The Reign of Rain Robinson

by Roy Glenn

  She had been going about fighting this war the wrong way. Rain had simply been responding to Barnes and Mobley’s tactics with superior force. To this point, that strategy hadn’t proven to be a deterrent and was therefore, ineffective. So, it was beyond time to start taking the fight to Barnes and Mobley.

  Put these boys out of business. Permanently, as she and Black had discussed.

  Therefore, on the way back to J.R.'s, Rain began assigning targets based on Baby Chris’s list of Barnes and Mobley’s money-making spots.

  “Roll by Shooters, Jackie,” Carter said.

  “What you wanna go to Shooters for?” Rain wanted to know.

  She was still mad at him for not telling her that he had killed Damián Custodio and he could hear it in her voice. It made her wonder if she could trust Carter, and that made her wonder if she had made a mistake making him her consigliere.

  Carter looked at Rain and knew she was mad. He laughed a little to himself each time he thought that the reason he was in this shape was that he rushed off to fuck Fantasy instead of rushing off to tell Rain what he had done.

  Good pussy makes a nigga make stupid mistakes sometimes, Carter thought and vowed to never let it happen again.

  He understood that he had betrayed her trust and would have to work to earn it back. So even though Carter resented the tone of her question, he answered The Boss of The Family with respect.

  “Since we were close by, I need to make Treach aware of our new direction and his place in it,” Carter said, and Rain nodded her head. When she did, Jackie headed in that direction. “With Hassan being down and Ryder keeping the money going, Treach has really stepped up. I’ve asked him to handle some things for me and he’s come through every time,” Carter said.

  It made Rain think back to the night Cynt was murdered and Black put Treach in charge and she wondered why.

  At the time, everybody knew that pussy was Treach’s primary purpose in life. A fact proven since at the time of Cynt’s murder, he was fucking Maserati and Boots. But Rain had come to understand that Black had looked past all that and saw the soldier that Treach would become, in the same way that Black saw potential in her when all everybody else saw was the out of control bitch that Nick was fucking.

  Black had showed confidence in her, just like he had shown in Treach that night. And just like Treach, she had made plenty of mistakes along the way. Mistakes that Black had to clean up. Rain looked at Carter and knew that she had to recognize that he was going to make mistakes too. But that didn’t mean that she had chosen the wrong man for the job.

  They arrived at Shooters just after Dazz, Moe Z, Bullet and Romy went inside.

  “Fuck!” Shandrel shouted.

  “What?” Da-Juan asked.

  Shandrel pointed. “Rain Robinson.”

  “Oh, shit,” Da-Juan said and dropped his head in his hands. “This is fucked up.”

  “Fuckin’ right.” Shandrel armed himself and started to get out of the car.

  “Fuck is you goin’?”

  “We gotta get in there.”

  “And do what … die?”

  Shandrel shut his door as the shooting began inside.

  Baby Chris walked in the door just as Dazz and Moe Z raised their weapons to rob the cashier. By the time Moe Z turned and saw them, Baby Chris had his gun out and he fired, hitting him with several shots. When Dazz turned to return fire, he fired one shot that hit him in the chest, and he went down.

  Rain shot them both as she passed and went in the club to the sound of more shooting. She opened the door and saw Bullet and Romy blasting away at Treach and his men with AR15’s. Rain shot one and then she shot the other and that put a stop to it.

  Outside in the car, Da-Juan and Shandrel waited a while after the shooting had stopped to see if any member of their four-man team made it out alive. When nothing but customers and half naked women came out, Da-Juan started the car and headed back to Mobley’s house to report.

  “How’d it go?” Mobley asked the second that Da-Juan and Shandrel came through the door.

  “Not good, Big Dawg. Rain Robinson and them were there when we got there, and we barely got out alive,” Da-Juan lied as planned.

  “We even brought along some extra manpower, you know, in case something like that happened.” Shandrel shook his head just as they had rehearsed it. “They was still too much for us,” he said, and Da-Juan glanced at Shandrel because he thought they had agreed that saying they were too much for them, would make them sound weak and might get them killed.

  “I heard.” Mobley leaned forward, picked up the gun that was on the coffee table in front of him and stood up. He looked at his men for a while without speaking, and then he smiled and shrugged his shoulders like it was no big deal. “That’s how the shit go sometimes.”

  Da-Juan relaxed. “Sorry Big Dawg,” he said.

  “Did you at least get Treach?” Mobley may have asked, but he already knew the answer.

  “I don’t know if we got him or not,” Shandrel said, returning to the rehearsed script.

  “Like I said, we barely got out alive,” Da-Juan said.

  Mobley shook his head. “You don’t know because you weren’t there!” he shouted and shot Da-Juan in the head before he turned to Shandrel. “I hate a lying mutha fucka,” Mobley said and shot him. He walked around the coffee table and stood over them. “Especially dumb ones like you niggas,” Mobley said and shot them both again until the clip was empty.

  Chapter Eighteen

  After the shooting stopped at Shooters, customers began emerging from cover, happy to be alive and most of them quickly left the building.

  “Awe, shit,” Baby Chris said when he discovered Treach’s body. He stooped down and checked for a pulse as Rain, Carter and Jackie walked up.

  “Is he dead?” Jackie asked, and Baby Chris nodded his head.

  “Damn,” Carter said.

  Baby Chris closed Treach’s eyes with his fingers and stood up as two police officers came in Shooters. He looked at Jackie and Carter and then to Rain.

  Two captains and The Boss of The Family, Baby Chris thought and knew what had to happen next.

  “Give me your gun,” he said with his hand out. Rain looked him in the eye and handed Baby Chris her gun.

  “I’ll get you out as soon as I can,” Jackie said.

  “I know. Now get Rain out of here,” Baby Chris said still looking into Rain’s eyes.

  “Come on, Rain,” Carter said to her. “We gotta go.”

  Rain nodded at her soldier and left Shooters through the back door along with Carter and Jackie. Once they were gone, Baby Chris took control of the scene and quickly talked to Treach’s men and the dancers to make sure that they were all on the same page.

  “Rain Robinson was not here tonight and hasn’t been in months. I shot those men. Got that?” Baby Chris said and told everybody to make sure that nobody said anything different. Then he went in Treach’s office to wait for the police to come for him.

  When Bautista arrived at Shooters with Dickerson, they talked to their officers and were informed that everybody told the same story.

  “What’s that?” Dickerson asked.

  “They all say that Baby Chris came in the club, dropped the two at the door, and then he came in here and then he shot these two assholes,” the officers said standing over Bullet and Romy’s bodies. “That’s the story and everybody tells it damn near word for word.”

  “Where is he?” Bautista asked.

  “In the office.”

  “Anybody talk to him?” Bautista asked.

  “No, ma’am,” the young officer said. “I thought it be best if you handled the questioning, Detective. So, I have an officer posted outside the office door.”

  “Where’s Treach’s body?” Dickerson asked.

  “Over there,” the officer pointed and then led the Detective to the body.

  “One shot, dead in the center of his forehead,” Dickerson said. “Good shooting.”


  “Damn good, or a very lucky shot,” Bautista said and then she and Dickerson went to question Baby Chris.

  “You buy the story everybody’s telling?” Dickerson asked as they headed toward the office.

  “I believe those four men are dead.” Bautista paused. “Do I believe Baby Chris killed them all? Shit no.”

  “I agree. Who you think was with him?”

  “Jackie Washington, maybe,” Bautista said as they reached the office and went in, but her gut told her that it was Rain Robinson that was with him.

  “Baby Chris Arcus,” Dickerson said when he burst through the door. They found Baby Chris seated behind the desk.

  “Detectives.”

  “Why don’t you tell me what happened?” Dickerson said, and the Detectives sat down.

  Baby Chris waited until Bautista sat down and he made eye contact with her before he spoke. “I had just come in the club when I saw these two guys in ski masks robbing the place.”

  “What happened then?” Dickerson asked.

  “When they saw me they shot at me.”

  “What did you do?”

  “After they shot at me,” he was careful to say, “I pulled my guns and shot back,” Baby Chris said, still looking at Bautista. It was making her a little uncomfortable, but she refused to show it and continued staring into Baby Chris’s soft brown eyes.

  “So, you came in, saw the robbery in progress and you pulled your guns and shot them. Is that right?” Dickerson asked.

  “That’s right. After they shot at me, I shot back.”

  Dickerson saw the way that they were staring at each other and figured that either they were trying to intimidate each other or there was something going on between them. Either way, he hoped Bautista knew what she was doing and pressed on.

  “What happened next?”

  “I came in the club, saw two more masked men. They shot at me and I shot them both,” Baby Chris said calmly, continuing to stare into Bautista’s eyes. He was doing it for two reasons. One because he could tell it was making her uncomfortable. That, and Bautista was pretty, so she was easy to look at.

  “Where are the guns you used?”

  “In the desk drawer.”

  Dickerson bounced to his feet and put his hand on his weapon. “Would you mind standing up and backing away from the desk,” he said as Bautista smiled and got up slowly. She couldn’t tell if Baby Chris was flirting with her or whether he was trying to intimidate her, but it really didn’t matter. Despite that, she had to admit that Baby Chris was one pretty man.

  Baby Chris stood up slowly with his hands raised and backed away from the desk as ordered. Bautista broke eye contact and came around the desk. She opened the drawer, saw the two guns and nodded to her partner.

  “Christopher Arcus, you’re under arrest,” Dickerson said as Baby Chris lowered his hands and put them behind his back to be cuffed.

  “What am I being charged with?” Baby Chris asked.

  “Unlawfully discharging a firearm for starters and we’ll see where we go from there.”

  “You got a license for those?” Bautista asked, as she donned gloves and put the weapons in an evidence bag.

  “No, Detective Bautista, I do not.”

  “See. Now we can add criminal possession of a weapon. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning,” Dickerson said and was escorting Baby Chris out of the office when Kirk arrived at Shooters with Dawkins.

  “What the fuck are they doing here?” Dickerson asked as the Detectives walked over to where Treach’s body was found.

  Bautista’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know,” she said as they moved through the club. “But I know that we’ll find out,” she said and signaled for the uniformed officer that she spoke with earlier. “Take him to the house and hold him until I get there,” Bautista ordered.

  “Yes, ma’am,” the officer said.

  “Stop calling me ma’am,” Bautista said as she and Dickerson walked toward Kirk and Dawkins.

  “Detective,” Kirk said formally.

  “Detective,” Bautista said in the same tone.

  Dickerson shook his head. “Detective,” he said to Dawkins. She looked at the angry looks on Kirk and Bautista’s faces and laughed lightly.

  “Detectives,” Dawkins said smiling just to be silly.

  “Sure would like to know what the two of you are doing here?” Bautista asked.

  “We’re not here to take over the case.”

  “Then what are you doing here?” Dickerson asked.

  “We’re just looking at it from a different angle.”

  “What angle?” Bautista demanded to know.

  Dawkins smiled and gladly explained it to her.

  “Because of the angle of trajectory and caliber of the bullet indicating a sniper, major case has been assigned to investigate Doc’s murder. And since it involves Mike Black, the Lieutenant thought that Kirk needed to be on it because of his extensive experience,” she threw in just because she knew that it would piss Bautista off.

  It worked.

  “Okay,” Bautista said angrily. “But that doesn’t explain what you’re doing here.”

  “Take it easy, Marita, we’re just here looking for similarities and hoping to arrange a time when we could get together to compare notes. That’s all,” Kirk said with his hands raised.

  “We’re on our way back to the house now,” Dickerson said.

  “Baby Chris drop these four?” Dawkins asked.

  “So he says. But I think he’s covering for somebody farther up the food chain,” Bautista said.

  “Like I said, we’re heading back to the house. But I wanna hear about what you got. So, we’ll see you back there, right?” Dickerson asked.

  “Right,” Dawkins promised.

  “Okay,” Dickerson said, and he left Shooters with Bautista.

  “You wanna go talk to them or have a look around?” Kirk asked, and Dawkins laughed at him.

  “What do you think,” she said and walked off putting her gloves on.

  It was less than ten minutes later when one of the crime scene technicians approached the Detectives.

  “What you got there?” Kirk asked.

  “An expended high caliber round.”

  “Where did you find it?” Dawkins asked, and the technician led the way to the spot.

  “All the rest were five-point-five-six mil fired from those AR15’s, except for this one,” he said and held up the evidence bag with the shell.

  “I need that processed right away. And I need to know who that bullet is in,” Kirk said and looked at Dawkins. “Come on. I got a hunch.”

  They returned to the precinct and checked the ballistics reports for several murders of high profile members of The Family and found that in each case, they were killed by a high-power weapon and not by the dealers who were firing AR15’s.

  “What now?” Dawkins asked.

  “Let’s go talk to Bautista and Dickerson,” Kirk said.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The full moon was shining brightly in the darkness in the early morning hours when Jackie unlocked her door and went in the house. It had been a long day that started with a meeting at Black’s house, she’d been with Rain hitting their money-making spots ever since. She was on a mission to deal a serious blow to their enemies.

  No money, no war.

  It was only by chance that they were at Shooters when Mobley’s men hit. Now Treach was dead and Baby Chris was in jail. Rain was impressed with the way Baby Chris stepped up to protect her. It was something that she would never forget.

  “You get him outta there as soon as you can,” Rain said as they drove away from Shooters.

  “I’m on it, Rain,” Jackie promised, but at that point, she hadn’t been able to keep that promise. She had contacted the law firm and got the answering service. Not knowing who Jacki
e was, they promised that an attorney would contact her soon.

  “Fuck that.”

  Her next thought was to call Wanda, but since Wanda wasn’t her favorite person, something about her wanting to kill me, that wasn’t happening. But she needed to get Baby Chris out of there, so Jackie decided to call Patrick Freemen instead.

  After she apologized for waking him up so late, Jackie explained the situation as best she could on an open line. Patrick assured her that he was on top of it and would get back to her soon. When he called back an hour and a half later, Patrick told her that he had one of his best defense attorneys, Akilah Malheiros at the precinct and she had a bondsman that was standing by, but Bautista hadn’t charged him yet.

  When she told Rain that, it only made her madder and after swearing to kill Bautista, they were off again to hit another of Mobley’s spots in retaliation for Treach. Nothing or nobody major, just some guys that were working out of a club called Gravity they hung out in, that Baby Chris told Jackie about. Rain had been there a few times with Black, so she knew the layout of the spot and more importantly, she knew people there. It also had the advantage of being close to J.R.'s.

  “Let’s go,” Rain said and headed out of the office with Jackie and Carter. “This ain’t gonna take long.”

  And it didn’t.

  Because Rain’s plan was simple.

  “Kill everybody.”

  When they arrived at Gravity, Rain talked to a small-time hustler named Orlena. Her hustle was stolen credit and gift cards, tax schemes, food stamp cards, that type of thing. But she knew everybody, and Gravity had been her place of business for years. So, when Jackie pushed a gun in her side and Rain asked who was dealing for Mobley in there, Orlena gladly pointed out Wilson, Ford and Bey.

  “How you wanna do it?” Carter asked.

  “Three of us, three of them,” Rain said and started toward the table they were sitting at. Jackie looked at Carter and they fell in behind Rain.