Miami, Florida
Miami Gardens
As Black sat at his desk in his office in his mansion, he thought about all the corruption that was going on around him in Miami. There were murders committed every day between the two mafias of the Haitian culture. For years he had been at war with the Zo’pound gang in Miami, who wore black and white bandanas as opposed to the Haitian mafia who wore the original Haitian flag bandanas and who remained adamant about respecting the Haitian mafia that Black had raised from the ground up. Black had finally had enough and was anxiously waiting for darkness to fall because the head man in the Zo’pound gang, who thought that his whereabouts were furtive, would pay dearly with his life tonight.
Black was an old, swarthy, old-school forty-seven-year-old veteran of the game. He had been killing niggas for ages and sparing no loved ones, ensuing in chilly scenes from his wrath. Black was a strong believer in voodooism and was protected by the powers of them—the same as his number one nemesis, Polo.
Mr. Polo, I’ll have you just like the rest of them who tried desperately removing me from this game. The FBI can’t even fuck with me. What makes you think that you can keep up, Mr. Polo? Black thought, refusing to acknowledge that Polo was just as powerful as he was.
Black checked the time on his costly Hublot watch, and no longer than a minute later, two knocks came at his door.
“Come in!” Black permitted the visitor.
When the door opened, Pat strutted inside by himself dressed in all-black attire and gun holsters hanging with two Glock .40s between his armpits. Black looked at his thirty-seven-year-old compadre and knew that Pat was ready to go at Polo as much as he was anxious to go himself. But he couldn’t, and only Black and Polo knew why neither of them could die by the hands of the other.
“What’s up, Haitian?” Pat said to Black as he took a seat on the plush sofa in front of Black’s desk.
Black slid back into his plush chair, threw his legs on top of the ornate, oak wood desk, and crossed his arms.
“You tell me, son,” Black retorted back to Pat in Creole.
“Polo is still at the Marriott, and all his men are under the scope as we speak. Do you persist on bringing him out alive instead—”
“I need him alive, Pat,” Black interrupted, “so that he can look the man he’s been at war with in the eyes,” he said while pointing his index finger at his eyes.
Pat understood the principle well and nodded his head in agreement. Together he and Pat had conquered the streets in the tri-county area and had been expanding their reach further toward central Florida. Like the Haitian mafia, Polo was a vicious Haitian who had Zo’pound in every county from Miami to Orlando. With every means to take out Black from the game, the two old Gs’ beef had evolved from a cutthroat move that Polo did to Black when they were running compadres. The two of them once had a brotherly bond, until Black walked in on Polo fucking his ex-wife. He tried killing Black in the process of escaping, leaving Black’s wife bullet-riddled in bed.
Polo was a wise man with a lot of grimy stunts at forty-eight years old. He was a high-yellow-skinned Haitian who stood precisely five foot eight and weighed 215 pounds. He was solid and equal to his nemesis, Black. Both Black and Pat knew that going after Polo would not be feasible due to the high security he kept around him and, unbeknownst to Pat, the power of voodooism that Polo highly possessed.
“We’ll bring him alive, Black, if that’s what you want,” Pat stated.
“So what’s good with the tri-area, Pat?” Black asked, changing the subject to a business inquiry.
Pat cleared his throat and sat up straight on the sofa. “It’s better than we’ve ever expected,” he said in Creole.
“Good, good, good,” Black responded in Creole as he then continued to speak to Pat in their native language.
“I know that you have everything under control, Pat. Just keep your head in the game, son, and keep Big Chub occupied,” Black spoke of his three-hundred-pound nephew who was Pat’s right-hand man.
Black had brought Big Chub from Haiti precisely six years ago to assist Pat with the mafia.
“I will, trust me. We are holding the tri-area down like some real Zoes, Black,” Pat confidently exclaimed.
“And how is Gina doing?” Black inquired of Pat’s wife.
“She’s doing good,” Pat answered, shaking his head. “She’s due in two months.”
He was gladsome to be a father of his first son among three pretty girls.
“Will he be a junior?” Black asked.
“Yes indeed! My boy will be a junior—”
Pat stopped in mid-sentence when Black’s phone chimed in. Black paused Pat with one finger.
“Hello,” Black spoke in Creole.
“He’s back,” the caller said as he disconnected the phone.
Black looked over at Pat, and from the look on Black’s face, it was evident to Pat that it was show time.
“Pat, let’s move. Word is he’s back,” Black informed.
With nothing else needed to be said, Pa leaped from the sofa while making a call on his iPhone as he stormed out of Black’s office. When he was gone, all Black could do was pray that the gods would be with him.
“Pat, bring Polo—and bring him fast,” Black exclaimed as he then prayed for his compadre’s safety and ultimate sacrifice.
* * *
Precisely forty-five minutes later, at 12:20 a.m., Pat pulled up to the Marriott hotel on South Beach, two Suburbans deep.
He didn’t have his daily entourage that he kept close by in the tri-county, but these men were just as vicious as his entourage, and he knew them all thoroughly. Inside was their infiltrator who had purposely gotten close enough to Polo’s vicinity and was a big help in making it possible for the Haitian mafia to finally locate Polo.
“Pierre, I need you to keep a visual on the lobby and main road. Bo-Bo, I need you to do the same from the side and back court,” Pat ordered through his ear piece.
“That muthafucka is on the tenth floor. The only way he’s coming out of that bitch is if he’s Superman and thinks he can fly, Haitian,” Pat’s driver, Pierre, exclaimed. “And I doubt that nigga can fly!”
“Y’all ready for this shit?” Pat asked his team through his ear piece.
“Hell yeah!” Bo-Bo retorted in the second SUV.
“Let’s roll, nigga!” a Haitian named P-Zoe said from the backseat behind Pat while racking his AK-47.
Pat pulled down his ski mask and racked his AK-47 rifle for assurance.
“Let’s go! Move!” Pat ordered, and then exited the SUV simultaneously with all of his men and bum-rushed the entrance of the Marriott and initiated a deadly fusillade.
Chop! Chop! Chop! Chop!
Pat rapidly sprayed at the front desk, taking down four employees. He then took the flight of stairs to avoid the elevators for entrapment. Behind him were six men all prepared to war it out. And that’s exactly what came upon them. Polo’s men were in the stairway on the sixth floor and surprised them with a fusillade.
Tat! Tat! Tat! Tat!
Polo’s men quickly caught two of Pat’s men, but failed to hold their own as Pat nailed them from an angle.
“Come on! Let’s go!” Pat shouted as they unexpectedly took the sixth floor as a change of plans.
They hopped on an elevator with four men and headed to the tenth floor.
“Bo-Bo, are we clear?” Pat asked through his ear piece to see what the outside looked like.
“Clear,” Bo-Bo answered.
“Pierre, are we clear?”
“Clear,” Pierre said as the elevator doors opened on the tenth floor, and Pat met the infiltrator who had killed off Polo’s guarding men.
“What’s up, Sunni?” Pat said to the chubby old-school Haitian who had worked his way up to Polo’s trust before finally betraying him.
“He’s still in the room!” Sunni informed Pat.
“Good job, Sunni.”
“Here’s the room key,” Sunni said as he handed Pat the access card to suite 104B.
“Thanks,” Pat retorted impishly as he then turned his AK-47 on Sunni and took him down.
“You cut one, you’ll cut us all, Haitian!” Pat exclaimed as he stood over Sunni’s dead body and fired twice more into his face.
Chop! Chop!
“That’s for Black Haitian. We knew we couldn’t trust you,” Pat said as he made a dash to the suite.
Nowhere to run, Pat thought.
When he got to the door of suite 104B, he quickly swiped the key card and waited for the green light to appear. He then vigorously kicked in the door while meticulously stepping to the side. The four men with him swarmed the suite as he followed behind. Polo was nowhere to be found in the living room or kitchen. When Pat and his men came to the closed bedroom door, they knew that Polo had boxed himself in. Pat smiled, smelling victory while breathing heavily from running up the flight of stairs and his adrenaline rushing.
“It’s over, Polo!” Pat shouted as he kicked in the bedroom door.
When he rushed into the room, Pat found him on the bed lifeless with his throat cut from ear to ear.
“What the fuck!” Pat screamed in panic and perplexity as he stared at the dead man on the bed—who wasn’t Polo, but a man who strongly resembled him.
Pat had no clue that it was the work of voodoo staring at him.
“Let’s go!” Pat yelled, sensing a setup.
“Pierre, are we clear?” Pat screamed into his ear piece while running from the site toward the elevator. “Pierre, are we clear?” he asked, again getting no response.
“Bo-Bo, is it clear?” Pat called out to Bo-Bo as he and his men took the elevator down.
Bo-Bo didn’t respond either.
Not being ingenuous, Pat knew that he and his men were walking on eggshells and possibly a death trap when the doors opened. As they entered the lobby, the place was a wreckage. Sirens were closing in on them. Pat and his men ran to the SUV, where they found Pierre slouched over the steering wheel, obviously dead.
“Shit!” Pat shouted as he pulled back Pierre and saw that his neck was cut from ear to ear, just like the man upstairs who strongly resembled Polo.
“Damn it, man!” Pat shouted as he pulled Pierre’s body from the driver’s seat onto the ground and hopped into the seat himself.
Once all his men were inside, Pat started the SUV and then pulled out of the parking lot the moment Miami Metro Police swarmed the hotel, which was filled with shaken bystanders and a body count murder scene.
“Bo-Bo!” Pat called out again for his lookout, but got no answer.
Pat knew beyond a doubt that whoever had killed Pierre killed Bo-Bo too.
* * *
“I can’t believe this shit, Pat!” Black shouted in rage after hearing Pat give him the rundown on the fiasco of getting Polo.
The gods misled me! Why? Black thought. “Someone’s talking, and it’s more than Sunni, Pat,” Black quickly concluded.
He saw the vision and the infiltrator giving up Polo, and yet with so much corroboration he had still failed.
Pat sat on the edge of Black’s desk, completely engrossed in bewilderment. He understood nothing of the works of voodooism, and Black hadn’t explained to him that he was at war with a more powerful man than he had been led to believe. Pat only understood the turf war and not the voodoo war.
“He knew that we were coming, so he set up a lookalike inside the hotel and pulled one over on Sunni. All we knew was that Sunni said he was in the suite. But we never knew how close Polo allowed Sunni to get to him,” Black explained.
What Black was insinuating sounded convincing to Pat, but he still had his skeptical concerns.
“Why not kill Sunni himself?” Pat asked.
“Because, Pat, he knew that we would take Sunni ourselves. What man could trust an infiltrator? That’s like sticking yo’ hand in a bag that you know has a snake inside,” Black explained while rubbing his salt-and-pepper hair.
“If there—” Black stopped short of speaking when his iPhone rang. “Hello?” Black answered the unrecognized number.
“I lost a bet. Guess what it was, Black?” the irrefutable voice of Polo asked.
How the fuck did he get this number? Black thought.
“And what is that, my old friend?” Black asked in feigned surprise, as if he wasn’t surprised that Polo had managed to get his number.
Pat had no clue who Black was referring to as an old friend, but the tone in Black’s voice prompted Pat to give a
look of wonder.
“I lost my money because I told someone that you would have been peeped. How weak your surroundings are. I used to watch you, Black. How could you possibly think that it would be that easy to bring wrath down on me?” Polo spoke and then began to laugh hysterically.
“Come out of hiding, pussy-ass nigga, and give it to me like a man, Polo!” Black screamed in rage.
“Of course I will, Black. When I catch you by the hands of yourself, we’ll have our day, Haitian. Until then, don’t self-destruct. How do you think I knew that you would be coming?” Polo said as he disconnected the phone.
“Pierre and Bo-Bo are dead, you say?” Black asked Pat.
“Yeah, I personally saw Pierre. He was cut from ear to ear,” Pat explained.
“Did you see Bo-Bo, too?” Black asked.
“No, but he didn’t answer when I called. I know he’s gone too,” Pat explained.
Black stood from his seat behind his desk and began to pace in deep thought. He realized that he had a deadly problem. Somewhere in his mafia was a bigger infiltrator than Sunni. There was only one solution to fix the damaged fidelity in his mafia.
“Pat, I want all the men who assisted you tonight wiped out, and I mean ASAP,” Black ordered.
“Those are your men, Black!” Pat retorted.
“And I want them erased from the Haitian Mafia.”
“It’s done, Haitian,” Pat said.
“I know, son. I know, son!” Black responded.