Envy (7 page)

“The trouble in New York couldn’t be avoided,” Frank said coolly. “It was me or them. Nobody likes war, Don Vito. And there definitely would have been one.”

“Yeah, but I stuck my neck out for you, Frankie. You came out here with your entire family, and I gave you your own territory and cut you in on some pretty sweet deals. And how did you repay me?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Frank said honestly. “It’s been a great business relationship. Our families are good together. I’ve opened up some good avenues for you, and contributed a lot of money to the Los Angeles operations. I don’t know what the problem is. I thought we were doing fine. Can you just tell me what’s going on?”

“You fucked up, Frankie! That’s what’s going on! What are you, retarded? You were given detailed instructions. What was so hard about following them?”

With his cigar clenched between his teeth, Don Vito counted off on his thick fingers. “You keep your toe on your own side of the fuckin’ line, you don’t take from nobody else’s cookie jar, and you don’t whack off no made men or paid politicians. Standard stuff. How could you fuck it up?”

Frank stared his boss dead in the eye.

“With all due respect, Don Vito, I have no fuckin’ idea what you’re talking about.”

Don Vito stood up from the table and motioned for Frankie to follow him. His soldiers stood up too, and Frankie walked behind the boss with wise-guy confidence, but deep inside he was preparing himself to take a hot slug to the back of the head.

But instead of having him executed, Don Vito led him through a doorway and around a corner to a small room. They walked over to a sheet-covered form that lay on the ground, and Frankie stared down with a frown as Don Vito nudged the sheet back with the toe of his well-shined shoe.

It was Frankie’s nephew.

Mick.

Or at least what was left of Mick.

The kid’s face looked like an over-cooked hotdog. His tongue had exploded and his eyeballs had poached right in his skull.

“Yeah? So, what happened to him?” Frank asked casually, without a trace of emotion.

Vito puffed from his cigar and let the burnt ash fall into the corpse’s face.

“He got fried on a fence at a warehouse in San Francisco. Him and some other idiots crossed over into The Milan Family’s territory. It was a well-planned heist. They got away with twenty-million dollars worth of computer chips. The cameras were rolling, but your nephew here was the only piece of evidence they left behind.”

Frank stared down at his brother’s son. There was no way in hell Mikail could have participated in a twenty-cent heist, let alone a twenty million one. He didn’t have the heart or the smarts. But Frank knew who did.

“This wasn’t my job,” Frank said firmly. “None of my men were involved.”

Vito exploded. “Well it looks like somebody in your family is running themselves a little side operation! Do you know what kind of trouble this is gonna cause for us? Trouble that we don’t need? Are you trying to start a friggin’ war between us the Milans? I don’t have to tell you what’ll happen when the DEA gets on the trail.”

Don Vito puffed from his cigar and then pointed it at Frankie’s face. “You know, one of your nephews paid Big Earl Gambino a visit at his chop shop the other night.”

Frank’s look was blank.

“Big Earl likes to blow things up, you know. He told me he put a little boom-boom in a BMW your nephew brought by. I hear it went off at the airport and two moolies got hashed. Who the fuck were they?”

Frank just shrugged. He had no fuckin’ idea.

Don Vito sighed. “Look, they ran you out of New York because of this same kind of thing. I don’t know, Frankie. You’re looking pretty foolish, here. Someone in your family must be a maverick. A renegade. I’d say you better get some control, Frankie. You better shut your rogue relatives down. Or we’ll have to shut you down. All the way down.”

Frank nodded. He was angry, but Vito was right. When you lost control over your family in this business, shit rolled straight uphill.

“I’ll take care of this,” Frank said firmly. He knew exactly what needed to be done. “Please give my regards to Don Milan. I’ll handle this. In fact, consider it already fixed.”

Don Vito nodded. “It better be. Because this is a very small world you know, Frankie, and your family is running out of places to hide.”

CHAPTER 11

Juicy was still sleeping when three of Flex’s top lieutenants swung by the basement crib. A text from his boy Doc’s phone alerted him that the members of the Divine Nine were heading downstairs for their morning meeting, but Flex still made them go through all the security procedures before he unlocked the last door and let them in.

He greeted his street team: Doc, Stamp, Mannie, Rome, Boog, Cee-Low, Chickie, and Lil Lee. The nine of them sat around smoking blunts and discussing the financial profits from their various drug sectors.

“Yo,” Doc stood up and spoke out, “we gonna need to do something about our product flow, man. Without no large-scale distributor we just gonna keep coming up short. Them fiends is buying it up faster than we can put it out there.”

Lil Lee sat with her beautiful legs crossed. She was sexy to the bone and as coldhearted as they came. “Yeah, and just remember, every time we come up empty it’s like giving money away, okay? Our customers have no choice but to run across town and give their bizz to them other dealers.”

Flex sat there listening as his crew debated the matter back and forth. He was definitely about making his money, but just knowing Juicy was back there in his bed was a big distraction.

Doc asked, “So you wanna double up on what we usually get from Walla, or we just gonna be short this week?”

Flex had to shake his head to clear his thoughts.

“Nah, man,” he said slowly. “We gotta keep up with the demand, yo. We can’t be coming up short.”

Flex twirled his ring. Them Columbian connects were tryna fuck him. Flex could feel it, and he could also feel the anger rising in him at the thought of it. Them south-of-the-border niggahs musta thought he was soft. They must not know what kinda beast he really was.     

“Yo, Cee,” he told his manz. “Run across the street to McDonald’s and get some of them steak bagels, man. Get some a them potato shits too. Enough for everybody.”

“Well then we gotta find another source,” Doc said, steering Flex back to the matter at hand. “Or, we gotta take some off the top of all our other piles. Either way, they gonna keep wanting more than we have and business is gonna suffer.”

Flex sat quietly, deep in thought.

The last thing he wanted to do was lose money. The sales from his club drugs were steadily climbing, and that was cool. In fact, he had just dished off some free samples to an old broad last night, and if she liked it she would come running back for more, thus creating an additional source of secondary income.

But he had to study the big picture and figure out how to best handle this new situation. Sure, he could do like Doc had said and shorten the supply in all of his other sectors to make up for what he was lacking in two. But that was just shuffling money around, not bringing in more of it.

Another option was to hook up with another low-level dealer, and probably get some inferior product that would turn his die-hard users off. But Flex didn’t wanna risk that. His rep was solid, and he knew word of mouth was key in sending customers his way.

What Flex really wanted to do, was conduct a two-fold operation. If he could gain control of the G-Spot, he would have some of the sweetest drug territory in Harlem under his thumb. Of course, he’d inherit the same problems that Ace and Pluto had: the lack of a large enough distribution connection.

So what did he need in order to accomplish his mission? The first thing he needed was some firepower. Some clean firepower. He was gonna have to find a broker who could deliver some fresh, high-grade weaponry, because almost every piece his boys carried was dirty. Shit, most of their toolies had five and six bodies on them each. If they got caught blasting up in the G-Spot with dirty gats the cops would use their superior ballistics to connect the dots to countless other unsolved murders.

But Flex thought he might have a way around that. He knew a white dude who had tossed him off some AKs in the past. He had called this guy up to see if he had some clean burners that would fit his criteria, and dude told him he would do his best to find somebody with a fresh shipment.   

After that, all Flex needed was a big, steady supply of high-quality cocaine. Finding somebody to supply it was gonna be a whole lot easier said than done, so the next thing he planned to do was twist somebody’s fuckin’ arm until they spit out the name of G’s old connect.   

$$$$$

These were the thoughts on Flex’s mind when Cee-Low came back with breakfast.

Flex had just taken two meals out the bag for him and Juicy, when to his surprise the door leading to the back of his crib swung open and she was standing right there.

“Ooops!” she said with an embarrassed grin. “Sorry. I didn’t know you had people out here.”

Every niggah in the room was transfixed.

Wearing a black robe tied tightly over the slinky lingerie that Flex had bought for her, Juicy looked fuckably delicious with her sleep tousled hair, wide eyes, and clear, creamy skin.

“It’s cool, baby,” Flex said quickly. He stood up and walked over to her with the food in his hand. “I sent my manz to get you some breakfast, ma. It’s nice and hot,” he said, handing the steak bagel to her. “Give me a few minutes and I’ll be back there to check you out.”

Juicy took the food and stepped back into the living area, and Flex quickly pulled the door closed behind her. He knew his crew was swift, and by the time he turned back around, there were eyeballs on the ceiling, eyeballs on the floor, eyeballs studying chewed up fingernails, eyeballs everywhere but on the spot where Juicy had just stood.

Except for that niggah Cee-Low’s eyes.

“Yo, man!” he hollered, gripping his dick and pointing toward the closed door. “I
remember
that chick! That’s the bitch we banged one night in the G-Spot! She’s a
baaad
piece of ass! You remember her, Flex?”

Flex’s voice dropped low as he sat down on the couch. “Nah, man. That ain’t her.”

“Yo! I’m telling you, niggah! “That’s
her!
”

Cee laughed. “I remember getting’ all up in that shit…” with his face screwed up in mock sexual concentration, he gestured like he was gripping a woman’s hips, then thrust his pelvis back and forth in a deep, fucking motion. “Bang! Bang! Bang! I was knockin’ a hole in that soft-ass pussy!” He laughed again and reached out to Doc for some dap. “That shit was good, too. It was a little sloppy, but it was still good.”

Doc refused the dap. “Man, shut the fuck up, a’ight?” He grilled the youngsta. “You heard what Flex just said, niggah. You got the wrong girl. It wasn’t her.”

“
Oh yes the fuck it—
”

Boom!

A hole opened up on Cee-Low’s forehead and hot blood splattered the wall behind him.

Flex sat on the sofa cooler than winter, the gat he’d retrieved from between two cushions trailing smoke from its barrel.

Cee’s body had flown backward, into the wall, and now his dead weight slumped to the floor as his legs collapsed and folded beneath him.

“Now,” Flex looked around the room and said patiently. His voice sounded like cold death. “Any fuckin’ body else up in here think they remember my queen from somewhere?”