by K. T. Tomb
“Okay,” Romeo said, leaving the door open for Rufus to continue.
“They are backed by the same people who backed Moses. But you guys fucked him over since you’ve been tryin’ to extradite him from the island. It don’t look like our people stand a chance against these new guys, especially if the Boss gets caught,” Rufus said. He was beginning to get angry.
He heard a floorboard creak. He turned around, but didn’t see anyone; but that didn’t stop paranoia from seeping in.
“I gotta go.”
“What’s going on?” Romeo asked.
Rufus didn’t answer, he just disconnected the line as quickly as possible. He moved to the coffee table and picked up the small pistol.
He turned the corner in just enough time to see the girl he had been sleeping with standing in front of him taking tiny, cautious steps towards him. She was still naked and her large breasts heaved proudly as she breathed. The sight of them distracted Rufus long enough for her to pull the pistol from behind her naked back.
“You is a fuckin’ informer, Rufus!” she screamed.
That was when she fired three silent shots into his chest. Rufus collapsed twitching in a pool of his own blood.
“An’ all informers be dead!”
***
“We know where he lives.”
There was no need for the caller to mention any names.
“We need to be making a statement with this, you understand.”
“Of course.”
“Everybody has to appreciate that there’s a new sheriff and a new posse in town.”
“Got it.” The man paused a moment before venturing into another question. “What about the other one?”
“They’ve got him holed up somewhere, but we’ll figure out where that is soon enough.”
“And the support?”
“You let me worry about the technical stuff. You get paid to do what you do.”
“Perfectly understood.” He waited a few minutes, giving his employer the opportunity to tell him more. When nothing more came, he spoke again. “When?”
“Keep an eye on things, but don’t be seen. I’ll call you when it’s time, so be ready.”
“Okay then,” he replied to nobody.
The line was already dead. He’d be ready.
***
“Agent Moore. How may I help you?” he said, after checking the caller ID and then pressing the call button on his cell.
“Hey, we’ve got a lead on Ricardo Jackson, aka Kenneth Colton,” Robert said. “There are a lot of interesting little twists in this man’s story, it seems. They’re still doing some digging, but we have a team being briefed to go get him and his family out. At the moment, he seems to be out of harm’s way, but we probably can’t wait very long. Things are getting pretty intense down there.”
“Yeah, so I’ve noticed.” He’d watched CNN as well. “Rufus called me.”
“You’re shitting me, right? I figured the guy was dead or in the wind.”
“Seems he’s worried about his brother. Anyway, there’s someone else that we need to locate.”
“Jesus, Romeo, we’re going to be stretched pretty thin if this keeps up. Who else?”
“Ricardo, I mean, Kenneth’s son.”
“We’ve gotta find his son too? You realize that we don’t have a lot of assets in Jamaica to be running all over the place rescuing everybody.”
“He’s not in Jamaica, he’s in Atlanta. His name is Curtis Colton.”
“Curtis Colton in Atlanta. What’s his real name?”
“Who knows? Rufus didn’t say anything different and sounded pretty desperate, so that’s likely the name he’s using for the time being, maybe even his real one.”
“I’ll get the team working on it. They should be able to get him tracked down. PC for him, too, or do we just want to keep an eye on him?”
“Just locate him for now and keep an eye on him. It might be nothing. Rufus figured that if his family goes missing or something happens to them, Curtis might go charging home and walk into something.”
“That’s true,” Robert agreed. “We’ll get a line on him and let you know when the team is ready to move to pick up his family.”
“Robert, there’s more.” Romeo was sifting through the information that Rufus had provided him in their last call. “Rufus seemed to think that there was a rival posse positioning themselves to move into the vacuum created by the imminent extradition of Marcus Brown. There’s a pretty good chance that they are already on the move.”
“That’s to be expected, we have someone keeping an eye on that contingency. No one has surfaced, yet. Did he give you anything else?”
“No, he was just worried that Kenneth and Curtis might be in danger from that angle. I think that’s why he was so desperate.” Romeo continued to go over his conversation with Rufus as he spoke. “Rufus said that the new posse had the same backing as Marcus did.”
“The mysterious governor?”
“That would be my guess. What have they come up with?”
“They’ve narrowed the field and they’re digging, but not a lot yet. What else you got?”
“That’s all for now. He had to cut the call off, but he’ll probably call back. Maybe I can get some more out of him later.”
“It would be nice to have a name.”
“I understand.”
His mind turned to Curtis. Was he involved in the “family business” or was he outside of it? If he was outside of it, then he might also be completely ignorant of what his father and uncle were in on. Maybe it would be better not to shake Curtis up too much just yet. If he was a lead, he needed to be developed subtly; if he was innocent, it would be better not to storm in on him the way extraction teams had a tendency to do. Besides, if there was a rival posse working things, they might slip up while watching Curtis and expose themselves.
“Robert. Have the guys get me whatever information they can on Curtis. I think I’ll handle him myself.”
“I think that’s a good idea. I’ll let you know.”
“Gotcha.”
The line went dead and Romeo slipped his phone back into his pocket.
***
“You’re absolutely certain that I can’t be implicated in all of this?”
His voice shook slightly as he spoke, though he was trying to keep it under control, playing both sides between two rival drug operations was eating away at his gut. He pulled the desk drawer open and fished out the king-sized bottle of fruit-flavored Rolaids, shook out a handful and pushed them into his mouth.
“I’m not absolutely certain of anything at this point,” the caller said. “We’re still waiting for certain developments to take place, just like you are, but we did discover a little problem.”
He didn’t want to hear about problems. Problems led to people dying and dead people led to investigations. When the FBI started digging, well, the stress level tripled.
“What kind of problems?”
“It seems that the Boss’ lieutenant has been turned into an FBI informant.”
“What? How do you know that?”
“I have ways of knowing things.”
“What has he told them?”
“We’re working on finding that out, but we haven’t developed the connections that the Boss had just yet. Perhaps you could help us out with that? You know, just so we can make sure that you’re not ‘implicated.’”
He couldn’t afford to have the FBI poking around in his affairs. He’d managed to keep clean while backing the Boss, but things had heated up and he wasn’t entirely sure that he could trust the “new” don.
“This is turning into a fucking nightmare.”
“Not yet, but it might.”
“I’ll see what…” He started to speak but quickly realized that the call had already been disconnected.
Chapter Six
It was no surprise to Kenneth that things were heating up even more on the political front as the gun battle and standoff con
tinued in the Inner City. The report continued to drone on, going into details about the cooperating witnesses and Kenneth turned away. So far, he had not been connected to the Boss, but he was beginning to wonder how much longer that would be true.
With authorities attempting to close in on the Boss, it was only a matter of time before someone would make the connection. He recalled the phone call that he’d received from the Boss the day before.
“Yeah?” He’d answered the phone after looking at the caller ID. Just like always, he instantly knew who it was from.
“I’ve got some bad news for you.” Marcus Brown’s voice opened the call. “It’s about your brother.”
“What happened?”
“He’s dead.”
“But how? I thought he was in the safe house?”
Kenneth had been able to relax a little bit after he had been told that Rufus had made it to the safe house. He knew that Rufus would never give him up to the FBI, but he felt better knowing that the Boss had made arrangements to get him to a safe place. These were very unsure times and every two-bit gunman would be trying to grab a share of the crumbs from the empty plate that Marcus Brown’s extradition would leave behind.
“He was in the safe house. They aren’t sure what happened. The girls said that he had spent the night with one of the whores. They had seen him wandering around the house earlier this morning and then they heard the whore screaming and three gunshots.”
“Jesus.” The shock from this news made the bile rise up into his throat. “Why? Who got to him?”
“We don’t know for sure. I’m afraid that they got that girl into the safe house, somehow. She was gone before anyone put it all together and realized that she was the shooter.”
His thoughts rushed to his own family. “If they know about that, then they know about me. Am I safe? Is my family safe?”
Panic had begun to penetrate the timbre of his voice.
“Take it easy,” his boss reassured him. “No one will make the connection. Rufus was on the front lines. You know that.”
“But won’t they make the family connection?”
“Connection to who, Brother Ken? Ricardo Jackson, chartered accountant and upstanding citizen?” Marcus chuckled at his own sarcastic remark. “Relax; I’ll take care of things.”
“Like you took care of things for Rufus?” He had suddenly become bolder as the shock took a deeper hold and he fought his true emotions.
“I’m working on things, okay? I’m already checking to make sure you weren’t compromised.”
He’d hung up on the telephone call, shaking, and the tumultuous emotions caused him to rush to the toilet to deposit his breakfast. Since speaking to Brown, he had been on edge, watchful and paranoid of every person and every sound that he encountered. He tried to act normal as he went about his daily routines, but he wondered if he was doing a good job of hiding it.
He’d avoided Dawn because he knew that she’d read right through him and he wasn’t quite sure how he was going to explain things or keep cool around her. He’d faked being sick to his stomach when he came home from work, though in truth, the churning in his stomach was all too real. Regardless, he’d been able to keep his distance from her and insulate her from what was going on. If something happened to his family…
The Boss had told him that he’d take care of things, but Kenneth wondered if maybe he ought to take things into his own hands. Maybe if they took a quick trip to go visit Curtis. How would he explain that one to his wife? Could he come up with some fake emergency? What if he exposed Curtis as well? He was unable to answer the question before the phone rang.
He looked at the caller ID, saw that the number was blocked and knew who it was.
“What did you find out?”
“Evidently, Rufus had convinced the FBI to take you into protective custody.”
The words were like a baseball bat being swung at full force into his stomach. For a moment, he couldn’t come up with a response. “But that would mean…” The statement trailed off. There was no way that Rufus had given him up.
“Yeah. Isn’t that some kind of shit?”
The tone of Marcus’s voice told him that he was struggling to believe it too.
Rufus must have known something else was going down. Were there rival entities already making their move against them? The only way that Rufus would have told the FBI that he and his family needed protection was if he’d feared for their lives. It was all beginning to come together. The hit at the safe house had not been by the FBI; it was the rival posse. He took a stab at his theory.
“What have they found out about the shooter?” he asked.
“She wasn’t FBI, but she’s not one of ours either.”
That confirmed his theory. If that was the case, did any of the current players know about Curtis?
“Some people went over to clean things up and to get Rufus out of there,” the speaker paused.
“You dumped his body like common trash?”
“We couldn’t compromise the place, so…”
There was a long pause. Neither one of them was comfortable given the situation and what had to be done. Kenneth understood, but that didn’t help to get rid of the bitter taste in his mouth.
“The good news is, your family will be safe,” the Boss said. His voice seemed to have lost some of the confidence that had always been there. “The bad news is…”
“That will be because of the FBI.” Kenneth finished the sentence. He realized that everything and everybody involved would now be connected. The money trail could be followed and he would be just as screwed as the Boss when came right down to it. How was he going to explain all of that to his family? “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know,” the Boss answered quietly. “This shit is getting pretty heavy. Hey, I gotta go. I don’t know how things are going to work out, but I just want you to know that you’ve been solid with me. I’m sorry for…” The words didn’t come. “Just be sure to do whatever you’ve got to do. Don’t worry about me. I know that I have to face my demons. There are too many skeletons in my closet and my time is up. Just don’t turn into one of those skeletons, Brother Ken. I gotta go. Take care, mi bredrin.”
When the line went dead, Kenneth sat quietly for a few minutes, digesting everything. Should he make a run for it? Where would he go? He had to leave Curtis out of things. He would have to explain it all to Dawn before the FBI arrived.
Shit! That’s not a conversation I’m looking forward to.
***
“PD just found a body that you might be interested in knowing about,” Robert said over the phone. Romeo was back at Quantico running through more of the tapes, hoping that he’d find something more that would tip him off concerning the identity of the mysterious governor.
“Oh yeah?” Romeo answered. “Who’d they find?”
“Rufus Colton.”
“Rufus Colton? What? Where?” He’d wondered why Rufus had never called back. Now Romeo had his answer.
Shit! Everything was falling apart.
“Body dump at a roadside park in Pennsylvania. He’d taken three .45 rounds in the chest. Time of death puts it sometime mid-morning the day he talked to you last.”
“Somebody overheard him talking to me then.”
He really needed the information that Rufus had. This was a major setback in the case that they were building against Brown. Worse yet, even though Rufus was sort of a pain in the ass, he’d started to like the guy. It opened up a lot of new questions. Did his own people take him out because they discovered he was a snitch? Did the rival posse get someone inside the Boss’ organization to get rid of him? Was there somebody else out there with an interest in it? Piecing together the puzzle had just gotten harder.
“We have the information you wanted concerning Curtis Colton,” Robert continued after a long period of silence.
“Thanks, shoot it my way,” he replied.
He was still thinking about Rufus and hardly
heard what Robert had said. What was really going on in Brown’s organization?
“What have you decided to do with him?” Robert asked.
The question brought him back to reality. He stopped thinking of Rufus for a moment and moved on to Curtis.
“When are our people going to pick up his brother?”
“The plan is for tomorrow night.”
“Then we have a few days before it’s critical that we contact Curtis. Be better to let him know that his father is safe. Might be more cooperative that way, if he’s somehow part of it all.”
“That’s good thinking. You want someone in Atlanta to keep an eye on him?”
“It wouldn’t hurt.”
“How much do you want to be in the loop?”
“Just let me know if anything major happens. I don’t necessarily need to know when he goes to take a piss, but, you know, if something out of the ordinary happens. I’ll probably head to Atlanta the day after tomorrow. If something happens or somebody shows up and starts watching him, let me know.”
“You turn anything up about that other crime posse?”
“In the tapes, there are some hints that somebody is out there, but I can’t find anything on them that indicates that Marcus Brown was worried about them.”
It was very likely, however, that they were the ones who had gotten to Rufus. If the Boss’ people had just stayed out of the way and let the FBI do its thing, Rufus might not have died. He wished he had access to whatever Rufus knew about the other criminal entity. It would be nice to be waiting for them to make their move before they had a chance to get settled in. As it was, the information gained from Rufus had raised more questions than it had provided answers.
“We’re looking at some pretty heavy hitters, but so far we haven’t seen anybody making any obvious moves. Of course, it won’t be obvious until it happens. They’ll make a statement when they’re ready to take over.”
“It sure would help if a few more of the pieces were in place.”
