No Room for Mercy (20 page)

CHAPTER TEN

A COLD PIECE OF WORK

“
I’
m rollin’ with thugs
and felons ughhh, cuz that’s his own killaz…we gon’
teach you ole punk ass niggas to respect us authority figures…throw
one of a kind boy when we be pourin’ up in the club…you
going down boy too bad fuck ya’ sorry for ya’…that’s
when that spot get shook, but I ain't the one to
come look…’cause all I can tell the police is…”

“
I am not a crook!” Carmella, Toodie and
Phoebe said in unison as they all threw up peace signs and laughed
aloud after quoting part of the rapper Mystikal’s verse.

Li’l Jon and The Eastside Boys song
I Don’t Give a
Fuck
was pumping hard inside the interior of the black Crown
Victoria as Carmella wheeled the ride eastbound on Interstate-70
headed towards East Saint Louis. She lay back into the soft leather
while still dressed as an F.B.I. agent, complete with lettered jacket
and fake badge, her left hand now draped across the steering wheel
and her right hand rubbing her chin softly as she drove in deep
thought. The Saint Charles hit was by far one of the coldest tactics
she’d used to date and she’d succeeded in removing some
major players from the game, just as she’d promised over a year
ago. She then thought about letting what happened back at
Connections
slide, but she just couldn’t, nor was she willing to take the
chance.

Toodie and Phoebe were bobbing their heads to the music and absorbing
the lyrics while counting the stacks of money. Carmella bumped Toodie
and nodded to the backseat briefly.

“Si, boss,” Toodie said.

Toodie then grabbed her phone and texted Phoebe. When she read the
message, Phoebe said aloud, “Figured that a while ago.”

“Me too,” Toodie responded as she continued on with the
counting of the stolen loot.

The young female in the backseat grabbed her phone and began texting.
Carmella quickly took notice and she jumped to attention. “Who
you talking to?” she asked as she looked in the rearview mirror
while turning the volume down.

“She texting her momma,” Phoebe remarked.

“I’m talkin’ to her li’l young ass!”
Carmella snapped.

“I thought we was going back to Fox Park. I have to do
something for my momma,” the young girl stated in a meek tone.

“Your momma gone have to wait on that shit because we on our
way over to the spot on the other side that water. Let me see that
phone,” Carmella demanded as she placed her hand over the front
seat and wiggled her fingers. Carmella called Q-man and told him to
meet her over by the abandoned warehouse in East Saint Louis. “You
know where it’s at right?”

There was a brief pause and Carmella responded by saying, “I
know we said over there, but something came up. Just push out now and
we gone meet up about the same time. I’m rolling that way now.
Get the keys to one of the rides from that li’l girl in the
house and you drive it on the other side for me. Not the yellow one,
though. I got you covered when we hook up.”

When Carmella hung up the phone, the young girl asked to use it to
call her mother. “I told you, you will do that shit later. Just
ride.” Carmella snapped as she dialed another number. “Peppi?
You okay?”

Carmella chatted with Pepper for a few minutes, telling her she’d
be home shortly and hung the phone up once more, denying the young
girl in the backseat the use of her own phone again. She then called
Desiree back over in Denver and talked briefly as she cruised over
the Mississippi River Bridge and entered East Saint Louis.

At that moment, Toodie and Phoebe began sliding clips into their .9mm
Berettas and the entire mood inside the car had gone from calm to
fright. Toodie and Phoebe knew what was about to go down, and the
young girl seemed to pick up on the play as well.

“I’m sorry I said your name,” the sixteen year-old
told Carmella.

Carmella shook her head and sucked her teeth. “All the fuck you
had to do was watch and report back to Q-man, bitch,” she
sighed as she shook her head in disbelief. “Your ass didn’t
listen, and now you fuckin’ sorry?” she asked calmly.

“I forgot! I just slipped up for a minute! But we was gonna
kill them anyway!”

“Fuck that! I gave you one order! One test! For you to not to
say my name and you failed it! Had shit gone wrong my name woulda
been out there,” Carmella argued as she exited onto Saint Clair
Avenue and rode in between the interstate pylons towards the
abandoned warehouses.

“Carmella, no!” the young girl whined as Phoebe cocked
her gun and placed it to her side. “Phoebe! Please! I ain’t
gone say nothin’! I won’t tell nobody what we did I
promise!”

Neither Phoebe nor Toodie uttered a word as Carmella wheeled the
vehicle to the back of the empty warehouses and slammed on the brakes
and threw the car in park where she, Toodie and Phoebe jumped out
with their handguns cocked and surrounded the ride. The sun had just
slipped beneath the Saint Louis skyline on the opposite side of the
river and a dark blue hue encompassed the area as the cool wind begin
whipping about.

The young girl began screaming in the backseat, her voice echoing
throughout the hallowed warehouses, landing on nothing but the bare
brick walls and the area’s non-human inhabitants. Carmella
turned up the music to drown out the girls’ screams just as
Toodie snatched her from the rear seat of the car and drove her into
the concrete dock head first. The young teen fell onto her stomach
and Phoebe kicked her over onto her back and began stomping her face
repeatedly with her boots.

Carmella then picked the young girl up and threw her onto the docks
and climbed up onto the concrete and dragged the semi-conscious teen,
who was weakly crying out for her mother, inside the warehouse where
the three beat the youngster mercilessly. If anybody were watching
from a distance, it would look as if three federal agents were
abusing their arrestee; but no witnesses were on hand for this
all-out assault on one lone teen that’d gotten in over her
head.

The girl was slammed against the brick walls and steel beams inside
the small room where the beating had escalated into a violent frenzy.
She was cut all over her body with razors, one of her ears was nearly
sliced off and she had hair ripped from her skull. She was left a
bloody, heaping mass of flesh by the time Carmella and her girls grew
tired of whipping her ass. A single shot to the face from Phoebe’s
.9mm ended her life and her body was covered with old cardboard boxes
and insulation and left where it lay, dead, bloody and stiff.

Carmella, Toodie and Phoebe were emerging from the building when
Q-man and his crew pulled up. The men exited a money green 1973 Buick
Skylark on 26 inch chrome rims and Toodie’s white Navigator
with guns in hand and waited while the girls jumped down from the
docks. Carmella went to her car and grabbed a duffel bag and a
suitcase and set it atop the trunk of the Crown Victoria and waved
the boys over.

“We came out with four hundred and eighty-six thousand dollars
and twenty-seven kilograms.” Carmella told the Somalis. “The
money all in thousand dollar stacks so it’s a even split—two
hundred and forty-three stacks apiece and thirteen kilograms even.
You and your people can have the extra brick for delivering our
ride.”

“It was four of y’all at first. Where your other girl at?
The one that I was dealin’ with?” Q-man asked as his boys
took down their cut.

“She had to go home. Just like I do.” Carmella said as
she walked around the driver’s side of the Crown Victoria.

“You a cold pieca work, yeah?” Q-man said, looking at the
bloodstain on the concrete dock. “She fucked up at the end and
you kill the bitch? You had it in mind to kill those people anyway,”
he reasoned.

“That’s how I do my business. I have no time to be
fuckin’ around with these li’l girls out here in this
game. Them li’l young bitches need ta’ recognize what
they gettin’ involved in when it comes to me and mines.
Everybody wanna be a fuckin’ gangster but they have no clue how
to be real with it.”

“Hmm. You just gone leave her here?”

“Fuck you worryin’ bout that bitch for? Everybody paid
now so let’s go get it!”

“Fuck it, man. We headed back to the Ap tonight. Me my fam be
in touch next month,” Q-man said as he shook his head and
walked off.

The Crown Victoria was taken several miles north of East Saint Louis
and set ablaze. Carmella and her girls then headed back towards Fox
Park in Toodie’s ride, minus one soldier, and thousands of
dollars richer.

“Awww,” Phoebe suddenly sighed from the backseat.

“What happened?” Carmella asked.

“I was reading our homegirl’s last text.”

“What it say?” Toodie asked.

“I love you mommy,” Phoebe sang before she laughed.

“See there? She was just a fuckin’ baby,” Carmella
said through laughter as she wheeled the vehicle onto the Mississippi
River Bridge. “She wouldn’t have lasted long in this
business so I did her a little young ass a favor,” she ended as
Toodie took the cell phone and tossed it over the side of the bridge
into the murky waters below.

After dropping her girls off at the trap house in Fox Park located on
Ann Avenue, Carmella jumped into her yellow Spider and headed over to
her home in Crestwood, an upscale neighborhood on the outskirts of
Saint Louis. Crestwood might as well have been on an island in the
Pacific as it was a slice of paradise. The area was quiet and draped
with oak trees, sculpted parks and golf courses amidst the mini
mansions that dotted the area. The home was a two story light grey
and white five bedroom brick home with specks of black running
throughout. The roof was made of white clay and the lawn was trimmed
and edged to perfection with a large moss-covered oak tree on either
side of the driveway. It was the smallest of the four mansions
Carmella owned, but it was luxurious nonetheless.

When Carmella exited her Ferrari, eleven year-old Pepper opened the
door and ran out the house to greet her. Carmella had to run into the
home and deactivate her alarm before it went off, barely making it in
time. “Pepper, remember not to open the door without
deactivating the alarm.” she said softly.

“I’m sorry. I forgot.”

“People die for forgetting, you know?”

“Why? How?”

“Never mind. What did you do here today all by yourself?”
Carmella asked as she traversed the stairs of her home, removing her
jacket and badge.

“I read the English book you gave me and took that test you
left in the dining room.”

Carmella had never placed Pepper into a school because she was always
on the move with the child. Not to mention the rapport that she had
with the little girl may be uncovered should she enter the system.
Still, Carmella made sure that Pepper was able to learn curriculum
that matched her age and then some so as not to have the child grow
up illiterate. When Peppi Vargas was old enough, Carmella was
planning on taking her to a high school so she could take a G.E.D.
exam and earn her diploma. Until then, she would keep the child’s
nose in text books whenever possible.

“How you think you did on your test, Peppi?” Carmella
asked as she entered her twelve hundred square foot master bedroom.

“I passed.”

“You’re very confident.”

“You said to always be sure of yourself and know what you are
capable of doing. I’m sure I passed that test because I was
capable to do it.”

“Able to do it, Pepper. You were able to do it.” Carmella
said as she sat on the bench before her bed and removed her boots.

“Okay. Why’re you dressed like that? Are you the police?”
Pepper inquired, sitting beside Carmella.

“I was for about five minutes. Not even that long.”

“I’ve never seen you wear your hair in a ponytail. What
did you do today?”

“Started a war, Pepper. Your Auntie has started a war.”

“People die in wars. Are you going to die in this war?”

“You ask a lot about death.”

“I know. I saw my mother die and I can’t forget it. I’m
scared to die.”

“No one gets out of life alive, Peppi. Death is something we
all have to face. Either late in life or early in life, it will
inevitably arrive at our doorstep. I was scared to die once, but when
you’ve looked death in the face, it no longer bothers you. It’s
like going to sleep.”

“I wanna live a long time.”

“So do I, Pepper. But bosses don’t always live long.
Remember that if you ever become a boss, okay? We don’t live
long,” Carmella ended somberly as she stripped out of her
clothing, turned on the TV and walked towards her bathroom.

Pepper climbed onto the bed and watched the news while Carmella
showered. A few minutes into the program, she saw a story that
detailed a shooting that took place in a town called Saint Charles.

“In what has to be one of the worse shootings ever in Saint
Charles’ history, three people were gunned down and another
critically wounded inside a bar that was the reputed headquarters of
a now defunct Italian Crime Family known as the Egan’s Rats.
The suspects in what has come to be known as The Massacre on Elm
Street, were said to have been dressed up as FBI agents when the
shootings occurred. Rumors ranging from a drug deal gone bad to old
Mafioso rivalries or a combination of both are fueling the
investigation. Witnesses report hearing no gunshots, but some grew
curious when the purported officers left holding bags believed to
contain drugs and money without arresting any suspects. A local deli
owner discovered the bodies and authorities were soon notified.
Investigators have no clues and the only living witness is listed in
critical condition and has little chance of surviving. Authorities
are resting their hopes on the chance that the lone witness, who’s
being guarded by police, is able to pull through and give an account
of all the events that transpired leading up to this terrible
tragedy. More details on this story as the investigation unfolds.”