The Cocaine Princess Part 5 (Cocaine Princess Series #5)(20)

‘I don’t know about this,’ Alexus thought. She was gazing at Papi’s shiny gold machete and wondering why he’d brought it to the meeting. He usually left it at home.

“But let’s get back to the Zeta and Sinaloa cartels,” Papi said, turning back to Alexus. His gelid green eyes seemed to penetrate her computer screen. “Bring them in!” He shouted.

Seconds later, a dozen AK-47-toting Costilla cartel members in black suits escorted a bunch of naked, blindfolded Mexican men and women into the room behind Papi. The captives were handcuffed and shackled. Deep lacerations marred their blood-laden bodies.

Papi clamped an age-spotted old hand around the handle of his machete and stood up. “These fools were bold enough to enter Matamoros on behalf of the Zeta and Sinaloa cartels. Apparently, their main tunnels have been compromised, and they’re in search of a new route into the States.” He grabbed a female captive’s ponytail, and she only had a second to scream before the machete hacked through the front of her neck and out the back. Her body dropped to the floor in a spray of crimson. Holding the woman’s dripping head by its ponytail, Papi added, “Forty-nine of these filthy vagrants wandered onto our land, Alexus. Forty-nine of them! And they all work for the Zeta and Sinaloa cartels. Now, my dear princess,”—he smiled at Alexus—“I will show you how to properly dispose of these rodents.”

What Alexus wanted to say was, “Please…no more killing.” But instead she showed a timorous smile and said, “This ought to teach them not to f*ck with the Costilla cartel.”

She watched in shock as Papi beheaded nine more rival cartel members. Then she shut off the computer, kneeled down in front of the gold trashcan beside her desk, and vomited.





Chapter 14

There were droves of young African Americans meandering on the corner of 9th and Willard when Blake made it to his old neighborhood on the west side of Michigan City, Indiana. An urban ghetto, the area was mostly replete with ramshackle clapboard houses, a few black-owned churches, three parks, an old redbrick community center that hardly anyone used, a liquor store, and Blake’s convenience store, which is where everyone was gathered.

Blake parked the Bugatti in the alley next to the redbrick church across the street from his store. He grabbed his extra-large Louis Vuitton duffle bag from the passenger’s seat, got out of the car, and crossed the street to where Fly was standing with the rest of their Dub Life crew. He paused to study the flickering candles that were bunched together alongside the store and the ‘R.I.P. LIL MIKE’ that had been spray-painted on the sidewalk. All around him people were crying, distraught at having lost a loved one.

“I should’ve listened to you, bruh,” Fly said, pouring a whole bottle of Ciroc onto the sidewalk. “I should’ve just started bussin’ at them niggas when they first pulled up.”

As Fly began telling Blake how the shooting had transpired, Blake turned his back to the store and cautiously fluctuated his eyes around the dark avenue. Lined up side by side before him were five lime green 1973 Caprices on chrome thirty-inch Lexani rims. Other cars and trucks were parked on both sides of the two-way street, and the majority of them were candy-painted in the same shade of green as the five Chevy convertibles. Blake had popularized the color last year when he’d had his entire Fleet of luxury cars painted lime-green, and everyone in his old neighborhood had followed suit.

Of the thirty or forty black women standing on the corner, sobbing and drinking cups of hard liquor most of them kept settling their eyes on Blake every few seconds or so. He couldn’t blame them. Their money-hungry looks were understandable. A couple of years ago, he had been a low-level crack dealer like all the other young ‘hood niggas, and these same girls had been too busy chasing behind the ballers to pay him any attention; now he was worth more money than every dope boy in the country—his pinky rings alone cost $4 million apiece—and they, like mostly every other woman he’d met since becoming a multimillionaire, were all too eager to get to know him a little bit better.

“That was a dumb ass move,” he said when Fly finished revealing how the shooting had taken place. “I told you to air ‘em out. Fuck was you thinkin’?” He sat the duffle bag on the hood of Fly’s Caprice, unzipped it, took out three thirty-thousand-dollar bundles of hundred-dollar bills, stuffed two of them into the side pockets of his sweatpants, and then peeled the rubber band off the third one. “You talked to Lil Mike’s people?”

“I talked to his momma, she was cryin’ an’ shit, real f*cked up,” Fly said.

“Was she at home?”

“Yeah, man. I think his whole family was there. I sent my bitch over there wit’ fifty racks to give to his momma.”

“Fifty thousand?” Blake made an indignant face. “Call and tell her I got a million for her.”

While Fly made the call, Blake counted out two thousand dollars in hundreds and waved over a slender yellow-bone named Tootie. She was a cute, long-haired twenty-five-year old with a petite body and a history of f*cking and sucking the life out of every man she dealt with. Blake glanced at the crotch of her tight blue jeans as she walked toward him, wondering if that * was as fat and wet as everyone said it was.

“You do me a favor?” He said, handing her the two racks. “Go down there to the ‘L’ and grab me twenty bottles of Ciroc. You can keep the change.”