I was supposed to meet Mia for lunch in Manhattan, but I wasn’t in the mood for her shit, so I called her and told her I couldn’t make it. Instead I told my driver to take me to Harlem, so I could link up with BJ. I needed him and Lo on a flight like yesterday to link up with the Haitians out in Miami.
***
It was nearly three o’clock in the morning, and I could hear my cell phone vibrating from across the room. Mia stirred in bed, pretending to be asleep. I walked across our massive bedroom and grabbed my phone, thinking that it was Jasmine. To my shock, Bebo was blowing me up.
“Yo,” I said.
“Yo, Nico, what took you so long to answer your phone?” Bebo asked, aggressively.
“I was ’sleep, muthafucka. Fuck you think took me so long?”
Bebo paused momentarily, “I need you, my nigga.”
“A’ight, we’ll politick in the morning.”
“Nah, this can’t wait. I can’t talk this shit through the wire. Those peoples might be listening.”
I exhaled as my mind raced on what to do. “So what you thinkin’?”
“Come through to the underground. I’m already here waitin’ on you.”
The underground was code for a basement stash house that we used for business meetings and other illegal shit. The apartment building was off of Hillside Avenue and 179th Street in Jamaica, Queens, where we would pay the super of the building a few grand a month. My gut told me something wasn’t right—that this could be a setup. I could count on two hands the number of niggas I knew who left their cribs in the middle of the night to never come back. When Mia saw me getting dressed she began to panic.
“Who you going to meet?”
“I got shit to take care of.”
“This late?”
“Go back to sleep. This shouldn’t take long.”
When she saw me reaching for my Glock, I could almost see her eyes relax, and I wasn’t sure if I liked that. When she thought I was going to meet some bitch she was all worried and ready to beef. The moment she saw me reaching for my burner she was content with a nigga going out
in the streets to possibly put my murder game down.
As soon as I got in my truck, I called BJ.
“Yo, did you get a call from Bebo?”
“Nah, why, what’s good?”
“That nigga just called and asked me to meet him at the underground.”
“This time of night?”
“Exactly.”
“You want me to come through?”
“No doubt. And go by and pick up Lo. I don’t trust Bebo. This might be an ambush, and I want to be on point. I don’t want to walk in outnumbered and outgunned.”
When I pulled up on the block I didn’t see BJ and Lo, so I circled the block a few times just to see if I could spot anyone creeping. The block was desolate and quiet other than a few livery cabs driving down every few minutes. I was just about to hit BJ on his jack when he hit me.
“I see you,” BJ stated. “We’re parked down by the bodega. Come down and pick us up.”
My eyes scanned the block and BJ flickered his high-beam lights. As my car crept up the block, I kept wondering what the fuck was so urgent to pull me out of my bed. When BJ and Lo got in my car they were wondering the exact same thing.
“Yo, this don’t feel right,” BJ stated the obvious. “That nigga didn’t give you a hint as to what was up?”