After two sleepless nights of weighing the pros and cons of doing business with DeSosa, Easy finally had decided he would strap up and at least meet the man in person. He would hear the man out; and if DeSosa even hinted at taking over Easy’s spots, the meeting would be over before the shit even started.
In the meantime, Easy remained cautious with whom he shared his news. He knew better than to blab his mouth to any of the jealous dudes he worked around on the streets. In fact, there was only one person Easy trusted, aside from Corine, and that was Rock Barton.
Easy appeared in DeSosa’s Spanish Harlem club office. His baby face was clear of blemishes, wrinkles or worry. The budding goatee he grew was the only indication that he was even old enough to drive. Easy stood a gangly six foot two inches; his rail-thin frame was covered in his best digs. He was decked out in a butter-soft leather blazer, cashmere mock neck sweater, Potenza slacks and his first pair of suede Salvatore Ferragamo loafers. A lone gold crucifix with a ruby crown at the top sat in the middle of Easy’s chest, a diamond pinkie ring graced his left pinkie. His gaudy way of dressing screamed drug dealer or pimp. This was something his friend Rock had been lecturing him to change lately.
“Sit down, Easy,” DeSosa instructed in his thick accent.
Easy nodded respectfully and took a seat. Easy’s heart hammered and his palms were soaking wet. He splayed them open, flat on his pants legs, and rubbed them dry.
DeSosa’s style was simple. No jewelry, no flashy clothes, just a very regal presence that said, I’m in charge. DeSosa stubbed out his customary cigar and leveled Easy with a look.
“I selected you for my own reasons,” DeSosa began. He bombarded Easy with a series of questions; within an hour they were speaking fluidly and comfortably.
Easy felt a great amount of respect for DeSosa. He felt like DeSosa was a kindred spirit, someone whom Easy had known his entire life. Easy and DeSosa built their relationship on mutual respect and on a common goal—getting rich fast.
DeSosa educated Easy on the business of marketing mass quantities of crack cocaine at prices that would guarantee sales at lightning speed. In weeks Easy became the man to see in Brooklyn. Everybody knew he was pushing weight and he was offering a fair price for his product. Soon Easy’s drug operation grew, and he became one of the biggest crack cocaine distributors in New York City.
Rolando DeSosa was his lone supplier. It was like a match made in heaven. At first, Easy was just getting eight ounces or so at a time, worth about $15,000. But as Easy’s drug empire expanded, he began putting in orders for kilos’ worth of crack cocaine, worth tens of millions of dollars. Easy never asked DeSosa any questions about his access to such vast quantities of product. That was one of the reasons his relationship with DeSosa worked so well. DeSosa did the supplying and Easy met the demands on the street—no questions asked.
Before long, Easy became a certified kingpin, with over a dozen crack houses in Brooklyn, churning out $30,000 to $50,000 a day in profits. His network of drug dealers sold so many crack rocks daily that Easy gained as many enemies as he did loyal customers.
Easy was making money hand over fist. Little did he know that the millions he made could be directly attributed to the CIA and DEA operatives who supplied DeSosa with unlimited amounts of cocaine. Easy was a boy from the hood—a squirrel trying to get a nut; DeSosa was fulfilling his agreement with the government and the Reagan administration. It all worked like a well-oiled machine.
Their business relationship soon evolved into a personal one. DeSosa often invited Easy to break bread with him and his family, and sometimes DeSosa even dropped by the Hardaway house for a social call.
Detective Moore had been watching Easy and DeSosa’s relationship progress. He was waiting for the day he could shake DeSosa’s hand and thank him for blowing off the head of the man who’d destroyed his daughter’s life. He was furious with DeSosa for falling back on his word.
“You fucking lied to me! We had a deal!” Moore had screamed when he stormed into DeSosa’s new club, Baile Caliente, gun in hand, badge in the other. He was a man possessed. He didn’t get very far before he was hemmed up by DeSosa’s henchmen.
“You’re a fucking liar, DeSosa ... after all I did for you! All of the times I saved your ass!” Moore strained against the stronghold he was placed in, his veins cording against his skin.
DeSosa was very calm; his smug demeanor infuriated the detective even more.
“Detective, I think you have your son-in-law all wrong. You should try to get to know him. He is a good, loyal kid,” DeSosa said, blowing a smoke ring in Moore’s direction. “As for what you’ve done for me? I don’t think you would want me to tell your chief what I’ve done for you over the years. I’m sure you didn’t claim those bags of cash on your taxes,” DeSosa countered, following up.
Moore’s frustration mounted. He had watched his daughter run off with a known drug dealer, get herself pregnant and then marry the bastard. He hadn’t even seen or held his own grandchildren. DeSosa had promised he would take Easy out. But what had he done but empower the man by supplying him with endless amounts of product? Now Easy was not only rich, but impossibly powerful, which placed his daughter and grandchild in even greater danger.
Detective Moore cursed DeSosa out and vowed that this wouldn’t be the last time DeSosa or Easy heard from him.
“I will get my daughter out of this lifestyle if it’s the last thing that I fucking do! Even if it means bringing you to your knees too,” Moore threatened.
DeSosa had laughed at the peon detective. He wielded no power compared to the people DeSosa was involved with.
Shortly after Detective Moore’s tirade and threats, the local police suddenly became very interested in one Eric “Easy” Hardaway and his associates. In a task force led by Moore, the NYPD became dedicated to putting Easy and his counterparts out of the crack cocaine business.
The first time they attempted to arrest Easy, they didn’t have enough evidence to keep him detained. Following that, prosecutors from New York approached Easy and tried to get him to become a government informant. Easy had scoffed at their offer. He had laughed uproariously and told them to kiss his ass and speak to his lawyer; he was no snitch, he’d told them.
Those fucks actually thought he would talk to them about where the loads of cocaine they saw hitting the streets was coming from. Easy immediately reported this run-in with the NYPD to DeSosa. Needless to say, the NYPD’s operation was short-lived. The locals had unwittingly stumbled into CIA territory, jeopardizing Operation Easy In, but not for long.
When Grayson Stokes swept through the NYPD Brooklyn South Task Force Office, he left captains shuddering in his wake. Detective Moore was forced to turn in his badge and shield; he became known throughout the law enforcement community as the detective who’d made the biggest drug fuckup in New York’s history. He went home that night, placed his personal weapon between his lips and blew off his head.
Corine heard the report of her father’s suicide from the eleven o’clock news. She never realized that her father’s quest to destroy her husband, and to get his baby girl back, was ultimately the cause of his own demise.
Easy comforted Corine for the days and weeks that followed her father’s suicide. Easy had held her, telling her it would be all right and that it was not her fault. But something about Moore’s death had unsettled Easy. He’d known the man to be a very proud and religious person; he was a man who would never have taken his own life.
Easy consulted Rock about his need to investigate Moore’s death. From a clean-cut ex-Marine, to an ex-CIA cleaner, to a drug kingpin hit man, Rock had no clue what he’d stepped into, until it was too late. All he wanted to do was live a quiet, circumspect life. But he also felt very loyal to Easy and would do anything to help his friend; loyalty was a trait ingrained in Rock’s DNA.
Rock immediately set out to discover as much information as possible about the circumstances surrounding Moore’s suicide. Rock briefed Easy i
n person about the information he came across. Only once had they spoken over the phone about the information Rock had learned about the CIA’s involvement with DeSosa.
Rock regretted this slipup until the day he died.
The CIA had been tapping all of Easy’s phones. Rock’s revelation about the CIA’s plans to distribute crack cocaine in poor neighborhoods had raised red flags.
Rock, of course, had tried talking Easy out of the game. Unwittingly, Easy had been a pawn of the government, helping to kill off his own people. Rock thought the decision would be a no-brainer.
Easy had been very unsettled with the information Rock had provided him with, but there was no easy and quick way out. To Rock’s great dismay, he continued with the farce. After all, they both were aware that the only quick and sure way out of the game was through death. Neither was prepared for that inevitability. Nevertheless, Rock vowed to protect Easy, no matter what.
Naturally, Grayson Stokes was not pleased to hear that Rock Barton, one of his debriefed cleaners, was smack-dab in the middle of Operation Easy In. Rock served as the catalyst for the CIA’s decision to turn Rolando DeSosa against Easy Hardaway. They needed a scapegoat for the mayhem that would ensue when DeSosa turned against his protégé.
Stokes set about planting seeds of doubt in DeSosa’s head about Hardaway’s allegiance to him. When Stokes presented DeSosa with pictures that he’d taken of the NYPD hauling Easy into the precinct, DeSosa quickly wrote Easy off as a traitor. Stokes convinced DeSosa that Easy had turned government informant.
Easy’s latest discussions with DeSosa about leaving the game was the final nail in his coffin. Easy Hardaway had reneged on his deal, and for that he must be eliminated.
DeSosa sentenced Hardaway to the worst sort of death—death by the hands of his oldest son, his name-sake Eric Junior. Where DeSosa was from, a man killed by his own offspring let people know he was the lowest of the low, the scum of the earth. In DeSosa’s mind traitors like Easy were deserving of such a fate.
Chapter 12
Sins of a Father
Rolando DeSosa slammed his fists down on his desk until the sides of his hands went numb. He made an animalistic moaning sound, like he’d been mortally wounded. Pain was etched in every worry line on his face. His rage was palpable, and everybody in the room felt like it was alive—a big ugly monster standing in the middle of the room.
Arellio stood up to remove the pictures from his father’s desk. He was kicking himself now for giving them to his father, but he didn’t know what else to do, whom he should turn to. He reached out to grab the photos, but DeSosa came down on his hand, hard. He gave Arellio a look that would have felled a small creature. Arellio snatched his hand back and sighed. He thought it morbid that his ailing father wanted to stare at the disfigured and depraved photographs of his brother.
“Papi, let me take them away,” Arellio whispered, trying to reach out to his father. “We will get whoever is responsible for this,” Arellio consoled, stepping around the desk and clapping his hand on his father’s shoulder.
DeSosa let his head hang low. Arellio could hear a cry bubbling up from deep inside his father’s chest. He had never seen his father so broken down; it was killing him to see his father in this condition.
Rolando DeSosa hadn’t cried since he was a boy in the Dominican Republic and his mother had been shot during an uprising in the small, poor ghetto where he had grown up. He’d cried for what seemed like an eternity over his mother’s dead body inside their makeshift tin-roofed home. For seven days he stood by her decomposing body, along with his little brother, and prayed for a miracle that would bring his mother back to life.
DeSosa had become hardened by the event and had never shed tears for anybody since. But today the tears came and they could not be stopped. He wailed for his second-born child. Family meant the world to DeSosa. Someone would pay for his son’s death. Revenge was high on DeSosa’s list of rules to live by. If people went around committing evils without any consequences for their actions, the world would be an inhospitable place for everyone.
“It had to be Junior,” Arellio said, breaking the silence, squeezing his father’s shoulder in commiseration. “He was the only person ... the only one who you recently had a problem with. We have to find him and fuckin’ destroy him.” He hoped that by steering his father toward avenging his brother’s untimely death, he could bring him out of his melancholy state.
“No,” DeSosa whispered, his voice cracking like a woman’s.
Arellio stepped from behind his father and looked at him oddly. “Papi, don’t tell me no. You can’t protect these fuckin’ bastards. I know Junior was the one who did this shit... . There’s nobody else... .” Arellio was decisively protesting his father’s dismissal; his eyes were ablaze with rage.
“No!” DeSosa snapped once more; his aching hands were clenched tightly in front of him. The veins in his neck pulsed dangerously close to the surface.
Arellio visibly shuddered at his father’s grating, high-pitched shout.
“I took care of Junior,” DeSosa whispered regretfully. “But it wasn’t him. I knew it wasn’t him. I thought he was lying to me, so I put Phil on him. Junior is taken care of, but this—this was not his doing. He didn’t have the heart or the balls,” DeSosa was saying, shaking his head as if he had all the regrets in the world sitting on his shoulders.
Arellio fell back onto an empty chair like the wind had been knocked out of him. “But who else could it have been? Who would do that to him, Papi?” Arellio asked. He could not fathom who would commit such a heinous act on his brother, who everyone knew was harmless, soft even.
“It was somebody who knew him, Papi. Whoever it was, they followed him,” Arellio started, his voice cracking. He could not believe his poor, unsuspecting younger brother had gotten caught out there like that. The story would be all over the news. Their family would be humiliated.
DeSosa was rocking now; it was a habit he’d picked up since he’d been confined to a wheelchair. He heard his son rambling on about the possible suspects, but DeSosa wasn’t really listening. There was one possible suspect that neither of them had discussed.
“It is her,” DeSosa admitted in an almost inaudible whisper. “She came back for us, once and for all. She was here... . I can feel it,” he wailed, inhaling a shaky breath.
One of his men had reported that the nanny had been spotted snooping around in his office. DeSosa had waved it off. He had met the nanny and believed her to be a harmless presence in his home. But now he saw the nanny in a new light—as a skillful, crafty and dangerous individual. She had infiltrated his home under false pretenses. She’d been right under his nose the entire time, laughing at them and plotting their downfall.
“Who, Papi? What are you talking about? You’re talking crazy... . You think a woman killed Guillermo?” Arellio asked in rapid succession. In his mind there was no way a woman could have inflicted that degree of damage on his brother. “Papi ... answer me. What are you talking about?” he pressed.
DeSosa couldn’t even look at his son. His father never hung his head for anything; he had too much pride for that. Arellio could feel his blood pressure rising with every minute that passed. He wanted to shake the answers out of his father, but he knew his emotional and physical state was already on very shaky ground.
“Papi, what did you do? What do you know?” Arellio raised his voice and placed both of his hands flat on the front of DeSosa’s desk.
DeSosa could hear his son’s labored breaths exit his flaring nostrils. He had no choice but to come clean and tell Arellio everything.
“Everybody out!” DeSosa came to life with renewed vigor. All of his men looked at him strangely. He hadn’t been left without bodyguards in years, even when he visited with his own children. “I said get the fuck out! Everybody out!” he barked again, a feral look in his eyes. “I need to speak with my son,” DeSosa whispered. His voice went high, then lowered like a wave at high tide.
His bodyguards and other workers filed out of the room.
“Sit down, Arellio,” DeSosa said gravely, nodding toward the chair.
Arellio’s chest felt heavy with dread as he sat on the chair.
“I have to tell you everything. It may mean the difference between your life and your death. I’ve already lost one son because of my sins. I don’t want to lose you as well,” DeSosa revealed. That was the closest DeSosa had ever come to saying “I love you” to his son.
DeSosa closed his eyes and started at the beginning. Confession was good for the soul, or so they said. He needed to prepare his son for what was surely to come. He needed to give him as much information about the lady assassin as he had. The more he knew, the better chance he had of coming out alive in the end.
New York, 2006
Grayson Stokes dropped the envelope on DeSosa’s lap. He was flustered that his word wasn’t enough.
“I guess I have to make you a believer, huh, DeSosa?” Stokes chuckled while he waited for DeSosa to spill out the contents.
DeSosa jutted his jaw. He didn’t care for Stokes. In fact, he hated the ground Stokes walked on. But DeSosa realized that Stokes and the CIA owned him now. It was either get down or lay down, when it came to the government spooks. DeSosa shook out the contents of the package. It only took him a few seconds to realize what he was looking at. His eyebrows shot up involuntarily at the sight. It was too late to try to put on a poker face; Stokes had already taken notice of his reaction.
“Now do you believe it?” Stokes asked, watching DeSosa’s breathing pick up speed. “I don’t have to lie to you ... ever,” Stokes said triumphantly, smirking.
DeSosa shuffled the pictures; he studied each one separately, hoping his eyes were deceiving him. His hopes were dashed. DeSosa’s eyes bugged out when he examined a close-up photo of Easy, standing with his hands shoved into his pockets and talking to two detectives. The next shot was of Easy looking around suspiciously, like he was afraid he was being watched. All of these poses were the signs of a police informant. The sight sent a wave of stabbing cramps through DeSosa’s lower abdomen.
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