Page 4 of The Coldest: Stay Dangerous Part 2

“I’m finna be there in…” I check the GPS. “Six minutes.”

We both click at the same time, and I sigh.

You frontin’ so hard, Rick.

I roll my eyes, refusing to meet Fredo’s gaze in the mirror until the doors open to the parking garage.

Am I crazy for hallucinating my brother for the past five years? Probably. Or maybe it’s not a hallucination. Maybe it really is his ghost, following me around, trying to guide me because he knows I’m lost without him.

It wasn’t long between when I got word he was killed, and when he showed up to me. Soon as I touched down in Belize after his wake, the nigga was right there. I go back and forth between the hallucination and ghost theories. If he’s a hallucination, then maybe I’m not as fucked up as I think I am. Maybe my mind does know right from wrong, and my conscience just presents as the most solid nigga I’ve ever known so I could at least pretend to listen.

But then, if my brother is a ghost, then he’s just as lost as I am, out in the world. He ain’t leave me, because his soul is right here, going through life as best he can, keeping me as levelheaded as he could without being able to physically restrain me.

But that would mean I have no conscience at all. That would mean when our egg split in the womb, his half got all the goodness, leaving nothing but all the bad for me. All Pooh’s genes, and none of Ma’s.

I can’t decide which is better.

What if it’s both?

“Shut up,” I growl aloud as I speed toward Asa’s grandmother’s crib. Northupton is a casino town, like most of Nevada. But where the mob built up Vegas, Black people built up Northupton.

Asa’s granny lives away from all the glitz and glamour, on a lonely desert road. His van is parked in the driveway, next to a fucking cactus.

I pull in behind him and bounce out, just as he opens his front door and shuffles out.

“I’m guessing this isn’t a social call,” he says, grinning as we dap each other up.

We met in the Marines. Specifically, the off-the-books MARSOC unit I was in during my first tour. I’m Black, and he’s Jewish, so naturally we bonded being surrounded by a bunch of racist white Christian muthafuckas.

“No, it isn’t.”

He gestures for me to follow him. I’ve only been here once, years ago, when I had to make sure he was straight after taking a bullet to the chest. I hate this city, but for him, I braved it for a few hours.

Nothing has changed. Especially the finished basement that could put Shad’s computer room to shame.

“You know the Mathers family, right?” I ask, taking the dry shirt he hands me from his drawer to change into.

Asa crumbles up his face as we take our seats at his dashboard.

“The brothers all got hit up tonight. It’s all over the Net… oh shit! That was you?” He grins at me, mirth twinkling in his blue eyes before turning toward his keyboard.

“Somethin’ like that… but, I need the whole family gone. Tonight.”

Asa’s fingers still, before he turns to me again. This smile is a little more unhinged. He scratches at his chest, where the scar underneath his shirt prolly healed ugly as hell.

“And how do you figure, that lil’ ole Asa Goldstein can make moves like that?”

“You can’t,” I shrug. That much is true. Asa Goldstein has one kidney left, half a stomach, and hasn’t so much as done a pushup in prolly five years.

“Baaaabe, you said we were–oh! Hi Rico.”

We both turn as Asa’s wife bounds toward us. I stand so we can hug.

“But she can.”

“I can what?” Ingrid asks, her head comically turning to and fro.

“I got a job for you.”