No Room for Mercy (58 page)

Phillip ran over to his father yelling aloud in Japanese as Grover
dialed an ambulance. JunJie had held on long enough until his son and
godson made it home for the night. He knew he was in bad shape, so he
quickly gave an order to Phillip and pointed up under the desk before
passing out. Phillip looked up under the desk and began feeling
around.

“I’m calling—” Grover was interrupted by
Phillip when he scrambled and covered his mouth. He then placed a
finger to his lips and the two left the home, Grover dialing 9-1-1 as
the two walked out the to back side of the home and went and stood
before the swimming pool.

“You were going to call Asa once you called paramedics, right?”
Phillip asked lowly as he looked around, certain he and Grover were
going to be raided by the feds at any second.

“I was. You think we can we trust him now?” Grover asked.

“He’s all we have for now. Maybe he can get in touch with
Chicago.” Phillip said. “Son-of-bitch! How did they get
on to us?” he asked aloud just as the ambulances pulled up to
the front of the home.

JunJie had all the contacts, but he was obviously out of commission
for the time being and may never be the same if he were to even
survive his ordeal. Grover was able to reach Asa Spade; and quickly,
the pieces had come together once they’d discovered who was the
odd man out in their organization.

The best thing for Phillip and Grover, they both knew, was for them
to skip town for the time being, despite JunJie’s condition.
They left word with Asa Spade so he could contact Chicago, and while
the paramedics were stabilizing JunJie, they gathered important
documents and left the home. Phillip and Grover were so enraged over
the things they’d uncovered they didn’t even bother to
ride to the hospital with JunJie, who was now near death. They had to
make serious moves now in order to save the entire network.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

THE DOMINO EFFECT

“AquaNina talking about getting married now, girl. Can you
believe that, Tiva,” twenty-one year-old Bena asked her twin.

It was just minutes after Phillip and Grover had discovered JunJie
shot up inside his home. Doss was down in Saint Charles walking
through the hollowed out walls of the old cleaners on the corners of
Elm Street and Lindenwood Avenue that he was renovating and
transforming into a night club as Bay and T-top trailed him closely.

“Y’all gonna do it, Bena?” Doss asked as he walked
along the first floor.

“I want to, but man, we have problems as it is with her parents
and other people trippin’ on our lifestyle, daddy.”

“Can’t worry about what people say, Bena.” Doss
replied. “As long as this family approves of you and AquaNina
that’s all that matters. Her parents will come around.”

“So you approve, dad?” Bena asked nervously.

“Do you love AquaNina?”

“I do love her, daddy. She makes me very happy.” Bena
responded with a beautiful smile on her face as she grabbed her
father’s arm.

“Well, I guess I’ll get to walk my oldest daughter down
the aisle.”

“Oh that,” Bay said as she backed away from her father
shyly.

“What?” Doss asked.

“Well, I was, I was thinking about letting grandpa walk
AquaNina down the aisle. I’m gone be standing at the altar.”

Doss stepped back and placed his hands on his hips and eyed Bay. “Are
you serious? What am I supposed to be doing while your grandfather
father is walking ‘Nina down the aisle?”

“Wishing me and ‘Nina well from the front row?” Bay
asked.

“I ain’t sitting nowhere wishin’ nobody well if I
ain’t walking. I’m not gone even attend the thing.”
Doss chided.

Bay and T-top laughed aloud at that moment. “You don’t
understand their relationship, daddy.” T-top said.

Doss eyed his daughters with a puzzled look. “What am I missing
here? Why can’t I walk you down the aisle, Bena?”

“Daddy,” Bay said as she walked up and hugged her father,
“I would be honored if you would give me away, but it’s
the father of the bride’s responsibility to give the bride away
to the groom. And since AquaNina’s parents disapprove of our
relationship, she wanted DeeDee to do it. I tried to persuade her to
let you do it, but the slick pimp stood in the way.”

“Okay? But why is ‘Nina walking down the aisle and not
you?”

Bay and T-top laughed again. “It’s the father’s job
to give—the bride—away—to—the—groom,”
T-top said slowly.

Doss reared back and rubbed his chin in deep thought as he stared at
his daughters, trying his best to decipher what Tiva had said to him.
“It’s the father’s job to give the bride away to
the—ohh! Ohhh,” Doss said as he snapped his fingers.
“Bena, you the, you—”

“The groom,” Bay blurted out as she eyed her father, a
little disappointed in his lack of understanding of her and
AquaNina’s relationship.

“Don’t be eyeing me like that now,” Doss said as he
raised his hands up even with his shoulders. “It ain’t
like I go around seeking details of you and ‘Nina’s, you
and ‘Nina’s—”

“Sex life?” Bay finished.

“That’s right,” Doss responded, a little
embarrassed over his lack of insight.

“Don’t worry, dad. You can walk Kimi down the aisle.”
Bay said as she hugged her father briefly and kissed his cheek.

“And who is Kimi marrying?” Doss inquired.

“Udelle. And Koko gone marry Chablis.” Bay joked.

“I can see Udelle and Kimi getting married, but Koko ain’t
ever marrying Chablis,” T-top said. “That boy act too
stupid sometimes.”

“Who are Udelle and Chablis?” Doss asked.

Bay and Tiva laughed again. “Daddy,” Bay said. “You
met Udelle and Chablis like four times this summer already.”

“Udelle? The weather man?”

“Yeah. And his friend Chablis,” Tiva answered. “They
met Kimi and Koko a while back at a mall when they got into that
argument with that singer Narshea.”

“Chablis is a little silly-minded. He has some more maturing to
do. Udelle all right, though,” Doss remarked. “That boy
knows his stuff when it comes to weather. He told me one day when we
standing outside, he said, ‘it’s gone rain tomorrow,
Mister Dawkins’. Wasn’t a cloud in the sky. I asked him
how he know and he said it was getting hotter, that meant a cold
front was coming through and it was pushing all the hot air ahead of
it. Sure enough, the next day it rained all day. That boy got a
bright future of he’s able to predict like that.”

“That ain’t the only thing he be pre-dicking,” Tiva
said lowly as Bay sniggled and bumped her side with her elbow.

“Excuse me?” Doss said as he looked back at his
daughters.

“Nothing, just thinking out loud. Where were we?” Tiva
asked in a polite manner.

Doss eyed his daughters for a second before he turned around and
stared at a large open space at the rear of the building on the first
floor. “This here is where the first floor bar will be set up,”
he said, going on with the plans he had for the club. “Now,
when people enter in through the V.I.P. section, they could walk
along the wall and climb some stairs and walk behind the bar and head
up to the second floor. The third floor will be for the crew and the
crew only. I want an office up there where we can discuss business
and pack heat.” he said as he and his daughters continued
walking around the place.

*******

Asa Spade, meanwhile, was speeding back to his home in Boulder,
Colorado, about an hour northwest of Denver. He’d talked to
Phillip Tran about thirty minutes earlier and was aiming to call
Doss, but Doss’s number was locked away in his second burner, a
phone he hadn’t used in a while. Asa also now knew a federal
agent by the name of Lisa Vanguard was on to him courtesy of Phillip
and Grover. It would be a meeting Asa Spade wanted to make sure he
would miss to for certain. He’d encountered the court system in
Vegas back in 2001 and he knew if he were to appear in court under a
federal indictment, he would never see daylight again given his past
run-ins with the law. He was aiming to skip town with Xiang, Dougie
and Francesca, all of whom were riding with him on this day.

“I’m not a distributor, Xiang,” Asa admitted as he
wheeled his BMW up U.S. Highway 36, headed towards his mansion in
Boulder. “It was a good run, but this business ain’t for
me. Not on this level anyway. A few kilograms here and there I
thought I could handle, but I got us in over our head. We been
warring and dodging the law for the last four years. I done had
enough of this shit!”

“Where we going, baby?” Xiang asked calmly while rubbing
Asa’s shoulder.

Asa had not a clue where he was headed once he left Boulder, but
people were talking. If he were to have a day in court, he would be
looking at thirty years minimum—time he couldn’t do—time
he didn’t want to do. “I don’t know where we going,
Xiang. I really don’t wanna head to this house, but I can’t
leave Doss in the dark about what’s going down. I knew it from
day one,” Asa said as he shook his head in disbelief. “And
they trusted the guy,” he ended as he sped up the highway.

Once he reached the home, about thirty minutes later, Asa ran up the
stairs to he and Xiang’s bedroom and rummaged through his
armoire and grabbed his phone and the memory card that went with it.
His phone was powering up when he heard Dougie yell aloud, “Yo,
Ace! Feds in town! The feds!”

Asa looked out his vista window and could see a S.W.A.T. team wagon
trailing four unmarked cars, all five vehicles speeding up the gravel
road leading to the home. The phone had just powered up and Asa began
texting just as the federal agents were approaching the front door.
“
Come on, Ace!”
Asa Spade said to himself as he
searched for Doss’s numbers.

Dougie and Francesca were running out the back door of the home, but
they were quickly greeted by federal agents toting semi-automatic
rifles. They dropped to their knees and surrendered and were quickly
handcuffed and escorted through the home back towards the paddy
wagon.

Xiang, meanwhile, had run into the bedroom to be with Asa. “We
fucked up,” she said somberly as the federal agents were heard
traveling up the stairs.

“Federal agents! Show yourselves! Federal agents come out with
your hands up or we will fire! Surrender or we will fire!” the
men were heard yelling aloud and at random.

“Asa!” Xiang said lowly. “What, what are we going
to do?”

“We’re gonna go our asses to jail today, Xiang. A pimp
can’t get a break,” Asa said solemnly as he flushed the
memory card down the toilet. He and Xiang exited the bedroom with
their hands in the air just as four S.W.A.T. team members entered the
room. Knees planted in their backs and on their back of their heads
brought about the reality of the situation to Asa Spade and Xiang
Nyguen as they eyed one another while being handcuffed.

There was no need for explanation. Asa and his crew knew what they
were up against. Someone had ratted them out to the feds and they
were about to take a fall. The only thing good about the matter was
the fact that Asa Spade knew he hadn’t been busted with any
drugs. The home was clean, save for a few semi-automatic handguns and
rifles, and the memory card with his cohorts’ phone numbers had
been flushed away.

Still, the weight of the matter was more than enough to keep Asa
spade behind bars for quite some time fighting whatever charges lay
ahead. On top of that, he knew the feds had a witness. His only hope
was that Doss would receive the message he’d sent and act
quickly; thereby giving him at least a chance to see daylight again.

*******

“Two hundred and twenty-nine, two hundred and thirty. Just as
our informant said,” Laddy huffed as she jumped down from the
rear of an unmarked trailer that had been seized at one of the docks
behind JunJie’s warehouse located at the port of Seattle.

“That guy was a gift basket. You think we should put him
protective custody?” an agent asked Laddy as he removed his
latex gloves.

“No. Lisa said he has orders to avoid everybody within this
organization. And I’m sure Mister JunJie’s getting shot
will pause all activities and no one will ever suspect the guy. We’ll
leave him on the streets and see what else he decides to bring us.”

Lisa had acted on information she’d received a while back when
she cornered her informant in Chinatown-International District just
outside of downtown Seattle. The information she’d been given a
few months back had led to one of the biggest cocaine busts in
Seattle in years. Two hundred and thirty kilograms of uncut cocaine,
its origin unknown, but its ownership had been relegated to JunJie
Maruyama. And Lisa was only beginning. She had Laddy, several of her
aides, and a dozen federal agents in charge of the bust on the port
while she was paying an old friend a visit.

*******

Special Agent Jarkowski was shredding documents in his office when he
heard someone yell aloud, “Jerkoffski! What’re you doing
over there?”

Jarkowski looked up and saw Lisa Vanguard and several agents from the
Seattle branch of the F.B.I. standing behind her. His white skin grew
flush and sweat formed on his temples as he shoved several more
documents into the paper shredder in a hurried manner.

Lisa laughed as she entered the office, the three agents behind her
following as they held their guns on Jarkowski. “You have been
a pain in people’s ass ever since Hayate and Isao were killed,”
Jarkowski said as he stood behind his desk. “What the hell do
you want from me now?”

“You have the right to remain silent,” Lisa said as she
began citing Jarkowski his Miranda rights, the area between her legs
getting moist over the excitement of capturing a rogue cop
red-handed. “Anything you say can and will be used against you
in the court of—”