by Mark Anthony
“Jessica, we can’t get in touch with the nigga. He ain’t picking up his phone. You sure it was him who got hit?”
“’Preme, I’m telling you it was him!” I stressed. I was pretty confident that the G-Baby rumors were true so I ran with it to my advantage. And for my sake, those rumors had better been true.
“So who was it that did it?”’Preme asked.
“That’s the thing. I would be lying if I said I know for sure. But it was definitely three guys. One guy hit him and two other guys picked him up and ran off with him. I was trying to keep up with them after they picked him up but with all of the shots ringing out I couldn’t. Then I tripped and when I got up my knee gave out on me. And I guess because I was one of the only girls out there at the time or something, I was able to flag down a cop in all of the madness and I told them what happened and I got in their car and we sped off looking for the guys that had run off with G-Baby. But to be honest I wasn’t even sure what their car looked like, I just knew that it was a black car so we went speeding off looking for a black car but we didn’t find one,” I said in one long breath, hoping that I was coming across believably.
Supreme was about to say something else but I cut him off and asked him where exactly he was at.
“We in the office trying to sort this whole shit out,” he stated.
“Listen, I’m not that far. I’ll come by in like twenty minutes and I’ll finish telling you what the cops were saying and I’ll tell you what happened with my knee,” I said.
“A’ight no doubt. We here. One!”
With that I hung up the phone and faced a roomful of shocked-looking overworked agents.
“What?” I asked.
“Jessica, are you out of your fucking mind?” Andrew screamed at me. “What if G-Baby wasn’t kidnapped, what if none of those other stories that were relayed back to Horse and Supreme turn out to be true? Do you know what kind of position that’ll put you in?”
I didn’t have time to sit and listen to that. My job as an undercover agent was risky as hell and I knew that. But I also knew that at times I just had to go with my gut instincts and trust that. And my gut was telling me that the G-Baby rumors were true so I ran with it.
“I’ll be okay. Trust me on this,” I said as I grabbed the keys to Andrew’s Cherokee and proceeded to exit the office.
“I need to borrow your car. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“I swear to Christ that you must be a goddamn man ’cause you have some pair of balls!” Andrew yelled as I walked out of the office.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
To help play things off, I had called Trina, who was one of the models that worked with my White Chocolate modeling agency and asked her if she would ride with me over to the record company and she agreed. On the way there I had filled her in on all of the events that had transpired at Rucker Park and I also made sure to tell her my fake story about how I’d seen G-Baby get smashed in the head with the bottle.
Trina told me that aside from hearing on the news about what had happened at the park, that her cell phone had been blowing up all evening long with different industry people gossiping about what had gone down and about how G-Baby had apparently been kidnapped.
Trina lived in the Lower East Side, so picking her up didn’t delay our arrival to the record company by that much. But by the time we had arrived at the Gun Clap headquarters there had apparently been a major development which had occurred in the hour or so that it had taken me to get there. It was quickly evident that no one would even care about what the cops had supposedly said to me or what had supposedly happened to my injured knee.
As Trina and I walked into the large conference room, I noticed that the room was packed with guys standing around while some sat in the plush high-backed leather chairs that encircled the long mahogany table. A few of the guys spoke to me and Trina, but regardless of how attractive the two of us might have looked, pussy was the furthest thing from the minds of the guys in the room.
“Yo, I don’t give a fuck, we paying the goddamn money!” Supreme shouted at Horse as I tried to decipher just what the hell was going on.
There was a lot of rumbling and talking going on in the room and Horse looked as pissed off as I had ever seen him. He paused and looked at everybody in the room before cursing and demanding that everyone shut up and show him, as he so eloquently put it, “some muthafuckin’ respect!”
There was quickly dead silence in the room.
Horse deliberately said nothing until he finally broke his silence and said, “Nah, fuck that! I ain’t budging. Them niggas is bluffing, they ain’t gonna kill ’im. And ’Preme, I thought you was straight gangsta so whatchu mean we should give them the money?”
“First of all nigga, don’t ever question my gangsta! A’ight? I’m just saying that that’s my man that they holding and if they want the dough, then we give them the dough and we lose this battle but that’s our man they holding! If it was you we would give up ten, twenty, thirty million!” Supreme preached.
“But it ain’t me!” Horse fired back.
“Horse, all they asking for is the three million. We ain’t losing on this!”’Preme tried to explain.
“Yo, are you crazy? You was the main one in this same office barking about how them Calvino cats had disrespected you and all that, and now you saying it’s their money? That’s our money!” Horse argued as I was able to piece together what was going on. I had figured that it would be a good time to wear a wire because I guessed that no one’s suspicions would be raised. And man was I right. I had the recorder near my upper thigh and the tape was rolling, recording every word that was being shouted across the room.
“Horse, they said they gonna start torturing the nigga! Come on man!”’Preme urged.
“Yo, if you roll wit’ Gun Clap then you know how we get down! We gangsta to the core! I don’t gotta tell you that, ’Preme. And G-Baby knows that. He was riding wit’ you and the whole Supreme Team since he was damn near twelve years old. He seen you torture niggas personally! He knows how the game gets down. And he gotta know that he got caught out there so now he gotta take one for us! That’s it!” Horse hollered as he walked out of the conference room.
Out of respect everybody remained quiet. Trina and I both used that silence as a cue to shuffle ourselves into two open seats that were available near the middle of the table.
G-Baby was being held for ransom somewhere by the Calvinos and apparently they had threatened to torture him if the three million dollars was not returned. From the looks of the faces in the room you would have thought that a funeral was taking place—that was how somber the mood was.
As we sat and looked at each other the black telephone that was located near the front of the table began to ring. Horse quickly made his way back into the room and pressed the speakerphone button.
“Holla!” Horse stated into the air.
“Holla!” the person said on the other end, in what sounded like a very Italian voice. The caller was definitely trying to mock Horse.
“I love the way you rap guys do that … Holla!” the Italian guy stated as he started laughing. “Did I sound too white when I said that?” he asked. I hoped liked hell that the Bureau was able to trace the origin of the call.
There was silence.
“Okay. Horse, let’s be serious here. We gave you guys half an hour. What’s the story? Where is my money?” he asked.
“Yo, listen, you wasting your muthafucking time calling here with that bullshit!” Horse arrogantly said.
There was silence.
The silence was then broken by the sound of a thud, followed by the loud sounds of someone screaming.
“Horse, you hear that? We just broke your boy’s right kneecap! Give me my fucking money or this ugly scumbag is dead! Horse, you don’t wanna test me! You don’t wanna test me on this! You guys need to stick to making music and let us stick to being gangstas! That’s your fucking problem,” the Italian guy said over what I as
sumed was G-Baby still howling in pain in the background.
“Hang up the phone!” Horse ordered. But when no one listened to him he walked over to the phone and snatched the handset before violently slamming the phone down and ending the call.
Supreme shook his head before speaking up. “Horse, it’s the wrong move, kid!” he stated.
“’Preme, all due respect but I don’t wanna hear it. He told me to test him so I’m gonna test his ass!” Horse replied.
At that point my cell phone began vibrating. It was a blocked number and I knew that it was probably Andrew. So I quickly excused myself from the table and went out into the lobby area.
“Hello?” I said as I spoke into my phone.
“Jessica, can you talk?” Andrew asked.
“Yes but make it quick.”
“Are you at Gun Clap?” he asked.
“Yes, I’m here, why?”
“So then you know what’s going on. Listen, whoever is holding G-Baby must be calling from a prepaid cell phone or something because we can’t trace that number. Is there anything you can do to step in that situation? Otherwise we’re gonna have a murder on our hands,” Andrew stated.
I was already feeling stressed out, because in a way I kind of viewed this whole situation as my fault. After all, it was I who had helped to instigate things by encouraging the dis record. But I couldn’t stress myself too bad because a dis record wasn’t the Mafia’s main concern. Getting back that three million dollars was.
“I’ll see what I can do. But there is not much that I can really input. I’ll explain later. I gotta go,” I said as I quickly ended the call and made it back into the conference room. I took my seat among the many long faces.
Finally someone other than Horse or Supreme spoke up.
“Horse, on the real, I’m sayin’, ’Preme is right. You can’t let them just torture G-Baby like that. Gun Clap did a hundred million last year. So three million and ain’t no money. Especially if it was money that we was just gonna wash for those cats anyway,” the slim thug said.
Horse looked at him and didn’t respond.
The slim thug continued on, “Horse, look at it like this. What if that was your son they was holding? Wouldn’t you—”
Horse quickly cut him off. “Hold up, money! Leave my son the fuck outta this! ’Cause it ain’t my son that they holding! They holding G-Baby and he knows the rules to this street shit! He knows the codes of the street. I guess the next thing is y’all gonna be bitchin’ up and saying we should start snitching and call the police, right?”
No one said anything. There was silence in the room for about a minute or so until the phone rang again. Horse just looked at it as it rang three times. Supreme then reached over and answered the call, again putting the phone on speaker.
“Get at me,”’Preme said. He spoke with his head sloped downward toward the phone.
The Italian guy’s voice quickly filled the entire room. “Horse, you had to test me. You got some pair of balls. I’ll tell you that. But I’ll be fair and give you and your crew this one last bit of advice. Stick to making music and no matter how much of a gangsta you and your crew think you are, and no matter how many drugs you sold, or how much time you did in the pen, that don’t matter, and we gonna keep coming at you and coming at you and coming at you. Now listen to this and ask yourself is this really what you want?”
The next thing I heard was the sound of a loud gunshot echoing through the speakerphone. Everyone in the room jumped. I placed my hand around my mouth as I was somewhat in disbelief. That single gunshot was followed by at least twenty other gunshots and two seconds after the gunshots ended, the loud sound of a dial tone filled the room.
Supreme turned and rammed his fist through one of the platinum album plaques that was hanging on the wall. The force of his blow was so strong that it put a huge hole in the wall. He then ran his hand down his face before cursing and storming out of the room.
“’Preme, them cats is fronting, ’Preme! They ain’t kill him!” Horse shouted. Horse didn’t want to let on to it, but with the way the muscles around his eyes appeared to be a little tighter, I could tell that he didn’t believe what he was saying. He knew that G-Baby had become a casualty of this hip-hop versus the Mafia war. And it would have to eat at him, knowing that he practically sanctioned G-Baby’s death by not giving in to the Calvinos demand that they return the three million dollars.
The room slowly started to empty out, and for the first time since I had been investigating Gun Clap and the Supreme Team, I can honestly say that it was the first appearance of humbleness that I’d seen displayed by any of the Gun Clap and Supreme Team crew members. Surprisingly there was no gangsta talk about strapping up and going back at the Calvinos. And I think that was because instinctively they knew that they were fighting a war that they were losing, and they were also fighting a war that it seemed like they wouldn’t win.
Horse had to keep up the image of the tough leader. He didn’t wanna relent for one second. But after Trina and I had sat with Horse and a few other Gun Clap employees for forty-five minutes waiting for the Calvinos to call back and prove to Horse that they had indeed just been bluffing, we decided to leave.
I got up and walked over to Horse and rubbed his back with my right hand while giving him a kiss on the cheek. I made sure that I didn’t say a word, because nothing that I could say at that point would have been appropriate.
Trina and I walked out and made our way to the elevator, as I wondered to myself just how long Horse would sit there and wait for a phone call from the Calvinos. A phone call that he would never receive.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Two days after G-Baby had been kidnapped, Horse was still in denial about his death. His denial lasted until G-Baby’s naked bullet-hole-riddled body was found dumped in the street right near Rucker Park.
G-Baby’s hands had both been chopped off. And while he himself had not personally stolen the Calvinos three million dollars, everyone knew that his hands being chopped off were the Calvinos way of indicating that his death had occurred as the result of thievery.
The network news stations and newspapers were having an absolute field day with all that had been going on. They chronicled the events that had led up to the death of rival rapper Frank Nitty. They reported and recapped the violent deaths of Gun Clap rappers S&S and Tech-9. They showed all of the different memorial services that had been held for the recent fallen soldiers in hip-hop, as well as commenting on what they labeled Horse’s crocodile tears.
But with the recent shooting of Paulie Calvino’s home, followed by Gun Clap’s dis record of the Mafia, and the shootings at Rucker park and then G-Baby’s kidnapping and death, the media seriously portrayed the alleged escalating war between the Calvinos and Gun Clap Records.
One reporter from Channel Four News in New York was actually the most accurate with his reasoning that a war was in fact in progress even though both warring sides continually dismissed such rumors.
In his ten-minute segment on the news, the reporter showed Angela Calvino and what was to be the next big thing in rap music, the rapper White Lines happily gloating at a press conference together with Horse. The reporter asked very sensible rhetorical questions such as: “If there wasn’t a war, why was it that Gun Clap Records had dropped White Lines from their roster of artists after recently signing him to a million-dollar deal and not even releasing an album for him?” “Why had the socialite Angela Calvino suddenly disappeared off the face of the earth?” He went on to answer those questions, and for the most part he was right. For example, no one had been able to get in contact with Angela, and while we knew that she had been shipped off to Florida, the reporter stated that, “Clearly she must have been shipped to Florida and was being kept secluded from everyone so that she would not be a pawn in the war and suffer the same fate as G-Baby.”
The reporter did, however, end his report by saying that in the midst of all that had been going on, Gun Clap was still
smiling at the end of the day, no matter how many crocodile tears came from the company’s employees. And that was because of the phenomenal amount of records that had been sold by Gun Clap since the war had started. He mentioned how in the week following the release of the dis record, the single had sold close to two million copies and was the most requested song throughout the country. All of Gun Clap’s artists had seen a dramatic rise in record sales. But he ended his report by asking the question, “How many more people would become casualties of this war and what would it take to settle the war?” He answered his last question by saying his sources were telling him that it would take at least three million dollars to end the war and that on the 11 P.M. version of the news, he would explain just how the three-million-dollar figure had supposedly come about.
* * *
As the news report went off I couldn’t help but think how this whole hip-hop marrying the mob idea that I had constructed was totally going in a direction than I could have never envisioned. I knew that more bodies would fall if I personally didn’t step in and put an end to the whole thing. The Bureau and I just needed something else a bit more solid to nail Paulie Calvino Sr. to the wall. Because so far, Paulie Calvino Sr., being the smart mobster that he was, had totally kept himself clear of the radar in terms of being on tape saying incriminating things.
Fortunately for me—and I say that it had to be an act of God—I saw some light at the end of the tunnel. That light came from a phone call that I received with a 305 area code. The call was from Angela and although she had been missing in action she definitely had not lost her arrogant ways.
“Hello?” I said with a curious tone to my voice, as I did not recognize the number.
“Jessica, you fucking bitch!” the person on the other end said to me.
“Okaaay. And hello to you too,” I sarcastically responded. “Who is this?” I asked.
“Jessica, you know exactly who this is. This is Angela! How could you let Horse use your girls in a video that is mocking me and making me look like some kind of slut?” Angela vented.