Crimson Footprints (37 page)

She should’ve been at home,
curled up with Tak and his newly freed hand. Despite the desire to
earn a name for herself, she kept turning to silly and trivial
thoughts. Something Tak said, something John did, something Kenji
wanted. She needed discipline. In the past, she’d had it in droves.
What had the Tanaka men done to her? She could only imagine the
answer they’d give.

They had this way with her,
Tak, and John even, of making her laugh when logic defied joy.
She’d been standing in the mirror that morning, staring at her
reflection, when she turned to Tak and said, ‘you know, one time,
my grandfather told me I looked like a baboon.’”

He’d looked up at her with a
frown as serious as it was contemplative.

“
You want to go kick over
his tombstone?”

She’d laughed, of course,
knowing he would’ve done it had she agreed.

Deena chastised her
wandering mind. The “City-Within-A-City” was her ticket to freedom.
Win that, and her days of stingy five figure salaries with Daichi
were over. She smiled.

Fantasizing was fun. And now
back to work.

After all, she had a full
day ahead of her. A few hours at the office, a trip to Babies R US
and a baby shower for an expectant fourteen-year-old. Somehow, her
itinerary failed to excite her.

Deena stood in line at the
Aventura Babies R Us, a baby mobile in one arm, a nursing pillow in
the other. She tried not to think of the gift’s recipients, the
fourteen-year-old girlfriend of her seventeen-year-old cousin,
Shakeith, but her thoughts had a will of their own. As she stood,
she pondered how such a family could exist—a helter-skelter mix of
welfare receiving, low achieving, blissfully satisfied souls
content with self-destruction.

It wasn’t that she believed
healthy families existed apart from problems. But she knew the
difference between that sort of family and one without hope. The
day after Tak broke his hand on Mike’s face; he pulled his cousin
aside and offered an apology. It was important to him that he had
his cousin’s forgiveness, and for Mike, once he realized what Deena
was to Tak, he was horribly embarrassed and wanted Tak’s
forgiveness, too. So when the cousins parted at the end of the week
it was on good terms. Once, Aunt Caroline and Rhonda had argued
over the price of postage stamps. The argument escalated, Caroline
hit Rhonda, and the two didn’t speak for a year.

Shakeith was Caroline’s son.
A seventeen-year-old smoker, drinker and soon-to-be father, he
idolized Deena’s deceased brother, Anthony. Whenever Shakeith
wanted to emphasize one thing or another, he would do so by
invoking the name of his cousin. “Man I put that on my dead cousin,
Tony,” he’d say with a shout. Tony, who was third-in-command in the
tyrannical R.I.P. gang, Tony, who moved more cocaine in and out of
Liberty City than any two dealers combined and Tony, who’d become
so powerful someone believed he had to die.

Tony
. It was how Deena sifted trash from treasure. Tony versus
Anthony. One was a murderous gang member, the other her brother.
And all it took to separate them was the dropping of three small,
yet powerful letters.

Shakeith wanted to be Tony.
It was in everything he said and did. In the way he’d invoke Tony’s
name when challenged, as though his cousin had written an evocative
and compelling manual on the art of gangsta living. It was in the
way he dressed and walked, that funky gait that dared onlookers to
test him. And it was in his life’s philosophy, that of doing as
Tony Hammond would’ve done.

Deena gave him a year to
live. Maybe a little more, but not much. A single year and the
Hammonds would bury another.

Their story would be
compelling were it not so commonplace. Prisons were brimming with
brothers and cousins, fathers and sons, all harbored within the
same maximum facility. What was impressive to Deena was the stories
of those who didn’t fill those walls. The Deenas and Rhondas who
kept their footsteps high as they trudged through the sludge. To
Deena, the honest way was the hard one, and the other,
easy.

She couldn’t understand the
lure for Shakeith. Her brother was dead. Despite all those who had
feared him, maybe even because of it, Anthony Hammond had been
hunted, captured, and slaughtered.

CHAPTER
FIFTY-SEVEN

Morning arrived without
fanfare. The simple shimmer of sunlight through the windowpane woke
first Deena, then Tak.

“
Mmm. You feel sublime,” he
mumbled, running a hand down the length of her body. Immediately,
he felt a familiar stirring. “I want to be inside you,” he
whispered, planting kisses along her neck. His body pressed against
her backside as remnants of Cartier aftershave and tequila wafted
in the air. She eased away from him, rubbing her eyes in an effort
to become oriented. Her phone beeped, insisting there were several
missed phone calls. Just as she rose to retrieve it, Tak tugged at
her camisole.

“
Not now, Dee. No Lizzie,
no Skylife, no problems,” he insisted.

She smiled at him and
settled back into his arms. No problems. The idea was as seductive
as the kisses he planted along her neck. The phone beeped again and
she plucked it from its resting place on her nightstand before he
could stop her.

No problems.

The idea was
laughable.

Deena looked at the phone’s
screen and groaned. “Your dad,” she said, noting the missed calls.
“I’d better call him,” she rubbed the side of her face
tiredly.

“
Come on, Dee, forget
that,”

Tak pulled her into his arms
impatiently, relishing the soft flesh of her backside against his
chest.

Tak continued planting
kissing along her throat, slowing long enough to appreciate the
slope of her breasts and the flat of her stomach before moving on
to the curve of her backside. His manhood stirred its approval and
Deena laughed sleepily.

“
Is that all you do?” she
asked. “Think about sex?”

Tak chuckled. “Oh, baby, I
can do more than think about it.”

In an instant, he was atop
her, parting her legs as she laughed, pushing her back as she
struggled to sit up.

“
Tak!” she squealed. “Would
you go back to sleep? I have to call your father!”

“
Sleep?” Tak scoffed. “What
are you kidding me? I’m not going back to sleep and neither are
you,” he pushed her again. “Now stop playing hard to get! I’ve got
a seed to plant, woman.”

Deena shrieked as he began
to kiss her body relentlessly, pushing aside the straps of her
camisole, tugging at her panties. “Tak! Your father—”

He groaned and lifted his
head momentarily. “Dee, I gotta tell you. You’re killing my ego
here with all this talk of my dad.”

Before she could respond, he
returned to her body with vigor, licking, biting and sucking. When
she cried out in delight, he lifted his head with a smile of
triumph.

Tak was poised to enter her
when the doorbell rang. Once, twice, three times, all in quick
succession. Startled, Deena sat up, dismounting Tak quickly,
efficiently. Not easily thwarted, he attempted to reclaim his
position, only to be deterred again.

She pulled on Tak’s UCLA
sweatshirt and an old pair of shorts before rushing to the door. As
she approached, the bell rang twice more.

“
Make it quick,
Dee!”

Deena threw open the door,
prepared to slam it provided it were a Jehovah Witness, salesman,
or some other equally unwanted rascal.

It was Daichi.

“
Daichi?” Deena
croaked.

He adjusted his crimson
tie.

“
Deena, I expect my
associates to answer when I call them, and consider it highly
problematic when they do not.”

“
Sir—”

“
We need to discuss this
project.
Now
.”

He pushed his way past Deena
and into her apartment.

Deena’s horrified gaze
followed him. “This is a really bad time right now, Daichi. If you
want, I can throw on something and meet you at the
office.”

She cast a single, sickly
glance towards the bedroom.

“
A bad time?” Daichi echoed
in disbelief. “A bad time? Construction is stalled, Deena, and has
been since yesterday afternoon. Every day we it continues we burn a
quarter of a million dollars.
A quarter of
a million dollars!”

Deena’s mouth opened, but no
words came out. She was aware of the budget, of the opposition they
took for the slightest expenditure, but her mind was fodder.
Tequila, fatigue and fear muddled her thoughts. She glanced at the
bedroom door again.

“
You know, Deena, this is
incomprehensible and frankly I’m stunned. Rarely have I misjudged a
person’s character. But you,” Daichi wagged a finger inches from
her nose. “You are forcing me to question your professionalism,
your aptitude, and your judgment. I would recommend you salvage
this ordeal, immediately.”

Sickened, Deena looked from
Daichi to the bedroom door yet again. She needed a moment, a moment
for thinking, clarity, a plan.

Behind him something
crashed.

And the bedroom door
opened.

“
Dee? Who was
it?”

Tak stuck his head out and
glimpsed only a partial view of Deena. Grinning, he pressed on.
“Quit playing hard to get and climb your ass back in this
bed.”

When she failed to respond,
he padded into the living room with a brazen smirk, intent on
finishing what he’d started and froze at the sight of his
father.

“
Oh my God.” Tak whispered.
In nothing but a pair of form fitting boxer briefs, his libido
died, instantly.

Daichi looked from Deena to
Tak and back again, his face a myriad of astonishment.

“
Now dad, before you go
crazy—” Tak reached for his father in an effort to calm
him.

Daichi turned to his employ,
his gaze narrowing. “I see your aspiration knows no bounds, Ms.
Hammond.”

Deena gasped.

“
Dad, when we met we had no
idea that you were the common denominator.”

“
When you met…”

“
O.K., I know what you’re
thinking. And you’re absolutely right. We should’ve been more
forthright. We should’ve been upfront. And we shouldn’t have
pretended that we were meeting in California. But you have to
understand—”

“
When you met…”

“
Otosan
, just—just hear me out. Please.”

“
How long this been going
on?”

Tak cringed.
“
Otosan—
”

“
Don’t ‘
otosan
’ me! How long has this been
going on?”

Tak swallowed, suddenly
speechless, motionless. Daichi pointed an emphatic finger at the
couch, and without a word, Tak sat.

“
Takumi, I will not ask you
again.” Daichi stared at his son until he looked away with a
sigh.

“
Three years.”

“
Three—”

At this revelation it was
not his son he looked at, but Deena. Deena who’d listened to his
confessions of parental ineptitude, of resentment and regret, all
while feigning ignorance.

“
Daichi, I didn’t—I
never—,” she shook her head. “I never told him anything you
said.”

This time it was Tak’s turn
to look up.

“
What? What are you talking
about, Deena?”

She looked from the elder
Tanaka to the younger, desperate.

“
He confided in me,
about—things.” She turned back to Daichi. “But I never betrayed
you. Not once.”

Tak’s eyes narrowed, and in
them, Deena saw the seeds of something new.

Distrust.

Daichi turned to his
son.

“
Takumi. You know I can’t
accept this.”

Tak sighed.

“
You know how I feel about
this matter.”

“
Otosan
, please. Just listen. I love her and I have for years. She
makes me happy. Doesn’t that count for something with
you?”

Daichi sighed. Here was his
son, sniveling about happiness. It was always that way with Takumi,
so engrossed with himself. But Daichi knew he needed look no
further than a mirror for someone to blame. He’d always given his
son whatever he wanted, believing it the best way to express his
affections. When he turned 16, he bought the boy his first car, a
Ford Mustang convertible, because it was what he wanted.
When he turned 16, he bought the boy his first
car, a Ford Mustang convertible, because it was what he wanted.
When he graduated from UCLA, it was a three-bedroom condo in South
Beach, and for his 25th birthday, a luxury yacht for cruising the
Caribbean.

Daichi was most comfortable
when his love could be expressed with gifts, as opposed to the
emotional outpours everyone else seemed to prefer. But in showering
his son with gifts, Daichi had created a man whose values did not
match his own, who had no sense of the group’s greater identity,
who constantly sought pleasures of the self and of the flesh.
Takumi, he found, knew nothing of modesty, restraint or sacrifice
and was at least to Daichi, the very anti-thesis of
Japanese.