“Yeah, yeah you did,” I said and laughed a little.
“I know it’s early, but shit, I’m up. You might as well be up too.”
“Thanks.” I raised my glass and drained it.
“I’m gonna be busy the rest of the day and I wanted to talk to you. See how things are going.”
“Last night I talked to Howard.”
“You get that thing straight for him?”
“I sent Jap and Kenny to get his fifty back from the construction guy, Charles Watson, but he ducked out on them. Now he’s got another problem.”
“What now?”
“He said a couple of nights ago his brother was forced into the limo at gunpoint by three men. They beat him pretty bad and dumped him out of the car.”
“He all right?”
“Howard says he’s in the hospital, but he’ll be all right. But last night somebody took a shot at him. Howard walked into the lobby of his building and somebody was waitin’ there pointin’ a.38. Howard ducked and the bullet grazed his right shoulder. Since he went down from the impact, the shooter thought he was dead. But Howard saw the guy get into a black Lexus. He recognized the car. Thinks it belongs to a guy that works for Watson. His name is Clay Barksdale.”
“This nigga wanna play gangster?” Black laughed.
“Looks that way.”
“What’d you tell him?”
“Don’t worry about it. That he should go on with his business like this wasn’t happenin’.”
“Good.” Black finished his drink and put the glass down. “Anything else I need to know about?”
“No, everything else is smooth. What do you want me to do about Charles Watson?”
“It’s your house to run, handle it however you think you should. But if you’re askin’ for my advice, I think you should handle it personally and as violently as possible.”
“Establish myself.”
“Make sure people know who you are and things ain’t no different. But do it in a way that leaves us an opportunity to cut into his construction company.”
“I’ll take care of it, but I got a question. What exactly am I establishing myself as? What I’m askin’ is, are we stayin’ in or am I overseeing us getting out?”
“That’s entirely up to you. We’re moving to be more legitimate, but as long as we’re making money, I see absolutely no reason to give up that money. So what I’m tellin’ you is this, it’s your house to run as long as you want to and as long as you make us money.”
Black looked at me for what seemed like a long time. Then he stood up and went to the bar. I thought that he was thinking about the best way for me to do what he wanted done.
“Do you remember when you used to run that crap game?” he asked while he poured.
I had no idea where he was goin’ with this. “What were we, sixteen, seventeen then?”
“Something like that.”
“Made a lot of money runnin’ that game.”
“You damn sure did. You remember Big Willie; used to always wanna fight everybody?” Black said and laughed.
“Yeah, that muthafucka was crazy,” I laughed. “Talkin’ ’bout killin’ niggas when he lost.”
“Like that night he lost all that money and said you was usin’ loaded dice.”