The cost of vengeance

by Roy Glenn

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s Rain Robinson. I need your help, Perry.”

  The day before, Nick had taken me out there for his friend Perry and his wife Glenda, to change my dressing. He opened the door and took me into the examining room they had in their house. Perry was unbuttoning my blouse when Glenda walked in. “Am I interrupting?” Glenda said and smiled. “You were supposed to be in bed resting, young lady.” Glenda sat down on the examining table next to me.

  “What have you been doing?” Perry said when he looked at my wound.

  “I fell.”

  “Right,” he said.

  “I’ll take care of this, Perry. Why don’t you go back to bed?”

  Perry shook his head and left the room.

  “He’s always a grumpy-ass when he first wakes up,” Glenda said and got what she needed to take care of me. When she was done, I apologized for getting them up and thanked her for taking care of me. “This time you need to get to bed and stay there.”

  “I will, I promise. But I need a big favor.”

  “I think I just did you a big favor,” Glenda said. I liked her.

  “Yeah, I know, but you could, you know, like keep this between the three of us. I mean like not tell Nick that I showed up here bleedin’ at three in the morning.”

  “You’re secret is safe with me. And I’ll make sure Perry doesn’t say anything either.”

  “Thank you,” I said and she walked me out. I drove home and went straight to bed.

  When I opened my eyes and sat up in bed, I called out for Nick, but he wasn’t there. With nothing else to do, I laid back down and turned on the TV. I channel surfed for a while and finally settled on the judge shows. My favorite was Divorce Court. I liked Lynn Toler, but thought that Madeline was better. Halfway through the show, Nick walked in. “How you feelin’?” he asked and sat down on the bed next to me.

  “I’m a’ight,” I lied. I still felt kind of tired and my chest hurt.

  “Good. Get dressed, we’re up,” Nick said and got up.

  I reached for the gun I had under my pillow and got out of bed. “Where we goin’?”

  “We’re goin’ to kill Ralph Watson.”

  “That one of the niggas that robbed us?” I asked and got out of bed.

  “Yeah. And hurry up before we miss him.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Kirk

  I didn’t seem to be making any headway in this case. I really thought we were on to something when Sanchez and I rolled up on Leon Copeland at Nina Thomas’s apartment. But both of our sources have been telling us that Leon hasn’t been a player in this game in years. I really wasn’t all that surprised by that though. Leon and Mike Black were good friends those days, and he did seem to drop off the grid about the time that Black killed just about every other dealer in the area. Black made a deal with Chilly and setup what became know as the dead zone, where Black permitted nobody to sell drugs. Maybe Leon still respected the dead zone on the strength of his relationship with Black, so we had nothing. Then we caught a break.

  I was at my desk, reviewing what little I had on the case, when an officer walked up. “Hey, Kirk, you know an asshole named Timothy Thompson?”

  “I know a lot of assholes,” I said and keep reading my file.

  “This one says he talked to you and Sanchez the other night.”

  Now he had my attention. “What about him?”

  “He got popped trying to sell to an undercover today. Instead of lawyerin’ up, he said he would only talk to you and Sanchez. You want to talk to him?”

  “Shit, yeah.” I called Sanchez and told him to meet me down there.

  When Sanchez got there, I filled him in and we went in. “I was startin’ to think y’all didn’t wanna talk to me,” Thompson said.

  “What would make you think that?” Sanchez said and pulled up a chair next to him.

  I grabbed a chair, pulled it up to his other side, and sat down. “We’re here; but now I wanna know what a small-timer like you could possibly wanna talk about?”

  “I want outta here, that’s what I wanna talk about,” Thompson said.

  “Tell me something I don’t know and I’ll consider it,” Sanchez said.

  “The night Big K and them got shot, somebody got through our security.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean a cop.”

  “I’m listening,” Sanchez said.

  “The reason we stayed outta y’alls way is that we had lookouts everywhere. If a cop car or anything that even looked like an unmarked car came our way, we’d shut down until they was gone. But this mutha fucka rolled up and walked up on us, made his buy quietly, and walked off. But instead of leaving, he steps to Kenyatta. They beefed for a while and then he leaves.”

  “How you know he was a cop? And if he was a cop, how come none of you assholes are in jail?”

  “After he left, I asked Kenyatta what was up with that. She said he was a cop tryin’ to shake her down.”

  “You get a good look at the guy?” I asked. “This cop.”

  “I ain’t tryin’ to incriminate myself, but I was as close to him as I am to you right now.”

  “What was he driving?” Sanchez asked.

  “Midnight blue Camaro.” I looked at Sanchez and I could tell he knew something by the look on his face.

  “Can you pick him out if you saw him again?” Sanchez asked.

  “I saw him today when they busted me. I started to talk to him, but I figured he didn’t have no juice.” Thompson looked at Sanchez then he looked at me. “So can we do somethin’ here or do I need to call my lawyer?”

  “I’ll see what we can do,” Sanchez said and bounced up. He headed for the door.

  “What’s that mean?” Thompson wanted to know.

  “It means you sit here and you don’t talk to anybody,” I said and followed Sanchez out of the room.

  I knew that Sanchez knew exactly who Thompson was talking about and was on his way to go after him. The fact that he was in on an uncover operation meant that it was one of Sanchez’s men.

  I had to hurry to catch up with him. “Slow down, Gene, and talk to me,” I said and Sanchez kept walking. “You know who he’s talkin’ about?”

  “It’s one of my men: Nelson Brown. Drives a blue Camaro.”

  “So where you going?”

  “I’m going to tear him a new asshole, that’s where I’m going, Kirk.”

  “Slow down, Gene, and let’s talk about this,” I said and got in front of him.

  “What?”

  “All we got now is the word of a scumbag drug dealer tryin’ to make a deal to get out and sell some more drugs. Let’s check this out a little and if he comes up dirty, I’ll hold him while you tear him a new asshole.”

  Sanchez finally exhaled. “Okay.”

  Sanchez and I discretely dug into Brown’s life; his finances and the luds from his phone, just like we would any other criminal. The picture that was being painted by the information we found, made one thing crystal clear: Brown was dirty. But I wanted more before we confronted him, so I suggested that we follow him. We lost him in traffic the first day, but the second, Brown led us right to what I was looking for.

  “Get a picture,” I said and Sanchez got out his camera.

  That next morning, Sanchez called Brown into his office. Before he got there, I made Sanchez promise to take it slow. “Don’t let that famous Latin temper of yours blow this.”

  “I’m cool,” Sanchez said as Brown walked in.

  “You wanted to see me, lieutenant?”

  “Yeah, come in and close the door,” Sanchez said.

  “Detective,” Brown said to acknowledge my presence in the room.

  I just nodded my head and took another sip of my coffee.

  “How’s the car running?”

  “Like a dream, lieutenant. It’s worth every penny of that fat note I pay for it every month,” Brown said.

  “Kids doing good in school?” Sa
nchez asked, and I was surprised that he was actually taking it slow. Normally, Gene was the kind of guy that would have called him a dirty cop and asked for his gun and shield as soon as Brown walked in the door.

  “They’re doing great.”

  “I remember when my kids were that age; wanting something all the time because the other kids had it. I used to have to tell them all the time that they didn’t know what their parents were doing to get all that stuff.”

  “It is tough, but me and Kathy, we get by,” Brown said cautiously.

  “I know it must be tough paying that fat car note and keeping three kids in private school,” Sanchez said and the look on Brown’s face told the story. “Mount Holy Oak, that place ain’t cheap.”

  “What’s going on here, lieutenant?”

  “I wanted to talk to you about Kenyatta Damson,” Sanchez said.

  “The vic from the other night; what about her?”

  “How much did you ask her for?” I asked.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Brown said and squirmed in his chair.

  “Well maybe you’d like to tell me what you were doing with Bryce Tyler, and what you had to talk about for an hour?” Sanchez said and I dropped the pictures of him and Bryce Tyler in front of him.

  “I need your gun and your shield,” Sanchez said and held out his hand.

  I guess Brown knew he was done and quietly gave it up. Then he started talking about a deal where he could walk out of this without going to jail. “The deal is that you give up every dirty cop in the building,” Sanchez said.

  At that point, he asked to have a PBA rep present. When the rep got there, Brown told us what he was doing and then he rolled on no less then seventeen cops who were taking payoffs from the same drug dealers they were supposed to be arresting. “So what happened with Kenyatta Damson?”

  “She’d been payin’ us off for years. She used to sell for Lorenzo Copeland, the one that killed McDill.”

  “Was McDill dirty?” Sanchez asked.

  “He got me started. That’s why he was fuckin’ with Copeland that day. He approached Copeland after we flipped Bryce Tyler, but Copeland was an arrogant fuck and wouldn’t play ball. After he went down, I found out that she was back up and running in the same spot, and I approached her. I told her that if she didn’t want to suffer the same fate as Copeland then she would pay.”

  “What happened that night? Why’d you go see her?” Sanchez asked.

  “I told her the price was going up,” Brown said.

  “You fucks always get greedy,” I said in disgust.

  “But she refused to pay.”

  “That why you had her killed?” I asked.

  “I didn’t know he was gonna kill her.”

  “Who?”

  “Bryce Tyler.” Brown said. “Anytime somebody didn’t want to pay, we’d send Bryce around and he’d convince them that it was in their best interest to pay.”

  “What happened then? Dead dealers don’t pay,” I said.

  “He said that it was personal.”

  “That what you were talking about?”

  “Yeah, I told him that he had fucked up and that he needed to lay low for a while ’cause you were putting pressure on us to close this one.”

  “How do we find him?” Sanchez asked.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Mike Black

  As Bobby drove to Nita Blue’s spot, I thought about Ms. West. Every time I saw her it was always my intention to seduce her, but somehow, each time we meet it turned into a discussion about business. She called me one night and invited me to her apartment. Ms. West said that she had something important to talk to me about. It didn’t matter what she wanted to talk about, I was going to talk her out of her clothes.

  When I got there, Ms. West was dressed in a black Herve Leger armor trim dress, with a single strap across the shoulder and a string of pearls. She looked beautiful, but she always does, and I’ve come to expect nothing less from her.

  That night Ms West told me that an ex-KGB operative with ties to the Izmaylovskaya mob named Oleg Mushnikov was trying to shake her down for twenty percent of her business. “How do you wanna come outta this?”

  “With this guy off my back and me not owing you twenty percent of my business,” Jada said quietly. And just like that, the seduction of Jada West once again, got put on hold. I called and arranged a meeting with Oleg Mushnikov that same night and offered him a deal that in the long-term would be far more lucrative for him than Ms. West’s little pussy business.

  It was kind of funny when you think about it. I am now business partners with Oleg Mushnikov in a joint venture to bring wind power to The Kola Peninsula in the Murmansk region in Russia, which should prove to be quite lucrative in the long run, but it was to keep Oleg from shaking Ms. West down for twenty percent of her business. Now, here we are about to scheme our way into shaking Nita Blue down for twenty percent of her little pussy business. Sometimes I don’t understand myself.

  Ms. West and Nita Blue are in the same business, but where Ms. West is a madam with a stable of high rent escorts, Nita Blue is a pimp with a stable of seven streetwalkers. What one of Ms. West’s ladies earns in an hour would take Nita’s ladies all night to make.

  If I was gonna shakedown somebody, it should be Jada West.

  But I’m not.

  I had other plans for the lovely and talented Ms. West. And that may or may not include fuckin’ her brains out.

  Me and Jamaica were expanding our operation into the gambling market in Nassau; And the international tourist clientele that Jamaica had begun to attract to his spots, don’t seem to be willing to pay for the caliber of women that currently worked the trade in Nassau. Those women are run by Harry and Deidra Walker. In addition to the women they run, they also have a few gambling spots. Eventually, we’ll get around to taking over their business, but for the time being, my attention is focused on getting our gambling operation up and running.

  Something that Jamaica said to me one night made me think of Ms. West and her skill set of recruiting and training women to be high-price hookers. “All we need now is some girls, and we take all their money,” Jamaica said. If Ms. West could recruit and train high-quality talent from around the world, I’m sure that there would definitely a market for that.

  I would talk to Jamaica about that when I got back to the island. Right now, the issue was finding Skip Skinner and Bull Harris. That’s where Nita came in. She had ties to both Skip and Bull. Nita started out working the stroll for Bull. She was his only girl. He was a gorilla pimp and used to beat Nita’s ass almost daily. Skip felt sorry for Nita, so he used to keep Bull off of her when he was around. He was in the loan shark business and convinced Bull that there was more money to be made breakin’ legs than breakin’ Nita’s jaw, so Bull gave up the pimp game.

  But by this time, Nita had turned Skip out; ’cause from what I hear, Nita had the bomb pussy. So Skip tries to square Nita up, but he couldn’t keep Nita off the stroll because she was a ho. She liked fuckin’ and she loved that money. Finally, Skip gives up on her, but by this time, Nita had a couple of women out turning tricks for her. Nita always did have mad game, and let’s just say, she had a way with women too.

  So now Nita is makin’ money and it gets Bull’s attention. He feels like Nita was still his ho and that he has a right to some of that money. He finds Nita, beats her ass and takes her money. She goes crying to Skip. He offers to extend his protection to Nita, but somehow, she convinces that nigga that he don’t want any money. But Bull is obsessed with Nita, and every once and a while, he would hunt Nita down, beat her ass, and take the pussy and her money.

  Now, back in those days, Andre was a drug dealer. He made his money off heroin and cocaine. To him, gambling, loan sharking, and prostitution, which he controlled, were all just sidelines; and he really didn’t pay much attention to that part of his business. That’s where I saw an opportunity. I found out that Nick and Jamaica were shakin’ down
the number runners that they knew were skimmin’ money off Andre. I went to Andre and got him to let me take over that part of the business. “I guarantee that I will more than double your take in less than three months,” I told Andre and he went for it. Since I knew just about everybody that worked for was him was coming up short on the money, it was easy.

  So I get to Nita Blue. Me and Freeze catch her one night at the spot she works out of; the same spot me and Bobby were on our way to now. I sit Nita down and stick my hand out. Nita says no. Freeze put a gun to her head. “You’re not understanding me, Nita. Those are my streets. That is my stroll your ho’s are walkin’. You wanna keep gettin’ that money, you gotta pay me for the privilege or your life ends now. Choose wisely.”

  “You need to talk to Skip about that, Black,” Nita Blue said.

  “What Skip got to do with my money?”

  “You have this pretty nigga here take that gun from my head and I’ll tell you,” Nita Blue said. I motioned to Freeze to remove his gun and Nita Blue explained her arrangement with Skip. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

  “If you lyin’ to me, Nita, ain’t gonna be no talk. This pretty nigga will kill you the next time he sees you,” I said and left. I went straight to see Skip and he confirmed what Nita Blue had said. I looked at Freeze and he put his gun to Skip’s head. “How much money you costin’ me?”

  “Huh?” Skip said.

  “You lettin’ that bitch work my streets for free. How much money is that costin’ me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You better come up with a number fast,” I said and put my gun to the other side of his head.

  “I don’t know-a couple of grand maybe,” Skip blurted out.

  “That’s how much extra you need to give me for y’all’s dumb-ass arrangement.”

  But that little soap opera didn’t stop there. There was still Bull to deal with. Every once and a while, for reasons even he says he can’t understand, he gets drunk and goes after Nita. He hunts Nita down, beats her ass, and takes the pussy and her money. So, Nita always has one of her girls following Bull. If he gets anywhere near Nita, they let her know and she lays low for a day until Bull calms down. That system has worked for Nita for the last three years, but I heard last month Bull finally caught her and made up for lost time. Crazy right?