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Eshon wasted no time calling her back. Brandy’s phone rang twice before she answered, saying to Eshon, “You ain’t heard?”
“Heard what?” Eshon asked, trepidation slowly building inside of her.
“Kip got shot last night.”
Eshon immediately went blank. She thought she’d heard her friend wrong. It had to be a joke, but Brandy wouldn’t joke like that.
“What?” She was scared to ask if he was alive or not. Her heart fluttered with fear, not wanting to hear the worst, but she needed to know. “Brandy, is he dead?” she asked, her voice quivering with apprehension.
“He went to Harlem Hospital, but they say he’s okay.”
Eshon felt like she herself had just escaped death row. “What happened?” she asked.
“He got shot in the arm. I thought you knew.”
“I didn’t. Is he still in the hospital?” Eshon didn’t know it, but her body was already dressing, and she was ready to rush to his aid.
“I don’t know, but it was over some beef wit’ some nigga.”
Eshon was fully dressed; she had set a record for dressing. She then flew out the door like a flash of lightning and hurried to Kip’s apartment. Once there, she knocked several times, but there was no answer. She knocked again. Again, no answer. She sighed and took a seat on the ground. She was worried about Kip. Was he still in the hospital? She doubted it. He had gotten shot in the arm; it couldn’t be that serious. She knew Kip had to be out there looking for revenge on the man who’d shot him. It was in his character.
***
Devon smoked a blunt while sitting shotgun in his own vehicle. Papa John drove, and Kip sat in the backseat clutching a black 12-gauge pump shotgun, itching to use the fully loaded weapon against Jay P. Kip was looking for him, and anyone working or associated with him was a dead man too. He wanted to blow Jay P’s head off, and Maserati Meek’s too. No more Mr. Nice Guy.
They drove to Long Island and went to both of Maserati Meek’s stash houses, but both houses had been abandoned.
“Muthafuckas is running from us because they know we comin’ fo’ that ass,” Devon exclaimed.
Kip had no words. They all believed Meek had left the houses, and probably left town, because of the failed hit on Kip, who was grateful that Jay P had poor aim. And Maserati Meek’s cell phone was off.
But they had no idea that Meek was in hiding, and in Mafia terms, “going to the mattresses” because of the sudden conflict with Panamanian Pete. Maserati Meek was at war with a man just as powerful, resourceful, and deadly as himself. And Pete didn’t take kindly to losing his cousin and $800,000 in cash.
***
Panamanian Pete thought it was a petty robbery, and that his cousin’s murder was uncalled for. Why would Maserati Meek do something so stupid? Why would he risk both organizations going to war over $800,000, when they both had more money than they could count? What was Meek’s goal? Panamanian Pete planned on asking Meek that before he beheaded him for violating him, his family, and his organization in the worst way.
***
The entire night, Kip and his crew drove around the city, going from borough to borough, looking for Jay P, going to locations he was known to frequent, but there was no sign of him or of anyone connected to him.
The next day it was the same thing, hunting urgently for Jay P or anyone close to him. Four days passed, and Jay P was nowhere to be seen. He seemed to have vanished into thin air.
Thirty-One
Jay P slept like a baby next to his naked whore. After some intense sex, he was spent. It was the middle of the night, and he didn’t hear a sound where he laid his head. After shooting Kip in the arm, missing his target completely and fucking things up, he had to leave town immediately. He didn’t trust anyone, and he knew there would be a price on his head. He went north, to Connecticut, where he stayed in a cheap rental in West Haven. He kept things low-key, paid for everything in cash, and left his entire identity back in New York. In West Haven, he was Mitchell from Albany. He had gotten a fake ID, always carried around his Ruger .9mm, and did his best to stay out of trouble. His only weakness was pussy. He’d spent a week in West Haven and frequented a strip club in New Haven called The Bottom, where he met Star, and she became his freak of the week.
Something suddenly woke Jay P out of his peaceful sleep. The room was dark and quiet. His stripper, Star, was wrapped around him intimately, still asleep. Jay P felt like some kind of entity was in the room with him. He pulled himself from the woman’s naked body and looked around the darkness, feeling a bit of paranoia overcoming him. His Ruger.9mm was on the nightstand, but still a tad out of his reach.
He sat there on the bed, one leg propped on the mattress, the other on the floor. Then something caught his eye in the shadows of the room—a man. Jay P knew it wasn’t a friend. He lunged for his pistol, but a bullet quickly tore through his leg. It came from a .9mm with a suppressor at the end of it.
Jay P dropped to the floor, bleeding and immobile.
The man dressed in black stepped closer to his victim.
Jay P stared up at him in awe and whispered, “I know you.”
The man in black aimed his gun at Jay P’s head.
