Cartier Cartel (16 page)

Barn was embarrassed. She couldn't finish her sentence and felt
ashamed.

Her friends knew what she was trying to say. One by one they embraced
their friend.

Lil Momma led with the questions. "Did you tell the police who did this
to you?"

Barn nodded her head in the affirmative, but said nothing.

Barn's answer raked Lil Momma's nerve. "Well? Who did it," she asked
Barn in a less than friendly tone. Everyone glared at Lil Momma, who decided
to soften her tone. "We're worried about you, Barn, that's all."

Barn shook her head again and finally replied, "H-h-h-he d-d-d-dead."

"Donnie? Was it Donnie who did this to you?" Lil Momma was relentless
in her line of questioning. And it didn't sit well with Cartier.

Once again, Bam nodded her head in the affirmative.

Cartier and Monya exchanged glances. Both wondered how long it would
take before the detectives realized Donnie's death was a revenge killing. This
information made them antsy; so much so, they decided to cut their visit
short.

Outside, Cartier said, "I think we should give Lil Momma and Shanine
their cut of the money and make up."

"Nah, we'd be stupid to do that," Monya replied. "What for? They wanted
out ... hell, they knew the rules."

"I'm telling you I got a bad feeling about Lil Momma," Cartier retorted.
"She keeps staring at us as if she knows we had something to do with Donnie's
murder."

"You're being paranoid," Monya responded. "How the fuck could she
know? Don't let that bitch play you. You gotta be strong"

The roles had been turned. Monya was the strong, determined one since
she'd killed Donnie. Cartier wasn't sure if she was coming or going.

"She knows because she knows us," Cartier reasoned. "She grew up
around us all her life and she knows I wasn't gonna let Donnie get away with
beating on Bam, especially after the guilt trip she put on me."

"You're going mental," Monya countered. "Besides, why you taking
credit for shit I did? You talking like you murdered him, when it was me who
handled my business!"

Monya's outburst startled Cartier. She couldn't believe they were in the
middle of the street arguing about who was going to take blame for a murder. Since that day, Cartier didn't recognize this new Monya. This Monya didn't
have any remorse for taking a life. This wasn't the scary Monya she'd known
since birth.

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Cartier asked with attitude. "No
one's taking credit for your shit. I'm just saying that Lil Momma ain't stupid.
In fact, she's one of the smartest members in my crew!"

Cartier knew this would cut Monya's pride down to size. She got the
expected result.

"And what the fuck is that supposed to mean?" Monya asked as she
stepped toward Cartier in a confrontational manner. "You saying I'm stupid?"
Donnie's murder had given Monya the confidence she lacked all her years.

Cartier recognized where Monya's strength was coming from. But she
was stuck between a rock and a hard place. She could beat Monya to a pulp,
but that was something she didn't want to do. The Cartel had fallen apart and
she couldn't afford to lose Monya as well.

Cartier exhaled and took a step back. She needed to breathe and put space
between them. "That's not what I'm saying," Cartier began. "All I'm trying to
say is that we gotta watch Lil Momma. She's out for revenge, because she wants
her eight large and I'm telling you that each day she doesn't get it is going to put
our whole operation at risk. I don't even feel comfortable hugging the block,
because she might call 5-0 on us. You feel me?"

Monya tossed her eyes in the air, and said, "I wish that bitch would call
po-po on me. She better chill if she knows what's good for her!"

Cartier wanted so badly to tell Monya that Lil Momma would break her
bony ass into several pieces, but she knew there was no point. Monya was
riding high off her accidental murder.

ebbles was a sight to the two detectives' weary eyes. Her brightly dyed
red hair, against her pale, almost pasty white skin, brought immediate
attention to the grieving woman. Although she was half-white and half Puerto Rican, she carried herself and spoke as if she were black. Her mother
was white, born and raised in a trailer park off Eight Mile, in the heart of the
Detroit ghetto. Her father was Puerto Rican and was only passing through
long enough to get her mother knocked up. Life in Detroit was too slow for
the pregnant girl, so she followed another boyfriend to the hoods of Flatbush,
Brooklyn, where Pebbles would be born and raised.

When Pebbles was twelve years old, she began dying her naturally
brunette hair, red. By the time she turned fourteen, her boyfriend at the time
stopped calling her by her God-given name, Belen, and began calling her
Pebbles, after Fred and Wilma Flintstones's daughter. The name stuck ever
since.

The strikingly beautiful girl with the dirty mouth wanted justice for her
slain man.

"Those bitches gotta pay or so help me God, when I drop my fucking
seed I'ma kill all of them."

"Ms. Gomez, take a seat," the lead detective began. "Calm down ...
before you hurt your baby. We're here to see that justice gets served, but you
gotta help us out and tell us what you know."

"I'm too fucking heated to calm down!" Pebbles exclaimed. "Those bumass boosting bitches took my world away from me. I got two kids by Donnie.
Now what the fuck I'm gonna do? His fucking mother done came through
and looted all his shit before he was even buried in the ground. I came home
from work and all our shit was gone and she talking about that was her son's
shit? She done found the stash and everything! She gonna get hers too!"

"Ms. Gomez-" the detective tried intervening.

"Call me Pebbles."

"Pebbles, why don't you start from the beginning?" the detective said.

"When I'm done can I press charges on his moms for stealing our shit?"

Both detectives looked to one another and decided to appease their only
witness. "Sure ... sure ... anything you want," the second detective chimed in. "Now start from the beginning."

"OK, check it. Donnie calls me and tells me that he's about to check this
bitch named Bam for selling product on his block..." Pebbles paused. "Am I
gonna get into trouble?"

Then she answered her own question. "What could I get into trouble
for? I don't sell drugs. So anyway, Donnie was heated. When he got home
that night he told me he thought he'd killed Bam, because he left her ass
knocked out cold on her block and didn't nobody do shit. You see they all
feared my baby daddy. Now, I told him that I would handle those bitches
after I dropped my baby, but he wouldn't have it. He beat her down himself
and now he's dead"

Pebbles looked to the detectives to put the pieces together.

"That's it?" the second detective asked.

Pebbles exhaled. She felt as if she was dealing with the Keystone Cops.
"Bam was a part of the Cartier Cartel. There are five members, Cartier, the
ringleader; Monya, the lieutenant; and Bam, Shanine, and Lil Momma-the
flunkies. They formed this all-girl organization and began slinging dope on
my man's block. They had been beefing for weeks. Donnie said that alpha
bitch, Cartier, was stepping to him like she was a dude. And the night he got
killed, he got a call from this kid named Jason, who's fucking Cartier."

"How do you know that?" the lead detective asked.

"Because I got all his numbers from Donnie's cell phone bill and called
the last number. It was Jason."

Suddenly, a smile appeared on both detectives faces. "Tell us everything
you know about Jason. Last name, address, telephone number, anything you
can think of."

"What about the Cartel?" Pebbles asked.

"We think we got our killer, and it's Jason"

ess than two weeks later after Donnie's murder, the police thought they
had put the pieces of the puzzle together. Pebbles had steered them in
the right direction. It was only a matter of days before they started building a
case against Jason and received a search warrant for his crib.

Jason didn't sweat it. He knew the police wouldn't find anything. He
made it a point to keep his crib clean, not even a burner. When they hauled
him down to the precinct on suspicion of murder charges, he wasn't worried.
He knew in his gut he'd get pulled into the mix. But he was confident shit
wouldn't stick.

On the night in question he was around mad niggas at a dice game, so he
knew it would be hard for them to pin shit on him.

Word traveled fast in the hood. Cartier had just walked into her building
when she heard the news. Her heart plummeted as she remembered Jason's
words. He told her this was going to happen. That she dragged him into this
situation. She just hoped Jason didn't tell the police she had had him call
Donnie to meet her. Since they already knew Donnie had assaulted Barn,
they would come looking for her and her crew. Cartier ran up her stairs, two
at a time. She was shaking, severely, too much to pull out her door keys. She
began banging on the door.

"Ma! Open up!" Cartier demanded.

Trina waddled to the door at a snail's pace. She was already two days
overdue and if the baby didn't naturally come soon, then her doctor said he
was going to have to take the baby. When she flung open the door, she was
frantic. She thought Cartier was hurt.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

"I'm fine," Cartier replied and dashed into her room. She went to the
shoebox that held their stash: money, drugs, and Donnie's jewelry. Her first
instinct was to flush it down the toilet as they do in the movies. As she was
contemplating her next move, she didn't realize Trina was standing there
looking over her shoulder.

"Where the fuck you get all that money from?" Trina asked. "I mean, I
know y'all out there tossing it up, but never did I imagine you were holding
it down like this."

Cartier was a nervous wreck. She didn't know what to say. Large tears
began to fall down her dark chocolate skin. She knew she was in deep trouble
and didn't have anywhere to turn.