Antebellum

  4

  Rose, Loen, and Mytino traveled around a lot, but their main offices were located in Chicago. Loen and Rose had grown up in Chicago, and they’d met Mytino at the University of Illinois. When they dropped out to form Cosmos Records, they started out in Loen’s basement, and then moved into a run-down office space on the outskirts of the city. As Cosmos grew, so did their venues, until they finally decided to buy a building in the Business district and make it their headquarters. They had satellite offices in Miami and Los Angeles, but all of the major decisions came from an extravagant structure in Chicago’s Loop.

  Luckily, it was only about ten minutes away from the television studio where I’d almost been shot.

  The lobby looked like an upscale piano bar minus the alcohol and piano. The furniture was all postmodern and perfectly matched the dark marble floors. There were 50-inch, high-definition televisions on either end of the space, and a glass waterfall that took up most of the west wall. Each of the twenty-three floors above the lobby were just as exquisite and each dealt with a different aspect of Cosmos Records’ business. The second floor was dedicated to marketing and retail. The ninth was for production. The eleventh floor was where all the lawyers’ offices were, and the twentieth was dedicated to staff meetings. I, as well as most of the other employees, had been on every floor up to the twentieth. I had been in the building dozens of times and never knew the building went up any higher. As far as I was concerned, the building ended at the twentieth floor. The night that SaTia and I jumped out of a screeching Maybach and knocked over three security guards on our way in the building, I found out otherwise.

  “Where is Rose?” My manager slammed her hand down on the desk so hard that Lisa’s—the receptionist—stapler fell onto the floor. The security guards started after us once they’d gotten up, but one of them recognized me and signaled the other two to leave us alone.

  Lisa’s eyes were closed and she’d had headphones on when we’d burst through the door. She’d been mouthing her favorite Beyoncé song and had no idea what was going on until SaTia scared the beautiful nightmare out of her.

  “Wha...umm...what...what’s the matter?” Lisa fumbled to take the headphones off of her ears while trying to compose herself.

  “Just get Rose down here! No...you know what...just tell me where he is so we can see him!”

  “Umm...I’m so...I’m sorry...I don’t think Mr. Rose is here.”

  Adrenaline and fear will make you do some insane things. My crazed companion shot her hand across the desk and grabbed a handful of Lisa’s blouse before I could say a word.

  Truthfully, I couldn’t have stopped her if I tried. The sprint from the Maybach and through the guards to the front desk had left me feeling as if I was having an asthma attack. Now I was bent over with my hands on my knees.

  “I know he’s here!” SaTia had just about picked Lisa up off of her feet. She brought the receptionist close enough to her face so that they could feel each other’s breath. “I talked to him earlier, and he said he’d be here watching the interview. Now you get on the phone and you FIND OUT WHERE HE IS!”

  By this time I was standing up, and I saw Lisa’s face turn cue-ball white before a figure appeared in the shadow behind her.

  “Mr. Jenkins...Ms. Brooks...”

  I immediately recognized the Spanish accent. Carmen, Rose’s personal assistant, stepped out into the light. Her voice was firm yet sultry, and it was tailor-made for her body. She stood upright and proud, and was completely business-like, despite her blouse being slightly low and her skirt teasingly high.

  “Mr. Rose has instructed me to show you to his quarters.”

  We must have looked like we’d just stepped out of a tornado. SaTia’s makeup was smeared, her hair was all over the place, and part of her jacket was ripped. My chain had snapped at some point between the studio and here, and was hanging open around my neck like a dead snake. My Wizards jersey was turned around backward, and I’d lost one of my Jordans.

  Carmen brought a sense of calm back to the situation. SaTia released Lisa’s blouse and attempted to straighten her own hair. I turned my jersey around, took off my broken chain and stuffed it into my pocket.

  Lisa managed to calm herself down and not cry.

  SaTia had turned back into her usual self, and muttered an apology to the traumatized receptionist as we followed Carmen into an area of the lobby that neither of us had known was there. The way the space behind the receptionist’s desk was set up made it look as if there was just a wall, but in reality there was a long corridor that appeared to be a dead end. Carmen placed her finger on a groove in the wall. It miraculously lit up, and before we knew what was happening, opened up to a lavish secret elevator.

  Any other time, SaTia and I would have been amazed, but after barely escaping a gunman and a television-studio-turned-deathtrap, we weren’t really in the mood to be awestruck.

  As usual, my companion spoke for the both of us. “What the hell is this?”

  “It’s the elevator to Mr. Rose’s private quarters. He’s waiting for you.”

  Once we had stepped inside, Carmen pulled out a keycard and waved it in front of a blinking red sensor. There were three buttons to the left of the elevator door. One was marked with the letter L, one with R, and the last with M. Carmen hit the button marked R and then stepped out.

  “You’re not coming up with us?” SaTia wrinkled her forehead.

  “No. He wants to speak with you alone,” she said, standing motionless in front of us until the doors to the elevator closed.

  The universe paused for the eight seconds that it took to get to the twenty-second floor. My cohort was silent, and the soft ride of the cabin as it ascended the floors caused me to close my eyes and inhale deeply. When I exhaled, it was as if someone had calmly whispered in my ear.

  “Someone wanted you dead tonight.”

  I felt ice get stuck in my spinal cord. My heartbeat sped up and my chest struggled to expand. My breathing became audible.

  My sidekick turned to me just as my knees were getting weak. “Moe, are you okay?”

  By the time the elevator door opened, I was sitting on the floor with my head between my legs, panting like an overweight dog. SaTia was rubbing my back and telling me to calm down. When Rose saw us, he jumped up from his chair.

  “What the hell happened? He didn’t get hurt, did he?”

  “I think he’s having a panic attack...help me get him to the couch!”

  Rose ran over and grabbed my right arm as SaTia kept hold of my left, and together they dragged me over to the chaise that sat by the window.

  If I hadn’t felt like I was dying, I’m sure I would’ve noticed the penthouse suite I was in. It was one whole floor of a twenty-three-story building. The only walls in the space were the four that made up the perimeter of the room. It looked like an indoor football field, with Oriental carpet instead of turf and with elaborate tapestries covering most of the space. A huge marble desk sat at the front of the room with a touch-screen HD monitor on it. Two huge oil paintings seemed to watch over the desk like bodyguards on either side, and sitting in the middle of the room, in direct line of sight from the desk, was a huge, white marble sculpture of Napoleon Bonaparte. On the east side of the room there was a Jacuzzi made of the same dark marble as the desk, and a king-sized abaca bed made up with silk linens. On the west side there were nine 62-inch, flat-screen plasma televisions. They were set up on the wall in rows and columns of threes, so that together they formed one huge rectangle. Rose could either watch the one of the televisions in the rectangle, or have the entire group form one huge picture.

  As of now, all of the screens came together to form an image of an attractive woman reporting in front of the Phil Winters’ studio building. The headline “Gunman Targets Rapper” ran across the bottom of the screen, while “Breaking News!” flashed in big, bold letters across at the top.

  “Put your head between your legs again, Moe. It might help.”

/>   SaTia spoke softly, but couldn’t hide the worry in her voice. I sat on the chaise between her and Rose, wheezing like a chain-smoker on a treadmill. I bowed my head and grabbed both of my ankles to try and get some relief.

  “Ms. Brooks, for the love of God, what happened tonight? One second Moe’s having a great interview, and the next there’s gunshots going off and the footage is cut.”

  “There was a man in the audience with a gun,” she said while rubbing my back. “He took a shot at Moe. The guys tackled him before he could do anything else, but I think Henry was hit.”

  “Do you think this has anything to do with P. Silenzas?”

  SaTia jerked and stared thumbtacks at Rose from her eyes. It was as if someone had given her a booster shot of resentment. “What are you, some kind of idiot? Of course this has to do with P. Silenzas! This has everything to do with those fools! I told you in the beginning—people like them don’t play! They don’t have the same concept of right and wrong as you and I do! But all you care about is money! You sit up here in your little palace, and you throw money at people to get them to do what you want! And then, when reality comes back to bite and someone almost gets killed, you act as if you had nothing to do with it!”

  “Now wait a minute, Ms. Brooks...”

  “No. No, I will not wait a minute. You shut up and listen!”

  I was still hyperventilating, but I managed to look up at SaTia as if she’d lost her mind. She walked around me and stood in Rose’s face.

  “My best friend was almost killed tonight because you threw so much money at him he couldn’t turn it down. I blame you for this, and so help me God, you had better find a way to make this right. If he gets hurt over this foolishness...”

  I wasn’t looking at them, but the last time I’d heard my manager’s voice reach this tone, she’d ended up pulling a girl’s weave out.

  “End this crap, and end it now,” she barked.

  My breathing was starting to slow down, and I looked up again to see my short, black friend staring down the tall white man. If I was an artist, I’d have painted a picture.

  “It’s...it’s not that simple, Ms. Brooks...”

  Rose’s phone rang loudly from the top of his desk. He was all too happy to run over and hit the speakerphone button.

  “Ahem...yes, Lisa, what is it?”

  “Mr. Rose...” Lisa’s voice sounded strained and timid. You could hear male voices in the background.

  “Yes, Lisa, what do you want?”

  “Ummm...three of Mr. Jenkins’ friends are here in the lobby. They’re asking for him and you both, and they seem pretty excited. One of them has blood all over his shirt. What should I do?”

  Despite my condition, I jumped up to my feet. SaTia helped to steady me before I fell back down, while Rose closed his eyes and paused for a second to think. When he opened them again, he spoke into the phone. “Send them to the twentieth floor and tell them to wait in the conference room. We’ll be right there.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Rose clicked the button off on the phone and motioned to the elevator. “We can take it down to the conference room.”

  I followed slowly as he walked toward the elevator doors. SaTia was right behind me, making sure I was okay. When we arrived, Rose pressed the button and the doors instantly opened. As we stepped inside the cabin Rose made a parting request. “Very few people know about my quarters up here. I’d like to keep it that way.”

  “I couldn’t care less who knows about your little shag pad up here, Rose,” SaTia said as the elevator doors were closing. “I’d like you to finish what you were saying before—something about how it’s not that simple to get my client out of all the foolishness you’ve gotten him into.”

  Rose took a deep breath, got his wits about himself, and then turned to face SaTia.

  “Ms. Brooks, Moe is an adult. I am not his father, and more importantly, you are not his mother. I am sorry that things have gotten so complicated, but the bottom line is that Moe was made an offer by the company and he accepted it. Because of that acceptance, he’s made more money in the last couple of months than any of us thought possible. Maybe he regrets the decision now, at this very moment, but he’s been fine over the last eight months, and when all this blows over, he’ll remember that he’s one of the highest paid rappers in the business, and he’ll know that all this was worth it.”

  She-Hulk wanted to come out of SaTia, but this was no low-level receptionist that my manager was impaling in her imagination. This was one of the CEOs of Cosmos Records.

  SaTia stood unmoved with her fists balled, breathing sulfur out of her nostrils.

  Once Rose realized the short, brown-skinned woman recognized his power the same way everyone else did, he relaxed his shoulders and began breathing easier.

  “You know, I’ve always been intrigued by cultural differences when it comes to the concept of responsibility. It seems only logical to me that if you are upset about a decision that was made, you would direct that concern to the person who made the decision.”

  “You son-of-a—”

  The elevator doors started to open and cut off SaTia’s would-be profanity, and the ensuing chaos wiped away any traces of the previous conversation. Brian, Orlando, and Ray had made such a scene when they came into the building that the same three security guards that SaTia and I had run into followed them up to the twentieth floor. They’d exchanged words on the elevator, and consequently, Orlando had tried to swing on the tallest one while the head guard called two more up for backup. When our elevator doors opened, we saw eight grown men trying to give each other concussions.

  When they saw the three of us, they all froze like ice sculptures.

  SaTia and Rose spoke simultaneously.

  “Get in the conference room.”

  “Get back to your posts.”

  They scattered like moviegoers after a bomb threat.

  I had regained most of my strength by this point, and wanting to look strong in front of my entourage, I led the way into the conference room. Though the security guards were gone, Ray, Brian, and Orlando looked as if they were still in the middle of a fight.

  Brian yelled out loud first.

  “Yo, we gotta get dem niggas, Moe! We gotta get dem niggas, for real!”

  “Who—the guards?”

  “No! Man, forget dem guards, they was pussies anyway,” Ray cut in, jumping up and down. “I’m talkin ’bout P. Silenzas, man! Dem niggas gotta get dealt wid!”

  For the first time, I realized that only three of my crew members were in the room with me.

  “Where’s Henry?”

  “Dat’s what I’m sayin’, man!” Ray continued to hop around like a pissed off bunny. “Henry in da hospital, dogg! Orlando got through to da back while dey was workin’ on him. Dey was tryin’ to keep us out, but ’Lando got in and heard ’em fo’ hisself. They said he got hit in one’a his arteries and he lost too much blood on the way to da ’mergency room. He in a coma!”

  “What?” I would’ve preferred another panic attack to the way I felt when I heard those words. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to throw up or pass out. Instead, I jumped out of my seat for the second time in ten minutes.

  “He in a coma, dogg.” Orlando scared me. He wasn’t jumping around or pacing or anything. He stood up from the wall with this cold look in his eyes and evil in his voice. “Laid up like a vegetable, dude. And I’ont know ’bout none’a y’all niggas—” He walked up to the table in the middle of the room and pulled a 9mm handgun out of his pants. “—but I’m tryin’ to ride on dese niggas tonight.”

  He put the gun down on the glass table in front of him and kept his hand on top of it as he looked up at each of us. “What’s up?”

  “Whoa!” Rose and SaTia jumped back from the table.

  “Hell yeah!” Ray pointed to the gun on the glass table. “Dat’s what I’m talkin bout!”

  “Let’s lay dese niggas on the sidewalk!” Brian walked around the room, slammi
ng his hand against the wall.

  I stayed in my seat, looking at Orlando as if I was trying to pinpoint the part of his brain that had stopped functioning properly.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Oh, so what? You Mr. Hotshot Famous Rapper now and you cain’t ride for yo’ homies no more? Yo’ man sittin’ up in the hospital half-dead and you cain’t take no action? All dis fame done made you some kinda pussy?”

  Without thinking, I walked over to the table, picked up the gun, turned it around in my palm so that I was holding the barrel, and smacked Orlando across the face with the handle.

  “Nigga, don’t you ever call me no pussy again! I could give a damn ’bout yo’ lil gun! You forget who da hell you talkin’ to? I’m Da Nigga; you wouldn’t be nothin’ without me! Nothin’! Everything you got, I bought, nigga! I’ll beat da bricks off you!”

  Orlando spit blood from his mouth onto the floor and looked up at me with unadulterated contempt.

  “So you can pistol whip me, but you cain’t go after da niggas who ’bout killed your man? Aight, Mr. Moses Jenkins, let’s see how many bricks you beat off me when I get dat gun back...”

  At that moment, I decided to quit everything. Doing shows, making music, interviews, I was going to quit it all.

  Somehow, in only one day, a man had tried to kill me, one of my best friends was in a coma, and now another of my best friends had threatened my life. And it all related back to being in this godforsaken business. It was only one night, but that was all it had taken. It was too much for me to bear.

  “I can’t do this anymore...” I started.

  Rose cut in before I could finish.

  “Alright, look, everyone needs to calm down, okay? Moe, give me the gun so I can check to see if there’s a serial number on it.”

  I still had my eyes nailed on Orlando as I slid the gun down the table.

  When Rose got it in his hands, he examined it briefly.

  “Ms. Brooks,” Rose said. SaTia shook herself out of the trance of watching two best friends get ready to come to blows. She turned toward Rose. “Do you think you could continue to add some common sense to this situation? Moe put his fingerprints on this gun. I need to go and make sure it disappears.”