Sonny parked his Cadillac opposite the security shack and hauled his groceries and brown bag of money to the dock. It was a quiet day at the club, all clear except for a wet footprint near his sailboat’s portside winch. He unlocked the cabin, turned on the stereo, dropped in a Cannonball Adderley disc, and headed outside.
Two highball glasses into the bottle, Sonny found his groove. It’d been a long time since he was alone on the boat drinking to get drunk. The selfishness felt good, damn good, and he started thinking the solitary moments would be what he’d miss most. Just the thought got him chasing a refill. As an orphan kid, his fantasies were never outsized, like owning a Gatsby mansion or being a movie star. His mind was occupied by smaller milestones—food and shelter—so when he did fall asleep at night, he was too tired to dream. It wasn’t until the sixties he had enough resources to start eyeballing luxury. Sailing imprinted on his brain after he saw pictures of the Kennedy clan outfitted in wool sweaters working the wind off of Martha’s Vineyard. That’s when he knew what he wanted.
Inside the cabin, dropping a few cubes into his glass, Sonny felt a subtle roll. Keeping his pour even, he spoke out of the side of his mouth. “You still a beer man or should I bring the whisky?”
Cassir stuck his head inside the cabin, hands on either side of the entryway. “My man, Sonny. Had a feeling you wouldn’t fight the current.”
“No sense playing grab-ass all over South Florida. It’s only money.”
“You could have sailed off.”
“I considered it. Not like I’m too honorable. Just wasn’t the right time.” Truth was, without the FDA’s recent Viagra approval and Marcek pressing forward, Sonny would have skirted for an extended stay in St. John.
Cassir said, “There’s no testimony without a test.”
“I’ve had my fill of both. One more isn’t changing the gauge.”
“Where do you want to do this?” Unlike at their first meeting, Cassir’s hair was loose and hanging to his shoulders, making him look a few years older. Behind Cassir was a second man, another Cuban-looking tough guy who was all sunglasses and sideburns. His shoulders were too thin not to bring a gun to a fight.
Sonny grabbed a beer from the fridge and handed it up. “What’s your pal’s pleasure?”
“He doesn’t drink. Makes him poor company.”
Sonny shrugged as if he didn’t see the point and took a sip. “I’m going to have some words for you. And I’m guessing you’ve got one or two for me. But the money is here, and since I think nobody’s getting killed, we can sit wherever you like.”
Clutching the cold beer, Cassir didn’t want to go into the cabin. He had Sonny figured pretty well, but that didn’t mean something nasty wasn’t waiting for him. All things considered, he’d just as soon stay topside now that the sun had dipped and temperatures cooled enough to make a fine evening. “Come out of there,” he said, unsure what else to add.
The men sat face to face on the port and starboard ends of the companionway, Team Cassir settling in side by side. “First thing I want to know,” said Sonny, “is how much of my money Michael had left when he showed.”
As Cassir took a sip, his elbow brushed his close-sitting partner. Grazing man skin pissed him off and he responded by whispering for some goddamn room. Back to the question, he said, “You saying you gave him the two hundred?”
At least Michael was consistent, thought Sonny. “We met that third morning for breakfast. Driving off the lot, he was paying you and heading north for rehab.”
“He didn’t post for a week or so,” said Cassir. “I was getting ready to come see you when Michael came up for air. His net worth was four thousand dollars and clothes he hadn’t changed in days. That boy smelled homeless.”
“Jesus Christ.”
Cassir took a long pull. “Said you bailed on him. Dad screwed me. Spun a tail how he was supposed to meet you here and when he arrived, you’d pushed off for a couple days. Mentioned Bermuda.”
Sonny emptied his glass, rattled the ice, and took a final sip in case any extra booze had broken loose and filtered down. “So you put him to work.”
“He call you?”
“New Orleans newspaper had a big spread about dope running. Michael was the anecdotal evidence.”
“Antidote?”
“Anecdote—a story to prove a larger point. The reporter’s take was Florida mules were fueling New Orleans’s drug problem. He used Michael’s arrest as proof.”
Cassir paused, filing the lingual tidbit for future use. Yeah, boss, my theory is the Puerto Ricans are stealing our action. Now let me continue with anecdotal evidence.
“Was that legitimate or did you put him to the wolves?”
Cassir shook him off. “You said something like that before. We don’t ship for loss.”
“If he wasn’t sacrificed, he was running lead. Otherwise, thirty pounds doesn’t make sense.”
“You’re wasted talent, Sonny,” said Cassir. “A silver fox still figuring the angles. As for your boy, yeah, he was out front, but he had as much chance as the second car. Nothing said he had to get pulled over.”
“How much was in the second?”
“Four hundred pounds. Needed special suspension for all that weight. No guarantee that gets through either, even though hopefully the lead car draws the flies. Those Louisiana boys are getting smarter, starting to profile, so first car makes the run and thirty minutes later second car follows. If both make it to New Orleans, that’s cool. Nobody wanted Michael to get arrested. And if they were profiling, we were covered.”
Sonny looked off into the canal. All this could have been avoided if he’d just assumed the worst of Michael. If he’d conceded his son’s rank and absolute depravity, he could have delivered the money himself and postponed the come-to-Jesus moment.
“Look, man, that was the deal,” said Cassir. “He borrowed the money. He didn’t pay it back. He got another chance with you and screwed it up. What was salvation supposed to look like? His choices were getting killed or driving. That’s why he put his hand out for the keys. Michael did more than a few runs before getting careless. Believe it or not, he was pretty dependable once we got him into the program. I was sorry to see him go.”
After watching two seagulls buzz the mast, Sonny said, “You guys aren’t worried he’ll trade you in?”
Cassir scoffed. “Shit, what does he really know? He picks up and drops off, and the second car was none of his business. Those end points don’t mean a thing, and it’s not like he has anybody’s real name. Michael’s best move is keeping his mouth shut. Make time go easy. Not like we don’t have people in Louisiana. You tell him that, you get the chance.”
“I’m in no hurry.” For Sonny, his son dealing with the consequences was one thing. Assisting Cassir in spelling them out was another. If they wanted to threaten Michael, they’d have to write their own postcards.
“Well, he’ll reach out to you soon enough. All the addicts get a little freaked when the court-appointed lawyer starts using words like decades instead of months or years.”
“You should have tracked me down before putting him in that car. I’ve got money. Now he’s going to waste in prison and I’m still paying.”
“Fuck that,” said Cassir, brushing hair off his face. “I like you, Sonny, but I didn’t owe you any free courtesy. You know how much hassle rained on my head because of your boy?” He held his thumb and forefinger a quarter inch apart. “I was this close to getting my nuts busted. This close because I’d tippy-toed so far out on that Michael branch. Must have been crazy allowing that mess, like letting a cat pee all over the house and looking the other way. Insane.”
“Yeah,” said Sonny, with a slow nod. “I know the feeling.”
That drew a dark chuckle from both Cubans. Sonny could see that the nameless one was missing an incisor and his gums were diseased.
“While I could chat all night, let’s deal with the matter at hand. I’ve waited long enough.” Cassir handed his
empty beer bottle to his partner, who tossed it into the water.
Sonny called him a rude son of a bitch, and Cassir agreed, ordering him to fish it out. Leaning over the side, the man lost his sunglasses and almost fell in before he could swipe the bottle from the current.
Sonny didn’t know what to make of Cassir’s number two, figuring he was probably a slow-witted brother-in-law or cousin needing work. “The money is in the kitchen. A brown bag next to the pretzels. You can drop that bottle in the trash on your way down. Careful you don’t hurt yourself.”
Cassir’s head nod looked like a dad telling his kid it was okay to hit the dessert bar. The silent partner disappeared into the cabin and returned with a fresh beer for Cassir, the bag of money, and Sonny’s pretzels.
“Man, you’ve got no class,” said Cassir, his mood rising. He looked left and right before opening the money bag. “Not that counting is all that polite, but you’ll understand my distrust.”
Sonny said the package was no longer his concern; he wanted them to leave as soon as Cassir finished his beer. Time to drink alone.
After a few minutes of peeling, Cassir pulled out a brick of hundreds. “You overpaid. Michael gets credit for his runs, ten grand each. He made four. So you know, last one doesn’t count.”
The first thought popping into Sonny’s head confirmed how unsettled he was over Michael’s situation. Forty grand was enough to hire his boy the best damn criminal defense attorney in Louisiana. Sure, the stack could finance the truck heist and keep Eastern State in good standing, but that was all too self-dealing. No matter how much Michael deserved it, Sonny wasn’t the abandoning kind.
He scooped up the brick, peeled off two stacks of three grand each, and handed the money to Cassir and his wingman. “That’s for the inconvenience. I’m also hoping it buys Michael some goodwill. If Michael ever gets out, just leave him alone. Treat him like a leper and run the other way.”
Cassir slapped the bills against his assistant’s distended belly. “You see that, Frank? Old doesn’t mean old school except when you’re dealing with this gato. Today’s been one of a kind. We’re going home with a bag of money, some sugar for the wife and kids, and a lesson in cool. Not bad considering the alternative.”
23.
DRIVING HOME FROM SONNY’S CONDO, Marcek filled Angie in on the details. Her two cents was that even though their initial responsibility sounded simple enough—find a Viagra shipment and sketch a plan for stealing it—the end points felt a thousand miles apart. She especially didn’t like the tight time frame. What was wrong with another month or two if the extension meant a better strategy?
Marcek explained how other factors were driving the compressed schedule. “A score like this, we aren’t the only ones sniffing the fence line. Viagra is already on the street. How long did it take for that black market to develop? Ten, eleven days? And that’s just from people selling off their prescriptions. Won’t take much for other professionals to see what we’re seeing. Right now, and maybe for the next week or two, a truck of Viagra is undervalued and underguarded. First shipment stolen will be the easiest. After that, impossible.”
“If that’s true, why didn’t we start earlier? Like, you know, before it was being sold?”
Marcek was now wondering the same. His initial enthusiasm had him downplaying negative points Angie wasn’t so willing to ignore. Unsure what to say, he answered her with a trust-me shrug and silent prayer that the delay wouldn’t come back to bite them.
Inside the apartment, they time blocked forty-five minutes for preparations. The pair managed to shower, have quickie sex to release the adrenaline spike, pack simple accessories to alter appearances on short notice, and make a sack of peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches.
Mindful of organization, Angie suggested breaking the week into three parts, each one more refined than the last. Days one and two would be an all-out effort to accumulate information on the pharmacies. When did they get their drug shipments? Did certain pharmacies receive more than others? Were guards or store assistants monitoring the off-loads? She warned Marcek this stage would feel random and haphazard because they were starting at zero and tossing a wide net. These two days were also the most critical because mistakes begat mistakes, especially when stealing from corporations adept at preventing theft.
Once the raw data requirements were satisfied, she explained how the next forty-eight to seventy-two hours would be dedicated to trucks and routes. Where were the trucks coming from and going to? Any soft spots in their schedule? What was the typical driver like? That’d leave two or three days for synthesizing a plan, running scenarios, and doing a handful of test runs before presenting to Sonny. They’d be pressed to finish and have almost no chance at unwinding any missteps.
In agreement on the seven-day calendar, Marcek suggested starting with the all-night pharmacies. Ease in, play casual, and make small talk with cash register attendees or pharmacists working third shift. Both understood they’d need a breezier style, nothing too heavy or penetrating. Soft little probes by a couple of late-night wanderers. Even then it’d be like painting with mittens. Three stores in, they settled on finding open spaces on the shelves. Hey, you guys are out of that antifungus cream—when’s your truck getting here? Or, to the pharmacist, Hey, man, you need a prescription for that Viagra? Oh, damn, you do? How many trucks a week you got hauling that stuff in here? Must be like two or three, hahahah.
By 6:30 A.M., they’d visited twenty pharmacies. The yield of that effort could be written with large letters on the back of a gum wrapper. Twelve hours of role-playing in exchange for fatigue, failure, and bad breath was a demoralizing start, one that had them questioning the entire proposal. And that’s, of course, when they got their first break.
Wiped out and getting testy, Marcek and Angie agreed on hitting one more pharmacy in Boynton Beach before grabbing breakfast and a few hours’ sleep. They walked into store twenty-one with long-shot hopes and exited with zero-point-zero help. Stepping outside the pharmacy’s doors, as doubt leveraged exhaustion, both were quick to notice a tractor-trailer in the loading dock. Their reaction was to look at each other and shrug. Well, now what do we do? Marcek whispered something about sneaking into the pharmacy’s back room and observing the unloading process. Angie was hung up on how, in six days, this truck would translate into a payoff.
Between them and the loading dock was a rough-cut picnic table for pharmacy employees on break. Perched atop the table was a bony, underweight white woman with a dozen piercings. Despite the warm temperatures, she wore a faded yellow sweatshirt with the sleeves stretched over her hands. Layered atop the sweatshirt was an employee smock and a name tag reading KALYNN. Unafraid of making eye contact, Kalynn stared straight at Marcek and Angie as she took a slow drag from her cigarette. “Hey there.”
“Hi,” answered Marcek, reaching for Angie’s hand to lead her away. With the truck on-site, they didn’t need any employees making mental notes of their visit.
Angie wouldn’t budge. Something in the woman’s eyes told her to stick around. “What’s going on?” she answered, head to the side, a half-smile in the same direction.
Wiping her nose on the back of her sleeve, Kalynn rolled her eyes to the parking lot and back to Angie. “You guys like to party?”
“Come on, Ang—”
Angie shushed him as if she had an itch that needed scratching. Releasing his hand and stepping to the picnic table, she said, “He’s working this afternoon, so it’d be for me. What’d you have in mind?”
“Pills. That’s what you’re doing, right, shopping for pills?”
“Yeah,” said Angie, wondering just how bad she must have looked.
“Found the right place. The doctor is in. I’ll have you high before you’re two miles down the road.”
Angie put a foot on the bench. “It’s got to be good or I’m not interested,” she said, doing her best imitation. She’d never bought drugs before. “No crap or sugar pills.”
“Pa
inkillers. For real. The sweet stuff. I’ve got a system for stealing one at a time. How many you need, baby?”
With the negotiation hanging between them, Angie acted wary of the loading dock, as if eyes were coming from that direction. “What’s the story over there?” she asked, rubbing the back of her neck and working her jaw. “That truck is making me nervous. Too many people.”
As the woman peeked over her shoulder, a neck tattoo reading PROPERTY OF SNEAKY PETE stretched above her shirt collar. “What do you mean? That truck is just our delivery.”
“Aren’t there cameras watching? Or security guards?”
The woman laughed, fished a pack of cigarettes from her sweatshirt pocket, and winked. “That truck is just for diapers and toothpaste and shit—all the crap we sell on the shelves. The pharmacy shit comes later.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, one time they let me look inside the drug truck. Oh, damn, it has every taste under the sun. Like a river of chocolate.”
Angie glanced again at the loading dock. “So two trucks—the regular truck and another for the pharmacy?”
“Yeah, relax. I just sold to that driver. He’s cool. He’s not going to bother us. The drug truck comes this evening, and you’re right, I don’t do nothing while it’s around.” She tickled the packet of cigarettes with her left index finger. “Sit next to me and have a smoke. They’re menthol. High-end fancy smokes like that are twenty bucks apiece.” She winked again in case Angie missed the import of the first one. “Half a cigarette—if that’s your speed—is twelve.”
All the necessary information acquired, Angie turned and walked away. Marcek was sitting in the car, his head pressed into the seat. Opening the door, she said, “You’re never going to believe what I just learned.”
Marcek raised his eyebrows.
“Three things, really. First, somewhere there’s a Sneaky Pete with control issues. Second, that’s not the right truck—it delivers everything except drugs. And third, the truck we need comes later today.”
The Friendship of Criminals Page 19