The Prince of Pentium

Kye, Sha-Born, Big John, Clay, and Justice had all done their parts getting everything organized for the Gaines Berlin job. They were into phase three of the seven phases to complete the hit. Prince was just finishing up opening up all of the Swiss bank accounts using the new identities the team was able to obtain. Just as Prince had planned, each account was open, but the bank had put a hold on each of the one-hundred-thousand-dollar deposits, totaling six hundred thousand dollars. Since the money wasn’t physically taken, the firm didn’t know about it. Surely Monday morning when the market opened up they would be $12.6 million light. But for now, everything was running smooth. Prince closed his laptop as he sat in his car ready to drive. The throwaway cell phone he had bought for this job was ringing. “Hello?” “Hello, yes, is this Central Trucking?” “Yes, it is,” Prince said, keeping up the false front. “Oh, good. This is Amanda Hussar. I’m calling with Fleet Bank.” “Yes, how may I help you?” “Oh, no, sir. We were just giving your company a courtesy call to thank you for choosing our bank to do business with. Sir, may I speak to the owner? Or am I speaking to him?” “You’re speaking to him,” Prince said, taking on the role. “Oh, Mr. Osterman, correct? Well, sir, are there any questions that have for us at this time?” Prince thought about it. He didn’t want to put the operation under jeopardy by sending off any red flags, asking the wrong questions. So he thought fast and just said, “Excuse me, ma’am. We are very busy, and I have very little time to speak to you right now.” The woman on the other end was understanding. “Oh, that’s fine, sir. If you have any questions, please feel free to call our 1-800 toll-free number.” Before she could finish her statement, Prince hung up the phone. Prince had arranged for his crew to meet at the Marriot Hotel in downtown Brooklyn. He’d paid for two connecting suites. He wanted to have physical contact with each of them for the next thirty-six hours. This was serious business, no room for mistakes. Prince went into a daydream state of mind. He thought about it—should he just say fuck his crew and do the job himself? $12.6 million. He smiled and came back to his senses. Two million dollars was enough to keep him straight. Twelve million was too much power for him. The mere thought of coming into that kind of money, power, and respect scared him. What would come of all of this? He was crossing over into unknown territory. This was every hustler’s dream. He wasn’t even nineteen years old and was about to become a small-time millionaire. He looked at himself in the car’s rearview mirror and spoke to himself. “Damn, Prince, what are you becoming? What are you fucking doing? Look at you, you’ve sold ya’self to the devil.” But just as the good angel on his shoulder was buzzing in his ear, the bad angel with the pitch fork had a voice that was louder and much more convincing. “Nigga, fuck what he’s saying. Nine-to-five just ain’t going to cut it, kid. Go get it, dawg, go go gadget go. Or may I say, go go Prince go!” Prince shook his head, bringing his attention back. The voices in his head were fading away, echoing the words, “Get money, get money.” Prince put the Lexus into drive and headed to Brooklyn. Everyone had arrived at the hotel. To Prince’s surprise, nobody was late. Prince kept his word about getting them all new threads—Armani, Bill Blass, and Versace. Pinky rings and new eighteen-karat-gold watches filled the room. Nobody could tell that just a few days ago, these guys were dressed in Timberlands, jeans, and sweatshirts. Prince was funding this operation from the ground up. In the hustler’s manual, rule number one was, it takes money to make money. To all of you hustlers in the real world, be sure to school the newcomers about this rule when it’s time to get money. Even though in the white-collar fraud, computer hacking game you can make a quick $10k by just pushing some buttons, you still need some money to purchase the laptop to hack on. Well, not really! A stolen credit card number could get you one, so let’s rephrase that comment. White-collar crime is the shit! No money to invest—just an idea and one hungry nigga. But overall, if you get deeper into this game, indeed you are going to need money from some of your schemes to carry you on to the next job. So in all, it takes money to make money. Here these guys were, from street thugs to Corporate Thugs overnight. “All right, all right, I need everybody wit me here!” Prince had a way of capturing everybody’s attention. “Listen up. This job is damn near breaking me! But for what it’s worth, it’s all good.” Everyone laughed. They all had bottles of Grey goose and honey Dutch Masters filled with Brooklyn’s finest chocolate tye. Key said, “Yo, Prince, take us to the top!” “And Kye, the top is where we will be!” Prince opened up the closet, and there lay six small, square boxes with the name Toshiba. “All right you all, welcome to my world.” Prince gave everybody a box and kept one for himself. “Laptops!” Justice was smiling ear to ear. “Nigga, stop playing!” “Ain’t no secret we all got jobs to do. How else did you niggas think we was going to do this job? By telephone, or just by one computer? These are your money makers for now. But word to the wise—after we do this hit, wipe those babies down and throw them in the ocean.” “Yo, Prince, why do we have to do that for?” “Clay, I thought you had a little bit more sense than the average fucking bear.” “Na P, I’m just curious.” Prince questioned everybody in the room. “Does anybody know why we should throw these nice pieces of hardware away once we finish the job?” Big John spoke up. “Yeah. So that nobody knows it was us.” Prince had to school his boys. “Okay, listen up. What Big John said is correct. We don’t want to be traced by these laptops at all, by going on the Internet. Listen, with two million dollars, you can buy a new one that’s way faster and better than these. It’s not worth federal prison for something that could’ve been avoided, you all feel me?” Everyone nodded their head in agreement to what Prince was saying. Then Kye said, “Yo, check this out. Let’s all get out of this hotel room and go relax and enjoy ourselves!” Sha-Born chimed in, “I know a spot in Manhattan! Those Oriental girls will love us long time.” Big John added, “Then after that we can get somethin’ to eat. Yo, Clay, you brought some of that Hawaiian Salvania red tip herb?” “Ain’t no question, my dude!” Prince really didn’t like the idea of celebrating before a hit. But since last week everybody had been running around, and most likely they were all on edge. There was no room for any of them to be stressed or unfocused on this big week. Yeah, tonight would be their chill-out night. “Fuck it.” Prince was still funding all of this. “Might as well live! You only got one life to live.” Prince tapped his pants pocket, affirming that the knot of money was there. “Yo, Clay, roll a blunt for each one of us. Kye, call downstairs tell them we need a stretch limo. Something real big!” Kye smiled. “Gotcha, my dawg!” Clay sat for a quick second after Prince asked for him to roll all the blunts. “Yo, Prince be on some real shit,” he said, laughing. “Y’all niggas roll ya own blunts!” Clay threw out an ounce of herb on the table. “You know what, Clay? This time next week we will be on South Beach reading the Goodyear blimp say the world is ours.”