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Marvin raised up and tried to get a shot off, but he realized he was seriously outgunned and quickly dropped back behind the car to avoid being hit by the barrage of flying bullets. RJ put his phone back in his pocket, readied his gun and crawled to the front of the car. He opened fire and quickly dr
opped back behind the car.
But then the shooting stopped. RJ peeked around the car and saw two men circling around. He nodded at Marvin, and they prepared to engage their attackers head on.
RJ rose up and fired on his man until his gun was empty, and he went down. When he did, Marvin stood up quickly and killed the other man as he advanced.
The shooting began again, and they took cover. RJ checked his pocket and loaded the last clip. Marvin had four shells left in the magazine, one in the chamber and one clip left. He pushed it back in and looked at RJ
“I hear sirens in the distance!” RJ said.
“Maybe they’ll have sense enough to leave!”
Shots bounced off the car and the wall in front of them.
“Guess not,” Marvin said.
“Yeah. We just need to hold them off a little longer,” RJ said.
“Let’s hope that shit works,” Marvin said and both men rose up, fired a few shots before dropping down for cover.
Evander and his last remaining man, Derick Mobley opened fire again with semiautomatics. Marvin raised his weapon and fired three times before dropping down to reload. RJ fired until the clip was empty and then he fell back behind the car.
“I’m out!”
Marvin rose up and fired again.
“They need to hurry!” he yelled, fired again, and dropped down. “’Cause I’m out too.”
There was silence in the street as the shooting stopped. Marvin peeked over the hood and saw Evander and Mobley coming towards them. “Here they come.”
They heard a car come to a screeching stop and then the shooting began again. RJ peeked over the hood and saw Pills firing two guns from behind the wheel, and Judah hanging out the back window firing an AR-15.
“Our ride is here.”
RJ had sent Pills a text that said, help, and he used the GPS signal to find them, just like they planned it.
Now that it was Evander and Mobley that were outgunned, they returned fire on the run and made it around the corner. As the sound of police cars got louder, RJ and Marvin got in the car and Pills drove them away from there.
Chapter Five
In addition to expanding his own gambling and prostitution operations, and with Wanda backing him, RJ was branching out into legitimate businesses. The Late Night was currently under construction and would be opening soon. And when it did reopen, it would be a completely legitimate business.
“That makes you a businessman, not a gangster,” Wanda told him.
Now he was making a big push in the entertainment industry as a producer and a concert promoter. RJ was in the studio one day when Scarlet was producing a track for Lola Luv, when Monte Cole and P Harlem arrived. After they finished recording Lola’s track, Scarlet was playing around with a beat and started singing, then Monte got in, then P, and then Lola.
After listening to them freestyle for a while, RJ told the engineer to record it. When they played it back, RJ suggested that the four of them should make an album and The New Regulators were born. A week later, they cut an album and since it was his idea, RJ got producer credit.
Wanda suggested that he talk to Gladys about being the promoter of a Regulator tour of smaller markets to perfect their show before they started a major-city U.S. tour. Naturally, Gladys agreed because she never said no to anything Wanda wanted.
The tour opened to a sold-out crowd in Jacksonville, where Scarlet got a chance to meet her sister-in-law, Shy’s cousin Natasha and her husband, Victor and his cousin Sydney. After that, the tour did ten sold-out shows in smaller-market cities. The following morning, RJ and Wanda were meeting with Gladys and Meka about a major tour kicking off at Madison Square Garden. But that night, RJ was hosting Cristal at The Four Kings.
It was only a couple of years ago that it would have been unthinkable for Cristal to be playing a small spot like that. She was a headliner that used to pack large arenas, the operative word in that sentence being was.
Her last release debuted at number one and then dropped like a rock from there. Neither of the singles charted and they didn’t get much airplay at all. Cristal’s penchant for partying, drugs and alcohol was responsible for her lack of any work ethic to speak of. Now it had taken its toll on her voice. Once Gladys was finally able to talk her into rehab, and Cristal committed to take it seriously, it was decided to make her rehabilitation a media event.
First, Cristal went on a nationally syndicated radio morning show and made a tearful admission that she had a drug and alcohol problem. Something else that Gladys convinced her that she needed to do to restart her career. The last thing that Cristal wanted to do was tell the world her business, but singing meant everything to her, so she reluctantly agreed.