The Family Business 4

by Carl Weber

“What the fuck is wrong with you? Why’d you let her go?” my dad spat at me.

  “You said you weren’t gonna kill her.” I panted, positioning myself in a defensive posture in case he tried to attack me again.

  “I didn’t say I wasn’t gonna kill her. I said I wasn’t gonna kill her there at the fucking beauty shop.” He began pacing like the madman he was. “Now you’ve gone and fucked everything up.”

  “Aunt Chippy did nothing wrong. She’s always been nice to me and Curtis. This bullshit is between you and LC. She has nothing to do with it. How’d you like it if LC went after Mom?”

  “You’re a fucking disgrace. You’ve ruined it. I was going to take away the one thing LC loved more than anything, and you messed it up.” He kept storming up and down the sidewalk, shaking his head while he talked. Then he stopped, turning toward the steps to the house. “I know, Momma. We’re going to bring it inside.” He turned back to me. “You heard your grandmother. Let’s bring it inside. And don’t think I ain’t gonna kick your ass when we get in there.”

  “Will you stop fucking talking to her?” I yelled at him. I just couldn’t take it anymore.

  “What are you talking about?”

  I pointed at the door he’d been looking at. “I’m talking about the fact that there is nobody over there. That Grandma Bettie’s been dead twenty years.”

  “You little disrespectful bastard!” He charged at me again, but this time Curtis grabbed him.

  “This entire time I’ve been quiet about it, and so has Curtis. We’ve been avoiding sitting in seats and making accommodations for a woman that’s been fucking dead for over twenty years. Wake up, Dad! She’s not here, so stop talking to her!”

  “Leave it alone, Kenny,” Curtis warned, struggling to hold him back.

  “Sorry, but I can’t do that, Curt. Not anymore. I can’t turn a blind eye anymore. Our father is mentally ill, and he needs to be hospitalized. Uncle LC and them were right to have him locked away,” I said, finally unburdening myself of the guilt that had been building inside of me. We’d been enabling my father to be as crazy and dangerous as everyone had tried to tell us he was.

  My dad reached his arm behind Curtis, snatching the gun my brother always carried. He pointed it at me.

  “Say it again and you’re gonna be the one dead,” he snapped. “You disrespectful motherfucker.”

  “Dad, it’s okay.” Curtis eased in front of him in an effort to get him to lower the gun. I could see the tears forming in my brother’s eyes, and my heart raced. “Please, please, Dad, lower the gun.”

  “He’s crazy, Curt,” I whispered, now fighting my own tears.

  My dad looked at Curtis and said, “Curtis, go take your grandma inside the house and y’all get ready, ’cause we gonna have to move out this house. The neighbors are watching us.”

  “Okay, Dad. But first, please give me the gun,” Curtis pleaded.

  My dad and I stood in the middle of the driveway, neither one of us moving. I steadied my breathing, finding solace in believing my brother loved me enough that he was standing in the way of a bullet. For a brief second, I wanted him to shoot me.

  “Yeah, Grandma Bettie, we’re coming right now,” Curtis suddenly said, his voice sounding stiff. “Pop, Grandma Bettie said come on and get in the van with her.”

  “What?” My dad finally turned away from me.

  Curtis gently took the gun from him and pointed to the truck. “She’s waiting. We’d better hurry up before she starts cussing.”

  “Oh, yeah, you’re right.” My dad walked over and opened the back side door. “Come on, Momma. Curt, let’s go!”

  “Curt, he’s crazy. He’s gonna get you killed,” I said as he followed him to the van.

  Curt stopped and turned to me. “I gotta go with him, Kenny. I’m all he’s got.”

  “What about me?” I asked.

  “Go home, Kenny. You always got Ma.” He got in the van, and I watched helplessly as he backed it up then drove away.

  LC

  63

  An array of emotions ran through me. As soon as I got the call that my wife had escaped an attempted abduction, I was both relieved and angry. Just a few minutes before, Vegas had received word that two of the men who were assigned to her detail were now dead, and Chippy was missing. I immediately knew that my brother had taken her, and fear seized my heart until I received the call a half hour ago that she was safe. She was now on her way home with Junior, who was closest to her location.

  “How the hell did they get to her, Vegas?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, Pop. She had six guys on her detail, and one of them was your guy Willie.”

  Wasn’t much I could say bad about Willie. He was a retired cop and Navy Seal.

  The front door opened, and Chippy walked in. I rushed over and held my wife as Junior escorted her into our home. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m all right, LC.” Chippy sobbed into my chest.

  “Did that bastard touch you?” I noticed the blood stains on the arm of her blouse.

  “No, he didn’t hurt me. I scraped my arm when I jumped out of the van.” Her hair was standing all over her head, and her clothes were disheveled, but she had never looked more beautiful to me than at that moment. I kissed her forehead and hugged her again.

  “Ma!” Paris ran down the stairs and over to her mother, her face full of tears.

  “I’m okay, baby,” Chippy assured her.

  “I’m gonna kill him, Ma. I promise, if it’s the last thing that I do,” Paris snapped.

  “We’ve gotta find him first,” Rio commented, walking over and hugging his mother.

  “Trust me, we’re gonna find him,” Vegas said.

  “Ma, did he say anything?” Orlando asked.

  “Not really. He just kept saying that he wanted his portion of the business that your father stole from him.” Chippy looked at me. “I’ll tell you one thing, LC. He’s never gonna stop.”

  “Yeah, and he’s knocking us off one by one,” Rio said. He wasn’t entirely wrong to be worried, either. Now that I knew Larry could get at us like this, the situation had risen to a whole new level of danger.

  “I want this entire family on fucking lockdown. Everyone needs to be home now. Everyone! No one is to leave this compound without my permission. Am I understood?” I announced.

  “Nevada. Where is he?” Chippy started to panic.

  “I’m right here, Grandma.” Nevada hugged Chippy, and she held onto him, but you could see he was angry.

  “Junior, where’s Sonya?” Chippy asked.

  “She’s upstairs with the kids. She’s safe, Ma,” Orlando said, putting his arm around her. “And so are you. We all are.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Vegas said, removing his phone from his ear.

  “What the hell do you mean?” I asked, my concern matching the look on my wife’s face.

  “That was Bruce from London and Harris’s security detail. London and Sasha never made it to the hospital. They aren’t there,” Vegas told me.

  “What the hell do you mean, they never made it?” I demanded.

  “That’s impossible. I talked to London earlier, and she said she was already at the hospital and Sasha was with her. She said they were going to spend the night.” Chippy turned and looked at me. Any relief I had felt when Chippy returned home was gone, replaced by fear for my first daughter and my niece.

  “Where the fuck are they?” I snapped, and damn near everyone in the room jumped.

  “We’re trying to reach them now. Neither one of them are answering their phones,” Vegas replied.

  “Oh my God, LC. He has them. He has Sasha and London. How are we going to find them?” Chippy’s eyes filled with tears. I put my arm around her and asked myself the same question.

  “We don’t know that, Chippy,” I whispered into her still damp hair.

  “Why don’t you just ping their phones, Grandpa?” Nevada asked.

  “Good thinking.” I looked over at
my grandson, and then to his father, and nodded.

  “I’m already on it, Pop,” Vegas said.

  “Orlando, you take a team and check it out. Junior and Nevada will get you within a few blocks of the ping point. If you find something, don’t try to be a hero. Wait for us before you go charging in. We may have to call the authorities in. There’s been a lot of bloodshed associated with our name, so we want the cops on our payroll to handle it.”

  “I got it,” Orlando said, heading for the door at the same time Nevada and Junior headed for the den.

  My cell phone rang, and I took it out of my pocket. Seeing the name on the screen, I frowned. “Chippy, are you butt dialing me?”

  “No, my phone is in my purse,” she said, and then as she realized where her purse was, her eyes got wide. “Larry took it from me when we got in the van because he knew I had a gun in it.”

  I looked down at the phone again and inhaled deeply to steady myself before I hit the ANSWER button.

  “Larry.”

  “How are you, LC? It’s good to hear your voice. Not!” The sound of his voice caused my already brewing anger to build, but I forced myself to remain calm. I knew handling it with caution was critical. My initial instinct was to demand the whereabouts of London and Sasha, but my better judgment made me wait.

  “Oh, by the way, did Chippy make it home okay? We spent a little time together,” he said with a sick laugh.

  “I’m trying to remain calm, Larry,” I told him. “You’re making it very difficult.”

  “LC, you don’t wanna talk about how difficult you’ve made my life, do you?” Larry asked.

  The good news was that he didn’t make mention of London or Sasha, which made me think he might not have them. Otherwise, he would have been trying to use them from the start to throw me off balance. Still, I couldn’t be sure, so I was determined to get my brother and his behavior under control some way. I had to gain the upper hand.

  “This has gotta stop,” I told him. “You have—”

  “Don’t fucking tell me what I’ve done. What about what you’ve done, LC? This is all your fucking fault! You were the one who had me locked away and stole my share of the company. You took everything from me: my life, my family, my money.”

  “Larry, you know none of that’s true.”

  “Stop fucking lying to me, LC! This is why I shot your ass last time we were together—because you keep fucking lying!” Larry screamed like a madman.

  “What the fuck do you want, Larry? Let’s just handle this man to man, once and for all,” I said, still speaking quietly so as not to set him off any worse than he already was.

  Larry laughed. “Man to man? You don’t really wanna do that, little brother. You were never that good and never will be.”

  “Try me and see,” I suggested.

  “You know what? You’re right. Let’s just handle this shit and finally get it over with,” he said. “It’s been going on long enough.”

  I felt a brief second of relief. At least now I would know where he was. “You name the place.”

  “I’m taking Momma back home for a few days, so why don’t we meet back where it all started.”

  I ignored his reference to my mother. His insistence that she was still alive was more proof of how far gone he was, and pointing it out to him might just send him over the edge. “I’ll be there tomorrow afternoon,” I said.

  “Take your time. It’s going to me at least a few days to get there. Unlike you, I don’t have a Learjet. At least not yet.” He hung up.

  Larry

  64

  I stood smoking a cigarette as I watched Curtis prep the back of the van. It looked as if I was going to be able to kill two birds with one stone: having a face to face with my brother, and handling my business with Vinnie, who said he would lower his price to 20K a kilo if I met him down in Florida and took all his product today. So wasting no time, Curtis, Momma, and I loaded up the old van and headed down I-95. We had arrived in Jacksonville about an hour ago to meet Vinnie at a warehouse near the Julington Creek pier.

  “What about Kenny?” Curtis asked.

  “What about him?” I frowned. “It’s clear that your brother don’t give a shit about us; therefore, we ain’t gonna give a shit about him. We got business to take care of. I don’t have time to deal with his temperamental ass.”

  “But, Dad—”

  “Curtis, shut the fuck up about your brother. Now, if you’re that worried about his ass, you can get the fuck out and stay here. Is that what you wanna do?”

  “No, sir.” Curtis sighed then walked over and patted my back.

  “I’m sorry, son. It’s just . . . your brother, he broke my heart,” I said sadly. “Go get those bags. Vinnie is here.”

  Vinnie was fifteen minutes late when he walked up wearing an all-white linen suit and a pair of leather flip flops, looking like a tourist.

  “Larry Duncan.” He extended his hand to greet me.

  I looked at it and said, “You got my shit, Vinnie?”

  Vinnie lowered his hand, and his smile weakened. “You got my money?”

  Curtis walked over and tossed him a duffle bag full of cash. “Here.”

  He nodded and pointed to a box truck. “Dope is in the back.”

  I motioned for Curtis to check it out, and Vinnie tossed him the keys.

  “You got that other thing for me?” I asked.

  Vinnie shrugged and said, “Sure thing, Larry. Got it right here.”

  He handed me a brown leather briefcase. I took it out of his hand and gave him a knapsack of money. “Is that it?”

  He handed me a telephone. “All you have to do is call me on this cell, and everything will be taken care of.”

  “Thanks, Vinnie.” I put the briefcase on the floor in the back seat. Everything was falling into place.

  “Where are you heading next?” I asked him.

  “No particular destination. I heard Santorini is nice this time of year. I might head there.” Vinnie shrugged. “Or I might hit up Italy, check out where the Dash family got their start.”

  “A’ight, Dad, we’re loaded.” Curtis tossed Vinnie the keys.

  “Well, once again, Larry Duncan, it’s been great doing business with ya.” Vinnie grinned, extending his hand a second time. This time, I took it. “Good luck dealing with your brother.”

  I lifted the phone he’d given me and said, “I’ll call you and let you know.”

  He laughed, picking up the duffle bag and starting to walk away.

  “He’s just gonna walk down the street with a million dollars in cash?” Curtis asked.

  “Hey, like Momma always says: not my monkey, not my circus.” I took a deep breath. “Come on. We have a lot of things to do if we’re going to meet with the infamous LC Duncan.”

  Orlando

  65

  Pinging London and Sasha’s phones hadn’t given us an exact location, just a vicinity, which turned out to be LaGuardia Airport. We arrived at the terminal with five cars and ten men and began searching for my sister and cousin, but we came up empty until about an hour into the search, when Nevada gave me a call.

  “What’s up, nephew?”

  “Well, Uncle O, I think we have a problem. I’ve been pinging Aunt London’s and Sasha’s phones, and all of a sudden nothing is coming back.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. “What’s that mean, Nevada?”

  “O, it’s Junior.” My brother cut in. “What it means is that either they turned their phones off or someone did it for them. You guys find anything at the terminals?”

  “Nothing, but we still got a lot of ground to cover. I could use some help.”

  “Roger that. I’m gonna head over there with my guys right after I brief Pop and Vegas.”

  “There is one thing we haven’t thought of,” Nevada cut in. “They are at an airport. What if they’re on a plane? We wouldn’t get a signal if they’re in the air,” he told me. “Give me a sec. Let me check something really qu
ick. Wait for my call.” The boy genius hung up without waiting for my response. It took him nearly ten minutes to call me back.

  “Damn, it took you long enough. What were you doing?” I asked.

  “Hacking into Aunt London’s American Express account to see if she’s used her card today,” he said meekly, because he’d been told about hacking into accounts. “Uncle Junior said it was okay.”

  “Then you’re golden. You find anything?” I asked.

  He hesitated, then said, “Looks like she was at the Lucky Dragon buffet in the Bronx, a municipal parking lot in Manhattan, she purchased tickets on Delta Airlines, and has a hotel room being held at the Marriott.”

  “Which Marriott?” I asked.

  “Sawgrass Marriott Golf Resort and Spa in Jacksonville, Florida.”

  “Good job, nephew. I’m handing you my title. You’re officially the smartest one in the family.” I could hear Junior laughing in the background. “Junior, tell Pop I’m headed to Florida. I’ll meet you guys down in Waycross once I find out what the hell these two are up to.”

  “Will do, O. Be safe, and smack both of them upside the head for me. We don’t have time for this BS.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  * * *

  Five hours later, I stepped off the elevator onto the eighth floor of the Sawgrass hotel and continued down the hallway until I arrived at room 878. Nevada had used his hacking skills to get me the room number of their suite. With a full detail of men behind me, I tried my best to calm down a bit and then tapped on the door, lightly at first. When there was no response, I knocked a little harder, then checked my watch. It was almost three in the morning, and they were probably asleep, but I didn’t care. I knocked again, this time hard and loud. I finally heard muffled sounds and then, Sasha’s voice.

  “Who is it?” she asked gruffly. I took a step back so she could get a good view from the peephole I knew she was looking through. “Oh, shit! It’s Orlando!”

  “Orlando?” I heard London ask. To say I was pissed would be an understatement. Our family was in crisis, my crazy uncle was on the loose, and here were my sister and cousin, disappearing to a Florida resort like they didn’t have a care in the world. “I told you we should have told someone we were coming here.”