Apollo Road

by Cliff Roberts

  “Rough diamonds,” Bill explained, “don’t look like much. Just some milky white rock or a piece of quartz. I still couldn’t tell you the difference between the two,” Bill admitted as he began setting the diamonds aside. Once he had the diamonds sorted out, he piled them back into the colander and then rinsed the cocaine off them. It seemed that a lot of cocaine was rinsed down the drain and lost. Bill didn’t seem to care, so I didn’t make any comment one way or the other.

  “How much do you have there?” I asked.

  “I think it’ll weigh out to be about ten pounds, maybe twelve,” Bill stated as he continued to check the diamonds over and load them into plastic bags that were sized to hold a pound a piece.

  “So you sell them by the pound?” I asked. I know it was a stupid question, but I was curious. I waited for Bill to make some nasty comment about my lack of something, but it never came. He just ignored me and kept loading the bags and then closing the zip lock and taping it shut. When he finished with the twelfth bag, there were a few rocks left on the table. He picked through them, and when he found what I thought was the biggest one, he flipped it to me.

  “There. You have a souvenir of the transaction. In about two weeks, I’ll have your cash, and we’ll split it up. How’s that for not having to risk a damn thing and get four million in profit?” Bill spouted.

  “Too bad you can’t do this once a month,” I chimed in.

  “Yeah, it’d be nice, but it takes time to accumulate the stones. He’s got to show the government enough stones to keep them happy with their cut from the cartel, otherwise they’ll take away his license to deal.” Bill explained how the operation worked in Brazil. “Do you know, he has Indians carry the diamonds down river to his brother’s farm and there it gets mixed with the coke and then shipped into Rio where I pick it up? The Indians do it for sugar and salt. Can you believe that? They value sugar and salt far more than cocaine and diamonds.”

  “They’ve got all the coke they want with the coca trees. And the diamonds? What good are they in the jungle? I’m sure salt is a real hardship for them, not a lot of that in the jungle. Sugar, I don’t know, maybe it’s just too hard to harvest it from other plants.” I shared what I’d learned watching the Discovery Channel.

  “What are you? Some sort of Amazon expert now?” Bill teased me.

  “No, I just watch the Discovery Channel a lot,” I said defensively.

  “Okay, we’ve got to get back to finding a way to get rid of the Young Turk, and I think it’s best if we do it on his boat. He takes the family out on the boat every now and then. They just go out a few miles and then drop anchor. They watch the stars and relax, while daddy talks on the phone.” Bill suddenly seemed to know a lot about what the Turk did.

  “How do you know that?”

  “I had Giles ask his maid on a date, and he managed to get quite a bit out of her. If fact, her next day off will be when they take a ride on the yacht, and she’ll call him for another date. He thinks it’ll be pretty soon.

  “So, I want you to take one of the nine mils and go practice with it. Go to a gun range or out in the Everglades, but practice, practice, practice. I’ll be by and go over some very basic self-defense moves with you—nothing that will be too taxing on your body but will help you eliminate a threat if one shows up. Then we’ll teach you the Intercoastal and the offshore buoy system. That way, you’ll be able to find your way back in, even at night. We’ve got lots to do and a short time to get it done. So, go shooting and meet me at Coka Cola Charlie’s at eight tomorrow, so we can work on a few other things. I promise, I won’t keep you up past your bedtime,” he snidely remarked as he headed out the door. “Oh, one last thing. Burn the packaging in the fireplace.” And he was gone. I stood looking at the uncut diamond in my hand, amazed at its size. It was the size of my pinky finger. I had no idea what it was worth, but I thought it would be a lot.

  When I arrived the next day at Coka Cola Charlie’s, the bouncer quickly grabbed the keys to the Navigator and said he would take care of it. I walked right in and went to Bill’s table where he was talking on his cell phone to someone and smiling. I waited a couple of steps away in case it was a private conversation, but he quickly waved for me to sit down.

  “Yeah, that would be great. Send it via courier, and let’s look at all of the straight write-offs as well. Oh, hey—I want to move the money makers too, okay? Yeah, we’ll make it fair market pricing but no premium. My friend doesn’t need to be taken advantage of. I want them to make all together four to five million a year. We’ll talk about some of the condos in a few weeks. Just make this happen.” Bill hung up and smiled at me. “So, how’s the practice coming?” Bill asked as he held up his empty drink glass.

  “Oh, the shooting range,” I stated and then added, “While you were in Brazil, I went every day, and I’ve become a pretty good shot. I now only go once or twice a week. I even bought a new gun, a Sig Sauer .40 caliber with a silencer. So we’re closer to being ready than you thought.”

  “What? You think a new gun and having fired a few shots makes you ready to kill someone?” Bill snarled.

  “I don’t know about shooting anyone, but I can place a good grouping very quickly in the dead center of the mass,” I retorted.

  “Targets aren’t the same as real people,” Bill noted.

  “Well, unless you have a few people willing to be targets, I don’t know how to prove I can kill them if I needed to.”

  “Did you save any targets?” he asked.

  “Sure did. I thought you would want to see them. They’re out in the car.”

  “We’ll check them out after dinner. Do you want to know who I’ve just spoken with?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  “It was my attorney. I having him sell you about six dozen small holdings I have. They all make money, and together that adds up to around fifty million a year. We won’t be exchanging any cash—you just make monthly payments to me over the next…I think it’s ten years. He’ll set up a dozen or so shell corporations to ensure that the lion’s share of their earnings remain in your hands. The condo building you’re in, I’m selling that to you in a couple months after the year end closes on it.”

  “Wow! I wasn’t expecting this. But don’t you need them? I mean, don’t you still want to make the money off them? I can work for my own success—maybe not as good as you can—but I don’t want you to have to give up anything. You’ve done more than enough already.” I stumbled through my thank you like the rube I was.

  “Jake, I’m not out a thing. I’m getting market value and income over a ten year period; plus, at the end of the ten years, you can sell it back to me, and I’ll make more profits. So will you, by the way. It’s a good business deal for me, and you’re the right buyer. So shut up and just say thanks.”

  “Okay. Thanks. Is there a catch?” I asked in low, humble voice.

  “Yeah, if you try to double-cross me, I’ll cut your heart out and steal the businesses back.” That sounded more like him.

  “But I haven’t done anything to earn this favor,” I stated.

  “You will. You will very soon.” Bill took a minute and looked out over the restaurant and then he leaned in close and waited for me to do the same, so I did. “Jake, you need to understand. You don’t do anything anymore. You have people who do it for you. That’s what the attorney is doing while we eat. He’s making the sale happen, and he’ll have papers for us to sign in a day or two. You’ll never enter any of these businesses or stop by to clean up or hire someone. It’s like this. Damn, I really had thought you were catching on. If you want a car dealership, you hire an attorney who hires the manager, and he makes him make it work or he doesn’t get paid. If you want to build things, be the developer and hire the construction manager to get it done. I don’t work. I count money now. If it will take money to do what you want to do, you get the attorney to get investors, so you don’t have to risk your own money. The attorney buys insurance to cover any losses, so the i
nvestors don’t try to come back on you. Of course, the insurance is bought with the investors’ money, not yours.” Bill explained my new life yet again to me.

  “What about a place like this?” I asked.

  “The attorney hires the manager, who in turn hires the waitresses in bikinis, the bartenders, they hold the wet t-shirt contests and charge too much for the crappy food and drinks. The place will be a gold mine,” Bill stated with authority.

  “I was thinking I could maybe open six or seven places like this, all a day trip apart, complete with marinas and a ship’s store with the bar-restaurant combo all attached. Maybe even a hotel for those who don’t want to stay on board, or maybe they drove to the place,” I quickly explained what I was thinking about.

  “Damn, that’s the spirit! I’ll have to help you get the funding in place, but I think you can do that. I guess it’ll take about fifteen million to get the places and fix them up. You’ll need to have a front team to do all the leg work and the paperwork, but it can be done. I’ll show you how and then the rest is up to you,” Bill cheerfully offered.

  “Like what? Counting the money? That’ll be great. I never thought I’d ever get the chance to do this. I don’t know where to start.”

  “I’ll show you where and how.”

  “I hope so, ’cause I haven’t a clue how to do it. I’ve been a builder, and I could probably oversee the construction, but permits, financing, the actual running of the business—I’m lost.”

  “Jake, if I have to say this again, I’m going to shoot you in the leg to emphasize it. You don’t do anything but count your cash and buy new cars and boats. Maybe buy more businesses, but nothing that’s considered work. You hire an attorney, and he has to guarantee the business makes money. You might even let him see you’re packing heat when you meet. Don’t outright threaten him, but let him know you’re not someone to fool with. He gets fifteen percent, not a penny more. If he wants more, he’s got to have the business make more. That’s his job. Yours is to…”

  “Just count the money.”

  “I know you’re a smart guy, Jake, so start acting like it, and stop thinking you can’t do things. You have money now, and money does it all. Remember the old adage, ‘He who has the gold makes the rules.’ You have the gold now, so make the rules. You don’t pick up hammers, saws, brooms, dirty dishes, dust pans, lumber or trash. People do that for you, so they can get a tiny bit of the gold that you have. The richer they want to be, the more they are willing to do to make you richer so that you will provide them with riches.”

  Bill explained who he was and who I was becoming. I was becoming the guy who I had been told I didn’t want to be. I was told by the schools, by my parents, by the church. My parents told me that because they didn’t want to see me waste my life trying to be more than what I was. The church and schools taught me that the men and women with the gold didn’t want to share what they had. The little people are brainwashed the world over, so we know our place and don’t expect too much from life. I had been brainwashed to be that guy, and it was hard to get my head around the fact that I was now the man with the gold.

  What? Is this how they get you sucked in? They sprinkle a little gold around, and you simply bend over backwards. I remembered back to when I was a politician and how the political parties now thought once you were elected, you would do exactly what they wanted, when they wanted it, because you had a taste of power. And who would want to give that up? I gave it up after just one term because I didn’t like who I was becoming. I should have run away as fast as I could from this, but yet, I was trapped. Bill had seen to it that I couldn’t leave. He had me by the short hairs. The only escape was to get enough money together so I could disappear or kill Bill and then disappear. Either way, it took money, and I was halfway to my goal. I had ten million, which had seemed enough at first, but after thinking it over, I changed my mind and I now wanted twenty. I wanted twenty million fucking dollars, and I wanted to be anywhere but here. Then the thought crossed my mind—would twenty million even be enough?

  “What’s so damned important that you stopped talking and are spending the evening in thought?” Bill interrupted my self-imposed lecture.

  “I…uh…was just thinking about how life has changed and how it is so different from what I was used to. I don’t want to ever go back. I’ve been poor, and I’ve been rich. I’ll take rich hands down.” I did my best to sound convincing because I didn’t have any self-confidence about the choices I’d made the last few months. The only difference between us was that I hadn’t killed anyone. I may have helped cover up murders, but I hadn’t actually killed anyone. I’d taken money from a murderer, but I didn’t have to kill to get it. I took what comfort I could from that fact, although I didn’t know for how long I could.

  “Tomorrow, we’ll start training you in some hand-to-hand techniques that will help you when we get on board the Turk’s yacht. Say about ten a.m.?” Bill asked between bites of his grouper.

  “That sounds good. Do we know when we’ll make our move?” I asked.

  “Listen to you, acting like the tough guy with all the right verbiage and everything. Next you’ll want to know who you’re supposed to whack first.”

  “Whoa, cowboy. I’m just there to watch your back. Not to be whacking people.” I tried to sound like I still had some principles left.

  “When we hit that boat, you had better have my back or we are both dead. You will have to kill or you will be killed. Can you do it? I have my doubts, but I can’t trust anyone else.”

  Bill then pushed back from the table. Dinner was over.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The next day, the hand-to-hand training started in earnest. I thought he would show me several moves and call it good, but no. He started training me. He had me do a few leg lifts, a few push-ups. He was impressed I could do ten of them. I then did sit-ups, fifteen of them. He then had me do stretching exercises and made sure I was as stretched as I was going to get. Then, he started showing me how to make the moves. He went very slowly, making each move deliberately slow, so that I would be sure to see how each one was made.

  We practiced most of the day. Finally, I told him I was bushed and that I had to get off my legs. He surprised me and rolled out a recliner chair from behind the bank vault, setting it right in front of the vault. Then he rolled out a chalkboard with the ship’s diagram on it. I plopped myself down in the chair, and he continued my tutelage.

  He explained how he planned to get on the ship by driving a Sea Sled from his cabin cruiser, which he would be anchoring about three miles away. He laid out how we’d enter at the rear of the ship and work our way forward, down the dual hallways. I would be on my own, and I had better keep moving or they would cut me off front and back. He explained that we would use flash bang grenades to get on board if we couldn’t sneak on without being harassed.

  He had found out from the maid that the ship would carry eight bodyguards, plus eight armed crew members. He figured that the Turk would be armed, as well, but wouldn’t actually join the battle unless he absolutely had to.

  The Turk and his wife would be in the stateroom up front with the children—a boy and girl—on either side of what the shipbuilder called the grand foyer. There were stairs leading up to the main salon on both sides of the master cabin, and it would be a problem to keep them both covered while Bill went in and executed the Turk.

  He went over the plan again and again. He never mentioned the children or the wife. He did mention that he wouldn’t leave any of the Turk’s men alive, and when we were done, he was going to sink the ship. I guess I assumed he was going to set the wife and kids adrift in the dingy beforehand. At least I wanted to believe that, so I didn’t ask what he planned for them.

  We did this same routine for the next two weeks. On Wednesday afternoon, he pulled another surprise on me.

  “Jake, come on over here. I need your help,” Bill called from behind the chalkboard. I, of course, climbed out of the chair and wob
bled over.

  “What do you need?” I asked as I rounded the board. Suddenly, the door on the vault swung open, and I stopped to look at him.

  “I decided to add your bio-scan, and you just helped me make sure it was working,” Bill offered.

  “Wait. Why now?”

  “Why not now?” he replied.

  “’Cause everything you do is planned out, or you don’t do it,” I retorted.

  “Damn, you are so cynical. I just decided I won’t be killing you anytime soon, and so I added you.”

  “Okay, if you say so.”

  “I do. Plus we’re going after the ship Saturday night,” Bill confessed.

  “See, I told you. Nothing happens with you without a reason. But why do I need access to the vault now?”

  “We’re going after the ship Saturday. In case I don’t make it back, I want you to have access to everything that’s here. It’ll be your option what you do with this stuff. You can keep it all or sell it off, whatever floats your boat. Plus, the lawyer will have a few papers for you to sign. Jacks and Giles will be getting the house and cars there, plus a good chunk of money. Then the rest will be yours provided you stop in at the attorney’s right after seven years are up.”

  “Seven years?”

  “Missing persons are declared dead after seven years. You’ll need to let the attorney know that I’m missing, of course, and he’ll file the needed reports. Then seven years later, you’ll have to get back in touch with the attorney and he’ll finalize the estate. In the meantime, the penthouse is yours. I signed the building over today, as well as the house to Jacks and Giles. Of course, they won’t be apprised of the situation until it actually happens. The attorney will provide a letter to them as well as the combination to the house safe. That should be enough to carry them until the seven years pass.”