5 ways to trip up Tariq in Power Book: Ghost S4

Rich kid drug dealer Tariq St Patrick (Michael Rainey Jr) and his college “project partner” Brayden Weston (Gianni Paolo) start the final season of Power Book II: Ghost with empty pockets and a $100 000 bounty on each of their heads from British drug lord Noma Asaju (Caroline Chikezie).

Tariq’s dirty lawyer Davis MacLean (Method Man) – who’s about to get debarred – offers them one parting word of advice: get out of New York. Because Noma’s hitmen aren’t the only people gunning for them. Drug queenpin Monet’s (Mary J Blige) oldest son Cane (Woody McClain) and his love Effie (Alix Lapri) – Tariq’s ex-high school sweetheart – are out to get him for supposedly plugging Monet full of lead in the Season 3 finale, as is Cain’s brother Dru (Lovell Adams-Gray). And DEA Agent Angel “Junior” Young (Kevin Tyler Rodriguez) is locked in on Tariq. 

They’re all armed to the teeth as they descend on the Stansfield University campus. But when the smoke clears, Junior is dead thanks to Tariq, who convinces Noma that he’s doing her a favour by getting rid of Junior to stop him from investigating her network. While that slick move gets Noma to call off the bounty, Junior’s murder sends Junior’s mom Paz (Elizabeth Rodriguez) running straight to Detective Don Carter (Michael Ealy), a vindictive NYPD detective who has an axe to grind against drug cartels.

Can he succeed where the cops and agents before him have failed spectacularly? Anonymously – because snitches get stitches – here are five things that Don Carter should look into if he’s out to get Tariq…

Binge Power Book II: Ghost S4 now.

1. Junior’s death

Tariq covers his tracks immaculately in Season 4, episode 1, shooting Junior with the assassin’s gun, then firing Junior’s gun to make it look like Tariq himself killed the shooter. He gives Brayden any incriminating evidence – including the flash drive that criminal attorney Cooper Saxe (Shane Johnson) sent Junior, and the assassin’s phone that Tariq used to make his deal with Noma – and he makes Brayden scamper before he phones campus security to report “someone with a weapon on campus”. 

But the story that he spins for the NYPD is as full of holes as Monet. Tariq tells the cops: “I saw him go down, I grabbed the guy’s gun and did what I had to do to stop the sh**t. It happened so fast I just didn’t even think about it. I just know that guy had to be stopped.” Great, but Tariq is no campus random who heroically picked up a cop’s gun and took down an active shooter with a clean headshot (already suspicious). Since Tariq arrived at Stansfield, two of the professors who got closest to him have been murdered or died – Carrie Milgram (Melanie Liburd) and Jabari Reynolds (Justin McManus) – along with the student Tariq was tutoring, Zeke Cross (Daniel Bellomy). 

Tariq was previously in court dodging RICO (organised crime) charges and Junior was a DEA agent, so this would in no way be “case closed, throw the kid a parade”. Junior is at Stansfield specifically to speak to Tariq, which he tells Paz along with two students, BruShandria (LightSkinKeisha) and Ashley (Zoe Whitford). He goes straight to Stansfield after discussing Tariq with his boss, NYPD Sergeant Blanca Rodriguez. And he tells Blanca that, according to the records on the flash drive that Cooper Saxe sent him before he died, “Tariq St Patrick and Councilman Tate are connected to expedited green cards for an Obi Okeke … Some work that I did on my own that I’m still doing could reveal a bigger drug conspiracy.” 

That alone should have the cops combing through Junior’s notes and computer backups to see what he uncovered. The fact that Tariq steals the flash drive that Junior is waving at him doesn’t leave them empty handed, either, as Junior opens that drive and reads it on his work computer.

And perhaps the cops should also ask why a supposed school shooter opened fire in a parking lot that was empty aside from three people. Normally the bodycount boys head for the roof or crowded areas like the classrooms and canteens. 

2. Cooper Saxe’s petty post-mortem gifts

Before he was murdered in Power Book II: Ghost Season 3, FBI agent turned criminal defence attorney Cooper Saxe sent out a number of “gifts” to destabilise the criminal networks around him and bring down Tariq. While the flash drive he sent Junior did not, alas, contain Seasons 1-6 of Power, which would have explained so much, it does connect the dots between Tariq St Patrick and drug queenpin Noma.

As long as the name Cooper Saxe keeps coming up, Detective Don and his team should go through everything Saxe had his fingers in with a fine tooth comb. Saxe liked to keep insurance and he didn’t seem like a one-copy man. Part of the reason Power fans have been foaming at the mouth to know what’s on the flash drive since the Season 3 finale, is that we know that Saxe probably had the following recordings and pieces of evidence: 

• A video recording of a drugged Tariq standing at his dad’s grave and confessing to murdering James St Patrick, despite his mom Tasha (Naturi Naughton) taking the fall for the murder. 
• A copy of late Detective Kevin Whitman’s (Jeff Hephner) police files from Zeke’s murder scene (Tariq stole the originals in Season 3, episode 9), which opened a can of worms about Monet’s criminal network and the Tejada family.
• Every tasty morsel Saxe stole while he was snooping around Davis MacLean’s office.
• How about recordings of witness Maria Suarez (Maria Rivera) positively identifying Tariq’s dad as the notorious drug kingpin, Ghost?
• He could even have had a recording of Ghost’s second in command Tommy (Jospeh Sikora) admitting he killed Junior’s aunt, FBI agent Angela Valdes (Lela Loren), from when Tariq’s dad Ghost and Tommy broke into Saxe’s apartment to confront him.

Even if Don Carter starts with unravelling how Tariq got the green cards, there might be enough to send Tariq to jail on ordinary charges. And speaking of…

3. Rashad Tate and Tariq’s “special relationship”

In Season 3, episode 9, Tariq needed to secure green cards that would allow Noma’s associate Obi (Kyle Vincent Terry) to bring his family into America. To do so, Tariq turned to crooked cop turned newly elected city councilman Rashad Tate (Larenz Tate), the same guy who helped Tariq to make bail while he was on trial for murder. If he digs, Detective Don might find out what Tariq did in exchange, and how Tariq got Davis MacLean to threaten Tate to make it happen. 

That could turn up juicy details like who Tate’s anonymous tipoff was for his drug bust of the Russians in Season 3, episode 7, or the fact that Tariq also had access to a controversial photo of Tate’s political rival, Congressman Rick Sweeney (Scott Cohen). And in exchange for the blackmail photo, Tate helped Tariq to gain custody of his little sister Yaz (Paris Morgan) and get her out of foster care. Tate also provided the evidence that helped exonerate Tariq of the murders of Jabari Reynolds (which he committed) and Detective Danilo Ramirez (for which Tariq had been framed). 

But the trick Tate pulled on the witness stand to save Tariq cost his brother Kamaal Tate (Lahmard Tate), who was working for the prosecution, his job. And just guess who is on Don Carter’s elite NYPD drug task force!

4. Tariq’s finances

Tariq and Brayden have fantasised about living the life of normal students. Well, wish granted, boys! When Rashad Tate exposed the Westons’ ponzi scheme, Tariq’s trust fund went up in smoke. This season in episode 2 we’ll see that Tariq has to take on multiple work-study jobs just to pay his tuition fees at Stansfield. He makes $11 per hour from his jobs taking care of gym laundry (sweaty jockstrap duty), and manning the university’s library and candy shop. And Tariq very quickly has to steal back his car because being broke means you can’t even order an Uber. The episode also gives us a peek at Tariq’s mom Tasha’s povvo life in witness protection, in which she has to work at a supermarket to scrape a living, while Brayden has to earn his keep as an estate agent. 

Add a teensy bit more little pressure, and these rich kids are going to crack. When they do, if they really are drug dealers, suspicious amounts of money are going to start cropping up in their lives that can’t be explained away by formal employment. In the meantime, we can all have a good laugh at Tariq in his lil hairnet and uniform, and him and Brayden admitting that they might have overrated the romance and ease of living a normal student life.

5. Tariq’s trail of death

While Tariq has jeopardy in the Ramirez and Jabari Reynolds murders, which means he cannot be re-tried for them, the accumulated evidence around his trials would be worth a second look. 

A trace of Tariq and his possible victims’ cellphone locations would show an intriguing pattern of Tariq being in close proximity to a lot of shady people just before they die. There comes a point where this stops looking coincidental.

In Season 3, episode 1, Tariq impulsively murdered Bash Kumal-Stern (Abubakr Ali) – the man who helped Tariq fund his Course Correct app as a cover for his drug distribution network (which Brayden took the fall for during Tariq’s trial) – during a confrontation in Bash’s hotel room. While his pals helped him to get rid of the body and the knife, the hotel desk might have some intriguing evidence. And the day of his death (or disappearance, if the body has not turned up yet), Bash visited both Brayden at Weston Holdings, and Tariq at Stansfield.

On top of this, Blanca Rodrigues had a security camera still image showing Tariq St Patrick in the lobby of the building the day that her CI, Dante (aka Mecca the FBI super-snitch), was assassinated. While Tariq wiped security footage from the penthouse cameras, one longshot camera in the lobby caught a clear enough image to pin him at the scene of the crime.

In the Power Season 5 finale Tariq shot dirty undercover cop Ray Ray Jones (Marcus Callender) in the head for killing his twin sister, Raina (Donshea Hopkins). While Tariq’s family cleaned the scene, Blanca connected the dots between Tariq and the murder when she caught him anonymously collecting the ashes of the supposed killer, Kanan Stark (Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson). Ghost’s protege Dre (Rotimi Akinosho) told Blanca that he gave Ray Ray’s address to Tariq, and Blanca found Tariq’s DNA at the crime scene.

And while Tariq was officially cleared of Jabari Reynolds’ (Justin Marcel McManus) murder, Jabari was writing a book about Tariq, so it might pay Detective Carter to go through his computer and notebooks, because when Jabari stalked Tariq, he saw him selling drugs on campus. 

It should make for entertaining reading, along with all the police reports written by the cops and legal minds who’ve taken aim at Tariq and the St. Patricks, including Greg Knox, Tameka Washington, Angela Valdez, Stacey Marks, Cooper Saxe, Jenny Sullivan, Blanca Rodriguez, Mike Sandoval, Danilo Ramirez, Jerry Donovan, and Seamus Whitman. That’s a lot of paperwork for one humble university student.

As Detective Carter and his team wade through their coursework for Tariq 101 and set up their big board of suspects and connections, we’ll be here, waiting and wondering whether Monet will escape death by soft hospital pillow and ghostly nagging, and whether Brayden will follow in Tommy’s footsteps as Tariq’s ride-or-die homie. 

Binge Power Book II: Ghost S4 now to find out.

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