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“Bet.”
It was twenty after three when Drum got to Dime Piece and Rain handed Carter a grand. He came in with four of his men, exactly as Carter had predicted. Once they got there, Chee-Chee escorted them through the club to the gambling room.
“Gavin is inside waiting for you,” Chee-Chee said, and then she opened the door. “Have fun.” Once Drum and his men were in the room, Chee-Chee closed the door and locked it behind them. “For as long as you live,” she said and walked away.
Drum and his people stood completely still in the middle of the dimly lit room. “Magic! Where you at?” He called out and he got no answer. But that was when the shooting started from all sides. Drum and his men were surrounded as Rain, Carter, Otis and Reidel, two of Chee-Chee’s men, opened fire. They never had a chance.
Rain took out her phone and called Gavin. “Problem solved,” she said and walked away. “Now, about that dick?”
Chapter Three
His name was Gavin Caldwell, but everybody called him Magic, a nickname he picked up in college. He was the second son of gangster turned businessman, Vince Caldwell.
Rain was introduced to Gavin by Black when they did a favor for Vince. He had known Vince since the old days when Black first started out working for Andre. Back then, Vince and his partner Bob Garrett made a ton of money for Andre and got huge in the game until the day it all fell apart. Early that morning, Garrett’s wife, Tammy showed up at Garrett’s club at seven in the morning, photocopied all of the documents and then had the maintenance man take it out to her Jaguar.
After that, she disappeared. Two months later, Vince and Garrett were arrested and charged under New York Penal Law Section 220.77 for operating as a major trafficker. The next time Garrett saw Tammy was on the witness stand in court as the prosecution’s star witness. Fortunately for Vince, his lawyers got the cases separated so Garrett went on trial first. At his trial, Tammy dropped the whole thing on Garrett. She only mentioned Vince’s name once and that was in response to the prosecutor’s question, “Who is Vince Caldwell?”
“Vince,” Tammy paused and frowned. “He was just some guy that worked for Garrett. He ain’t nobody,” she said, looking directly at Garrett. He was found guilty and sentenced to fifteen years to life.
When it came time for Vince to go on trial, based on Tammy’s testimony, his lawyers got the trafficking charge dropped, he pled guilty to criminal sale of a controlled substance and was sentenced to five years.
When Vince went to prison, he met Yovanna Anderson in the visiting room while visiting her brother and he fell in love with her. When he got out, he divorced his first wife, Irene, leaving his two young children; a ten-year-old son, Vince Junior who everybody called Butch, and an eight-year-old daughter, Fredricka and he quickly married Yovanna. They had two children, Gavin and a daughter named London.
Going to prison and meeting Yovanna turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to Vince. She worked as a trader on Wall Street and showed him that there were other, better and safer ways to make money. Yovanna set up an investment portfolio for Vince and asked him to invest a hundred thousand dollars in it. It wasn’t easy for Vince to put together that much money from his cell. He had just paid the huge legal bills that stacked up during his trial. It took some time, but he got it handled.
Yovanna began buying property and businesses with growth potential and began to build a legal empire for Vince to step into when he got out. She managed his money, made sound investments in financial products that yielded consistent gains over the years. She turned over the profit she made on those investments and opened Anderson Investment Consultants to offer investment banking sales and trading.
But, Vince being Vince, he never relinquished his involvement in, nor his control of the drug business. With loyal soldiers on the outside, Vince was able to run his business from his cell. Therefore, by the time Vince got out of prison, he stepped in to run both businesses along with Yovanna.
At that point, life was good for him and his family. Over the years, both businesses grow and eventually, his oldest son, Butch took control of the drug business and once he came of age, Gavin took over running the legal businesses.
The problems began when Bob Garrett was release from prison on parole after serving twenty-one years of his life sentence. When he got out, Garrett wanted it all back. Not just a piece of the drug business, he wanted to get back everything that he had lost because of Tammy’s treachery. Garrett always felt that Vince getting a lighter sentence than him was all the proof that he needed to show that Vince was in it with Tammy.
Had Garrett simply wanted a piece of the drug business, Vince would have gladly handed it to him because it was what he was due for the sacrifices he’d made over the last twenty years. It wasn’t until Garrett started talking about wanting a piece of their legitimate businesses that both Vince and Yovanna lost their minds, and of course, you can imagine the loudest voice was Yovanna.
“That nigga must have lost his mutha fuckin’ mind,” she shouted, and Vince just looked at her like she had lost her mind because Yovanna never cursed. “If he thinks he can just waltz in here and take everything that we’ve spent years building, he is crazy. I’ll die before I let that happen.”
Vince smiled, laughed a little, and promised her that it wouldn’t come to that. “Before I let that happen, I’ll kill him myself.”
The problem with that was that Vince wasn’t a killer. In fact, although he always carried a gun, he’d never used it, never even had a reason to pull it out and shove it in somebody’s face. The other problem was that Garrett was a killer that had no problem pulling and blasting. Despite the fact that he had been locked down for years, he still had people that were loyal to him.
“So, what are you going to do?” Yovanna asked.
“I know a guy that can take care of this for me. And he owes me a favor,” Vince said and the following evening he was at Cuisine, having dinner with Black.
“I asked Ms. Robinson to join us,” Black said.
“No problem,” Vince said, thinking that Rain was just some pussy that Black was getting and not the person that would be assigned to resolve his issue. Once Vince finished telling his story, he looked at Black and waited for an answer.
“No problem, Vince. I’d be more than happy to take that fuck off your neck. I never liked Garrett anyway,” he said and then he looked at Rain.
“No problem.” She stood up. “I’ll let you know when it’s done.”
“No. You call me when you got it set up. I wanna be there,” Black said.
“Yes, sir,” Rain said and walked away from the table.
“You gonna send that little girl up against Garrett and them?” Vince asked.