The Plot Against Hip Hop Read online

  D reached up with his good arm, grabbed Malik by the scuff of his jacket, fueled by anger and adrenaline, pulled the man across the desk, and slammed him face-first onto the office floor. Two more shots flew from the gun, sending hot metal ricocheting off the floor and ceiling. One landed in the top of the desk. The other found a home in the fleshy part of Malik’s right ass cheek.

  The most dangerous weapon in any hip hop–era fight was not a left cross, an Uzi, or a box cutter. The things that inflicted the most damage were thick soles of Timberland boots and chunky athletic shoes. The stomp-down—brutal, relentless, and sure to crack bones and rip holes in important organs—was a weapon most lethal. And D applied it to Malik’s body with gusto. He started on the man’s hands, followed by his left shoulder, right knee, and, finally, his left cheekbone.

  Malik, big and hard, was still conscious, but wished he wasn’t. D pulled his office door open and then, using his right hand, dragged Malik’s bloody, beaten torso through his small waiting room and doorway. He dropped the man inches from where Dwayne Robinson had lain dead not too long ago.

  D looked down at Malik Jones, a.k.a. Anthony Jackson. The man was prone, dizzy, and fractured. The gun felt good in D’s right hand. I can do this, he thought. There was no doubt. Not like Amos. The reasons were legion. His cause was just. Malik had killed a woman he cared for. The safety was off.

  The staircase door suddenly opened and Sussanah, the yoga teacher from downstairs, peeked her head out into the hallway and took in the scene.

  “D? D, are you all right?”

  “I’m alive.”

  “I was in my studio. I heard the shots. The police are coming.”

  He looked back down at Malik. “I think you just saved me.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “No, he isn’t.”

  D engaged the safety and walked back into the office, put the gun on his desk, and sat on the floor, thinking maybe he should try to stop his arm from bleeding.

  CHAPTER 30

  EMPIRE STATE OF MIND

  The yacht made a big circle in New York Harbor right in front of the Statue of Liberty. D stared at the illuminated torch and at Lady Liberty’s steely gaze as he sipped on cranberry juice. The day’s humidity had cooled into a temperate late-summer night and there was even a slight nip in the air with September just a few days away.

  D shrugged his shoulder and smiled. Every day it hurt a little less. The doctors said he could hit the weight room right after Labor Day. There was only so much yoga a big man could do before he craved a forty-pound barbell in his hands. As the yacht moved past the site of the World Trade Center, D walked down from the top deck to see how things were going.

  Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Chris Rock, Mary J. Blige and her husband Kendu, a pregnant Alicia Keys and her husband Swizz Beats were all chillin’ at a long table, as they finished dinner and sipped on cocktails. D had accompanied this illustrious group to Governor’s Island for the Rock the Bells hip hop festival, which was highlighted by Lauryn Hill’s return to a New York concert stage. It had been years since the revered and reclusive MC/vocalist had graced a Big Apple stage, and the royalty of contemporary black pop came out to pay homage.

  As D stood back from the party and watched, he had the disturbing thought that if the boat went down with the three ladies in it, the entire last twenty years or so of R&B would sink with it. If push came to shove, D knew he’d dive and help Swizz Beats with Keys first, though he figured pregnant women would probably be extra buoyant. D, as was his custom, didn’t try to eavesdrop on his clients, and what he did hear, he did his best to forget. The men at the table, most of whom were from Brooklyn, were telling tales of infamous stick-up kids, including the original 50 Cent.

  Then someone mentioned the “plot against hip hop” and D, who’d been standing about ten feet away, suddenly found himself three feet from Chris Rock’s chair. Someone had heard tell of an OG named Ice out in the Ville who’d “handled” a white man who “someone said” was involved with a group “trying to fuck up the game.” Rock ran with this, riffing on the fact that artists like Soulja Boy were the biggest threat to hip hop since Vanilla Ice.

  Quickly the conversation went spinning into why Lauryn Hill was the best female MC ever and which male MCs she was better than (which turned into a long list). To the celebrated folks at the table, the plot against hip hop was just entertaining dinner table conversation, something to smile about and then move on. D thought of Dwayne Robinson’s unfinished book, which was just one more of humanity’s unfulfilled dreams.

  Yet it had been no dream. It had been as real as the knife wound to Dwayne’s gut and the bullet hole in D’s shoulder. He wanted to tell them all—the star MCs, the superproducer, the great divas—how true it was. But that wasn’t his job. He protected people. At least that’s what he aspired to do. So he looked over at the group, nodded at Jay (who nodded back), and headed up to the top deck to finish his cranberry juice. One side of the boat was the city. The empire state of mind in full effect. On the other was New Jersey, a place to which he now felt surprisingly tied.

  He took a sip of juice and wondered how much he really knew about anything that had transpired these past few months. Had Amos Pilgrim told him everything? The old man had implied there were many situations he still had his hand in. And what about his cancer? That could have just been a bid for sympathy or a ruse to throw D off. Far as he knew, the old dog was a little bruised, but still alive out in Cali.

  D had done his best to uncover the plot, but he knew he hadn’t done much, and surely what he had done wasn’t enough. He thought of the way MCs used the word cipher, which was a bunch of brothers in a circle rhyming. But a real cipher was a form of encryption, a word that hid the real meaning of things in plain sight. If you didn’t know the references or catch the slang of an MC’s rhyme, its real meaning could be as elusive as a dream. The words could be reworked to mean anything and everything, if the MC was skilled enough and the listener was committed to hearing.

  As the boat moved slowly toward the dock at Chelsea Piers, D drank down the last of his juice and recommitted himself to hearing, listening, and understanding. He saw dock workers at the pier, a raft of expensive cars, and a couple of men with cameras in the far distance. He headed downstairs. Time to go back to work.