by Carl Weber
It was at that moment that he decided to look up to see exactly who had broken his winning streak. I slid back my hood, and he boldly removed my sunglasses. He recognized me immediately, and his eyes widened in terror.
“Jamaica John.” I smiled at him.
“Fuckin’ Duncan,” he hissed.
He tried to slide his chair back and reach into his pocket, but his belly was so big that it got caught on the edge of the table, shaking it and almost causing it to flip over. He stumbled back down into his seat, looking around.
“Looking for your men? My guys took them for a ride. You’ll find them over by Yankee Stadium,” Orlando said as he reached around him from behind and took out his gun.
“What de fuck you want, Vegas?” He looked scared but tried to hide it.
“I wouldn’t take that tone with me, John. I’m really not in the mood. Now, I need some information, and you’re going to give it to me.”
“I no got no information fo’ ya. Sorry,” he said.
Orlando kicked the leg of his chair, causing him to fall to the ground. I got up and stood over him. “Get your fat ass up.”
Jamaica John struggled, and I looked over at my brother, who was trying not to laugh. I almost felt bad for him as he used the folding chair to lean on as he pushed his large body off the ground.
“Where is—”
“I don’t know nothin’,” John insisted before I could even get the name out.
“I haven’t even told you what I want.”
“Whatever it is, I don’t know shit.”
“Oh, you know.” I sighed. “Now, tell me, where the fuck is my uncle?”
A strange look came across his face. “Your uncle?”
“Yeah, you thought I was gonna ask about your fucking boss, Vinnie Dash. I know he’s in Tivoli Gardens, so I ain’t thinking about his ass right now, John. Right now I’m more concerned with the whereabouts of my uncle Larry.”
“Why would I know where he is?” John asked.
“Because I know he’s been working with Vinnie, and I know that you’re the one who’s been helping him.”
Once again John’s eyes grew wide. “No, I ain’t—”
“Listen, before you lie to me again, I need you to know we talked with your nephew, Gus. He’s pretty much filled us in on everything.”
“Dat is a lie. My nephew is no snitch.” John glared at me.
“Really? Well, he told the feds all about how you set up the meeting with Vinnie and Larry and arranged for him to fly Larry and his sons over to Jamaica and back with a whole bunch of dope. Now, we can do this one of two ways: one, I can haul your fat ass over to the feds, or two, I’m sure you know all about the bounty on my uncle’s head right now.”
John looked even more confused. “What are you saying?”
“Man, I told you to just offer that reward to Gus. We’re wasting our time with this dude,” Orlando yelled.
I raised my hand and played my part in our good cop/bad cop exchange. “Hold on a minute, O. Let the man at least answer us.” Looking at Jamaica John, I asked, “What’s it gonna be?”
“Look, Vegas, I don’t know where ya uncle is at. Dat’s de truth, mon. De numba I had fo’ him is not workin’ no mo’.” John shrugged, but I swear I could see him trembling beneath all that fat.
“But he will call you eventually.” I pulled out a chair and sat directly in front of him, looked him in the eye, and said, “Fine. You don’t know where my uncle is. But you do know how the hell Vinnie got all that dope he sold him. Let’s talk about that.”
London
41
We had been staked out at a small outdoor cafe for almost two hours. I was on my third cappuccino, and Daryl was on his fourth cup of tea. The cafe was located directly across the street from the building where Uncle Larry and Vinnie had met up. Daryl had decided that returning to the forbidden neighborhood Vinnie disappeared into would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. The only other lead we had was to return to the downtown building in hopes that we would see him again. Now that our team had made their way from Negril to Kingston, we set up around-the-clock surveillance of the building. As luck would have it, just as our shift started, Daryl and I spotted the same yellow Lamborghini that Vinnie had been driving, parked in the building’s lot. Instead of going inside in search of him, we sat at the coffee shop and waited for him to come out.
“I’m not gonna lie. I forgot how good we were together,” I said to Daryl. My body was still feeling the effects of round two this morning.
“Yeah, we’ve always had crazy chemistry. I think we both know that.” He reached across the table and covered my hand with his. “Look, I ain’t trying to mess this up right now, because we’re both enjoying it, but you do know that eventually we have to go home.”
I nodded sadly. “I don’t wanna think about that.”
“Neither do I, but—”
I touched my finger to his lips. “Sssshhhh. You said you didn’t want to mess it up.”
His emotion-filled eyes met mine. “This is a very dangerous game we’re playing.”
His words sank in, and that warm, satisfying sense of contentment that I’d felt since waking up in his arms began to fade. My eyes darted from his face back to the building in an effort to avoid his stare.
“Oh, wow, Daryl. Vinnie’s walking out the door. We’ve gotta go.” I stood up and placed some money on the table.
We quickly made our way back to the rental car as inconspicuously as possible. Vinnie pulled out of the parking lot, followed by another dark-tinted SUV, and we eased behind them. Daryl continued to maintain a loose tail.
“He’s headed back to Tivoli Gardens,” Daryl said.
“I don’t care if he’s headed to the moon. Just don’t lose him.” We had just crossed over into the neighborhood when a large box truck suddenly reversed from an alley and stopped in the middle of the road, preventing us from going any farther.
“What the fuck is he doing?” I said, unable to see around it. “Blow the horn.”
“Get the fuck out of the way!” Daryl yelled as he leaned on the horn.
A loud rapping on the driver’s side window startled both of us. Daryl lowered the window slightly so that he could hear the tall, scary-looking guy with shoulder-length dreadlocks hovering next to the car. I couldn’t help but notice the long machete bat he was swinging back and forth in his hand.
“Are ya lost, mon?” he asked. That’s when I noticed three other machete-wielding men on my side of the car.
“Nah, man, we’re not lost. We’re tourists, and we just happened to make a wrong turn,” Daryl told him. I touched Daryl’s arms as a small group of six or seven men came and stood beside the one holding the bat. Now there were a total of ten men surrounding the car.
“Dat mean ya lost. Let me help ya, mon. De way out is dat way, and dat’s de only way you should be headin’. Ya understand?” He pointed the machete in the same direction we had come from.
“That way. Got it,” Daryl said, putting the car in reverse and turning around.
“We’re leaving?” I asked him.
“Yep.”
“Are we gonna come back later tonight?”
“Not unless we have a death wish. This is not a place where we wanna get caught after dark.”
LC
42
I stepped out of the back of the SUV, along with Orlando, Junior, and Harris. We were then followed into a sleek Canal Street office building by my four bodyguards.
“LC Duncan to see Jun Cheng. He should be expecting me,” I told the young woman sitting at the reception desk.
“One moment, Mr. Duncan. You may have a seat over there if you’d like.” She pointed to the waiting area.
“I’ll stand and wait here.”
She picked up the phone and announced us to whomever was on the other end, then said, “You can follow me this way.”
I ordered the bodyguards to sit tight as the rest of us followed the woman down a
long corridor, and she opened the door to a massive office, where Jun Cheng sat in an oversized chair. Two of Cheng’s men were positioned near the door, while two other men stood on both sides of him.
“Jun Cheng.” I nodded at him.
His face was emotionless as he stared at me silently, causing me to wonder if he was going to greet us. Finally, after a few seconds, he stood and said, “Mr. Duncan, I was expecting Vegas to be with you.”
“These are my sons, Orlando and Junior. I think you know my son-in-law, Harris, who is our attorney.”
Without offering his hand, he said, “You gentlemen may have a seat.”
I waited until everyone was seated before I spoke. “Jun, your family has known me for a long time, and I wanted to make sure you knew I had nothing to do with your father’s and uncle’s deaths.”
“That is what Vegas tells me, but I must admit, I find it hard to believe that your brother killed them without your knowledge.”
“I can understand your point of view, and if I were you, I might come to the same conclusion, which is why I wanted to clear the air and bring you proof of my innocence.” I gestured to Harris, who opened his briefcase and handed Jun a folder.
“My brother has been in a mental hospital for almost fifteen years,” I explained as he thumbed through the folder. “Nine months ago, they somehow miraculously deemed him competent and released him without my knowledge or consent.”
Neither Jun nor his associates seemed impressed, until I ripped open my shirt dramatically, revealing the scars from the bullets that had been removed from my chest. “He then came to my place of business and shot me three times.” Harris handed him another folder with my medical records. “I should have been his first victim, not your loved ones.”
Jun sat back in his chair, contemplating my words. “I’d heard you were shot. My father even came to visit you; although, like me, I’m sure he did not know it was your brother who shot you.” Jun handed the paperwork back to Harris. “I’m glad you came by to explain this. It has helped to stop what could have been an uneasy conflict between us.” The men beside him stepped back a fraction of an inch, and the tension in the air came down a notch.
“Well, I’m glad to hear that,” I said. “If you didn’t know, we’ve put a sizable bounty on my brother’s head.”
“We did know. It’s the only reason we were willing to meet with you.” He leaned forward, finally offering his hand. “Thank you for coming.”
I grasped his hand firmly. “I have something else for you to see.”
Orlando took out his phone and showed Jun the video.
“My brother and his sons are the men on the right in the video. The man on the left is—”
“Vinnie Dash,” he said, finishing my sentence. “Why is your brother with Vinnie Dash?” Jun looked over at me, and I could see his anger growing. “Did Vinnie have something to do with my father’s death?”
“We don’t know that, but we do know that Vinnie has supplied him with enough heroin to make a deal with the Dominicans and a few of our best customers,” Orlando told him. “Well over a hundred kilos.”
“Where would Vinnie Dash get that much product?” Jun asked with a frown.
“According to our sources, it’s yours,” Orlando said.
“How? We haven’t provided him with any product.” Jun glanced at his associates curiously.
“Are you missing any product?” Orlando asked.
Jun motioned toward the man on his right, and when he leaned down, the two began whispering in their native language.
“We did have a container on a freighter that was lost in the recent hurricane. It was being shipped to Puerto Rico. My father wrote if off as a casualty of business, but perhaps it wasn’t,” Jun fumed.
Orlando informed him, “From what we’ve been told, that container you’re talking about ain’t at the bottom of the ocean. It somehow turned up at a container terminal in Kingston.”
Jun again motioned for the man on his right and whispered something. This time, the man left the room. “How do we know that container was ours?”
Orlando reached into his pocket and pulled out two small vials, which he placed on the glass coffee table in front of us. “You probably don’t know this, but I am a chemist and a licensed pharmacist. These are samples of heroin: one we got from a Dominican street dealer yesterday, and the other from one of your associates last night. I tested them, and the chemical breakdown of both are exactly the same. There’s no mistaking that the dope my uncle got from Vinnie belongs to you.”
Jun stared at the two vials sitting on the table, then looked up at me.
“He knows what he’s talking about, Jun. It cost me a fortune to put him through pharmacy school, and he graduated at the top of his class.” I chuckled, attempting to lighten the mood. It didn’t work, because now Jun looked like he was ready to rip someone’s head off. Actually, that wasn’t a bad thing, because I could help him direct his anger right where we needed it.
“Obviously, you didn’t come here unprepared. What do you have in mind?” Jun asked.
“We have a plan that I’m sure you will find beneficial to both of us. Harris and I have another meeting to attend. Orlando will stay here and give you the details,” I said as I stood. “Thank you.”
When we exited the building and were in the car, Harris turned to me and said, “Are you crazy? You’re going to leave Orlando by himself to handle something like this? LC, we have to make sure nothing goes wrong. You should have stayed.”
“Calm down, Harris. Orlando can handle this, and Junior’s there. Me and you have bigger fish to fry right now.”
“We do?” Harris replied, looking confused and a little scared.
Donna
43
“Sasha, dammit! Stop acting like a child and answer the phone!” I shouted into my cell as I pulled into my driveway. I’d been calling and texting my bratty daughter nonstop ever since the charity auction she’d stomped out of, but she wouldn’t answer. I was starting to think she’d blocked me, which was no way to treat your mother, no matter how mad you are at her. Hell, for all she knew, this could be the last call I ever made—or worse, I could be dead in the morning. And all this because I’d outbid her on some doctor who could barely keep it up.
After leaving a scolding message, I took out the endless number of shopping bags I had managed to collect after my trip to Roosevelt Field Mall, and headed toward the house. I stepped inside my townhome, the heels of my Oscar de la Renta pumps clicking on the marble floor as I walked the short distance to the alarm system keypad. I didn’t hear the beeping noise that normally came from the wall panel, and when I reached it, I saw that the alarm had been deactivated. I could have sworn I turned the alarm on when I left the house that afternoon, but I chalked it up to a senior moment. Then suddenly, I stopped, sensing that there was movement in the house and I wasn’t alone.
“Sasha?” I called out. Maybe she’d decided to grace me with her presence, I thought for a second, but as I slowly moved into the den to investigate, my heart seized with fear.
“Who the hell are you? What the hell are you doing in my home?” I gasped, backing away from a man I’d never seen before, only to spot another man standing on the opposite side of the room. I dropped the shopping bags and clutched my expensive purse against my chest with both hands. No way was I giving up my shit. “What do you want?”
Neither of them said a word as they began moving toward me. Fuck! Was I about to die? No! I was a survivor. No way was I going to lose my life over shit that could be replaced. I held my handbag out toward them.
“You want money? Here, take my purse. There’s probably a thousand dollars in there and fifteen credit cards. The purse itself is worth four thousand dollars.”
Instead of taking it from my hands, the two men just crept closer, staring at me. That’s when I realized maybe it wasn’t money they were after.
“Please, please don’t rape me,” I begged them. “My keys are
in the purse. You can take my car too. It’s the Maserati parked right out front.”
Then, the sound of laughter came from the doorway leading into the dining room. I looked over to see a face I hadn’t seen in years. This time, I dropped the purse in the middle of the floor.
“Oh my God, if you could see your face,” he said, still laughing.
“Larry, you fucking bastard, where the hell did you come from?” I stood staring at my ex-brother-in-law as hard as the two strange men had been staring at me. I hadn’t seen Larry in almost eighteen years. As a matter of fact, his brother Lou and I were still together, and Sasha was just a toddler at the time. “And how did you get into my house?”
“The front door. You know I’ve always been resourceful. I picked the lock.”
Okay, that answered one question, but how the hell did he manage to get past a state-of-the-art burglar alarm system?
“And you and Lou always used Sasha’s birthday as your alarm code,” he said, answering the question I hadn’t voiced out loud. He smiled as he walked over and tried to give me a hug that I did not reciprocate. “How are you, Donna? Now, you can believe it or not, but I missed you.”
“I thought you were . . .”
I didn’t want to say it, so he said it for me. “In the nuthouse?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Well, yeah. That’s what I was told. They said you went bonkers.”
“From who? LC?”
“No, Lou told me a few years before he died.”
“So, what’s up, Donna? You don’t look happy to see me,” Larry said, sounding like this was just a normal social call instead of the bizarre break-in that it was.
“I’m not used to finding uninvited guests in my house, Larry,” I said, not hiding my annoyance. Now that I wasn’t as scared, my attitude was back in full force. “And who the fuck are these scary-ass guys?” I glanced over at the two men.