“D amn, you the blackest ghost I ever seen!” Stone exclaimed, hugging Daddy-O when he walked through the door.
Daddy-O had been arraigned the day before and formally charged with possession of an illegal firearm. His bail had been set at $75,000 and to the displeasure of the two detectives, posted the next morning. It took the combined efforts between he and Prince to raise it, but he was back on the streets. He had just enough time to shower the jail-stink off of himself before he got the phone call telling him where the meeting would be held. Prince decided to keep it a secret up until the last minute to avoid any preplanned surprises.
“Fuck you, fat boy!” Daddy-O shot back. “Man, I ain’t been home for a whole day and you starting right in.”
“Welcome home, my nigga.” Prince said with a weary smile. He and Daddy-O shared a pound/hug. It had been several days since they had seen each other, and having his right arm back gave Prince a sense of comfort.
“You love throwing stones, don’t you?” Daddy-O said seriously. Everyone knew that Prince was hot and the police were looking high and low for him. Though they were on the Amsterdam side in an apartment that, to their knowledge, the police knew nothing about, it was still not the smartest move for them to be out in the open like that.
“Can’t nobody run me from my hood,” Prince said in a tone that let Daddy-O, or anyone else who wanted to voice their opinion, that it wasn’t up for discussion. “Come on in, we got business to attend to.”
Once he had their attention, Prince addressed his team, “I assume it’s no secret why I called you all here?” When no one answered he continued. “A few months ago we was all out here just trying to eat off Diego’s plate, and now we’re the ones doing the cooking and niggaz is hating. Diego trying to get at us and the police are on our dicks. But you know what, we knew it was gonna happen so we prepared for it. Let no one assembled here place himself above this union, lest he be consumed by this union, remember that?”
Everyone was silent.
“Well I remembered it,” Prince continued. “It was an oath that we all took, but not everyone stuck to the script,” his eyes swept the room. “Now, ya man Jay is gonna be the first of several casualties out this bitch by the time I’m done.”
“Son, how we gonna get to the boy when he’s in PC?” Sticks asked.
“Man, how many niggaz you know that’s locked up?” Prince asked. “I got a young wolf on the job right now.”
“Speaking of snitches, what’s up with E?” Stone asked.
It was a question that Prince had hoped to avoid. E’s sudden disappearance had everyone looking at him sideways. Prince wanted to believe that E’s Florida story was the real deal, but it didn’t sit right. To make matters worse, a young’n from the block had a court date at 100 Centre Street not too long ago. As he was riding the elevator, it happened to stop on the seventh floor and sure enough Killa-E was sitting there. For those not in the know, the seventh floor is where the DA’s office was located, so it didn’t take a rocket scientist to know what he was down there doing.
“Fuck him. Knox can move the rest of what he’s got on the streets and then we’re cutting them Binghamton niggaz off,” Prince said. “I want everyone to get the word out that I got twenty grand on both them niggaz heads. Thirty if you finish ’em off before they can do any real damage. I want it to be known that in this camp, snitches will be put to death.” His eyes seemed to linger on Danny a little longer than anyone else.
“What we gonna do about that nigga Diego? He acting like he want it, kid,” Stone said.
“Man, I heard he’s out there smoking any and everybody on this side. He ain’t playing by the rules, Danny added.
Sticks shot him a disbelieving look. “Rules? My nigga, ain’t no rules in combat. They hit us and we hit them, except we gotta make sure we hit them way harder than they hit us.”
“Sticks is right. All this tit for tat shit ain’t getting us nothing but hot,” Daddy-O added.
“And that’s why we’re gonna finish this shit once and for all,” Prince told his team. “Being that he and his bitch ain’t got that big house to lay up in, there’s only one logical place for him to move his family to. He’s got a brownstone off 128th and Lenox.”
“You mean to tell me that nigga was stupid enough to let you know where he rests his head?” Stone asked.
“He took me down there fronting like it was one of his lady’s cribs that he kept work and guns in, but I peeped his government on some mail that was laying out on the counter.”
Sticks rubbed his hands together greedily. “I can’t wait to wax that skinny yellow nigga.”
“Nah, that’s my kill.” Prince shook his head. “You and Stone are gonna handle Manny. I hear he’s been a busy boy lately.” Prince was referring to some information that he had gotten through the grapevine. It seemed that Manny wasn’t so sure that his boy was gonna win the little tug-of-war with Prince and was trying to set up a connect with this young kid from out of Brooklyn who was looking to do his thing uptown. If Diego died, Manny planned to slide right into his spot.
“Prince, you’re already hot as hell, man. You can’t go and try to take out Diego on some Rambo shit. That’s what you got killers for, son. Let us do our jobs,” Sticks argued.
Prince placed a hand on Sticks’s shoulder. “Young boy, you and your brother have always handled business for me on some grown man shit, and I love you for it, but this is something I gotta do. I want Diego to see my face when I relieve him of his brains.”
“I’m coming with you too. If I let you go alone, you’d probably fuck it up.” Daddy-O smiled.
Prince looked at his man. “Fo sho,” he nodded. “Just make sure your ass don’t get in my way,” he teased him. “Danny,” he turned to the youngster. “Your job is gonna be one of the most important.”
“Me?” Danny almost jumped out of his skin. “Prince what do you need me to do?”
“The projects are too hot to sit on, so we gotta take this show on the road. I want you to round up what we got inside 845 and 875 and move that shit to 96th street. Guns, drugs, I want everything up outta there. Get Steve from down the steps to help you move the shit in his minivan. My man Chino is gonna hold it at his spot until we can establish another base. Danny, them people is about to shut the whole projects down, and I don’t wanna lose one gram more than we already have, understand?”
“Sure thing, P,” Danny said, thrilled that he wouldn’t be asked to kill anyone.
Wayne was one of the young boys in the projects who was dying to get a rep. He had finally gotten his wish when a stray bullet from his gun hit a Chinese delivery man who was just trying to get home to his family. Wayne was currently in Rikers Island where he was awaiting trial on manslaughter charges. With his record he wouldn’t be going home any time soon, so he decided to make the best out of a bad situation.
He was honored when Keisha had him and Prince on a three-way call. Since he was a shorty, Prince had been one of his ghetto heroes, and he was down to do anything for him. Though Prince never came out and said it directly, he knew what he was asking and was only too happy to handle it. It had been a snitch that pointed him out as the shooter so he did any and everything he could to make their lives hell. He had already stabbed two suspected snitches since he had been locked down, so one more was really no trouble. Besides, Prince was going to give him five thousand for the job, which went a long way in the joint.
Getting into protective custody was easier than Wayne had expected it to be. During lunch he had gotten into a fight with another inmate, leading to him getting cut. It was a minor cut, but Wayne told the guards that he was in fear for his life. They promptly moved him to protective custody, two bunks down from Jay.
Just after count, Wayne had struck up a conversation with Jay. They had never hung out but knew each other by face from the projects. Wayne confided in Jay that he was an informant against Diego, which was a lie, while Jay confessed to being an informant against Prince, which was the truth. Before you knew it, they were swapping stories like two old buddies. It was all good until Wayne pulled out a length of coil from the bedspring that he had sharpened to a fine point.
Jay never even saw the first blow coming. When the coil tore into his kidney, it sounded like biting into a ripe plum. Jay tried to cover the wound with his hand, leaving his throat exposed. Wayne tore Jay up from gut to face and back again. By the time the COs pulled Wayne off the boy, there was barely enough of Jay’s face left to identify him. The COs beat Wayne damn near within an inch of his life, but in the end it was worth it, because Jay’s punk ass would never see the inside of that courtroom.