In a Cold Sweat (28 page)

You hear anything from Stark or that other clown yet?

BB’s in the wind, but he’ll turn up. I just left Stark at the Shrine Bar.

“Who’s that he’s talkin’ to?” Black asked.

“This is him,” Monika replied and showed Black a picture of agent Masters and the car he drove up in.

“. .
.We’re
moving up the timetable.”

“Why?”

“You ask too many questions, Mylo. What is going to happen now is that you are going to get Mike Black in place.”

“Like I told you, he don’t come into the city much and when he does, he goes to Cynt’s, picks up that same ho and breaks to that hotel.”

“He set up the hit at the hotel,” Bobby said.

“Seems that way,” Black agreed.

“Shhh. This part is important,” Jackie said and both Black and Bobby looked at her. The four of them sat and listened to the rest of the conversation. Once the recording was finished, Black sat quietly and looked at the rest of the images that Monika had snapped. Black looked at Jackie. “I’m impressed,” he said.

Jackie smiled.
 
“Are you really?”
 

“Really. You did
good
.”

“Well, Monika did all the hard work,” Jackie said modestly.

“That’s not true, Black. I just helped her out,” Monika corrected. “It was Jackie’s plan. She planted all of the devices.

“Don’t matter who gets the credit,” Bobby finally said. “This answers a lot of questions. It’s been
these two asshole pullin’ the strings
. Had all of us dancin’ to their beat. We need to find out who this other guy is.”

“Question is
,
what time table are they moving up?”

“Killin’ you.”

 
‘Since they’re onto this place, it’s a good bet that they know you’re here,” Monika said.

“That means they’ll be coming.” Jackie finally said what she had been feeling all along. She checked her gun and so did Monika.

“Let ’em come,” Bobby said and started walking toward the safe in the office. Cynt kept a small arsenal in that safe, as well as two other places in the club.

“Slow down, everybody,” Black said with his hands in the air. “If they know about this place, then they gotta know this ain’t the place to come at us.”

Bobby started laughing a little. “You're right. We could fight a small Army off with the shit we got here.”

“Black’s right,” Monika said. “They wouldn’t try it here. Semi-public place; too many variables they couldn’t control, too much could go wrong,” she added.

“That’s right,” Black said and stood in front of Monika. “This is your type of shit. How would they do it?”

“Shit, there are hundreds of ways they could come at you. But I can tell you this, they already know how and they know where they're gonna come at you. They are either gonna lead you there, or just wait for you to show up.”

After Black and Bobby left Cynt's, they went straight to Bobby’s house and had a few of their men meet them there. Bobby quickly got his family out of bed and ready to leave the house. He didn’t believe that they were in any real danger, but Bobby felt safer with them out of the house. Once he was satisfied that his family was safe at a hotel with men to watch over them, Bobby drove back to the city with Black.

“Where you wanna go now?” Bobby asked as they drove across the Tappan Zee Bridge.

“Take me by Maria’s apartment,” Black answered, referring to Mystique by her government name for the first time.

“Who?”

Black looked at Bobby. “Amazon Shy.”

“I’ma
stop
callin’ her that. Now that you claimin’ her and shit.”

“Call her whatever you want, just
take
me by there. Since they know about her too, I want to make sure she’s safe.”

“I’ll put a couple of our people on her,” Bobby said.

“No,” Black said definitely. “She’ll be all right with me.”

“I’m sure she will, but I’m still gonna put somebody on her and you too.”

“No.”

“Look Mike, I don’t give a fuck what you say, you gonna have somebody on you.”

“I got you.”

“Yeah, but I’m gonna go to sleep sometime. Somebody’s gotta be watchin’ our back. And besides, you ain’t plannin’ on takin’ her to Carolina with us, are you?”

“Hell no.”

“Then she needs somebody on her until you get back,” Bobby said as he drove.

“I guess you're right,” Black admitted reluctantly.

“Of course I am. Ain’t no harm in havin’ a few bodies around until this blows over, right?”

But Black didn’t answer him. He stared out the window and thought about Mylo. They had a traitor in their house, somebody that Freeze brought to him. Could Freeze have misjudged Mylo, or was he involved? There was no way he could be sure, but he knew he’d find out.

It had been a long time since somebody had betrayed him. His name was Gary
Banks,
he used to run one of their gambling houses until he got caught selling drugs. Back then, everybody that worked for Black had made a pledge not to sell drugs.

After what he considered a fair trial in front of his peers, Black tortured and then executed Banks that night while everyone in the room looked on. Some people started to leave, but Black stopped them. He wanted to be sure that everyone there saw what was happening. Banks was gonna die that night and Black wanted to be sure all of them knew why. Black wondered would he give Mylo a chance to defend himself or would he just kill him.

Bobby looked at Black, waiting for him to say something about having a few bodies around. When he didn’t answer, Bobby said it again. “Ain’t
no harm in havin’
a few bodies around, right?”

“Huh?”

“I said, ain’t no harm in havin’ a few bodies around until this blows over.”

“You’re right.”

“What zone you in?”

“Thinkin’ ’bout this nigga Mylo and wonderin’ ’bout Freeze.”

“I wasn’t gonna say anything, but I know you got to be thinkin’ the same thing I am. Is Freeze involved in this thing? I mean, where this nigga come from all of a sudden that Freeze got him runnin’ our game? And how come nobody bothered to tell me ’bout him?”

“Freeze said that Jap met him in jail. Jap used him on a couple things, and turned him on to Freeze.”

“That’s it?” Bobby asked, thinking that damn sure wasn’t good enough.

“All I can tell you is that Cassandra didn’t like him. That shoulda told me something. He was the one that told Freeze where Birdie and Albert were hidin’ out.”

“Anybody ask him how he knew where they were?”

“What?” Black asked.

“Did anybody ask him how he knew just where to find them?”

“I never thought about that.”

“I been tellin’ you for years, I look at shit a little differently than other people. And why should you have thought about that? You were in jail while they were out chasin’ the wild goose. By the time you got out, they were dead and you moved on to the real killers.”

“You’re right,” Black said thinking back to those days.

“But think about that shit now. This fuckin’ Commission, all them niggas used to work for Birdie. Knowing that he’s got some influence over them—,” Bobby started.

“That’s how he knew where to find Birdie and Albert. He was down with them,” Black said.

“So we know
he
a snitch.”

“I hate fuckin’ snitches.”

“But Freeze depends on them,” Bobby pointed out. “He’s made his rep on knowin’ or being able to find out information. Information that you’ve relied on for years and you didn’t give a fuck where it came from.”

“What are you sayin’, Bob?”

“Mutha fuckas been snitchin’ for Freeze for years, you can’t hold that against him now, that’s all I’m sayin’.”

“Okay, but do you think Freeze knew about Mylo
fixin
’ the fight or tryin’ to kill me?”

“I don’t think so. Maybe it is just bad judgement for him to trust Mylo, but Freeze is too loyal to you for him to be a part of that.”

“I hope you're right. I don’t even wanna think about that,” Black said and looked out the window. The thought of Freeze betraying him was much more than he wanted to deal with right then. He didn’t want to believe it, but there was no way that he could ignore the possibility. Freeze was like a brother, a son even, to him.
There is no way.

When they got back to the city, Black picked up Mystique and took her to the Marriott on 40
^th
street, where Bobby had two men waiting. She stayed awake and watched over Black while he slept for a couple of hours, before him and Bobby headed to North Carolina to settle a debt.

After rotting for more time than he thought was possible in the Federal Prison Camp in Atlanta, the day had finally come for him to get out of there.
Former DEA agent Kenneth DeFrancisco wasn’t
getting out of jail altogether though. He still had thirteen more years on the fifteen-year sentence he was serving for his involvement with drug trafficking
that, had it been successful, would’ve had Mike Black in there instead of him. Then, two days after he was taken into custody, the government, confiscated all of his assets. His sprawling home, the condo on the North Carolina coast, his prized cars, motorcycles, even the cash he had neatly stashed in off shore accounts. The most important thing he lost was his wife.

He thought back to the last time he spoke to his wife Jane. “They’re putting me out!” she had cried that day. She had barricaded herself in the bedroom while IRS agents went through everything they owned. They hadn’t paid taxes on millions of dollars. “Where am I supposed to go? What about the kids? You need to fix this! You need to fix this, now!” That last conversation with his wife woke him up every night and reminded him just how much he hated Mike Black.

Even that didn’t matter that morning. For DeFrancisco, 6:00
am
couldn’t come fast enough. He was up and dressed before five that morning and sat patiently waiting for something that he had begun to think would never come. He was excited, because this particular morning, DeFrancisco was being transferred to another institution.

“And it’s about damn time that arrogant prick Marshall got off his ass and did something for me,” DeFrancisco said as he got up from his bed and began pacing back and forth in his cell.

Even though he was talkin’ shit about it, he was at first surprised and then thankful the week before when the guard told him that he had a phone call.

“Somebody callin’ me?” he asked. He very rarely got any phone calls, and the entire time he’d been there, he had only one visitor. As he got up and waited for the cell door to open, DeFrancisco thought that it could only be his old friend and partner, Pete Vinnelli on the line for him. Vinnelli, dressed in biker gear and posing as
DeFrancisco’s
lawyer was his lone visitor.
It couldn’t be anybody else
, DeFrancisco thought as he was escorted off the cell block. When he got to the phone he was surprised when a female voice introduced herself after he said, “Hello.”