CHAPTER SIXTEEN
2000 – Triage
Holiday or not, I hit Hopeton up and let him know what was going down.
By 2pm, he, Biz and I were seated around the mahogany desk.
I brought the meeting to order. Hopeton sat there, watching me. Biz looked tired.
I started in. “We have a lot of shit hemorrhaging and it’s getting out of hand! Biz, tell us what’s going on with Eula. Is she handling it?”
Biz gave us the rundown: Eula got raided early that morning. They found all of his EBT paperwork, all of his computers and the North Face backpack filled to the brim with bundled up EBT cards and booklets of food stamps- each one parceled into color coded pouches. Enough to bring down heavy federal time on all of us if Eula snitched.
“But, that’s not all,” Biz went on. “They found the guns.”
Those fuckin’ guns.
Hopeton took over. “So Biz- confirm this for me, please. They have a backpack full of one month’s EBT deliveries. They have all of your laptops. They have all of your files- applications, client information, delivery routes, et cetera.”
Biz nodded.
“And Cabrón. The guns.”
“They were the last five left from Brownsville,” I confirmed. “A Sig Sauer and four Brownings.”
Despite the seriousness of the situation, Hopeton smiled. He fuckin’ loved Brownings.
A deep sigh from Biz snapped Hopeton out of whatever 1980s Jungle/Rema reverie he’d drifted off to.
“We need to find out what Eula’s doing,” Hopeton said. “If she’s talking.”
He turned to me and asked, “Do you think there’s any chance she’ll keep her mouth shut?”
I gave a half shrug and said, “Eula talks a LOT, but she wants to be down. I feel like if they haven’t broken her yet, we could probably work her and get her to keep quiet. If it weren’t for the guns, she’d be out of there with maybe some bullshit probation, or something.”
Those fucking guns!
Hopeton lightly slapped his palm on the desk and said ,“Okay, ‘nuff talk. This is how it’ll play. HQ is shut down for good, effective immediately. Biz, you are now strictly focusing on the EBT scheme. And you’re going to have to find a safe place to conduct your business from. No confusion and no disorder. What happened with HQ cannot happen again. Y’unnastan’? ”
Biz nodded.
Apparently, word had filtered back to Hopeton about Biz’s sloppy work habits. I was surprised he hadn’t asked Biz why the EBT backpack was in Eula’s closet so early in the month. Standard operating procedure was that Biz didn’t bring it over until a few days before the drops were scheduled. But, oh well- not my problem.
“And what about Eula?” Biz asked, more to take the heat off himself than anything else.
“Eula needs to be handled,” Hopeton agreed, “but I’m going to let Cabrón decide what needs to be done.” He looked at me and nodded.
I told Biz that he needed to haul his ass up to Rikers the first second Eula was able to get visitors. He needed to determine if she’d snitched. And if she hadn’t snitched, he needed to promise her anything she wanted. Tell her we’d give her anything she needed, as long as she kept her mouth shut. It was a weak plan, but it was the only one we had.
Hopeton nodded in approval.
“And keep that chick far away from me, Biz,” I said. “She is a headache and I don’t need it.”
Biz nodded and stood up to leave. He’d been dismissed.
“And we have some major work coming in very soon. I’m going to need backup on automating an untraceable payment system. Stay tuned.”
Biz nodded again. He didn’t look especially happy about his lateral promotion.
“Oh, and one more thing,” I called to him. He looked at me with a “what now, motherfucker?” look on his bland face. “From now on, hit me on the BlackBerry if you need me. We need to keep all of this shit encrypted.”
Biz nodded.
“AND I want regular updates from you, you hear?”
He nodded again, then bounced without a backward glance.
Now that we were alone, Hopeton broke out the bottle of rum that he kept hidden in that desk of his. I peeped the label- Smatt’s. A brand I’d never heard of but I was a thousand percent sure it was Jamaican as fuck. Primarily accessible to locals.
I gladly accepted a glass. My head needed clearing with a quickness.
“There you go, Pierre,” Hopeton said and gently clapped his fingertips, like a Bond villain.
I laughed and asked, “Could you please give me some clarification on our position, Mr. Silva, sir?” If he wanted to turn this into some formal initiation shit, I was gonna play the role to a tee.
“They’re gone,” he said. “We waited them out.”
I nodded, waiting for him to follow through on his thoughts. I needed him to spell it out-that way, I could hold him to it if anything went sideways.
“The kids are gone. HQ is shut down. The girl isn’t going to flip.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“I saw it in her eyes.”
I shot him a skeptical look. That sounded mad corny.
“Trust me,” he told me. “Let Biz handle it. She’s not going to give up names.”
“And Mundo?” I asked. Hopeton had been going back and forth to Panama, getting face time with Bolo, so he’d have the inside track on my bredda, Doe.
“Mundo wants to get his garage sold. After that, he knows he’s in the background when it comes to any weapons work coming through Port Newark and PanStar.”
“So, what happens once I get that garage sold?” I asked. He was going to have to spell it out before I could begin to possibly believe I’d finally be getting out from under Mundo’s shadow.
“It’s done,” Hopeton replied.
I shot him another skeptical look.
“The garage is sold, you get your commission and we work directly with Bolo to set up a real arms business,” he affirmed.
“Alright,” I conceded, too tired to argue this any further. “Lemme get going. Gonna try to start scaring up some leads.”
“I think I may be able to help you with that,” Hopeton replied. “I have several contacts in East New York who’d jump on a property of that size, in that location. Stop by tomorrow and I’ll get you their info.”
“A’ight. Check you tomorrow.”
And I left.
