The Take Down

by Mark Anthony

  “Yo and I bent over for the nigga, I wasn’t on no sheisty shit but fuck that! Fuck him and fuck his three million dollars! His dumb ass should know that you don’t give a man three million dollars and then threaten him!” Supreme reasoned.

  “Supreme, I’m sure that this can all be squashed and forgotten about. We can all move on and make money and just forget about it before things get ugly for no reason,” I explained.

  “Nah, I ain’t squashing shit! Yo, I sat down with those cats and gave them my word that we would do right by them. Horse is gonna hold Angela by the hand and teach her the music business. They even asked us if they could have White Lines as their premier artist and we already got the dude signed but I still was wit’ it. Now, nah, fuck that, I ain’t releasing that nigga White Lines to them, let them find their own goddamn artists. They wanna play hard, this is my muthafucking game! I run this rap shit. And my nigga Horse is gonna keep hittin’ his hoe-ass sister!” Supreme vented.

  “Supreme, come on, you know what this whole thing is about. It’s about Horse, a black guy, messing with Angela, who’s white,” I explained as I tried to make sense of everything for ’Preme.

  Supreme wasn’t trying to hear anything.

  I was supposed to be meeting him at the Gun Clap offices in Manhattan so that he and I could hang out later on that night. He was already there and I wasn’t too far away. So after finding a place to park I made my way up to the office.

  This time there was no drama from the receptionist or anyone else, as I was easily let into Horse’s office. Supreme wasn’t on any of the Gun Clap paperwork but he did have an office of his own which was adjacent to Horse’s office. Supreme claimed to be the manager of many of Gun Clap’s biggest artists, such as S&S. He really just held the title because he never actually did any of the work that a manager does. He would also give himself executive producer credits on most of the albums that Gun Clap recorded. Yet he never did any of the work of an executive producer. But because he held those titles, his having an office at Gun Clap’s headquarters could be justified.

  I walked into Supreme’s office and Horse and G-Baby were both sitting down. Supreme continued to rant and rave about how he had been disrespected.

  “Hey baby,” I said to Supreme as I gave him a kiss on his cheek. Supreme barely acknowledged me as I took it upon myself to take a seat next to G-Baby.

  “Yo, word is bond! We need to call the team and tell them niggas to strap up. I’m ready to go see that punk-ass Paul tonight!” Supreme added.

  G-Baby tried to be somewhat of a mediator as he spoke up and said, “What I say is we call the nigga man-to-man, get him on the phone and see if he switches up his tone and shows us some respect, and if not, if he’s still talking greasy, then we bring it to his ass! I mean yeah, them cats is Mafia, but big damn deal, they still bleed red!”

  “My nigga!” Supreme stated as he slapped G-Baby five. Horse was uncharacteristically quiet.

  As a law enforcement official, I really couldn’t just straight out condone violent acts, and if I had knowledge of a potential act of violence I would have to notify my superiors and attempt to thwart it. I was just hoping that things wouldn’t go that far.

  “I hope I’m not talking out of turn or anything like that, but did anybody reach out to Angela because I think she might be able to shed some light on the whole situation,” I said.

  “Angela wasn’t the one that disrespected me, her brother was!” Supreme stated. “Get his ass on the phone right now.”

  G-Baby spun the desk phone in his direction and put it on speaker as he looked up Paul’s number in his cell phone. Once he found it he began dialing.

  Everyone was silent as the phone rang about four times.

  “Bitch-ass nigga, pick up the phone!” Supreme yelled into the room.

  Almost on cue Paul picked up.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Is this Paulie?” Supreme asked.

  “Yeah this is Paulie, what’s up?” Paul said in a cocky Italian street accent.

  “Yo, my man, this is ’Preme. I had to get at you and let you know that I ain’t appreciate you and that real bitch shit, calling my phone and talking reckless with that message you left.”

  “Listen, first off, I’m not your man. All right? That’s first. And—”

  “Whoa! Money, that’s what I’m sayin’, you a real disrespectful muthafucka! Let me let you know straight up, I don’t care who your father is, and I don’t care who y’all roll wit’, you disrespected me, spittin’ out threats so now I gotta bring it to you,” Supreme stated.

  “Supreme, you don’t wanna fuck wit’ me! You and your moolie friends might get respect in Harlem, or the South Bronx, or South Jamaica, Queens or whatever slum you come from with that rap shit. But that don’t mean nothing to this white boy! You don’t wanna fuck wit’ me ’cause you will not win!” Paulie stated rather convincingly.

  “Oh word? I tell you what. Your boy, White Lines, won’t ever release a record on anybody’s label. And that million dollars that I gave him, I’m not eatin’ that as a loss, not when I got three million of your father’s money to make up for the shit!” Supreme stated. “And my man is gonna keep breaking your sister off. What!”

  “Okay, those are the rules that you wanna play by? No problem. But I promise you this, you fighting a war that you can’t win. Dumb fucking nigger!” Paul said as he hung up his phone and ended the conversation.

  Supreme then instructed Horse to call Gun Clap’s lawyer and have him get the three million dollars of front money that they had put up wired back into their account. He also went on to say that after being disrespected the way he had been, there was no way that he was giving up the three million in cash that he had received from the Calvino crime family, money which was originally supposed to replace the three million that Gun Clap had put up to make everything look legit.

  I sat and thought to myself how the marriage between the hip-hop world and the Mafia world that I had orchestrated, had to have been one of the shortest-lived marriages in history. And like most divorced couples I was sure that the breakup was definitely gonna be a bitter one.

  “G-Baby, get everybody on the horn and tell them to stay strapped up and to keep on their Teflon ’cause we at war with the Calvinos!”’Preme commanded.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I’ll never be able to understand how grown men can act and behave like such kids. The mob, Supreme, Horse, and all of those involved in this newly started war were sounding like grown bullies. A little more than a week had passed since the confrontational conversation between Supreme and the mob’s Paul Jr. And during that time it was like the mob had let their guard down.

  It was like Angela was the queen bee and all of the members of the mob were out to protect her honor or to show her father that they would guarantee the honor of the family name. We picked up so much conversation on our wiretaps about how Horse was gonna get his dick chopped off and stuffed in his mouth. We heard threats that the building that housed the Gun Clap headquarters should be blown up. We heard all kinds of things from these grown men who all sounded like seventh-grade bullies.

  Out of all of the chatter that we heard on our wiretaps, there were two common themes that ran throughout all of the conversations. And that was the fact that Paulie Calvino Sr. was pissed off that his daughter had been sexually soiled by a porch-monkey gangsta-rap nigger that went by the name of Horse. Horse had to die, there was just no question about that. The other theme was that they had to get back that three million dollars that they had anted up for Angela’s record label. Supreme would have to die for his blatant disrespect of the Mafia and their money. But it was implied that Supreme shouldn’t be killed until they got the money back.

  On the other side, Gun Clap’s side, there was the same type of talk. Everyone had loose lips and was talking about how much they didn’t fear the mob and how they would bring it to the mob with no problem. In the eighties Supreme had run a Queens drug empire known
as the Supreme Team. By late 2004 most of the Supreme Team was either dead or in jail, but there were still about fifty Supreme Team members in New York City who yielded a lot of power and still got a whole lot of money through many illegal methods. Money which the FBI believed but could never prove was constantly being laundered through Gun Clap Records.

  Supreme and Horse made sure that they told everyone on the Supreme Team what was going down. And like the mob, the Supreme Team also had two constant themes that ran through the chatter that we had recorded. One of those themes was that the mob was not getting that three million dollars back. It was reimbursement money as well as money to pay for the blatant disrespect that had been shown by the mob. The other theme was that Gun Clap and the Supreme Team would wait and see what happened. They knew that the mob was gonna come at them but they were gonna wait for the mob to strike first before they made any moves.

  The best thing for the FBI was that both sides were giving us all kinds of powerful information that would be devastating at a trial. Throughout everything, Supreme had been trying his best to get with me so that he could hit it again. But although being around him would provide the FBI with possibly more inside information than we would ever get on a wire, I had to start keeping my distance just a bit.

  For one, my superiors didn’t want me alone with Supreme out of fear that if the mob came after him I might get caught out there and lose my life if and when his killers came gunning for him. The other reason that I began to keep my distance was because I just couldn’t put my life and my career at risk over some good sex. My fiancé was also in the back of my mind, but honestly, things between he and I were just about on the outs. The job that I had was a twenty-four/seven type of job, which left practically no time for family or friends or a fiancé.

  So I began drawing away from Supreme and Horse in instances where I felt that I would be in a one-on-one situation with them. Instead I began trying to stay in contact with them strictly by phone. If, let’s say, there was to be a record industry party or event, then I would have definitely been there. But my boss had made it perfectly clear that no matter what event, from now on I would have to be tailed by other agents just in case something erupted.

  The whole setup was okay with me because I didn’t want to be directly in harm’s way either. My plan was to try and spend more time with Angela, if I could, and work the investigation from that end.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  At like three in the morning my phone began ringing nonstop. I was so tired that it took me a minute to gather my senses. When I finally reached over and got ahold of the phone, I saw that it was my supervisor, Andrew.

  “Jessica, turn on your radio to 1010 WINS, the AM news station. You won’t believe this,” he said.

  As I scrambled to get up and turn on the light I kept asking Andrew to tell me what was wrong.

  “Andrew I can’t get this station to come in clear, what’s up? What happened?”

  “S&S, Tech-9, and their whole entourage of like seven other people, including their bodyguards all just got killed out in Los Angeles!” Andrew said with a raised voice.

  That definitely woke me up and erased all of the grogginess that I was feeling.

  “Are you shitting me?” I asked.

  “No, it’s all over the news, but we got a call from the Los Angeles office because of the way everything went down,” Andrew explained.

  “What do you think?”

  “It’s definitely the Calvinos’ first strike. No doubt about that in my mind. But the media is saying that it has to do with an East Coast/West Coast rap rivalry. For our investigation’s sake, it’s good that the media is portraying it that way,” Andrew stated.

  “But what if it was retaliation by someone from Cell Block Records? I mean, Frank Nitty was killed and we caught Horse with the murder weapon. Even with him denying his involvement I gotta think that the people at Cell Block Records, a West Coast label, had to be waiting for one of Gun Clap’s artists to come that way so they could retaliate,” I reasoned.

  “But Jessica, all of the witness accounts say that S&S and Tech-9 were leaving the club when a black Hummer pulled up and two gunmen with masks got out and sprayed their whole entourage. Now that sounds like it could be Cell Block behind that, but what happened next was that after the gunmen drove off, Tech-9 and S&S were hustled to their limo which wasn’t parked too far off and when they got inside, the driver started the ignition ready to rush them to the hospital, and BOOM! The limo exploded!”

  “Holy shit! That is a mob hit,” I said.

  “Exactly! These rap guys are not doing anything that sophisticated,” Andrew explained.

  “Listen, I’m gonna get on the horn right now and see what I can find out,” I said to Andrew as I hung up.

  See, S&S and Tech-9 were two major artists on Gun Clap’s label. S&S was the more established artist with two multiplatinum albums under his belt and Tech-9 was the new artist who was just getting ready to release his new album, but many people were saying that his album sales would probably top those of S&S. But in any event, losing those two artists would definitely be a major blow to Gun Clap.

  I immediately called Horse but I got no answer. I also called Supreme and I got no answer. I didn’t leave a message for either one of them. I decided to just wait and call them back later. In the interim, I placed a call to Angela just to feel her out.

  When she picked up the phone I could tell that she had been sound asleep.

  “Angie, I know you were sleeping but I just wanted to see if you had heard about what happened,” I stated.

  Sounding as if she was adjusting herself in the bed, she asked in a sleepy voice, “Did I hear about what?”

  “S&S and Tech-9 and their entourage just got killed out in LA,” I said.

  At that point I heard more moving around on Angela’s end as she sounded more alive. “Oh my God. Jessica, is Horse okay?” Angela asked, sounding as if she had genuine concern.

  “As far as I know he’s okay, but I haven’t been able to get in touch with him,” I said.

  “Yeah, me either, he hasn’t been returning my calls. Jessica, this whole record label thing has gotten so blown out of proportion it’s not even real! I’m sick over the whole thing. My father is sick about his money. My brother is sick about Supreme disrespecting him. White Lines is sick about his whole deal falling apart. It’s just crazy,” Angela said as she began to wake up a bit.

  “So what exactly happened?” Angela asked as she sort of switched subjects.

  “I don’t know. One of the models called me and told me about it. She said that it was all over the radio,” I said, stretching the truth just a bit for obvious reasons.

  “Jessica, I just hope that Horse is okay. Oh gosh, this is so crazy,” Angela said, sounding stressed.

  “Listen, Angie, I just wanted to tell you. I mean sorry to be waking you up with that kind of news but…”

  “No, thank you for telling me. Look, I gotta go. I’ll catch up with you later,” Angela said as we hung up the phone and departed ways.

  I immediately tried Supreme’s cell phone to see if I could get him. His phone rang three times and this time he answered.

  “What?”’Preme asked in a tone that said he was way past pissed off.

  I knew that I had to play things off to ease the tension. “’Preme, thank God you’re all right. I heard what happened and I didn’t know if you was hurt or what. Is Horse okay?” I asked.

  “Yeah, yeah, Horse is good.”

  “What about G-Baby? Is he okay?” I asked, trying to come across as genuine as possible.

  “Yeah, all my niggas is good, they here wit’ me right now,”’Preme said. As he was talking I could hear somebody ranting and raving in the background. It sounded like Horse but I wasn’t sure.

  “Yo, who dat? Is that Jessica?” the person in the background asked.

  The next thing I knew the phone was taken from Supreme and I was now talking to Horse. And he was as vexed
as I’d ever heard him.

  “This Jessica?” he screamed.

  “Horse, I’m so sorry about what happened out there in LA. Thank God you and ’Preme and everybody is all right. I called as soon as I heard,” I explained.

  “Jessica, you don’t know. This ain’t a fucking game! They killed my mans and ’em!” Horse vented as he paused for a minute to breathe real hard into the phone. He then continued. “Yo, where you at right now?” he asked.

  “I’m in my house. I—”

  Horse cut me off. “You calling from your house phone or your cell phone?” Horse asked.

  “My cell. Why?”

  “A’ight listen. Stay with me on this phone and I need you to grab your house phone and dial my cell phone right now,” Horse instructed.

  “Huh?” I asked as I was trying my hardest to figure out where Horse was going with his instructions.

  “Jessica, you heard what I said! Do the shit right now!”

  “Okay, okay,” I said as I retrieved my home phone and dialed Horse’s cell phone.

  “Yo, pick that up and make sure she don’t hang up,” Horse instructed someone.

  “Horse, what is this all about?” I asked.

  “Jessica,” Horse said in a low, calm, but serious tone. “I’m gonna ask you something right now, and I don’t need you to play games wit’ me. ’Cause if you play games wit’ me I’m gonna know that you had something to do with this and I swear on my son’s life that I will murder you before the sun comes up!”

  My heart began to race because I didn’t know what Horse was gonna ask me.

  “What?” I said in a nervous tone.

  “When I ask you this, Jessica, if you do anything other than give me a straight-up answer or if you hang up either one of your phones, I’m not playing, you will not live to see the light of day! You hear me!” Horse roared.

  “Yes, I hear you. Horse, you are really scaring me. What’s up?”

  “What’s up is that my people is laying dead and shot the fuck up and blown the fuck up out in LA and I know them Italian cats is behind this shit. And guess what? Since yo’ ass introduced me to them I’m holding you the fuck responsible unless you give me Angela’s address right now!” Horse commanded.