The Cost of Vengeance (7 page)

“Black.”

“Huh?”

“We’re here,” Victor said.

“Don’t look like that. I’m not gonna kill Sabrina. I just want to ask her some questions about Bo,” I said and Victor and I walked toward the house.

“Yeah, you told me. But suppose she gives you the wrong answers?”

“Then I’d have you kill her,” I said and kept walking. Victor stopped. “I’m only kiddin’. I wouldn’t ask you to do that.” Victor had been fuckin’ Sabrina, so I wouldn’t ask him to kill her. I’d get Monika to do it. But I didn’t think that would be necessary. I just wanted to ask her some questions about Bo. Before I had him killed, Bo Freeman worked for me. He had to die when he and his partner, Hank Jackson, conspired with
Cruz Villanova to kill me, Nick, and Bobby. They’re all dead now.

I rang the bell and waited for Sabrina to answer. Sabrina Cole was a very beautiful thirty-seven-year-old woman who talked slow, and was just country enough to be sexy. She had been with Bo for twelve years; since she’d arrived in New York from Mississippi. During that time she’d had two years of good and ten years of bad. Her life was made bearable when she started sneakin’ around with Victor. “Hey, Black,” Sabrina said when she opened the door. “Hey, Victor.”

“How you doin’ tonight, Sabrina?” I asked.

“I’m doing just fine, Black. Y’all come in,” she said and stepped aside.

I leaned close to Victor and whispered, “Wait here.” His eyes opened wide. “Don’t worry. I told you I wasn’t gonna kill her.” Victor didn’t look convinced. “Right,” I said and handed him my gun. “That make you feel better?”

“A little,” Victor said.

“Y’all comin’?” Sabrina asked.

“Comin’ right now,” I said and closed the door behind me.

Sabrina led me into the living room and I sat down. “You know something, Black?”

“What’s that, Sabrina?”

“I been invitin’ you over here for dinner or drinks and whatnot for years, and this is the first time you been here.” Sabrina sat down across from me. “Now, I’m not tryin’ to be rude or disrespectful or nothin’ like that, but what you want, Black?”

“I want you to know, for what it’s worth, I liked Bo, and I’m sorry it turned out the way it did.”

“I’m glad you came to say that, but that ain’t what you here for, is it?” Sabrina asked. She was a beautiful woman; I understood what had Victor so excited.

“You know what Bo was plannin’?”

“No. Bo never talked to me about y’all’s business.”

“Who was over here talkin’ to Bo the last couple of weeks?”

“One night Hank, Bull Harris, and Skip Skinner was here.”

“You hear what they was talkin’ about?”

“No,
Bo told me to go to the club and stay gone until he called for me,” Sabrina said.

“What did you do?”

“I called Victor.”

“He just made it too easy for you, didn’t he, Sabrina?”

Sabrina smiled and laughed a little. “Yeah, Black, he really did.”

“I’ve been tellin’ men for years: don’t leave your homework undone, ’cause there is always some man that is more than willing to do it for you,” I said and Sabrina’s smile got bigger.

“Guess you didn’t have that little talk with Bo, huh? If you did, he didn’t listen.”

“Anybody else come by here lately?”

“Cruz Villanova.”

“He come alone?

“No, his boy, Jorge, was always with him.”

“Anything else you think I need to know about?”

“I think Bo had something to do with Kenny gettin’ killed.”

“What makes you think that?”

“I heard him talkin’ to Bull one night and I heard him say somethin’ like: ‘He wouldn’t be dead if he had got with me in the first place.’ I didn’t think nothin’ of it, but now, after all that’s gone on, I think he was talking about Kenny.”

I got up. “Bo was involved in a lot of things.”

When I was leaving the house, Sabrina walked me to the door and I made her come out to show Victor that I didn’t kill her.

“I told you that I wasn’t gonna kill her. You gotta learn to trust me,” I said to Victor as he drove off. “Now, get Bobby on the phone for me.”

“Bobby; it’s Victor. Black wants to talk to you. Hold on,” Victor said and handed the phone to me.

“You busy?”

“Not really,” Bobby said.

“Where you at?”

“I’m at Grant’s. Why?”

“Stay there. I’ll be there in twenty minutes. I need to talk to you about something,” I said and ended the call. I handed Victor back his phone and relaxed.

“You find out what you wanted to know from Sabrina?”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t think Bo and Hank was in it alone, do you?”

I glanced over at Victor. “Do you?”

“No, I don’t”

“I don’t either; but tell me why you don’t?”

Victor swallowed hard, like he was about to answer a test question. “Even if they killed you, Bobby, and Nick, Bo still wouldn’t have a clear path to the throne. He would have to contend with Sherman and Howard. And if Wanda ever figured out that him and Hank was behind it, she would come after him with everything she had. In either one of those scenarios, Bo would need all the muscle he could get. That’s where Bull Harris and Skip Skinner come in.”

“Good answer.” I was starting to like Victor. He was smart and he wasn’t afraid of shit, but like I said, he wasn’t ruthless like Freeze was. Still, if I kept him around, showed him a few things—who was I kiddin’. I knew I wasn’t gonna be around to train him to handle power like I’d done with Freeze. If I didn’t have to handle this little matter, I’d be in Nassau right now. Lately, the most important thing in the world is being Michelle’s father. Maybe that’s what almost dyin’ does for you; makes you understand and appreciate the things that are really important in your life. And that’s Michelle. She already lost her mother because of my shit; so what was I doing out here runnin’ the risk of her losing her father, too? I grew up without a father; so I understand what’s it’s gonna be like for her. Maybe that’s why I’ve gravitated toward CeCe. She was great with Michelle and Michelle was crazy about her.

 
CeCe’s a good woman. Not the scheming baller’s ex-girlfriend I’d made her out to be. I was content with her. There was no drama in our life and I liked it that way. It’s the closest that I’ve ever come to a normal life, and that seems to have a haunting pull on me.

And then I thought about Jada West. She had a haunting pull on me, too, but for entirely different reasons.

We pulled up in front of Grant’s and went inside. Bobby wasn’t hard to find. He was sitting at a table near the back, and was surrounded by women. Before I went over there, I stopped by Grant’s office. He had run that spot and few number joints for me for years. I liked Grant, but I didn’t respect him. It wasn’t business. He was a smart businessman and a good earner; I just had no respect for him. He was too easily led, too quick to go along. Like he didn’t stand for shit. But like I said, he was a good earner.

Once I showed Grant some respect—it wouldn’t be right for me to be in his house and not speak—Victor and I went and sat down with Bobby. “What’s up, Mike?” Bobby said.

“Ladies, would you excuse me; I need to talk to Mr. Ray for a minute.”

Victor got up and herded the ladies away from the table. “Victor.”

“Yes, Black.”

“When you’re done with them, you can take off,” I said, and I could see that he looked disappointed as he walked away. I thought that he would be in a hurry to get back to Sabrina, but I guess not. He wanted to be a part of whatever I had planned for Bull and Skip. I turned to Bobby.

“Since you ran off all the women, this better be important,” Bobby said and picked up his drink.

“I think it is. Listen,
Cruz Villanova,
Bo, and Hank tried to kill us.”

“I was gonna talk to you about that. I don’t think it stops there. If Bo and Hank planned it, then them other two members of the fearsome foursome, Skip and Bull Harris, had to be in on it.”

“So when was you plannin’ on talkin’ to me about it?”

“Next time I was with you, which is now; so I’m tellin’ you.”

“Come on,” I said and got up.

“Where you thinkin’ about goin’?”

“I was thinkin’ about findin’ and killin’ these niggas. Wanna come along? Or should I call Victor back over here? I know he wants to go.”

Bobby finished his drink and got up. “Let’s go.”

When we got in the car and drove off, I could tell that he had something on his mind. For the next couple of hours, we rode from spot to spot looking for Bull and Skip. They were nowhere to be found, and nobody had seen them. That just made me believe that I was right about them. “Where we headed?” Bobby asked.

“I thought we’d stop by and see Nita Blue.”

“What you wanna see her for?”

“She hates Bull; so she kept tabs on him.” I thought for a minute. “And besides, I want a piece of her action.”

“You have for years.”

“This may be a way for both of us to get what we want.”

“You were gonna kill Bull anyway. Makes sense to let her think you’re doin’ her a favor,” Bobby said. “Good idea.”

“Thank you. I try to think up smart shit,” I said and waited for Bobby to say something, but he didn’t.

“You remember Keisha and Connie Mack?” Bobby asked.

“The Mack sisters. How could I forget them? Those were two fine-ass mutha fuckas.”

“Used to always be together,” Bobby said and laughed.

“Whenever you saw one, the other was around somewhere. They were inseparable.”

“How did we get them apart?” Bobby asked.

“You grabbed Keisha by the arm and dragged her in the room.”

“Yeah.” Bobby shook his head. “I had to talk to her for over an hour before she gave up that pussy.”

“Shit, soon as you closed the door, Connie looked at me and said, ‘wanna go in my room?’ ” I looked at Bobby. “Ain’t Keisha the one that used to go around sayin’ that you were her baby’s daddy?”

“That’s her.”

“What made you think about them?”

“Her daughter is dancin’ at Grant’s,” Bobby said.

“She call you daddy?”

“No!”

“She look like you?”

“No!”

“How you know she’s Keisha’s daughter?”

“She walked up to me and said, ‘You Bobby Ray, right?’ I said: yes. She said, ‘My mama said to tell you hello.’ So I asked: who’s your mama? She put her hand on her hip and said, ‘Keisha Mack.’ ”

“She got big-ass hips like her mama?”

“She look just like her mama. Got a body like her too,” Bobby said.

“Suppose that is your daughter? How would you feel about your daughter dancin’ at Grant’s?”

“It don’t matter ’cause she ain’t my daughter, Mike,” Bobby said, and I could tell he was gettin’ a little mad. Just like he did back then.

“Let me put it another way. How would you feel if Barbara, or better yet, if Bonita and Brenda were dancin’ at Grant’s? How would you feel then?”

“But they’re not.”

“They dance.”

“They do ballet!”

“Mercedes told me she used to do ballet,” I said quickly.

“Mercedes is dumber than a box of rocks,” Bobby partially shouted.

“What’s that got to do with it? She said that’s why she can stand in them four-inch stilettos and lift her leg straight up in the air—it’s from the balance she learned from doin’ ballet for years.”

“Fuck you, Mike.”

I laughed and so did Bobby. “All I’m sayin’ is that you need to find out if that’s your daughter or not. ’Cause I know I wouldn’t want Michelle shakin’ her ass in none of our spots or anyplace else. And I know you don’t want that for your girls either.”

“You right, Mike.”

“What she call herself?”

“Butta.”

I laughed again. “She got a big, round ass like her mama and her Aunt Connie?”

“Why you think they call her Butta?”

“Talk to Keisha. Find out if that’s your girl or not. If she is, give her a better life,” I said and then I dropped it.

I remembered that night with Connie; more because of what happened the day after. The next morning we went with André to meet with Greg Lacey. He was the closest thing André had to competition those days. Lace was what they used to call up-and-coming. But to me, he was a loudmouth fool who was always talkin’ when he should be listening. Even though I ended up killing André for betraying me, I listened to what he had to say and learned a lot from him.

But not Lace, he thought he knew it all, and tried to force his way into a piece of André’s game. It began one day when one of the guys who sold heroin for André started operating on a block that Lace considered his. André’s man killed him and Lace wanted satisfaction; so André agreed to sit down with him. The move surprised me, because André was king those days, and sitting down with Lace would make him appear stronger. But André knew what he was doing.