Brooklyn Bombshells: Part 1

“Yo, you lost, so bounce, nigga. This shit right here is a fuckin’ rich man’s game, muthafucka,” someone exclaimed.

Fingers didn’t like the comment and he removed his pistol from his waistband to start some shit and get his money back. But surprisingly, no one was intimidated by the gun in his hand. They stared at Fingers like he was crazy, and then they pulled out their guns and aimed at Fingers.

“What, nigga, you think you the only nigga wit’ a fuckin’ gun down here?” said someone. “You either leave broke and alive or in a fuckin’ body bag, nigga. Ya choice, fool.”

Fingers relented, knowing he was outnumbered and outgunned.

Outside the building, he fussed and cursed to himself. He was a bit drunk and agitated. While he staggered to his car, he got it into his head to call Charlie. Her phone rang several times before she finally answered.

“I got sumthin’ to tell you, Charlie,” he uttered.

“Fingers, what the fuck is wrong wit’ you?”

“This is important, and I wanna tell you in person. Meet me in the morning,” he added.

“I’m not interested, Fingers. You sound fuckin’ drunk.”

“I ain’t fuckin’ drunk and this got sumthin’ to do wit’ our last lick.”

Charlie abruptly ended their call.

Fingers was left standing there dumbfounded. “Why . . . why she hang up on me?” he stammered.

He attempted to try and call her again, but her phone was going directly to voicemail. He angrily tossed his phone and marched toward his truck and unlocked his doors. He was fully aggravated and felt disrespected by Charlie too. Fingers wanted to release his anger, and he thought about heading uptown to Harlem to fuck some chick.

He walked and stumbled a bit, and the moment he placed his hand on the door handle, a dark assailant emerged from the shadows—like he came out of nowhere. The man outstretched his arm with a Glock 41 in his hand and he fired coldheartedly into the back of Fingers’ head.

Bac! Bac! Bac!

Fingers’ body dropped to the pavement, his crimson blood thick and coating the street. The assailant fired two more hot slugs into Fingers’ chest, officially making it overkill. But Fingers was dead before his body hit the pavement.

Pyro glared down at the body and squeezed off another shot. “That’s for Mateo, faggot!”

He pivoted and hurried back to his vehicle. He peeled away from the scene unobserved. One down and one to go.

***

Fingers was dead. It hit God like a ton of bricks. The grim news of his friend being gunned down on the street with three shots to his head and two in his chest was unnerving. God knew the killing was personal. It had to be with five shots. His friend had been caught slipping.

God needed to be alone. He left out the apartment and went into the stairwell to smoke a cigarette and think. He still couldn’t believe that his friend was gone.

He took a long pull from the Newport and thought, Who did this shit? He felt that they didn’t have enemies, or did they? When they did the home invasions, they always wore masks and gloves, and they always picked their victims carefully. They didn’t want anything to come back on them. But something had come back on one of them.

Word around the way was that Fingers had lost a lot of money at a gambling spot and ruffled some feathers. God was worried. With his right-hand man gone, what was next? And would they try and come for him too?

“What the fuck! Damn it, Fingers. Damn!” God griped. He had lost his best friend, and he was a wreck.

But no one took the news harder than Charlie. She had spoken to Fingers the night he was killed. She’d hung up on him. Now she wished she hadn’t. Charlie had burst into tears and screamed throughout the apartment after hearing the news. The three of them were thick as thieves, because that’s what they were—thieves. Now one of them had been gunned down.

How?

Charlie’s family took the news in stride. No one really cared about Fingers’ death. Bacardi, Butch, and Claire all pretended as if they barely knew him, and they refused to go to his funeral.

Chapter Thirty-Two

July 4th

What was supposed to be a festive holiday turned out to be the day Frederick Avery, AKA Fingers was laid to rest. The 23-year-old thug was dressed in a fitted ball cap and a black and white Nike sweat suit chosen by his single mother, Tonya. The morticians did a good job reconstructing his features, and the young thug looked more like he was sleeping than dead.