Page 1 of Omar

Chapter 1

Omar

The man zip-tied to the support beam wasn't dead.

I crouched and put two fingers to the side of his throat. Pulse was there, a little quick but holding. His chest was moving in shallow pulls, his chin down, his arms behind him with the tie sitting high enough to put most of his weight through his shoulders. He'd hurt in the morning. He'd live. That had been the assignment. I straightened up, picked my jacket off the floor where I'd left it before we started, and walked the length of the loading bay to the roll-up door Devon had left cracked for me.

Behind me the man made a sound. Not words yet. I kept walking.

Devon called before I got to the car.

"He good?"

"He's breathing."

"A'ight." A door opened somewhere on his end, street noise rushing in behind it. "Kadeem need you at a sit-down. Crown Heights, Supreme's warehouse. Tonight."

"What's it about?"

"TK. He been pushing into the corridor between y'all and Supreme's territory. Both sides got a problem with it. Kadeem want everybody in the room."

"Stone coming?"

"Already confirmed it."

James was waiting by the car. He'd been outside the whole time, watching the approach road, clocking the boats in the harbor. He looked at my hands when I came through the door and didn't ask questions.

I got in the passenger side of the Range Rover and looked out at the water through the windshield. The harbor was dark and flat and the far shore had lights starting to come up. "Tell Kadeem I'm on my way."

James pulled out of the lot and headed toward Crown Heights. The knuckles on my right hand were swelling where they'd connected with the man's face. He'd talk tomorrow when the pain settled in and his options narrowed. They always did.

The warehouse was on a block in Crown Heights that Supreme owned from the sidewalk up. His men were out front. They knew the Range Rover before I'd parked. The one on the step gave me a nod and stepped aside, and I went inside and up to the second floor.

The back room was set up for business. A long table, eight chairs, two strip lights overhead running a flat white light onto everything. No windows. Supreme stood at the head of the table with his hands in his pockets. Dark shirt, collar open, a watch on his left wrist I put at sixty or seventy thousand. He wasn't dressed for anybody but himself. Kadeem sat along one side with Stone next to him, cardigan over his button-down, his reading glasses on the table in front of him. Two of Supreme's men stood along the far wall.

"Omar," Supreme said when I came through the door.

"Supreme."

I pulled out the chair next to Kadeem and sat. Stone caught my eye across the table and gave me a nod.

Supreme sat down across from me, leaned back in his chair, and took his time before speaking.

"TK's been running supply through the Flatbush corridor," he said. "That corridor runs along the line between my territory and yours. So when I say this is a shared problem, I mean that." He looked at Kadeem. "What's Baptiste got on him?"

Kadeem opened the folder in front of him. "Devon's been sitting on three blocks in Flatbush. Vehicle pattern's been consistent for weeks. Same plates, same times, same contact points." He set two pages across the table toward Supreme. "Three confirmed locations he's been using to move product through the gap. The volume's higher than what TK's operation should be pushing."

Supreme picked up the pages and read through them without hurry, his focus settled on the data, the room waiting on him. "Higher how much?"

"Enough that he's either got a backer or he's running for somebody else on top of his own supply."

Supreme set the pages down. He looked at Stone. "You got anything on a backer?"

Stone leaned forward and touched a name near the bottom of the second page. "This intermediary. He moved money between operations years back, when Malik was still building the outer network. His name keeps showing up in Devon's peripheral data. Could be dead paper. Could be nothing." He sat back. "But I'd pull everything Devon has on him before the next sit-down. Just to close it off."

Supreme looked at the name. Then he looked at Kadeem.

"I don't want a war behind TK's ambition," Supreme said. "That's not good for either of us."