Page 2 of Hush Money & Hits
“I can’t help you.”
Pauly leaned forward never breaking eye contact. His white hair and wrinkled olive skin stood out amongst his dark, piercing eyes. “Are you not a contract killer?” his tone was low.
“Yes, I am, but I also have the right to be very selective with the jobs I take, and this one is crazy as fuck. I don’t know what’s going on in your life, but I know you’re mob. Which means your son is protected. And you want my black ass to kill him? Fuck no,” I stated adamantly. His ass had to be senile or some shit, but I wasn’t going to do his dirty work then turn around and have beef with the entire fucking mob. I was far from pussy, but that was dumb as fuck.
“And you’re the son of Kalim Moore. Which means you’re protected as well. And if you’re as good as they say you are, no one will ever know that it was you.”
Pauly and I went back to having a stare off. As far as I knew, my father had never done direct business with the mob, but there was a mutual respect among all the major players in Diamond Cove.
When I didn’t respond, Pauly sat back in his seat. “How much do you charge for a kill?”
“Different jobs have different prices, but I’m not even entertaining the idea of a hit for less than $100,000.”
“I’ll give you $200,000.”
I was really close to telling Pauly to suck my dick. I was sure he could see it on my face, so he continued his spiel.
“My son is a fucking disgrace. He stole more than a pound of heroin from me less than a week ago, and he’s already shot it all into his veins. His first stint in rehab, he was seventeen. I spent $75,000. He was there for two months came home and overdosed the same night. Damn near died. Five times he’s been to rehab already, and he’s only twenty-seven. The knucklehead is dying slow anyway. I was cool with him being an embarrassment with tracked up arms and cornball behavior, butstealing from me and his mother, putting himself and his family in vulnerable positions because he’s weak as fuck is no longer acceptable. At least this way, I won’t have to keep waiting for the phone call.”
I could have sworn I heard Pauly’s voice crack. And that was the reason, I didn’t want to take the job. Calling a man emotional wasn’t exactly respectful, but more than likely, that was what it was. Pauly was in his feelings, and I feared he was making a decision that he would end up regretting. I took jobs at my discretion. The most I’d ever been paid for a hit was $140,000. The fact that he was offering $200,000 was tempting as fuck.
“You have my word that this will not come back on you.”
I felt like Pauly’s patience was wearing thin, and I gave no fucks. I wasn’t so thirsty for bread that I was going to jump at his proposition without considering all of the possible outcomes. His moral compass was shot to hell if he was hiring me to kill his biological child, but being that he’d given me his word, I had to assume he meant it. Honestly, I could see my pops doing some shit like that, so it wasn’t too far-fetched. You didn’t become a crime boss by being practical, having a conscience, and not possessing the courage to do the unthinkable. Finally, I gave a curt nod signaling that we had an agreement. Pauly had never used my services, but he obviously knew the drill. Leaning forward, he lifted a small gym bag from underneath his large cherry oak desk.
Pauly maintained eye contact with me as he nudged the bag across the table. “Half up front. The rest when the job is done.”
“I need all the info you can give me. His address, frequent hangouts, the kind of car he drives, all that good stuff.”
Pauly released a snort that reminded me of the disgust he harbored for his son. “Last year for his birthday, the idiot was gifted a brand-new Aston Martin. You know what he does when he doesn’t have the money to get high? He rents it out to hisdealer and anyone else that can put a few hundred bucks in his pocket,” Pauly scoffed.
I didn’t have kids. In my entire life, out of all the women I’d dealt with, there were only a couple of pregnancy scares. My father and I weren’t close. In fact, the relationship was mainly tolerating him on my part simply because he was my father. If for any reason, I brought him shame or did something horrendous, Kalim wouldn’t be above doing to me the same shit I was going to do to Pauly’s son. And that shit made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. There wasn’t anything other than self-defense that would make me even consider putting my own child in the dirt.
Pauly slid one of the desk drawers out and removed a small, burner cell phone. “Everything is in this phone including the name and phone number of his dealer. Make it clean.” There it was again. His voice cracked just a bit.
He wanted his son eliminated, but he didn’t have the guts to do it himself. I’d never had instructions given when I was hired for a hit, but I could respect his wishes. Oddly enough, I could understand just a bit. I knew Tasha would never in life wish death on her mother, but I knew if the day ever came that Maria overdosed and died, Tasha would in a very weird way be able to release the breath she didn’t know she held every time the phone rang. She constantly lived on edge and with the fear that something would happen to her mother. It was a stressful way to exist and though I could sympathize, having your own kid murdered was still a level of coldness that I never wanted to reach.
Pauly’s security was stationed directly outside of the office door. I was sure he didn’t want anyone to know what he’d done. Rightfully so. Getting inside my truck, I placed the gym bag on the passenger seat. The first thing I needed to do was get the money home because being stopped with that kind of cash on mewould bring issues that I didn’t need. And in the current climate we were in, cops pulling niggas over simply for driving while black was at an all-time high.
The drive out to my home in Cayden Cove Estates would take twenty minutes to get to from Pauly’s restaurant. The same suburbs that I escaped from every chance I got as a kid, was now the only kind of environment that I’d ever lay my head in. I didn’t have neighbors directly beside me. My 8,000 square foot home sat on two acres of land. It was a gift from my father for my twenty-first birthday. Like too many rich, powerful men, Kalim gave gifts. He expressed his love by giving money and material items. That had always been fine by me. I was a grown ass man and made my own money, but I was never opposed to anything my father gave me. Thanks to a massive life insurance policy his grandfather had, years of hustling drugs, and almost ten years of running several successful strip clubs in Miami, Charlotte, Diamond Cove, and Atlanta, along with a large construction company, my pops had more money than he could ever spend.
I stood six feet even just like my father. We had the same peanut butter colored skin, and the same thick beard. We even had the same bowlegged stance. On any given day people thought we were twins versus father and son. One thing I absolutely respected Kalim for was that he never wanted me in the drug game. His drug empire wasn’t passed down to me and while being a contract killer wasn’t a noble occupation, I was able to make my own money and live well and I only took six or so jobs a year.
I also had a commercial and residential cleaning business that my mother and aunts ran. If it was up to me, my mother would be retired and damn sure not cleaning anyone’s houses, but she wanted to work, and she liked her job. My mother was a person that loved to clean and organize. Our home was always spotless when I was growing up. Shit, she was the reasonI was a neat freak that cleaned better than some women. I’d had the company for five years, and there were clients that had been with me since the beginning. My mother had so many regular customers that only wanted her to clean their homes and aside from them tipping her, she often got bonuses around the holidays. One judge gifted her $10,000 last Christmas because when his wife was battling serious health issues my mother went like clockwork twice a week and kept their home in excellent condition. She did things she didn’t normally do like laundry and cooking and didn’t charge extra. For four months, she went above and beyond for that family.
My parents were never together. I was the result of a rebellious teen with an attraction to the neighborhood knucklehead. My pops didn’t have money like that during my parents’ brief four-month fling. The moment he was sentenced to a year in prison, and she couldn’t come up with the money for an abortion, her rebellious stage ended, and she did what she had to do. When my father got out of prison, she didn’t keep him from me. They were strictly co-parenting. The deeper he got in the streets, she became uncomfortable with the kind of money that he was giving her, but she wasn’t in the position to turn it down. He hated the neighborhood that she lived in, but she lived where she could afford because she refused to rely on the money, he gave her. When I was four, there was a shootout across the street from our house that claimed four lives. Kalim bought my mother a house in the suburbs, and he wouldn’t take no for an answer.
They tolerated one another well, but the romantic relationship was never rekindled. Because of the life he lived, my mother was skeptical about me visiting him at home, but he assured her that he lived in a gated community and that I’d be fine. When I stayed with him, he spent time with me, but he also juggled making money and various women. As I got older, thatwas how I was able to spend so much time in Terror Terrace. Kalim had too much going on to keep up with my every move.
My mother was a gorgeous woman that prioritized working and raising me over anything else. Truth was, she could have easily used the money that my father provided and not worked but that wasn’t how she was. As a kid, I never noticed my mom have any kind of social life, sneaky links, or any of that. Once I was older and able to run the streets, she joined a book club, started traveling, even began dating. Of course, my mother thought I was spending my father’s money and living off the cleaning business. If she ever caught wind of how I made the bulk of my money, she’d have a heart attack for sure.
At home, I showered and poured a double shot of some expensive ass cognac I’d paid way too much for, but it was smooth, and it got me where I needed to be off less than four shots. After powering on the cell phone Pauly had given to me, I scrolled through the only text message that was in the phone. I assumed that he had used another burner phone to text me all the info I’d need to find his son and kill him. He wanted me to make it clean, so I was going to make sure his son went out doing something that he loved.
The plan was simple. Get some pure, uncut, heroin that wasn’t stepped on, and hang out in one of the spots that Pauly frequented. It might take a couple of interactions because I wasn’t just going to walk up to his ass and announce that I had heroin for sell. If I seemed too thirsty, it would look suspicious. Good dope sold itself. I needed Pauly to come looking for me. If he heard I had some good shit and sought me out, when he overdosed, no one would think twice. I would let him cop from me once or twice, then I’d sell him a hot shot. Or rather heroin mixed with something else. Something else that would more than likely kill him.
Draining the alcohol from my glass, I sat back and processed the fact that I actually made a living from taking lives. At the end of the day, I wasn’t too much different or better than my father or Pauly.
CHAPTER 2
