by C. S. 96
Copyright
The names and other identifying characteristics of some of the individuals mentioned in this book have been changed.
Copyright © 2017 by ZOMNP Entertainment LLC.
Jacket design by Jarrod Taylor
Cover copyright © 2017 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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ISBNs: 978-0-316-31537-1 (hardcover), 978-0-316-31538-8 (ebook)
E3-20170710-JV-PC
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
I. The Escape Thin Ice
Raul
Ship of Fools
Down the Rabbit Hole
The Way Out
Reborn
Switching Flags
Freedom
The Angel of Death
Burning Down the House
Undercover
The Demise of Tony Loco Tony
Operation Clean House
II. The Cartel An Unexpected Gift
Queen of Hearts, Lord of the Sky
The Setup
Bait and Switch
Takedown
III. C. S. 96 Game On
Life as C. S. 96
Acknowledgments
Appendix
Newsletters
To my Lord and savior Jesus, my beautiful wife, and my wonderful children. You are the reason I decided to do the right thing and become the man I am today.
Prologue
I parked my whip—a straight-from-the-showroom triple black Mercedes SEL 500—at a safe distance, just in case these OG Rastafarians decided on ripping me off of the thousand pounds of weed I had stored in the car’s oversized trunk: eight 125-pound, hermetically sealed bales of Mexico’s finest. So I had to walk the six blocks to the initial meeting place, a big mistake. East Harlem is not the place you want to find yourself when you’ve got hundreds of ruthless enemies hoping to jack you.
It was one of those late August nights New York City is famous for, so hot and muggy you felt as though you were plodding through a torpid bowl of pea soup. The quicker I was off the street and back in the whip, a/c jacked to the max—or inside the hotel’s rooftop pool—the better.
The blazing sun slid behind a wall of decaying tenements offering little relief. The streets were teeming with people, every block, every corner; every doorway satiated with steerers, lookouts, slingers, shooters, and the occasional hooker; every one of them looked suspect to me—the paranoia growing inside me threatened to subsume every other part of me.
On my walk to the meet I was hawked everything from nickels, dimes, halves, and whole grams of “primo perrico,” or cocaine. I was offered blow jobs for twenty, straight-up fucks for forty, and the special of the evening, a half-and-half, for fifty. I’m sure if I asked any one of those street hustlers where I could buy a rocket launcher, within ten minutes I’d be in some alley deciding between a Russian-and a North Korean–made RPG. But I had no time to chat with any of these young enterprising businessmen and women; I had my own business to attend to.
Our meet for the trade-off was at my customer’s restaurant, Caribbean Sea Cuisine on Second Avenue. The closer I got to the restaurant the more sweat I found myself swabbing off my face and neck. I worried I was being followed but did not look back. The very last thing anyone in my position wants to do is appear nervous, because these are the type of cats who can smell fear a mile away. And fear on a first buy with $400,000 and a half ton of marijuana at risk would be the deciding factor between whether these Rastas were going to torture me until I brought them to my $90,000 whip, where they’d certainly take the weed they assumed was in the trunk and put a bullet in my head, or whether we would have a friendly transaction that would lead to bigger and better endeavors—for me at least.
I knew exactly who and what Anthony Makey was long before I got off the jet at JFK. His reputation as a ruthless Jamaican hit man, as well as a major weed distributor and rip-off artist, was legendary all over the country. I’d been introduced to him by a very reputable gang of coke dealers out of LA whom he’d done business with in the past. My reputation was that of a sound, standup player with deep connections to the Beltrán Cartel based out of Sinaloa, Mexico. I, for all intents and purposes, was a responsible businessman who could deliver as much weight as needed, tons in fact, on a mere day’s notice.
I’d studied Makey and his crew of ruthless rip-off artists and killers the way I would any other dealer or buyer before making a transaction: I’d rehearsed this sale over and over in my mind. I’d talked to Makey at least a dozen times, and had seen him once in Santa Barbara, California, on what we’d called a “meet and greet,” though my real intent was the chance to look into his eyes and size him up, see if he could be the next guy I’d cut a deal with. I’d evaluated him as a businessman first and killer second. My first impression of the man was that he didn’t kill for sport. My second was that he always seemed to wear a strap, as did his cabal of Jamaican ex-pat security goons. I may have never carried a gun, but my ace in the hole—and one Makey was aware of—was that I represented some very dangerous people with a very long reach. If anything happened to me, or the primo weed I was selling, these Jamaicans, including every one of their family members, would be tracked, caught, tortured—and only afforded the luxury of a bullet through the eye.
As I approached Caribbean Sea Cuisine I noticed the restaurant was a storefront establishment—shabby in accordance with the rest of the neighborhood. It stood between two prewar four-story tenements. The lights were on, and from the street I could see no customers other than three light-skinned black men, two with dreadlocks the length of jump ropes, and the third a bespectacled man with short cropped hair whom I immediately recognized as Anthony Makey.
They appeared to be in quiet conversation, sitting at a four-top table next to the counter.
This was not how our meet was to go down. I was to meet Makey alone in his restaurant. Once he flashed me the money, I was to get my car, come back, and make the switch. It was never a good sign for a customer to be changing the rules of engagement before the meet began, but if I walked away now I was sure he would’ve gotten a call and I’d have been grabbed before I made it to the corner. No, now I had to switch up and go off book just like him.
The street-side establishment looked like any other fast-food roti den. Above the counter, covered by grease-stained Plexiglas, were faded pictures of jerk chicken, oxtail, beef roti, and other Jamaican delicacies I did not recognize nor had any desire or proclivity to eat.
As I got within a couple meters of the shabby restaurant I pulled out my phone and pretended to make a call. I set my cell ph
one to record everything that was about to happen.
I spoke into the phone and gave the exact address and quick description of the men inside the restaurant.
Makey, like every other drug dealer on the planet, had become very paranoid behind the inception of all the new technology that law enforcement now had at its disposal. My colleagues guaranteed me that the modified phone I was using would not read as a bug—in fact, they wanded the transmitter in front of me and it registered nothing—from the outside, it appeared to be just another cell phone.
I entered the restaurant, and though I’m sure Makey knew exactly where I was once I stepped onto Second Avenue, if not the moment I parked my car, he feigned complete surprise.
Makey had a big personality to match his big evil. He stood up, hugged me tightly as if we were old friends, and in his thick Jamaican brogue said, “Ya, Mon, here come da big mon all da wey from da sunny coast ’a Californ’a. Roman, meet me business par’nahs Zeek and Colin.”
Both men had dead eyes—glassy and bloodshot, though behind the apparent partying they’d been doing and their anemic look, I could tell they were very aware and furtively sizing me way the fuck up. They stared hard, but in deference to their boss, nodded hello.
I had to read out as much information as I could about my environment, whom I was with, any guns in view, if and when I saw the money, where it was, what it was held in, color of bag—without making it sound like I was bugged. A one-on-one meeting would’ve been hard enough to keep under control.
I shook hands with Zeek and Colin. “Damn, how long it take you guys to grow those dreads?” It was the best partial description I could give under the circumstances.
Makey told me to sit down and asked if I wanted something to eat, which I definitely declined.
Makey suddenly dropped the friendly decorum rap and seemed to grow pensive. After an agonizingly long silence he said, “Ya mon, ya be wantin’ to get right’a business. I can respect that. Cool.” He stood up and moved to a glass-encased refrigerator stocked with soda, water, and the obligatory Jamaican staple in every roti den—Red Stripe beer. He looked into it for a moment then turned back to me and said, “Well, let’s go den.”
I was confused; he was standing in front of a refrigerator situated against a wall. Where was he expecting me to go?
Suddenly Makey skillfully pulled on the large icebox and I realized it was on recessed wheels; it slid easily from the wall revealing a hole large enough to walk through.
Moving out of the restaurant and into the adjacent building was a big problem. If this phone wasn’t transmitting and these Rastas did in fact have larceny and murder on their minds, I had no one to keep an eye on me.
Before I moved to the hidden passageway the one named Colin held his hands out indicating he was going to frisk me, which I fully expected. I took my hand out of my pocket holding onto the phone, leaving it in plain sight. As he tossed me I noticed he had what appeared to be a Beretta 9mm tucked under his t-shirt, my level of paranoia now spiking almost out of control. I had to get this information out immediately. My throat went dry.
I stopped and said, “Whoa, let’s take a step back for a second. A hole in the wall behind a soda machine, are you guys kidding? Before I walk into that building I want to know exactly where the fuck you’re taking me.” Just as I relayed that bit of information I heard the iron gates being pulled down in front of the restaurant. It was a loud clanging noise ending with a BANG! and easily cloaking my transmission—I was now, without question, completely on my own.
“By the way,” I said, turning to Colin, “there’s no need for fucking weapons, bro. You saw I came clean?”
The metaphor of entering a dark black hole was not lost on me. I could only hope my boys on the other end of the cell phone caught my description of it.
At that point Colin indicated my phone. I handed it to him to inspect. To my absolute surprise and horror, he removed the battery and handed it back to me. That was it. My lifeline, the only hope I had of communicating beyond these walls, was gone. I felt that cold familiar chill run up my spine.
The contingency plan was that if I didn’t leave the storefront to retrieve the car with the weed in fifteen minutes, one of my boys would walk in to check out the menu. That plan was now completely off the table, as the restaurant was shuttered and locked.
I was completely at Makey’s mercy. He and his friends had played me perfectly—they were professionals. I could only hope to be their match.
I followed Makey and Zeek up a darkened stairway with garbage everywhere; there were syringes, crack vials, broken glass, and suddenly I was hit with that putrid unforgettable odor, the smell of death. And there it was, a dead cat being ravaged by a horde of rats as big as the cat.
BOOM! A rat exploded less than six feet in front of me. I nearly jumped out of my shoes as the rats scattered. I spun on Colin, who was tucking the smoking Beretta back into his pants. “What the fuck!” I screamed. “Let a brother know when you’re going to bust off a shot.”
Makey and Zeek laughed. “Hey, cat got your tongue?” Makey said.
I had to take control of the situation. I stopped following them. “No, no, no! This isn’t cool, bro. Where the fuck are we going? It was supposed to be just you and me in the restaurant, Makey, and now I’m following you and two of your boys through an abandoned building. No, brother, that’s not how I do business.”
Makey looked down the landing at me. He was suddenly calm again, back to the businessman. He told me the cash was too big a load to show me in the restaurant—we were going to an upstairs apartment, and he wanted to show me some of the Jamaican weed they were hopeful I’d peddle back to LA.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s just do this. Show me the cash and I’ll bring back the fucking material!”
I’m not sure if it was the bullet ringing my head, the exploding rat, the other rats, the half-eaten dead cat, the eerie building, or the absolute insanity these three hitters displayed, but I began shaking. Before I got into a lit room with these three I had to calm down—my life depended on it.
We reached the top floor where two apartment doors were side by side; we entered the one on the left. The apartment was characterized by the same filth as the halls and stairwell. It was a railroad-style apartment, abandoned, walls torn out, closet doors missing. I noticed a fireman’s pole in the front closet that led straight down to the first floor, making note of this potential escape route. There was a narrow hallway or foyer, kitchen to the right, living room beyond that, and a side-by-side bathroom and bedroom in the back. On the floor of the living room was a bloody king-sized mattress.
Makey pulled an old-fashioned chain affixed to an ancient, greasy balustrade and the ugly white fluorescent bulb blinked to life. I noticed it was jerry-rigged through a line that ran across the floor and through a wall presumably jacked into the restaurant’s electric box.
Makey looked at me for more than a few seconds. Then he turned, and from behind a wall extracted a large canvas bag, unzipped it, and pulled it open for me to see: stacks of cash. He elegantly moved his hands through it so I could see the bills, all hundreds wrapped in ten-thousand-dollar ID bands.
It was all there.
“I don’t have to count it, do I?” I laughed, slightly relieved.
Suddenly Makey did something that shocked me: He pulled out a large kitchen knife and held it up, very close to my face. He wasn’t going to shoot me, he was going to slit my throat. How could I have been fooled into taking this meeting, thinking I could beat a legend like Makey?
I was about to drop-kick him and hit that fireman’s pole as fast as I could when suddenly he bent down and produced a huge block of marijuana. It was wrapped in plastic and looked like a square block of gingerbread. He handed me the brick and the knife.
“Ga’head, cut it, smell it,” he said. “Da best Jamaican ganja on da planet.”
I cut into it and it felt as though I was cutting into a block of clay, though its odor
—undeniable. I split it, sniffed it, and looked up at him—that’s when the lights suddenly snapped off and all hell broke loose.
I quickly shuffled back to the wall, dropped low on my haunches with the knife out in front of me. The first person I could detect close enough was going to get slashed and stabbed in the face. My heart was now pounding. This couldn’t be happening, but it was. I was waiting for the flash of a gun so I could determine who was closest. If I was going to die, I was taking at least one of these motherfuckers with me.
I was trying to see, gripping the sweaty knife.
Then suddenly the lights came back on.
Colin and Makey were standing in the same position as they were before the lights went out. Zeek was gone and so was the bag of money. When they saw me in that prone position, terror in my eyes, shaking hand gripping the knife, they both started laughing.
I felt the blood pounding through my ears. I wanted to get up and hack both men to pieces, but I calmed. This wasn’t a rip, just an elaborate plan to keep them from getting ripped. Now, I was back in control.
I looked into Anthony Makey’s eyes and I started laughing, too, hysterical laughter, insane laughter.
And why not? I wasn’t laughing for the same reason these guys were—that business was good. I was laughing because I would leave this building to pretend to retrieve all that good Mexican weed they were expecting, and when I got back to the restaurant, I’d hesitate by the door, bend down, and pretend to pick up a coin—the signal for my colleagues to move in—and as soon as I was safely outside, about fifty federal agents and cops would swarm the place. Just about the time these guys were getting fingerprinted, I’ll be on a jet back to California with a money belt filled with about $40,000 in hundred-dollar bills, the same bills they’d just fronted me in that bag.
I
The Escape
Thin Ice
I drove to the safe house in Temecula, California, about forty miles northeast of my home. It was a sprawling, hard-edged suburb of San Diego, lying at the center of a two-county region known as the “Inland Empire”—the perfect location to set up a drug-smuggling ring. It was beyond any customs checkpoints, clear sailing to all points north throughout the country.
