He nodded. “Mesha, it is. She’s the first to go,” he said after reading the name.
“Kill ’em all for me, baby.”
“It will be my pleasure.”
Chapter 10
Mesha was partying hard in the downtown Manhattan nightclub called Swags, grinding her thick hips and phat ass against the tall, handsome stranger she had come to know as Tabs. He had thick, long, shoulder-length dreads that looked like a lion’s mane around his chiseled features and a complexion like brown sugar. Mesha fell in love with him at first sight. She threw back a cup of Grey Goose and pulled down her tight miniskirt to keep from exposing too much of her precious goodies. Mesha loved the way Tabs’ body pressed and rubbed against her to Keri Hilson’s “Knock You Down.” It felt like they were having dry sex in the middle of the dance floor.
The night continued with her flirting and dancing with Tabs, and downing drink after drink. Tabs made it obvious that he was enjoying her company but wanted a little something extra on the side. He rubbed against Mesha, taking advantage of her inebriated condition, one hand massaging her breast, his other hand sliding between her smooth thighs, and Mesha didn’t mind at all.
She exited the club at three in the morning with her two girlfriends, Sammy and Jacqueline, and Tabs. Tabs and Mesha chatted near Sammy’s Escalade for a moment. They quickly exchanged numbers, and then Tabs went on his way.
“He’s cute,” Jacqueline said.
“I know. I think I just found my husband.”
***
Mesha stepped out of her friend’s Escalade on the corner of 135th Street and Fifth Avenue, the Goose still fresh in her system. “I’ll see y’all bitches later,” Mesha said joyfully.
“Later, ho!” Sammy returned from the driver’s seat.
Mesha shut the door and strutted down 135th Street as her friend peeled down Fifth Avenue. The block was quiet and the traffic sparse. She walked down the lighted street covered in her brown, crinkled leather jacket. It was a windy, but clear night. Her mind was on sleep and Tabs. She couldn’t wait to call him.
Mesha didn’t notice the black Impala approaching her from behind in a slow creep, with the passenger window rolled down.
“Hey, beautiful,” Chico said with a feigned smile.
Mesha glanced at him, quickly turned her head, and kept on walking.
“I just wanna talk to you for a moment.”
Mesha continued to ignore him. She knew who he was and wanted no dealings with him. He was bad news.
Chico told her, “If you’re worried about Apple, I’m not fuckin’ wit’ that bitch anymore.”
“Why not?”
“’Cause I ain’t. But I like what I see right now. I just want to holla at you for a moment. I ain’t gonna bite.”
Mesha slowed her steps and looked over at Chico. He smiled. She didn’t. Nervousness quickly overcame her. Her instincts were telling her to keep walking. She watched him park his Impala and step out.
“Leave me alone, Chico.”
“I just wanna talk, Mesha, that’s all,” he said, a little roughness in his voice.
Mesha turned around to walk in the opposite direction. She wanted to get away from him, but Chico followed behind her. She glanced over her shoulders and saw him coming. She had the urge to run and scream out for help.
Chico marched quickly toward Mesha, and before she could do anything, she noticed the gun aimed at her side and his menacing stare.
“Like I said, I just wanna talk to you.”
Suddenly, Mesha was flanked by Chico and Dante.
“What you want from me, Chico?” she asked, her voice shaky, panic in her eyes.
“Just walk wit’ us, and we’ll pull your coat to it.”
Reluctantly, Mesha followed both men into one of the nearby buildings. They pushed her into the lobby and then into an elevator. Chico pressed for the top floor, and the elevator took them thirteen floors up. Chico grabbed and pulled Mesha out of the elevator by her jacket collar, and they continued down the narrow hallway and entered the stairway leading to the rooftop.
Chico pushed Mesha out onto the rooftop, and Dante wedged the door with a rock, so they wouldn’t be locked out. She stood uneasily on the gravel rooftop, clutching her small purse, her eyes on Chico. There was nowhere to run. Mesha was so scared, she struggled to not pee herself.
Chico approached her. “I know you heard what happened to your friend.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with that, Chico.”
“You sure?”
“She was my friend.”
“Was your friend.”
“How is she?” Mesha asked.
“You didn’t care enough to go visit her in the hospital. I thought she was a friend.”
“I’ve just been busy.”
Chico chuckled.
Dante stood off to the side, silent like death itself. He gripped his .50 and had it pointed downward at the ground. Mesha kept glancing at him.
“Don’t worry, he won’t hurt you—unless I tell him to.”
“I still care about her, Chico. I really do.”
“Well, that’s why we’re here . . . to talk and get some questions answered.”
Mesha remembered what had happened to Ayesha a few months earlier. She was shot twice in the back of her head as she was leaving her building. She also remembered her own encounter with Apple while she was coming home from work one evening. Apple had assaulted and robbed her in the hallway, right in front of her grandmother’s door, over some money she’d owed. It was an ugly memory that she wanted to forget. She thought her ties to Apple were done.
“What you want to know?” Mesha asked.
“Suspects.”
“Huh?”
“I just want to talk to the people that you might know had a grudge against Apple. I know you hear things in these projects. You always hear things, Mesha.”
“Look, all I know is that maybe her brother might have something to do with it.”
“Whose brother?”
“Ayesha. You remember she was shot in the head last summer because she had a beef with Apple. I’m just saying, maybe you need to talk to Memo about that incident.”
“Memo. You know where he be at?”
“I don’t know. We don’t talk.”
Chico nodded. “What he look like?”
“He’s tall, light-skinned with braids. I just wanna go home, Chico. I didn’t do anything.” Mesha’s heart was racing like it was in the Indy 500.
Chico moved closer to her, and she took a few steps back away from him. He smiled. “I told you, I’m not going to hurt you, Mesha. I just wanted to talk.”
Chico thought Mesha was a very beautiful woman. She had a runway model’s posture and enticing eyes. He suddenly became green-eyed over her beauty. She still had hers, while Apple looked like a burn victim. An uncontrollable rage stirred up inside of him. He’d heard enough. He looked over at Dante.
Dante nodded, understanding the look. He holstered his weapon and approached Mesha, who continued to step backwards, nearing the ledge, her eyes registering fear.
“Chico, what’s going on?” she cried out.
“It’s just business, Mesha. I mean, I gotta send a message, right?”
Mesha took off running in a panic, like she could fly, but Dante snatched a hold of her. She tussled with him, but her strength was no match for his. Mesha screamed out, clawing at his face, but Dante was unfazed by her weak blows against him.
“No! Get off me!” she screamed.
Dante hoisted the petite woman over his shoulder like the wind had lifted her off her feet and walked toward the ledge.
Mesha was squirming and screaming, “No! Please, don’t do this! Don’t do this!”
Dante stood close to the ledge and peered down at the ground below him, a thirteen-story drop. Mesha gripped his wrist, struggling not to be thrown off the rooftop like she was trash.
“Chico, please!”
Chico said to Dante, “Toss
that bitch.”
Dante didn’t hesitate throwing Mesha off the rooftop. She screamed on the way down and plunged rapidly like a brick from the sky, crashing face first onto the concrete pavement below. Both men stared down at the contorted body splattered against the sidewalk with crimson blood pooling underneath.
“You think that will send a strong message?” Dante asked.
“Strong enough. We just gettin’ started, cousin.”
Dante smiled.
They hurried from the rooftop and jumped back into the Impala. Chico slowly turned the corner and drove by the body at a snail’s pace. Mesha was almost unrecognizable, her face pushed into the concrete and parts of her skull exposed.
***
As dawn peeked from the sky, Fifth Avenue was shut down with yellow crime tape and flashing police lights from corner to corner. It seemed like the entire precinct was out there investigating Mesha’s death. The bystanders stood a short distance behind the tape, peering at the body under a blood-stained sheet. Word had traveled throughout the projects faster than the wind itself. There was speculation that the woman had committed suicide, but Mesha’s family and friends highly doubted that. And witnesses claimed they’d heard a woman screaming.
Mesha’s two friends were in tears, trying to console each other.
“She was just with us,” Sammy told one of the detectives. “She didn’t do this to herself. She was happy. She was murdered!”
The gray-haired detective tugged on his bushy mustache as Sammy spoke. Then he wrote something on a small notepad he’d taken from the pocket of his crinkled suit. Meanwhile his partner was canvassing the area, looking for potential witnesses, but the tight-lipped residents were scared, all claiming they were asleep.
The coroner took the body away, but the grieving remained. Detective Rice knew it wasn’t a suicide. He figured it was too much of a coincidence that a friend of Mesha’s, Ayesha, was murdered in the same projects a few months earlier. The thing that both women had in common was, they were both friends of Apple.
Detective Rice was very familiar with Apple, having investigated her younger sister’s death almost a year earlier. The thought of the young girl being murdered and tossed into a city dumpster still haunted him. It was still an open case, but the lead went cold when J-Dogg, the main suspect, was gunned down in the Bronx.
Detective Rice continued to question everyone. He was determined to get to the bottom of everything. In his mind, everything was leading back to Apple. Still, he had no solid proof that she was behind the murders. He was aware that Apple had been a victim herself, with her sister’s murder, and by having acid thrown in her face. When it came to mentioning her name about any cases, folks in the neighborhood either went mute or had amnesia.
Detective Rice couldn’t understand how such a nice, lovely-looking young woman could become such a monster. Apple’s name was ringing out, and the department became keenly aware of her fierce reputation.
***
Clad in a long, dark blue robe, her hair pulled back into a ponytail, Apple lay in bed staring at the television. She noticed her old neighborhood in the backdrop as the pale, brown-haired field reporter talked on camera, surrounded by a small crowd. She quickly took it off mute to listen to the incident.
She smiled as the reporter talked about Mesha’s death. A chuckle escaped from her lips. “Fuck that bitch!” she uttered softly. One down and three to go.
Suddenly Apple was hit with a wave of uneasiness. She sighed heavily. She got up and walked over to the window. She peered outside into the dark tree-lined street outside her bedroom window. She had a creepy feeling that someone was watching her, like someone was standing outside her home at that very moment. Dante was the only person who knew of their location.
She closed her curtains and walked away from the window. The past few weeks had her somewhat paranoid. She hadn’t been outside since her arrival from the hospital, too ashamed to go anywhere. She looked over at the clear, plastic mask on the dresser next to her medication.
She thought about her failing loan-sharking business. She had made plenty of phone calls around Harlem, ready to get back into business, but business looked like an ugly trip up an icy hilltop. Some of her debtors had heard about the acid incident and thought it was a way out of their debts. They would hang up on her, and some even mocked her, feeling like she didn’t have the muscle to collect. The situation was driving her mad.
One of them had said to her, “Fuck you, bitch! You’re MIA.”
Another one told her, “I thought you were dead.”
She heard movement downstairs and decided to check it out. She placed the mask over her face, retrieved a .380 from the dresser, and exited the bedroom with caution. She descended the stairway and came across Chico and Dante, who were just arriving.
“Hey, baby,” Chico greeted.
“Hey.”
Dante looked over at Apple and gave her a cold stare. He didn’t want to stay too long because she made him uncomfortable. He was used to seeing Chico around beautiful women, and even though he knew about the attack, he was still surprised that Chico kept her around. He felt like she was a burden on his cousin. Chico had explained his reasons, but Dante wasn’t buying that she reminded him of Nikki. Nikki was a good girl, and she wasn’t.
“I’m not gonna stick around, cuzzo,” Dante said. “I got business to take care of.” And he made his exit.
Apple waited for him to leave and then said to Chico, “I don’t like him.”
“Why?”
“I hate the way he looks at me.”
“I mean, look at you. No disrespect, baby, but he ain’t used to seeing something like you.”
Apple could smell the alcohol on Chico’s breath. She didn’t have a reply. She discarded his comment and focused on business.
“I’m ready to pick another name.”
“Well, you might have another to add,” Chico said.
“Who?”
“Ayesha’s older brother. Before we tossed Mesha off the roof, his name came up.”
“Memo?”
“That’s the name.”
“Kill him too then.”
“It’s already been arranged. I got people looking for him already.”
Apple turned and walked back up the stairs, while Chico stood at the bottom of the staircase watching her. He felt bad about what he had said to her, but he wasn’t going to apologize for it. He truly loved her and was showing it by the bodies he was dropping in the streets of Harlem, in her name.
Chapter 11
The East Side of Harlem was becoming a tense place. With the crime rate rising and the corner hustlers on high alert, the police were on constant patrol. Chico and Dante were becoming a known entity in the hood. A few gun battles had broken out with Cross and his men.
Mesha’s death was the talk of the town. The people were furious over her murder, and although there weren’t any witnesses to her death, word was circulating that Apple was involved.
It was on a clear, cold night that Chico and Dante sat parked across the street from the Blue Note, a hole-in-the-wall lounge on St. Nicholas Avenue with a back-alley doorway that was tucked away in the dark like a dirty little secret.
Chico took a few pulls from his cigarette, while Dante played with the radio. They were hunting for Memo. An informant had told them that the Blue Note was one of Memo’s favorite places to hang out and get drunk. Both men weren’t about to let the opportunity slip away from them, so they went to the lounge immediately after they got the news.
Dante took a drag from Chico’s cigarette, nodding to 50 Cent rapping, admiring the gangster’s lyrics and his reputation.
“What’s on ya mind, Dante?”
Dante answered immediately, like it was urgent. “Why we doin’ this, man?”
“What you mean?”
“We on the wrong hunt, Chico. We should be going after niggas that matter, not some off-brand muthafucka gettin’ drunk in a bar. This is news that came from a bi
tch’s mouth just to save her own ass from being thrown off a roof.”
“It matters to me.”
“What should matter to you is goin’ after what’s yours—these streets. Cross and his niggas . . . I want them, cuzzo.”
“And we will, but this shit here is personal, Dante.”
“I don’t like that bitch!” Dante spat.
“Why not?”
“’Cause she ain’t right for you. I know you say she reminds you of Nikki, but she ain’t Nikki, Chico. Far from it. You still riding on this guilt trip about what happened to her. Yeah, it’s fucked up, but that was years ago. You tryin’ to make up for her death by doin’ this shit, carrying out hard revenge for this broad?”
“Niggas need to understand not to fuck with what’s mines.”
“And they will. But the more time we waste doin’ this shit, Cross is getting stronger, making money out there, him and his bitch. I don’t like it.”
Chico took a long pull from the burning cancer stick. He turned his stare away from Dante and looked over at the bar, observing a few patrons that stood outside. He didn’t want to hear what his cousin was saying to him.
“I’m just saying, cuzzo,” Dante continued, “business is business. I could spend my time on the hunt for the come-up instead of doing this shit. We find this muthafucka, Memo, and I’m ready to kill him for you. But this shit is eating up too much of our time. You know Cross and Kola moved in on a few of your customers. Yeah, they hitting them with that better quality, and niggas is biting at their bait. Here you are selling ya shit at a stack less, but niggas is still biting for what Cross is throwing out there.”
“Nigga, I don’t wanna hear about no muthafuckin’ Cross or his bitch right now!” Chico shouted.
Chico didn’t want to admit that Dante was right. He didn’t want to look stupid and played. He had heard the name “Coca Kola” being floated around. Word on the street was, she got that nickname for all the weight she was unloading. Cross and his bitch were moving so much snow, they were calling his team “The Perfect Storm,” which was hard for Chico to swallow.
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