Sovrano

by Michael Powers

  “My classmates noticed I always had plenty of cash, so they began approaching me with their own deals. I did some loan-sharking, fenced stolen goods, and put up the money for drug deals. I got burned a few times, so I hired a couple big guys from the local college to be my collectors. In less than a year, I had set up my own little crime syndicate. I had delivery boys, suppliers, salesmen, collectors, and clients, just like any legitimate business. My collectors were big, didn’t mind a fight, needed money, and took orders well. I suppose I got away with it for so long because I was an honor student and looked so clean-cut. I was also a pretty good manager. A lot of factors combined to help me build my illegal business to an incredible volume.

  “I gave Harry and Keira generous allowances and Jerry got anything he asked for. I went to see Mom in the hospital each week and always took jewelry, candy, or flowers. Harry and Keira knew I wasn’t earning all that money from my minimum wage job, but they never asked questions. I knew they didn’t approve, but my family preferred not to discuss unpleasant things. I only had two rules for them: no questions and no guests in our home. I didn’t want anyone asking where our parents were.

  “I took advantage of the situation, rationalizing that anything I did was all right because it was for my family, but I went way beyond stealing to survive. I became greedy. Truth is, I enjoyed all the wheeling and dealing. I was no longer just an ordinary high school kid. I was supporting a family and running an organization with a million-dollar payroll. It made me feel important. Good student, class valedictorian, minimum wage theater job……that was my cover. I was careful not to spend too lavishly since I didn’t want to draw attention to myself. I knew my continuing success rested heavily on flying below the radar.

  “By the end of the second year, the euphoria began to wear off, so I quit doing some of the penny ante crap like selling false IDs and bootlegging liquor to minors. I even quit loan-sharking since it was such a headache. Then the theater manager discovered my ticket reselling scheme when an envelope filled with tickets to be resold fell out of a cashier’s purse in front of him. She was fired on the spot. I knew the manager suspected my involvement, so I quit before he had a chance to fire me. After that close call, I grew paranoid about all my illegal activities. I had nightmares about being caught and sent to prison. My conscience was starting to bother me, too.

  “Then I met Marcus Sloan. I thought he was the answer to my prayers. I wanted a safe operation that made lots of money, required little work, and carried almost no risk. Did Marcus have a sweet deal for me!

  “Marcus was a few years older than me. He had scraggly shoulder-length hair, and fit in well with bikers, rednecks, boozers, druggies; anyone outside the mainstream. He introduced himself at a party and told me if I would put up ten thousand dollars for two weeks, he could buy drugs on the West Coast, and resell them for forty thousand dollars in Wisconsin. He promised to double my investment. All I had to do was bankroll the deal since he was broke. It was too good to pass up, so I agreed. I had stashed away nearly a quarter of a million dollars. I told myself that if Marcus was lying, I’d be out ten thousand dollars and he’d get a good beating. If he kept his word, I’d make a lot of money with no effort. That seemed reasonable. I thought I was a pretty shrewd young businessman.

  “Marcus contacted me two weeks later and gave me twenty thousand in cash. I was too naive to spot the setup. That slick son-of-a-bitch did half a dozen deals with me, each one bigger than the last. We got up to a hundred thousand dollars and sure as hell, two weeks later, I got two-hundred thousand in cash. I was ecstatic! I never dreamed money could be made so easily. After all our deals, I had doubled my nestegg to a half million dollars. Then Marcus hit me up for the big one.

  “Somehow he knew how much money I had in the beginning and he was after all of it. I may have bragged about my nestegg when I was out drinking, then some gossip passed the amount on to Marcus. I figured it was strange how Marcus and his girlfriend sought me out after only a few weeks in town. I learned much later that Marcus’ mother was a bank officer, married to the local District Attorney. Guess he used his mother’s bank access to temporarily borrow the cash for his scam.

  “I was pretty nervous about handing over five-hundred-thousand dollars to a guy I’d known less than a year, but greed got the better of me. When I gave Marcus the money, I joked about how pissed I’d be if I never saw him again. Suddenly, I knew in every bone of my body Marcus was about to rip me off, yet I just let him go.

  “I worried a lot the next day. If Marcus was broke when he hit town, why did he and Carol have a new car? Over a period of eight months, why hadn’t I ever run into anyone who had bought drugs from Marcus? He said he sold mostly in Milwaukee and Chicago, but none of my contacts had ever heard of him. Why didn’t he ever offer me some of his product? Every dealer I knew kept a little stash for himself and his friends. Why didn’t Marcus? I drove over to his house and arrived just in time to see Carol driving away with a U-Haul behind Marcus’ SUV.

  “I followed Carol to a gas station. When she got out, I pulled up next to her, pointed a small pistol at her, and told her to get into my car. I bullied her into telling me she was going to meet Marcus in Denver. She admitted there hadn’t been any drug deals before, but this time, Marcus really was buying drugs from some Mexicans. She and Marcus planned to resell the drugs in Colorado, clear a couple million dollars, then buy a little farm and retire. Carol was very smug about how clever she and Marcus were. She didn’t mind telling me about their plans in great detail since she figured it was too late for me to do anything to stop them. After all, they already had the most important ingredient…..my money! She had no idea how determined I was not to let Marcus screw me. I’m not really sure whether it was a matter of pride or economics, although I suppose it doesn’t really matter now.

  “I dropped Carol off with a friend and told him to keep an eye on her for a few days, and not to let her make any calls. I took five of my toughest collectors to San Diego. Airport security was less strict then, so my guys packed enough weapons for a small army and checked them with their luggage. We rented two trucks at the airport. Then I hired a guy familiar with the area where Marcus was making the exchange to act as our guide.

  “We found the spot Marcus had highlighted on the map Carol gave me and waited for eight hours. I got more nervous by the minute. Just after midnight, we heard a truck approaching about the same time we saw the landing lights of a small plane touching down in an open field. The truck headed for the plane and we followed the truck, with our lights out. As the plane and truck met, I sent one of my teams around to the other side of the field. Then I called out to Marcus, telling him to have his people drop their guns and walk toward me.

  “I fired a few warning rounds and so did my team on the other side of the field. We turned our headlights on them so we could see them, but they couldn’t see us. Believing they were surrounded, Marcus and his associates threw their guns on the ground, raised their hands, and begged us not to shoot. Marcus, and a really shady character who looked enough like him to be his older brother, brought a suitcase to my truck and threw it in. Then I made them start transferring drugs to my trucks. I was so proud of myself for pulling off a double double-cross! When they had transferred about half the drugs, one of the Mexicans bolted and the man next to me shot him. The other Mexicans grabbed their guns, shot at us, and ran for cover. The guy next to Marcus pulled a pistol from his boot and I shot him. Next thing I knew, the plane and Marcus’ truck were both hit by grenades. The canvas covering the truck burst into flames. I had what I came for, so I yelled at my driver to get the hell outa there. As we drove off, I heard another explosion. My other team was hit. One of the three guys from the second truck met us on the road. Six of us went to San Diego, but only four came back.

  “I had no idea how many of Marcus’ party were dead or wounded. The last time I saw Marcus, he was dragging someone into the bushes. We hightailed it back to San Diego. I gave my three surviving co
llectors the drugs. I told them it was theirs to keep, and either use or sell as payment for the mission. Then I caught a flight to Mexico City and made my way to the office of Union Bank of Switzerland.

  “You have to understand the terror and sickness I was feeling for the next part to make any sense. I didn’t go directly home from California, convinced police were waiting to greet me at the airport when I got back home. I believed if I showed up with a suitcase full of cash, that’d be all the evidence they’d need to put me away. I know it was my guilt that made me so paranoid, but I couldn’t shake my fear about the money. I knew I had to get rid of it, yet I wanted to keep it. I had read an article in some magazine about discreet Swiss bankers and remembered the part about Americans not needing to cross the Atlantic any longer. Just a trip to the Union Bank of Switzerland’s office in Mexico City was all that was necessary. I turned my loot over to the Swiss, and returned home with a numbered bank account only I could access.

  “The flight home was very peaceful. I was satisfied my career as a crook was finally over. My treacherous partner had been dealt with. My profits were beyond reach of the IRS, bank examiners, and cops. I didn’t plan to hang around with anyone who so much as jaywalked from that day forward. I was awfully proud of myself for being so clever.

  “When I got back home I was surprised to see my Dad sitting at the kitchen table, drinking a soda. He and Mom were chatting happily and all seemed right with the world. Dad had been bumming around the country, taking odd jobs wherever he could find work. He claimed he’d been sober almost a year, so I agreed to let him stay. He got a new job, I enrolled in the local college, and we were just one big happy family again.

  “I figured it was all for the best. I had gotten the family through the rough years. I had no job, and most of my money was in a secret Swiss bank account. With Dad paying the bills again, I didn’t need much money. It was so much easier pretending our private nightmare had never happened. I didn’t have to panic every time I saw a cop car. Things went fine for about four more months.

  “Then I got a call from Carol, Marcus’ girlfriend. She said she wanted to make amends and asked to meet me for coffee. We had a pleasant chat and she told me Marcus was in a Mexican jail. Apparently his Mexican partners felt betrayed and wanted to kill him, but he persuaded them to give him another chance. He found another sucker in San Diego to front him some money, but was busted in Mexico before he could get his drugs across the border. She said they both wanted to square things with me someday. She actually seemed sincere, so I told her I was willing to forget everything that happened. Then she went to the bathroom, made a quick phone call, and we left. As I was driving home a few minutes later, a cop pulled me over. He searched my car and found ten kilos of crack under the front seat. Sure enough, Marcus and Carol had found a way to square things with me. I was booked and jailed.

  “The DA came to my cell to make a deal. He wanted to bust all the big local dealers in one fell swoop since he wasn’t getting anywhere busting a few street pushers. In exchange for my help, the charges against me would be dropped.

  “I told him I wouldn’t be much help, but the DA knew I had all the right connections. He made me put together a big buy involving every major drug dealer within fifty miles. I was supposed to deal with them individually, but arrange for all the transactions to take place at the same time and place. If anybody got nervous, I was to hint that I was trying to drive up prices by cornering the local market. Then, when money and drugs began changing hands, the narcotics squad would raid the place.

  “When I balked at the deal, the DA hinted it’d be just as easy to set up my brother or sister. Someone could plant drugs in their cars while they worked, and they’d be pulled over driving home, too. That convinced me to cooperate.

  “I set up almost thirty of my friends and watched them being dragged off to jail. The next day, the whole thing came out in the newspaper. The DA publicly expressed his thanks to me by name for my role in the bust. I called him and asked if he was crazy! He just laughed. He said he’d see me in court since I’d be called as a witness. My whole world collapsed.

  “I told my parents the Reader’s Digest version of what had happened, then made plans to leave town. While I was packing, the first death threat call came in. My whole family piled into Dad’s car and we drove to a town forty miles away so I could catch a bus to Milwaukee. I didn’t have much time to say good-bye. Told my parents it wasn’t safe for them to know where I was, so they shouldn’t expect me to contact them. They said they understood. I think my Dad was relieved I was leaving. Keira, Harry, and Jerry didn’t know the whole story, but they were used to secrets. They simply accepted my departure as something necessary for everyone’s safety.

  “The rest of the family stayed inside the depot while Mom walked me to the bus. She looked up at me with those large brown eyes and thanked me for keeping the family together while she and Dad were separated. She told me I was strong and smart, and knew I’d be all right. She said I shouldn’t worry about them. Her last words to me were, “I’ll always love you.” We hugged one last time, she kissed my cheek, and I boarded the bus.

  “The last thing I remember seeing from the back of that Greyhound bus were the tears running down Mom’s cheeks. She wore a brave little smile as she waved me off like some kid going to summer camp for a week, but I saw her tears even as I hid my own. I didn’t want anyone on that crummy bus to see Jason York cry.”

  Eric’s head fell to his chest as tears silently trickled down. Tiny gasps escaped as he tried to suppress his tears, but remembering the pain he had caused his mother was almost too much to bear. Cody stroked Eric’s hand, uncertain how to help. Should he urge Eric to take a break, or wait until he was able to continue? Cody waited.

  “Sorry,” Eric apologized when he was able to continue. “Anyway, I drifted around the country for months, working for cash wherever I could. I decided not to touch the money in my Swiss bank account since I was trying to live off the grid. I had no idea if the police were actively searching for me, but I didn’t want to take any chances. I was twenty, had no job skills, and no college degree. I recalled a friend telling me if I enlisted in the Air Force, I could apply for education programs, earning a college degree while serving a six-year term. That seemed like a reasonable way to spend the next few years. Enlisting was more appealing than waiting on tables or washing dishes.

  “I went to the Chicago military induction center. As I was filling out forms, a lot of questions bothered me. Had I ever been arrested? Had I ever been convicted of a serious crime? Were there any outstanding warrants for my arrest? Could I supply the name and address of character references who had known me more than five years? I asked a sergeant in the front of the room a couple of hypothetical questions. He told me they checked with hometown police departments, the FBI, and other agencies to verify the accuracy of all applications. That’s all I needed to know. I was afraid there was a bench warrant for failing to appear as a witness in Skyline. Even if my record came up clean, I couldn’t produce a birth certificate. I would never pass a security clearance investigation as Jason York, so I excused myself to use the bathroom. Instead, I ran out of the building as fast as I could.

  “I hung around Chicago for another month, working temp jobs during the day, drinking at night, and staying in cheap hotels. One night I met a guy in a bar who looked a lot like me. In fact, that’s how we started talking. The bartender asked if we were twins. We struck up a conversation and hit it off. I found out he had just enlisted in the Air Force, but didn’t have to report for basic training right away. He was given a cash advance and told to kill a few days until another training class started. During our conversation, I found out both his parents were dead, he was an only child, and had been born and raised in southern Illinois. When the bar closed at three that morning, we were having too much fun to quit, so I invited him to my hotel room for a drink. We staggered across the street to my hotel and continued drinking.

  “Arou
nd five that morning, he had to use the bathroom. My cheap little room didn’t have a private bath, so I pointed him down the hallway to the public toilet. Twenty minutes passed and he didn’t come back, so I went looking for him. There were several stalls in the bathroom and the door was closed to only one. I looked underneath and saw his pants and shoes. I called out his name and asked if he was all right. No answer. I gave the door to his stall a slight push. It swung halfway open. He was slumped back against the wall. I thought he’d passed out, but he didn’t appear to be breathing, so I took his pulse and couldn’t find one. I didn’t see any blood, so I was pretty sure he hadn’t been assaulted. It may have been alcohol poisoning or maybe he had some medical condition. I was certain he was dead, even if I didn’t know the cause. He was beyond help, and calling 911 would only get me in trouble. I dragged him to my room so I’d have time to think.