Boogie Down Bronx, page 5
“In due time,” Whitey said again.
“Yo, time ain’t on our side. We gotta figure out what the hell Noodles went up there scoping for in the first place! What the fuck made him go out on his own? Who was he going after? What the fuck was he trying to find out?”
Whitey shrugged and shook his head. “I don’t know, but now isn’t the time to worry about that bro,” he said gently. “Noodles took the answers to those questions with him to his grave. But you just leave everything to me. I promise you I’m on this shit. I’ll do some looking around and find out what Noodles was going after and exactly who he ran across. Whoever did this, we’ll give those motherfuckas what they deserve, but right now we gotta concentrate on getting Noodles buried and putting our squad back together.”
“What squad?” Slick was about to say, but just then a figure in a grove of trees just beyond some small tombstones caught his eye.
“That coward-ass bitch!” Slick tensed up and cursed as Whitey followed his gaze. “Fuck is he doing showing up here?”
“C’mon,” Whitey said. “He’s grieving too man—”
“I’ma drill ’im,” Slick spit bitterly as he turned back to the limo to go get his piece. “I told him not to come around me! I’ma dirt-nap his ass right fuckin here!”
Whitey grabbed Slick’s arm and Slick glared at him and pulled away. “Fuck offa me!” he exploded. But when he looked toward the trees again, Wild Man was gone.
“Fuckin herb!” Slick spit, eyeing the empty spot as he clenched his jaw. “I swear to God the next time I see that lil pussy I’ma rip his ass! Son better stay clean the fuck from around me because if I see him again I’m take him right off this planet.”
$$$$$
Whitey knew he had just dodged a major fuckin bullet. It was obvious that there had been some hidden eyes on him when he attended that business meeting with Avi up in Westchester. Eyes that had peeped his game and were trying to smoke him out. But even before that his former partner must have been pulling recon on his moves and tracking him like a bloodhound.
Whitey drove out of the cemetery and away from Noodles’s burial with the full realization that if Noodles had made it back to Brooklyn to sound the alarm, then his white ass would have been the one stretched out in that cemetery taking a long nap in the dirt right now.
Whitey had strong-armed Avi into taking him to that meeting so he could size up Don Benny and the rest of the jewelry-ring crew. They had gotten together to discuss the logistics of the heist, and everyone involved had the poker face on, to include the Jewish mobster who was financing the entire operation.
The conversation had gone back and forth for a few, but then tempers started getting heated and all eyes had suddenly aimed full metal jackets straight toward Whitey.
“I’d like to introduce everyone to my new partner,” Avi had explained. “His name is Mr. Blanco and he’ll be helping me line up a few foreign appraisers in the underground market overseas.”
“Wait a hot fuckin minute!” an older black man dressed in a fine suit had stood up and bitched. Avi had introduced him as Sly McFly, and right off the bat Whitey sensed the old dude was gonna be a problem.
“First of all,” Sly spit, “who is this Blanco muthafucka and where did he come from? And who said you could bring this new nigga into the goddamn picture? We ain’t cutting the cheese in no more slices, asshole. What type of rookie shit is you on right now?”
“Relax, Mr. McFly,” Avi had said, keeping his cool. He didn’t care what any of them said. Whitey was staying. His sons’ lives were on the line and there was no way he was backing off.
“Mr. Blanco is with me and there’s no need to worry. Such a valuable stone will require a joint appraisal effort. Besides, there’s enough money to go around and I’ll be compensating him from my cut. Just relax. Everything’s going to be fine.”
“Let me put it to you like this so you don’t get it confused,” Sly McFly stood up and drawled sounding evil as hell. “I don’t trust nan’one of y’all muthafuckas up in this bitch! Not you, not you, and,” he pointed at Big Benny, “definitely not fuckin you! The more dirty fingers you stick in the pot the greater the chance for somebody to fuck it up! It ain’t just about the money split either, simple-ass. It’s about the fuckin Feds!”
Don Benny held up his hand.
“Alright, that’s enough! You came to me asking for financial support and all I care about is getting a return on my investment. I don’t give a shit who shares their cut with who. As long as I get my full portion Avi can bring in whoever he thinks might help us. I don’t give a fuck who it is.”
Sly McFly bucked again. “You don’t give a fuck because you ain’t got no ass in the game! You ain’t putting nothing on the line but money! You gonna be sitting up nice and safe in the big house while us field hands are out there pounding dick on the streets! If we get caught and the po-po starts clicking them metal bracelets down on us you won’t be nowhere around!”
Whitey had been amused as fuck as he listened to the back-and-forth banter because there was no way in hell Avi was gonna agree to cut him out. He had him bent too far over the barrel with his dick too deep up his ass for that.
“Here’s the deal,” the Don said to Avi as he leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on the table. “I’m going to provide the trucks, the explosives, and the firepower for the mission. I’ll also finance the airline tickets overseas and the cost for security until the diamond is sold. That’s our agreement. Now I want to hear what your plan is on obtaining the goods.”
“We’re going to hit whoever buys the diamond at the auction,” Avi said with extreme confidence. “We’ll wait until the auction has been completed and then we’ll ambush the buyer. We’ll strike as soon as they leave the building, and then we’ll head straight to the airport with the diamond.”
“Um, hold up,” Honore stood up and interrupted. “That plan is wack as hell, Avi. I think we need to switch it up because I don’t see how that shit can work. What we need to do is hit the damn delivery truck before the diamond even gets to the Sotheby. Nobody’s gonna be checking for it while it’s rolling down the street. Everybody’s gonna be checking for it once it’s inside that damn museum, you feel me? Nah, let’s dead that old plan. We gotta steal them suckas when they’re on the road and not paying attention. That’s how I envision this thang going down.”
Whitey could barely stop himself from laughing. The beautiful black chick was acting like a shot-caller today, but the night of that jewelry store hit she had been all hiccups and tears. She had no idea that he had been there that night because he’d worn a mask and she’d never seen his face. But he had damn sure seen hers. He’d seen her face and that beautiful ass she had on her too.
Avi frowned as she spoke, then he nodded in agreement. “Okay. So let’s say we intercept the delivery truck before it gets to the museum. We can set up a couple of explosions or heavy-duty concrete trucks to create a roadblock and a diversion to soften the level of security. Yes, that would work perfectly.”
He turned to the Jewish boss. “We appreciate your financial contributions and I can assure you that no matter what strategy we employ this endeavor will be a great success. Just leave the details to us, Don Benny. You provide the money and we’ll provide the brains.”
Sly McFly snorted. “Brains? Sounds like you got a pile of shit for brains to me,” he muttered while side-eyeing and throwing shade at Whitey.
Whitey stayed cool with a slight smile playing on his lips, but before Avi could respond two security guards busted up in the room shouting that they’d caught somebody taking pictures at the event and they’d just bodied him outside in an alley. Everybody stood up looking surprised as the guards took Benny aside to provide him with more details.
Almost immediately after Don Benny walked off with his security team, Whitey’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He retrieved it and turned toward the wall to answer it, and he was surprised as hell to hear Slick on the line hollering something about Noodles getting shot up in Westchester.
“Get over here right now!” Slick barked. “Noodles got bodied, man! Somebody popped him somewhere in an alley. He’s fuckin dead!”
Whitey’s stomach sank. Ignoring the other people in the room, he pressed his forehead against the wall and banged that shit one good time. Slick sounded pitiful as fuck on the phone and it didn’t take a genius to put two and two together.
“Hurry up,” Slick had insisted. “We’re on the roof, man. Wherever the fuck you are, get your ass up here ASAP!”
Of course Whitey had broken out from the joint right away. Noodles was his manz and he loved him. But during the drive back to Brooklyn he kicked himself up the ass the whole damn way. How the hell had this happened? Either he was falling asleep on the game, or Noodles had come at him extra hard with his surveillance skills because he had never even felt the gunslinger stalking him. And there was no doubt in Whitey’s mind that Noodles had been tracking him. Yet Whitey’s fuckin Spidey senses had never once tingled. Why?
Whitey had no answer to that question, but he was damn sure grateful. Because if those security guards hadn’t popped Noodles then he definitely would have run back and exposed Whitey to the crew. And that kind of betrayal would have earned Whitey an immediate death sentence.
A sentence of death that would have been most especially cruel and unusual, and handed down by the grieving man he’d just stood next to at the cemetery, the chief gunslinger himself. Slick.
Stay on your toes, goddammit, Whitey chastised himself as he peeled outta the cemetery and headed toward his crib. Stay on your goddamn toes!
$$$$$
Wild Man was driving through the Bronx with his head spinning with crazy thoughts. As he pushed his black-on-black Benz down the troubled blocks of the bombastical Boogie-Down, all he could think about was his boy Noodles and his untimely demise.
It was hard to wrap his mind around everything that had happened over the past few days. He had just peeped Slick at the cemetery where Noodles was being buried and it hurt him to his heart that his closest road dawgs had turned their backs on him.
As fucked up as they were treating him, nobody was harder on him than he was on himself. Wild Man felt responsible for Noodles’s death, and he understood that he had made an unpardonable error at a crucial time.
For the past couple of nights he’d been having some crazy nightmares about his manz. In his dreams, every time he turned into that alley and tried to save Noodles he would get there too late. Wild Man would wake up sweating and panting like a dopefiend. He’d be re-living the grief and horror of seeing his friend’s bullet-ridden body stretched out in a back alley in Westchester all over again.
Wild Man wasn’t the type of clown to keep feeling sorry for himself. That’s because he was usually at peace with whatever decisions he made and he gave a fuck about the consequences. However, this situation was different.
Noodles’s death had him in a fucked up state of mind. The only thing he could do was try to find out what his boy was doing up in that fuckin town that was so important when he died.
Wild Man looked down at the small metal device that had fallen out of Noodles’s hand when he searched for his pulse on the street. Wild Man had never seen anything like it before, but he had a cousin who worked for Intel and he was the tech king of the entire family.
His cousin would know what he was sitting on, Wild Man was pretty sure of that. Yeah, his cousin was outta town right now, but as soon as he came back Wild Man was gonna have to pay his fam a lil visit so he could find out exactly what Noodles had been creepin on when he went up to Westchester and got himself slumped.
CHAPTER 3
Playin Catch Up
It was late-night in the brazen town of the Bronx. Movement on the dark streets was furtive and sparse. All the straight-laced squares and working folks were locked safely behind closed doors, and the criminal element of the city was coming alive.
Still grieving over Noodles, Slick was lurking in the shadows of a front porch at a house across the street from Bajan Andy’s boxing gym. He had gotten word from Jewelz that the Goode Brothers Gang was planning to embark on a killing spree to wipe out certain members of Andy’s Bajan crew.
“I heard him talking to one of his brothers and giving him the order to rock Andy out,” Jewelz had come back and reported to him. “I was in his bed and he thought I was sleep—”
“Fuck you mean you was in his bed?” Slick had damn near roared.
“Calm down, stupid!” Jewelz snapped. “I got sick and I rode home with him from a restaurant! I left as soon as I was feeling better. I didn’t give up no pussy so it was no big deal.”
Slick had got jelly as fuck just hearing about Jewelz getting that close to Handgun Goody, but the info she had gathered was vital and now he was overjoyed. This was his big opportunity to tag another Goode Brother, and he was standing by ready to take potshots and pick them niggas off like sitting ducks.
According to the info that Jewelz had given him, Chainsaw Goody and his shooters would be arriving in just a minute. Waiting in the darkness, Slick’s tongue started tingling in his mouth like it usually did at times like these. It was a weird sensation that seemed to get his adrenaline flowing and sharpen his focus. It only happened when he went into beast-mode and was about to put a body on his hammer, and Slick loved it.
The last time he was at Bajan Andy’s gym was the night that he had laid eyes on Jewelz again for the first time in years. Slick didn’t have to split nobody’s shit that night but tonight would be much different.
Slick was dressed in all-black and he was standing on somebody’s shadow-filled porch just like he lived there. He had a clear line of sight directly to the back door of the gym, which would be the only place that Goody’s men could attack from and make a clean getaway.
Slick stood in the shadows watching quietly as Bajan Andy himself stepped outside. He was followed by a tall skinny chick who had her hair at the top of her head in a bun.
Slick could tell the girl was a chickenhead, even before he heard the tinkling sounds of her giggles as she said, “What you want, Mr. Andy, huh?”
As Slick watched, Andy went in his pocket and pulled out his wallet. He tore the girl off some bills and she laughed again, then dropped down to her knees. Slick couldn’t hear Andy’s zipper going down, but he had a pretty good hunch that it did.
Unaware that he was being scoped out, Andy leaned back against the wall of his gym and put his head back. Moans and groans escaped his lips as the jump-off’s head bobbed up and down against his groin. Before long Andy’s moans got louder and he cursed and praised the girl’s skills as he got his nut.
Suck it baby, suck it. Yeah…suck it just like that…
Gripping his ratchet tight, Slick chuckled under his breath.
How ironic is it that you could be coming and going at the same damn time, Andy? Hur’rup and get ya nut, my nigga. If it’s up to Handgun Goody and his hittas it’ll be the last one you ever blast off.
As the gym rocked inside with occupants, Slick looked down the quiet block and saw a dark brown Cadillac cut its lights and pull up and park on the corner. Slick knew what time it was. Handgun Goody’s dogs had arrived and they were ready to eat.
Finished with her job and standing near the doorway, the young dick-sucker laughed out loud then turned around and went back inside the gym. Andy remained out back. With his balls nice and empty he had lit himself a cigarette and was now looking down at his cell phone and steady puffing.
Slick was hyped and on the ready. He knew that once those niggas rounded the corner the Bajan kingpin would have zero reaction time. His ass would get shot full of holes, and then the gunmen would go inside and light up the rest of the gym.
That was the type of cut-throat message that Goody was trying to send to the Bajans. He wanted them bitches to know that he would roll up and shit in their mouths right in their own fuckin territory.
Slick watched as the five shooters emerged from the old Caddie and popped the trunk. Led by Chainsaw, they were carrying AK 47’s and probably some handguns too.
Although Slick had the drop on them from his vantage point, his margin of error was slim. With the kind of weaponry them cats were carrying they could lay down mega bodies without even stepping foot inside Andy’s gym. All they had to do was aim and shoot at the building. Those full metal choppa rounds were just that deadly.
Bajan Andy flicked his lit cigarette into the grass and walked back inside his gym just as the shooters closed the Caddy’s doors.
It’s ShowTime baby.
The shooters moved fast, and as soon as they were past him Slick came down off the porch and fell in behind them. He moved silently and light on his feet with twin Glock 9’s in his hands as he trailed them toward the boxing gym. Slick paused and ducked behind a parked car until they got to the back door of Andy’s joint, and that’s when he started cutting them down.
Handgun sent y’all cocksuckers here to die tonight! He’s got one foot in the grave right along with y’all niggas though!
Before the first shooter could reach for the doorknob Slick was already firing at a fast and precise clip.
He let off on Chainsaw first.
Blat! Blat! Blat!
Slick dodged and squeezed. He was close enough not to miss, but he didn’t wanna risk them raising the choppas and letting off at him if he was stationary. With fleet feet he moved from side to side ripping at the other four young gunners.
And as the gunshots cracked and echoed in the night air, Slick began counting down a mental clock in his head. By now he was sure Andy could hear what sounded like World War Three going down behind his gym. The cops were about to get called and the block would be getting hot in just a few minutes.
Slick didn’t stop shooting until he was sure Goody’s gunners were good and dead. Then, as he always did, he made a silent escape and slipped right outta the danger zone.
