No Room for Mercy (51 page)

The rest of the family, however, never even thought about Reynard,
nor did they care for the man, but because Dimples accepted him, they
remained cordial the few times he’d returned to Ponca City for
a visit with his daughter and grandson.

CHAPTER THIRTY

TEXAS CAKE AND CREAM

“
Dios, no dejes que me
o Simone morir esta noche
.
”
(God, don’t let me
or Simone die tonight.) fourteen year-old Peppi Vargas said to
herself as she rode in the backseat of a rental car with Toodie and
Simone Cortez, the three riding south on Interstate-45 through the
town of Aldine, Texas, headed towards Houston on a rainy August night
in 2005.

Shortly after Carmella’s death, just over
ten months ago, fourteen year-old Pepper had begun living under harsh
conditions in Fox Park. She and sixteen year-old Simone Cortez were
basically fending for themselves on Ann Avenue by selling any and all
drugs they could score to turn a profit, and an occasional pawn shop
robbery. The two were jam tight, practically inseparable, and they
had each other’s back through thick and thin because when it
got down to it, all they had left were each other; in spite of their
survival instincts on the streets, Simone and Pepper were still
young, and therein lay their conundrum. The two felt as if they had
to listen to Toodie because they’d been under her for some
time, before Carmella had been murdered and well afterwards.

Twenty-four year Kathryn ‘Toodie’
Perez, now the last remaining leader of a once prosperous drug
organization, was now getting money by any means necessary, using
Simone and Pepper at will in her endeavor to remain on top of the
game. When Carmella went down in Mexico, the cocaine had been shut
off completely to the click in Fox Park.

Ann Avenue had gone from brick sellers to the
bottom of the rung, barely able to sell quarters on the streets let
alone ounces and kilos. Cocaine was hard to come by now that the lead
supplier was out of the picture. To add insult to injury, the Chicago
Gang was in control of the streets and there was little Toodie could
do about the matter because she hadn’t the muscle. Starving was
not her style, however; Toodie was used to having things—the
best of things. The disdain she had for the Chicago Gang was still in
her heart, but her survival was now top priority. She would deal with
the crew from Chicago soon enough. Carmella’s home in Crestwood
was now hers; and she still had several cars, and a little bit of
money stashed, but the hustle wasn’t coming in as fast and as
large as Toodie had been used to during the time Carmella had things
pumping.

As Toodie drove down the highway, her phone
began ringing. She looked down at the screen and saw a number she
didn’t recognize that had a Missouri area code. It was the
second time in three days she’d gotten the call, but she never
bothered to answer because she didn’t know the number and
whoever the person was that was calling on the other end never
bothered to leave a message. She sent her phone to voice mail and
continued her drive towards Houston.

Riding behind Toodie’s rented PT Cruiser,
in a Buick Roadmaster, was twenty-six year-old Bahdoon ‘Q-man’
LuQman and his three man crew. Q-man was a man that had burned
bridges. When Carmella cut the price per kilogram, he’d cut off
his supplier from New York. After her death, he returned to his old
supplier and business was good for a while. Q-man, however, had
become accustomed to getting cocaine on the low. Carmella had spoiled
the boys from Minneapolis; and rather than pay full price, the
Somalis had decided to rob their connect out of forty-two kilograms
he’d had in his stash house and had taken five lives in the
process. They’d fucked the game up for a brief minute over in
the Bronx and could never return to New York City.

Q-man soon clicked up with Toodie, and for a
while they broke bread with the stolen cocaine; but now that the
kilograms had all been offed, this newly-formed band of armed jackers
was after a new target located down in Houston, Texas.

Not having a legitimate connect and the refusal
to pay the going rate for a kilogram of cocaine had brought about a
deadly alliance between Toodie and the Somalis. Game didn’t
stop. And even though Toodie had lost a sister and her best friend to
the game, she was still deep into the mix and had taken on a new
occupation. She drove down the highway as rain whipped about, the
windshield wipers on the PT Cruiser working overtime to keep the
windows free of water as they seemingly mimicked the words ‘
goin’
kill ‘em...goin’ kill ‘em…goin’ kill
‘em…goin’ kill ‘em…’

Everything was all set up on this night as
Toodie rode into Houston and traveled to the north east side of the
city and entered the Fifth Ward where she and her crew were to meet
up with their contacts. She pulled into the back parking lot of
Phillis Wheatley High School shortly after midnight and parked beside
a 1986 two door Delta ’88.

The tinted window on the driver’s side
rolled down on the car in the rain, which had turned into a light
drizzle, and Toodie laid eyes on Pancho Vera and Cesar Guerrera for
the first time in nearly two years.

Twenty-one year-old Pancho Vera, who went by the nickname Dead Eye,
because of his droopy left eye, and his partner in crime, twenty-one
year-old Cesar Guerrera, who everybody called Big Bounce because of
his six foot tall, three hundred and fifty pound frame, were
Carmella’s Enforcers down in Houston.

They distributed cocaine throughout Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana for
Carmella during her time; but they, too, had been on hard times since
the woman’s downfall. They knew all that was going on down in
Texas, who got busted, who was ratting, when Carmella’s next
package was coming in, and how much money each city was supposed to
bring in. Dead Eye and Big Bounce often hung out in Fifth Ward where
they ran a trap house, selling bags of marijuana being that their
cocaine connect had went away with Carmella’s death.

Itching for a major come up, Toodie’s call a month ago had
landed in Dead Eye and Big Bounce’s lap at the right time. They
knew all the big suppliers in Houston because they’d once
supplied the clicks. With a chance to make off with a big score,
Carmella’s former Enforcers jumped on the Texas cake and cream
bandwagon and agreed to help set up two dealers they’d once
sold kilograms to.

Q-man exited his ride and walked in between the cars and the group
went over their plan one last time before they set out to do their
jobs. A big time dealer down the road in the Fifth Ward, known to
store bricks by the dozen in his trap was to be hit by Q-man and his
crew, along with Dead Eye, who’d set up the sting. Big Bounce
would ride with Toodie, Simone and Pepper over to a home in River
Oaks and pull a kick door on another dealer who was rumored to have a
safe full of money tucked away in his mansion. The crew dapped off
and hopped into their rides to get their plans underway.

Pepper sat in the backseat beside Simone in silence as she rode
listening to the music and inhaling the potent marijuana Toodie and
Big Bounce toked on as they cruised towards River Oaks, one of the
wealthiest neighborhoods in the country with homes ranging from one
million to twenty million dollars. The guy the crew was planning on
robbing was a married man in his mid-fifties and had been the main
supplier to the city of San Antonio, Texas for years. His eight
million dollar two-story Swedish-style home sat on a golf course
beside a thick groove of trees. The man did no business in Houston,
hadn’t harmed anyone in years and had retired from the game
with his riches when Carmella was gunned down in Mexico last October.
The fact that he had no body guards and lived alone with his wife
made him a perfect mark for Toodie and her bunch, who only wanted an
easy lick that would go smoothly and with as little hang ups as
possible.

The PT Cruiser turned into the River Oaks Golf Course, passing a
guard shack that was empty and began winding down the road. The homes
here were pristine, to say the least. Large, exquisite structures
that sat back from the road, some hidden by tall pine trees, dotted
the hilly landscape and they were all unique in design. When Toodie
rolled up on the brown two story home sitting beside a tall grove of
trees with a fountain out front, she knew she’d found the place
she was searching for. The address on the custom-built brick mailbox
confirmed the location and she wheeled the car up the narrow concrete
road leading to the home’s three car garage with the PT
Cruiser’s headlights off.

Under the darkness of night, Toodie and the gang exited the ride with
guns in hand and ran along the right side of the huge mansion towards
the back of the home where she, Simone and Pepper hopped a small iron
gate that led to the home’s swimming pool area. They climbed
the theatrical-style stone stairs without making a sound and
approached one of the French doors just as a searchlight began
gleaming, lighting up the entire area. The lights went out several
seconds later when Big Bounce pulled the circuit breaker, signaling
Toodie that it was safe to enter.

A crowbar wedged in between the patio door’s hinges forced it
open and Simone entered with a twelve gauge that had an illuminated
flashlight duct-taped to the top of the barrel. Big Bounce joined the
crew with another twelve gauge and led the four through the home
towards the stairs where they met the man of the home in the
stairwell. The man had a .357 revolver in his hand, and when he aimed
it, Big Bounce blasted him in the chest and he tumbled down the
stairs, his body now resting on the mid-drift.

“Stay here, Peppi. Simone let’s go,” Toodie said as
she and Big Bounce climbed the stairs and ran towards the room where
they heard screams emanating from the man’s wife. The three
entered the room where Toodie grabbed the woman, knocked the cell
phone from her hands and forced her to her knees. “The safe?
Where’s the safe?” she yelled in the darkness as she
checked to make sure the woman hadn’t called 9-1-1.

The woman was scared beyond words. She crawled over to a large
walk-in closet and opened the door and lay face down on the carpeted
floor, readily complying with her assailants. She was pulled back up
by Toodie, however, who forced her inside the room and hissed, “Open
this mutherfucka before I blow your brains all over the place!”

“Please don’t hurt me,” the woman begged as she
slowly twisted the knob on the four foot tall safe until it clicked.

Toodie and Dead Eye shoved the woman away from the open safe and
began placing stacks of hundred dollar bills into a satchel along
with diamond necklaces, ruby and diamond rings and small packet of
loose diamonds.

Simone, meanwhile, was rummaging through boxes on the dresser,
picking up on a couple of large diamond rings and an expensive
diamond-crusted watch. A gun blast to the back of the woman’s
head ended her life and Toodie, Simone and Big Bounce emerged from
the walk-in closet and trotted out the master bedroom’s double
doors.

Pepper, meanwhile, as she stood on the stairs with her .380 clutched
tightly in her right hand, had watched in silence as the man Big
Bounce had shot just a minute ago, died before her very eyes. She’d
seen death up-close before, the day her mother died and the day
Phoebe had been killed, but each time it was a brand new experience.
The man had asked her for help, but she said nothing. He’d
pleaded for her to help his wife, but she did nothing, only standing
by and watching in silence as the man died before her very eyes.
Pepper was shaken from her trance when she saw and heard Toodie
descending the stairs and all four left the home and rode calmly off
the golf course.

*******

“So my man here from Dallas looking for that fire connect, ya’
feel me,” Dead Eye said as he stood beside Q-man inside a trap
house of some long time acquaintances of his.

Two black men sat on a sofa with a lone female who was rolling a
blunt as she paid little attention to the conversation at hand. It
was just a routine deal at the dope house between her man and his
customers as far as she was concerned. Q-man’s crew had guns
drawn and was standing beside the wooden shotgun house as lookouts.

“You say he want three of them thangs?” one of the men
asked Dead Eye in a calm manner back inside the living room.

“Yeah, homes. You know my word good. We been doing business for
a while now. I lost my connect, but it ain’t nothin’ for
me to turn my people on to some real shit, ya’ know?”

“True dat. Show me some loot,” the dark-skinned slender
man replied as he sat on the edge of the sofa eyeing Dead Eye and the
man who called himself Q-man.

“I’m sayin’, where the product, homes?”

“Don’t worry about that. You know the routine, Pancho.
Cash up front, my nig. We talkin’ sixty stacks, dog, and that
shit mean something. Let me see it.”

Q-man leaned forward and said, “Yo, Panch, just go ‘head
and pay dude up front. What? We gotta wait here ‘til you go get
the work, my dude?”

“You pay me, you get what you ask for, cuz. Panch know the
play.”

“I know the play, homes,” Dead Eye said as he leaned down
and unzipped the duffel bag situated between his feet.

“Yo,” the man sitting opposite of Dead Eye said to his
comrade, “get them thangs ready so we can make this deal and
stab out.”