Chapter 13 #3
My Enforcer had a point. If the man was in pain, it was all in his head. “He really should be thanking me for breaking his neck. That one,” I pointed to the one with my dagger in his shoulder, “isn’t going to be so lucky.”
The man’s eyes went wide in horror.
I walked over to the footless man who looked like a twisted rag doll. Squatting, I tried my damnedest not to wince as the stitches on my back pulled. Tommy had said the one in my side wasn’t very deep and he didn’t think my kidney was in danger, but he still shot me full of antibiotics.
“How many of you are there on the islands?” I asked over his cries.
The man couldn’t move anything below his chin, meaning he couldn’t even shake his head as he tried to answer. But everything that came out of his mouth was unintelligible.
He was giving me a headache. I stood. “Throw him in,” I ordered the others. He was going to bleed to death soon anyway.
I gritted my teeth as I walked back over to where Tommy stood by the raised helm.
Per Lu, I was not allowed to lift anything.
I was already in the doghouse by getting on this boat, and I knew damn well that the others would tattle on me if Lu asked them if I obeyed.
That would have pissed me off if I didn’t know they did it out of loyalty to her and not out of disrespect to me.
As I’d told her months ago, I’d rather they liked her more than me anyway.
If there ever was a time when they had to choose between my life and hers, I needed to know without a shadow of a doubt that they would choose her over me.
My headache lessened as soon as the screaming stopped. I let out a sigh of relief. Then I turned to face the next man. “My question’s still the same. How many of you are there?”
Lucifer pulled down the man’s gag. He hit the dagger still protruding from the man with his elbow when he did. I didn’t know if it was on purpose or accidental, but I approved so I didn’t reprimand him for it.
“You’ll kill me if I talk,” he gasped out. “What’s the point?”
“I’m a man of my word,” I swore. “You will not be put into the woodchipper if you talk. But,” I added sternly, “if you don’t answer all my questions truthfully and I have to start questioning him,” I jerked my thumb at the other man, “then you most definitely will be going through the woodchipper.”
The two men glanced at each other. The man with the dagger in his shoulder slowly turned his gaze back to me. “What do you want to know?”
“Let’s start with how many of you are here on the islands?”
“We used to be about three dozen, I think. We were supposed to have more, but they never sent them. After you attacked us at the storage yard and then again at the laundromat, the rest of us moved to a different island. We didn’t think Oahu was safe anymore.
” He pronounced my island like “ow-wa-hoo” instead of “oh-AH-oo”. Haoles.
I gave Tommy an exasperated look before I said, “Which still doesn’t tell me how many of you are on my islands. Toss him in,” I ordered Spirit.
As Spirit stepped forward, the man started shouting, “Wait! Wait! Eleven! There were only eleven of us left!”
Spirit checked with me and I nodded to wait. I looked back to the Bloody Scorpion. “Why did only seven of you come to my home?”
“The others. They stayed behind to…” He looked at his companion, who was glaring daggers at him, before continuing, “To guard the shipment.”
“What shipment?”
“We lost a part of our shipment when you raided the laundromat, but we still had some and we bought more. We’ve slowly been cutting it and starting to distribute it.”
Fuck. We hadn’t gotten it all. Though the practical part of me knew that we would never get it all. There would always be those willing to sell and willing to use drugs.
“There weren’t any drugs when I checked the warehouse, Prez,” Spirit told me.
I nodded slowly. “Take some fingers,” I told my men. When the man looked at me in horror, like I’d betrayed him, as Lucifer and Spirit approached him, I calmly explained, “For making me repeat myself. Next time, it’ll be your balls.”
I had to hand it to the guy. For being a midlevel thug, he knew quite a lot.
He was able to give me the address of the place where the Bloody Scorpions hid their drug supply.
He knew the names of the other members of his club and their new dealers.
Too bad Saga wasn’t here. Tommy had to eventually start taking notes so we didn’t forget anything.
He also told us when their next supply was coming in.
What he didn’t know was who their supplier was or why they’d attacked my home tonight.
“We were ordered to take you out! I swear, that’s all I know,” he insisted, his bloody hands now bound in front of him.
Spirit had taken both of his thumbs and threw them into the woodchipper for failing to answer my initial question.
“I can’t tell you what I don’t know!” He kept going, eyeing the bright yellow machine like it was the door to Hell itself. “Please. That’s everything!”
I watched the man for a moment, making him sweat. “If you were ordered to take me out, why was I tranquilized?”
“I don’t know,” he gasped out, shaking his head. “That was all Lewis!”
I looked to the other man. “I take it, you’re Lewis?”
He didn’t nod or shake his head. He just glared at me over his gag.
I nodded my head slowly. “Very well. Now, is there anything else you can think of to tell me? Anything at all that could convince me to spare your life?”
The man frantically thought for a moment. “The… The Black Market Railroad. We were supplying them women. They were our first supplier of H.”
“I already knew that.”
He started to hyperventilate. It didn’t surprise me that thinking was so hard for the guy.
I decided to help him along. Mainly because the sun was coming up, not because I cared if he lived or died. “Do you know the name of your contact in the organization?”
The man’s eyes lit up like I’d just handed him the map to the Fountain of Youth. “Denis Baranov! His name is Denis Baranov.”
I gave him a nod of thanks before turning to his companion. “Aloha, Lewis. Now, same rules apply. For every question you deny me, my man will cut off a piece of you and feed you through the woodchipper bit by bit."
Spirit walked up to him and undid his gag.
“Why did you target my house?”
He remained silent, his jaw clamped shut. Spirit took his right big toe.
“Why did you target my house?”
His face turned red with anger and pain, but his mouth remained closed. Spirit took his other big toe.
“Why did you target my house?”
The man tried to kick Spirit’s leg, but Spirit lifted his foot just in time and then slammed it down on the man’s ankle with enough force to break bone.
“Why did you target my house?”
“We were hired to!” he finally gasped out.
I lifted an eyebrow, my demand for him to elaborate a silent one.
“I don’t know by who,” he insisted. “But I saw the guy talking to One Eye. I know there was money exchanged.”
“If you were paid to kill me, why did you tranq me?” I asked.
The guy shrugged like he wasn’t missing two toes and had a broken ankle.
“Figured if the guy wanted you dead enough to pay us, we could figure out why and then blackmail him into paying us more. When you survived the shooting, I grabbed the other gun. I didn’t realize the dose would wear off so quick.
The women we’ve used it on were under a lot longer. ”
I was also bigger than a hundred-pound woman. I had to quell my anger at the thought of these men dosing women to take them hostage.
“You said you saw the man who paid One Eye. Describe him.”
The guy shrugged. “Average height, I guess. Darkish, red hair.”
My eyebrows flew up. “Did he have one hand?” Rory was the only red-haired man who might have a reason to kill me.
Spirit, though, was shaking his head. “I doubt he survived. He was in really bad shape when we left him.”
Still, I wanted the Bloody Scorpion to confirm. Unfortunately, he gave me a noncommittal, “I couldn’t say.”
Fuck. When we got back to shore, I was going to need to send some men over to Rory’s boat to see what they could find.
“What can you tell me about Denis Baranov?”
He shook his head. “I came after our deal with the Black Market Railroad ended.”
“Then who is your new supplier?”
The guy clamped his mouth shut, but as soon as Spirit started forward again, he quickly started talking. “Kan something. Kannaka. Or, Kanooko! He runs—”
Spirit, Tommy, and I all straightened at the name. Lucifer must have recognized it too, because his eyebrows drew down.
“Kahoku?” Tommy gasped. “No. He would… He would never.”
Kahoku Hikialani was an activist. But he wasn’t just some activist around these parts, he was the activist. And we all worked for him at one point or another: Rory, Aaleah, Tommy, Spirit, Tangaloa, Neo, Mako…
Even Hops. Kahoku stood for home, for our way of life.
It made no sense that he would be involved in drug running.
Called it the ‘haole poison’. And he despised drug dealers.
It made no fucking sense… But how else would this Bloody Scorpion know Kahoku’s name?
I wasn’t the only one who was pissed at this news. Now also wasn’t the time to ask Tommy or Spirit about it. Not when we were running out of moonlight and the others would need to be asked the same questions.
“Can you think of anything else to ask them?” I asked Tommy instead.
The Brit looked shellshocked. He wasn’t born here, nor did he have a drop of Polynesian blood in him, but he was still malihini. He’d fought and bled for our people.
I looked to Spirit and Lucifer, silently asking them the same question. Both shook their heads in response.
At my nod, the two picked up the man who told us about Kahoku. He flailed, but was unable to prevent them from cutting off his clothing. The man with the shoulder wound sagged in relief as he watched his club brother be fed into the woodchipper too.
“Turn it off,” I instructed Tommy, who flipped the switch. I walked up to the last living Bloody Scorpion. “Your clothes are filthy. Strip.” I waved a hand at the large pile of clothing. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
He stumbled to his feet. “I need to go to the hospital.” When he fumbled with his clothing due to his missing thumbs and the knife still in his shoulder, Lucifer came over to assist him. The man shouted in agony when Lucifer finally pulled the blade from his shoulder.
Once naked, he tried to reach for the pile of clothing, but I stepped in front of him. He jolted to a halt, paling. He must have seen something in my eyes because he stuttered out, “N-no! Yo-you promised! I told you everything!”
“You did, and therefore you aren’t being fed into the woodchipper.” I leaned forward, “As I promised. But you also shot up my house with my pregnant wahine and my baby niece inside. For that, you die.”
Then I grabbed his arm and bloody shoulder, spun us to get momentum, and tossed him overboard into the crimson water. We all walked to the edge of the boat to watch as gray skin met pale flesh and the screams of the dying were soon pulled down into the depths of the sea.
When the predawn fell silent, I rolled my neck, my muscles stiff and the stitches on my back tight. “Anyway you guys could not tell Lu about me tossing a man into water?”
All three shook their heads. Fuck.