CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
2001 – This Was Never Supposed To Happen
Damn, 2001 was starting to feel like the never-ending story.
I was grinding to rass all that Fall. PanStar was in fire sale mode, and Hopeton leaned on me hard to pitch in. I was still nominally responsible for making sure Biz and Lucci didn’t get buck with whatever new age digital scams they had brewing.
And I was still trying to make an effort to date Laís, though truth be told, she seemed immune to my many, many charms. To me, that proved she had common sense and discernment.
By November, I’d finalized all three of my grad school applications and got them mailed off ahead of deadline. My mom insisted we celebrate. I asked her if we could just have a nice meal at home, and if it would be okay for me to invite Hopeton to join us. Both of my folks had low-key been bugging me about meeting the man who’d inspired me to avail myself of my father’s gifted LLC. The man who, at the point, had me seventy-five percent legitimate. The second he sat down and broke bread with us, they approved of him, of course. He read “extended family” to both my Furcy-raised Haitian mom and my pragmatic Dominican father. Maybe slightly more roughneck, but same universe.
I’d been looking forward to taking an extended break in December. Hopeton let me know that Bolo had given official orders to shutter the guns operation, as of December 31st. I asked him what was up next, nature abhorring a vacuum and all that. He told me he was flying to Panama in January, to have a sit-down with Bolo. “I’m going to propose repurposing PanStar into another line of business,” he said, “but I can’t tell you what it is, at the present moment.”
Hopeton also alluded to the fact that Bolo was getting old and would probably announce that he was taking a step away from day-to-day management. I wondered what that meant for Mundo. I made a mental note to give my brother a call. It had been a while.
And then, on Friday, December 7th, all of this came crashing down on me- everything. I headed from Clermont Avenue over to East Flatbush, where I was meeting Hopeton at a property that hadn’t hit the market yet. It was a big house on a corner lot, and we had first look. I really wanted to lock this property down.
I was driving up Eastern Parkway towards Troy Avenue when I first heard police sirens. I glanced in my rearview mirror and saw a fuck-load of police cars and armored S.W.A.T. vans speeding up behind me. I slowed down to let them pass and then heard a patrol car’s speakers crackle, “Green SUV, pull over. Now!”
Me?
