THE DIARY OF NINO BROWN
(THE UNTOLD STORY OF A STREET LEGEND)
(This short story is a portion of a novella I have been writing for the past couple of years; it is both a prequel and a sequel to the 1991 Warner Brothers film I scripted, "New Jack City.")
This is not the slave narrative of a nigga chained to the drug game.
It is the damaged GPS of a gangster who got lost on the road to the riches.
This is the diary of Nino Brown.
Don't ask me why it took so long to come forward and tell his story. But it was not out of fear, because Nino is dead. It was not out of reprisals, because he had no friends.
However, Nino Brown did have a family, but now they're dead, too. Outside of his wife and two twin sons, there were no loved ones. Just a crowd of haters, an audience of salt-shakers who feared and despised this man. When they found out he was taking a dirt-nap forever, crooked judges toasted crooked cops, crooked cops toasted big ballers, and big ballers toasted shot-callers; flutes filled to the brim with Cristal and Krug and condescension, in between bites of lobster and fillet mignon spilling out of the sides of mouths framed in nervous laughter--and trying not to get butter and Worcestershire sauce on their Breguet and their Cartier and their Bulgari and their Kiton, and their Armani, and their Brioni, and their Hermes, and their Louis Vuitton, and their Zegna--from the cherry wood and Antelope leather private booths of expensive restaurants to the greasy-shine Formica countertops of fish and chip joints all over the country. Their secrets and their bling and their lives were safe. Nino Brown was dead and gone.
They sang songs. Schoolyard type: Ding, dong, the bitch is dead. That dirty rat bitch, that telling’-ass snitch, ding dong, wicked bitch is dead. They sang and sang, and sang, they drank gallons of big ticket champagne, they told stories of how they would have had the bitch-made turncoat killed: and then they looked over their shoulders, and their bodyguards shoulders, and their bodyguard’s bodyguard shoulders, and bought tougher body armor, and bigger guns, and for all of that, they still saw the specter of Nino Brown walking through the walls of their bedroom and winking and whispering, “Peekaboo, bitch-ass,” before emptying the clip from the Sig Sauer in their foreheads and torsos, they still woke up in the middle of the night (from that reoccurring nightmare), shaking in a cold sweat, fighting to get untangled from pissed up 1020-thread count Sferra sheets tucked into $7500 Duxiana Beds, grabbing the nine millimeters from under their pillows and aimed at shadows on the walls and stood at the window, peeking through the curtains, until either the sun came up or they fell asleep on their feet, nodding like dopefiends.
Of course--they hoped in the GOD they always blasphemed--that Nino Brown was really and truly dead, expired, not breathing anymore, six feet under, where the snails, and mulch, and dung, and weeds, kissed eternity and mingled with the dust and ashes. Dust to dust, asses to ashes. Nino--NIGGA?!--please be gone and come back no mo’. Where the undying worms were snacking on Nino Brown’s $8000 Garrick Anderson suit, but not his ghost. Because if Nino Brown was still inhaling, if he was still alive, then, well…
Hmmm?...
The media--that Marshall McLuhan army of cathode ray (now plasma and LCD) carrion eaters, the digital vultures who chomp, tear, and feed on dead careers and those dying to be famous, literally and figuratively--speculated that he had talked to someone before his timely demise. He did.
He talked to me.
I kept close tabs on Nino. I scoured through all of my notes from his trial almost 17 years ago, I even watched the movie New Jack City over and over, and scoured court transcripts from Nino's trial, looking for clues. And two clues that seem to stay with me, are the two names he--well, Wesley Snipes portraying Nino Brown--mentioned to Gee Money--portrayed by Allen Payne--in that scene in the Spotlite after-hours joint, where they declare their love and loyalty for one another: Pushead, and Blackie. These two names also came up in court, during his real life testimony. I knew these two people were a key to Nino Brown’s past. I just needed to use that info to open the door to Nino's soul.
So I began to dig, and dig deep. Chasing down lawyers he burned, cops he turned, and old bitter acquaintances, I followed a rumor that that Nino Brown had been relocated to Baltimore, MD, after making a pit stop in Scottsdale, Arizona, to get his cosmetic surgery, and to change his name and his life. Many people thought rumor melted into myth, but guess what?
The myth was true.
I won’t go into the specifics of how I located Nino Brown, or how I landed the interview with him. I made a promise to him before he died that I would keep silent about that, so I am going to keep that promise. Just rest assured that I was there when Nino was in so much excruciating pain from the car accident on May 8th, 2009 (his pale sapphire, Bentley Mulsanne flipped over the guard rail of I-83 South, remember? Witnesses that afternoon report seeing two teenagers riding on a Honda 4-wheel ATVs, besides the gleaming Bentley, and shooting the back tires out. The boys then yelled, tried to pop wheelies, but the ATVs wouldn’t cooperate. Both 4-wheel vehicles hydroplaned and pitched the two hitmen passengers vertically, before flipping over to crush and kill both boys--identified as Tayshuan Marcrief, 16, and Bilhal Freeston, 17, of East Baltimore--instantly.
However, the assassins completed their mission on that rainy evening. Nino and his wife Rebekka, along with their 4-year-old twins Nathaniel and Daniel, didn’t make it to their dinner at the tony Charleston Restaurant on South Exeter and Landcaster in Harbor East--Baltimore‘s version of Battery Park in New York City--where they were going to have a quiet dinner in the 2nd floor dinning room. Instead, the brakes on the $325,000 dream-machine malfunctioned, causing the vehicle to ice-skate into a figure-8 and somersault over the railing onto Guilford Avenue 20 stories below. Rebekka was decapitated from the section of the windshield that shattered and buckled into the sedan‘s front seat.
The back rear window caved in and dismembered the twins--Daniel and Nathaniel--separating their heads from their necks, and their arms from their shoulders, while they were still buckled in their car seats--as the car crashed upside-down onto the street, creating a small, fiery, crater), that he would literally moan for 15 minutes, even though a sea of morphine navigated throughout the canals of his veins; as the pins, rods, and screws from his wait to his ankles, kept his broken carcass in place.
But the pain Nino felt wasn’t a physical pain, or let me correct that, it wasn’t just physical. Nino Brown--whose skill set included teen executioner, pharm king, snitch, and then multi-millionaire record mogul and fashion magnate (his Kary Kash collection grossed more than $350 million last year), under the new, government-issued name Nathan Brakeen--was going through a psychic torture. The baggage of years of murder, mayhem, and destruction of others, was now manifesting itself in the ultimate metastasizing of an agonizing payback, that tore out the guts of his soul. And he wanted to tell his story before there was nothing left. Not that that would stop his intense pain. “But at least,” he told me the day right before he died, “it would slow it down a little bit.”
I have no idea of whether Nino Brown went to Heaven, or whether vanished into the silent darkness of Hell. I am just a writer, and truthfully, no mortal man knows those things anyway. He did talk about GOD, about belief, about faith--in the right things and wrong things--and about regret, which seemed to be his heaviest burden of all.
This is a tragic story. Tragic because what Nino Brown realized in his last days, is that he wanted a normal life. More than the hundreds of millions of dollars, more than the mad fame, Nino wanted unassuming; he wanted mundane. Nino Brown wanted boring. Boring enough to weave himself into the smooth and transparent fabric of the upper-middle class: boring enough to vote--he was a big supporter (and financial contributor) of President Barack Obama’s campaign, and even flew to see him speak in Iowa--boring enough to take Elizabeth and the twins to Lobsterfest at Red Lobster, boring enough to go on vacation to Disneyworld, or the Bahamas. Boring enough to carry the bags for wifey from the shopping-cart bay at Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, to the huge-hide-a-body-in-the-trunk compartment of the Bentley Mulsanne, boring enough to kiss his babies as he buckles them up in their car seats. Boring enough to dream of the day he would film the Twins on his iPhone, when they had their first middle school basketball game.
Boring enough to look forward to the time he would teach his boys how not to crash the big body 600 Benz after they got their Learner’s Permit. Boring enough (and brave enough) to show his emotions and wipe tears from his eyes as they graduated magna cum laude from Howard or Harvard or Coppin State, or Morehouse, or Morgan, or NYU, or Fisk, or Wharton School Of Business, so they would be the next Barack Obama. Boring enough to fall asleep in his lazy boy in his den while MSNBC and CNN and CBS and ABC talked about somebody else killing and ruining the community. Nino Brown wanted peace, and quiet, and boring.
However, ghetto superstars are not afforded that luxury; not after killing more than 30 people, not after poisoning the masses and destroying communities with crack cocaine, not after creating a sonic drug economy that was getting millions of views on Vevo and YouTube, and in perpetual rotation on BET, and MTV, and Fuse, and VH-1. Ghetto superstars like Nino (now Nathan Brackeen) and are not afforded sympathy, after selling tens of millions of downloads on iTunes and Rhapsody, onto iPhones, Blackberry’s, Droids and iPads--the new aural crack pipes--thereby addicting a whole new generation on gangsta rap, so, too little, too late, Monsieur Untouchable. Sorry.
You may or may not chose to believe the truth of Nino Brown’s diary; that’s your choice. All I ask you to do is read it. From there, draw your own conclusions.
The next voice you hear will be that of Nino Brown. This is his story. In his words.
BOOK I.
LIVE! FROM NINO'S DEATHBED
THE FIRST BODY
JOHNS HOPKINS HOSPITAL
4TH FLOOR, I.C.U.
ROOM 413W
MAY 10TH, 2009
11:03A
The hospital suite is both huge and empty, with the exception of the hospital bed where Michael Nicholas "Nino" Brown/Nathan Brakeen lays in agony, held together by bolts, metal braces, morphine, and GOD's Grace.
The place smells like a strange perfume of chlorine, alcohol, piss, cotton, and wooden tongue depressors. The flicker of florescence from the neon over his bed and in the ceiling sparks the room with a clinically alabaster glaze, as if this place is an constant state of flux between life and death. It is overcast outside, with heavy smoky gray clouds. No rain. Not yet.
Eyes fluttering, Nino comes out of his haze and stares at me. As weak as he looks, there is a steely strength in his gaze. An IV bag filled with morphine fished a narrow plastic IV line underneath Nino's hospital gown and implanted somewhere--I'm assuming--on his abdomen. roll-away table next to his bed.
A little corner of blazing sun cut out a patch of monochromatic sky like a big lemon buzz saw. The odd palate of daylight painted the room in abstract shadows.
Nino looked at me as I pulled the hard metal seat next to his bed. He then stared somewhat absent-mindedly at the window.
Nino: Look at that.
Bmc: What's that?, I say as I glance over my shoulder at the window.
Nino: The dust. That's what we are, right? Where we start, and where we end.
I watched the silt twirl in the illuminated shafts piercing the wide-screen of glass, dancing a slow and deliberate ballet of silently softened grit.
Bmc: Yeah; ashes to ashes, and dust to dust.
Nino motions for me to turn my tape recorder on, but it's been on the whole time.
Nino: I got my first body when I was fifteen.
I believe his name was Kev. It was June 8th, 1978.
Dude had been skimming for some time from his crew chief, a scrambling kid by the name of Blackie. Blackie was down with the L.A.--Lenox Avenue--Boys. He paid me $600 and bought me a pair of brown suede British Walkers to slump a nigga. So I did.
The kid I killed--the kid named Kev--was nouveau riche; new ghetto money. New ghetto money (back in the day) always shopped on 125th Street, always talked loud, always called the Kojack car service (if they didn't have they own car) and ordered a Lincoln Town Car to take them (and they girl) to the Loewes movie theater on 86th Street and 3rd Avenue, and then to the Flaming Embers steak house on the corner of 86th, made the driver wait 3 hours, and then drive them (and they girl) to the Fort Lee Lodge Motel in New Jersey, and hit the driver off with $200 dollars, and made sure the driver picked them up in the morning, and drove them to the IHOP on 233 Street in the Bronx for breakfast. Those Sunday mornings at that IHOP on 233rd Street were always crowded with church people and scramblers: saints and sinners drowning their piety and transgression in a river of pecan pancake syrup. Crazy.
So as I remember it, yeah, the kid named Kev that I killed, was brand new money, because niggas making new ghetto money loved the R&B group Blue Magic, and he was talking about how Blue Magic rocked the Apollo when they came out in clown suits and sang Life Is A Three Ring Circus. Before he got to the part when Ted Mills, the kid with the high voice sang, "All of the ups and downs of the carousel/that I know so well...," I pulled the trigger. My body jerked, my stomach felt like it was going to come through me throat, and the world went on pause. I got woozy and my knees got weak. My fingers got wet and warm, and clammy. The nerves under the palm of my left hand--the hand that I write and shoot and now, kill with--jumped uncontrollably. I saw a flash of white-orange light as I smelled the heat, the fire, the powder, and the power of the bullets as they ripped out of the nozzle. I watched the bullets fasten to his neck like overweight nails before forcing themselves inside the skin. The back of his head opened up like a brown egg that fell on the kitchen floor and had blood and pink and white pieces of brain inside. His blood smelled sweetly sour, and the smell seemed to be stuck to the back of my throat and made it sore, like when you get strep throat. My heart pounded out an interior countdown of almost twenty seconds of silence, as the kid fell in slow-mo between an ice green Buick Park Avenue and a gray Audi, before his body leaned into the lip of the sidewalk in real time as the street came to life, and filled stony air with screams and people yelling, OH SHIT! OOOOOH...SHIIIIT!! KEV GOT SHOT!!!!!!!!!
The complete version of "The Diary of Nino Brown (The Untold Story of a Street Legend)" can be found in my new anthology, "Hooked On The American Dream-Vol.1: New Jack City Eats Its Young," available exclusively on Amazon/Kindle. In the event that you don't have a Kindle, not to worry; Amazon has a free, downloadable app for all computers and mobile devices. Click here to go directly to the Hooked On The American Dream-Vol. 1: New Jack City Eats Its Young Amazon page.
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