No Room for Mercy (44 page)

“He’s hit pretty bad,” Doss remarked as he stared
at Junior, who was trembling slightly.

“We cant take him to the hospital, though, so we’re in
between a rock and hard place.” Dawk responded.

“Maybe not. I’m gone make a call. Junior, can you hold on
for another four or five hours?” Doss asked as he leaned into
the SUV and eyed Junior’s wound.

“How the fuck, how the fuck would I know, man? It hurts every
time I breathe. That bitch landed a million dollar shot.”
Junior gasped through clenched teeth.

“We can’t go to a hospital. I’m gonna make a call,
brother. Hold on for us, Junior.” Doss said as he grabbed his
cell phone.

*******

“
Won’t you take me to…funky town…won’t
you take me to…funky town…won’t you take me
to…funky town…won’t you take me to…funky
town…”

JunJie was sitting inside a booth of
Goddesses
, a high end
strip club he owned just outside of The Chinatown-International
District in Seattle, Washington, watching several eighteen year-old
Asian strippers dance on stage to Lipps, Inc.’s song
Funky
Town
. It was early in the day and the club was closed. Only
JunJie, Finland, Phillip and Grover, and three Asian females were on
hand on the first floor.
Goddesses
was where JunJie plotted a
lot of his illegitimate schemes and conducted business of a street
nature.

The crafty businessman had his hands in nearly every conceivable
venture outside of the law while posing as a real estate mogul. Drug
deals and the sale of guns went down inside this strip joint, but a
far more lucrative business, that of adult entertainment, was also
conducted inside of
Goddesses
. The second floor, which was
rife with traffic on this day, was the site where numerous Asian
pornographic movies were filmed and developed.

Money never stopped for JunJie Maruyama, the Sensei of Asian hustling
and a gangster with street credentials that where unparalleled in
Seattle’s Asian community. He sat tapping his feet to the music
as he watched the dancers perform with his family and Finland. The
vibrating of the his cell phone caught his attention and he answered
over the thumping bass of the music, the phone crammed to his left
ear and his right index plugged inside the other.

“We have a situation and we need your help ass soon as
possible.” Doss said calmly.

JunJie knew the hit was going down on this day through Gacha. “What
went wrong?” he asked.

“The job is done. One guy is on ice and the other two need
medical attention immediately.”

“Where are you now?”

“Just on the other side in Brownsville.”

“Okay. Okay, umm. I have to make a flight plan. It’ll be
at least five hours before I can get down there. Can your men hold
on?”

Doss looked over to Junior, who was sweating profusely and grimacing
in pain while taking long, deep breaths of air. The soldier from Fox
Park was moving around in his seat talking to Dawk and Malik, but he
was obviously in pain as he tried to keep his mind focused off his
wounds. “They have no choice as of now,” Doss said. “We
left a lot of damage behind just south of here and the heat may spill
back over onto this side. We can’t stay here much longer.
You’ll have to take us to a safe place.”

“I have that covered, my friend. I’ll be there A-S-A-P,”
JunJie replied before he hung up the phone and contacted one of his
pilots.

“Everything okay?” Finland asked.

“Our friend completed the job, but there were casualties.”

“Damn,” Finland sighed as he rubbed his forehead. “Who
was it?”

“I’m not certain, but Doss is okay. It was him who
called.”

“You want me to join you?”

“No. Stay here and enjoy yourself, Finland. Phillip and Grover
will take you to my home where you can relax and they will make sure
you catch your flight tomorrow afternoon.”

“If any of the family needs notifying, call me. I’ll
handle it. In the meantime,” Finland said as he poured himself
a glass of gin, “in the meantime, I’ll be at my second
home.” he ended as he eyed the stage once more.

“Enjoy yourself,” JunJie replied before he left
Goddesses
, headed to Boeing Field/King Company International
Airport where his Gulfstream was located in order to make a flight
down to Las Vegas.

*******

The Chicago Gang, meanwhile, had moved Junior and the wounded soldier
up to one of the hotel rooms they’d rented. Junior was lying
across the bed in silence, having taken one of the morphine pills
Doss always brought along on hits for just such an occasion. The
entire left side of Junior’s body was numb and he had no
movement in his left extremities. He was cold all the time, so the
heat was turned on inside the room and he was draped with a blanket.

The soldier from Fox Park was complaining about severe pain in his
legs as he sat at a small desk and swallowed a morphine pill and
downed another shot of brandy. Everybody was on pins in needles
inside the hotel room, but no one showed emotion as they paced the
floor in silent, deep thought, contemplating their next move should
the inevitable transpire with Junior, who was the most severely
wounded.

Taking bullets on the job was something that couldn’t be
planned on, no matter how real the possibility. It would’ve
actually been easier to move around with dead bodies, but when it
goes down the way it had gone for the Chicago Gang, time was of the
essence in order to save a life. Everybody was counting on JunJie to
arrive sooner than later. This was a tense time for the crew; they’d
succeeded in killing Carmella and her crew down in Mexico, but they
were now stuck in Brownsville, Texas in a state of suspended
animation while awaiting JunJie’s arrival and all they could do
for the time being was toe the line in silence as the minutes ticked
by at an agonizingly slow pace.

*******

Back in Ponca City, Naomi was sitting in her office with Kimi and
Koko, the three of them closing out bills of ladings for the week
when Naomi’s phone rang. She answered and heard Doss’s
voice on the other end. Kimi and Koko eyed their mother briefly and
returned to their duties. A minute later they heard their mother
gasp.

“What? Will he be okay?”

“Who?” Kimi asked worriedly. “What happened,
momma?”

Kimi and Koko, ever since they realized their mother was training
them to launder money for the family, began wondering exactly where
all the currency was coming from. This was more than agriculture in
their eyes. They’d seen the numbers, knew what cattle went for,
and how much freight was leaving the ranch. They began focusing in on
their father, Dawk, Bay and Tiva more and more and had a feeling that
there was much more to what they were being told. When they asked
their mother about the profits being made, Naomi told them that the
trucks ran other freight besides livestock, but her answer didn’t
sit right with Kimi and Koko, the numbers didn’t add up, except
for on paper after they were done moving money around. Now, this
strange phone call was received and Kimi and Koko were both worried
that something had happened to their father, or maybe Dawk and Bay,
who’d traveled with their father to Chicago nearly two weeks
earlier.

Naomi hung up the phone and looked over to Kimi and Koko. “Everyone’s
fine,” she said. “Your father, Dawk and Bena will have to
stay out a little while longer back in Chicago that’s all.”

That was all Kimi and Koko wanted hear. Nothing else mattered. So
long as their family was safe, they would have no problems and ask no
further questions. They resumed working as Naomi got up from behind
her desk and quietly left the room.

Tiva, meanwhile, was in the library sitting at the large oval table
reading a book containing baby names. The nineteen year-old
mother-to-be was hoping to have a baby girl. She wanted to see if the
family myth was true—that Holland females come forth as twins.
She would be more than honored to be the first of the grandchildren
to further add to the family heritage by birthing twins. She sat
sipping Gatorade and listening to her MP-3 player as she scanned a
host of names.

Naomi soon found Tiva in the library and entered the room slowly.
“Hey, momma,” Tiva said happily as she removed ear plugs.
“I was looking at a bunch of names for the babies.”

“Babies?”

“Yeah. I don’t know yet, but you knew before Spoonie and
Tyke were born you was carrying female twins. I think I am too. I
looked at boys names? But they not sticking with me. When I look at
the girl names, though? I just get this feeling in my stomach like
that’s what it is.”

“Tiva, listen to me, baby,” Naomi said softly as she sat
down beside her daughter. “You know, sometimes, sometimes we go
through life thinkin’ everything will turn out just fine. We
move about making plans as if tomorrow will come, right up until the
moment we’re blindsided with a brick.”

Tiva knew what her father, brother and sister and Junior had sat out
to do. She was with Bay and Dawk when they were training on the ranch
with M-16 rifles, practicing herself and sitting in on every
discussion right up until their departure. They were going after a
fierce woman in her homeland. The job was the most difficult by far
and casualties were a possibility. She leaned back in a weakened
state and eyed her mother as tears welled up in her eyes. “What
happened?” she asked as her body began to tremble.

“The job went well. Carmella has been taken down.”

“But?”

Naomi crossed her legs and looked Tiva in the eyes and said, “Junior
took a hit and it doesn’t look good.”

“Will he make it?” Tiva asked through her tears.

“We don’t know. I can’t help back to think back to
when Lucky got hit. I swear I thought he was gonna pull through, but
he took a terrible turn. I can’t sit here and tell you I’m
certain Junior will survive because nobody knows. Doss said it’ll
be another four hours before he can be moved.”

“We was supposed to get married at the end of the month, momma.
Can I go to him?”

“You can’t, Tiva. Junior is breathing, but he’s not
responding. He’s unconscious. Everybody involved is tryin’
to stay off the radar for now. We’ll get an update before
morning,” Naomi said as she eased up from her seat.

Naomi continued on towards the open area on Ponderosa’s
pristine first floor with her hands behind her back and her head
bowed in deep thought. Losing Junior would have serious
repercussions. Mendoza and DeeDee were on the verge of retiring and
the crew needed all the experience they could muster because the
business was getting more treacherous as time wore on. Carmella had
been taken down, and for that, the family may have to answer someday.
The Somalis were still unknown and there was no telling what would
jump off with Asa Spade because he was still in a weakened state
after battling Carmella, who was kicking his ass outright by all
accounts before the family finally got to her if Naomi had to tell
it.

Martha, meanwhile, was in the kitchen looking for a corkscrew so she
and Twiggy could uncap a bottle of wine and watch a movie in the
theater room when she saw her sister strolling by. Naomi seemed to be
in deep thought to Martha, but there was much more to be read in her
eyes. Her oldest sister wore a black sombrero that covered her head
completely and had a pair of thin framed sunshades were covering her
eyes. A white, tight-fitting denim outfit was plastered to her
voluptuous body and she wore a pair of expensive knee length boots
that were hidden by her jeans. Naomi was always dressed when she was
awake. Unless she was under the weather, she was up and about and in
a managerial state of mind each and every day. Running a ranch
couldn’t be this stressful in Martha’s mind and she’d
now resolved herself to getting some answers on this night as thunder
began to rumble across the land from an approaching storm.

“Sis,” Martha called out.

Naomi was startled from her thoughts as she eyed Martha. “What’s
up?” she asked.

“I should be asking you that, Naomi,” Martha said as she
sat the bottle of wine down and approached her sister.

Naomi looked off into the openness of Ponderosa briefly. For a while
now she’d been feeling Martha. She knew her sister was paying
close attention to her dealings and it was only a matter of time
before Martha could withhold her thoughts before she erupted. That
point had just arrived. Naomi thought briefly on what she would say
before gazing her eyes back upon Martha.

“You got something you wanna say to me, sister?” Naomi
asked calmly.

“What’s really going on, Naomi? This here is more than
just running livestock. Mendoza and DeeDee are in the streets and the
apple didn’t fall too far from the tree with Doss and Junior.
And Dawk and my oldest nieces ain’t just learnin’ how to
run a warehouse.”

Twiggy emerged from the long hall at that moment flustered. “Martha,
you takin’ all day with wine, girl. The movie about to start!”
It didn’t take a scientist for Twiggy to figure out that she’d
stumbled upon to something involving Martha and Naomi given the way
they were standing eye to eye. She eased around the two and grabbed
the wine off the counter.

“I’m about to share some things with Martha concerning
the family, Twiggy,” Naomi said lowly. “You want in on
this?”

“Nahh. Thanks, but no thanks, Naomi.” Twiggy said as she
curled her lips and walked off, leaving Martha and Naomi behind with
stunned looks upon their faces.

“Well, that’s a new one.” Naomi said, breaking the
silence between her and Martha. “Follow me,” she then
said as she led Martha to the first floor observation room where she
closed and locked the door and began to give Martha the lowdown on
the family’s most profitable form of revenue, which involved
everything from drug dealing to murder-for-hire.