gotta figure it out,” was all he could muster up.
“Well, I’m here whenever you need me,” I said.
Then we went back to getting my brand-new home technology center up and running.
It was so good to be home.
