enemy, but the man who held the secret to Gunn’s murder: O.G. Trik.
chapter 29
DIRT BILL was finally starting to have fun. The girls saw him with Goldie and Hollywood so they thought he was someone important. For the past twenty minutes he had been in the ear of a sensual chocolate gem, trying to get her head rates to drop from sixty to thirty-five. He was finally starting to make headway when he felt someone bump past him to get to the bar.
“Pardon me,
“Loc, I ain’t ya Blood, that shit don’t rock up here. This Harlem, cuz,” Dirty Bill said, not even recognizing the threat.
“Word? I thought we were in the Bronx?” Major said sarcastically with his hand casually at his side.
In every group there was one. A cat so quick to make a show that he doesn’t bother to assess the situation or measure the odds. Nine times out of ten it’s gonna end nasty, but the poor bastard has gotta make a show of it. This was the case when a cat that had been kicking it with Bill decided to add his two cents to the mix. “Harlem Crip, nigga. Fuck is you smoking?” the kid snarled.
“Crabs!” Major said, placing one of his guns under the kid’s chin. The kid opened his mouth to say something, but Major Blood put a bullet through his chin and out the top of his head.
Goldie moved with the grace of a jungle cat as he grabbed the stripper closest to him and held her in front of him like a shield. In true gangsta style he hoisted his pistol and started busting back at Major Blood, who was scrambling to get out of the way.
“Not in my muthafucking house!” Desire, who was the bartender, shouted as she came up from behind the bar with a pump. The twenty-two-year-old bartender might’ve weighed about a hundred and ten pounds on a good day, but she had the heart of a giant. The burst went wild, shredding through a beam and an unlucky patron, but never touching anything from the red side. Tito bounded on top of the bar and placed his gun to her forehead. Desire pursed her lips to spit in his face, but ended up kissing the barrel as her brains squirted onto the Coronas in the cooler.
HOLLYWOOD LAY back in the leather recliner with one foot slung across the arm, while Lexi gave him some gangsta-ass head. Hollywood suspected that she was about her business from the way she came at him, but the love boat ride she was currently giving him would net a mint on the streets. He needed to have this little freak bitch with him.
Hollywood was about to crack for the pussy when a faint noise caught his attention. The office was soundproofed from the music on the main floor, but there was no mistaking the sound of a gunshot. He lifted his head to say something to Lexi and barely got out of the way as a switchblade came whizzing past his chin. Lexi looked up with murder in her eye and bellowed,
Hollywood was stunned by what was unfolding, but he shouldn’t have been. From the time Lexi opened her mouth at the bar she smelled like a snake, but Hollywood let his dick send mixed signals to his brain and now he was caught literally with his pants down.
“That’s on Blood I’m gonna open yo pretty ass up,” Lexi vowed, jabbing at him with the blade. When she came with a wild swipe, Hollywood made his move. Throwing himself backward in the recliner he brought his knees up into Lexi’s chin, snapping her head back and throwing her off balance. Instead of trying to get farther away from Lexi and her blade, Hollywood threw himself in her direction. He tried to knock Lexi to the floor so he could pen her, but miscalculated his lunge and was only able to subdue one arm. By the time he realized his mistake the razor was grazing his jaw.
Hollywood never felt the cut, but he knew something was terribly wrong when his face got moist. Lexi had opened him up from his earlobe to his lower lip with more precision than a surgeon. Hollywood didn’t have to see it to know that his beautiful face was ruined, and thus his pockets would take a hit. To this day nobody really knows if it was the vanity in Hollywood or the fact that Lexi had cut him, but he slammed his fist into her skull so hard that it cracked, breaking his hand in the process.
“Con’n bitch.” Hollywood kicked her in the ribs as he took stock of his hand. There was no doubt that his right hand would be no good to him that night, but he could shoot just as well with his left he thought as he grabbed his hammer off the desk where he’d left it before the near fatal blow job, and headed for the office door.
As soon as Hollywood opened the office door, a bullet slammed into it. The club he had vested so much in was being shot up and torn apart like a saloon. Three Spanish-looking cats were by the entrance wilding the fuck out. He recognized Tito and Miguel, but the light-skinned kid with the braids was a new face. From the way he was clapping shit up that had to be the infamous Major Blood. The way they were cutting loose it would only be a matter of time before the Crips were overrun.
Hollywood boogied back to the office desk and wrapped on it a series of times, popping a false panel out of the side. Nestled in the panel was the grand opening gift Wiz had given him. Tucking his pistol into his waistband and checking the barrel of the gift, Hollywood stepped out onto the main floor.
THERE WERE five of them in all; five lambs who had successfully escaped the slaughter. They had all began the night with different reasons for hitting the spot, but they were exiting with a common thought
Eddie knew they’d be coming, but he was still startled when the club doors flew open and people began spilling out onto the street. None of them were Crip soldiers, but they had all been sentenced to death. How many innocents would die that night to claim the life of one enemy?
“Live by it, die by it,” Eddie told himself, stepping off the curb.
A big butt stripper, whose weave was sitting at a funny angle from her frantic exit, was making swift strides in Eddie’s direction. Eddie laughed at how funny she looked trucking on the six-inch heels to keep his mind off her face, which had twisted into a horrid mask as the bullets from the Mac ripped up her chest. As her blood drained into the gutter at Eddie’s feet he thought how Major had surely condemned him to hell. But he would rather pay in the afterlife than go against Major Blood in this one. With that thought in mind Eddie began sweeping the crowd with the machine gun.
THERE WERE so many people trying to get out of the crosshairs that Miguel could barely raise his gun, let alone get a shot at the wild man, Goldie. It seemed like every time he even thought about pulling the trigger someone darted out in front of him. The whole spot was thrown into utter chaos, and from the look on Major Blood’s face he was enjoying every minute of it.
Through the tangle of arms and heads Miguel could see Goldie now had his back to him. With a smirk at the stripes he would get for smoking Goldie, he took aim and pulled the trigger… A split second later he felt the intense heat.
“IS THIS a private party, or can anybody join in?” Hollywood capped before pulling the trigger on the oddly shaped sawed-off.
The recoil from the Dragon-Mouth round was so powerful that the gun almost flew out of Hollywood’s hand. Even with the stalk braced against his hip the weapon was difficult to control with only one hand. The aftermath of the blast was thick smoke hanging in the air and the smell of sulfur damn near choking Hollywood, but seeing the carnage the blast had caused made it almost worth the vomit that was trying to escape the back of his throat. Wiz had warned against firing the thing in close quarters and now he understood why.
The young Chicano had come up with some very interesting gadgets over the years, but the Dragon-Mouths were the best yet. A Dragon-Mouth was a shotgun shell that had magnesium shavings and mercury packed in with the gunpowder. When the pellets burst from the casing they ignited, making the spray look like a horde of tiny fireballs.
