CHAPTER 8
JIMMY ACE
“Don’t ever stand square in a shootout,”
—CADIEN
As I got older, my hair got nappier, my baseball cap tilted to the side, and my name changed—people started calling me Jimmy Ace. My pants were tailored, my button up was press and clean. If I wasn’t wearing a fresh pair of shell toe Adidas or suede Pumas, I had on a pair of Travel Fox or Clarks Wallabies from England. There was a certain way a Flatbush and Crown Heights guy dressed and you could tell who I was becoming. Everybody else was a square and we respected that but if you step in our arena you knew about us. I had a new energy in me. A hunger. I was no longer just a face in the crowd. I was stepping into my own identity—equal parts soldier and style.
Cadien had gotten 2 to 6 years in prison. Two years minimum, six years max. That meant he could see the parole board early, maybe come home soon. I kept that hope alive, but I also knew the reality—prison was a warzone, especially for Vanderveer and Untouchables guys. They had crossed too many lines, spilled too much blood. It wasn’t just about survival anymore. It was about what you represented.
We inherited the Untouchables’ enemies and added a few of our own. From Church Avenue to Eastern Parkway, from Crown Heights to Brownsville, the name “Veer” rang out. Everybody knew us. Everybody watched us. There were stories about each of us that weren’t respectable, some good, a lot bad. The imagination of the streets ran wild, every robbery, every beat down, every shooting became ours. That made every outing dangerous for us. That meant you couldn’t retire your gun even if you wanted to.
We had alliances too—real ones. Jamaican gang with political ties to Jamaica; the Spanglers in Harlem, led by Mudbelly and Early Bird. And the Shower Posse in the Bronx, connected to Vivian Blake. Ruthless and organized, they had crews tighter than ours and were moving serious weight through marijuana. These weren’t just friendships. They were strategic bonds—war pacts for the street chessboard we played on.
The nickname “Jimmy Ace” came from my swagger. It stuck. It felt right. Jimmy Skeng, the high-ranking Untouchable, used to joke about it whenever I came through his gates in Coney Island. “Ace, yuh always ah roll like you bigger than the rest,” he’d say, half-smiling. And maybe I did. He felt because both our name started with Jimmy I should look up to him. See I was a small guy and wiry. I was young and always around older and bigger guys. I needed a name that would be bigger than me. Jimmy Ace was different—it sounded like a character straight out of a gangster film. My days of tagging was long gone. Jimmy Ace had grit and flair. In my head, I was Billy the Kid, carving out my legend. I had waited in the shadows long enough. Now I wanted street fame. But I earned the name, one scuffle, one fight, one handgun at a time. No one gave me a lane, I took it.
I’d often think about those long afternoons with Cadien. Him and me alone in the apartment. Breaking down his Carbine rifle, oiling his pistols with 2-in-1 machine oil. “Don’t ever stand square in a shootout,” he’d tell me. “Stand sideways. Make yourself small.” Then he would show me. “Get low and don’t pivot to the right, you’ll run into a bullet, lean left and fire.” That kind of advice would be priceless in later years. Veer was a training ground, and Cadien was my instructor. He didn’t just teach me how to shoot—he taught me how to carry power. How to strike fear. How to become the type of man whose name echoed long after he left the block. But for all his wisdom, Cadien never taught me how to make money.
That was never his priority. There was a pecking order, and my lane fell under him. There was no quarreling about that, and it was a pass through many situations. One day a Jamaican man came to Veer looking for Cadien—his brother had been shot by “Gold Teeth Mikey”, a rival crew. It was early, just after sunrise. The man asked for Cadien, and I told him I’d check on him if he didn’t come around by 1 p.m.
We smoked a spliff. A few minutes later, OttoShine (pronounced auto-shine) and Roy walked over. They asked me to lure the man into the basement so they could take him out.
“Hell no,” I told them. “How dare you try to line up Cadien’s guest like that.” I told them I’d let Cadien know.
They stormed off, cursing at me, mad that I wouldn’t join their nonsense. But to me, loyalty was everything. If Cadien was my brother, then I was ride-or-die for him. Back then we held fealty to nouns: people, places and things; but Veer was a verb: we showed our loyalty with action.
We were all each other had. We ate together, shirtless in the Foster Park heat, played ball or soccer, handkerchiefs hiding ratchet knives in our pockets, guns always nearby. We weren’t just a crew—we were a foster family. With my brother Kesner not around much anymore, these were the guys I clung to. And in the illusion of youth, I felt immortal. We thought we’d live forever. But I had already lost Eggy and Sherwin— their young, smiling faces forever stamped in my memory.
At home, I was still with my mother. Her finances had stabilized some, but she knew she had lost control over me. I don’t think she gave up—I believe she loved me from a distance. A mother’s love never dies. My father never came around. And honestly, I didn’t want him to. If he had shown up trying to discipline me, it wouldn’t have ended well. He forfeited that right.
I had done well at St. Christopher, and I transferred to Sheepshead Bay High School, right across from Shellbank Junior High—the first place I learned what racism looked like. I started out strong, with good grades. But by tenth grade, I stopped showing up altogether. I never returned. I gave my life to the streets the way a Christian gives their life to Jesus—fully, without looking back.
The original Veer crew was shrinking. Some were dead. Some were locked up. Others branched out. Rat, for example, had taken his skills to Pine Street in East New York, teaming up with King Tut and Kendu. He was a master stick-up kid—what we called a “jukes man.”
I stayed in touch with a few Untouchables still in circulation—Pepper, Screw, Bordy, and Worm. But the landscape was shifting. Everyone was changing, when I stopped by Cortelyou Ave and 21st Street, Fredlocks and Willy were terrorizing the place and formed the Raiders. My early alliances became strong allies.
One day I lent my gun to Anthony Brown, a friend. He claimed he lost it. That gun wasn’t just mine—it was part of the Veer arsenal. Shared tools meant shared responsibility. When word got to OttoShine, who was now running things, he wasn’t happy.
The crew had shifted too—now it was mostly Trinidadians. OttoShine had always teased me for being Haitian. And now, with Cadien gone, the power dynamics were obvious. Otto had taken the throne. Even though he had been teased himself by the Jamaicans for being Trinidadian, now he had the power to hand out punishments. And he was ready to use it.
OttoShine was illiterate—not a slight, just a fact. But where he lacked in books, he made up for with gunplay, robbery, burglary, and weed gates expertise. He summoned me to his gates in Veer. I showed up unarmed—something I never did. But I knew what was coming.
He opened the door, Colt .45 visible in his back pocket. I was just 15. As terrifying as the idea of getting shot was, I had carried that same kind of firepower myself. It was all so contradictory. But this wasn’t about a lecture—this was a sentence.
“I don’t want to see you in Vanderveer again,” Otto said.
My ears rang. That was a death sentence. Banished. Exiled. No man wanted to hear those words, especially as a Veer man. He was throwing me to the wolves, at least he thought he was.
He searched me anyway—just to confirm what he already knew. I had no gun. If I did, that would have a bigger humiliation. They didn’t even want the weapon. They just wanted the statement. The message. I was no longer Veer.
I left that apartment on edge, my heart pounding. I knew what Otto was capable of—I had seen him make men and women bleed. I watched him shoot Winston and his girlfriend in the calves on Linden Boulevard, just to prove a point.
I would have to travel the streets of Brooklyn lightly, without a crew I could become a memory and a bad story to tell about caution. But I am Haitian I was born and trained to be behind enemy lines.
By exiling me, OttoShine was letting the whole Brooklyn know who was king now. And I had just become an outsider to the only family I knew.
CHAPTER 8
JIMMY ACE
“Don’t ever stand square in a shootout,”
—CADIEN
As I got older, my hair got nappier, my baseball cap tilted to the side, and my name changed—people started calling me Jimmy Ace. My pants were tailored, my button up was press and clean. If I wasn’t wearing a fresh pair of shell toe Adidas or suede Pumas, I had on a pair of Travel Fox or Clarks Wallabies from England. There was a certain way a Flatbush and Crown Heights guy dressed and you could tell who I was becoming. Everybody else was a square and we respected that but if you step in our arena you knew about us. I had a new energy in me. A hunger. I was no longer just a face in the crowd. I was stepping into my own identity—equal parts soldier and style.
Cadien had gotten 2 to 6 years in prison. Two years minimum, six years max. That meant he could see the parole board early, maybe come home soon. I kept that hope alive, but I also knew the reality—prison was a warzone, especially for Vanderveer and Untouchables guys. They had crossed too many lines, spilled too much blood. It wasn’t just about survival anymore. It was about what you represented.
We inherited the Untouchables’ enemies and added a few of our own. From Church Avenue to Eastern Parkway, from Crown Heights to Brownsville, the name “Veer” rang out. Everybody knew us. Everybody watched us. There were stories about each of us that weren’t respectable, some good, a lot bad. The imagination of the streets ran wild, every robbery, every beat down, every shooting became ours. That made every outing dangerous for us. That meant you couldn’t retire your gun even if you wanted to.
We had alliances too—real ones. Jamaican gang with political ties to Jamaica; the Spanglers in Harlem, led by Mudbelly and Early Bird. And the Shower Posse in the Bronx, connected to Vivian Blake. Ruthless and organized, they had crews tighter than ours and were moving serious weight through marijuana. These weren’t just friendships. They were strategic bonds—war pacts for the street chessboard we played on.
The nickname “Jimmy Ace” came from my swagger. It stuck. It felt right. Jimmy Skeng, the high-ranking Untouchable, used to joke about it whenever I came through his gates in Coney Island. “Ace, yuh always ah roll like you bigger than the rest,” he’d say, half-smiling. And maybe I did. He felt because both our name started with Jimmy I should look up to him. See I was a small guy and wiry. I was young and always around older and bigger guys. I needed a name that would be bigger than me. Jimmy Ace was different—it sounded like a character straight out of a gangster film. My days of tagging was long gone. Jimmy Ace had grit and flair. In my head, I was Billy the Kid, carving out my legend. I had waited in the shadows long enough. Now I wanted street fame. But I earned the name, one scuffle, one fight, one handgun at a time. No one gave me a lane, I took it.
I’d often think about those long afternoons with Cadien. Him and me alone in the apartment. Breaking down his Carbine rifle, oiling his pistols with 2-in-1 machine oil. “Don’t ever stand square in a shootout,” he’d tell me. “Stand sideways. Make yourself small.” Then he would show me. “Get low and don’t pivot to the right, you’ll run into a bullet, lean left and fire.” That kind of advice would be priceless in later years. Veer was a training ground, and Cadien was my instructor. He didn’t just teach me how to shoot—he taught me how to carry power. How to strike fear. How to become the type of man whose name echoed long after he left the block. But for all his wisdom, Cadien never taught me how to make money.
That was never his priority. There was a pecking order, and my lane fell under him. There was no quarreling about that, and it was a pass through many situations. One day a Jamaican man came to Veer looking for Cadien—his brother had been shot by “Gold Teeth Mikey”, a rival crew. It was early, just after sunrise. The man asked for Cadien, and I told him I’d check on him if he didn’t come around by 1 p.m.
We smoked a spliff. A few minutes later, OttoShine (pronounced auto-shine) and Roy walked over. They asked me to lure the man into the basement so they could take him out.
“Hell no,” I told them. “How dare you try to line up Cadien’s guest like that.” I told them I’d let Cadien know.
They stormed off, cursing at me, mad that I wouldn’t join their nonsense. But to me, loyalty was everything. If Cadien was my brother, then I was ride-or-die for him. Back then we held fealty to nouns: people, places and things; but Veer was a verb: we showed our loyalty with action.
We were all each other had. We ate together, shirtless in the Foster Park heat, played ball or soccer, handkerchiefs hiding ratchet knives in our pockets, guns always nearby. We weren’t just a crew—we were a foster family. With my brother Kesner not around much anymore, these were the guys I clung to. And in the illusion of youth, I felt immortal. We thought we’d live forever. But I had already lost Eggy and Sherwin— their young, smiling faces forever stamped in my memory.
At home, I was still with my mother. Her finances had stabilized some, but she knew she had lost control over me. I don’t think she gave up—I believe she loved me from a distance. A mother’s love never dies. My father never came around. And honestly, I didn’t want him to. If he had shown up trying to discipline me, it wouldn’t have ended well. He forfeited that right.
I had done well at St. Christopher, and I transferred to Sheepshead Bay High School, right across from Shellbank Junior High—the first place I learned what racism looked like. I started out strong, with good grades. But by tenth grade, I stopped showing up altogether. I never returned. I gave my life to the streets the way a Christian gives their life to Jesus—fully, without looking back.
The original Veer crew was shrinking. Some were dead. Some were locked up. Others branched out. Rat, for example, had taken his skills to Pine Street in East New York, teaming up with King Tut and Kendu. He was a master stick-up kid—what we called a “jukes man.”
I stayed in touch with a few Untouchables still in circulation—Pepper, Screw, Bordy, and Worm. But the landscape was shifting. Everyone was changing, when I stopped by Cortelyou Ave and 21st Street, Fredlocks and Willy were terrorizing the place and formed the Raiders. My early alliances became strong allies.
One day I lent my gun to Anthony Brown, a friend. He claimed he lost it. That gun wasn’t just mine—it was part of the Veer arsenal. Shared tools meant shared responsibility. When word got to OttoShine, who was now running things, he wasn’t happy.
The crew had shifted too—now it was mostly Trinidadians. OttoShine had always teased me for being Haitian. And now, with Cadien gone, the power dynamics were obvious. Otto had taken the throne. Even though he had been teased himself by the Jamaicans for being Trinidadian, now he had the power to hand out punishments. And he was ready to use it.
OttoShine was illiterate—not a slight, just a fact. But where he lacked in books, he made up for with gunplay, robbery, burglary, and weed gates expertise. He summoned me to his gates in Veer. I showed up unarmed—something I never did. But I knew what was coming.
He opened the door, Colt .45 visible in his back pocket. I was just 15. As terrifying as the idea of getting shot was, I had carried that same kind of firepower myself. It was all so contradictory. But this wasn’t about a lecture—this was a sentence.
“I don’t want to see you in Vanderveer again,” Otto said.
My ears rang. That was a death sentence. Banished. Exiled. No man wanted to hear those words, especially as a Veer man. He was throwing me to the wolves, at least he thought he was.
He searched me anyway—just to confirm what he already knew. I had no gun. If I did, that would have a bigger humiliation. They didn’t even want the weapon. They just wanted the statement. The message. I was no longer Veer.
I left that apartment on edge, my heart pounding. I knew what Otto was capable of—I had seen him make men and women bleed. I watched him shoot Winston and his girlfriend in the calves on Linden Boulevard, just to prove a point.
I would have to travel the streets of Brooklyn lightly, without a crew I could become a memory and a bad story to tell about caution. But I am Haitian I was born and trained to be behind enemy lines.
By exiling me, OttoShine was letting the whole Brooklyn know who was king now. And I had just become an outsider to the only family I knew.