Free No Room for Mercy by Clever Black Page B

She
reached under her seat and grabbed a mini-Uzi and tucked her
gold-plated handgun into the back of her waistband and stepped out
the car door.
    “Where are they, Toodie?” Carmella asked as she went and
stood before the docks with her Uzi on display.
    “Dumb asses got lost and rode way over to Saint Louis. One of
the girls on the yap now guidin’ ‘nem in. They should be
here in five minutes or so.”
    Carmella, for a brief moment, thought she was walking into a trap
given the nature of the scene upon her arrival. Realizing she’d
only had a brief case of paranoia, she walked over to the stairs.
“Pepper tells me you that yell at her, Kathy. I’m a tell
you once to not let it happen again. She’s a child without a
mother and on the strength of what she’s going through she
deserves to be treated better.” Carmella said as she knelt down
on one knee beside Toodie and reached for Toodie’s blunt. She
toke a few tokes before passing it back. “Do I make myself
clear about Peppi?” she asked through a cough.
    “We clear on that, boss. That little girl is a burden, though.
She act like she can’t do nothing on her own.”
    “Peppi can’t do anything for herself right now, Toodie,
and that is why we must look after her,” Carmella said as she
sat down on the edge of the concrete dock. “Peppi is only ten
years old. She has lost her mother, believed she had a heart
condition and was about to die, and she is in a strange place with
people she doesn’t even know. How could she be strong right now
given her age and circumstances?”
    Toodie reflected on Carmella’s words as she blew smoke from her
nostrils. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Peppi Vargas,
she just didn’t want to be bothered with tending to, what was
in her eyes, a baby. The crew was about to get money and Toodie felt
Pepper would only get in the way. “I’ll make sure she’s
okay, but it’s Phoebe here that is actually cool with her li’l
ass.” Toodie told Carmella as she passed her the blunt.
    “I know. But remember, nothing happens to Pepper.”
    “Si, boss. We’ll look after her,” Phoebe said.
    Carmella looked over to Toodie as she took a long toke off the blunt.
    “What?” Toodie asked through a smile.
    Carmella exhaled the smoke and said seriously, “I’m sorry
about that thing in Valle Hermoso where I hit you. You know how I
get, but that little girl means something to me, okay? She just means
something to me, so look after her.”
    Toodie looked Carmella in the eyes and the two bumped fists. “Nothing
happens to Pepper,” she said as she looked down into her lap
while nodding her head up and down.
    Where are these guys? Carmella then wondered silently as she
sat under the shade with her crew and checked the time on her Cartier
watch.
    *******
    “ Bring it…we right here…we’re not going
anywhere…we right here…this is something we don’t
share…we right here…bring your crew ‘cause we
don’t care…we right here…”
    DMX’s song Bring It was thumping hard from the interior
of a black Range Rover on 23” inch chrome wheels as the vehicle
turned off into the abandoned warehouse and paused beside Carmella’s
Ferrari a few minutes after Carmella’s arrival. She and her
crew watched as the four men, one whose name was Bahdoon LuQman,
A.K.A. Q-man, slowly exited the ride on the front passenger side.
    Carmella had never seen the Somalis before; she thought them to be a
bunch of dark-skinned, thin men. To the contrary, Q-man and his goons
looked every bit like a few of the fellas who balled on Fox Park with
their brown skin and ripped biceps. They were all sporting either
curly Afros or braids, baggy jeans, sparkling white tennis and ice
white t-shirts with long platinum chains dangling down to their belt
buckles. The Somalis were a handsome bunch, but they also had a
certain style of ruggedness about themselves that Carmella could
appreciate.
    Q-man and his crew, all in their twenties, were from The