“Popeye’s men . . .” I said, looking over Paris’s head at Orlando. “And what were you going after X and his men for anyway?”
She didn’t answer, but turned to look at Orlando, which told me everything I needed to know.
“What did you promise Popeye, Orlando?” I asked him.
He finally made eye contact, but remained silent.
“Answer me, dammit! What did you promise Popeye Wilson?”
Orlando’s shoulders slumped as he admitted, “I gave him the distribution rights to Virginia, Maryland, and parts of PA.”
“You did what?” I asked, seething. “Those weren’t your rights to give away. They belong to the family.” I was trying to remain calm because we were in a public place. Lucky for him, because my instinct at the moment was telling me to pump a bullet into my stupid, stupid brother. “How the hell could you do that?” I shouted at him.
“It was my call. Not yours,” he yelled, matching my volume with his own. “I’m the one Pop left in charge, so I made an executive decision. It didn’t go as well as I planned, but I had to do something.”
“Paris, go check on Pop.” I shooed her toward the room. When she was out of sight, I lit into him. “What the fuck were you thinking? Do you have any idea how long it took us to get those rights? How many people had to die? For you to just give them away.”
“I did what I thought was right for the family,” Orlando fumed, holding his ground in a martial arts stance. Just the idea of my little brother challenging me set me off. I snatched him up by the collar before he could blink.
“No, what you did was sell this family down the river. Same way you sold me out when you revealed X’s location. You and I were the only ones who knew where he was holed up, O, and yet somehow X knew we were coming for him, and he had time to set a trap. Now we’re gonna be beholden to twelve NYPD widows because of your fucking mouth. How many folks did you tell about his warehouse in Rosedale?”
Orlando remained tight-lipped.
“How many?” I asked again, tightening my grip on his collar.
“Just Paris . . . and Popeye and Tony.”
I shoved him against the wall. “You stupid ass.”
Orlando shook his head, still not putting the pieces together. “No, man, Popeye and Tony were helping us. It wasn’t them.”
“Did Tony send any of his men for this raid you had planned?” I asked slowly.
“No.” He still wasn’t making the connection, so I spelled it out for him.
“That’s because he didn’t want any of his men killed—after he told X you were coming. That booby-trap wasn’t there for the cops; it was there for our men,” I said, slamming my hand on the wall just inches from his head. “You better hope like hell that they don’t kill my cousin, Orlando.” I stormed off, leaving him to think about the shit storm he’d just created.
Junior
33
We’d had a consultation with the entire medical team in charge of Pop’s care, including hospital executives who were probably there to make sure we didn’t intend to sue. They were all pressing us to come to some kind of decision about his future treatment. The longer we listened, the more times we heard their fancy ways of saying the same damn thing: They didn’t think our father would ever recover, and considering the alternative, they thought that he was better off dead. They hadn’t put it in those direct words, but what they did talk about was atrophy. They said that he would gradually waste away from being bedridden. They presented charts and summaries of worst case scenarios, all offered to convince us that we really only had one decision.