Cartier Cartel, Part 3

by Nisa Santiago

  Quinn looked at him and smirked. “We got you.” And then she turned the gun on him and fired.

  Pop!

  The bullet penetrated his skull, and he dropped face-first onto the carpet. The driver was a liability, and they couldn’t afford to keep him alive. He knew too much. His betrayal cost him his own life.

  “Let’s go,” Cartier said.

  They hurried out the master bedroom and descended down the stairway and out the front door. Quinn climbed behind the wheel of the Benz G-Class SUV, Cartier into the passenger seat, and they sped away with their score for the night.

  As they drove back to the Motel 6, Cartier made the phone call.

  “Yeah,” Mills answered.

  “Just do it.” Cartier hung up.

  Fuck everyone! Yeah, fuck the world! The way Cartier saw it, everyone was responsible for her daughter’s kidnapping. And Miami was going to pay and pay dearly with money and lives.

  ***

  Mills stood up from the bed. He turned to look at Felicia, who was tied naked to the bedpost, her arms and legs outstretched. She was gagged with a washcloth and in despair. He walked up to her with the pistol in his hand.

  Felicia squirmed and mumbled something incoherent. As Mills reached closer, tears started to form in her eyes and fall. He gazed at her for a moment. She was such a beautiful woman, but she had to die. She’d seen his face and was a witness to his deadly actions.

  He removed a pillow from off the bed and pushed it against her face. She squirmed wildly, but her cries were muffled by the washcloth stuffed in her mouth. She fought hard to free herself, but her restraints were unyielding.

  Mills shoved the pillow against her face with strength, then placed the barrel of the 9mm into the pillow and didn’t hesitate in squeezing the trigger. The shot was stifled, but the bullet crushed into Felicia’s skull, and instantaneously her squirming and grunting ended.

  He walked out the room expressionless. It was only business, nothing personal.

  Chapter 21

  Quinn and Cartier had carried out a series of gruesome robberies across Miami in the past forty-eight hours. Their victims were obtuse and much easier to hit up than Domea. A pretty face, a short skirt showing off their toned legs, and a whiff of pussy would lure the dope boys and young ballers, and before they knew what was going on, Quinn or Cartier had a gun to their head and was shouting out orders to them. After they got their prize, they killed them. It was a take-no-prisoners attitude.

  It was petty, but everything was turning out to be somewhat profitable. And it was too seducing the crown ballers with their icy jewels who were making it rain in the strip clubs, and bottle-popping with their homies. Cartier and Quinn were the cream of the crop once they strutted into the clubs, grabbing the men’s attention without difficulty. The ballers were wearing over a hundred thousand dollars in jewels, but the ladies got only half of that in the black market. They put their lives at risk because time was running out. And it wasn’t as risky as going up against a dozen hustlers guarding tons of methamphetamine and bundles of cash.

  But their reputation was spreading like wildfire. The game was on alert, and death was knocking on everyone’s door. People pointed fingers at each other, stirring up distrust and blame, and lives were being cut down ferociously in Miami, especially after the bodies of Domea, Felicia, and a well-known Miami Gotti Boys hustler were found shot to death.

  Cartier didn’t think about any of it. She didn’t care what was happening in the streets, or who was dying. As long as she was getting that money to bring her daughter back home, it was fuck whoever. And Quinn was right behind her.

  The trio lingered around the motel room counting money and appraising jewelry. In two days, they’d robbed and killed three hustlers, two connected to the Miami Gotti Boys and one independent from Little Haiti who was caught slipping when he tried to push up on Cartier at the bar. He was simple to get at. He was willing to follow Cartier anywhere, intoxicated by the prospect of a quick fuck. They snatched his life and sixty thousand from him.

  After counting the money on the bed, Cartier huffed with despair. “This ain’t enough!”

  “We tryin’, Cartier.” Quinn blew out some cigarette smoke.

  At the end of the day, the trio had only raised six hundred and eighty thousand dollars, with the bulk of the ransom coming from Domea. They were still short. And with two days left, it was becoming scary.

  Mills sat by the table inspecting his guns once again, while Cartier was trying to brainstorm their next score, stress written heavily across her face. Once again, the girls went without much sleep, and every day was a risk.

  Cartier’s cell phone rang. She knew it had to be the kidnappers. She snatched the phone from off the bed and answered. “Yes!”

  “You’ve been a really busy bitch,” the distorted voice said.

  “Where is my daughter? I want to talk to her,” she hollered.

  “She’s still in good hands—for now, anyway.”

  “Put her on the phone!”

  “This was just a courtesy call. I see you have Miami running red with blood. Maybe we underestimated you. Too bad you’re not playing on our end; it would have been nice. Forty-eight hours, Cartier, forty-eight hours. And after that, this little game between us will finally come to an end. How will it end? Well, that’s up to you. But it’s been fun.”

  The call went dead, leaving Cartier fuming. They were taunting her. She felt like a squashed bug under someone’s shoe.

  Cartier tossed her phone and screamed at the top of her lungs. She was tired of everything. She smashed the window into pieces and tore the bed apart. She needed to release the pent-up frustration and anger inside of her. She started to cry. She felt so helpless. No matter what she thought of and executed, it still wasn’t enough. But she couldn’t lose her daughter, not now. She had come too close.

  Cartier was on the floor with her back against the wall, looking defeated, when an idea suddenly came to her. Drying her tears, she looked up at Quinn.

  The only place where they could get a large amount of cash within minutes was a bank. Cartier had to do it. On any given day, a bank vault and the tellers held close to a quarter of a million or more.

  “We gotta rob a bank,” she said to them.

  “Whaaat?” Quinn dragged out the question but she was in disbelief.

  “It’s the only way.”

  “That takes time and planning, Cartier,” Mills chimed.

  “Fuck that! We can do this. And we don’t have time.”

  Quinn and Mills looked reluctant. They had less than forty-eight hours to scope out a bank and methodically plan the robbery. It seemed impossible. But Cartier had pulled off the impossible in several days, so this would be just another obstacle to overcome. And at nights they were going to still hit the clubs and set up the dealers and the ballers. The walls were closing in on Cartier, but she was determined to keep them up for as long as she could.

  ***

  Bones stood over the body in the city morgue, the room quiet and still with death. His mood saddened, and his face was menacing, but the tears didn’t fall. They’d stopped falling long ago.

  Death wasn’t new to Bones. He had grown up around it, witnessed it numerous times, and had made it happen to others himself when he squeezed with his trigger finger. But now death had reached close to home once again — first, his cousin Rico, and now Rustic, a childhood friend he considered a brother. He sighed heavily, staring at his homeboy sprawled out on the morgue slab naked. The bullet had torn though his heart.

  The mortician stood close by the gangbanger silently, giving Bones some time to grieve inwardly for his friend.

  The sudden war with the Ghost Ridas in Miami was coming at a heavy cost. Rustic was caught with a bitch — Domea’s wife. Rustic had always been a smooth, pretty boy, dipping his dick into bitches that could get him caught up. And it would have been a major fuckin’ problem, because Domea was their cocaine and marijuana connect, but he was dead
too. So that problem had canceled itself out.

  Domea and Rustic were serious and deadly men, but somehow they had been caught slipping and easily toe-tagged.

  “Cover him up,” Bones instructed the mortician.

  The man nodded and threw the sheet over Bones’ friend.

  Bones walked out the eerie-feeling room with a heavy heart. He was a marked man and wasn’t going to be the next man caught dead. He headed toward the green Durango parked out front, where Shotta was behind the wheel smoking weed. Every step Bones took was careful with his hand close to his .45, which he kept snug in his waistband.

  He jumped into the Durango and sat back, his mind spinning with worries. “They fuckin’ wit’ us, Shotta,” he said angrily. “We gon’ need a new connect. Fuck me!”

  “What you ready to do?”

  “Let’s go see what Purple and Knotty have for us, and then we could try to get information ’bout what the fuck is happenin’.”

  Shotta nodded. He started the Durango and drove off back to the hood, skies graying above.

  Thirty minutes later, Shotta and Bones entered the one-story home in Little Haiti. Their goons were all over the place, armed with semi-automatic weapons and watching everything from every direction. They couldn’t take any chances. They had been hit several times by the Ghost Ridas, and now it was time to hit back.

  Bones was greeted by Purple, a lanky, black muthafucka with a blown-out Afro and no facial hair. Purple was shirtless with faded jeans and sneakers, his upper torso swathed in an assortment of tattoos and battle scars that he took pride in. His eyes spoke coldness and death. His knuckles were bloody, indicating he had either just been in a fight or was beating a man.

  Bones and Shotta followed Purple into one of the back bedrooms. He had something he wanted them to see. They walked into the bedroom to see the floor covered with plastic from wall to wall, and in front of them were three blindfolded men on their knees in the middle of the room, their hands tied behind them. Two of the men were Ghost Ridas, and the third was Russell, Domea’s right-hand man. The two Ghost Ridas had been severely beaten and tortured, but still remained strong and defiant.

  Bones walked over to them and stood in front of them. “Remove their blindfolds,” he instructed.

  The blindfolds were pulled from their eyes, and the first thing they saw was Bones.

  “Bones, what the fuck, yo?” Russell cried out.

  “Shut the fuck up, Russell! I’ll have words wit’ you in a minute,” Bones replied.

  “You dead, puto. Ay, Ghost Ridas gon’ get in ya ass, muthafucka!” one of the Ghost Ridas boldly shouted. “You dead!”

  Bones glared at the young Mexican goon and then reached for the sawed-off shotgun in one of his soldiers’ hands. “You talk that shit, muthafucka!” he hissed.

  “Fuck you! Ghost Ridas fo’ life, puto. You dead. Hector and my chulos gonna fuck you up.”

  “Fuck you, and fuck Hector!” Bones shoved the sawed-off shotgun in the man’s face, while his men watched on, waiting for the inevitable to happen.

  The Mexican gangster stared up at Bones brashly, accepting his fate.

  Bones returned the man’s unrelenting stare and without any hesitation pulled the trigger.

  Boom!

  The explosion rocked the room and took the man’s head clear off, spraying blood, bones, and brain matter everywhere. His body fell forward at Bones’ feet. It was a horrifying sight, but everyone in the room was used to the gory violence. It was their way of life.

  Bones stepped over to the next Ghost Rida, the shotgun gripped in his hand. He glared at the man and shouted, “You gonna curse me out too, muthafucka?”

  The man glared up at Bones and kept silent.

  Bones smirked. He raised the sawed-off shotgun to the man’s face and thrust it against his forehead. “Any last words, muthafucka?”

  The man’s breathing intensified, like he was about to have a panic attack. He scowled and braced himself for death.

  There was a dramatic pause, and then the boom came. The loud shotgun blast ripped the man’s face clean apart into fragments, and he fell forward against his dead homie. Death stained the room. The Ghost Ridas were now short two thugs.

  Bones turned his attention to Russell next.

  Russell scowled, his eyes searching for some kind of mercy from Bones. He didn’t understand why he was thrown into this situation. Domea was dead, but it wasn’t his fault. Bones’ fixed stare at him was intimidating; it was one killer eyeing the next.

  “Talk to me, Russell,” Bones said.

  “What the fuck you want from me, Bones?”

  “What happened? Why is my fuckin’ connect dead?”

  “It wasn’t my fault, Bones!” Russell growled. “It was these bitches!”

  “What bitches?”

  “Domea left with these two bitches from the club the other night. They the ones that set him up.”

  “What?”

  “You know how he is when it comes to pussy. I always tried to have his back, warned him about these hoes he be around, but the nigga always thought with his dick.”

  “Yo, Bones, I’ve been hearing about this shit in the streets,” one of the Miami Gotti Boys stated. “Some hoes out here setting niggas up, gettin’ that money, and murderin’ muthafuckas.”

  Bones barked, “Anybody got a fuckin’ name on these bitches? Who the fuck are these hoes?”

  The room was stumped. No one had any answers for Bones.

  “Don’t anybody know who these fuckin’ bitches is?” Bones looked fiercely at all his soldiers in the room.

  Another gang member said, “The only thing I heard — probably like two to four bitches runnin’ around Miami doin’ that kinda dirt. And I’m thinkin’ they might even be responsible for Rico’s setup, because one of the cuz out there said he saw some bad-ass bitches lingering around Rico’s that night.”

  Bones shouted, “So y’all fuckin’ tellin’ me that some hoes out here are runnin’ around rampant in my fuckin’ city, fuckin’ up my business and killin’ my niggas, and don’t nobody know shit? That’s what the fuck y’all tellin’ me?”

  “I know what they look like,” Russell chimed.

  “You do, huh?”

  “I’ll point these bitches out to you in a fuckin’ heartbeat.”

  Bones stared at Russell, who was now worth more to him alive than dead. “Well, lead the charge then.”

  Chapter 22

  The plan was set, and Quinn, Cartier, and Mills were ready to execute it soon. The bank they wanted to rob was U.S. Century Bank on South Dixie Highway, which was out in the open and right near the highway, making it an easy escape. Quinn and Cartier had scoped it out quickly, going inside and looking around subtly.

  The place wasn’t a fortress. The tellers weren’t behind some thick partition, and the open bank vault was in the next room behind them. The bank wasn’t crowded at a certain hour, and there weren’t any armed guards on the premises.

  The girls would do the deed the ski mask way. They would run inside with their guns brandished and quickly take control inside. Quinn would work the customers in the area, making them hug the ground and robbing them, and Cartier would get at the bank tellers and possibly the vault. Mills would be the lookout by the door. It seemed possible to pull off. They were going to execute everything the next afternoon, when more staff would be on their lunch break.

  Mills and Cartier were lying up in the motel room chatting, reminiscing about New York. She was talking about her experiences growing up in Brooklyn, and he was telling her about growing up in Harlem.

  They started going over the bank robbery. It had to be carried out perfectly. If they were caught, they all were looking at serious federal time, and Christian would be a dead girl.

  A quarter after one in the afternoon, Quinn came into the room looking stressed about something. She said to Cartier, “We have a fuckin’ problem, ay.”

  “Like what?”

  “We’ve been fucki
n’ marked.”

  “What! By who?”

  “Bones an’ the Miami Gotti Boys. There’s a fuckin’ bounty on our fuckin’ heads, twenty-five thousand apiece. We made this city hot, Cartier. These niggas are gettin’ too suspicious now. If they even smell a setup, it’s shoot first, fuck questions.”

  It was news that Cartier didn’t want to hear. But when you play in dirt, you’re expected to get dirty, and right now, the ladies felt muddy. But Cartier wasn’t going to let a bounty on her head deter her from getting this ransom money and bringing her daughter back home. They had gone through too much to give up now. In fact, it made her even more determined to rob this bank.

  “We hit the bank then,” Cartier said. “Early tomorrow. We’re in and out.”

  Mills nodded.

  Quinn suddenly looked unsure. Her brother and her crew were at war, and she’d been absent from everything for a moment. She didn’t want to raise suspicion with Hector, who also had a lot going on.

  “We do this and get this over wit’, and afterwards, we have to lie low . . . really low,” Quinn suggested.

  “Once Christian is back wit’ me, I’m leaving this fuckin’ city.”

  Cartier had had enough of Miami. She’d made herself a marked woman, and there were too many bad memories for her to stay. First, she wanted to go back to Brooklyn to bury her family, and then it was off to the West Coast to build something new. She would be a new face and have a new identity. There, she planned on permanently burying Cartier Timmons and becoming reborn. The past weeks had drained her, seriously, and there was nothing left.

  The flat-screen TV in the room was showing the news, but the volume was on mute. As Cartier and Quinn conversed, something on the television caught Cartier’s attention. Breaking news flashed across the screen:

  The body of a seven- to ten-year-old girl was found slain, her body buried in shallow grave.

  Cartier screamed out, “Turn that up!”

  Mills turned the volume up, and the three started to listen and watched as the reporter on scene informed the city of Miami that a young girl was found dead off US 41. Cartier stood frozen to the carpet, her heart in her stomach. The girl they said they found was the same age as Christian. There was an aerial view of the crime scene from the helicopter circling above, and news cameras were everywhere. It looked like a circus.