by Chuck Dixon
“Yes. He was. Until my daughter died,” Jordan said, voice level, eyes turned away from the tools on the table.
“Do you know where he is?”
“I do not know where—”
Nestor nodded.
Karp pulled the Browning from his waistband and shot Marcia twice through the head.
Jordan stared. First at his wife lying shrunken and dead still in a spreading lake of blood. Then into the predator eyes of the younger man.
“That is to show that we are serious. Continue to lie and, believe me, you will envy your wife.”
“But I don’t know where he is. I’d tell you if I knew. I’d have told the police if I knew.”
“Police?” Karp said, glancing at Nestor.
“What do you mean by police?” Nestor said, stepping from the table to lean close to Jordan’s face.
Jordan began to speak. Nestor held up a hand.
“Wait. Wait. Wait.”
Nestor took his tablet from an inside pocket of his coat. He poked and swiped. A voice speaking a foreign language came from the device. A gruff voice with a basso tone that was discernible even through the tinny speakers of the tablet. Nestor answered in the same language. A curt exchange followed.
The tablet was held up before the doctor’s face. On the screen as the face of a hard-looking man of perhaps Jordan’s age, maybe older or younger. The man locked eyes with Jordan over the link as intensely as if they were in the same room.
“You talk to police? Of what do you talk to police?”
“My son-in-law. He took my granddaughter without permission. I filed charges. I told the police all I knew.”
“It’s true. We saw the legal papers, shef,” Nestor said.
“You told police all you know. What is it you tell them?” the man on the tablet asked.
“That Cade is insane. He’s dangerous. He suffers from PTSD. He’s on psychotropic drugs, mood altering medications. He’s capable of anything and he has my granddaughter with him.” Jordan stated his case clearly. They both wanted the same thing. They could all be reasonable men.
“He is crazy. He is dangerous. This I know. Where is he? That is what I need from you,” the tablet said.
“I don’t know where he is. I told you that. I would tell you where he is if I knew.”
“Will he call you? Will he be contacting you?”
“No. He hates me as much as I hate him. He won’t call.”
“Your granddaughter. Maybe she call?”
“She’s nine years old. I’m not sure she remembers the house number.”
“She have phone. All kids got phones.”
“Not Meredith. I forbade her to have a cell phone.” The doctor caught himself before making mention of the Danish studies.
“I believe you. You do not know. A liar would make up a story to tell me.”
Jordan relaxed at the words. His muscles ached from the strain of the tension and the cold.
“Nestor?” the tablet said. Nestor held the tablet before him and there was a new exchange in what sounded like Russian now. Nestor tapped the screen, killing the call. He nodded to Karp.
Karp pulled his Browning once again.
Jordan was more irritated than surprised.
“You want to prove that you’re idiots? You want to do the stupid thing? Then go ahead and kill me,” the doctor said. He sounded impatient with them, like they were stubborn children.
Nestor held a hand up to Karp. This was a first. Nestor had seen people in this same situation beg, pray, pass out, weep and make all kinds of promises. He’d been offered drugs, money, cars, pussy, and blow jobs by others taped in chairs, suspended by their heels or buried to their necks.
This is the first time he was ever scolded.
“We are stupid? We killed your wife. We have a gun to your head. But we’re the idiots.”
“Yes.”
“You have balls, my man. Big ones. But who holds the gun?”
“You want Cade. I’m your only possible contact. The man is a classic loner. He has no family. No friends. If I’m gone you lose any chance you would ever have had of finding him.”
“You told us you don’t know where he is.”
“That doesn’t mean that I can’t find out. Given time to think about it, without the threat of pain or death, I would be able to help you locate him.”
“You really hate his ass.”
“He killed my daughter,” Jordan said.
“Give me one more reason or my tovarich brings this to an end.”
“I’m a doctor. A surgeon. Surely your people, your organization, the man on the tablet, would have use for a surgeon now and then.”
Nestor glanced at Karp then back at the doctor.
“You can write prescriptions?”
“Whatever you’re looking for. Whatever amounts you need. I’m on the board at Huntsville and Crestwood.”
Nestor shrugged and reached out to pat Karp’s gun hand. The brute returned the Browning to his waistband. Nestor cut the tape holding the doctor to the chair with his clasp knife. Together they carried/dragged the doctor to the car and placed him in the back seat. Marcia went into the trunk along with the sack of tools from the table. The pair settled back in the front seat.
“We’re taking you home to get some clothes and your prescription pad. Then we get something to eat. How’s that sound to you?” Nestor said, turned in the seat to speak to Jordan.
“Yes. Could you turn the heat up, please?” the doctor said.
Karp cranked up the fan and warm air washed over Jordan. He allowed his body to unknot from the tension built up over the past hours. He fell asleep as they drove, awakened once when the corpse in the trunk rocked against wall behind the backseat. The doctor fell back into a doze, his invisible organ free to dream of warm streams and green grass under a summer sun.
37
* * *
They were a half hour off the county road and following a switchback coursing around hills covered in white birch. Levon slowed to a stop twice to allow deer to cross the road.
He turned the truck onto a driveway marked with a battered mailbox with a faded Marine Corps globe and anchor painted on it. The driveway had a hard-packed stone surface. It snaked alongside a dry wash to ford a shallow creek fringed with winter ice as thin as lace.
A fringe of tall pines acted like a gateway either side of the roadway. A one-level log cabin was visible ahead. White smoke curled from the wide chimney of stacked stone. A Dodge Ram sat high on lifts and knobby tires in the gravel yard before the house. A waxed-shiny Range Rover was in the shade of a carport on a concrete hardstand. In the center of the yard was a walled flower bed empty now but for a flagpole atop of which an American flag fluttered above a smaller USMC flag.
A man stood on the deep porch that ran across the face of the cabin. He came down the steps with a double-barrel shotgun cradled easy in his arms. A black man with steel gray hair cropped close. He had massive shoulders and a thick neck visible under a denim farm coat. His eyes were hidden behind dark wraparounds. Beneath the glasses was a scowl that looked as if it were frozen there for all time. He walked out to meet the approach of the Avalanche.
“Hope it’s okay I stopped by like this,” Levon said stepping onto the gravel.
“Knew you were comin’. Heard you pulling off the county road.” The man’s scowl deepened.
“Couldn’t be the motion alarm a mile back helped, you lying bastard.”
Merry stood by the truck, looking between the men uncomprehending.
The man with the shotgun’s scowl vanished into a broad smile of welcome.
“About time you come visit me, Cade. Who’d you bring with you?”
“My little girl. Merry.”
“Well, I’m anxious to meet the little princess your daddy talks about all the time.”
“My daddy talks to you about me?” Merry skipped around the truck to take the man’s offered hand. He held it out waiting for her to take it.
“All the time, sweetiepie.” The man pulled her close in a tight hug. He smelled like fresh cut wood and cinnamon.
“Honey, I want you to meet Gunny Leffertz,” Levon said.
Gunny Leffertz said:
“The older I get, the more I know that the rarest thing in the world is having someone who honestly, truly, and purely gives a shit about you.”
38
* * *
Dinner was pasta and venison sausage in a marinara followed by fresh baked apple pie. Coffee for the grown-ups and creamy tea for Merry.
The cabin was like something out of a fairy tale to Merry. The great room had high ceilings with open beams. The fireplace of river stone was big enough for her to walk into without stooping. A big Irish wolfhound slept on a rough weave carpet before the hearth. The kitchen came off the great room as did the bedrooms and two bathrooms. She helped Joyce, Gunny’s wife, clear the table.
Joyce was as nice to her as Gunny was. She talked to Merry as they washed and dried the dishes together. She told Merry that she met Gunny in Hawaii a long time ago when they were both in the Marines. When Gunny lost his eyesight and retired, she retired too and they got married and they built this cabin in the Mississippi woods.
“Gunny can’t see?” Merry said.
“Blind as an old bat,” Joyce said.
“But he doesn’t use a cane or bump into things.”
“That’s because we’ve lived here long enough that he knows where everything is. He even fools me sometimes. But you take him down to Tupelo and he’ll walk right in front of a bus.”
Joyce laughed. Merry joined her.
“Was he hurt being a soldier?” Merry said becoming grave all of a sudden.
“Marine, honey. Never call a Marine a soldier.”
“No, ma’am. Sorry, ma’am.”
“Well old Gunny got a piece of steel in his head from a roadside bomb back in— Are you sure you want to hear this?”
Merry nodded with enthusiasm.
“Back in Desert Storm. A piece of metal no bigger than a pin. And it was in a place where doctors couldn’t get to it. Over the years, and because Gunny wouldn’t take it easy like they told him to, the piece of metal moved to press on some nerves and he lost his sight over time.”
“My daddy never talks about when he was fighting.”
“Some daddies don’t.”
“He met Gunny back then? They became friends?”
“Gunny was a teacher at a very special school your father went to. Gunny says Levon Cade was the best student he ever had.”
“What did Gunny teach him?”
“You’d better ask your daddy that,” Joyce said putting away the last dried plate into a cabinet.
Merry nodded. She would ask him.
Levon and Gunny sat out on the front porch listening to the trees creak in the wind. They were sharing some high-grade lightning made by a neighbor.
“What kind of trouble you in, Slick?” Gunny said.
“Why do you think I’m in trouble?”
“This man can’t see. Don’t mean this man is blind. You bring your little one up here out of the clear blue. She’s packed to stay but you’re not. You want to keep lying to your old gunny?”
“Wasn’t lying. I only wanted to know how you smelled trouble.”
“You stink of it, Slick. Now tell me a story.” Gunny settled back in his chair.
Levon gave him the long and short of it. When he stopped talking Gunny had some questions.
“These Russians. How big is their outfit? What’s their reach?” he said.
“They’re not mafiya. The Vor gangs are smaller. Like the plazas the Mexican cartels authorize. They’re connected but not that high up.”
“How far up the chain are you going to have to go?”
“That’s up to them, isn’t it? I need to find their command and control and either get a promise from them or take them out,” Levon said.
“Promises ain’t worth shit from anyone. You leave one of them alive and you’re gonna be hidin’ for a long time,” Gunny said.
“Me and Merry are going to be our own witness protection. I don’t want that life for her but I don’t know what else to do.”
“Your little one okay with staying here a while?”
“I told her there were wild ponies.”
“I mean she okay with you going away and her stayin’ with me and Joyce?”
“I’ll stay till tomorrow night. Give her some time to get used to it. Hearing the two of them giggling in the kitchen, I think she’s ready to adopt Joyce as a granma anyway. Might not even miss me.”
“Bullshit,” Gunny said.
They sipped the hard corn liquor. There was an aftertaste of apples once the fire died down.
“I need some ordnance,” Levon said after a while.
“We’ll have a look in the morning. You take anything you like.”
“I can pay for it.”
“And if you try to you’ll be pickin’ that cash out of your ass.” Gunny turned to Levon with his badass stare that still worked even if the old Marine was stone blind.
39
* * *
He was naked and hurting and cold.
“Have you had time to think, Dimi?”
The voice was tinny and flat.
Dimi came fully awake in an ice cold drizzle.
Tupo was standing over him, pouring a bottle of beer over him. Yvan was by him holding his hand out. In his fingers was a smart phone held up for Dimi to see. Uncle Symon’s tiny face glared at him from the screen.
“Dimi. Have you had time to think?”
Think? It was all Dimi could to do to keep from passing out again. His ears rang. His vision spun. Every beat of his heart brought a new tide of pain to his skull.
He’d lost his room privileges. He lay in the musty straw of the stable set. Manacles were around his ankles and secured to a long chain slung over a ceiling joist. The gear was part of the bondage stuff left behind by the recent lessees. Before leashing him like a dog, Tupo and Yvan made him take his clothes off. He refused at first, certain they were going to ass-rape him, these sick prison fucks. Tupo pressed the barrel of gun to his head. Dimi shucked out of his clothes.
They chained him. They gave him a beating. No malice. No questions. They took turns. Just following orders. All part of the job.
Tupo gave Dimi a shot to the gut that loosened his bowels. A stream of bloody shit sprayed over his legs. They dropped him to the straw then and went back to their card table.
Uncle Symon had left before the stripping and chaining and beating. Now his uncle was back. Virtually, anyway.
“Get him up,” Uncle Symon said.
Tupo and Yvan lifted Dimi and dropped him in a chair. Tupo handed him what was left of the beer. Dimi sipped, struggling to keep it down.
“Have you had time to think, Dimi?” Symon said from the phone.
“I told you, Uncle. Maybe the bikers know.”
“We spoke to them. They do not know the man. He is a stranger to them. I believe them.”
“I swear to Christ I don’t know either,” Dimi said. Tears started in his eyes. His throat closed with the effort not to sob.
“Something at Skip’s. You know. Skip’s.”
“The place in Tampa? I know it.”
“This man Cade killed our people at Skip’s. Robbed us. This was before he killed your father.”
Dimi licked his lips and nodded.
“Did you sell drugs there? Did you make trouble there with someone, Dimi?”
“I told you and told you and told you, Uncle. I don’t sell drugs anywhere. I’m not a dealer. I’m a wholesaler. Why can’t you understand that?”
“Hit him,” the face on the phone said.
Tupo slammed a fist into Dimi’s face. Dimi heard a wet snap. He tasted blood in his mouth.
“Again. Just to hurt.”
Tupo slapped Dimi across the ear with an open hand. Dimi couldn’t believe, even after
the beating the night before, how much it hurt. An explosion inside his head followed by a dagger of pain from his ear. A high whistling sound drowned out everything for a long moment.
“Enough.” Symon sighed.
Tupo stepped back. The assault via Skype was on pause for now.
“You are not telling me the truth. You think that lying will keep you alive,” Symon said inches from his face.
Dimi stared at the fuzzy image filling his field of vision.
“You are a man because you can take a beating. Then we show you that you are no man. We treat you like a bitch.”
Dimi watched Yvan hand the smart phone over to Tupo who held it close to Dimi’s face. Yvan walked away and returned a moment later with a push broom. He snapped the broom handle over his knee, leaving a two-foot section in one fist.
Yvan spat on the end and grinned.
The world pixilated and then went red and then black.
Dimi was off line.
Gunny Leffertz said:
“You can never have enough gun.”
40
* * *
“Jesus Palomino, Gunny,” Levon said in a whisper.
They were in a block-walled building set into a hillside well behind the cabin. Accessible by a hard-packed walkway and enclosed by a cyclone cage. Gunny hit the combination on the keypad flawlessly. He swung the heavy steel door open to let them in.
The familiar smell of gun oil and Cosmoline. Fluorescents in the ceiling winked on. The room was ten by ten and lined with racks of weapons in protective sleeves. Above the racks were shelves of ammo boxes. The back wall was stacked with cases in wood and high-impact plastic.
“This room is some kind of prepper’s dream,” Levon said unsheathing a government model Thompson submachine gun in pristine condition.
“Preppers. Screwballs, I call ’em. Got a pack of ’em over the hill diggin’ out their half-assed bunker on weekends instead of golfing or barbecuing.”
“So, why do you have all this shock and awe in your backyard?”
“Just an old jarhead who can’t sleep right without some strike capability handy,” Gunny said smiling.