Rosewood

Chapter 12: Murder Clothes

2 days later

I sprout up after dozing off for the umpteenth time. My Desert Eagle sat on my lap, everytime I awake it reminds me why I'm here.

The sun was blazing and my day started feeling longer than planned. I'm two seconds away from getting out my car and going knock on Smoke's front door, to see if he's alright.

My lil stakeout included a big ass bag of Dorito's and 6 cans of Pepsi.

I'm worried but not as worried as I would be if it was Mozzy or Gleechy. Or shit, anybody else for that matter. Smoke wasn't an easy target, if he was, he would've been dead a long time ago.

His body count was a mystery, but everyone likes to assume 8 or 9, maybe to tone down how dangerous he really is.

From what I know through Mozzy and some loose lips throughout the city. He came up under his father's most respected hitman, Ricardo Montreal.

What gave Smoke such an advantage in the street's was that he could blend into any crowd of people. Even though the only hispanic blood he had in his family was his grandmother and a little bit of his pops, he was so lightskin due to his mother being mixed, that he can pass for Mexican just as much as he can pass for Black.

Even though he been a loner since we were all kids, everyone always embraced him. I never could really put my finger on why, my only guess was that he was so mysterious. Since a kid, he hung with Mexican gangs, due to him being semi-raised by Ricardo. He also hung with Bloods, due to his relationship with Mozzy.

As for someone like me who looks obviously black, I can't just walk up in a Mexican hood and make alliances. Nor can a Mexican just walk up in my hood looking for alliance, but somehow Smoke got lucky and didn't have that problem.

Well I can't say he's too lucky, because you already deal with enough beef being affiliated with one gang, imagine two. Fortunately the two gangs he was affiliated in didn't have beef with each other. However, they did have beef with other gangs, and Smoke had to be present for both of them.

In 2005, the Mandero Projects had beef with another Mexican project down the street called the Alcalla Projects, for territory reasons and whatnot. Next thing you know it was a big war. And let's just say what used to be the Alcalla Project's is now a strip mall. It was so bad, the news stopped reporting on it. People were dying everyday, so eventually people started moving from around there. Word on the street was Alcalla didn't have a enough firepower to sustain a war so they surrendered, but by then it was too late, too much blood had been shed. That only made the Mandero's go harder. One of the bloodiest weekends of Rosewood happened right after the "surrender", 38 people killed and 71 wounded. Of course all that wasn't from the war, but it was definitely the main reason for it.

The war lasted for almost a month, and every day maybe 1 or 2 people were killed but no one ever seen anything like that last weekend. And around that time, Mozzy ain't hear from Smoke for weeks. But when he finally did, he said he wasn't the same. When the war was officially over Smoke had the utmost respect on the Westside.

But the moment that put his name on city-wide radar, was the time he took out Mike Sosa's top hitter, Randy Wise. It's still a "rumor" if you ask DSG saluters, but everyone knows it's true. DSG still denies it because it's embarrassing, Randy was 28 doing hits his whole life and was killed by a 15 year old.

Two weeks prior to Randy's demise. He shot and killed Mozzy's uncle, Big Ron. Then the next day he killed the 6Mobb Hustler's (Blood Set) gang leader. He shot and injured a few more people that same week. Point is, he bullied them knowing that 6Mobb wasn't known for killing just dealing, and Mike Sosa was trying to take over the Westside like he did the East.