Carl Weber's Kingpins: Queens

by Erick S. Gray

Genres: African American Urban

Synopsis

From a murderous Bonnie and Clyde stirring up a hornet’s nest to a drug war and the rise of heroin overdoses, Detectives Michael Acosta and Chris Emerson are tasked with investigating the rash of robberies and brutal murders happening in the borough. Queens is bubbling with heated
violence, as rival kingpins vie for power in Erick S. Gray’s intense addition to the bestselling Kingpins series.
It’s a new millennium, and Nasir’s finally coming home from doing a bullet on Riker’s Island for a petty drug charge. He’s lost everything, and he craves to come up again in the streets and take back his power and respect.
One night in a strip club, Nasir reunites with Denise, the sister of his best friend, Sincere. Their friendship turns sexual, and they fall deeply in love. Nasir comes up with a master plan, and they set out to rob drug dealers, becoming the new Bonnie and Clyde of South Jamaica, Queens.
Sincere is livid when he hears news about his little sister hooking up with his old partner in crime. Nasir has become a dangerous man, and he’s dragging Denise down a dangerous path. However, Sincere is locked away upstate, unable to get to his sister. So, he calls in some
favors and does the unthinkable. He places a hit on his old best friend.
Meanwhile, Zulu is the new power in the neighborhood, a fierce drug kingpin who runs Queens and New York City with an iron fist—until he gets knocked by theFeds. There’s a snitch in his crew, and this informant’s testimony could send him away for life.
Zulu gives Zodiac, his right-hand man, the task of killing this rat before he can testify, but Zodiac has other plans. He wants to run the organization, and that’ll be easier with Zulu out of the way. As Zodiac works to build his kingdom, it sparks a civil war in the organization.

Release date: September 27, 2022

Publisher: Urban Books

Print pages: 288

Sample

Jamaica, Queens, 1999

The blacktop streets absorbed the spring sunshine, with a nice breeze being a sweet, fragranced petal wrapped around the urban neighborhood. It was a bright day, and a yellow taxicab came to a stop in front of the run-down row house on an underprivileged block in one of the worst neighborhoods in the city—Jamaica, Queens. It was early morning, and the activity on the block was minimal. The drug dealers, the knuckleheads, and residents were still asleep, and everything seemed still for the moment. But that would change in a few hours. It was Sunday morning, and the only movement happening was the people going to church.

Sincere stared at the row house from the back seat of the cab. He looked like he didn’t want to be there. He looked reluctant to get out.

“This the right place, right?” the driver asked.

“Yeah, it is,” Sincere replied.

Sincere sighed. He paid the fare and climbed out of the cab in his army fatigues, carrying a military-issued duffle bag. He stood tall on the block clad in camouflage and tan-colored boots. The cab drove off, leaving Sincere alone. He looked around, and everything looked the same, including the dilapidated blacktop basketball court on the corner. He had been gone for four years, and his memories of the place were ambivalent.

Sincere approached the row house. It was one of many crowded homes in poor conditions on the street. It was the ghetto. He knew it was still violent, poor, and plagued with drug use. During his time in the army, he traveled and was able to see the world. For two years, he was stationed in Japan—at Camp Zama. To him, it was a beautiful country. It was amazing to him that he was living across the world from where he’d grown up. At first, the language barrier was pretty hard for him, but he’d learned a few phrases.

Now that he was back in South Jamaica, Queens, he would have to readjust again—to the hood. Sincere slung the duffle bag over his shoulder and walked the steps to the row house. He knocked on the door and waited. It was eight a.m., and he doubted his family would be up. He tried the doorknob, and it was locked. Sincere continued to knock until his sister, Denise, answered the door. When she saw her older brother, her eyes lit up with glory, and she screamed in joy.

“Sincere, you’re home,” Denise hollered.

She leaped into his arms, and they hugged each other. They both were happy to see each other.

“Why didn’t you tell us you were coming home?” Denise asked.

“I wanted to surprise y’all,” he replied.

She finally released her embrace of him and beamed. Denise was 16 years old. Sincere took a step back and stared at her. “Little sis, you’re growing up.”

Denise smiled. She had rich, ebony skin and an angelic face with high cheekbones and curves.

“Am I going to have to grill and intimidate a boyfriend?”

“I don’t have a boyfriend, not yet, anyway,” she said.

Sincere grinned. “Good. Because you’re still my little sister, no matter how much you’re filling out.”

“And I can take care of myself, Sincere. I don’t need a babysitter or a bodyguard.”

Sincere laughed. “Okay. Where’s Ma and Maurice?”

“Ma is sleeping upstairs, and Maurice isn’t here,” she said.

“What you mean Maurice isn’t here?”

“He comes and goes, Sincere. Sometimes he’s gone for days,” Denise let it be known.

Sincere looked troubled by the news. Maurice was his 19-year-old little brother. Before Sincere shipped out, Maurice had a penchant for getting into trouble. Growing up, Sincere had always been his little brother’s guardian angel. Before Sincere was a soldier for the United States Army, he was a soldier for the “Gotti Boys.” They were a gang out of Queens known for drug dealing, violence, prostitution, murders, racketeering, and extortion. The gang was run by Dominique and Trey-Trey, brothers with a penchant for violence. They were feared and respected.

Eventually, Trey-Trey was murdered by rivals, and Dominique was indicted under the Kingpin and RICO Act. He received a life sentence. Fortunately for Sincere, he was low on the totem pole when the Feds came crashing down on the gang, and he escaped indictment. He’d joined the military and cleaned up his entire act.

Sincere entered the house and, to his shock, saw that things had changed a bit. An upgrade had taken place. A big-screen TV was in the living room. Their furniture wasn’t secondhand. Leather couches and stylish coffee tables decorated the living room. There was even an elegant dining room set.

“Whoa,” Sincere uttered. “Where did all of this come from?”

“Maurice has been helping out lately,” said Denise.

“Helping out, huh?”

When Sincere left, things were poor. Now, his home looked like a scene out of New Jack City. Sincere knew what Maurice was into. He wasn’t stupid. Unfortunately, his little brother had followed in his footsteps.

“We were drowning, Sincere,” said Denise. “You weren’t here.”

Sincere sighed. He set down his duffle bag and continued to look around.

“Are you hungry? I can make you some breakfast,” Denise said.

Sincere grinned. “You cooking now?”

“Yup. Ma ain’t doin’ it, so someone had to step up.”

“Cool.”

“You want me to wake up Ma?”

“Nah, let her sleep,” he replied.

He followed her into the kitchen. There was a small TV on the counter, and the fridge was filled with food. Sincere took a seat at the table. Denise started the preparations for breakfast.

“I’m gonna make you some French toast, cheese eggs, grits, and bacon,” she said.

“Damn, I get the royal treatment, huh?”

“Of course.” Denise smiled.

As Denise cooked, the two talked and did some catching up.

“Tell me about Japan,” Denise asked.

“It’s far,” he joked. “But I liked it. The people are nice.”

The aroma from Denise’s cooking permeated the entire home. Soon, their mother entered the kitchen, tying together her silk robe.

“Denise, what you in here cooking?” Janet asked.

Right away, she saw her son, Sincere, seated at the table. She froze, shocked by his sudden presence. Sincere smiled. “Hey, Ma.”

“Sincere, is that you?”

Sincere rose from the table, and his mother greeted him with open arms. It was a happy reunion. She hugged her son so tight it almost felt like she was about to crush him.

“You should have told me you were arriving today,” said Janet.

“I wanted to surprise everyone.”

“Well, I’m surprised.”

Janet looked her son up and down. The glee in her eyes was so bright that the kitchen temperature went up. Sincere looked exceptionally handsome in his uniform. He stood six foot one with a muscular build and shaved head. Growing up, he had always been fit, but the military made him stronger. And he had cut off his braids.

Janet hugged her son again. And then she asked, “Are you home for good?”

Sincere nodded. “Yeah, honorable discharge,” he said.

Janet smiled. “Well, we need to celebrate. My baby is back home. Let me go upstairs and put on some clothes.”

Janet pivoted and left the kitchen. Denise set a hot, steaming plate of breakfast on the table for her brother. Sincere looked at her and asked, “How’s she been doing? She looks good.”

“She’s been doing okay. Been clean for the past year now,” said Denise.

Sincere was pleased to hear that. He smiled. It was hard to be the oldest sibling and deal with his mother’s drug use in the past. Crack was her drug of choice, and Janet had put her family through hell. So, to see her clean was a relief for Sincere. When he’d left for the army, Denise was 12, and Maurice was 15. It was a hard choice for him to make because they were young, but it had to be done. He would have been dead or locked up if he had stayed in Queens.

“Sit down and eat, big bro.”

Sincere sat at the table. “Let me see if you got skills in the kitchen. But keep 911 on speed dial just in case,” he joked.

“Oh, I got skills. My cooking will taste like sex in your mouth,” Denise quipped.

Sincere chuckled at the comment. “I didn’t need to know all that.”

“When I graduate, I want to go to culinary school,” Denise said.

Sincere was surprised. “Oh, word? That’s what’s up, sis. I’m proud of you.”

He took a few mouthfuls of his sister’s cooking, and his face lit up. “Damn, girl, you weren’t lying. What the hell you put in these eggs?”

Denise beamed. “If I tell you, then I will have to kill you,” she joked.

Sincere continued to devour her cooking. Finally, he was home, and he was happy to see his family doing good. He thought he would come home to dysfunction and chaos, maybe with his siblings in foster care and his mother still on crack. He felt guilty that he’d lost contact with them, becoming a different person on the other side of the world. He underestimated them. Now, his only concern was Maurice.

Sincere continued to enjoy his sister’s cooking with Maurice heavy on his mind.

Maurice took a few deep pulls from the blunt, inhaling the potent marijuana, readying himself for tonight’s event. He sat in the passenger seat of the Dodge Intrepid, clad in all black, as it traveled east on the Belt Parkway. Rap music blared inside the car. Voltron was driving the vehicle. Sitting in the back seat was a man named Drip-Drip.

It was nearing midnight, making traffic on the parkway sparse. The large green sign above read: “Southern State Parkway, Eastern L.I.” It’s where they were going. Voltron steered the Intrepid onto the Southern State Parkway, heading into the suburbs of Long Island. They continued to smoke and listen to rap music. Maurice looked calm. He gazed out the window in silence. The scenery transformed from urban Queens to sprawling, green suburbs within ten minutes.

The trio inside the car was on a mission. They were determined to get rich and make money by any means necessary. They were young, hungry, and reckless. They traveled deeper into Long Island and arrived at a community called Valley Stream. Maurice read off the navigational instructions to an address written on paper.

“It says turn right,” said Maurice.

Voltron turned right. Valley Stream, Long Island, was a diverse and middle-class town along with the Nassau and Queens border in Long Island. They drove through the neighborhood for ten minutes and soon arrived at a Cape Cod-style home. It was a tidy little rectangle of a house with its long side facing the street. Shutters adorned the windows.

“This is it,” Maurice pointed out.

The men stared at the residence. It was dark and quiet with a manicured lawn. There wasn’t any movement inside. On both sides of the property were neatly trimmed, high shrubberies, and in the driveway was a Lexus Coupe. Voltron looked at Maurice and Drip-Drip and said, “Y’all niggas ready to get this money?”

Both men nodded.

“No doubt,” Maurice replied.

What looked like a quiet, family home in the suburbs was the opposite. It was a stash house for one of the most notorious drug dealers in Queens, a man named Zulu. The house was meant to look family-oriented and unassuming. Only a handful of people knew about the location. Voltron and Drip-Drip had gotten the location from a source and information that the stash house held 9 percent of Zulu’s fortune. They brought along Maurice, knowing he was a rider like them.

Drip-Drip and Maurice masked up and armed themselves with semiautomatic pistols. They climbed out of the vehicle, stealthily moved toward the home, hid behind the trimmed shrubberies, and waited. Voltron kept a lookout inside the nondescript Intrepid. The only thing they needed to do was be patient and see if their source was correct.

A silver BMW 528i pulled into the driveway behind the Lexus twenty minutes later. Two men, Frank and Heat, climbed out of the Beamer and opened the trunk. They removed a small, black duffle bag and approached the front entrance to the house. The two men notified the occupants of the house that they were there. The moment the front door opened, Drip-Drip and Maurice sprang from the bushes and charged at them with their guns drawn.

Voltron leaped from the car and hurried toward the action with his pistol in hand. Drip-Drip and Maurice forced the men inside at gunpoint.

“Get the fuck down! Get the fuck down,” Drip-Drip shouted at everyone, waving his pistol wildly.

The two occupants of the house, a man and a woman, were shocked and hesitant to comply.

“Y’all niggas really doin’ this?” the woman uttered with contempt. “Y’all must be fuckin’ suicidal.”

Maurice thrust his gun into her face and growled, “Bitch, if you don’t shut the fuck up, I’ma blow ya fuckin’ brains out.”

She frowned, relenting. Drip-Drip relieved the men of their weapons. Everyone was lying face down on the ground, handcuffed and held at gunpoint. Voltron snatched the bag from the men and unzipped it. Bundles of cash inside filled it up. Voltron smiled and uttered, “Bingo.”

“Fuck all of you niggas. I guarantee we gonna find out who you are, then come after you and your fuckin’ families,” Frank growled from the floor.

Drip-Drip spun his way, scowling. “What you say, nigga?”

Drip-Drip didn’t give Frank a chance to repeat himself. Instead, he stood over Frank and started to pistol-whip him while he was handcuffed. It was brutal. The occupants could only look on in horror.

“Talk that shit now, nigga. Huh, nigga?” Drip-Drip shouted as the butt of his pistol repeatedly smashed against Frank’s face.

“Yo, he said no bodies,” Maurice reminded them.

“Fuck that,” Drip-Drip said, and suddenly, his gun went off. Frank’s face exploded, splattering his brain across the floor with his blood quickly pooling.

Voltron and Maurice stared at Drip-Drip in shock. But then, that fast, things went south.

“Nigga, what the fuck did you do?” Maurice screamed.

“He shouldn’t have been talkin’ that shit,” Drip-Drip countered with apathy.

The occupants were horrified. They knew they were going to die soon. Voltron and Drip-Drip exchanged knowing looks, and then Voltron fired a bullet into the back of Heat’s head. Drip-Drip killed the third man. Then only the woman was left. Both men stared at Maurice.

“What you waiting for, nigga?” asked Drip-Drip. “Do that bitch.”

Maurice was hesitant. He’d never killed anyone before. He thought it would be a simple robbery, but now it was bloodshed.

“You down or not?” asked Voltron.

“Please, don’t kill me! I’ll do whatever y’all want,” she begged.

Drip-Drip smirked. “First, this bitch hard core. Now, she ready to suck dick to survive,” he mocked.

“Please . . .”

Drip-Drip crouched to her and uttered, “You cute. You wanna suck my dick?”

She whimpered. She was bound and at their mercy. But deep inside, she knew there would be no mercy for her. Evil lurked in their eyes.

Drip-Drip stood up and remarked, “Fuck this bitch.” He looked at Maurice and said, “Do this bitch now, nigga.” He wasn’t taking no for an answer.

Maurice pointed the pistol at her as she continued to cry out for mercy, but her words fell on deaf ears. Finally, reluctantly, he squeezed the trigger.

Bak bak bak!

He pumped several rounds into the back of her head and back. Her cries were now still. Voltron and Drip-Drip gawked at Maurice, and they were satisfied.

“You did good, my nigga,” said Drip-Drip.

Maurice stood there with the smoking gun in his hand, stunned by his actions. Voltron lifted his mask to reveal his identity. “Let’s be out,” he said.

Drip-Drip picked up the duffle bag filled with cash and started toward the door. Maurice and Voltron were right behind him. However, unbeknownst to the three men, when Voltron had lifted his mask, his reflection had hit a mirror situated on a nearby wall. Someone hiding in a hallway closet recognized him.

When the three men left, the survivor, a soldier named Keys, emerged from his hiding spot in the closet, thankful to be alive. However, he was appalled by the grizzly scene. They were all executed. He frowned and right away made the needed phone call.

The early-morning sun surged through the bedroom window. It was another bright spring day and Sincere’s second day home. He glanced at the time. It was six a.m. Sincere had slept in his little brother’s bedroom. When he woke up to see Maurice didn’t come home, he sighed. He didn’t want to worry. Denise mentioned that he had a girlfriend and sometimes stayed at her place. However, Sincere wanted to see his little brother again. It had been four years, and he missed him.

Sincere did a few morning calisthenics in the bedroom, push-ups and sit-ups. It was routine for him. He then walked into the hallway to find Denise getting ready for school and his mother getting ready for work.

“Good morning, everyone.” Sincere smiled.

They replied, “Good morning,” and Denise disappeared into the bathroom.

It was a happy home for once. Janet was working as a cashier at a retail store. She’d been there for five months, and Denise was a straight-A student at Jamaica High School. Sincere was proud of them.

While Denise and Janet went to school and work, Sincere decided to jog around the neighborhood. He felt it would allow him to catch up on things and see what had changed and what didn’t. So, wearing basketball shorts and a white tank top, with his physique showing, Sincere started his early-morning jog. In Japan, every morning, he ran three miles.

He headed toward Guy R. Brewer Blvd., a busy two-way street inundated with storefronts, homes, and traffic. Everyone was going to work or school. Next, he decided to jog south, down the boulevard. He raced to Linden Blvd. and decided to turn back around and head back to the location from where he started. While jogging, Sincere took in the neighborhood. Much hadn’t changed. Certain areas and locations triggered memories of his earlier life when he was with the Gotti Boys. Thirty minutes later, he jogged by the notorious housing projects, South Jamaica Housing, a.k.a. 40 Projects. It was still morning, and the activity was picking up. Now that the kids were in school and residents were at work, the morning hustlers and drug dealers emerged. The crackheads were roaming about, searching for their daily high.

Sincere jogged parallel to the sprawling projects. He was in great shape. When he was about to cross the small intersection, he noticed a green Honda Accord making a left turn near him. It was blaring rap music. It came to a stop, and the horn blew. Sincere eyed the vehicle, being cautious. If an attack was to happen, though he was unarmed, he was trained to defend himself. The driver’s door opened, and Sincere was ready to react. Friend or foe? he wondered.

“Sincere, nigga, is that you?” someone called out.

Sincere eyed the driver climbing out, and he breathed a sigh of relief. It was his day one homie, Nasir. Nasir was all smiles.

“Nasir?” Sincere called out.

He approached Nasir, and they embraced, giving each other a brotherly hug.

“Damn, my nigga, you lookin’ all swollen and shit. The army got you lookin’ like the Terminator,” Nasir joked. “When did you get back?”

“Yesterday.”

“That’s what up. So, what, you were over there fighting terrorists, making our country safe?”

Sincere chuckled. “Nah. Just doing my job.”

“No doubt.”

“That’s your ride?” Sincere asked him.

“Yup. That’s my baby.”

It was a ’95 midsized Honda Accord with tinted windows and chromed rims. It was showy like Nasir. A large, gold chain with a diamond-encrusted Jesus pendant dangled around Nasir’s neck. He also wore fresh, beige Tims. In addition, he sported a throwback Chicago Bulls Jersey and a diamond pinky ring shined on his left hand. Sincere already knew what his friend was into.

Sincere and Nasir met during their freshmen year in high school in 1989. They both were pretty boys with catchy names. Nasir even joked, “Sincere and Nasir; nigga, we sound like a duo.” Sincere had laughed. They both were on the high school basketball team, and they dated pretty girls. And they both had dropped out of high school to run the streets and sell dope. But it was Sincere who decided to get his GED a year later.

While conv. . .