by Chuck Dixon
This guy was upper management.
They unlocked the barred door and entered Skip’s. The CLOSED sign stayed in place. Twenty minutes and no change. No cop cars or rescue wagons. A few more customers rolled up and tried the door and walked away. One of the younger guys came out and moved the Benz from the curb to a parking spot and went back inside.
An hour passed and an unmarked van pulled into the fenced-in area at the back of Skip's. Four guys climbed out in work coveralls and removed buckets, mops and gallon bottles of cleaning fluid from the rear. The group carried all the gear inside. Two came back out to the van. They rolled a pair of plastic fifty-gallon drums from the rear. The drums were empty by the way they moved them. They placed them on a hand truck and wheeled them inside.
They were all white guys.
Levon watched from his place on the Winn-Dixie roof as the afternoon wore on. He had a thermos of coffee in his gear bag and a Cuban sandwich wrapped in paper. He sipped and munched and kept the front and back of the bar under surveillance as the afternoon wore on. He did a rough count of the cash he took. Eighty thousand. Most of it bundled twenties. A lot of money for one night’s take for a downmarket dive like Skip’s.
Cars pulled up and parked and left again as Skip’s remained closed. Around three a black man pulled up in a Kia pickup and went to the front door. He knocked at the door and waited. The door opened after a minute or so and he was let inside.
The afternoon bartender.
Two more hours and the cleaning crew came out the back. Two of them worked to wheel a drum back to the van. It was heavy now. It took all four of them to lever it up into the back of the van. The rear suspension sagged under the weight. They went back inside for the second drum, also fully loaded. They removed a box of heavy plastic contractor bags from the van. The buckets, mops and empty cleaning bottles went into these bags. Same with their coveralls, shoe covers and plastic gloves. The bags were sealed up tight and loaded into the van by the drums. They were in t-shirts and shorts now. Three got in the van and took off. The last one used Johnny’s key ring to get into the Audi and drive away.
The black man from the Kia appeared at the front door twenty minutes later. He flipped the sign in the window to OPEN. Like following a whistle only heard by the dogs, the cars pulled up and some of the same folks denied access earlier straggled into the bar.
It was getting on evening when the older man and the twins exited the bar. One of the twins trotted out to the Mercedes. He hit the remote as he moved. The car chirped. Running lights came on. The engine came to life.
Levon shouldered his gear bag and made for the ladder off the roof. He was in the Avalanche and around to the front of the Winn-Dixie in time to see the Mercedes hooking a left out of the lot to head north. He kept the sedan in sight as he followed across the lot in the same direction. The northern exit off the lot put him out on a surface street. A right turn brought him to a traffic light. He pulled up behind a mini-van and watched the Mercedes cross the intersection ahead of him. The target was almost to the next light by the time Levon was able to make a left to follow. He gunned and weaved and got within three cars of the Mercedes’ back bumper. He dropped his speed to match traffic and kept his eyes on the strip of tail lights.
The Mercedes took a highway north two exits and got off on a two-lane road lined either side with run-off ditches and cypress. It was full night now and even darker with the dense marsh woods hemming in all around. Levon hung back and cut his lights. He followed into a subdivision. An elaborate wood-carved sign along the road read Suncoast Estates. The road wound back. Long driveways either side of the road. Houses sat well back on lots of five acres or more.
Through the boles of the trees, Levon saw the glimmer of the Mercedes' headlights moving off the road where it curved around. Motion lights went on all around silhouetting a sprawling rancher.
He found a dry section of the shoulder and pulled the Avalanche to a stop and cut the motor.
Levon sat a while listening to the ticking of the cooling engine. The headlights vanished into a garage. Lamps went on in the house. The security lights died leaving only dimmer accent lights around the landscaping. He punched the dome light override and stepped out of the truck cab. The gear bag held a pair of well-used night vision scopes. He took them along with a long slide .45 pistol. He moved into the woods parallel to the house toward the rear of the property.
Gunny Leffertz said:
“Remember when you were a kid and thought a monster lived in your closet? You’d cry for Mommy and Daddy and they’d turn on the lights and open the closet door. They’d show you the monster wasn’t there. Only you knew he was there, didn’t you? You knew he couldn’t be seen if he didn’t want to be seen.”
15
It was hockey night in the home of Wallace Collins.
Wolodymyr Kolisnyk, formally of Kiev and Lubyanka. Now a year-round resident of Hillsborough County, Florida.
The big screen in the den had the Bolts on. They were playing Chicago. Wally and his nephews would be down in his skybox but it was an away game. Besides, this was almost as good. The action was crystal clear and the sound system rocked the floor like they were right down there on the ice. And here Wolo had his favorite vodka. Nemiroff Lex. The bar at the Icehouse never had his vodka no matter how many times he told them to stock it for him.
He sipped and watched the game. His nephews bounced on the edge of a sectional, calling out to the players in a mix of Ukrainian and American as if the skaters could hear them. Danny and Van, Danya and Vanko, were twin sons of a man Wolo called brother though they weren’t related by blood. Wolo was part of something with stronger ties than any family.
These were bonds forged in the prisons and camps of the old Soviet Union. Parents and siblings and such were mere accidents of birth. That could not compare to the shared suffering offered within the cellblocks and gulag sheds. Wolo’s mother gave birth to his body but the punishment camps gave birth to the man. It was there he earned his place in a brotherhood that welcomed him for his toughness and rewarded him with protection and loyalty. All he had he owed to the men he met there. What did he owe his mother, a whore too stupid to keep a stranger from making her pregnant? She loved her drugs more than she’d ever loved him.
These boys, drinking his beer and spitting popcorn on his carpet in their excitement, were dearer to him than his own son. They were as loyal to him as to their own father.
A commercial came on — some woman showing her tits and talking about pills to make a man's dick hard. Wolo hit the mute.
“What do you think of what happened at Skip’s?” he said to the boys.
“A robbery.” Danya shrugged.
“Some negros.” Vanko nodded.
“They left the shotgun. Why would a robber leave the shotgun?”
“Who knows, uncle? Some negro high on whatever,” Danya said.
“And Johnny was not shot with the shotgun. Why is that?”
“They used another gun. There were two of them. There’s always two of them,” Vanko said.
“How did he get in? Fedir and Pavlo sitting on their asses. Dying like goats.”
“Maybe Johnny was with the robbers,” Danya said.
“Maybe Oscar too, huh?” Vanko said, brows wrinkled. Oscar was the Haitian afternoon barman at Skip’s. He sure fit neatly into Danya’s negro theory.
“Could be. Could be. Johnny is not one of us.” Wolo sat back and rubbed the gray stubble on his chin.
“We will find them. It’s almost one hundred kay. Someone will talk. Someone will notice,” Danya said.
“All that cash? You know they will be spending it.” Vanko nodded more vigorously.
“Talk to Oscar.”
“Tonight, Uncle?” Danya said.
“Tomorrow,” Wolo said.
“Game’s back on,” Vanko said and snaked the remote from the older man’s side and snapped the volume back on.
Wolo was up off the cushions and delivered an ope
n hand slap to Vanko's face that sent the younger, larger man tumbling to the floor. Danya barked a laugh. Vanko sat up, a red welt rising angrily on his face. A stream of blood running from his ear.
“We were talking! Business!” Wolo shouted. His hands were fisted.
Vanko lowered his eyes and fought back tears. He was humiliated by the man he called uncle. He was suffering shame at his own show of disrespect. Vanko was pissed at Danya who was sitting with a hand clapped over his mouth to stifle his amusement at the bitchslapping his brother just got in the way of.
Wolo sat back down.
“Talk to Oscar. See what he knows. Watch his eyes. You know how,” Wolo said. The final word. His eyes returned to the game.
Vanko was retaking his place on the sectional when the outside lights came on.
16
One of the bleached blonds stepped onto the screened-in lanai behind the house. He looked this way and that, shrugged and went back into the house through a sliding door.
Levon watched him from well back in the wooded conservation area behind the house. The motion detectors were infrared and well placed. One step from the cover of the trees and ferns and the lights went on all around the house.
The LED spots died after twenty seconds. He raised the NODs scope to his eyes. The property was awash in a greenish glow visible through the lenses. All was in sharp contrast. He moved parallel to the rear of the house and crouched.
The older man and the twins were visible in a family room that opened onto the screened pool area. They were watching TV on a monster screen. They were in for the night. They weren’t going anywhere right now.
Levon dropped back into the woods and circled around back toward the Avalanche. Somewhere out in the dark, a coyote yipped into a high howl. They learned to run and hunt at night, away from the eyes of man. Even long-time residents in Florida lived their entire lives and never saw one though whole packs lived within sight of ex-burb villas and mini-mansions all over the state.
Night was good. Night was a friend.
But some game only came out in the bright of the sun.
Tomorrow was another day.
Gunny Leffertz said:
“You don’t want to be seen then act like you belong. Walk like a man and nobody sees you. Scoot around like some half-assed ninja and the shit you call down on yourself is your own damned fault.”
17
Levon was back at Suncoast Estates the next morning just after dawn. He parked the Avalanche two properties down from the Kolisnyk house where another monstrosity was under construction. Big place with a crew of Dominicans putting in drywall. His pickup looked right at home on the bare dirt lot. The crew moved sheetrock from the back of the truck into the house without ever looking at him. Another gringo in a pickup. Just one more jefe in a work shirt that cost more than a day’s wages. As long as he wasn’t here to give them shit they didn’t care.
He cut across the back of the property and followed along the curving road until he came to a clump of low sago palms. From total concealment, he had a clear view of the front of the Kolisnyk home.
A school bus made its way along the road to the cul-de-sac and back. A few cars departed the subdivision for the county road. A landscaper’s truck pulled a trailer with a pair of riding mowers behind it.
An old guy shuffled along the verge of the road behind a little white dog on a leash. The dog stopped to sniff in the direction of Levon's hide. The old man muttered something and towed the dog away. On the return leg of their walk, the dog pranced by without turning its head.
The center door of the four-car garage at the Collins’ house trundled open. The Mercedes sedan rolled out. The twins were in the front seat. The deeply tinted windows on the sides hid the backseat from view.
They were gone a while when a van pulled up the road and into the driveway. It was marked Eeezy Breezy Cleaning but wasn't the same van as the day before at Skip's. A man got out of the driver's side and slid open the bay door of the van. A woman joined him. Together they carried a tank vacuum cleaner and a plastic tub of cleaning tools to the front door and rang the bell.
Levon moved low and slow to where he could see the front door through the spiky sago fronds. The older man from the day before opened it and held it open for the cleaning couple who entered. He settled back down in his natural hide and drank a bottle of iced tea and ate an egg biscuit sandwich he’d picked up on the way here.
The cleaners were there little more than an hour. They packed the vacuum and attachment back in the van and backed out onto the road. They turned for the exit from the subdivision at the county road. This was their only account in this neighborhood. Levon waited until they were a ways around the curve and walked fast for the front door of the rancher and pressed the doorbell once.
The gray-haired man from the night before swung the door open. He had a second to register shock that it wasn’t the cleaners come back for something they’d left behind.
Levon drove a fist into the man’s face then stepped inside to catch him as he fell limp. The man was muttering through bloody lips as Levon lowered him to the floor and kicked the door shut at the same time. He drove an elbow to the man’s jaw, bouncing his head off the terrazzo tiles. The man stopped muttering and sagged to the floor.
He shot the deadbolts closed and tapped the button on the security system to re-arm it. He took the man under the arms to drag him deeper into the house away from the foyer with its floor-to-ceiling windows of beveled glass. The guy was still toned for his age and heavier than he looked. He was no figurehead boss, this guy. He was muscle once and still a hard man.
Levon had his work cut out for him.
Gunny Leffertz said:
“Not every man has a price. Only all men have something to trade. Most times pride is the last thing on the table.”
18
His head was pounding as he came around. There was blood in his mouth. A tooth wiggled in a socket. He went to move and couldn’t.
Wolodymyr Kolisnyk came around in the sunlight on his own lanai. He was seated upright on one of his own steel lawn chairs. The pad had been torn off. He sat on the bare metal frame. His wrists were duct-taped to the armrests — his ankles to the front legs. There were bands around his chest securing him in an upright position. A strip of tape held his mouth closed. The chair had been moved, so he was out on the pool apron with his back to the water.
A white guy sat on the edge of a chaise in the shade of the overhang. He wore jeans and a work shirt under a cotton hoodie. There were working man’s boots on his feet. The man was lean but not skinny. There was scar tissue around his eyes, skin long ago broken and left to heal on its own. The man studied Wolo from under the battle-torn brows.
“I’m going to take the tape off. You’re going to speak in a normal indoor speaking voice. You yell and you go into the pool. Nod if you understand.”
Wolo nodded.
“You sure you understand? You let out a yell and I kick you into the water. No one’s going to come help you. You’ll drown before I’m off your front walk.”
Wolo nodded deeper, boring his gaze into the other man’s eyes. The man did not blink under his gaze.
The man sat a moment as though making up his mind. Then he stood and tore the tape from Wolo’s mouth. The motion brought new pain to the old man’s jaw.
“Do you know who I am?” Wolo said low, following the simple rules of quiet the man demanded.
“That’s why I’m here.”
“Do you know who you fuck with?”
“That’s what everybody keeps telling me. If it makes you happy you can tell me who I’m fucking with.”
“I am a brother in the Vor. You know the Vor?”
“I do. Some kind of prison gang.” The man stood over Wolo, making him look up.
“Is no gang. Is a brotherhood. Is a sacred trust.” Wolo spat a stream of blood that missed the leg of the man’s jeans by inches.
“I’m not here for that. I’m not here for
you. I want to know where your son is.”
Dimi? This was about Dimi? What had that little shit done now? Was he the one who robbed Skip’s yesterday? Was this a partner of his? Or someone he cheated?
“I do not know where he is.”
“I think you do. I think you should tell me right now.”
“What is this about? Who is Dimi to you?” Wolo searched the man’s face.
“He’s someone I need to find. When is the last time you saw him?”
Wolo had no intention of telling this asshole anything but he could not help but search his mind for the last time he saw his son.
"The girl. This is about the girl — the one at the bar. The one the police were looking for," Wolo said. The skin around the man's eyes tightened just for a second.
“Where is he?”
“All this for some little whore? You come to me in my house. You threaten me. Over a woman? Is this what this is?” Wolo said, a mocking edge in his voice.
“Do you know where she is?”
“In a grave. In the bay. In a whorehouse in Plant City sucking cocks. Do I care?” He shrugged as best he could taped down tight in the chair as he was.
“The last time you saw your son it was about the girl. Was she dead? Was she alive?”
“I cannot remember. I would not help him. He deals in the drugs. The meth. He is no son of mine. He is not Vor,” Wolo said.
“You won’t help me.”
“I cannot help you even if I could. Go see his friends in Cotton Lake. Ask them where he is.”
The man put a booted foot on the chair frame between Wolo's knees and shoved. The chair went over backwards into the water. There was no time to call out — no time to take a breath. Wolo's head struck the bottom and lay in the shallow end with his bare feet waggling exposed on the surface. Wolo stared up through water stained with his own blood and willed the man to return with more questions.