“What you gonna do?” Nick asked.
“Since the nigga is ghost—”
“Like the bitch mutha fucka he is,” Bobby added.
“All of his shit belongs to us now,” I said, and sent my people to all the spots to take over. Violently, if necessary. It went smooth in some places, others, not so much.
So, when some of Bodie’s people insisted that they were going to stay loyal to him, me and Bobby went to deal with them personally.
“You know where Bodie’s hiding from me?”
“Yeah. He’s just regrouping, getting his shit back right, you know what I'm sayin’,” one told me. “And when he does, he’s gonna be back, stronger than ever and he’s gonna kill your mutha fuckin’ ass, Black.”
“He might, but you won’t be here to see it,” I said, and shot him in the chest.
Then I put two more in his head, because I like to make sure that a mutha fucka is dead. I turned to the rest of the people in the house.
“Anybody else wanna die today?”
There was silence.
“Come on, now. I’m sure somebody else wants to die so they can be in hell when Bodie gets there,” Bobby said as he walked around the gambling house.
One of Bodie’s men had a big shit-eating grin on his face. “What you smiling about?” Bobby stopped in front of him. “You got something you wanna get off your chest?”
“No, Bobby.”
“Yeah, but you was thinking about it,” Bobby said, and then shot him in the head.
“I’m gonna say this one more time. This shit is mine now. All of you mutha fuckas work for me. And if I hear that any one of you are communicating with Bodie, or bringing him money or even thinking too hard about him, I will kill you, your whole family, your fuckin’ dog and anybody else you care about.”
Bobby stopped in front of another one of Bodie’s men. “Like this,” he said, and put one in his head.
“Am I making myself clear?” I asked.
“Yes, Black,” some of them said, but it was lackadaisical.
I took out both of my guns and pointed them. “I didn’t fuckin’ hear y’all!”
“Yes, Black!” they all said like their lives depended on it being the absolute truth.
When we left and got back in the car, both Bobby and I fell out laughing at what we had just done.
“I don’t fuckin’ hear y’all!” Bobby laughed.
“That’s no worse than, yeah, but you was thinking about it,” I laughed and we were still laughing about it when we got back to The Late Night. It was five in the morning and the place was still packed. Seems that our hostile takeover was good for business.
There was even a line to get in The Blue Room now. It was a bar to make money on the wannabe’s that couldn’t get in The Late Night, but now we started charging to get in.
“That’s because we’re on top,” Wanda said and raised her champagne glass as we toasted to our success a week later.
I expected her to break into a speech about how we were on top now, and what it was going to take to stay there, but I was wrong.
“Everybody wants to be down with us, because we’re the shit!” Wanda hollered and drained her glass. Bobby refilled her glass, she drank that and then she started singing an old disco classic, “Oh yes, it's good to be the King. Ooh la, la, gee, but it's good to be the King.”
“Say it girl,” I said and raised my glass.
Then Wanda bounced up and started dancing too.