The Cocaine Princess Part 5 (Cocaine Princess Series #5)(73)

“Pull over at the next rest stop so I can drive,” he said.

“I told you, I’m good,” she replied. “It’s just a graze wound. Don’t worry, I won’t pass out on you. At least not while we’re on this highway.” She tossed him a dry smirk. “I wish you would have been there to beat the daylights out of that fat ass Mexican for shooting me. I think I blacked his daughter’s eye. They left right before you pulled up. Alexus made them leave.”

Blake kept quiet. Kept smoking and coughing. His mind was on other things, like the three Louis Vuitton duffle bags in the trunk of his Phantom. Two of them contained Ak-47s and 100-round drum clips, and $450,000 in hundreds filled the third duffle.

“Why are we going to Michigan City?” Nona asked.

“I gotta take care of somethin’. I’ll get you a hotel room.”

“Your ass better be there with me.”

“I will. I’m thinking about flyin’ us out to New York tomorrow, f*ck wit’ Jay and Kanye for a li’l bit. I need to get in the studio wit’ them anyway. I’m done wit’ the streets for a while after tonight. Them niggas almost hit me like Pac and Biggie got hit.” He adjusted the rearview mirror and checked to make sure the Ferrari and Range Rover were still trailing his Phantom. They were. “Jay said it ain’t no use in me havin’ all this money if I’m just gon’ keep doin’ the same shit I was doin’ before I got it.”

“He’s right. Hell, you’re almost a billionaire. Boss up and lean back. Put a ring on my finger”—she giggled softly—“and let me upgrade you.”

Blake shook his head. “A wise woman once told me, ‘You’re only nineteen, Bulletface. I’m twenty-six, and I’m not even ready to get married yet.’ I think I’ll just take her advice.”

“Things were different then.” Nona smiled then grimaced in pain. She touched the side of her head where the bullet had struck. “Jesus Christ. Feels like somebody hit me with a bowling ball.”

The smartphone on Blake’s hip began singing the chorus to Tupac’s “Dear Mama.” He answered the call and immediately heard the panic in his mother Carolynn’s voice.

“Blake?”

“Yeah, what’s up, Ma?”

Carolynn breathed a sigh of relief. “Boy, you almost gave me a heart attack. Your uncle Noble just called saying he’d heard something about your car being shot up in Chicago.”

“I’m cool, Ma. They did shoot my Bugatti up, but they didn’t hit me. You can go to bed. I’ll call you in the mornin’.”

“Have you talked to Alexus? I know she’s got be shaken up about what’s happened at the MTN Tower.”

“What? What happened?”

“It’s all over the news. Mass shooting at MTN Tower. Eighteen confirmed dead.”

Blake could not believe it.

“I’ma call you tomorrow, Ma. Kiss Vari good night for me.”

“Getcho butt somewhere and sit down, Blake. You hear me?”

“Love you, Ma.”

“I love you, too.”

*****

Zipping down Interstate-94 in Squirms’ blue Dodge Magnum, twenty-four-year-old Reggie Freeman was feeling good, rocking back and forth in the driver’s seat and listening to the Freddie Gibbs song that was blasting from the four fifteen-inch speakers in back. This was the first time he’d been able to smile since his girlfriend and son were killed by whoever it was that had rescued Alexus’s kidnapped son from his girlfriend’s Gary apartment. Getting some payback felt good. Real good. And now he and his partner in crime, Lil’ Ant, were going to get forty kilos of cocaine to split for killing Bulletface.

Yeah, he definitely felt good.

The eight TVs inside the Magnum were playing a Pinky XXX porn, and Lil’ Ant was in the backseat getting head from the thick redbone they’d picked up before leaving Chicago. Her friend, a dark-skinned chick with a tight ponytail, was asleep with her head against the window next to Reggie. But he didn’t give a f*ck. He was thinking about the twenty kilos.

“Sell dem muhf*ckas for thirty bands apiece,” he mumbled to himself as he clicked on the turning signal to switch lanes. “Make that quick six hun’ed thousand, prob’ly cop me a Benz or a—” He looked at the Range Rover he was passing, and the gray Ferrari in front of it. Then he spotted a black Rolls-Royce cruising ahead of the Ferrari. “Shit, I might even lease me a Phantom,” he said thoughtfully. “Yeah, dat’s what I’ma do. I’ma get me a Phantom.”

*****

Blake’s breathing stopped the moment he noticed the Magnum pulling up alongside his Phantom. A few weeks ago, he had watched two Vh-1 documentaries detailing the murders of Tupac Shakur and Christopher “Biggie” Wallace. Now those images were flashing through his mind.

Simultaneously, he lifted the gold-plated .50-caliber from his lap and rolled his window. Then he stuck his arm out the window and opened fire.

BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM

The Magnum’s driver window collapsed. Bullet holes the size of fifty cent pieces appeared in its door and the glossy blue Dodge fishtailed wildly before turning sideways and flipping up into the air. It rolled several times and then landed harshly and rolled eight or nine more times. One of its chrome thirty-inch rims divorced the Magnum and flew straight toward Blake’s windshield. Nona somehow managed to swerve out of the tire’s path, and it smashed into the right headlight of Streets’ quarter-million-dollar Ferrari.