Minion (8 page)

“This ain't no way to live,” Rider murmured to Marlene, whose gaze still scanned the horizon.

Marlene only nodded, but Rider's firm hold made her pause. He dropped his voice and spoke quickly as the group assembled themselves within the vehicle and their attention was on Dan, who was chatting away, keeping them distracted.

“What was that soundproof thing about? Was like what happened down South, right? You've seen this before, or am I wrong?”

“Yes. It was just what I was afraid of—and we'll talk about it later.”

The two older warriors climbed into the vehicle and shut the door behind them.

“Anybody hungry?” Dan said in a cheery voice as their limo pulled off. “Chinese, ribs?”

The mention of food made Damali cover her mouth and fight to swallow down the immediate nausea the suggestion brought.

“What?”

All eyes had turned to Dan, and he just shrugged, totally confused.

 

 

“Piles of dust, broken glass, empty rhino shell cases with crosses on them, dirt splattered everywhere—freakin' wooden spikes all around . . . and
the stink.
What do you make of it?”

“I don't know, Malloy,” Detective Berkfield muttered, stooping down to study an empty shell case. “It looks like somebody was back here firing enough ammo to start World War Three, but as per usual, nobody heard anything, everybody was supposedly partying inside the club, and down here there's no residences with neighbors close enough to have seen anything from a window. Godammit, these music-and-drug sons of bitches are involved somehow, and I'm going to pin their rich, slippery asses soon—or die trying. Plus where's our backdoor squad cars, anyway?”

Detective Malloy shrugged, lit a cigarette, and inhaled slowly, allowing the smoke to escape from his bulbous, pale nose. “Same place as they always seem to be when this crap goes down—diverted. Doesn't it seem strange to you that they always show up just after everything goes down?”

“Don't start with the conspiracy theory, Malloy. I can't deal with that, too, right now. All we need is an Internal Affairs investigation going parallel with this bull.”

Malloy leaned his angular form against the wall, considering the red ember as he took another steady drag. “Eventually, we might have to stake out their shows with our boys, and put one of our cars in the alleys, and one to two of our own men inside. Tonight, everything was jake in-house, but we definitely missed the action out here. Sooner or later the action behind the scenes will out. It's just a matter of time. Problem is, if these kids keep dropping like flies, and then the bodies keep disappearing from the morgues, we're gonna be on the media and department hot seat.”

His short stocky partner stared back at him with a scowl.

“That's a lot of resources,” Berkfield said with a grunt, standing up slowly and brushing off his wrinkled navy suit. “We've already got our team spread thin from that drug bastard, Rivera, in L.A., to a squad watching Warriors of Light Production there, to a stakeout near Fallon Nuit's supposed base of operations in Beverly Hills for Blood Music, as well as monitoring one of his holdings in New Orleans. We might have to cut some of that back, especially the New Orleans detail. That place is probably a vacation home, and there's been no activity near it for months. Now we're supposed to expand the mission to run around the country following all the hip-hop concerts—when a lot of our boys are still on terrorist detail?”

Berkfield let his breath out hard and shook his head, grime and sweat plastering wisps of brown hair to his shiny, balding scalp. “I'm getting too old for this bullshit, Paul. Honest to God. I need to get a life.”

 

 

 

 

 

C
ARLOS
R
IVERA
looked out over the chrome balcony of his North Hollywood club. Saturday night was prime time for Club Vengeance, and again, the place was loaded. Techno, hip-hop, salsa, it didn't matter. The people came. The artists came. They all waited in line outside, hoping to get in. It was the place to see and be seen, just like he'd told his boyz it would be. The crowd brought product. Once again, it was time to expand.

Making his usual rounds through his establishment, a sense of vitality pulsed in him with the beat of the music. There was nothing like the feel of money, except power.

“Yo, Carlos,” a regular patron shouted as he passed.

Oh, yeah, he was king.

He nodded and signaled to the bartender to give the man a drink, even though he couldn't remember the man's name. Smiles from gorgeous, scantily clad women graced his path. He smiled back, but kept walking while trying to decide which one of the harem he'd have tonight. His bouncers gave him a deferring nod as they kept their posts. This was a helluva long way from East L.A. . . . a long way from souped-up Chevy's, gang-banging in the streets for turf, drive-bys, and listening to his
mother and grandmother's wails as his sister died like a dog in a crack house. He'd told them all that he'd get everyone of his own out of that madness, or die trying. Oh, yes, it was great to be the king.

“What's the count?” Carlos leaned in toward his head bouncer as he assessed the size of the throng.

“Twelve hundred bodies and rising,” his employee muttered with a sly grin.

“And product sales?”

“Through the roof.”

Carlos exchanged a fist pound, nodded, and then threaded his way back through the crowd. Where was Alejandro?

If his little bro and his cousin could just grasp the understanding and commitment it took to run a business—a series of businesses. Pure disgust picked up his tempo as he briefly spoke to patrons, and headed back toward his office. Street product turned into Laundromats, corner stores, and then converted into apartment buildings. The nineties had been good to him. Real estate bought a man leverage, just like firepower did.

Leverage meant expansion. Other lines, multimedia in X-rated videos, Web sites, phone sex lines, everything had a dirty basis in this country, and then the masters converted it into clean, cold cash. One day, he, too, would be a master of the game—he could taste it, like fate. A small taste of power was never enough. It was better than any drug he plied.

Carlos kept his line of vision steady. Yeah. Soon. One day. After his other holdings had produced, then came the club, and increased shipment levels of product, new products like Ecstasy, and designer packages. More money meant more guns at his disposal, more mercenary soldiers. That meant more territory—which had to be run vigilantly, efficiently, or you'd lose your damned control, then your life. What about this didn't Alejandro
and his compadres get? A man had to have skillz. Had to strategically build an empire.

He dismissed the sudden melancholy, peering at his glistening platinum Rolex watch, and then glimpsing himself in one of the mirrors as he passed. Carlos Rivera liked what he saw—a young man, in top form from working out, wearing alligator shoes and belt, a custom-tailored, gunmetal gray Nino Cerruti suit, maroon bandit collar, silk shirt, manicured hands—not marred from picking fruit or performing other manual labor—and a smooth barber cut. He ran his palm over his jaw line. Fine, oh yes, he was indeed the man.

He glimpsed himself again and kissed the heavy silver cross that he always wore in place of the puny gold one he'd ditched as he'd gained more wealth. His family was too superstitious. So what if the first one had been blessed when he was christened? So he'd even traded up on his cross, a piece of jewelry, which was the only concession to the women in his family. Just like he'd upgraded his car and women and everything else around him. Carlos alighted the floating staircase to his sanctuary. He was blessed.

Entering the more quiet confines, he went to his private bar, selected Remy, and poured himself a drink. He took a sip and studied the rim of the crystal glass, watching the light form a prism against it. His mother never owned anything beyond Dollar Store plastic.

His mother and grandmother were so naïve, refusing to accept the gifts from this new life that he could offer them—only because they believed in fairy tales . . . good men didn't do bad things. Good men, like his father and uncles, were poor, immigrant bastards who died young under the weight of a factory, or in the sun picking fruit for men who also stole to own those factories and those farms.

Blood Music had snubbed him, though. He'd have to have someone from his organization pay them a visit. It was pure bullshit that they wouldn't send their artists to his club to perform, just because some nobody had bought it over a month ago not far from his establishment. What the hell? People died in the alley every day where he'd come from. He'd certainly lost enough men in gun battles, nudging out a respected space between the Russians and Asians. Even the Italians now gave him some props. The Dominicans and the Jamaicans had been a problem, but they'd come to terms. It was all good. Negotiation was always possible, and there were always weaknesses in any operation that would allow an alliance to be formed.

He let his breath out hard. Nobody snubbed him. Maybe he would just go to Blood's competitor, Warriors of Light Productions, and have them in . . . but there were people there he didn't want to deal with. The shit was complicated.

A vibration at his waist drew his hand to his cell, but the 911 on it along with Alejandro's code made him circle his wide glass-and-chrome desk, set down his drink, and add his gun to his wardrobe.

“Talk to me,” he said slowly, answering his brother's page.

“You gotta come down here, man. It's fucking chaos!”

“Come where, bro? You ain't making sense.”

“The station, the morgue. They got Julio, Miguel, and Juan is in the hospital—he don't look like he's gonna make it, though, man. Can't let their family do the body ID, not when you see what's left.”

“See what's left? What the fuck, man? Who did this! Where did it go down?”

“I don't know who did 'em. But you know it's got to be bad, I'm telling you, if I agreed to come down to do the ID. I
went to pick up Julio, Miguel, and Juan from their positions at the clubs we got alliances with on Santa Monica, they were all meeting up at the last one on the list tonight, the transactions up to then were smooth, but when I got there, it was off da hook. Cops everywhere, body bags . . . You should have seen our boyz—they're fucked up bad.”

Carlos paused, silence strangling the digital line between the brothers. His mind raced through his organization's long list of adversaries and business deals pending, trying to quickly assess who in the mix could be sending a message, about what deal, about what part of his territory? His cousin and two best friends?

“Where were they shot?”

Again there was a long pause before Alejandro spoke.

“That's the thing. They weren't shot.”

“Stabbed? What the fuck, talk to me!”

“Naw, bro . . . more like half eaten.”

 

“Glad you could finally come in here on your own recognizance, Rivera,” Detective McKinsey muttered with a disdainful grin. “My partners, Malloy and Berkfield, will be so sorry they missed your visit.”

“Cut the bullshit, man. My family is in there on trays.” Carlos bristled as he waited for the slow process of gaining entry, the muscle in his jaw pulsing as his mind worked the puzzle of who would be bold enough to come for his inner circle like this.

“Yeah,” McKinsey said with disgust, “we can have us a little conversation, later. I take it your enterprises will keep you in L.A. for a while, especially when you see what's left of your posse.”

“I was there, man, when they came with the ambulances,”
Alejandro murmured to his brother, still stricken. “I don't need to see it again. I'll wait for you out here.”

Carlos didn't respond to the comments from either of the so-called men standing before him. How many times had he seen one of his own on a tray, in a casket, on a sidewalk, whatever—it came with doing the kind of business he did. Pussies. In a war, there were casualties. Collateral damage, they called it on the news. In a war, there was a body count. In a war, there were soldiers, and some of them got shot. And in a war, there was territory gained and lost based upon who had the strongest men.