“Look at you,” I said to Glen from across the table.

  “It’s been a long time. I hope you brought something for my commissary?”

  “No. How ya doing, Solomon? What’s been going on, brother?” I said.

  “You looking real expensive, cuz.” He looked at my Rolex watch and matching chain.

  “That’s not important. Why you got me down here? What happened?”

  “Well, I told you much as I could in the letter I sent. Did you read it?”

  “Some of it. Bottom line is you locked up in here because you killed a bitch?”

  “Not me. Her daughter did it.”

  “And you an accomplice? Man, you fucked up. If you think I can get you out of this, you wrong. I can’t do shit for you.”

  “Look, man, I know we ain’t seen each other in a long time, but I just need you to put some money away for me. I got two separate child support case warrants against me from God knows when. I done slept with every woman in Richmond, Chesapeake, Martinsville. I ain’t got nobody looking out for me. You my only family.”

  “Niggaz really kill me.” I laughed. “You talking like you want me to be sympathetic. I’m-a leave you a little something in your account because you family. No more money after this.”

  “I love you, man,” he said standing up to hug me.

  “Relax, man.” I pushed him away. “Relax. It’s all good. You family, right?” I laughed.

  “There’s one more thing I need you to—”

  “Come on, man, you using up your favors.”

  “The bitch that got me in here, she’s on the women’s side of this joint. I know you know a lot of people. You make shit happen. You always did. Even when we was growing up in South Carolina.”

  “So what you saying? You want me to get her done in?”

  “Hell yeah. Her ass the reason for me being in here. There’s a little something extra in it for you.”

  “Yeah? Like what?”

  “Money. The bitch emptied out whatever her mother had left me.”

  “Where’s it at?”

  “That’s the thing. I don’t know, but I need somebody to find out.”

  “You know, Glen, I ain’t seen you in years. What in the hell made you reach out to me? I don’t know if I can fuck with you on that.”

  “Come on, man, it ain’t like I’m asking you to do it for free.”

  “But, nigga, you is, ’cuz you don’t know where the money is right now, home slice.”

  “Get somebody to shake her up. She’ll talk.”

  “I know she will. That’s why you in here now. What’s her name, man?

  “Sade Watkins.”

  “Who, nigga?”

  “Sade.”

  “Describe her.”

  After he described her in full detail I just sat back and shook my head, not knowing whether to be shocked, surprised, or salty with Mack.

  “What?” Glen rubbed his head.

  “We got a serious problem.”

  “Oh yeah? What’s that?”

  “The girl you talking about, did she use to live in New York?”

  “Uh-huh. With some nigga with a weird name—Fizzle . . . Fountain?” he guessed, trying to recollect what it was.

  “Mack?” I asked, red-eyed.

  “Yeah, yeah, that’s right—Mack. How’d you know?”

  “Because he works for me, and the bitch you talking about is his girl. Come to think about it, the nigga look a little something like you. Back when you had your shit together.”

  “So, you going to do it?”

  “I have to talk to Mack first and see what he know about this money. The bitch ain’t smart enough to hide something like that from him.”

  “She might not be smart but she crazy as a muthafucka.”

  “Crazy enough to start talking my business to certain people?”

  “Crazy enough to bring down your whole shit. You better take care of it soon.”

  “And what about you?”

  “What about me, Solomon?”

  “Do I gotta worry about you talking to certain people, running your flap when it finally hits you what twenty-five years really is?”

  “Man, if you thought that, then you wouldn’t be here. Ain’t that right?”

  I sat there looking at him suspiciously.

  “Solomon, ain’t that right?”

  I stood up and walked away.

  He kept calling, “Solomon, ain’t that right? Solomon . . .”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  COCAINE

  “So let me get this right,” I said to Craig, a very good connect of mine at an office in Washington, D.C., “twenty are ready to go, right, no questions asked because we went through this last year?”

  “That is correct. You can do with them as you wish. We’re looking at early as next month at the pier in the Hamptons, just as we discussed previously.

  “What about the Coast Guard? I need you to be sure on this because if it fucks up then I lose everything. That’s when I come looking for you with an army.”

  “Everything is in the process of being secured. There is nothing to worry about. Did you bring the last of the money?”

  “It’s out back in the van where you said to park it.”

  “Very well.” He peeked out the office window. “By the way, you’ll be needing the rest of these documents. Study them because there’s crucial information there that you must know.”

  “All right, I’ll be talking to ya.”

  “Have a safe trip back to New York.”

  “Yep.”

  “Yeah, Mack, this Coke. What’s up, man? I ain’t heard from ya. I hear things is going real good out there,” I said to him as I stood on the twenty-fifth floor balcony of the Sheraton Hotel. The only lights on outside was the small blue and red blinking ones of the small airplanes off in the distance.

  “Ay, man,” he said over music in the background, “what’s goody?”

  “Apparently you, young blood. I’m hearing a lot of good things about you.”

  “You know me, man. Told you I’d hold it down.”

  “I knew you would. You are your father’s son. It run in the family.”

  “I guess it does.”

  “How’s Cakes? You been taking care of her?”

  “I think she gained five pounds since you left.”

  “You’re feeding her?”

  “Hey, she gotta eat.”

  “Yeah.” I chuckled. “I’m just fucking with ya. Say, Mack, how’s Sade?”

  “Haven’t spoken to her. She cut off.”

  “Yeah? I hear that. Let me ask you something—Did you know anything about Sade and some money her mother left her?”

  He tapped the phone. “Hello?”

  “Mack, take the phone outside.”

  “Hello?” he said again.

  The call disconnected, and I called it right back. His voicemail picked up before the phone could ring. I left a message with him. “Don’t play games with me, boy. Call me right back.”

  That call never did come. And Gordy wasn’t answering his phone either.

  Now what the fuck is going on here? I redialed Mack’s number.

  “Yo,” he finally answered. There was less background noise this time.

  “Mack, what the hell going on? Y’all playing games?”

  “Naw, man. It’s mad hectic up in here right now. I ain’t never saw it cracking up in here like this.”

  “My man, I was asking you something earlier about your woman. You didn’t answer.”

  “Oh yeah. Naw, man, Sade ain’t got no money. What you talking about?”

  “I hear things, Mack, I got people all over, you know that. So you don’t know nothing about that?”

  “Naw, man. I don’t know nothing about your people telling you Sade got money.”

  “Now I didn’t ask you that. If you don’t know nothing about that, then you don’t know.”

  “Then I don’t know.”

  “That’s it then.”

  If it wasn’t for this phone being a cell, I would’ve slammed it down on its receiver. Right in Mack’s fucking ear. I wasn’t feeling his attitude. He ain’t never came at me funny. I’d been hearing he was acting a lil’ powerful while I been away. I could hear it in his attitude. I hope that boy wasn’t going to have to make me bust his ass and embarrass him in front of everybody.

  The next morning I took a ride back down to the prison, on the women’s side. I asked for Sade Watkins, and they said she’d been transferred to an undisclosed location. And I’m thinking, Why would she need to be moved unless she was being protected? Now, shit was beginning to bother me. It could’ve been nothing, absolutely nothing at all. But too much of this shit close to home was beginning to bother me. Out of a million muthafuckas in the world, how in the fuck did Mack end up with a bitch that lived down here with Glen when she was a kid? Then she marinates herself all up in my business and goes to prison for murder back where she grew up.

  And the first thing they want to do is ask you, “What you know?”

  Maybe I was just being paranoid and thinking too deep into shit. Why the hell would Virginia authorities care what a nigga do in New York? Yeah, I was trippin’.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  MACK

  Me and Gordy was in the office of a small apartment building off Merrick Boulevard in Queens. We’d just leased it. Twenty-five apartments and all was occupied by our girls. You’d pay your fee inside the first office near the lobby then look in the photo album and pick the girl you wanted. There was one wolf standing guard on each of the four floors, ready to pop off if a nigga got unruly.

  Every once in a while on a Saturday night there’d be one of them unruly cats that’d come in drunk off the Henny and try to get more than what he paid for. But there was hidden cameras and sound in every room.

  We both saw a red light blink on the top corner of the monitor and heard Smooches screaming, “No!” Two dudes was in the room on top of her, having their way.

  I chirped the guard, and there was no reply.

  Me and Gordy ran up to the second floor toward apartment 2B. The guard was laid out on the floor, his jaw cracked. We stood with our backs against the wall on either side of the door, with our guns raised and positioned. Gordy silently signaled to move on the count of three as her screams intensified.

  We both rushed into the unlocked door and stopped before the bedroom. The two dudes was so caught up in raping Smooches, they never heard us come in. Smooches was being forced to suck one dude’s dick, while the other violated her asshole with long, forceful strokes. She gagged, coughed, and cried as her hole was ripped at gunpoint.

  Gordy yelled at the backdoor nigga, “Nigga, if you turn around, I’ll shoot you right in the head. Drop the gun and kick it over here. Don’t turn around.”

  The other dude immediately dropped his gun and kicked it over.

  Smooches painfully crawled off the bed and began swinging on them both, and Gordy jumped in beside her, pistol-whipping both dudes. All the sorry in the world really couldn’t help them, once the rest of the wolves ran up in the apartment, including the one they’d jumped at the door.

  “You better come and get some of this, nigga.” Gordy held up the nearly unconscious dude up by the back of his arms. “This nigga violated your shit. This your shit, nigga. He know who you is. What he just did is like breaking into your house and taking what he want. Fuck you gonna do about it? I know you ain’t gonna let this halfway unconscious nigga make you look like pussy the pimp or pimp the pussy. Is ya?”

  The other dude was knocked out cold on the floor, and everybody was waiting on me to make a move, a decision.

  “Naw, these niggaz is a done deal. Get ’em outta here,” I said.

  As they was dragged out, Gordy walked past me in slow motion and mouthed something even slower, “Pussy the pimp.”

  It was bad enough that Gordy was hating on me, but now he was putting it out there that one of the girls got raped and I didn’t do shit.

  It got even worse when detectives Jeff and Bobby walked into Phenomenon late one Friday. They walked straight up to the office, and it wasn’t hard to tell who they were. They walked in laughing as the door opened.

  “Hey, great music,” Jeff said snapping his fingers. “Who is that? Kool Moe Dee?”

  “L.L. How can I help you fellas this evening?” I said, wiping down my desk.

  “I heard that one of your bitches got raped the other night. Guess your name ain’t as strong as you thought it’d be, huh? With Cocaine gone you ain’t shit.”

  “Why the fuck is y’all bothering me? I don’t know nothing about no rape, no bitch or nothing. That’s my M.O.—I don’t know shit.”

  “Keep not knowing shit,” Jeff said. “Because when it goes down you’re going to be the first one to fall.”

  “I told you all I know when you came to my crib. You’re not listening to me.”

  “I don’t wanna listen to what you gotta say unless it’s information. You got a week to give me something. You get in contact with your pimp and tell him to call me. He’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.”

  “That’s enough, Jeff,” Bobby said.

  “Fuck that and fuck you, you little shit. You tell your muthafucking pimp we want our money or all this shit is over,” he yelled.

  “Jeff, I said that’s enough.”

  “You know where I’m coming from, bro.” Jeff poured himself a drink.

  “Look, Coke is out of town on business, and I don’t know when he’ll be back. That’s all I can tell you.”

  “Look, kid,” Bobby said, “Cocaine made a deal with us and is trying to renege now. We’ve got way too much shit on his entire operation for him to try to dick us around. We’re the reason why you haven’t been raided yet. It’s been a smooth operation, but your boy had to go and mess up a good thing. I don’t like that. We don’t like that. So this is how it’s going to go from now on, unless you want to be in a cell next to his—You report to us once a week when Cocaine gets back into town. We’ll back off some and keep a low profile. He’s going down anyway, and we have two key witnesses that’ll put him away for good.”

  “Man, Cocaine is my partner. How I’m gonna shit on him?”

  “What you don’t seem to understand, Eric, is that we have witness statements against you too, shit that’ll surely bury your ass under the prison,” Bobby said.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Bobby turned to Jeff. “You want to tell him?”

  Jeff smiled. “No, I’ll let you do the honor.”

  “We have Anton and Sade holed up in a safe house in Connecticut. They’re ready to spill the beans on you and Cocaine—Drugs, murder, conspiracy to commit murder, extortion, assault, the list just goes on and on, man. You’re never going to see daylight again. You’ll be locked in a supermax prison cell twenty-three hours a day, five minutes outside a day. And if by some strange occurrence you get a visit from the booty boys patrol, pretty as you are, it won’t be nothing nice. You ready for all of that, Mack?”

  I can’t even front. They did put a lil’ scare into me. I couldn’t do no life sentence. But I couldn’t snitch on my nigga. Would he do the same for me? This was the first time I’d ever asked myself that, and I didn’t have an answer. “Naw, I don’t think I am.”

  Bobby grinned. “I didn’t think so.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  COCAINE

  My plane landed at JFK around three p.m. I didn’t tell anybody I was back except for Gordy. Even though he was unreliable, he was dependable, if you know what I mean. He was right there waiting for me by the lobby when I walked out.

  “Welcome home, man,” he said, giving me a hug.

  “What’s up, boy? You looking smooth.”

  “Well, you know, Mack doing his thing. Shit, you been gone for a month and change. Mack done leased a building with his money and OPT money and everybody eating now.”

  I stepped inside his blue Denali. “He did what?”

  “He ain’t tell you? Ol’ boy got a building, and shit is bubbling right now.” Gordy pulled out and stopped behind a red Expedition truck.

  “Nigga, you better be playing around.”

  “I’m not. You see, nigga,” he said with a change in attitude, “told you he was a bitch.”

  “So you stood right there and watched him do that shit without me knowing?”

  “I didn’t know shit until he did it. And what the fuck? You the one who put your baby in charge, so don’t be barking at me because your own dawg bit you in the ass.”

  “What you just say to me?” I turned down the music. “Say it again. I missed that.”

  Gordy knew. He never repeated what he said and soon began to move forward as traffic picked up.

  “See, you can talk all that smart-ass shit you want to them lil’ niggaz you be scaring. Don’t think just because you my brother that the same rules don’t apply to you. Now I been feeding your black ass, clothing you, putting money in your pocket, and if it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t even know what pussy felt like. I brought you up, and you better start acting like you remember it.”

  “I’m not no kid no more, Solomon, feel me?” he said turning into the next lane in the road with one hand.

  “So what that mean?”

  “It means that we can pull over right now and see how much of a lil’ kid you think I am.”

  “Do that then.” I unfastened my seat belt as he pulled over on the side of the road.

  Spectators rode by slowly while me and Gordy circled around each other, waiting to see who’d swing the first blow.

  “I’m getting tired of you disrespecting me,” he said, bumping my shoulder with his.

  I unbuttoned my sky-blue linen shirt. “Stop being a crying bitch. I ain’t taught you better than that, nigga?”