Exquisite Justice

by Dennis Carstens

  Lewis had retreated to a chair in the corner of the room behind the large minister. Ferguson shook his head, wiggling his fleshy face and replied,

  “Get him out of here,” referring to Lewis.

  Without moving his head, Damone shifted his eyes to his aide and nodded once. Lewis stood and silently left the room.

  When the door clicked shut, Ferguson said, “You’re a drug dealer and a gangster.”

  When Damone opened his mouth to protest, Ferguson cut him off. “Don’t bullshit me, boy. You think I was born yesterday?”

  “I talked to the two girls,” Damone quietly said. “Karenna Hines and her friend, Shelly Cornelius.”

  “I know you did. Did you think I wouldn’t find out? Do you think I give a fuck?”

  “Such language from a man of the cloth,” Damone said quietly, maintaining his nonchalant attitude. “That collar you wear is a nice prop. I want you to stop this nonsense. You know those two cops are innocent…”

  “So, what?” Ferguson almost bellowed. “It makes the point that needs to be made. White cops gunning down young black men is epidemic in this country.”

  Damone tilted his head back and laughed. “We both know that’s not true. No, you’re just exploiting a tragedy for your own purposes. How much money have you taken in from contributions? Enough for that new Mercedes?”

  “This is absurd coming from a drug-dealing gangster,” Ferguson said. “All right, gangster-boy. You want me to shut it down? Why?”

  “Because it’s not true, what you’re saying. And what the community needs are good relations with the police.”

  Ferguson laughed until tears came to his eyes. “Not good for the community? Oh shit, boy. That’s rich.”

  He took a deep breath to regain control, then said, “Okay, I want a hundred grand. No, make that one twenty, every month. I’ll get you the bank account information. Oh, and I’ll take that new Mercedes. Make it a really nice S-Class sedan. Black. I’ll look good in it.”

  “Where do you propose I get that kind of money? Even I don’t have a car like that,” Damone said.

  Ferguson pushed his large frame away from the table stood and looked down at Damone. “If you want to stay in my city, if you want calm in my city, that’s the price. And I’ll want an answer and the first payment in two days.”

  Damone turned his head toward the door and silently nodded. Lewis, who had been watching through the window, stepped in and held the door open.

  “Thank you for coming by,” Damone said. “Have a pleasant day, Reverend. Lewis will show you out.”

  While Damone waited for Lewis to return, he remained seated where he was. He lightly drummed his fingers on the table while thinking about what to do. He looked up when he heard the door open and both Lewis and Monroe joined him.

  “You know, maybe we can use this trouble the good reverend has created for our purposes,” Damone told them. “Monroe, give Jeron a call and get him on the phone for me or have him call me as soon as possible,” Damone said, referring to his brother in Chicago. “Do you have a new phone for me?”

  “Yes, boss,” Monroe replied. He reached in his coat pocket and handed Damone a new burner phone. “You want me to give him that number?”

  “Yes, do that. Tell him it’s urgent and thank you.”

  Monroe made the call to Chicago and while they waited for Jeron to come to the phone, Lewis said to Damone, “You asked me to remind you about the accountant.”

  “Yes, I remember. He’ll be here in forty minutes,” Damone said after checking the time. “What does he want?”

  “He wants to talk to you about supply,” Lewis said.

  “Okay,” Damone replied while taking the phone from Monroe.

  “Jeron?” Damone asked.

  “Yes,” he answered.

  “Give me a minute,” Damone said. He stood up and said to his aides, “I need to take this in my office. Shut off the recording equipment in there.”

  When Damone was seated behind his desk, he continued the call to his brother.

  “How are things?” Damone asked.

  “We’re holding our own but not making the progress I had hoped,” Jeron replied.

  “Your numbers are fine,” Damone said. “We knew Chicago would be difficult…”

  “It’s like the Old West on a Saturday night. Shootings, shootings and more shootings. Most of these fools take more pride in being gangsters than businessmen,” Jeron said.

  “We knew that when we set out,” Damone reminded him. “Keep your eye on the ball. Remember what our goal is and why we are doing this.”

  “Of course, brother,” Jeron said. “What do you need?”

  “I have a delicate job. I need a professional––not some street thug who’s going to spray the streets with bullets. I need a surgeon, not a fool. Do you know anyone like that?” Damone asked.

  “I know of someone like that. At least I have heard of someone like that. Someone the Italians have used.”

  “You don’t know who he is?”

  “I don’t know anything about him,” Jeron answered. “Nothing. I’m not even sure he exists. One of our Italian friends told me about him. At first, I thought he was bragging, but he assured me he wasn’t. He doesn’t know who he is either. He doesn’t know if it’s a man or a woman. He’s a ghost, a whisper, a phantom.”

  “The real-life boogeyman,” Damone said. “And he is good?”

  “They say the best. Very careful and expensive. At least according to our Italian friend,” Jeron replied.

  “This sounds exactly like what I need. Find out what you can. How do we get in touch with him? Find everything you can.”

  “When do you need him?” Jeron asked.

  “As soon as possible. There is too much trouble and protesting on the streets here…”

  “I’ve seen it on TV,” Jeron said. “How can you use this man to stop it?”

  “It’s not important for you to know. At least not over the phone,” Damone answered. “Do what you can to get this man for me.”

  “Today, brother. Right now.”

  “Good. Call back today,” Damone replied.

  While Damone was in prison, he spent a significant amount of time educating himself. With his innate intelligence being as high as it was, he was able to grasp a good deal of knowledge simply by reading a broad array of books. Especially business books.

  One of his absolute favorite subjects was how a small number of companies, primarily DeBeers, control the diamond market. Like most people, Damone believed that diamonds derived most of their value from their rarity. In fact, diamonds are not rare at all––just the opposite. They are quite plentiful. The price and value of diamonds are controlled by manipulation, controlling the supply that is allowed onto the market.

  The cartels do this by storing diamonds in large, well-guarded vaults. In fact, they have literally tons of diamonds, ‘stores’, that will never be allowed on the market. And despite the fact that DeBeers claimed to have stopped hoarding diamonds in 2000, they had not stopped hoarding, and nothing had changed.

  “Come in, Donald, have a seat,” Damone pleasantly told his next appointment.

  The man’s name was Donald Leach and Damone found him while in prison. Leach was a mathematical wizard. In fact, Damone believed Leach lived in his own little world of numbers and equations. He was not quite that bad. His social skills were not the best, but he was not as bad as a typical techie. Leach was just more comfortable with numbers than ordinary people. He also had a problem; Donald Leach had an opioid drug addiction that he had no desire to kick.

  In the late 90s Leach had been in a car accident. He had been in a car driven by a client that was hit by a drunk driver. His client was killed, and Leach awoke two days later in a hospital. Several broken bones, a concussion and a wrenched back were the result of the accident. Of course, Donald Leach was prescribed hydrocodone for the pain and Donald Leach was still hooked.

  Leach did a six-year stretch in prison
for helping several small businesses defraud the state of Illinois. He was able to hide several million dollars’ worth of revenue to avoid Illinois’ sales tax. A divorce came to one of his clients whose wife—the proverbial woman scorned—made a call to the Illinois Department of Revenue. The cheating husband was arrested, sang like a canary and Leach went to prison.

  While in prison, he was able to feed his habit by coming to the attention of Damone Watson. On one of his daily trips to the library, Damone found out that one of the new librarians, Donald Leach, was an accounting wizard. Damone had been using him ever since.

  “What do you need to talk to me about?” Damone asked Leach.

  “We’re hearing grumblings about supply levels of oxy,” Leach said.

  “Good,” Damone replied. “That’s precisely why we’re controlling supply. It keeps local prices at a premium.”

  “I know that,” Leach acknowledged. “It’s mostly coming from Northern Wisconsin, outstate here in Minnesota and North Dakota. Our people in Omaha and Des Moines are doing fine. Some of these guys, especially in the oil fields in North Dakota, are starting to make noises about finding another source. They’re not that far from Denver.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “I’ve run the numbers and another eleven percent for North Dakota, six percent for Northern Wisconsin and seven percent for Northern Minnesota. I think the price will stay up, but even if it drops a little, your net will be the same.”

  “Sounds reasonable,” Damone said. He looked at Lewis and said, “Take care of it.”

  “No problem,” Lewis replied.

  Leach handed Lewis a single sheet of paper with the amounts of opioids to be released from their supply. It also had coded names and addresses on where they were to be sent.

  Lewis scanned the list and said to Damone, “I’ll have them shipped by tomorrow. Is this the new normal amount to these places?” he asked Damone.

  “Until we decide differently,” Damone said.

  Damone looked back at Leach and asked, “Anything else?”

  “Yes, I think we need to take another look at going to a local supply net,” Leach said.

  “No,” Damone said. “I know the numbers and the cost of supply from California and Mexico. I appreciate your concern. We’re not going to start using local doctors and pharmacies for supply. I simply don’t want to and I’m not going to. They’re too unreliable and can bring too much heat. Producing rock here,” Damone continued referring to turning cocaine into crack, “isn’t as much of a risk. The local politicians treat it as no worse than weed. Oxy’s different. The heat’s too much. We’re staying low key.”

  “The way it’s done,” Damone continued, “our suppliers in the states get prescriptions for oxy by using junkies to go to crooked doctors. They write out the prescriptions for whatever, thirty, fifty or eighty-milligram tablets. Then the junkies are taken around to pharmacies who are in on it. They fill the prescriptions, the junkies are paid with oxy, usually a one-day supply, and the rest get sold.

  “A lot of this is going on down South and out West. Everyone is making a ton of money. The doctors, the pharmacists, the suppliers, the drug companies and let’s not forget, the politicians who are in no hurry to stop it.

  “In Mexico, it’s even easier. They simply manufacture the stuff themselves and cut out all of the middlemen. They ship to other places who turn it around to ship it to the states. UPS, FedEx and others are making a lot of money, too.

  “So, no, we don’t need to get involved with that. And by controlling supply, we can charge a premium price. Usually, the street price is around a dollar per milligram. An eighty-milligram pill would sell for eighty bucks. By the time it gets to the street the cost per pill is less than twenty. Because we tightly control supply, we’re getting even more per milligram, a buck and a quarter to a buck and a half per dose. May not sound like much, but it adds up pretty quick.”

  Thirteen

  Charlie Dudek parked his car—one that was nice, dependable, but not noticeable—a two-year-old, dark blue Buick LeSabre in the lot of the Kansas City, Kansas South Branch Library. Charlie was here to check his business email account.

  So as not to draw attention to himself and to make sure no one was watching him, he spent fifteen to twenty minutes in the fiction section browsing. He found two books, a Jack Reacher and a new one by Michael Connelly. Although he personally thought the Jack Reacher books were absurd, he found them entertaining. The idea of one man getting into as much trouble as Reacher hitchhiking around the country stretched fiction to the limit. He liked Connelly’s writing and his knowledge of the LAPD.

  Charlie took the books and found an unoccupied computer. He quickly opened his email account and found an inquiry from earlier that afternoon. He recognized the sender, a wiseguy from Chicago, as someone discreet and reliable, although the man’s discretion was unnecessary. He had no idea who Charlie was or where he lived and knew it was a bad idea to try to find out.

  The message was short and to the point. Charlie was given a name, address and phone number of someone in need of his services. He memorized the information and deleted the email. Because of the job’s location, by the time he was back in his car, Charlie had decided to take it. The reason being the message included a cryptic two-word note: ‘Very challenging’. And the city it was in, Minneapolis, brought back memories and a tiny emotional rush. There was a woman in Minneapolis who Charlie had become quite smitten with. He had not thought of her for a while. She was way out of Charlie’s league and he accepted that. But, the thought of possibly seeing her again was too hard to resist. Maddy Rivers did that to a lot of men.

  Charlie Dudek was a professional assassin who lived a quiet life in a suburb of Kansas City, Missouri. If his neighbors ever found out what he did—they believed he was a traveling salesman of some kind—they would be shocked down to their toes.

  One of the things that made Charlie so effective was the fact that he was about as ordinary looking as any man could be. At five-feet-eleven inches, one-hundred sixty-five pounds, he was the epitome of the average of the American male. His light brown hair was totally unnoticeable and if five people saw him and described him, there would be five different descriptions. If this was not enough, over the years, Charlie had become an expert with disguises.

  What did not show from his appearance was his background. Charlie had spent ten years in the Army, the last four with the super-secret Delta Force. He had been trained by the very best instructors to kill in so many different ways he could not remember all of them. Charlie was also absolutely fearless. In fact, he was a pure sociopath. During the battle for Tora Bora in Afghanistan, when the U.S. was hunting Osama bin Laden following the 9/11 attacks, it was Charlie who went into the caves and only Charlie whoever came out.

  By 2:00 P.M., Charlie had everything he would need—clothes, weapons and disguise kit—packed and ready. Before he left, he went to his next-door neighbor to let them know he would be gone on a business trip. They would keep an eye on his house while he was gone. What he really liked was to see their kids and say goodbye. To be called Uncle Charlie always made him feel good. Like someone actually cared about him.

  The next morning in his motel room, Charlie took a minute for one last review of the new face reflecting back in the bathroom mirror. Satisfied his neighbor back in Kansas City would not recognize him, he finished dressing for his meeting.

  Charlie had arrived in the Twin Cities the previous evening around 8:00 P.M. He had a reservation in an out of the way motel in a suburb south of St. Paul. Having been here twice before, Charlie was fairly familiar with the area, especially its freeway system. From his current location and freeway access, he could be anywhere in the metro area in thirty to forty minutes. He could also be gone in less time than that.

  Shortly after checking in, he had called Damone and set up today’s meeting. First things first, he would meet with Damone, find out what the job is, then settle on a price. Charlie’s ultima
te goal was five million in an offshore account then retirement. Still in his early forties, he would be there in a few more years; if he could give up what he did.

  Charlie had chosen the place for this meeting having been there once before on a previous trip. He set the time, 10:15 this morning, on the public park walkway directly above Minnehaha Falls in South Minneapolis. Charlie would sweep Damone for any electronic recording device, but in case he missed something, the noise from the waterfall would stifle anyone trying to listen in.

  Charlie arrived before 9:00 and took up a position in the park on a bench overlooking the area. He had insisted Damone come alone but knew that was unlikely. At 9:40, Charlie saw them.

  At this time of the day, even on a weekday, there was already quite a few people wandering around. When he saw the three men he briefly wondered if he should leave. His concern was for Damone’s intelligence. Did he not realize that three black men would stand out like a red flag in this place?

  “Well, let’s find out,” he quietly said to himself.

  The three men separated. Charlie watched as Damone walked toward the falls and Lewis and Monroe split up to cover him. Charlie went for Lewis first and then Monroe. Neither man saw him coming.

  “It’s a really nice area, isn’t it?” the elderly man asked Damone.

  “Uh, yeah, it is,” Damone agreed.

  They were standing on the walkway bridge above the falls leaning on the stone fencing directly over the waterfall. The old man took a small device out of his back pocket and said, “Move over a few feet so we can talk.”

  It took Damone a couple of seconds to realize this old man was who he was meeting.

  “Away from these people,” Charlie said referring to the dozen or so standing near them mostly taking pictures.

  “Hold still,” Charlie said. He used the device he held and quickly waved it over Damone. Satisfied he was not wired, Charlie put it away.

  “Your men won’t be coming to help you,” Charlie said.