6. Omar
Omar
I'd been thinking about Asha since the warehouse meeting.
Standing beside Supreme with her hand on his arm, her face composed, her posture careful.
Fourteen years since I'd seen that face and the first time I see it again she's next to the most dangerous man in Crown Heights.
Something in her eyes when she'd looked at me across the room.
Something I couldn't name yet but couldn't stop thinking about.
My chest hadn't stopped being tight since I left that building.
The Nostrand block was Devon's. He'd had it tagged as a Supreme logistics point for six weeks now, a barbershop two doors down from a check-cashing place where two mid-level men kept arriving separate and leaving together.
That kind of pattern wasn't personal. It was business.
I parked on the east side a little after three, engine off, window cracked, and pulled up the latest plate run on my phone.
The block moved around me. A kid on a bike. A woman with two grocery bags. A delivery van that double-parked outside a corner store and got nowhere fast. I worked through Devon's data and kept an eye on the barbershop door.
Marlon Holt came out of the barbershop at four.
I recognized him off Devon's photos before he hit the second step.
Medium build, grey tracksuit, gold chain outside the collar of his shirt, a small scar through his left eyebrow.
He stopped on the step, lit a cigarette, scanned the block.
Slow scan. Landed on nothing. Missed nothing.
A second man came out behind him. Lean. Younger. The two of them stood close enough to talk without it carrying.
I knew the second man's build. Devon had him on file as one of TK's outer contacts, a name that moved between crews depending on who was paying that week.
His being here, on a Supreme block, talking to Supreme's man at four in the afternoon, was a connection Devon hadn't been able to lock down through the paperwork.
I pulled my notebook out of the door pocket and wrote Holt's name at the top of a clean page. Drew a line between him and the second man's initials. Added the time and the address.
The second man finished what he was saying and walked north. Holt watched him go for a second, then dropped his cigarette without finishing it and went back inside.
I went back to the notebook.
When I looked up again, Asha was coming out of the side door of the building across the street.
I froze.
Her salon bag was on her shoulder. Her hair was done. Her coat was open. She walked off the steps at her own pace, finished with whatever she came to do, and turned left up the block.
Holt came off the barbershop step fast.
He didn't fall into step beside her. He covered the distance and got her arm hard above the elbow, fingers digging in, and yanked her into him so she stumbled half a step, her bag swinging.
His other hand came up to her jaw, tilted it toward him, his mouth at her ear.
He had her against his body with his whole frame blocking her from the street.
I was halfway out of the seat before my brain caught up, hand on the door handle, foot already moving toward the sidewalk.
I had three reasons not to open the door.
This block was Supreme territory. Two more of his men were parked two streets over with eyes on the corridor.
And three weeks of surveillance and a financial thread that finally tied TK to Supreme would be gone the second I stepped out of this car in daylight and put hands on Marlon Holt.
I ran those reasons. I made myself sit back down.
Across the street Asha was working herself loose.
She didn't panic and she didn't scream. She dug her elbow back into his ribs hard enough to make space.
Got two fingers on his wrist and moved it.
Said something to him that brought his chin up.
He said something back. She held his eyes for a long second and whatever she gave him in that look made him take a small step backward.
Then she turned and walked away from him without hurrying, bag back on her shoulder, eyes forward, no glance back over her shoulder for confirmation he'd stayed where he was.
I sat back in the seat and let my hand drop off the door.
Holt stared after her for a second. Then he got his phone out and went back inside the barbershop.
She turned the corner and was gone.
I sat with my hands on my knees. The block kept moving around me like nothing had happened. The kid on the bike came back the other way. The delivery van finally pulled out of the corner store.
I started the engine.
I called Devon from the car.
"I need everything you got on Marlon Holt. Addresses, regulars, schedule. Tonight."
"What happened?"
"Nostrand was hot. I'll tell you in person. Just send me what you got."
The first text came through a minute later. Holt had an apartment in Crown Heights, two bars he was in most nights, a cousin's place in East Flatbush he stayed at sometimes. Devon attached the regulars list with notes on the door staff and the back exits and the cameras.
I drove to the bar on Nostrand first. Sat at the end of the counter with a soda and a clear view of the door. Twenty minutes. He didn't come in. I paid in cash and left.
The second bar was on Utica. I parked half a block down and watched.
He came out a little after ten. Alone. Head down, hands in his coat pockets, moving without urgency. He turned onto the side street running off Utica without checking behind him.
I got out of the car.
The side street was narrow and residential.
Cars parked tight on both sides. I'd driven it twice already in the last hour, lights off both times, reading the layout.
Midway down, two vans were parked nose to tail under a stretch of dead streetlight, the concrete underneath them clean and dark. I walked toward it.
Holt heard me four steps out and spun, his right hand coming up.
I caught his collar and drove him into the side of the first van hard enough that the metal panel gave under his shoulder.
He got his elbow into my ribs. I stepped inside it, got my forearm across his throat, used my weight.
His left hand came up and grabbed my jacket.
I removed it. He went for my face and I broke his focus with a short right that snapped his head back against the van.
He went down hard. I went down with him. I put two more shots into his ribs on the way and one more into the side of his head when he tried to roll and after that he stopped trying. I kept my forearm on his throat until his hand stopped pulling at my wrist and then I let him breathe.
When I stopped he was on the ground with his back against the rear wheel of the van. One hand flat on the sidewalk. He was breathing through his nose in shallow pulls. His eyes found me, focused, and stayed.
"Baptiste."
"Yeah."
He spat blood onto the concrete and let his head rest back against the van. He'd worked it out before I even got close, probably the second he turned around on Utica.
"What you doin' over here, Omar?"
I crouched down so we were level and looked at him until he stopped talking.
"The woman on Nostrand," I said. "Don't touch her again."
He held my eyes for a long second.
"That Supreme's woman, fam. You know that, right?"
"I know whose woman she is."
"Then you know what this is."
"I do."
He didn't say anything after that.
I stood up, rolled my sleeve down, and walked back to Utica.
My knuckles were split across two of them and bleeding a little. I pressed my thumb into them as I walked. The bar I'd watched him come out of still had people outside on the sidewalk talking. A window above the street had a TV going behind a closed curtain.
I got in the car but didn't start it yet, just sat there with my hand on the steering wheel and thought about the half-step stumble when Holt first grabbed her, the speed she'd recovered it in, and the two fingers she'd used to get his hand off her wrist like it was something she'd done before.
I called Devon back.
"It's done."
"How bad?"
"He'll walk. He'll know."
Devon was quiet for a moment. "Supreme's going to hear about this before morning."
"I know."
"You want me to wake Kadeem up?"
"No. I'll see him in the morning."
I ended the call and put the phone face down on the passenger seat.
I sat with the engine off for another minute. Then I started it, pulled out, and drove home.
The notebook was still on the passenger seat from the afternoon. Holt's name at the top of the page. The line drawn down to TK's outer contact. Two networks linked through one bad afternoon on Nostrand.
The other thing on that page was a name from Devon's older files.
A peripheral name that had been showing up in money routes that ran through the same era my father had been running the outer network.
A name that meant nothing on the surface and a lot underneath if you knew what you were looking at.
I kept driving with the page open in my head.