“What is Marcus’s last name,” he said.
“I don’t know. I never got his last name.”
“Find out.” He said it like it was the most important thing I could do. “Get me his full name as fast as you can.”
“Legal. Tell me what you know.”
“Not over the phone. Not tonight.” I could hear him moving around on his end. “I need the rest of tonight to put some things together. Can you come to my office tomorrow morning. Nine o’clock.”
“Yeah.”
“Bring Mazi with you.”
That stopped me. “Why do you need him? I don’t put Mazi in the business of grown men. I limit what my brother knows.”
“Because there are things that boy needs to hear and I should have said them a long time ago. I think Mazi may have purposely tried to get close to BJ himself by working under Veteran and it backfired.”
“Working for Veteran? What?”
I was confused at this point. Was my brother selling drugs for people who are used to work for? If that was the case, then Tavarus would have had to put him on. They knew better than to give my brother some fuckin drugs to sell.
A pause. “Just bring him Xavier. And don’t say anything to anybody else about this conversation tonight. Not Gutta, not anybody. Can you do that.”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll see you at nine.” He paused one more time. “And Xavier. I need you to be careful between now and tomorrow morning. You hear me? Careful.”
He hung up.
I sat on my couch and held the phone. I looked at the wall across from me and let everything that just happened in that conversation sit on me for a minute.
Legal knew something.
He had been sitting on it for twenty years and whatever it was he wasn’t ready to say it over the phone and he needed Mazi in the room when he said it tomorrow.
That combination told me that what Legal was holding was big enough that it was going to change things for all of us when it came out. Not just for me. For my whole family.
I put the phone down.
Picked it back up and texted Mazi.
Letting him know that he needed to be at Legal’s office tomorrow at nine. And not ask questions just be there.
Mazi texted back in under a minute, telling me to say less. These boys were stressing me the fuck out. Especially his lil ass. Mazi was always the rebellious one, Melo was sneaky and girl crazy. While I was worried about Mazi catching a charge, I worried about Melo making a damn baby before his career could take off. It was really a lot on a nigga.
I put the phone face down on the coffee table, sat back and made myself breathe. I was going to have to put this down for tonight. Not because it wasn’t urgent. It was. But there was nothing I could do with it between right now and nine o’clock tomorrow morning and sitting here letting it eat me alive wasn’t going to make Legal talk faster or make the answers come sooner.
Tomorrow at nine I was going to find out what Legal knew.
Tonight I was going to let myself have one normal evening for the first time in a long time.
My gate buzzed.
My driver was finally outside to bring Kyla.
I got up and went to the door.
—
