The Union (14 page)

“I hope so, Frank. I feel like time might be runnin’ out. Anybody heard from Cleo?” They all said no. “Frank, did you get that information I asked for?”

“Yup.” He passed Mox a ripped piece of paper with a name and address on it.

Rita Davis

255 Huguenot St.

New Rochelle, NY

Apt 12K

Mox tucked the piece of paper into his pocket. “Okay. We gotta make a stop by there when we finish and I gotta go check my aunt. I also want you to go bail Dana and her little cousin out as soon as possible. I can’t have them sittin’ up in there. As far as the Telescos… we fall back for now. We don’t move until they force us to.” Mox sat on the end of the table tapping his knuckle on the wood. The strain was killing him.

Nate responded. “You sure that’s the right thing to do? You know I can make that disappear.”

“I know Nate. I just got so much shit I’m dealing with right now, I can barely focus.”

Papi stood up. “Dats why we here, Papi. Ju know we got ju back.”

“I think you should let Nate handle that, Mox. Take some of the pressure off you. That way we can focus on getting Brandi back and handling that other thing.” Frank suggested.

Mox
 
agreed. “You right. Nate, do that; and take Papi with you.”

“Hey! You guys forget about me??” Javier broke the tension and made them all laugh. He was making his appearance through a video chat from a remote location.

Mox looked amused for the first time in hours. “Wassup, bro. How’s the shoulder?”

Javier tapped on his wounded arm to show it was healing well. “Muthafucka hit me wit’ a .45 Mox. I took that shit like a champ bro. I heard you took one too.”

“A few pellets in the side, nothin’ crazy.” Mox lifted his shirt. The pellets ripped his abdomen to shreds. It looked like a sponge. “You out there takin’ care of business right?”

“Of course. I should be able to set something up soon. I know you’ll love it out here. Beautiful women, beautiful weather and easy money, what more could you ask for.”

“I bet. Listen, Javier, stay in contact with Papi. Make sure you check in so he can keep you informed. I’ma speak to you later.”

The computer screen went blank and Papi shut the laptop down.

“Before we step out this door and do what we gotta do,” Mox paused and took a good look over his team. “I jus’ wanna let each one of y’all know that I love y’all like brothers. I never had people as close to me as y’all are, and I appreciate the love. This shit is genuine. We all bosses here.”

SIXTEEN

Susan leaned against the bathroom sink and let the salty droplets fall from her eye wells to the porcelain tiles. She wiped her face for the hundredth time and tried to catch her breath. “Please stop!” she cried. With each bang on the door, her nerves would flinch. She was frightened and exhausted from putting up the fight of her life and barely getting away. For the last sixty minutes, she had been living out the most terrifying dream you could imagine and now she was locked in her own bathroom, praying that someone would come and save her.

“Bitch, as soon as you open this door, I’ma fuckin’ kill you.” Cleo had his back against the bathroom door. He clenched a half gallon of Hennessy in his right hand and a 5 inch, sandal wood handle kitchen knife in the other. He was pissy drunk and his disposition was unstable. “Su-san!” he slurred and then turned the cognac bottle up to his lips. He lifted his right leg and horse kicked the bathroom door with his size thirteen Timberland.

“Cleo, please stop! Why are you doing this to me?” Susan wiped her runny nose and tried to get her hands to stop shaking.

Cleo kicked again, but this time, his foot crashed through the flimsy plywood door. He kicked some more to widen the hole and then he got down on the floor and stuck his head through the crack like Jack Nicholson in ‘The Shining’.

“Heeeeere’s Johnny!” He laughed so hard, he started to cough. “Susan!” he screamed. After several unsuccessful attempts to reach the lock, Cleo finally got smart and used the knife to move the latch.

Susan had nowhere to turn, nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. She had to fight. She thought back on her previous abusive relationships and all the beatings she took from the men who claimed they loved her.
Was this love?
She felt like the only men she attracted were the ones that used physical force. It was a cycle. She watched her father violate her mother time and time again, so much so, that it became normal. If it didn’t happen, then something was wrong.

She balled her fist so hard, her finger nails cut into her palm and she charged at Cleo as he came through the door. The Hennessy bottle slipped from his fingers and hit the floor. Shards of glass and cognac were everywhere.

Susan took a chance and tried to reach for the knife in his hand, but slipped on the wet glassy tile and banged her head on the enamel steel bathtub. The impact instantly knocked her unconscious and she lay there, on her own bathroom floor, powerless and damn near dead.

Cleo dropped the knife in the toilet and got down on the floor beside her. He was still in a drunken stupor. “Susan!” He shook her limp body, but she didn’t respond. He lifted her and held her in his arms. “Baby, get up.” he used the back of his hand to wipe the blood that leaked down the side of her mouth; the blood that he drew just an hour ago after he slapped her. “Baby,” he mumbled. “Get up.”

Susan was still alive but her breaths were quick, short, and faint. If she didn’t receive medical attention soon, she would die.

“I’m sorry, baby…” Tears washed Cleo’s face. He rocked her in his arms. “I’m sorry…”

His cell phone vibrated in his pocket and snapped him out his drunkenness for a second. He dug it out and saw it was Mox calling. He quickly hit accept.

“Mox, I need your help.” He looked down at Susan. She hadn’t moved yet.

Mox could hear the panic in his voice. It sounded like he was crying. “Cleo, what happened? Where you at?”

Cleo closed his eyes. “Mox, I’m sorry…” his voice got high.

“Cleo!” Where are you?”

“I’m at Susan’s.” He sniffled. “Mox hurry up, please.”

“Where’s she at?”

He whispered into the speaker. “She’s sleepin’”

“Aight, I’ll be there, don’t move.”

25 Minutes Later

“Cleo!” Mox yelled as he pushed the door open to the brownstone. “Frank, call his cell phone back.” He removed the .40 caliber black Taurus from the double harness shoulder holster underneath his blazer.

“He’s not answering, Mox.”

The two of them cautiously ascended the steps to the second level and Mox hollered again. “Cleo, you in here!?”

They heard some shuffling towards the back of the house.

He could hardly get the words out. “Yeah… I’m…I’m in the bathroom.”

When Mox and Frank turned the corner, the bathroom door was wide open with a gaping hole in it like someone kicked through it. Cleo was on the floor holding Susan, who looked to be either sleep or dead.

“What the fuck?” Mox tucked his gun back in the holster and ran over to the bathroom. “Yo Frank, check the house and make sure nobody else is here.” He looked down at Cleo’s bloody hands and Susan’s beat up face. “What the fuck did you do, Cleo?”

“Mox, I’m sorry…” His face was full of tears and Susan’s blood.

Mox snatched a towel off the rack and threw it on the floor, so he wouldn’t slip in the glass. He bent down and put two fingers under Susan’s chin and felt for a pulse.

“She’s still breathing. We gotta hurry up and get her to a hospital. Cleo, get up!”

Mox and Frank carried Susan out to the car and put her in the back seat with Cleo. Frank got behind the wheel and they rushed through the moderate traffic. They made a right onto Amsterdam and then a left onto 135th street and ran almost every light until they reached the Harlem Hospital Center.

Mox pulled Susan from the car and waved down the ambulance that pulled up to the emergency entrance. The two EMTs got Susan onto a gurney and into the emergency room without delay. Mox couldn’t stay and give any information, so he hopped back in the car and they took off.

After a ten minute ride on the highway going back uptown, Mox told Frank to pull into a White Castle’s parking lot on Westchester Avenue. He jumped out, pulled the back door open and Frank tried to stop him. “Mox, leave him alone.”

“What the fuck is wrong wit’ you, Cleo!? What you do to that girl?” Mox dragged his 300 pound frame out the backseat like a bag of laundry.

Cleo didn’t even put up a struggle. He just cried. “Mox, I’m sorry…”

“Yo, Mox, it’s a lot of police out here tonight. I think we need to keep it movin’.” Frank was trying to avoid any more problems because they already had enough to deal with.

After Cleo got back in the car, they continued on the highway to New Rochelle.

“Frank, drop me off on Huguenot so I can go see Ms. Davis.”

“Got you.”

“And keep this nigga wit’ you. Don’t let him out your sight.”

__________

Vito downed his last shot of Johnny Walker and got off the bar stool he was sitting on. He checked his watch, smiled and thought about his late night rendezvous that would take place within the next hour. He hadn’t gotten laid in almost a month. Actually, more than a month.

Tony slid down the bar with a washrag, wiping up spilled drinks and peanut shells. He stopped when he reached Vito. “Boss, you taking it in early tonight?”

“Yeah, I got a hot one, Tony.” He fixed his sweater and tapped his pocket to make sure he still had cash on him. “Twin blondes,” he cheesed.

“A regular stud ain’t you…” Tony laughed. He just knew Vito was telling one of his routine lies. But not tonight, for the first time, he was actually telling the truth.

“Go head and makes jokes, Tony… ‘cause in about twenty minutes I’ll be bangin’ two 20 year olds from the back on a bum knee. You’ll be at home… by yourself, of course, drinking stale beer and slammin’ lil’ Sammy there in your pants. Ha! Now make sure you lock up on time,” Vito turned to exit. “And don’t rip the skin off your dick tonight, Tony. Take it easy!”

“Fuck you Vito!” Tony threw the washrag and almost hit him in the back.

Jimmy had been sitting in the limo, parked in front of Vito’s for the last twenty minutes waiting on him to come out.

Vito jumped in the backseat and tapped on the partition. “Jimmy, take me over to the Ritz Carlton, Three Renaissance Square.”

The limo peeled off and he sat back stargazing on the adventure he planned on having with the twins. He envisioned all the different positions he would have them in and the thought alone aroused him. He needed to get ready.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded hundred dollar bill. He opened it up and dumped the white, powder like crystals onto the back of his hand and then he vacuumed it right up his nostrils. The rush was immediately electric and numbing. The feeling was euphoric.

He sat composed and let the high potency drug run its course through his blood stream as he relaxed in paradise. When he finally looked out the window to see where he was, they were just passing the Ritz Carlton.

“Jimmy, where the fuck you goin’? You passed the place.”

He kept it steady down Court St. and made a left onto East Post Road and then pulled over and parked behind a black van.

“Jimmy, didn’t you fuckin’ hear me. I sai—”

The partition came all the way down. “I no think Jimmy hear you, my friend.” Papi lifted Jimmy’s stiff body from out the passenger seat and Vito saw the dime sized bullet hole that sat in the center of his forehead with a streak of blood flowing down the bridge of his nose. “I no think Jimmy hear nobody, my friend.”

Vito fumbled, trying to grab the pistol off his waistline, but when the door came open, he fell into a state of shock. Like a deer caught in bright headlights, he couldn’t move.

Nate was standing in a black suit, gripping an AM-15 sub machine gun. “Too late Vito.” He let the machine gun blow, and fire shot from the nozzle like a torch. The sub sounded like a jackhammer going off in the middle of the night and Vito caught every bullet that came out of it. He fell to the limo carpet and half of his body was hanging out the door. His blood was splattered throughout the back of the car.

Nate looked down at Vito’s bloody corpse and kicked him over to make sure he wasn’t breathing. “Papi, vamanos!”

Papi emerged from the driver’s seat, tossed Jimmy’s hat and jacket back in the car and him and Nate got in the black van that was parked ten feet away and burnt the road up.

__________

Mox stepped out the black 500 Benz and walked into the Avalon apartments at 255 Huguenot Street. He gave the desk attendant a fake name and told him he was visiting someone one the ninth floor, but he took the elevator to twelve. He tapped on the door that had 12K on it and waited for someone to answer.

An elderly female voice came from behind the door. “Who is it?”

“Hello, Mrs. Davis… It’s Mox. I’m Priscilla’s friend.”

The lock clicked and the door slowly came open. The older woman standing before him had a familiar face, one that he recognized. Mrs. Davis had a few more wrinkles, but for the most part, she and Priscilla looked just alike. They were both beautiful and even in her old age, she carried a delightful semblance.

“Look at those eyes.” She shook her head. “Come in, Mox. I was wondering when you would stop by.”

He stepped in and gave Mrs. Davis a kiss on the cheek and then followed her into the living room.

The apartment was a modest one; bare, eggshell colored walls, a micro fiber couch and loveseat, a 32 inch flat screen television sitting on a stand against the far wall and tall plants in each corner of the room.

Mrs. Davis went into the kitchen and poured Mox and herself some water. She sat the two glasses on the table along with a white envelope that had his name on it and took a seat on the couch. Mox rested in the loveseat next to her.

“Well, it’s a pleasure meeting you, Mox. I haven’t heard too much about you, but I do know that my daughter loves you.” She smiled and sipped her water. “You see that picture over there?” she pointed to a photo on the T.V stand. It was a picture of him and Priscilla the day Mox brought his 430 CLK. They were leaning against the car, parked in front of the dealership. “Whenever Priscilla walks through that door, the first thing she does is pick that picture up and dust the frame. She loves her some Mox.”