by Keon Smith
Money couldn’t hear his last reply but knew it was something he’d rather not listen to. Montega calmly walked back to the car.
He was pissed, not at Money but at Mike and the way he’d been acting since he’d got out of prison. His sister’s words were starting to hit even harder. He was no one’s crash dummy. Once he got back inside the Benz, Mike pulled off. “So what did he say?” Mike asked as he noticed Montega’s calm demeanor.
“He aight. I think we got a clear understanding now, but yo, don’t do that no more.”
“Do what?” Mike asked with a crooked eyebrow.
“Don’t put me under the gun like that again. If Reek scared ass got a problem with bol, then he should have checked him, not me,” Montega replied with an attitude. Mike didn’t respond. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the anger coming from the man in the passenger’s seat.
Montega was heated. He hated playing messenger because he usually pissed somebody off in the end. In this case, it was Money.
As they drifted to the red light of an intersection, the sound of tires screeching took a halt beside them. The horrific sound caused them to jump out of their skin. Montega’s eyes grew wider than he dared to admit. Even Mike felt the thunderous beat of his own heart punching at his chest. Both had been in a lot of drama and done things to people that left them forever paranoid. Montega reached for his hip to find nothing there. He left his gun stashed in a car tire around Ardleigh Street.
The blue BMW 745 stopped on the passenger’s side with the rapid sound of laughter. Montega’s bright-brown eyes slowly hooded with annoyance. His thick lips pursed, and his jaws clenched.
“Did you see his face?” Jasmine asked her two girlfriends inside the BMW. They were all cracking up in tears.
Montega looked past Jazz to the passenger, who was an Italian girl with dark hair. She was cracking up, along with the pretty, brown-skinned diva in the back seat. Even Mike had to smile though he almost shitted on himself.
Before Montega could gain the emotion to curse them out, the light turned green and the girls peeled off.
Bitches, he thought. “I see everybody got jokes now,” Montega said with an attitude. “Yo, you need to check your shorty and her girlfriends. If I was strapped, this wouldn’t have been no laughing matter. By the way, who was her girlfriends?”
“They out of your league, young bol. One is the daughter of the mob boss Valentino. Her name Ebo. The other is Amber. She be all in them magazines and videos. Dudes in jail used to go crazy over that bitch’s shots.”
“What she do?” asked a clueless Montega.
“What you think? She showing off that phat ass of hers. You ain’t never see her body? I ain’t gonna hold you. I was half tempted to try and fuck her. I’m just not tryna mess up what me and Jazz got going on. Plus, they supposed to be best friends.”
“Best friends, huh?” Montega said, rubbing his beard. “Aye, what’s good with that chick that be with my sister? I think her name is Breezy. I ain’t know shorty was so bad until now.”
“Shorty fuck with Kev from South Philly. That’s his lil’ bitch. You might as well forget about her,” Mike warned.
“I don’t give a damn about no clown from South Philly. What was that supposed to do? Shake me up? That’s just another place in the city with dudes who bleed just like us. Yeah, they might catch wreck, but you better believe they aware of us too,” Montega said.
“Yeah, well, she don’t want no broke ass nigga who gets bundles for a living; I know that. Plus, Kev my cousin’s righthand man. Now, go ‘head with that thug-life bullshit you be hearing in them 2Pac songs. Keep letting 2Pac put a battery in your back if you want. Your ass will end up somewhere stinkin’,” Mike warned again.
“Picture that,” Montega mumbled.
Truth be told, he did hear about Mike’s cousin Shug from South Philly. He supplied most of the city, and his name was feared all over Pennsylvania. He had wolves on almost every block in Philly, from Tasker Street to Fern rock, and everyone knew he represented the Underworld, which had headquarters in New York and Los Angeles. It was controlled by two powerful people—Deshawn Butler and Clyde White. There were thirty heads in the Underworld, and Shug was one of them. That only meant one thing; Montega was way out of his league. He knew this; however, he was just too damn proud to admit it.
Merciless Retaliation
“Sooner or later, dudes is gonna know you’re the Phantom.”
Razor
Later that night, after coming from Buffy’s bar in Nicetown, Mike dropped Montega off at the bottom of Blakemore Street. “Holla at me next week if you got the thirty-five hundred. Other than that, you already know what it is,” he said before pulling off.
“Yeah, whatever,” Montega mumbled as he went into the trunk of an abandoned car to retrieve his stash. He shut the trunk and stuffed the bundle of ten-dollar glass caps into his pocket. He went to cross the street when bright lights beamed at him. By the time he realized he was face to face with a black Range Rover, the driver beeped the horn at him as she brought the SUV to a complete stop.
Montega walked to the other side of the street as she rolled the window down.
“You need to watch where you’re going if you don’t want to get hit,” she said in a sassy tone.
Montega turned to look at the light-skinned orchid sitting in the driver’s seat with long dark hair and replied, “Obviously, I’m doing something right. I bumped into a pretty face like yours, didn’t I?”
The girl smirked but rolled her eyes to keep herself from blushing. “Please, boy. Your money ain’t long enough for me. I’ll have you ready to rob your plug with the appetite I have for nice things.”
As cruel as she sounded, Montega found her interestingly true. However, he wouldn’t give her the benefit of doubt.
“What makes you think I’m that easy that I would waste my bread on you?”
“Waste?” she repeated, feeding into his insult. “Boy, you better go play with one of them dirty bitches around here and be satisfied because dealing with a girl like me will only lead you two places—dead or in jail.” She let her foot off the brake pedal and continued. “See, I just saved your life.”
“My hero,” Montega said with a sarcastic smirk as he watched her brake lights shrink in the distance. He shook his head before heading up Woodlawn. The bright-yellow rectangular sign shined like the North Star on the one-way intersection of Blakemore and Woodlawn. The smell of Chinese food could be inhaled even from three blocks down.
The Chinese store sat at the corner of the intersection like a house on a hill, looking out at all the activity going on around it. On the opposite side of the street, the row houses sunk down a hill that traveled almost a hundred houses down to the end where Wister Street met. It was dark and quiet. Most of the streetlights had been shot out to keep the police’s task force from watching with binoculars. At the corner, in front of the Chinese store, Razor was the only one out. He sat on the concrete step with a white styrofoam platter rested on his lap. The platter was packed with three crispy fried chicken wings dripping with grease, salt, pepper, ketchup, and hot sauce, with a side order of savory shrimp-fried rice.
Razor bit into the tender meat, ripping it off the bone as Montega appeared. The juices and sauce dripped from his lips as a ball of steam faded into the air.
“Damn dog, you stay disappearin’,” Razor said with a mouthful of food. “I know you ain’t go back to that bitch crib.”
“Nah, bol, we just broke up. She keep comin’ at me with the ‘she don’t know if I’m gonna live or die out here in these streets, yada, yada, yada’ bullshit. Anyway, I went to get some drinks with Mike,” Montega explained. “Did you know that this dude is talkin’ ’bout givin’ us all bundles if we can’t come up with four and a half money? Fuck that, dog. I can’t live like that. I need a come-up, and I need it like yesterday. Got me checking dudes like I’m J-Black. What the hell is wrong with him?”
“Man, Mike been on some other shit ever since he c
ame home. You see how ‘jo’ dudes gettin’, calling him ‘Million-Dollar Mike’,” Razor said sarcastically. “He know damn well he ain’t have no parts in old-head gettin’ smoked. That was all your work. Then you keep drawlin’, talkin’ ’bout the Phantom did it. Watch, sooner or later, dudes gonna know that you’re the Phantom, and that’s when you’re gonna have real problems on your hands.”
“Yeah, they gonna know, aight, right before I put ’em to sleep. Besides, the only people that got me figured out is you and my sister,” admitted Montega.
“Kia? Man, why you tell her? You know her and Breezy like a Wendy Williams show. They gossip about everybody,” Razor countered.
“Man, Kia ain’t gonna say nothing. Relax. Besides, she my walkin’ diary and the only person I can talk to when I be spazzin’ out. Your ass, on the other hand, ain’t gonna do shit but hand me a damn Dutch.”
Razor smiled as he tossed the platter to the side, took the Dutch from between his ear, and sparked up the weed before checking his silver Movado. It was 1 a.m., and no one should have been out but the fiends. A stray alley cat came up and cautiously took a wing out of Razor’s tray then ran off. Razor meant to chase the fur ball until he spotted two men walking down Woodlawn with cocked fitted caps. They were coming from the direction of the school.
“Yo, you strapped?” he asked Montega.
“I got a Mac down on Ardleigh on the tire of that abandon Buick in front of the playground, but the Tommy in the trashcan beside you,” Montega replied nonchalantly.
He wasn’t alert, nor did he think anyone would be dumb enough to try them. Razor however looked over at the can next to the steps of the Chinese store and shook his head when he realized how much time he could have gotten if the undercover cops pulled up on him earlier. When he looked back up the block, the two men had vanished. He was then able to calm his nerves a bit.
“What’s up, bol? You aight?” Montega asked, following his gaze to two more men who got out of a dark-colored car up the block and were approaching.
Razor bugged out. They look just like the two from earlier, he thought. Before Montega could move to the trashcan, the two guys from earlier snuck up behind him from the alley with guns pointed. “Don’t fuckin’ move, or I’ll blow ya head off your fuckin’ shoulders,” the one said, pointing a silver German Ruger.
Montega froze in a panic. He didn’t notice it before, but the men who had their hats cocked over their eyes also wore stockings over their faces to hide their identities. Maybe they won’t kill us, he thought.
By that time, the other two men had arrived with guns drawn. One had a Smith & Wesson .45 ACP revolver. The other had a Taurus PT2011 .40 cal semi-automatic. Another guy, with a sawed-off, double barrel shotgun, stood a few feet away from the action as backup. The one with the Ruger did the searching. “Get the fuck on the ground ‘fore I pop ya dumb ass,” he said, smacking Montega in the back of the head with the steel.
Montega groaned in pain as he fell to the ground, shielding the back of his head. “Ah shit, man! What the fuck?” he snapped before watching Razor get the same treatment.
Montega’s heart raced with both anger and paranoia. He had mixed feelings of dying on the corner after the robbers got what they wanted. Besides the fact he had close to $1,000 in his pocket, he was even angrier when he saw his homie get smacked with the gun.
You motherfuckers better be about y’all work, he thought as he eyed the trashcan only a few feet away. It was impossible to try them now. He had gotten caught slipping again, messing around with the corner on the night shift, and there was nothing he could do about it. The first time was by three women who called themselves the Black Hornets; now it was four gunmen.
Once the men got what they wanted, the first two moved out while the one with the Ruger and the guy with the shotty stayed until they had the money tucked away. The goon with the shotty tucked the pump down his pants leg and slowly limped away. The last took a look at Montega and Razor long and hard as if he were debating whether or not he wanted to kill them. He then said, “If y’all get up, I’m rockin’ ya both to sleep.”
Razor sighed with relief as his heart beat up his chest. The gunman backed his way across the street. When he got to the other side, he turned to jog. Montega made eye contact with his homie, who was shaking his head, knowing what he was thinking. Every attack on Montega’s family and friends was like a slap in the face. As soon as he saw an opportunity, he pounced up. One leap, and he was at the trashcan.
The man with the Ruger heard metal scraping against the concrete and turned around. When he saw Montega pulling out an old TA5 Thomson machine gun from the rusted can, his eyes bulged. It was an old fully automatic weapon from the 40s that Montega claimed after a successful home invasion. It was rusted black with brown wooden highlights and had a seventy-five-round drum of .45 hollow points. For some odd reason, the robbers froze.
“You want to take something, take these with you!”
Montega aimed and pulled back the trigger, causing eardrums to ring. Bullets and fire spewed out of the barrel. The quiet night was shattered by the loud crack of gunfire. Montega’s victim took the hot lead into his stomach, ripping his white T into shreds. The gunman stumbled before his body hit the ground. His homies wheeled around and returned fire in an attempt to save their man. The .44 revolver barked, and so did the double barrel shotgun and the .40 cal.
Razor ran for his gun tucked on top of a tire of a parked car nearby. Stray bullets whizzed by, and sparks flew off the mailbox Montega took cover behind, trapping him in a tight spot. The Tommy suddenly jammed. He squatted with his butt to the concrete, back to the mailbox, trying to dislodge the shell stuck inside. The frightening sound of ricocheting bullets struck the iron mailbox.
The men began to walk them down with thunderous cracks of fire. Stray bullets pelted anything in their way, and copper shells flipped out and tinked as they hit the ground. The men knew where he was hiding. Montega was a dead man. Out of nowhere, Razor popped up and fired a Glock 17 at the goon with the shotgun. The first shot missed, but the second tore through the left side of his neck. He stumbled to the pavement, dropping the gun, and fled for his life. Montega finally got the shell out then popped up to spray again.
The other two shot it out with the two brave hustlers but quickly retreated after running out of bullets. The assailant with the Ruger alone would have to deal with an angry Montega as he approached with a smoking Tommy gun. He tried to crawl away, but Montega kicked him hard in the gut. The assailant turned over on his back and looked up at his assassin.
Montega was stunned when he removed the stocking cap from the wanna-be killer’s face. It was Money from Locust Avenue. He looked shaken up and in pain. Montega’s face turned sinister. “Oh yeah, Money? You sent those bols to rob us, you piece of shit?” he asked as he hovered over Money like a bald eagle.
The sound of police sirens was buzzing from the distance, and Razor grew uneasy. “Ay, Tega, we gotta bounce,” he urged, but Montega didn’t respond. He kept his eyes on Money, who was pleading for his life.
Raising his TA5 at Money’s head, he proclaimed, “Didn’t I tell you the storm was coming, main-man? Look at your ass now!”
With that, he pulled the trigger so that Money felt nothing but hard rain.
Rat-tat-tat! Click!
Razor watched as Money’s skull splattered before his eyes. Montega lowered his weapon, his eyes glued to the murder scene. An instant flashback of his mother lying in a casket clouded his vision, followed by the corpse of Million-Dollar Moe. This really disturbed him.
Seeing the expression on his partner’s face, Razor grabbed Montega by the arm and pulled him down the block to hide in Taliban’s mom’s house.
Taliban’s mother, Stacy, welcomed them with open arms. “What the hell happened up there?” she asked as the two walked in.
“I don’t know, Stacy, but we got the hell outta dodge,” Montega lied.
“I know that’s right. Oh my God, was y
our brother up there?” she asked, ready to flip out. “He hasn’t been here all day.”
“Naw, he wasn’t up there,” Razor replied before turning on the TV.
Stacy sighed in relief. “Well, y’all two stay in the house. I don’t want y’all going up there tonight. It’s too much shootin’ going on,” she lectured as if they were still children.
She then went back into the kitchen to drink some Bacardi lemon vodka with her girlfriend, missing the sight of Montega detaching the seventy-five-round drum, and stashing the murder weapon under her couch. Once she was out of sight, Montega looked over at his partner with relief. “Bol, you crazy,” Razor said, shaking. “You gonna have to get rid of that old piece of shit now.”
“I’ll sell it to my man in West Oak Lane in the morning before I head to the Badlands.” Montega eased back in the chair while reflecting on sending Money to hell. All he knew was that one day, he would join him. That was what he feared. Just then, his sister came to mind. She was right; he was too far gone. He had just killed again, and if he didn’t lay low, he could very well be the star cast of A&E’s First 48.
The Commission
CALIFORNIA…
“This is one vote you won’t be getting…”
DIAMOND “THE BLACK KISS OF DEATH” WHITE
On the west coast, in the beautiful hills of Hollywood, overlooking the city of Los Angeles, a meeting between both sides of the Underworld was held in a secluded mansion.
The room was large enough to hold a press conference and expensive enough to be an art gallery. Its tan limestone walls were decorated with expensive oil paintings and hand-crafted sculptures. An oversized stone fireplace took up nearly the entire end of the left-hand corner, while on the right, the floor to ceiling window with the immaculate view spread from one side to the other like an invisible wall. The sky had never looked so blue from inside. The smell of burning cigars, cigarettes, and oil burners filled the air with a ghostly white cloud of smoke. Silence consumed most of the men inside as business was discussed tediously.
