Read The Family Business Online
Authors: Eric Pete,Carl Weber
The Family Business (32 page)
London
56
The motorcycle came around the corner, one helmeted man in black and bright blue leather revving it as it traveled down the tree-lined street toward us. He came to a halt beside us just as Junior lowered the driver’s window of the van.
“Any movement?” my brother asked.
The man in the helmet shook his head. “No.”
“A’ight. Thanks, bro,” Junior said, extending a fist bump out the window to the man.
I checked the gun clip one more time, removing it and counting each bullet it stored before slapping it back into the SIG Sauer. It was an old ritual of mine that I’d thought was long in the grave.
“Soon?” I asked.
“Like you anxious for this,” he joked dryly.
“Just to get Mariah back.”
In the back of the van, the other three of our party were suiting up.
“Bro, how many black faces you seen around here?” Sihad asked from the back as he zipped up his National Grid jumpsuit. The other two men selected by Junior were doing the same. These three were the best of the best, along with Junior and Paris, when it came to taking down enemies. Daddy called them our own personal black ops team.
An NYPD cruiser made its rounds. Junior nodded at the two officers from under his hard hat—just a big grin from another utility worker. There were a lot of police roaming around the residential neighborhood just off Richmond Terrace in Staten Island today.
A gas line had “conveniently” ruptured this morning, resulting in a suspension of service while National Grid worked on the repairs. Workers were going around notifying residents on the next block over, which was also affected, while we were concentrating on this block.
LC’s man Sihad was right about us sticking out in this predominantly white Italian neighborhood. Even dressed as gas company employees, we were sure to get cross looks. That was one of the reasons we needed to hurry—the other being that my daughter was probably being held here.
We split into two groups and walked down the street, clipboards and tool bags in hand. We went door to door, meeting with elderly women who spoke English as a second language, inspecting around their homes for any residual damage from the gas-line explosion—excellent work, which Orlando had arranged on short notice. All the while we were methodically working our way toward one particular home from two ends of the block.
“Think these are the ones who offed Pablo?” Sihad asked my brother, refusing to keep quiet. I think he was pretty close with Daddy’s old friend.
“Yeah. And Lou,” Junior answered.
“I just wanna get some get-back on that ass.”
All five of us convened in front of the house. The van parked outside was the same one used to take Mariah away from me. Chills overcame me as I recalled its sliding doors cutting me off from Mariah. Further proof that we were at the right place was the presence of Tony’s black Cadillac parked directly behind the van. Since Tony knew our faces, we had one of Junior’s boys go up the stairs to the front door, while Junior and I pretended to inspect the gas line on the side of the house. Gossip traveled quickly in this tight-knit community, so news of the gas-line rupture had surely made its way around the neighborhood, adding legitimacy to our presence there. Tony and his crew would have no reason to doubt utility company workers.
“She’s in the basement,” I gasped, staring at the unassuming slender window by my ankles, remembering the words Harris had whispered to me before we left to go our separate ways. He said he suspected our daughter was being held in a basement and that she was alive. He wouldn’t tell me how he knew this, but he swore me to secrecy. I would uphold my promise to keep it secret—for now.
“How do you know, sis?” Junior asked, eyeing me suspiciously.
“I just know. Mother’s intuition,” I answered.
“Then we can’t risk it. If we bust in there and blaze on ’em, there’s no guarantee someone don’t harm Mariah first,” he hissed, his confidence wavering.
But there was no time for second-guessing our plan. We needed to get in there fast. It came to me to “call an audible,” as they say in football.
“Leak! We got a leak!” I yelled from the side of the house to our men in the front.
“What?” one of them hollered back, no doubt unsure what I was pulling.
“We got a major leak,” I said, poorly disguising my voice. “People in there need to get out till we get it repaired.”
I tugged on Junior to follow me to the front of the house before something went wrong. I kept my head low, fearful of Tony walking outside and recognizing me. My brother quickly communicated to Sihad and the rest with eye signals not to do anything yet. After delivering the message to the man who answered the door that it wasn’t safe for them to remain inside the home, we retreated to the van with the fake National Grid magnetic signs on the exterior. One of our group remained on the side of the house, pretending to call in an emergency repair order.
“What the fuck is going on? We got them to open the door,” Sihad said, out of breath and obviously nervous over the sudden change in plans as we regrouped following the retreat.
“My daughter. If she’s in the basement and someone’s down there with her—”
“Shit! We coulda had her!” he yelled, cutting me off. “Our chances don’t get any better than that.”
“Watch your tone, bro. I ain’t gettin’ my niece killed. We wait,” Junior urged Sihad as he motioned toward the home.
As we went about acting like a normal work crew gathered around the van, a flurry of activity erupted from inside. Two men exited first onto the porch, checking outside for any signs of trouble. Like rats creeping out of their rat holes at dusk.
“See, they’re relocatin’. Afraid o’ gettin’ blown the fuck up. Now they comin’ outside to us,” my brother said, glad I was right with my gamble.
“This is it,” I said, reaching into my tool bag for the SIG Sauer pistol. “Silencers, since we’re outside.”
“Damn. You is used to gettin’ wet,” Sihad joked with a smile. “Let’s do this.”
Keeping my hard hat low over my face, I saw him. Tony. He came out of the house and beat a path straight to his Cadillac. He was by himself. If we were wrong about Mariah being here, we’d need him to help us find her. We couldn’t let him drive off.
“Your call, sis,” Junior said, his hand resting inside his tool bag as he prepared to set up road cones around the van in the continuance of our ruse.
“Green light,” I said just as three more men exited the home and walked across the lawn to the van. Still no sign of Mariah. Once Tony was clear, they’d be free to drive away too.
Tony pulled away from the front of the house and drove straight toward us. When we were just about to unload on his car, he slowed anyway.
“Hey, man. How long is this gonna take?” Tony chirped in our direction out his lowered passenger-side window. Despite the disguise I wore, I almost couldn’t bear to look in his direction. I felt my hand trembling as I placed my finger on the trigger. Eventually, Junior took it upon himself to respond.
“Waitin’ for the big boss to send another inspector,” my brother replied, trying to keep a sufficient distance so as not to be recognized, but still close enough to shoot.
I couldn’t take it any longer. I slowly turned to steal a glance at the man who’d snatched my child from my arms. In that instant, his eyes locked on me and our path was set. No cheap disguise could obscure the eyes of someone from their former lover. A second later and he’d taken an accounting of the other gas company workers.
“Shit,” Tony muttered as he turned toward the road, preparing to gun the car.
“Junior!” I yelled.
He knew what it meant, bringing his pistol up from his tool bag and squeezing off a quick
zip
of silenced rounds into the cab, at Tony. The Cadillac still lurched and sped off, but at an angle that took it up the street, then into the overgrowth on the side of the road.
zip
of silenced rounds into the cab, at Tony. The Cadillac still lurched and sped off, but at an angle that took it up the street, then into the overgrowth on the side of the road.
I took off running toward him, already aiming at the car for any sign of his escape. As Tony jumped out, I saw he was wounded, bleeding from the neck area. He was armed, though, and raised an unsteady pistol in my direction. I screeched to a halt and took aim with two hands, pretending I was back at the gun range with LC as an impressionable teenager.
Keeping my anger at bay, I unloaded the clip. From habit, I counted down the number of rounds with each trigger squeeze.
Tony was hit dead in the chest by at least three of my shots. He didn’t even shoot back. As he fell over, his face wore the same smile I saw when he first came to my rescue. I wished I’d known then that it was all a setup. He would’ve gotten the box cutter across his throat, saved us all some misery. As I walked over to his body, I saw that he wouldn’t be with us much longer.
“I... I spared you,” Tony said with his dying breath.
I didn’t have time to make peace with what I’d just done. Behind me, the men by the van were trying to retreat back inside the house. They were caught between our advancing group, led by Junior, and the one man we’d left on the side of the house. As I ran to join the gun battle, a man for whom we hadn’t accounted emerged onto the porch with a small, hooded child in his arms.
My Mariah.
“There she is!” I screamed at Junior just as Sihad shot one of the men poking out from the van.
The man holding Mariah on the porch grabbed a shotgun from inside the doorway. He harshly shoved my blinded daughter back inside, then fired with a loud boom that was sure to carry through the neighborhood and draw attention. Our man went down immediately from the same shotgun that had probably killed my bodyguards.
My daughter wasn’t going to be anyone’s hostage any longer. As the man on the porch retreated inside, I broke into a full sprint, even though some of the men by the van were still alive and shooting.
“London! Wait!” Junior yelled as I ran by him, dumping the burdensome tool bag. Giving up on reason, my brother was quickly on my heels, firing over my head to give me some cover.
Dash’s men by the van saw us quickly gaining ground. One broke and fled toward the backyard, while the other one dropped his gun and threw his hands up.
“Okay! Okay! I give up,” he said just as Junior planted a bullet in his forehead, not losing stride as we charged up the stairs to the porch.
My brother caught up to me and passed me. He reached the front door first, planted his large foot firmly, and sent it flying open. He broke almost into a baseball slide just as a blast of shotgun pellets peppered the door frame. Most of them missed Junior, but some caught the forearm he’d raised to cover his face. While still on his back, Junior returned fire blindly into the home, in the direction of the shotgun fire.
“Junior!” I yelled for fear of Mariah being used as a shield.
“Shot high on purpose,” he said, grimacing in pain from the rivulets of crimson quickly flowing from his arm. “Go. Quick.”
I darted over my brother, hearing the others coming up the stairs behind us. On a table where the dining room place settings should have been, several bricks of coke were stacked beside a scale. Two large black duffel bags lay on the floor, waiting to be filled.
“Mariah! Mommy’s here! Mommy’s here, baby,” I yelled. I could hear muffled cries, followed by a husky voice shushing someone. At least he hadn’t gone back into the basement.
Turning a corner brought me to a bedroom with another door on the opposite wall. The creak of floorboards led me through that door and into an old kitchen at the rear of the house.
The tall, scraggly man with the crooked nose had cleaned up, yet I still recognized him. He was the panhandler from that day. He held the shotgun in his right hand as he carried my daughter by her waist under his left arm. Her little legs kicked as they dangled, but that damned hood was still over her face. Behind him was an open door descending into darkness-the basement where Mariah had been held all this time.
“Don’t come any closer, bitch,” he scoffed.
“Give me my daughter,” I said, pointing an empty gun at his head in a bluff. I was so worked up for fear of him doing something to Mariah that I didn’t think to take Junior’s weapon.
“So you can kill me?” he said, making me wish Mariah’s ears were covered, as well as her eyes.
“Don’t give her up and that definitely happens.”
“Nah. Why in the fuck would I trust a nigger bitch like you? I ain’t Tony, all strung over that sweet black ‘tang of yours. Throw your gun over here and I don’t turn li’l miss into a pincushion.”
“Look ... do you have any kids?” I asked as he slowly backed toward the basement door. I guess his plan was to hole up down there with Mariah as his shield until some more of Dash’s people arrived—backup we in no way could contend with.
He placed the shotgun against Mariah’s dangling body. I shuddered, knowing what it would do if he pulled the trigger. “Throw it. Now,” he said.
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