15. Omar
Omar
"Kyran's people?"
"That's what Rashid thinks. They were at the show the other night. He recognized one of them from the crowd."
"Where's he now?"
"Locked in the studio. Tre's with him. He's fine, just shaken up."
I hung up, called James, and told him to meet me at Rashid's building in twenty minutes.
James was already there when I pulled up. He was parked across the street in his car, engine off, watching the block through the windshield. I got in his passenger side and he pointed to an empty space three buildings down.
"The car was right there," James told me. "Black Camry, tinted windows. They bounced about ten minutes ago when they saw me pull up. I got the plate before they turned the corner."
"Run it."
"Already did. Registered to a Darren Yates, address in Flatbush. Devon's pulling his known associates now."
I texted Rashid: You good?
His reply came fast: Yeah. They left. What the fuck was that about?
Stay inside. I'm handling it.
O, I don't need you to...
Stay inside, Rashid.
He didn't reply after that. He was angry, probably pacing the studio, telling Tre about it, wanting to handle it himself.
That was Rashid's problem. He always wanted to handle things himself and he never understood that handling things in this family didn't mean throwing punches at a venue. It meant something different entirely.
Devon came back within the hour. Darren Yates ran with a crew out of Flatbush that had loose ties to Kyran's people.
Street-level affiliates who did favors when the money was right.
The other man in the car was a cousin, Anthony Mills.
Both had records. Assault, possession, the usual progression.
Devon had addresses for both of them, plus a location where they spent most evenings: a barbershop on Nostrand near Church Avenue. The back room.
"They connected to Supreme?" I asked.
"Doesn't look like it. This is personal. Kyran put the word out after what Rashid did to him at The 4Q. Somebody's paying these two to send a message."
"Then we'll send one back."
James drove. I opened what Devon had sent to my phone on the way.
Photos of both men pulled from their social media.
Darren Yates was tall, lean, wore his hair in short twists.
Anthony Mills was shorter, heavier through the chest, had a tattoo on his neck that said something I couldn't read in the photo.
Both of them looked like what they were: hired muscle doing a job for someone else's grudge.
The barbershop was on the corner of Nostrand and Church, a narrow storefront with a striped pole that hadn't been lit in years.
Three barber chairs visible through the front window, two of them occupied.
A television mounted on the wall was playing a game nobody was paying attention to.
The back room was through a doorway covered by a heavy curtain.
We parked half a block away on the residential side of the street. James checked his piece, tucked it back, and looked at me.
"How you wanna do this?"
"I go in through the front. You cover the back exit. There's an alley that runs behind the building, should be a door."
"And if they come out shooting?"
"They won't. This is a barbershop full of civilians. They pull a weapon in there, they've got witnesses. They're stupid but they ain't that stupid."
"You sure about that?"
"Cover the back, James."
He got out and disappeared around the corner toward the alley. I gave him two minutes to get in position, then got out of the car and walked up Nostrand to the barbershop.
The bell above the door rang when I pushed it open. The barber nearest the entrance looked up from his client, studied my face for a second, then went back to his fade. The second barber didn't react at all. A man in the waiting chair glanced at me over his magazine.
I walked straight to the curtain at the back and pushed through it.
The back room was small, maybe twelve by fifteen.
A card table in the center with four chairs around it, a mini fridge in the corner, a television on a shelf showing the same game as the one out front.
Darren Yates was sitting at the table with a plate of food in front of him, a fork halfway to his mouth.
Anthony Mills was in the corner on his phone, leaning against the wall with one foot up.
Both of them looked at me when I came through the curtain. Yates put his fork down slowly. Mills straightened up from the wall and slid his phone into his back pocket.
"The fuck are you?" Yates asked.
"Omar Baptiste."
The name landed in the room. Yates's eyes moved from my face to my hands to the curtain behind me, calculating whether there were more people coming through it. Mills hadn't moved from the corner but his right hand had drifted toward his waistband.
"I wouldn't," I told him without looking at him. "There's someone on the other side of that back door who'll put you down before you get that piece out."
Mills's hand stopped moving. He looked at Yates. Yates looked at me.
"We ain't got no beef with you," Yates tried. "This ain't about..."
"You followed my brother to his studio. Sat outside his building in a black Camry for forty minutes. You know whose brother he is and you did it anyway." I pulled out the chair across from Yates and sat down. "That makes it about me."
"Kyran asked us to deliver a message. That's all. We wasn't gonna touch him."
"What message?"
"Just... that he needs to watch himself. That what happened at The 4Q wasn't gonna slide."
"Kyran sent you to threaten a Baptiste." I leaned forward, my forearms on the table. Yates's plate of rice and chicken sat between us, steam still rising from it. "You know what I do for my family, Darren? You know what my job is?"
Yates didn't answer. His fork was still on the table beside his plate. His eyes kept going to the curtain.
"My job is to make sure that when somebody threatens my family, they understand the consequences.
" I picked up his fork, examined it for a second, then set it back down.
"You got two options right now. Option one: you tell me where Kyran is and you walk out of this barbershop on your own legs.
Option two: you don't tell me, and the next time you walk anywhere it'll be with a limp. "
"I don't know where Kyran is. He called me from a blocked number, said he'd pay us two grand each to follow the rapper kid and put some fear in him. That's it. I ain't even met Kyran in person."
"Two grand to threaten a Baptiste. That's what my brother's safety is worth to you?"
"It was just a job, man. We wasn't gonna hurt nobody."
I stood up from the chair. Yates flinched backward, his hands coming up.
I grabbed the front of his shirt with one hand, hauled him out of the chair, and drove him backward into the wall behind him.
His head bounced off the plaster. The plate of food went flying off the table, rice scattering across the floor.
Mills moved from the corner. I heard him take two steps before the back door crashed open. James filled the doorway with his weapon visible, his eyes locked on Mills.
"Sit down," James told him.
Mills sat down on the floor with his back against the wall. His hands went to his knees, palms up, showing they were empty.
I turned back to Yates. He was pinned against the wall, his feet barely touching the floor, his hands gripping my wrist. His eyes were wide, his breathing fast and shallow.
"Here's what's gonna happen," I told him, close enough to see the sweat beading on his forehead. "You're gonna call Kyran from whatever number he gave you and you're gonna tell him the message was delivered. Then you're gonna tell him something from me."
I pulled him off the wall and drove him back into it again, harder. A picture frame rattled and fell from a nail. Yates made a sound that was halfway between a gasp and a whimper.
"Tell him the next person who follows my brother, watches my brother, threatens my brother, or comes within a hundred feet of his studio will not be having a conversation with me afterward. Tell him I'm done talking after tonight. He's had his warning. This is the only one he gets."
I let go of Yates's shirt. He slid down the wall until he was sitting on the floor next to the scattered rice, his hands shaking, his shirt stretched and wrinkled where I'd been holding it.
I looked at Mills on the floor across the room. He hadn't moved. James was still in the doorway.
"You too," I told Mills. "Pass the message. Every corner, every block, every crew Kyran's connected to. The Baptiste family ain't asking. We're telling. Stay away from Rashid."
Mills nodded without speaking.
I straightened my jacket, stepped over the rice on the floor, and walked back through the curtain.
The barbershop was dead quiet when I came through.
The barbers were still cutting, the man in the waiting chair was still reading his magazine, but nobody was breathing normally.
They'd heard everything through that thin wall and every last one of them had decided they hadn't.
I walked out the front door. James came around from the alley thirty seconds later, falling into step beside me as we headed back to the car.
"That was quick," he said.
"Didn't need to be long."
"You think they'll pass the message?"
"Yates was crying when I left the room. Yeah, they'll pass it."
James almost smiled. "You Baptiste boys don't do anything small, do you?"
I got in the car without answering. James drove us back toward Bed-Stuy.
My phone buzzed. Rashid: Did you do something?
Don't worry about it.
O. Did you do something?
I had a conversation with two men who won't be coming back to your block. That's all you need to know.
A pause. Then: Respect.
I put the phone down. James was watching the road, his hands relaxed on the wheel, the city sliding past the windows. The adrenaline was already fading from my arms and hands, replaced by something steadier.
Nobody was going to touch Rashid. Not Kyran's people, not Supreme's people, not anyone. He was my little brother. Five years between us but I'd been looking out for him since we were kids running the block together. That wasn't gonna stop now.
The message would travel through Flatbush by morning.
By the end of the week every crew in Brooklyn would know that following Rashid Baptiste was a decision with consequences attached to it.
Kyran could sit wherever he was nursing the injuries Rashid had given him and think about whether sending hired muscle after a Baptiste was worth what came back.
I already knew the answer. But Kyran would have to learn it himself.
James dropped me at my building. I went upstairs, showered, sat on the edge of my bed with my phone in my hand.
I thought about calling Kadeem to tell him what happened but decided against it.
Kadeem would want details, would want to know if there was a bigger play behind Kyran's move, would want to assess whether this connected to the TK situation.
Right now it was just a street-level grudge and two men who'd picked the wrong family to threaten.
I texted Devon instead: Keep eyes on Rashid's block for the next week. If anyone shows up who shouldn't be there, I want to know before they park.
Devon replied: Already on it.
I put my phone on the nightstand, lay back on the bed, and let my eyes close. Somewhere in Brooklyn, Darren Yates was cleaning rice off the floor of a barbershop back room and trying to figure out how to explain to Kyran that the Baptiste family had just shortened the conversation permanently.
Good. Let him figure it out.