Commit To Violence

"Keep me around?" He started walking toward the door. "Maybe when you get a little older you’ll realize that you can’t just use people and throw them away when you’re done with them."

"Whatever, nigga," Rain said. She was startled by a loud banging on her office door. She looked at the big screen and saw Mixson, one of her dealers, leaning against the door.

Rain pressed the button and Mixson fell in the office. Rain jumped up and Blue rushed to him. Blue pulled him in the office while Rain closed the door. Blue helped Mixson into a chair. Rain looked down and saw the trail of blood; then she noticed the cuts on his face and knew that she’d gotten hit again.

"What happened?" she asked.

"There were four of them; caught us by surprise."

"How’d you get away?" Rain wanted to know, since nobody had survived the other two robberies.

"I just started bustin’ shots and when the shit got too thick, I jumped out the window."

"So you don’t know what happened, do you?" Rain asked and picked up the phone. When she got no answer she dialed another number and got the same result. She turned back to Mixson. "I guess they’re all dead."

Blue looked at Rain. "So is he."

CHAPTER FOUR

Bobby Ray held up Rawls’ head and hit him again. He was tied to a chair and for the last hour, Bobby had been hitting him in his face, his chest, and his arms. No matter how much or how hard Bobby hit Rawls, he hadn’t said a word.

Mike Black sat quietly and watched Bobby work. Every once and awhile he would get up and ask Rawls the question. "Where is Ebony Washington, and where are the papers she was carrying?" When Rawls didn’t answer, Black would walk away and Bobby would go back to work.

Black sat down and took a deep breath. He thought about the reason he even knew or cared who Ebony Washington was. It was just after eleven o’clock when Black got a call from Martin Marshall. Martin was a United States Congressman who Black was in business with.

"Black, it’s Martin. I need your help."

"What is it now, Martin?" Black asked.

"One of my people was kidnapped earlier tonight, while she was carrying some very important papers."

"What does this have to do with me, Martin?"

There was silence on the phone before Martin finally said, "The truth is I got careless, Black."

"Get to the point, Martin."

"You remember our meeting with Chang and the Cubans?"

"What about it?" Black said and thought back to that meeting and how it led to him getting shot. He remembered Martin coming to him with a plan to invest in sugar-based ethanol in Cuba.

They met a few days later in the Bahamas with Silvestre de la Toribio representing the Cuban Foreign Trade Ministry, Soberón Nicodemo Plácido representing the Cuban Sugar Industry, and Maximino Cristóbal. He was representing a group with oil interests in Venezuela.

At that meeting the debate raged on about whether to invest in sugar-based ethanol or in oil production between Cristóbal and Plácido, until Chang had heard enough. "Would you gentlemen excuse us for a moment or two?"

Once Cristóbal, Plácido, and Toribio left the room, Chang turned to Martin. "What do you think my friend?"

"For my money, ethanol production is the only way to go. I didn’t come here to talk about oil."

"I must say that I agree. What do you say, Jiang?"

"Ethanol is the future, and we must look to the future."

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; "What about you, Mr. Black?" Martin asked and all eyes turned to him.

"Like the man said, when the oil is gone, it’s gone. You can always grow more sugar cane."