Array 50 Cent - Baby Brother

“What you saying, Jop?” Raheem pushed away and searched his friend’s eyes, praying he was interpreting shit wrong. “What you mean, man?”

“They caught Baby Brother on kitchen duty, Rah. Buck-fiffed.”

The blood froze in Raheem’s veins. He staggered and went down to one knee, all six feet five inches of brawn and muscle now a big blob of grief-stricken jelly.

His brother was dead and he felt responsible. If he hadn’t switched shifts he woulda been there when they brought Baby Brother in. He could have protected him. Got him in Adult Segregation and kept him safe. Raheem cried. He didn’t give a fuck about the inmates who watched through the bars as he grieved on the floor. His baby brother was dead. The hope of his family was gone. How was he gonna go home and tell his other brothers some shit like that?

“Where is he?” he demanded, rising to his feet and looking around wildly. “Where the fuck they took my brother, man?” he demanded from Joplin and the other guards. “Some fuckin’ body better show me where the fuck my baby brother is right the fuck now!”

They saw the craziness in him and ten minutes later Raheem was standing in the prison morgue. He didn’t know the cat who worked down there, but his Corrections ID and the rage in his eyes was enough to convince the dude that Baby Brother was his family member.

“You know I’m supposed to wait until the family is officially notified, then do the whole identification process with a photo. You sure you up for this?”

Raheem had nodded yes, but when the morgue tech pulled the sheet back and he saw the brutality that had been inflicted on his younger brother, his knees sagged and he nearly stopped breathing as he grasped the cold metal gurney for support.

“Oh shit,” he cried, reaching out for Baby Brother’s cool body. Raheem slid his arm under his brother’s head and pulled him close, hot tears falling from his eyes as he moaned out loud, rocking the corpse and consumed with grief.

The tech stood by silently for a moment, then turned away, allowing his fellow officer a moment of grief. But Raheem was oblivious to everything except the fact that his brother was gone and that he hadn’t been there to save him.

Mama! he cried inside, his soul filled with shame. We was supposed to watch him, Mama! You begged us to look out for him. To take care of him! I’m sorry, Mama. Please…forgive me… I’m so sorry!

Two days later the Davis boys were mourning the murder of their beloved brother and plotting their revenge. The Santos family had already buried Sari, and Tony had gone off the deep end, terrorizing fools in broad daylight. Promising to rearrange some faces, his goonies were wreaking havoc in East New York and tossing anybody he even thought mighta been holding out on information into the Gowanus Canal.

Farad and Finesse had their crew out there too. Baby Brother had been murdered on The Rock, but they knew the streets still demanded a reckoning and they were both ready to get shit popping.

“It’s go to muthafuckin’ war time,” Finesse announced. Rage was in the air as they sat at their mother’s dining room table. “Somebody gotta pay for this shit, yo. The blade mighta been pulled from inside the joint, but the order came from outside the walls. My cats are out the streets with their ears close to the ground. A name is gonna fall outta somebody’s mouth before you know it. And when it does, we gone light these mothafuckin streets up with bullets and blood!”

Farad agreed. “Yeah. Any minute now,” he said, then nodded toward his brother Raheem, who sat with his elbows on the table and his face in his hands. “You still got them snitches behind the walls, right?”

Raheem looked ufl “Yeah. I’m leaning hard on Baby Brother’s cellie. That dirty bastard knows something and he’s gonna tell it. I think it mighta been that niggah whose nose I cracked last year. The one who tried to bite me.”

“Could be, but I been hearing noise about that fool Borne,” Finesse said. “He was breakin’ some of his new boys in the night Sari got popped. They was in the right area, son. And one of them cats dry-snitched and wrote a letter to his girl telling her somebody took down a Puerto Rican chick.”

Malik shook his head and crossed his arms. As a police officer he’d seen all kinds of shit on the streets. Black-on-black crime was ridiculous. It was the cheapest and most efficient method available for the white man to get rid of his problems. “I know for a fact Borne’s kids gotta slump somebody before they can get a tat and roll with him. And most of them be real young heads too. We’ve brought him in for contributing to the delinquency of a minor quite a few times, but he always manages to beat that shit.”

“But where was the fuckin’ C.O. who shoulda been holding down the kitchen!” Kadir demanded. He had made it in from A.C. and had been planning to ride with Antwan to visit Baby Brother as soon as Raheem gave them the word.

“Oh,” Raheem said quietly as a dark cloud came across his face, “don’t worry about that niggah. I’ma handle that. When I’m finished with that slime his bitch and kids ain’t even gonna recognize him.”

Priest sat at the head of the table with his hands clasped in front of him, praying quietly. He’d had to chase their dun-duns away from the front door, off of the stoofl They didn’t need no security, he explained. Baby Brother was gone, and now all they needed was the love of God and the strength to make it through.

He’d come inside and sat listening while his brothers vented, letting them talk their grief out. All of them had bloody hands. Farad and Finesse sold drugs, but they’d killed whenever the need arose.

And Malik. As happy as that cat was, he was still a black man with a gun. A couple of years back there’d been an Internal Affairs investigation that implicated him in some dirty business involving one of the top detectives in his precinct. Somebody had shot a young white man who was supposedly slumming through Brownsville to purchase drugs. The murder weapon was never found, but witnesses put Malik and the detective on the scene, although both of them denied any involvement.

Kadir was wild, like their father. He lived a dangerous life down in Atlantic City and probably had more bodies floating in the ocean than he’d ever admit. But Raheem…Antwan knew his brother like the back of his own hand. He walked a straight line when he could, but he was the most ruthless of them all when crossed.

“Leave it alone, Raheem. We gonna leave the retribution for the Lord, remember?”

Raheem snorted. “You the one preachin’, Antwan. Not me. I ain’t worried about my fuckin’ soul. All I’m worried about is not getting mines.”

“That’s what’s real,” Farad said, staring coldly at his oldest brother. “I can’t believe you so stuck on that Jesus shit that you would let a niggah murk your fuckin’ brother and tell us to leave the get-back for the Lord. You soft as fuck these days, man.”

Priest held up his hand. “Don’t roll out on me too far,” he warned sternly. “Everybody just chill out and let’s concentrate on getting Baby Brother in the ground. He didn’t live no life of crime, and we ain’t gonna blacken his memory with none either. All this payback and getback y’all talking ain’t gonna do nothing to bring him back. This thing could get bigger and uglier and the only thing that’ll accomplish is the spilling of more blood. Besides”—he glared at Farad and Finesse—“both of y’all out on parole as it is. You wanna go back upstate and get tossed in the bing like I did? Didn’t I do enough hard time for all of us?” He shook his head and glared at each of his brothers, letting them know that despite the priest’s collar he wore around his neck, he was still large and in charge.