No Room for Mercy (19 page)

“Is that right? What’s so bad about that?” DeeDee
asked as he stirred his coffee.

“Nothing. But I’m not finished with the story. I just
look at the guy with a blank stare. I been knowing him for years, so
I’m able to express myself candidly you know? I look at ‘em
and I say, I says, ‘Doc, it’s no secret between you and I
what I do for a livin’.’”

“What he say back?”

“Nothing at all. He just smiles at me and I says back to him,
‘Now, you like to say an apple a day keeps the doctor away.
Well, I say, you can eat all the fuckin’ apples you want, but
if you go down in my line of work it ain’t gonna be because you
forgot to eat your fuckin’ fruit’.”

“You told your doctor that?”

“Sure as hell did.”

“What he say back?”

“He told me I should find another line of work and sit my old
ass down and eat some fuckin’ apples.” Mendoza replied as
he and DeeDee laughed lowly. “How ya’ like them apples?”
Mendoza added. The two lifelong friends would share more laughter to
keep the mood upbeat, but deep down inside, Mendoza had never been so
scared in all his life. If he were to lose Francine, for Mendoza, it
would mean the loss of the most valuable thing in his life without
compare.

*******

A few miles to the northwest of Saint Louis lay the city of Saint
Charles. A medium-sized city, population 60,000, and the home base
for Chicago Gang affiliates, 63 year-olds Coban Benito and Humphrey
Gaggi. The lifelong mobsters had a smooth set up in a neighborhood
right behind Lindenwood University on the corners of Elm Street and
Lindenwood Avenue. This was a densely populated neighborhood filled
with homes and small businesses that were all anchored by a bar and
grill that had been owned by the Egan’s Rats since the 1920s.

The people here basically kept themselves and minded their own
business; and although many knew the dealings that went down on the
corners of Elm Street and Lindenwood Avenue, the place had been a
part of the neighborhood for decades and Benito and Gaggi were two of
the most well-respected men on the block. They were known to aid
businesses by giving loans and sometimes never asking to have the
loans repaid. That in itself kept the men with a certain amount of
respectability.

This part of Saint Charles, although dense, was a quiet area occupied
by young and established married couples while the rest of the homes
were being rented out to students who were sharing the rent in order
to attend the nearby college. There were numerous small businesses in
the tranquil community as well. On Elm Street, where most of the
activity took place, there was a large three story cleaners on the
corner across the street from
Connections.
A
d
eli, bookstore, and an urban clothing store was on the block
as well, all catering to the nearby college campus’ students
and the neighborhood in general.

Elm Street was a calm place by all outward appearances, but in all
actuality, it was the headquarters of one of the biggest cocaine
operations in the Midwest. Down from
Connections
, on the
opposite end of the block on the same side as the bar, lay
twenty-seven year-old Eddie Cottonwood’s two story white wooden
Victorian-style home. Eddie had been tight with Doss ever since he’d
helped him, Lucky and Junior pull off a job inside Cabrini Green
projects back in 1992. He moved down from Chicago to the Saint
Charles area with his two younger brothers and daughter when he got
in good with Benito and Gaggi and started making large amounts of
money. He was now Benito and Gaggi’s muscle. Eddie’s
younger brothers, seventeen year-old Jason David A.K.A. Jay-D, and
fifteen year-old Donnell, A.K.A. Dooney, were under his wing and
steadily learning the business.

Jay-D was sitting on the front porch of the home with his niece, ten
year-old Nancy, braiding her hair while his brother Dooney washed the
Cottonwood family’s dark blue 2001 Lincoln Navigator. The
family was relaxing for the minute, but soon, Jay-D and Dooney would
have to stand guard for a delivery that was scheduled to arrive from
Chicago.

“Jay-D, why you braid it this way?” Nancy asked as she
squinted her eyes. Her uncle had a way of braiding her hair so tight
she could barely blink.

“I’m hurtin’ your skull again?” Jay-D asked
his skinny, dark chocolate-skinned knot-kneed little niece.

“Yes, sir. But I can take it. I just know you braiding it to
the side again and it makes the other side of my face hurt the first
day. Feel like all my skin be pulled to one side.”

“You don’t like the lady down the street to do it and you
asked me to do it.”

“Because I know you gone take me somewhere for sitting through
this agony,” Nancy replied.

Jay-D laughed lowly and said, “I have business down the street
to take care of when your daddy get in, so whatever you have in mind
we’ll do it tomorrow, okay?”

“Aww, man! I coulda waited ‘til tomorrow?”

“That’s what ya’ get for tryna be slick,”
Jay-D smirked just as a Spanish girl ran onto the block chasing a
puppy on a leash.

“Heyyy! That’s a pretty puppy,” Nancy said. “I
played with it the other day.”

“You know that chick?”

“Not her name. I didn’t ask. But she lets me pet her dog
whenever I do see her.”

Jay-D whistled to Dooney and nodded towards the jogger and the two
watched as she ran up the block where she stopped halfway, tied her
dog and walked up the stairs of the neighborhood deli and took a seat
on the patio.

“You ever seen her before, Dooney?” Jay-D asked from the
porch.

“Nahh. But I think she go to Lindenwood because she had one of
they gym uniforms on.”

“That don’t mean shit, Dooney. You know what’s up
today,” Jay-D replied just as he finished Nancy’s hair.
“Niece, go on in and pop some popcorn and turn on the TV. They
got some new movies on the DVD player in the den.”

When Nancy entered the home, Jay-D and Dooney stood on the corner and
watched the woman from a distance. She’d ordered a sno-ball and
hopped up just as soon as the six-wheeled truck rounded the bend onto
Elm Street. Jay-D and Dooney grabbed two Tech-9 semi-automatics from
the rear of the jeep and began walking slowly towards
Connections
as the truck backed into the alleyway behind the building. The two
eyed the female, who casually jogged past them with her puppy while
sipping her sno-ball, before heading down to the bar

The small six-wheeled truck turning onto the block was what the woman
was looking for on this day, just like every other day she’d
been on the block for the past few weeks unnoticed by those whom it
truly mattered to; when she passed Eddie’s home, she rounded
the corner, picked up her puppy and ran through the woods onto
Lindenwood College campus’ parking lot and hopped into a white
Ford Focus.

“What did you see today,” her male counterpart asked.

“A small truck backing in. The same one as last time, and those
two boys that was in that house on the corner by that jeep was
walking back down there,” the girl said as she changed clothes.

The man grabbed his cell phone and text the words
, It’s
going down
, and slowly pulled out of the parking lot.

*******

Eddie and Junior, meanwhile, were already unloading the cocaine when
Jay-D and Dooney walked up.

“Hey, look who decided to join the party,” Junior said as
he stood on the concrete dock with the last sealed box of cocaine.

“I told y’all to be down here when we got here,”
Eddie scoffed as he hopped down from the docks. “Anything outta
the ordinary?”

“Some lady jogging. Dooney think she go to the college down the
street. I don’t know about that one.”

Eddie looked at his younger brothers curiously as the two walked
towards the end of the alleyway back out onto Elm Street. “What
went down?” he asked as he began looking around cautiously.

Inside
Connections
, meanwhile, Lucky, Benito and Gaggi were at
the bar counter having just finished counting $486,000, all banded
into thousand dollar stacks and placed inside of three leather
satchels. The crew wasn’t on the clock for no more than fifteen
minutes and were preparing to leave when Mildred ran into the bar. “I
gotta tinkle before we hit the road, love,” she told Lucky.

“Be quick about it,” Lucky snapped.

“Care for a drink while you wait,” Benito asked from
behind the bar.

“No. I’m drivin’. And you twos really need to cut
that shit out. This is when the real work begins and you two are
reaching for the bottle. One of yous, grab a bag and help me stash
these in the jeep.” Lucky said as he grabbed the two remaining
bags.

Back outside the bar, Jay-D had just run down what he thought about
the woman jogger to Eddie and Junior when two black Crown Victorias
with dark tinted windows swung the curb off Lindenwood Avenue with
blue flashers circulating in their windshields. Junior and the
Cottonwood family knew the sight all-too-well—the feds were
coming down on this day.

“Rollers! Rollers! Get the fuck outta there! It’s a
raid!” Junior, Eddie, Jay-D and Dooney yelled aloud and at
random before they took off running in all directions.

Lucky was near the front door and could see the cars stopping and
officers jumping out wearing all black, including black ski-masks and
gloves, and toting assault rifles. He turned around with the two
satchels of money he was holding onto and yelled, “Mutherfuckas!
Mildred! Get the fuck outta here! Run, Mildred!”

Benito and Gaggi ran out the side door. They were nearing their BMW
when two agents grabbed them and shoved them back inside without
uttering a word.

Lucky, meanwhile, had busted in on Mildred, who was washing her
hands. “It’s a raid! The feds are out there!” he
said out of breath.

Mildred was beyond scared and began palpating. “A raid!”
she whispered. “Oh my God!”

“You gone need him now more than ever,” Lucky said as he
ushered his wife out the bathroom towards the same side door Benito
and Gaggi had attempted to run out of; when Lucky and Mildred
emerged, they were both greeted by one lone agent who was welding a
gold-plated handgun. “Inside,” the female commanded
through her ski-mask as she shoved the two back into the building and
locked the door.

Lucky, Benito, Coban, Gaggi and Mildred were all placed onto their
knees in the center of the wooden floor inside the dimly-lit,
cavernous bar while four agents stood over them. The the other four
agents had went about confiscating the drugs and money in an
organized and timely fashion, careful not to make any unnecessary
noise.

Mildred was crying her heart out, “I’m going to jail,
Lucky,” she cried aloud.

“You’re not going to fuckin’ jail, okay? You only
came in to use the bathroom and you knew nothing about this,”
Lucky said under his breath as he held his hands behind his head.
“That’s your story. Get used to it because you’re
gonna have to tell it over and over again.”

“
Esto es todo!”
(This is everything!) the female
with the gold-plated handgun remarked as she walked from behind the
bar holding a duffel bag.

“You checked the safe, Carmella?” one of the females
asked, causing all eight of the agents to freeze in their tracks.

“
Perra dices mi nombre?”
(Bitch you say my name?)

“What the fuck kind of raid is this?” Gaggi asked as he
turned to face the four agents standing behind him. “Are you
sons-of-bitches real cops even?”

The question Gaggi asked had set off a fuse. The man standing behind
him pulled the trigger on his silencer-tipped AR-15 and shot him in
the back of the skull and he fell forward onto his face with blood
pouring from his mouth. Benito clutched his heart and called out to
God just before he was shot two times in the back of the skull.

“We got ya’ in this place. You girls can finish the job.
We gone be outside,” the man who’d shot Benito and Gaggi
said as he and his three henchmen walked towards the door.

“Si! We got these two,” Carmella remarked.

Q-man and his crew had watched the Chicago Gang for nearly five
months, had learned their routine and set up the sting. They now
stood outside eyeing spectators off in the distance counting down the
seconds anxiously. Carmella and her crew had to move quick lest they
be discovered.

Back inside the bar, Mildred was going ballistic. She crawled away
from Benito’s shivering body and huddled under a bar stool just
as Lucky jumped up and lunged at the agent approaching him with her
gold-plated handgun. She fired a muzzled shot that hit Lucky in the
arm, but he still managed to grab hold of the woman. The two fought
toe-to-toe for a few seconds. Lucky hit the woman in the head with a
forceful left jab, knocking her over the table and chairs behind her.
The woman quickly jumped as Lucky shoved the table aside.

Lucky was going for his gun until Toodie ran up and fired a shot from
her silencer-tipped AR-15 that hit him in his back. He was propelled
forward by the gun blast, falling onto the woman he was fighting as
he stumbled to the floor. As he fell, Lucky pulled the woman’s
ski-mask off and could see for the first time that she was a
Colombian. “It’s a hit! It’s a hit!” he
yelled out to no one in particular as he coughed up blood.

“You’re right, pa-pi,” Carmella said as she pressed
her boot to Lucky’s chest, pinning him to the floor. “It
is a hit!” she hissed as she aimed her weapon and shot Lucky in
the face as he lay on his back. She then walked over to Mildred, who
was reciting the Lord’s Prayer with her eyes closed. “Your
god will not save you today, old lady,” she said before she
placed her gun to the top of Mildred’s skull and pulled the
trigger.

Carmella, Toodie, Phoebe and one of their young soldiers from Fox
Park then fled the scene with the three satchels of money and three
duffel bags containing an unknown amount of cocaine. They met up with
Q-man outside the bar and the crew hopped into their cars and backed
away from
Connections
and peeled off down Lindenwood Avenue,
leaving behind a scene of unbridled carnage that would become known
as The Massacre on Elm Street.