“Oh, shit,” he said.
A gleaming black Cadillac Escalade trailed him, perhaps thirty feet behind. The windows were tinted smoke-black, but Nick didn’t have to look inside to find out the identity of the primary occupant.
He briefly considered running, discarded the thought as foolish. Running would have only made things worse.
Running might have gotten him killed.
The driver tapped the horn.
Nick stopped in his tracks. The SUV pulled alongside him. The rear passenger door swung open.
“Nick,” a familiar voice said, deep as a black hole. “Get in, my brother. We’ve got important business to discuss.”
2
Four people occupied the big SUV’s three rows. There was the driver, some bald steroid freak bursting out of his blue muscle shirt, a serpent tattoo writhing from underneath his collar and wrapping around the back of his head. A bronze-skinned woman rode shotgun. She also had a shaved head, and Nick saw multiple tattoos adorning her neck and shoulders.
The ebony-hued Black man sitting in the rear passenger row had summoned Nick to the vehicle. Nick knew him; his name was Shango. Nick didn’t know his last name; he didn’twantto know it. Rumor had it that Shango’s birth name was something ordinary like Dwayne Taylor, and that he’d changed his name to Shango because that was the name of an African god, and he believed he had a divine destiny.
In the middle row in front of Shango, occupying the seat like a kid stuck in after-school detention, sat Nick’s business partner, Omar Reeves.
Omar looked terrified: his face filmed with greasy sweat and dark eyebrows twitching. But he didn’t speak, merely inclining his head toward Nick.
Moving on feet that felt loaded with sandbags, Nick climbed into the vehicle and sat on the rear seat that Shango patted as if calling a puppy to heel.
The inside of the truck smelled of marijuana, the scent so cloying that it made it even harder for Nick to breathe. That was saying something because the fear lodged in his windpipe threatened to asphyxiate him.
Shango wore a charcoal two-piece suit, black shirt, and expensive Italian loafers. He was bald, but had a thick, longish beard tapered to a fine point.
Shango’s obsidian eyes took in everything and gave nothing back. He stared at Nick, silent, until Nick broke eye contact.
“Let’s roll,” Shango said. He had the ghost of a Brooklyn accent, but Nick knew little about the man’s roots.
As the Escalade cruised out of his neighborhood, Shango took a long draw from a vape pen and expelled smoke from his nostrils like a dragon.
Nick suppressed a cough. “Where are we going?”
Shango didn’t answer, didn’t look at him. He pulled an iPhone out of his jacket and tapped text messages.
“Can I use my phone, too?” Nick asked.
“Why would you want to do that, brother?” Shango grinned at him through a plume of smoke. “To call the police? To contact perhaps your beautiful girlfriend, Amiya Turner, who is heading toward work now at her college? Or your mother, Valerie Alexander, who is most likely watering her flowers on her front porch now?”
Nick tried to conceal the chill that washed over him. “Never mind.”
He wanted to strangle Omar. Omar, his old Morehouse roommate, had hooked them up with Shango two years ago. Shango had supplied venture capital (in the loosest sense of theterm) for their then-fledgling nutritional supplements company, in return for a percentage of profits.
But you didn’t make a deal with the devil and expect to emerge unscathed. Nick had felt uncomfortable allowing a man of Shango’s questionable reputation to back their business, but when the banks had declined to extend loans, when their credit cards had been maxed out, and when their relatives had pleaded empty pockets, he found himself justifying how a deal with the man could work to their advantage.Just pay him his percentage and keep him out of our business.
Since their agreement, they had been paying Shango, on time, every month, and Shango had kept his distance. Nick was only minimally involved in their business accounting—he left the business operations to Omar while he focused on product development—but for his own peace of mind, he reviewed Shango’s payments. That monthly royalty check to “Divine Inspirations,” the ridiculous sham business Shango used, got cut before they even paid the rent on their warehouse.
Nick’s best guess for the purpose of this “discussion” was that Shango wanted new terms.
The Escalade crawled south along the Downtown Connector. It was eight o’clock in the morning, near the peak of Atlanta’s notoriously awful rush-hour traffic. Wherever they were headed, it was going to take a while to get there.
“What’s this impromptu meeting all about?” Nick asked. “Since we’re stuck in traffic, can we have the discussion now? The gang’s all here, right?” He offered a light chuckle.
Shango lifted his index finger to his lips in the universal gesture for silence. “You could use one of those Cool Breeze pills right now, brother.”
