CHAPTER 8
When I reached my crib I ran inside and I found my four goons who I had sent to my house to make sure Mia was safe. Mia immediately ran and hugged me.
“You OK?”
Mia nodded her head rapidly. I could tell she was still shaken up.
“The crib is good. We checked it top to bottom,” Earl said to me.
“They take anything? Mia, did you see what they looked like at all?” I asked.
Mia was so nervous, her body was literally trembling as I held on to her. She explained that she only could see the intruders on the surveillance camera and that they looked Spanish, but she couldn’t really tell for sure.
“I don’t think they took anything,” Mia added. “But I don’t know for sure because everything just happened so fast.”
I went upstairs and looked around. Other than the bullet holes in the walls and ceiling, everything looked in order. I went into my closet and saw that my safe hadn’t been touched. Then I went back downstairs to the main floor and looked around, and things looked cool. Some pictures and a lamp had been knocked over, and the front door was broken, but other than that, everything was good.
I checked the basement and could tell that nobody had been there, so I quickly made my way back to the main floor.
“Muthafuckas ran up in my crib with my girl up in here. Somebody is dying behind this shit!” I said, emphatically.
By this time it was five in the morning, and my right hand, BJ, showed up at my crib with his cousin Lorenzo, who we all called Lo. Lo was from Harlem, but he ran with us and never really fucked with Harlem cats. About fifteen minutes later Bebo showed up, Corey, and one of my best soldiers.
Everybody who I wanted to be there was there, so I sent Mia upstairs so we could talk without her being around and hearing more than she needed to hear.
“Nico, just give me the word on who you want me to hit and it’s done,” Corey said.
“I got a hundred thousand on the heads of the cats that ran up in my crib tonight. A hundred thousand for each body,” I confirmed. “Put the word on the street.”
At that point BJ signaled for me to walk with him, so we could talk in private. We left the crew sitting in my dining room, and me and BJ walked outside to the front of the house out of the earshot of everyone.
“The Colombians ain’t fuckin’ with us,” BJ said to me, referring to our connect.
“What the fuck you talkin’ ’bout?”
“On the way over here to your crib, Lo just told me that the Colombians think Bebo is a snitch and they ain’t fuckin’ with us,” BJ explained.
“You just fuckin’ with me, right?” I said with a smirk on my face. I tapped BJ on his bodybuilder chest with my fist.
“The word is, the feds just got Ren, and with Bebo just coming home, they putting two and two together and saying shit ain’t a coincidence and wondering why he only did seven years and not more,” BJ continued to explain. “That money we sent with Lo, the shit came back to us.”
“The money for the last go-’round?” I asked.
BJ nodded his head.
“So we got no product, and our connect ain’t fuckin’ with us,” I said.
“Exactly.”
I kept quiet and thought to myself for a minute, and it was like BJ could read my mind.
“You thinkin’ Bebo got his hand in this shit, right?” BJ asked me.
“Bebo could be snitching, and that’s why he’s been talkin’ ’bout us eatin’ off the same package with different crews. But he ain’t been to my crib since he came home. Only a few niggas even know that I rest way out here.” I paused in contemplation. “Shabazz sent them muthafuckas to my crib tonight. Put a bounty on his head. One hundred grand for the muthafucka that bodies him. Two hundred if he’s brought to me alive.”
BJ kept quiet, but Lo spoke. “You wanna put in your own work on that dude, right?”
“You already know how I get down.” And so did Shabazz. I knew he was ghost and wouldn’t resurface on my territory until he sang me a lullaby. I don’t know what gave me away; maybe I was a little too aggressive at Bebo’s party. See, I was the one who had orchestrated the hit on Skeen, and that was because from behind bars, Bebo was planning the ultimate takeover. He felt that he’d started Ghetto Mafia from the ground floor and when he got jammed up the streets forgot about him and the name Bebo was now replaced with Nico. Someone as egotistical as Bebo couldn’t let that shit ride. He couldn’t appreciate where I was taking our organization. Him and Skeen had been playing checkers and making moves that they thought I didn’t know about. But the whole time that they were playing checkers, I was playing chess.
Shabazz, on the other hand, was too much of a wild card, and I had a strong feeling that once Bebo came home, him and Skeen would use Shabazz as the trigger man to take me out and take over the empire that I’d helped build.
Yeah, I was hoping that Shabazz would have gotten murked when Skeen got murdered. That was the plan, but it turned out not to be reality.
It was all good, though, because if the streets couldn’t locate Shabazz, I knew I had a new sexy pawn in this chess game that I could use to get at him.
“So what about product?” BJ looked at me to see what I wanted to do.
“Give me a day, and I’ll get you the name of these Haitian dudes out of Miami. I want you and Lo to go down there and chop it up with them, and that can be our new connect for right now until I sort out what the fuck is going on.”
BJ looked at me and nodded his head. He gave me a pound before we went back inside my house, and I addressed everybody.
“Yo, something is definitely up. I need all y’all speaking to your people to see what they know or what they hearing and let’s see what comes back about this shit. And let everybody know the hundred thousand is good money.”
Everybody was clear on exactly where I was coming from, and nobody had any questions.
“And if y’all see Shabazz, tell that nigga to holla at me,” I said, giving everybody a pound before they left my crib.