“Unfortunately my friend, I would have no choice but to consider you my enemy.”
“And you would have to act accordingly,” Howard said, and then he stood up.
“Afraid so.”
“Then you’d have to pay your dry-cleaning tab and I don’t feel like going to all the trouble of totaling it up.” He extended his hand. “So I’m with you, Mike,” Howard said, and we shook on it.
With that taken care of, we rolled by The Late Night. We weren’t opened yet, but I told Nick, Jamaica and Freeze to meet me and Bobby there. At André’s request, our target for the evening was Jerome Ennis. He was a drug dealer who was moving up in the game, and that meant that he was a problem for André.
When me and Bobby got to The Late Night, not only were Nick, Jamaica and Freeze there, but so was Wanda. Since what we were doing that night was for André, you know, our job, and it had nothing to do with our plan, I didn’t see any reason to tell Wanda about it. But there she was and from the angry look on her face, one of them told her about it. Wanda is as big a control freak as I am, so you know she wasn’t happy, but fuck it. Fact was, we still worked for André and like I said, handling his problems was what me and Bobby did.
Everybody got quiet. “Y’all ready?”
Everybody stood up.
“Can I talk to you for a minute before you go, Mike?”
“Wait for me outside.”
Me and Wanda stared each other down as everybody else filed out of The Late Night.
“What is it, Wanda?”
“Wasn’t there anybody else André could send to handle this for him.”
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“No.”
“I just think that we need to stay focused on what we’re doing. I mean really, André is the one who is gonna benefit the most from what we’re doing.”
“You’re right. He is. But what do you expect me to do, huh? We still work for him and this is what we do.”
“I know that, Mike, I’m just saying—”
I held up my hand to stop her. “I gotta go.”
Wanda let out a deep breath. “Be careful,” she said, and I turned to leave.
When I got outside, I walked over to Nick. “What you got for us Nick?”
Nick led us around the corner and pointed at the two cars that I had him steal. “Crown Victoria and a Volvo,” he said, and tossed Bobby the keys to the Volvo.
To be honest with you, I actually agreed with Wanda. I didn’t see what the big deal was. Ennis was little more than a corner boy that had recently stepped up his game. She was right, he could have sent somebody else, but like I said, we worked for him, so fuck it.
Ennis and his crew ran their program out of a second floor apartment in a building with controlled access. That way, if the cops showed up, they’d have a few seconds to run before they broke down the door. Getting in wasn’t gonna be a problem for us, because Jamaica knew a woman that lived in the building and he made a copy of her key.
As soon as we stepped inside, two men armed with Uzis stepped out of the shadows. Nick raised his weapon and shot one in the head. Then Jamaica took out the other.
Just as I predicted, when the shooting started, two more men came to the top of the stairs and opened fire on us with automatic weapons. While Nick, Jamaica and Freeze took cover, me and Bobby stepped to the front and returned fire on them and then we took cover. Once we were out of their line of fire, Nick, Jamaica and Freeze began firing so me and Bobby could make it to the back staircase.
Me and Bobby made our way up the stairs as more of Ennis’s people seemed to come out of nowhere like roaches when the lights come on. We were firing shots and killing men, as we got closer to the second floor. When we got to the top of the stairs, two men came out of an apartment armed with Mac 10s. They began firing. I shot one as I moved for cover while the other one continued firing. Me and Bobby ducked around a corner, he kicked in a door and we ran in as he blanketed the hallway with bullets.
“You niggas don’t want none of this right here!” he yelled, as he came around the corner. Then the shooting stopped. I looked out and saw that he was about to put another clip in when Nick walked up behind him and put one in the back of his head. I came out of the apartment.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Ready?” Bobby said when he came out.