8. Trigga
Trigga
The entire drive over, all I could think about was the look on Maliah’s face when she repeated her father’s words.
Tell Tahari we just left his little friend’s apartment over on Biscayne.
At the time, I hadn’t said much. There wasn’t much to say.
But the second she left, I knew exactly where I was headed.
I was out the door right behind her. A few minutes later, I was standing outside Ghost’s apartment.
I knocked twice. But nobody came to the door, so I knocked again.
The lock finally clicked, and the door opened.
Ghost looked annoyed before he even realized who was standing there.
“People have been knocking on this damn door all day like Jehovah’s Witnesses.”
A smirk pulled at my mouth, then his eyes landed on me. Immediately, his expression changed.
“Well, damn.”
He stepped back, making space so that I could walk in.
“I take it Maliah daddy ain’t lay eyes on you again?”
I shook my head as I stepped past him.
“You thought getting shot in the shoulder was something.”
“Shut up,” I said as I pointed at him.
Ghost laughed as I made my way over to the sofa to have a seat. The second the door closed behind me, I looked at him.
“They came here?” I asked.
His smile disappeared.
“Yeah,” he said as he plopped down on the other end of the couch.
My jaw tightened.
“What happened?”
“Not much, they were looking for Maliah.”
“What else?”
Ghost leaned back.
“The mother was worried.”
“And him?”
Ghost let out a breath through his nose.
“He was mad as hell, and I could tell he was ready to lay my ass down if he needed to.”
That sounded about right. For a few seconds, neither one of us spoke, then Ghost looked at me.
“That’s him, ain’t it?”
I already knew who he meant. And he knew who he was now, but I guess he needed confirmation from me. I nodded.
“Yeah.”
“Damn,” Ghost said while he shook his head.
The room fell quiet. Because now there wasn’t any guessing. The man standing at his door was the same man who shot me. Ghost rubbed the back of his neck and then laughed.
It was a short, humorless laugh.
“You are lucky.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Here you go.”
“Nah, I’m serious.”
His expression never changed.
“You lucky he only put one in your shoulder.”
I leaned back against the couch. Because honestly? He wasn’t wrong. I was lost in thought, and then his phone lit up. Ghost looked down, and his jaw tightened.
A second later, he locked the screen and tossed the phone beside him. I noticed it immediately.
“You good?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
The answer came too fast. I stared at him for a second, and he stared right back. Then his phone buzzed again. This time he didn’t even look at it. A quiet laugh escaped me.
“Whatever it is, it must be serious.”
Ghost shook his head.
“It ain’t nothing.”
I leaned back against the couch.
“Mhm.”
He rolled his eyes, and the conversation moved on. But every few minutes, that phone lit up again. And every time it did, I noticed. Because for somebody claiming it wasn’t nothing…
It sure seemed like something.
GHOST
Trigga and I had some meaningless conversation before he got the fuck up out of here.
After he left, I found myself sitting in the same spot for nearly twenty minutes.
The television was still on, but I wasn’t paying attention to anything that was happening on the screen.
My mind kept drifting back to the conversation we had just finished having.
First, Maliah’s parents showing up at my apartment.
The whole situation felt messy. Messier than it needed to be.
My phone buzzed again beside me, but I ignored it. A few seconds later it buzzed again.
This time I picked it up. Ryan’s name was at the top of the screen. I frowned before opening the message.
Buena Vista Park. Basketball courts. 11 p.m
Underneath that was another message.
We need to talk.
I stared at the screen for a moment before shaking my head.
“Man…”
A humorless laugh escaped me. The nerve of him.
The last time I saw Ryan, he gave me money for another play.
Then everything with the bricks happened.
One problem became another, and before I knew it, I had stopped answering his calls altogether.
At first, I figured he’d eventually get the hint. Apparently not.
I started cleaning up around the house. My mom had been picking up so many shifts at work that she was barely home.
When I finished cleaning up every single room, I lit a candle that was on the coffee table and then sat back on the couch.
My stomach started growling, so I headed to the kitchen.
I stood in front of the refrigerator and was pissed when there wasn’t much in there.
I grabbed some milk and made a bowl of cereal.
The day had gone by so quickly, and I was beat.
I started yawning, and I felt like heading to take a shower and then going to sleep, but I thought about Ryan’s text.
“Shit,” I mumbled under mt breath.
As I sat at the island counter dipping my spoon in my bowl of frosted flakes, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and checked the time.
10:17 p.m
That was more than enough time. With a sigh, I grabbed my bowl off the counter and set it into the sink before heading toward my room to change my clothes. I wasn’t stupid. Whatever Ryan wanted, I doubted it was good.
By the time I left the apartment, my firearm was tucked securely into my waistband.
Maybe Ryan just wanted his money. And that I didn’t have.
Maybe he wanted answers. Either way, I wasn’t meeting anybody in a park at eleven o’clock at night unprepared.
The basketball courts were nearly empty when I arrived.
A couple of lights illuminated the area just enough to see, but most of the park sat beneath a blanket of darkness.
Ryan was already there. He was sitting on the bleachers with his elbows resting on his knees like he hadn’t spent the last few weeks calling and texting me nonstop.
He was running me down worse than a bitch that just got some dick does. The second he saw me approaching, he stood. I didn’t stop walking until I was a few feet away.
“What?”
The question came out exactly the way I intended it to. I was annoyed as fuck, like I wasn’t the one who had taken this man’s money and disappeared. Ryan looked me over before letting out a small breath.
“I was starting to think you weren’t coming.”
I folded my arms across my chest.
“You got five minutes.”
A smile touched his face, and I immediately disliked it. The expression looked entirely too relaxed for somebody who was owed money.
“I gave you cash,” he said.
“You did,” I nodded.
“And I never got what I paid for.”
Giving him his money back wasn’t an option.
“You’ll survive.”
Ryan shook his head.
“I’m not worried about the money.”
That got my attention. For the first time since I arrived, I really looked at him because if this meeting wasn’t about the money, then why the hell was I here?
Ryan reached into his pocket, and my body immediately tensed.
Years of instinct didn’t give me a choice.
Instead of a weapon, he pulled out a photograph and then handed it to me.
I looked down and, in the picture, there were bricks.
Several of them. They looked exactly like the kind me and Trigga had taken from the auto shop.
They were in the same clear wrapping stamped with a red Cocoa plant.
The thing was, when I sold Ryan that work, it was already broken down, so this picture of this product had my mental knobs going.
When I looked back up, Ryan was already watching my reaction.
“I’ve been doing a lot of homework lately.”
Ryan took the photograph back from me and slid it into his jacket. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out another item. This time it wasn’t a photograph. It was a folder, a manila one.
The kind that immediately made me suspicious.
“What is that?” I asked as my eyes narrowed.
Ryan opened it and pulled out several sheets of paper.
“You remember the product you sold me?”
I stared at him.
“Yeah.”
“Our CST unit tested it.”
That made my brows pull together. CST unit? The wording sounded wrong. A regular customer would not be talking like this. This feeling in the pit of my stomach felt official wrong, like the kind of wrong that stood by side with the law.
Ryan glanced down at the paperwork before looking back at me.
“The cocaine was nearly a perfect match for the product we’ve been tracking through the Ruiz Cartel organization.”
Ryan kept talking.
“The purity matched,” he flipped a page, “the chemical markers matched,” he flipped another page, “the cutting agents matched.”
Then he looked directly at me.
“So, either the Ruiz Cartel suddenly started sharing recipes with local dealers…” he paused, “Or the product came from them.”
The parking lot suddenly felt quieter. My eyes dropped to the folder, and that’s when it finally clicked.
Not the Ruiz part. I didn’t know much about them except for what Chino said when we tried to sell the bricks to him.
Shit with Ryan started to click. It was the way he talked, the paperwork, the testing, the questions, and the confidence as he spoke.
Nobody buying drugs in the street talked like this.
I stared at him for a long moment. Then I shook my head slightly.
“Who are you?”
A small smile graced Ryan’s face.
“There it is.”
The answer immediately irritated me, so I folded my arms across my chest.
“Who are you?” I asked again, this time with so much bass in my voice.
Ryan closed the folder.
“I work organized crime.”
I felt sick to my stomach because Trigga said when we met this nigga in the club that he was probably the police. He studied me for a second before opening his mouth again.
“And right now, organized crime is very interested in whoever gave you those drugs.”
The night had gone quiet around us. The only sound came from the occasional car passing somewhere beyond the park. I stared at Ryan, and his ass was staring right back at me.
Finally, I shook my head.
“What exactly do you want from me?”
The answer came immediately.
“I want access.”
I laughed because the request was ridiculous. I didn’t know shit about the Ruiz Cartel. The only thing I knew was who I had stolen the bricks from. His ass doesn’t even know that I had sold him stolen product.
“You got the wrong person.”
“I don’t think I do,” he quickly responded.
“Then you’re wasting your time.”
Ryan didn’t look offended, and he didn’t look frustrated. If anything, he looked patient. Like this conversation was going exactly the way he expected it to.
“I think somebody trusted you.”
I shook my head.
“Nobody trusted me with shit.”
Ryan ignored that.
“The amount of product you had wasn’t random.”
His eyes stayed locked on mine.
“It wasn’t personal use either. It wasn’t street-level.”
I rolled my eyes before clapping my hand dramatically.
“Congratulations.”
Ryan took a slow breath.
“Find a way in.”
His words were simple. He said it in a matter-of-fact tone like he was discussing the weather or some shit. I stared at him and then laughed again.
“Yeah, aight.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I,” I said with a straight face.
I couldn’t tell him that I didn’t have a way in because the shit was stolen. Right now, he needed me for something, and I had to keep him believing that I could deliver on that want. Ryan’s expression never changed. Then he said something that immediately wiped the amusement off my face.
“Giovani Baxter.”
A lump formed in my throat, and him calling me by my government name made me so uneasy, and I could tell that Ryan noticed.
“You’re smarter than this.”
My jaw tightened.
“What did you call me?”
Ryan folded his arms.
“You heard me.”
The air around us suddenly felt colder. Now I understood something I hadn’t before. This wasn’t a man fishing, and he wasn’t a man guessing. This was a man who had spent time looking into me. A lot of time.
Ryan took another step forward.
“Whether you realize it or not, you’re already standing too close to this thing.”
I said nothing.
“You sold enough cartel product to spend the rest of your life explaining where it came from.”
I sighed because I knew he wasn’t bluffing about trying. Ryan held my gaze. It’s like he was watching me go through the motions.
“I’m giving you an opportunity.”
“To snitch?” I quickly asked with offense laced in my tone.
The words came out sharper than I intended. Ryan shook his head.
“No. I’m giving you an opportunity to help yourself.”
“That’s the same thing, bucko,” I said with a laugh.
“No, Giovani,” his eyes locked onto mine, “the difference is one choice ends with you helping me. The other ends with you helping your defense attorney. This is a lot to take in, so I’ll give you some time.”
He patted my shoulder and then handed me one of his cards as he walked past. I turned around to watch him make his exit, and he never walked to a car. He walked down the block until I couldn’t see him anymore.
“Fuck!” I shouted in the empty park.
This shit was too much for my fucking plate. I rubbed my forehead before stuffing his card in the pocket of my jeans and then making my way toward my car so that I could take my ass back home.