by Chuck Dixon
Lying supine, Levon stabbed the automatic toward the driver’s compartment and emptied it through the mesh. A grunt followed by an abbreviated bleat of the van’s horn.
Van was trying to get at his own handgun left-handed while maintaining pressure on his thigh. Levon was up and charged across the confining space to shoulder-check the man into the back doors with all his weight. Levon dropped upon the unmoving Van who was going white, bleeding out. Blood pooled in the recesses of the van’s floor grid making the surface greasy slick.
Levon yanked a black Sig Sauer from Van’s waistband. The man was shivering with the chill that blood loss brings. Levon crawled over him to drop the latch on the back doors and climbed out onto the road.
The van was on the verge of a two lane with nothing but saw grass and pines visible either side. Levon used the butt of the Sig to break the driver side glass. He reached in over the slumped form of the driver and slid the gear shift to neutral. With a shoulder to the door and a hand holding the wheel to the right he nudged the van rolling onto the grass. He stepped back and allowed the van to continue down the slope and into a swale filled with black water. It settled in the mud with water up to windows. The water downflooded through the break Levon made in the glass. The van sank further in an explosion of escaping air until only the top of the roof was visible. Big white birds rose from the surrounding shallows to flap away toward the trees.
Levon was covered in a spray of blood already growing stiff and tacky as it dried. He pulled the buckle from his belt revealing a spade-shaped blade. The razor sharp edge sliced through the tie wraps on his wrists. He checked his pockets. Wallet and keys were gone. His long slide was probably in the sunken van as well.
There were no rooftops or lights in sight. Only a lonely cell tower a few miles west. He started back up the road the way the van had come. His legs felt like he was dragging sacks of sand behind him. It would take a long hot soak and a long deep sleep to shake off the tazering.
He had a long walk ahead of him before that could happen.
Gunny Leffertz said:
“Body counts don’t mean shit if they’re not the right bodies.”
28
* * *
Two uniformed Tampa cops found Symon Kharchenko in the communal steam room at his bay view condo complex. He was with a pair of men of his approximate age. All three were covered in tattoos. Prominent on Symon’s chest was a snarling tiger. The three men were dressed only in the ropes of gold chains draped about their necks.
The cops stood sweating in their body armor under their starched uniforms. They politely asked if Symon would get dressed and meet them by the pool. Symon twisted his lips and nodded to his tovariches before standing and exiting his naked ass out of the hot box.
They weren’t arresting him. So it had to be bad news. He showered off, put on a robe and sandals and joined them in the sunshine by the pool.
The cops told him what they came here to tell him. Symon’s granite façade shifted for only a second before regaining his usual impenetrable expression. He thanked the police officers and promised to cooperate with any further questions they may have in the future. The cops left for their patrol car and Symon took the elevator up to his one-level dacha on the eleventh floor.
Once inside he fell to his knees in the deep pile carpet and wept into his fists while the sun sank over the golden waters visible through the window wall that overlooked the bay. The sky and water were dark and pearls of light along the shoreline were twinkling to life when he lowered his hands from his face. His eyes were red-rimmed and his lips pale. Though damp with his own tears, his expression had regained the density of a sphinx, unreadable and placid.
Only now there was a heat in his eyes; a fire that would consume anything his gaze fell upon.
He would swear to God and Jesus and all the saints that from this day forward his life was divided in two parts. All the days before this day and all the days that would follow. His life with his two boys and his life, from here, without them.
The days left to him would be solely for finding answers. And once he found them, the rest of his life was God’s.
But before that, he would get drunk.
Symon made a single call on a cell phone while pouring his first tumbler of Platinka.
“Find Dimi. Tonight.”
He tossed the phone to a chair and took a long, burning pull of vodka.
29
* * *
He was hungry, horny and sober. Three conditions he found intolerable.
Dmitry Kolisnyk tossed the remote across the room.
Dimi to his family. Dean Collins to his friends.
There was serious shit coming down and his Uncle Symon wanted to talk to him. They dragged him out of a strip club on 19 in the middle of a private session. All drama, these Old World assholes. Have to make a thing out of what could be accomplished over the phone.
For now, he waited.
He threw himself back in the king-sized bed and looked at himself in the mirrored ceiling. He wore Buccaneers warm-up pants and jacket. His gold crucifix glowed on his spray-tanned chest. He ran a hand over his gym-rat abs. No prison muscle for him.
His father and his ‘uncles’ were proud of their years inside. They wore getting caught like a soldier wears his medals. Their ink told their story in a kind of illustrated code. Something they should all be ashamed of and they turned it into a club. Smart criminals didn’t get caught. Smart criminals skated. The only ink on Dimi was a Bacardi bat on his right forearm and a winged pixie with big tits on the other. Jesus, he was drunk that night.
The red walls of the room were making him crazy. As was the faux gold trim on the heavy Mediterranean furniture and the ankle-deep carpet on the floor. There was nothing on the TV at this hour of the day. Niggers arguing in phony courtrooms and white people arguing at tables. He couldn’t even look out a window. The black velvet curtains that covered one end of the room hid a bare cinderblock wall.
This place looked like a hotel room but it was all just a set. It was a property Uncle Symon owned in an industrial park in Largo. He leased it to some Lebanese outfit and they set it up as a porno studio. The Arabs divided it into separate rooms each equipped with HD cameras sending out a live feed of whatever was happening in the rooms. How many couples, threesomes and gang bangs had happened on this bed?
When Symon found out about the operation he sent his Cossacks to throw the Lebs out on their asses. The Vor was puritanical like that. They’d steal the coins off a dead man’s eyes and take the change out of a poor box. They’d kill and smuggle and extort and defraud without losing a moment’s sleep. They ruined lives and bankrupted businesses. But they didn’t like dealing drugs and they didn’t like whoring out women.
Dimi wondered at that. Most Vor never married. They would keep a woman, sometimes many women, but few stood before a priest or rabbi to take the vows. Their children were all bastards. They owed an allegiance to each other that was deeper than the bonds of marriage or family. Women and kids could come in the way of that; make a man consider choices that were not in the best interest of the brotherhood. Only one loyalty was tolerated. The Vor was all.
One of the many reasons Dimi rejected his father’s life. It started as youthful rebellion. Over time, Dimi saw no value in the company of men who shared a union created in prisons and camps in places so far away. He wanted to be free to do what he wanted; to chase pussy and make money in drugs.
He leapt from the bed and stormed to the room’s only door.
“Hey! I am going insane here!” he called to the two men seated at a table in the large open warehouse area outside the row of faux hotel rooms, kitchens, bathrooms and even a phony horse stable with real hay on the floor. The two guys, big guys, were playing cards and watching a live stream of a hockey game from Belgrade.
“Go to sleep. Watch the television,” Tupo, a half-Turk said glancing from his hand to the screen.
“Fuck that! The room is making me crazy! It
smells like shit! There’s probably AIDs everywhere from all the faggots fucking each other in there!”
“You want to switch rooms?” Yvan, a Khazaki who looked like Charles Bronson’s meaner brother said, laying his hand down to regard Dimi without compassion.
“They are all the same! Dicks and asses and pussies rubbed everywhere! How long do I have to be here?”
“As long as Symon wants you to be,” Tupo said.
“Has anyone hurt you? Do you not understand that we are keeping you safe?” Yvan said.
They had not hurt him. They had only dragged him from the club in Clearwater and driven him here the day before. He could not leave. They told him someone was looking for him. That someone killed his father. He was safe for now.
Only Dimi had to ask himself, safe from who?
“Want us to order some pizza?” Tupo said, taking a real interest in the conversation for the first time.
“I don’t want any fucking pizza. I just don’t want to sit in that jizz-painted room any more!”
They let him sit with them watching the game. A Serbian team versus Moscow.
That’s where he was when the garage doors at one end of the building opened and Uncle Symon’s Mercedes pulled in.
His uncle was out of the rear and walking fast over the warehouse floor. Two of his ‘brothers’ trotted behind to keep up. Symon had Dimi out of the chair and was shaking him. The toes of Dimi’s sneakers were squeaking off the polished concrete as he kicked his legs like a man fighting back to the surface of a lake.
“Who is this man? What is this man to you?” Symon said. The tough old bastard dropped Dimi on his ass and stood over him, hands fisted, knuckles bleached white.
“What guy? I don’t know who you’re talking about!” Dimi shouted in English.
“He knows you. He fucking knows all about you.” Symon breathed in and out through his nose.
“What’s he done? How’s he connected to me?”
“You sold drugs to him? Cheated him? Did something to piss him off enough to come here and start killing people?”
“I take the drugs from the Mexicans then sell them to the guys in Cotton Lake. I don’t cheat anyone. I only take my cut. This guy’s not Mexican, right? Maybe the bikers know.”
“He killed my boys. Did you know that?” Symon said, shrugging his broad shoulders so his jacket lay better.
He did not know that. He did not know anything.
Vanko and Danya.
Now Dimi was scared. Now he no longer felt safe.
Gunny Leffertz said:
“I want my soldiers smart. Courage is good in small doses. Smart is better. A man who’s brave all the time isn’t smart. He’s looking to prove something. A man who’s smart knows when to back down, take a loss. A smart man knows it’s better to come back another day and win than lose today just to show off his balls.”
30
* * *
Merry was surprised to see her dad standing on the front walk of her school.
“How about a ride home, honey?” he said into her hair after she’d leapt into his arms.
A teacher was giving Levon the snake eye and was about to step forward through the crowd of kids rushing for the long row of school buses rumbling at the curb.
“My daddy’s home, Ms. Rodriguez!” Merry announced from his arms.
“It’s okay if I drive her?” Levon said.
The teacher nodded before being pulled away by a shoving match between two boys arguing over who would get on board the bus first.
Levon and Merry were in the Avalanche heading away.
“What happened to your window?” Merry said.
“Little accident,” Levon said. The window at his door was gone. The ride back from Tampa had been a noisy one.
“Did you get hurt?”
“Nothing seeing you didn’t cure.”
“Was it your fault?”
“What if I told you it was? What if I told you that Daddy forgot his car keys and busted out the window himself?”
Merry laughed.
“Didn’t know you had a daddy that dumb, huh?”
She rocked forward against her seat belt giggling.
“Better hope you take after Mommy, huh?”
She slapped his arm to make him stop.
“You’re taking me to Granpa and Granma’s? Because this isn’t the way,” she said when she’d recovered.
“Honey. How much do you trust your Daddy?” he said, eyes on the road.
“About what?”
“About everything. How much do you trust me?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, do you believe me? When I tell you something, you know you can believe me, right?”
“You’re my Daddy. You’d never lie to me.”
Levon looked at her sitting by him, regarding him with searching eyes.
“Look, Daddy made a mistake. And now I have to fix it,” he said.
“Like the window?” Merry said.
“Something like that. For now I can’t have you staying with your grandparents. I need you to come with me.”
“Where to?”
“To some friends of mine. Very old friends that are like family to me. They’ll be family to you, too.”
“What about school?” she said.
“You have your books?” he said.
She patted the book bag on the seat between them.
“Then trust me, honey. You’re going to learn a whole lot more than they could ever teach you in school.”
He pulled up a ramp onto Lee Highway west. They passed under a state highway sign that read: MISSISSIPPI.
31
* * *
Symon’s lawyer, a smart Jew with political ambitions, secured a copy of the Tampa police file on the sunken van. The evidence found with the three bodies within was detailed in the report. It was worth the thousand dollars Symon paid for it even if the Jew kept half the bribe intended for the evidence clerk at the police center. Billable hours was a lawyer word for theft. Symon, an old thief himself, could respect that.
The three men all suffered gunshot wounds at close range. Two of the dead, Danya Kharchenko and Vasily Gorky, died of gunshot wounds. Vanko Kharchenko was awaiting further autopsy but notes suggested he may have died of drowning.
The firearms suspected of causing the fatal wounds as well as a potentially mortal wound to V. Kharchenko’s thigh were both found within the van. Found as well was a handgun registered to V. Gorky in the state of Florida. In addition was a custom-made .45 automatic in stainless finish. The automatic was equipped with an aftermarket slide tooled without a serial number. Numbers were also absent from the parts on the rest of the weapon.
The nature of the crime scene had a negative effect on the accuracy of any forensic evidence. The van was five or more hours in muddy water before being discovered by a carload of German tourists who stopped to pee in the grass along the run-off swale. Time of death was going to be approximate. Even the hoary old crimebusting cliché of the stopped watch was thwarted by each of the three dead men wearing very high-end and very waterproof watches.
Two solid bits of evidence were not unaffected by being submersed in the brackish swill. A man’s wallet containing over a thousand dollars in cash, a Shell card and a driver’s license and registration from Alabama. There was also a key ring with a remote for a Chevy vehicle. That matched the registration paper. A five-year-old Avalanche.
The photocopy of the license showed a white man in close-cropped hair looking dead-eyed into the camera.
“Could be the man I saw on the video at Wolo’s,” Symon said to the gathering of men in the living room of his condo. The room was dense with smoke from cigars and cigarettes.
They were young and old. Ukrainians, Russians, Armenians and Latvians. All were Vor. All cooperated in a blood brotherhood that went beyond race or language or family, with rules and a code of honor more rigid than any army. They called themselves ‘thieves-in-law’ and answere
d only to their own set of laws and recognized no other.
“What is his business with us?” said an Armenian named Yuri.
“He is nothing to us. He has dealings with Dimi, Wolo’s son,” Symon said.
One of the men made a spitting sound at the mention of Dimi’s name.
“Danya and Vanko were looking for Dimi. They must have found the man from the video. Tried to take him captive. Something went wrong,” Symon said.
“The robbery at Skip’s. Wolo dead. Your sons dead. This is not only about that piece of shit Dimi,” said Oreske, a man older than Symon and underboss to the Vor chief in Miami.
“Dimi sold the man drugs. The man paid him with money I believe came from the robbery at Skip’s,” Symon said.
“Who told you this?” Oreske said.
“Dimi. I have him. He told me what he knows. Or as much as he wants me to know. He says he never met the man. Dimi does not know him except through some gang Dimi has business with,” Symon said.
“He must know. Dimi must know what this man is about, why he is in Tampa making hell for us,” Soshi, a fat Georgian said.
“Dimi knows he is the key to all of this. He knows that as long as we have questions I will allow him to live. I say we ask the man himself,” Symon said and held up an enlarged photo copy of the driver’s license of Levon Edward Cade of 1001 Willow Run Rd, apartment 3A, Moore’s Mill, Alabama.
Gunny Leffertz said:
“Sometimes you go it alone. Sometimes, for the good of all, you break contact and continue the mission.”
32
* * *
Joe Bob Wiley’s cell twanged two bars of “I Walk The Line”. He plucked it off his belt. Unknown number.
“You got Joe Bob. What can I do for you?”
“Mr. Wiley. Don’t say my name.”
“Hell, son. I thought you ran off on me. What have you learned? Can you tell me anything?”