Breaking Bad: 14 Tales of Lawless Love

by Koko Brown

  But first, he had to deal with whatever this shit was that Izzy was calling him about.

  “One problem at a time, Masaki,” he whispered to himself. “One at a time.”

  Oshun shifted carefully through the massive crowd behind the NYFD barricade as she looked for one face in particular. At six-feet-two, Aesop Jenkins stood above most people in the crowd by at least a head. When she spotted his signature light Caesar haircut, cedar complexion, and the faithful toothpick he kept trapped between his full lips, she made her way toward him.

  She said nothing when she found him. There were too many people around for her to express her thoughts openly. Not to mention, with all the emergency vehicles and their wailing sirens, there wasn’t much chance of being heard anyway.

  Her lips tightened into a flattened line as she squinted and assessed the blackened destruction of the now-extinguished fire. The row of attached two family houses on Mother Gaston Boulevard were now gaping holes of charred brick and steel. An entire block of buildings was gone in an instant.

  She wasn’t angry that AAM Developing had suffered such a loss. She knew by their track record those houses were going to be used as drug dens. But, on the other side of those houses were properties owned by members of her community. People she’d promised to protect if they followed her and adhered to the rules put forth by her council. Now those people would suffer along with AAM, and she couldn't have that.

  “Club, now,” was all she said before turning around to begin the two-block walk between the site of the fire and Heaven’s Gate.

  She didn’t need to look behind her to know Aesop was following her. She didn't even need to hear the heavy footfalls of his workman’s boots crunching hard against the concrete sidewalk. She knew he followed her, because it was his job to follow her, explicitly and implicitly.

  She keyed in the alarm code and entered the doors of the darkened venue. Heaven’s Gate usually brought calm to her restless soul. It was strange that a place usually filled with loud music and boisterous patrons dancing wall to wall could make her feel calm, but it did.

  When she was just a club owner, her soul was at rest. It was rare when she didn't have to worry about making certain her community was protected from all threats, that her people were thriving in a system that set them up for failure from birth. But tonight, even inside these hallowed walls, there was no peace.

  She headed for the basement, not surprised to see the lights were already on when she opened the door. She took purposeful steps down the staircase, and catalogued each face sitting at the rectangular table in the center of the room.

  Big Craig, Chelly, and Uncle Pete ran the prostitution, the gambling, and chop shop rackets on the north side of Brownsville. Oshun controlled the money laundering and protection rings on the south side. With more money from her enterprise, and a larger piece of the territory under her control, Oshun sat at the head of the council. A fact that hadn’t been easily accepted at first, especially by their eldest member, Uncle Pete. However, over time, they each saw her as a worthy leader who kept them paid, and paid people made happy subordinates.

  Oshun taught them the way to remain successful was to engage community support. If they did things that placed the community at risk, they would always have to worry about some do-gooder trying to bring them down. They needed to take care of the community, and the community would take care of them.

  The first thing she implemented was a community outreach of sorts. No crime was to be perpetrated against members of the community, only against entities that would take from the community. Her council members had to protect Brownsville, and they had to put an agreed-upon percentage of their profits back into the community.

  Before Oshun instituted the restricting of how hustles were run in Brownsville, it was a wasteland of death, drug addiction, and crime. Now, the community was beginning to thrive, and if it were up to Oshun, it would remain that way.

  The key was organization. The community balked at prostitutes walking the streets, or women sacrificing their health as sex workers, and pimps beating and killing the girls they victimized. Oshun helped Big Craig set up brothels near the business district that only opened when the businesses closed for the day. All Big Craig’s girls received regular healthcare at no cost to them, as well as took a favorable seventy-thirty split in earnings. Craig had balked about the changes in the beginning, but then the cops stopped busting his girls, and he saw his revenue increase rapidly. It was hard to argue with that logic.

  When Chelly’s gambling ring kept getting raided because nosey neighbors reported the undesirables hanging out on the block, Oshun formulated a plan. She turned Chelly’s brick and mortar business into a virtual casino whose IP codes were damn near impossible to track. With the cost of overhead going down and the profits pouring in, Chelly happily conformed to Oshun’s business model.

  When legislation produced heftier penalties for grand theft auto, Oshun stepped in to help Uncle Pete restructure his hustle. Instead of stealing the cars himself, she had him contract out the work. She also had him taking on more insurance fraud cases than before. Stealing cars brought unwanted attention. Frankly, there were too many people who wanted to cash in on the insurance money when payments became too much to handle. So now, Pete didn’t have to worry about breaking into and stealing cars himself. He simply designated a drop off spot with the owners, picked up the unwanted vehicles, and broke them down for parts.

  Each one of her council members leveled-up when Oshun gave them a plan to run their businesses more efficiently. It was an added benefit that these new methods didn’t put them in opposition with the community.

  Her plans always focused on minimizing risk and maximizing profit. The only thing the members had to sacrifice was violence and drugs.

  It had been difficult to get them to give up their interests in guns and drugs. Getting them to police their people and penalize them for breaking council rules had been damn near impossible. But over time, these three learned times were good when they followed Oshun, and not so good when they went against her wishes.

  Oshun quietly took her seat at the table, and waited for Aesop to close the door and take his place standing behind her.

  “Someone want to tell me what happened?”

  She watched the three council members gathered around the table, each directing their eyes to anywhere but where they needed to be, on her.

  “Don’t all speak at once,” she said to the still-quiet room.

  When no one spoke, she stood up, placing spread palms against the table as she braced herself. These three people had helped her bring Brownsville up out of the dark hardships that plagued communities of lower socioeconomic status.

  No, it wasn’t a wealthy haven overflowing with milk and honey. But, with hard work, Brownsville had become a working-class neighborhood. The council initiated programs geared to teach skills to the unemployed and undereducated. They’d sponsored grants designed to place competitive tools in their schools, and provided opportunities for residents to attend college, and start businesses within the community. They were doing good work. Brownsville was still on the come-up, but at least they were moving in the right direction. Tonight was the first time in her ten-year reign she worried all her work could be undone.

  “What the fuck happened? As far as I understand it, the plan was for us to sneak in and fuck up their shit enough to cause code violations for the inspectors coming in a few days. How the fuck did we jump from that to burning down their fucking buildings, along with the neighboring houses owned by our damn people?”

  Uncle Pete, an older man who was an original gangster from when her father was running Brownsville, finally turned his gaze to hers. He still wore wool fedoras or Bermuda hats wherever he went. He took a pull from the cigar resting between the thick pointer and ring finger of his right hand.

  “It wasn’t part of the plan, Oshun. Chelly, Craig, and me put some of our best people on the job. Aesop oversaw it all. Them damn Yakuza
was waiting on them when they got there.”

  She turned to Aesop, her right hand, for confirmation of the old man’s version of events.

  “They ambushed us,” Aesop said as he nodded his head. Just as we were finishing up, they caught us. There was a struggle between one of them and Craig’s people while he was messing with the wiring. A light broke, and the fire started. We barely made it out alive.”

  She digested Aesop’s comments, turning them over repeatedly in her mind. There was something picking at the back of her mind that didn’t sit right with her. They’d watched this site for more than a month to get AAM’s pattern down. They’d known everything about their security and had planned this job accordingly. Oshun wasn’t sloppy, and she didn't allow her people to be either. Something was wrong here.

  “How the fuck did they know we were coming?”

  Again, everyone sitting at the table remained quiet.

  “Someone talked,” she answered her own question. “That’s the only way they could’ve found out about our plan. Find out who the fuck is telling tales. We reconvene in two days. By then, y’all silent asses better have answers for me.”

  She stepped away from the table, walked up the stairs and out of the club. Her anger turned to breathtaking pain when she glanced at the burned ruins marking her failure to keep her promise to her people.

  The sadness cloaking her soul weighed heavily on her, pulling her into a sinking pit of despair and disappointment as she stood there trying to figure out how she was going to fix this. The easy fix was to help her neighbors rebuild. That would take some of the burden off, but she knew it wouldn’t repair the parts of their spirits that were destroyed with their mementoes, and memories that often colored the places a person called home.

  “Oshun?”

  She turned around at the familiar voice calling her name. It was out of place, somehow not fitting properly into her surroundings.

  “Masaki? What are you doing here?”

  It seemed like hours since she’d left him standing pissed off at his front door. A quick glance at her watch told her only forty-five minutes had elapsed. Did he follow her? Did he track her down to this site? She shook her head, trying to loosen the discomfort those thoughts brought to her.

  He couldn't have followed you. You would’ve noticed a tail. But how and why was he here?

  “One of my employees called to alert me of the fire. What about you?”

  “I know many of the people who live in this area. I needed to come down and see how bad it was. Needed to see if there was any way I could help.”

  It wasn't a complete lie. It was mostly true. Yes, she did know the people who’d lost their homes. But Masaki didn't know about the true nature of her ties to the club. He didn’t know she was the owner, and he damn sure didn’t know about her connection to the underground council that, until tonight, protected Brownsville from all threats.

  She replayed his words in her mind on a loop until something clicked in her head. “Did you say one of your employees called you?”

  He nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Why would a real estate agent need to know about a fire that ravaged houses that weren't for sale?”

  “Because my development company owns the properties on the other side where the fire began.”

  “You work at AAM Development?”

  He shook his head. “No,” he answered. “I own it.”

  Little more than an hour ago she was laying in his bed, quivering with need, falling victim to the pleasure he expertly doled out. Now, she was standing in the wake of the destruction she’d helped unleash on her own people. And worse yet, the man she’d been so captivated by for the last three months was part of what had led her down this dark path.

  Dear God, I’m bedding the enemy.

  THREE

  Oshun sat in front of her computer watching as each line of info she scrolled climbed up the screen. She wasn't the greatest hacker in the world, but she knew enough to get the information she was looking for.

  Birth records, social security number, citizenship, educational documents, professional licenses, and property listings was some of the information she’d been able to get so far. Masaki Yamaguchi’s life was spread out for her inspection on the large computer screen. Now, she just had to dissect it and piece it all together to make sense of the confusion in her head.

  Everything was as Mas had told her. He was born in Tokyo, Japan, immigrated with his parents to the States when he was a toddler, spent his life living in Canarsie with his parents, and owned AAM Developing.

  Oshun rubbed the side of her temple, trying to stave off the headache she could feel creeping up behind her eyes. This was outrageous. How could everything come back so clean if he was in bed with the Yakuza?

  He lived in a simple two-family home in Canarsie, Brooklyn that he’d converted into a duplex. He was a product of public education. He wore a suit and tie to work every day. He was clean, maybe too clean.

  She allowed memories of their union over the last three months to play in her head. Nothing about their time together pointed to anything screaming a Yakuza connection.

  He doesn’t even have full body tattoos.

  She allowed her mind to conjure up the image of him naked. She took a deep breath to remind herself this wasn’t about pleasure, this was about the survival of her organization and her community.

  Tanned skin, smooth to the touch with very little body hair. His chest, was strong and carved, and his arms…

  “Oh, my God! His arms.”

  She was right, he didn’t have the extensive full-body tattoos Yakuza members were notorious for. However, he did have full-sleeve tattoos on each arm.

  She pressed harder against her temple as she remembered a distinct conversation they’d had about his tats. The first night they’d slept together, she’d noticed them, noting how strange it was to find them on a man who looked so pristine. He’d laughed, telling her they were a result of rebellion against his father, and the life his father had planned for him.

  It was a perfectly fitting answer; one she never questioned until this moment. Now that she knew he was the owner of AAM, she wasn’t certain if Masaki’s answer felt as true as it once had.

  Dull vibrating against her desk pulled her eyes away from the computer and down to her phone. Masaki’s name flashing across the screen made the bottom of her stomach twist into an uncomfortable knot. She slid her finger left, sending the call to voicemail.

  She’d been ducking him since the fire. That was a week ago. A week of gaining access to government databases and sorting through all the information she’d procured, yet she still didn’t have a definitive answer. Was Masaki involved with the Yakuza, or wasn’t he?

  Nothing in the documents presented a clear picture. Nothing definitively said, “Yes, I belong to an evil, criminal organization that is trying to destroy your community.”

  Determined to find what she was looking for, she delved back into the data on her screen, scouring it once again in hopes of either vindicating Masaki, or convicting him. This middle ground filled with uncertainty and doubt was an uncomfortable place she refused to dwell.

  If Masaki was mixed up in the Yakuza, he'd go down with them. It wasn’t a choice she wanted to have to make. In fact, she desperately wanted this all to be some crazy misunderstanding.

  Though she’d never admit it to him, Masaki had become someone important to her. He wasn’t just a fuckboy she’d picked up at the club. The truth was, even though that’s what she’d told herself all the time, she’d been in denial about how strongly she felt for the man. She’d allowed herself to believe her only interest in him was the sex. The way her heart leapt when he’d asked her to move in completely destroyed any idea that their connection was only about their sex. Your heart didn’t dance when an insignificant fuck buddy asked you to commit.

  Sadness filled her as she pondered what all the latest developments meant for them. She’d known soon enough she would have to wal
k away. Him giving her keys to his place, asking her to move in, was the beginning of the end for them. But, even though she’d sensed the end approaching, she hadn’t thought she might have to bring harm to Masaki if they went their separate ways. A connection with the Yakuza meant there’d be no amicable parting. This would mean war, and war was always bloody.

  A loud banging on the door made her jump to her feet and focus her attention toward the foyer. The sound repeated itself, making her reflexes kick into overdrive. She reached in the drawer of her desk to remove her pistol. She cocked it, and flipped the safety off.

  The loud thumping kept rumbling against the door. She stepped quietly and carefully toward the sound. A brief peek at the security monitors on the nearby hall table showed an animated Masaki banging on her door with such force she could feel the vibrations through the floor.

  Securing her gun behind her back, she called out through the door, “What do you want?”

  “Open the door, Oshun! We need to talk.”

  She took a deep breath, hoping the added oxygen would force her brain to stop thinking of how tasty he looked in his tight black t-shirt. The fabric was stretched so tightly across his muscled chest, it was difficult to focus on how she was going to resolve this situation.

  “Mas, today isn’t a good day. I really need to be alone.”

  She anticipated more yelling to accompany the anger that had him pounding his fist against her door only moments before. What she received instead was soft-spoken concern that unnerved her more than the violent banging had.

  “Oshun, I’ve been worried sick about you. The last I saw you was the night of the fire. You haven’t answered one of my calls since then. Please, just talk to me, baby. Tell me what’s wrong.”