Envy (4 page)

But as fast as he had driven, he just wasn’t fast enough. He saw the flashing lights and heard the sirens as he was getting off the highway, and the huge plume of smoke that had risen in the air above the parking lot was enough to let him know that he was already way too late.

“Oh no!” Sallie had screamed in a panic when he realized what he had done. “Oh God! Oh fuckin’ God
no!
”

He had driven straight to an old girlfriend’s house so he could drown himself in grief. And later that night, after drinking as much liquor as his stomach could possibly hold, he had cried like a baby and passed out on the bathroom floor.

By the time he woke up the next afternoon, television coverage of the airport explosion was on almost every station. Sallie had stared at the television screen in amazement as photos of the two people who’d been blown up by the detonation were shown.

To his surprise, both of the victims were killers.

They were both men. And they were both black.

Relief had washed over him like a heavy, cleansing rain. The thought that he had killed his uncle had been almost unbearable, and it was nothing but a beautiful stroke of luck when he got two phone calls later that day. One had been completely unexpected, and the other one he had long been waiting for.

Two months earlier Sallie had been in the right place at the right time, and he had weaseled his way in on a heist that could easily bring in over a million dollars in exchange for thirty minutes of simple work.

The plan had been delayed several times due to a local longshoreman’s strike, and now that the port workers were back on the job, Sal’s associates had been given the green light to move forward with the operation.

Parked in the shadows behind a loading dock in the Bay Area of San Francisco, Slick Sallie ran the plan down to his slow cousin Mick one last time.

“I’m gonna stay right here with you until they give me the signal and the electric fence is turned off. Then I’m going in, and I’m going in fast. You stay right here, okay? Just keep the car running, and the second my ass hits the seat cushion you step on it. Are you locked and loaded?”

Mick’s hands shook as he held his Glock 17 9mm out for his cousin to see.

“Good,” Sal said as his eyes swept back and forth over the dock entrance to Uniden Technology, one of largest manufacturers of computer chips in the nation.

It was late in the afternoon, right before the business was scheduled to close. Sal and Mick, along with nine other men, were dressed in all-black and wearing gloves and masks. They were waiting for their inside man, a maintenance worker who was hiding in the ceiling rafters, to cut the wires to the security alarm and hit a button to slide open the wire-meshed electric fence.

Sallie peered out the window as a thin sheen of sweat broke out on his upper lip. He was nervous, but he was excited too. A heist like this didn’t go down every day, and when it did it made big news.

Sallie wasn’t afraid of getting caught or arrested. Their plan had been timed perfectly and they’d be in and out of the warehouse before the employees could call for help. But what made Sallie nervous was the fact that they were about to hit some mob-protected territory.

The Milan crime family of Los Angeles was in control of this area. Uniden Technology was the biggest company on their extortion list, and Sal knew the owners paid top dollar for the level of protection their mob payouts assured them.  

Ordinarily, a made man wouldn’t even consider violating another mob family’s territory. Respect for boundaries was one of the rules that allowed multiple Mafia families to function in small areas simultaneously.

But Sal wasn’t a made fuckin’ man. And since his father was just a lowly Irish son-of-a-bitch, he never would be. He secretly envied Mick and the rest of his dick-weed cousins who could trace their bloodline back to the Old World, yet walked around in this world with shit for brains.

Sallie was a million times smarter, slicker, and craftier than those clowns ever would be, yet he would never be as big-time or as respected as them simply because of the origin of his blood.  

“Y-y-you sure about this, right Sallie?” Mick stuttered. “You’re not gonna go in there and get yourself shot or nothing, right?”

Sal stared at his cousin. He loved Mick the way you would love a puppy. He was a simple dickhead, but he was faithful.

“Nobody’s gonna hurt me, Mikail. Everything is gonna be fine. You just be ready to drive like you’re at Daytona, okay?”

Minutes later the signal was given, and like the others who were waiting, Sal exited the car and crept cautiously toward the fence-line. The ten men were silent and had their weapons at the ready. The moment the metal fence slid back they rushed onto the property, and through the recently unlocked door.

Sal was near the middle of the pack as they burst into the office closest to the loading dock. Five men and one woman were busy at work, and in a flash, all ten guns were on them. Sal and his crew ordered the employees to drop their wallets and cell phones into a plastic bag, and then forced them to the floor. They were tied up and gagged, and then the team swept into the warehouse where their moving truck was backed up to the dock and waiting to be loaded.

It took less than thirty minutes for Sal and his cohorts to load massive amounts of processors and microchips onto the truck, and they moved so expertly that everything went without a hitch.

It was time to go, and Sal jumped on the back of the truck along with the other men. The rear panel of the truck remained raised so each man could hop off and make his escape at the appropriate time.

They were halfway to the fence when the shots rang out. Standing at the truck’s back opening, Sal ducked instinctively. When he looked up he saw two employees running out of the warehouse. They were brandishing automatic rifles and spraying rounds in their direction.

Three members of Sal’s team began returning fire, and Sal had just lifted his own weapon to blast a few rounds when he saw something that made his blood run cold.

It was his cousin Mick.

Disobeying Sal, Mikail had left the safety of the car and entered the compound, and now he was caught directly in the line of fire.

“Wait! Wait!
Wait!
” Sal shouted at the driver as the truck sped toward the fence, leaving Mick behind on the compound. “Hold up! We left somebody!” Sal screamed. “We left some fuckin’ body!”

Sal reached out both his arms toward his cousin as the young man ran behind the truck with bullets flying past him in both directions.

The look on Mick’s face was one of bewildered terror as he ducked and dogged in an attempt to stay alive.

“Stop the fuckin’ truck!” Sal screamed and reached hysterically.

“Keep fuckin’ going!” the team leader fired his weapon and barked to the driver. “They’re closing the fence! Punch it! Punch the fuckin’ gas! They’re closing the fence!”

Sal watched in stunned silence as a round skimmed the side of Mick’s lower leg. Grimacing, his cousin clutched his calf and went down to one knee.

“Run!” Sal bellowed! “Get up and run you stupid fuckin’ idiot!”

The sting of hot lead got Mick moving again. He jumped to his feet and ran for the fence, favoring his shot leg with every step.

“C’mon! C’mon! C’mon!” Sal urged, but just as the moving truck lurched across the threshold of the property, the automatic fences began to slide close on their tracks.

The rest was like watching a train wreck about to happen. Mick was
almost there
when the next bullet caught him. It sank into the flesh high in his back. Screaming, he was blown forward as the impact of the blast flung him full force into the fence just as it slid to a close.

“
Nooooo!
” Sal screamed from deep in his gut. Thousands of white sparks flew in the air as Mick was bonded to the electrified fence. His body shuddered and jerked, and smoke sizzled in a cloud as 20 amps of heat flowed through him from head to toe.

Sal was helpless as the truck lurched to a stop and his partners-in-crime jumped out and raced toward their cars. His feet were stuck in place, his eyes glued to the picture of his favorite cousin doing a grotesque death dance on the voltage-heavy fence.

“Get the fuck outta here!” The team chief planted his foot in Sal’s back and kicked him roughly out of the truck. Sal hit the ground hard, then got up running. He jumped behind the wheel of Mick’s souped-up ride, and without another look behind him, he peeled out of the parking lot right behind the others and took off in his pre-designated direction.  

CHAPTER 5

“Hey, Pluto,” Honey Dew came over to the bar and put her hand on his shoulder. “Something’s wrong with the pipes in this joint, boo. All the damn toilets are overflowing and those plungers ain’t getting it.”

Pluto looked up from his rum and coke. “Go, tell Ace.”

“He ain’t here. He went to Burger King to get something to eat.”

Pluto shrugged and tossed back his rum.

“Then go tell Truth.”

“He ain’t here either,” Honey Dew said. “He been gone for a minute. I seen him drive off with Mizz Salida in G’s car.”

“C’mon, man,” he shrugged her hand off his shoulder. “Y’all nasty bitches need to quit balling shit up and throwing it down the damn toilets! Y’all can’t be flushing ya wigs and drawers and shit down them lil-ass holes and expect them things not to back up on you.”

“It ain’t us!” Honey Dew protested. “The pipes is just bad up in here! Now can you come unclog some of these nasty shitters so the hoes can pee and wipe they asses and get back to work?”

“Damn.” Pluto brewed inside. The last thing he wanted to do was fuck around with some nasty toilets. He wasn’t no goddamn maintenance man, and he wasn’t feeling the G-Spot like that to be sticking his hands down in no shitty toilet water.

He finished his drink, and then went to the supply closet to grab a plunger and a plumber’s snake. He hit every bathroom in the club and all kinds of foul shit sloshed up outta the pipes.

He went to take care of the bathroom in G’s office last, and since it shared a line with the toilets in the stripper’s dressing room, he knew there was gonna be a bunch of shit down in those pipes too.

But when he opened the office door all he saw was creamy cooch and glistening ass-crack. Salida was on top of G’s desk butt-ass naked. She was propped up on her elbows with her legs spread wide and her head thrown back.

Ace’s bag of Burger King was on G’s desk but he damn sure wasn’t eating it. Instead, his manz was leaning over the end of the desk puttin’ in work. Salida’s caramel ass was cradled in that niggah’s hands, and his tongue stuck out a country mile as he licked out every inch of that bitch’s snatch.

“
Sssss
…” Salida hissed and gyrated as Ace rotated his head and probed up in her tunnel. “Lips and tongue, you son-of-a-bitch,” she bossed his ass. “Get it with your lips and tongue…”

Pluto was straight fuckin’ disgusted by the wet, lapping sounds his boy’s mouth made as he slurped Salida’s pussy like it was a juicy piece of fruit.

Neither one of them noticed him standing there watching, and before he could move Ace stood up and yanked down his pants. He grabbed his thick meat, then pushed Salida down flat on the desk and rammed it into her raw, causing the older woman to scream in pleasure as he dug over ten years worth of cobwebs outta her wet hole.

“Oooh!
Fuck
me!” Salida screamed and squeezed her plump, perfect titties. “
Fuck
me, you troll!
Fuck
me, you fat, ugly mothafucka!”

She lifted her long, beautiful legs high in the air, then brought them down and wrapped them tightly around Ace’s back. “Fuck this pretty-pretty, you ape-ass, bitch! Beat it up! Fuck it right! I said fuck it
right
, goddammit!”