The Cartel 3: The Last Chapter (12 page)

—Mecca

Carter embraced Garza and patted the old man on the back as they said their final good-byes. It was the inevitable day that they both had orchestrated, and now Carter was leaving with his freedom, while Garza would be left behind.

“Enjoy those cigarettes, old man,” Carter joked as he pointed to the boxes that Garza had stacked up in the corner, courtesy of Carter.

“Visit the priest for me. Make sure you give him what he has coming to him, and please ensure that my name is the last one he hears,” Garza replied in a low tone.

Carter nodded, letting Garza know that no further words needed to be spoken.

The tier of prisoners erupted in loud, boisterous cheers as Carter made his last walk down their halls. They were giving him praise for beating his case. Carter took it all in stride, never appearing arrogant, and simply making his exit.

Carter emerged from the prison gates with a luxury Lincoln town car awaiting him. Mecca emerged from the back of the car, and the usual tension that dwelled between the halfbrothers was non-existent in this moment. Mecca was genuinely happy to see Carter free, because he knew that Carter
was the only one who could reorganize The Cartel. Things would be business as usual under Carter’s reign.

“Good to see you, boy,” Mecca stated.

Carter slapped hands with Mecca and then embraced him tightly. “It’s good to see you too, fam. Real good,” Carter replied as he stepped inside of the car.

Carter gave the driver Miamor’s address. Now that his freedom had been reestablished, hers was the only company he wanted to keep upon his first night home. Her absence from his life had been slowly driving him insane.

He had sent Zyir by her place a few times, only to be told that she never answered the door and was nowhere to be found. He wanted to find out for himself, because he knew Miamor well. It was not in her character to leave him on stuck when he needed her most.

With the Garza Cartel connection being secured by Zyir, he knew that all of the pieces of his life were about to realign. She was the only thing missing. The center of his puzzle was lost and he had to find it, because without her, everything would be for nothing.

Mecca rode silently as he looked out of the window.
The sooner this ol’ lovesick nigga get over this bitch, the easier it’s gon’ be on him. Ain’t no coming back from the place I sent her,
he thought. A part of him just wanted to tell Carter the truth, but he knew that it would only complicate things. So, he allowed Carter to go on the dummy mission of searching for a girl he would never find.

“I had Zyir looking for Miamor while I was locked up. He said you told him she had skipped town,” Carter said as they pulled up to Miamor’s high-rise building.

“That’s what I heard. The bitch is bad news, bro. The way you were wife’n her before you went in, she should have been the one by your side through it all. She didn’t stand tall, my
nigga. Before the ink on the indictment papers dried, she got ghost on you. Fuck her, fam. It ain’t worth the headache. You’re out, and it’s time to move forward.”

Mecca’s advice would have resounded loud and clear if had been any other woman besides Miamor, but she was like an infection of the heart. Letting go would not be so easy.

Knowing that Mecca was too callous to understand the connection he shared with Miamor, he changed the subject. “When Zyir arrives, it’s back to business. Until then, I’m going to lay low and get my mind right. I have a couple of loose ends to clip before the shipment arrives,” he said.

Mecca nodded. “Your car will be delivered tomorrow morning.”

Carter exited the car and made his way up to Miamor’s condo. Although he had a key to her place, he knocked politely, not wanting to intrude. When he didn’t get an answer, he opened the door anyway and stepped inside. He immediately knew that she had not been there lately. The smell of rotting food permeated through the condo, and she had twenty new messages on her answering machine. As he moved through the apartment, his suspicions arose.

Where are you, ma?
he asked as he inventoried her bedroom. Her closets and dressers were still filled with clothes. He knew that she didn’t leave town, because she would never leave her possessions behind. As he collapsed onto her bed, his gut twisted in premonition. He had a feeling that her disappearance was not coincidental, and he was determined to find out exactly where she had gone.

But first, he had a message to deliver. Josiah Garza was about to reach out from behind the prison walls and seek vengeance for an unspeakable crime committed against him many years ago.

Leena’s words haunted Mecca:
God is the only one who can take the burden away, the guilt. You need to talk to Him.

He knew that she was right. He had never been a religious man, but the crimes that he had committed against his own family were torturing him.
If there really is a God, I need Him to take the pain away,
Mecca thought.

Although he had no regrets about killing Miamor, he did hate himself because he knew that by doing so, he had taken away someone who had meant the world to his brother. Carter was all he had left, and he feared that if the truth were ever revealed, he would have no one. For the first time in his life, Mecca felt remorse for things that he had done that hurt other people.

Even he had to admit that if he had not murdered Miamor’s sister, then she would have never come after his family. He had lived his life recklessly, without regard for others. Any way he tried to spin the situation, everything, all of the chaos and misery, led back to him. He had been the spark of it all. Mecca was the root of all evil. Bullets had been the answer to all of his problems, and now all of the lives he had taken were coming back to haunt him. He could barely sleep at night because he was afraid to close his eyes. If he could make amends, he would, but there was no reversing the things he had done.

As he sat in front of the Catholic Church, he knew that there was only one thing left to do: give his burdens to God and hope that his soul was capable of being cleansed. He wasn’t a Catholic, but knew that he could never confess his wrongdoings to a black minister. His business would travel through Miami’s gossip grapevine for sure. So, he chose a place where he could be low key. Confessing to a white man in a white church, he was confident that the conversation
would go no further than the four walls of the cathedral.

As he stepped out of the car, he felt his gun on his hip. As many people as he had murdered, it would be foolish to leave it behind. But he removed it from his waistline anyway and placed it beneath his car seat. Despite the fact that his conscience screamed for him to stay strapped, he did not want to carry the weapon inside of the church. He took a deep breath as he headed for the entrance, feeling as though his judgment day had arrived.

Carter walked side by side with the priest of St. Jude Catholic Church as he explained the concept of forgiveness and redemption. Carter had spent the past hour speaking with the old man at the request of Garza. Garza wanted to know if the priest displayed any remorse for the children he had betrayed in his past, and Carter followed his directions precisely. He was given specific instructions: “If the priest shows remorse, kill him quickly. If not, then a slow death will be better suited,” Garza had said.

“Have you ever done something that you are not proud of, Father?” Carter asked as they sat down near the front of the church.

“Son, no man is without sin. There are things that I have done in my past that God will hold me accountable for,” the priest replied as he became slightly emotional. “Some things that I have done I can never take back.”

“Father, I’m here to hold you accountable for those actions,” Carter stated in a low, serious tone. “Josiah Garza sent me.”

The old white man’s eyes widened in paralyzing fear as he allowed the emotion in his eyes to fall down his wrinkled cheeks. He knew exactly who Carter spoke of, and his mind flashed
back to the acts of molestation he had committed against Garza when he was only a small boy. It was then that he realized that today would be his last day on this earth. The priest began to weep as he leaned forward, resting his head on Carter’s shoulder.

Carter didn’t speak as he closed his eyes. He removed his .38 pistol from the jacket of his Brooks Brothers suit and placed the barrel directly against the priest’s chest. He allowed the old man to weep on his shoulder as he pulled the trigger, sending a bullet piercing through his heart.

“Forgive me, Father,” Carter whispered.

Even the dull sound of the silenced bullet echoed slightly against the walls of the cathedral. Carter caught the old man’s body as gravity took it to the floor, and he laid him down to rest behind one of the church pews. The old man’s eyes stared up into space, and Carter closed them. It wasn’t a task that Carter had wanted to do, but he had given his word. The old man had it coming to him for all of the abuse he had inflicted on the young boys of his parish over the years.

The clanking sound of the doors opening startled Carter.

“Fuck,” he whispered, knowing that he could never make it to the back door without being seen. He made sure that the priest’s body was out of sight, and then slid into the confessional. He hoped that the intruder would come and go quickly, without throwing a wrench in his program. He had planned to execute the priest quietly, without interruption. Carter did not want to have to hurt an innocent bystander for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The tension in his body was so high that he could hear his own heartbeat.

The other side of the confessional opened and Carter prepared himself to take another life. He saw the shadow of a man sit across from him on the other side of the lattice. Carter pointed the gun to the center of the shadow’s face, but the
voice that he heard come from the other side stopped him from shooting. He froze as he listened to a confession that he was never meant to hear.

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” Mecca stated. “I don’t know how this usually works, but I’m just gonna speak my piece. I feel like this is the only place where I can admit the truth without being judged. I know I’m not a good man. I’ve known it all along … ever since I was a kid. There was always something evil living inside of me, but I kept it dormant for a long time, until the day I killed my twin brother. I have a lot of blood on my hands, Father, but the blood of my brother I can’t seem to wash away. It’s like I see it on my hands all day.” Mecca lowered his head into his hands. Even admitting his sins behind the protection of anonymity was hard.

“I murdered my brother out of rage, out of jealousy, and then I lied to my entire family to cover my tracks. It feels like I’ve been lying ever since. I murdered my older brother’s girlfriend, and I look him in the face every day, watching the hurt in his eyes. I pretend like I don’t know why it’s there, when in actuality I caused it. When he asks about her, I plant seeds in his head to make him think she left town, when I know I left her in a basement in pieces.

“The sick part about it is that I enjoyed it. I know only God has the power to judge, but I was that bitch’s judge, jury, and executioner. She took too much away from me to let her live.

“My father would be ashamed of me. He put family above all else, and all of his sons were built just like him—except for me. Money was a good nigga, Father.” Mecca choked up and stopped speaking momentarily to get himself together. “He was my other half.

“My older brother is so much like our pops that it scares
me. I know I’m not one of God’s children, because I’m too much like the devil, but I’m tired, Father. I just want the demons in me to die. I want to be like my father—good.”

Carter sat on the other side of the booth with his finger wrapped tightly around the trigger of his pistol. Disbelief clouded his brain as he pictured Miamor’s face in his head. He pointed the gun directly at Mecca’s face. All he had to do was let off one shot to make things right. With one bullet, the deaths of Miamor and Monroe could be avenged, but the fact that Mecca was his brother made him hesitate. They both came from the same bloodline. They were the last of a dying breed. Carter wasn’t sure if he would be able to live with his decision if he chose to kill Mecca.

Carter put his hands to his face as he felt the hot tears threaten to fall. He was in utter turmoil just at the thought of Miamor’s death. She had been his life, his everything, the woman that he had wanted to marry. He had planned to spend an eternity with her, and in the blink of an eye, she had been taken away. Mecca had robbed him of his only chance in life to be truly happy. Miamor was his happiness.

Carter already knew of the basement that Mecca spoke of. It was The Cartel’s torture chamber, and he knew that Mecca had made her suffer a horrible death. He could hear Mecca crying as he poured out his sins, and Carter closed his eyes, allowing his own silent tears to fall. Both brothers sat on differences sides of the booth in turmoil.

The nigga deserve to die. All of this, this entire war started because of the lies he told. Everybody would still be alive if it wasn’t for Mecca. We broke the truce with the Haitians because we thought they were responsible for Money. All along it’s been him,
Carter thought. His rage was so prevalent that it burned his insides,
making him feel as though he would explode at any moment. Hearing Mecca’s confession and finally finding out the truth caused his stomach to turn violently. He was sick with grief. He had loved Mecca and trusted him.

How could he kill Money? He was our brother,
Carter thought.
How did I miss what was right in front of my face for so long? Mecca murdered Miamor.

Carter couldn’t grasp the fact that two people he had cared dearly for had been ripped from underneath him. It was unfathomable, and even though he had heard the words come directly from Mecca’s mouth, he still did not want to believe them. Carter remembered all of the lies that Mecca had told to cover his tracks as he watched Mecca rise and begin to walk away. It was up to him to end Mecca’s reign of terror, but he could not do it. Sitting underneath’s God’s watchful eye, all he could do was mourn the deaths of those he had lost at the hands of his only remaining sibling.