“This shit is getting ridiculous, baby!” Pearla exclaimed. “Y’all need to find that muthafucka Kwan and handle him. He’s fuckin’ everything up.”
Hassan emerged from the master bathroom with his lower half wrapped in a blue towel. He glanced at the TV and then looked at Pearla. “We gonna find him.”
“He scares me,” Pearla said.
“Well, he don’t scare me. He’s just another fool living on borrowed time. That nigga’s time will come. Believe me, baby.”
“Three cops in one night.” Pearla sighed heavily and shook her head.
“You need to turn that shit off, baby. You know there’s nothing ever good coming from the news. That’s the white’s man media.”
She did what he asked, and the flat-screen went black. Though the TV was off, clicking off their problems wasn’t that easy.
Pearla stared up at her king, looking sexy in his bath towel. “What’s the situation with Bimmy?”
“I know what you’re thinking, and I didn’t forget.”
“I hope not. He got April killed because he wanted me dead. You can’t never forget that, Hassan. You can’t trust him.”
“I know I can’t.”
“So why do you still keep him around?”
“Because I need him.”
“Why?”
“Because right now he’s the lesser evil. Do you fuckin’ see what’s goin’ on out there? That muthafucka Kwan won’t stop until we’re dead or he is. I need Bimmy’s skills on them streets to help hunt that lunatic down.”
Pearla sighed deeply. “It’s your call, baby. I believe in you. I just hope this plan of yours doesn’t backfire on you. I love you too much to lose you.”
“Baby, I’m not goin’ anywhere, believe me. I’m here for you until we get old or a hundred, either one.”
She smiled. “Well, I got your back too.”
“I know you do.”
They kissed passionately. Their tongues became entwined, and Pearla could feel the juices already building up in her pussy. She was ready to slide her hand up the towel and bring something to life between his legs. Every time their mouths touched, a jolt of electricity would pass through her, electrocuting her with lust.
He was her knight in shining armor, and when he finally got rid of Bimmy and Kwan, the two of them could finally live in peace. It was all she wanted, to live in peace and have a normal fucking life. She was tired of it all. There had been too much death and too many close calls for them both. It was time to get out. Pearla felt it in her bones.
“I want you out,” she said to him out of the blue.
“What?”
“Get out the game. You can, Hassan. You have enough money saved and invested in legit businesses, including the record label you started, that you don’t need the streets anymore. It’s becoming too much.”
He groaned. “You can leave the game, but the sometimes game won’t leave you alone.”
“Yes, it can and it will. Don’t give me that excuse!”
“You want me to leave all this alone and go legit, huh?”
“Yes. We’re getting older, and we need to become wiser, baby. How long before somebody gets the best of you and puts a bullet in your head? Or one day you can’t get yourself out of jail? I want you with me, in my life, enjoying each other until we get old. Like you said, baby—you gonna be here for me until we get old or a hundred. I don’t care which one.”
“And what suddenly brought this on?”
Pearla stared off in the distance bareness for a brief moment before locking eyes with Hassan. “I’m pregnant!”
“Y-y-you’re what?”
“I said I’m pregnant!”
“Seriously? You are? Oh shit!”
“Yes, you’re gonna be a father, Hassan.”
Hassan was over the moon about the news. “We gonna be parents. Damn!”
“I know, right?”
She and Hassan started to kiss fervently again. The news about the pregnancy made him extra horny.
He pushed her against the bed and made her spread her legs. Then he poised himself between her thighs and looked down at her. “You are the most beautiful woman in the world. And you’re going to make a great mother.”
Just as things were about to get really hot and heavy, Hassan’s cell phone rang.
“Shit!”
“Baby, just don’t answer it.”
“I need to. It could be important.” Hassan pulled himself away from Pearla and picked up his cell phone from the dresser, checking the caller ID. “It’s Bimmy,” he said.
She rolled her eyes. She was missing out on some dick because of him.
Hassan pressed the send button on his cell phone and answered, “What, nigga?”
“We hit gold,” Bimmy said.
“What the fuck you talkin’ about, Bimmy?”
“Kwan, that nigga’s house is crumbling, and we gonna be there to pick up the pieces.”
“Meaning?”
“One of his top goons reached out to me, some nigga name Leaky. He wanna talk.”
“And you trust this nigga to meet?”
“Yeah, I do. This is our one chance to end this madness, Hassan. Let’s hear him out.”
Hassan thought about it for a moment. It could be a trap, but he felt he had to take the risk. He glanced at Pearla lying butt-naked on the satin sheets on the king-size bed. “Set it up then, and be smart about it, Bimmy.”
“I will. Call you back wit’ the details.”
They ended their call.
Hassan stood by the foot of the bed looking pensive about the meet.
Pearla picked up on his sudden mood change. “What happened, baby?” she asked him.
“We might finally end this shit with Kwan.”
“Seriously?”
He nodded.
“What’s going to happen?” she asked.
He didn’t want to tell her the details. It wasn’t her business to know. He said, “I need some air.”
Hassan donned a robe and stepped into the backyard for a cigarette and to think.
Bimmy called back with the details. “Tomorrow night, the boardwalk on Coney Island. He’ll meet us there.”
“A’ight.”
***
The black Range Rover came to a stop at the end of West 15th Street in Coney Island. Bimmy was the driver, Hassan rode shotgun, and two goons with assault rifles sat in the backseat. Straight ahead was the extensive wooden boardwalk. The chilly fall weather and the late hour made Coney Island a ghost town.
Hassan wasn’t taking any chances. Meeting with one of Kwan’s men was a risk. He may not be legit, and it might be a setup. Their Range Rover was the only vehicle around so far.
“Where is he?” Hassan asked.
“He should be here soon,” Bimmy answered.
Hassan lit a cigarette and waited impatiently. He took a few pulls and said, “This better be for real, Bimmy.”
“It is, trust me.”
Hassan didn’t any nigga who said, “Trust me.” Bimmy was a snake in the grass. If Hassan didn’t need him, Bimmy would have been had a large hole in his head. But Hassan had to be patient. He was going to use him until everything was taken care of.
A pair of bright headlights turned onto the street and slowly came their way. Hassan and Bimmy were fixated on the dark blue Infiniti Q50.
The car parallel-parked next to their Range, the headlights went out, and the doors swung open. Two men climbed out from the front seats.
Hassan watched them both carefully. He then uttered, “Let’s do this!”
Leaky was average height, dark-skinned, and slim, wearing a do-rag and a long leather jacket. He had a serious look to him, and Hassan couldn’t help but wonder how many of his men this wild-looking nigga had killed.
> “You Leaky?” Hassan asked.
“Yeah,” he replied casually. “I came in peace.”
Quickly, both men sized each other up. They then decided to walk and talk on the boardwalk.
Bimmy wanted to follow behind, but Hassan instructed him to stay with the truck. He had this. Bimmy didn’t like it, but he did what he was told.
Leaky started with, “Look, that’s my dude and I got love for him, but Kwan is losing his fuckin’ mind. He’s out of control. We ain’t wit’ that cowboy shit anymore—killing cops like that. It’s always been bad for business.”
“I agree,” Hassan said. “So what you suggestin’?” Hassan didn’t want to assume anything. He wanted to hear it from the horse’s mouth itself.
“I’m sayin’ he gotta go! He gonna bring us all down and get us fuckin’ killed. I mean, I ain’t no punk, but I got kids, my nigga. You feel me?”
“I do.”
“And he on this warpath. I don’t know what the fuck he’s doin’ most times. Since his sister got killed, he been trippin’ and shit.”
They continued to walk farther away from their cronies. Hassan was ready to find a solution to his problems tonight.
“What I’m sayin’ to you is, I can give you the locations where he’s gonna be, and you and your peoples can do the dirty work,” Leaky said.
“And we will.”
“And when he’s dead, you and me, we can come to some kinda agreement on these streets. I know there’s enough to eat for everyone. I’m just ready to start gettin’ that money again. You feel me, my nigga?”
“Yeah, I feel you.”
“Kwan got these cops so much up our asses, I can’t even shit without feeling fuckin’ brass. I just want it all to die down and go away.”
“So how you wanna do this?”
“He trusts me, so I can bring him outta his hole and hand him to y’all easily. And then when he’s gone, you and me can talk business.”
“We can,” Hassan said.
“So we cool?”
“We cool.”
“A’ight, give me a week, and I’ll serve the nigga up to y’all with no problem.”
They shook hands then turned back around and began walking back to their men waiting calmly on the street.
Bimmy looked at Hassan wondering what had been said during their little walk. He anticipated that they had worked something out.
Hassan looked at his right-hand man and said nothing to him. He glanced at Leaky and said, “We’ll talk.”
Leaky nodded.
The men climbed back into their cars and went their separate ways.
Bimmy asked, “So what happened? He legit or what?”
“He legit.”
“What I tell you? So Kwan’s on his way out, right? I want that muthafucka, Hassan. Let me have him. I owe him plenty for what he did to my cousin Run-Run.”
“In due time,” Hassan replied matter-of-factly.
Thirty-Nine
Kwan stood over Sophie’s grave in deep silence, feeling a bottomless pain in his heart. He stared at her headstone and frowned. He had sent his sister off right, sparing no expense, from the casket to her wardrobe. Sophie went out in style.
But he missed her so much. Rarely did people see a heartless thug like him cry, but standing over his sister’s grave, he couldn’t help shedding tear after tear. They had taken one of the best things in his life away. They had to pay. And he was making them pay severely, declaring an all-out war on everyone and becoming public enemy number one. He had set Brooklyn on fire. He had made the borough so hot, not even a blizzard could cool things off.
“I’m makin’ these bitches pay, Sophie, for what they did to you. You were my little sister, and I loved you. I hardly told you that, but I’m tellin’ it to you now,” he said.
Kwan lingered by her grave wiping his tears. He knew who’d killed his pregnant sister in cold blood. He knew who was savvy enough to break into her home and murder her while she slept. It had to be Cash. He had the motive and the means.
The man was once his friend, but now Kwan had such a strong hatred for him that he placed a new contract of a hundred thousand dollars on his head. He’d hired two of the best killers to track Cash down wherever the nigga was hiding and kill him. Spiral and Lamont were the best at what they did. They were like bloodhounds when tracking down their victims and became pit bulls when tearing them apart.
As Kwan stood by his sister’s grave, Leaky cautiously approached from behind, knowing Kwan was a jumpy nigga with a trigger finger. Startling Kwan could be dangerous to a man’s health. So Leaky called out to him as he approached.
Kwan turned around, and all of his tears had been wiped away. “What the fuck you want, Leaky?”
“Good news, my nigga,” Leaky started. He glanced down at Sophie’s grave. “We all miss her, my nigga.”
Kwan didn’t care for his sentimental words, wanting Leaky to get to the point. “What you came here to say?”
“We found that nigga Cash.”
Kwan couldn’t believe his ears. “Where?”
“He fucked up. He’s in the Bronx shacking up wit’ some bitch,” Leaky said.
Kwan hurried off with Leaky to the Bronx. He had such a hard-on for Cash, he instantly rushed to the first sighting of him, eager to tear him limb from limb. Finally, he felt he could avenge Sophie’s murder.
***
The run-down house sat on a dead-end block in a neighborhood jumbled with mechanic shops, vacant lots, and garages on Bassett Avenue in the Bronx. It was only a stone’s throw away from I-95, but he traffic on the freeway was light because of the midnight hour.
Bimmy came to a stop in front of the old home and shifted the Range Rover into park. He looked over at Hassan and said, “This is it, nigga—victory.”
Hassan nodded.
They had gotten the call from Leaky an hour earlier informing them that they had Kwan in their possession. It was his gift to Hassan, as they planned on doing business together in the future.
Hassan was a little edgy as he, Bimmy, and three of their armed thugs stepped out of the Range and approached the house, where two of Leaky’s men stood guard. With everything going down, he couldn’t help but to think that there was no such thing as loyalty anymore. Leaky had betrayed Kwan—although for the greater good—and Bimmy had betrayed him.
He thought about Pearla. Had she ever betrayed him? Had she ever cheated on him? He erased Pearla from his mind momentarily. Right now, he had to focus and stay alert. He still had no idea what he was walking into.
Hassan and his men stepped into the house and were escorted down into the basement, where there was exposed plumbing, a century-old brick wall, concrete floors, and a single bare bulb dangling from the low ceiling. It was poorly lit and had a musty smell of cigarettes and mold.
In the center of it all was Kwan tied to a chair and surrounded by Leaky and his men. He was stripped butt-naked.
When Kwan saw Hassan and Bimmy enter the room, he shouted, “Y’all muthafuckas set me up!”
Bimmy smiled wide. He rubbed his hands together excitedly and couldn’t wait to get at Kwan.
“You fucked up, Kwan,” Leaky said. “We tired of your shit.”
“Fuck you, Leaky! You gonna betray me for these fools? I’m gonna kill y’all niggas! I swear on my sister’s grave, y’all are fuckin’ dead! Dead!” He violently tried to twist around in his chair, but his restraints didn’t budge.
“Yeah, nigga, I’ve been waitin’ for this day for a while now,” Bimmy said, walking closer to his prize, still rubbing his hands together. “You is fucked now, nigga!”
Everyone in the room was frowning intensely.
Kwan stared at his nemesis, and suddenly his tough demeanor changed. “C’mon, y’all, don’t fuckin’ do this to me! It ain’t gotta be like this!” Kwan co
ntinued to plead. “We can make a deal. We can work somethin’ out. How ’bout Cash, huh? I can get that nigga for y’all. Serve his triflin’ ass up on a platter.”
Leaky shook his head. The nigga was pathetic. His own men couldn’t believe what they were seeing. The man could at least die in dignity and not beg. But he turned out to be a fuckin’ coward. Leaky was glad to dispose of him.
Bimmy gripped the .40-cal. in his hand, his animosity transparent. The man’s eyes glowed with resentment toward Kwan as he lifted the pistol to his head and uttered, “This is for my fuckin’ cousin Run-Run, nigga!”
Kwan cried out, “Yo, please, c’mon, nigga. It ain’t gotta go down like this. I’m sorry for what I did, yo. It was all part of the game, nigga. That’s how it is. Nothin’ personal, nigga, just business.”
“Fuck you!”
Bak! Bak! Bak! Bak! Bak!
Bimmy put five shots into Kwan’s head at point-blank range, killing him instantly. The force of the gunshots pushed him and the chair back, and the body fell to its side, thick, crimson blood pooling on the concrete floor. Bimmy exhaled, staring at his work. Finally! It was all over with. No more Kwan. Maybe now, things could get back to normal.
They planned on leaving the body on public display in the heart of Brooklyn, letting law enforcement know that the sadistic cop killer was dead and no longer a threat to them. As an added bonus, they planned on turning in the teenage shooters to the NYPD. They didn’t want any more headaches with the cops.
Leaky stood over Kwan’s body. He then looked at Hassan and asked, “So, we good now, right?”
“Yeah, we good,” Hassan faintly replied.
“Damn! That felt good,” Bimmy said, the smoking gun in his hand.
“Bimmy, get rid of that shit,” Hassan said. “Let them deal wit’ this clown nigga and the gun.”
Bimmy nodded. “Yeah, you right.”
Bimmy put the gun into Leaky’s hand. The moment he surrendered the weapon, he found himself surrounded threateningly and being frowned upon, especially by Hassan. Suddenly he was the one in the hot seat.
The House that Hustle Built, Part 3 Page 20
