by Chuck Dixon
“We had sixteen deaths from counterfeit oxy in the county over the weekend. Pills looked like the real thing. But they were loaded up with fentanyl,” the detective said.
“Some asshole compounded them wrong. Our faux Cubano here?”
“No. He just sells them. Has a pill mill in Plantation. Has some kind of doctor’s credentials whipped up. We’re checking on it. Writes scrips for the real thing. But just started direct selling the phony oxy.”
“Any ideas on his supplier?”
“A Jake outfit. The pill mill’s on their turf. The doc is not being helpful.”
“You want me to talk to him?” the DEA agent said.
“When his prints get back. We’ll know more then. Shouldn’t be a minute or so,” the detective said.
They small talked a while. Both looked forward to cooler weather coming next month. Neither looked forward to the increased local drug traffic as the snowbirds arrived. As they talked, the man at the table drooped to rest his head on folded hands. He appeared to have fallen asleep.
A clerk arrived with a sheaf of fresh faxes. The detective and DEA agent shared them, reading them over in silence. There were fingerprints on file. A three-page report from the Alabama state CID. Typed single space. A printout for a BOLO from the FBI and a printed-out email from Treasury.
“Damn,” the detective said.
“This guy murdered his wife up in Alabama,” the DEA agent said.
“And that’s just for starters. There’s a hold order from Treasury. What do you want to do?”
“Go to lunch?” The DEA agent shrugged.
“Bye-bye, jerk-off,” the detective said. He rapped on the glass, startling the man inside awake, eyes blinking.
The man who was still insisting he was Dr. Julian Hernandez in clumsy Spanish, straight out of Rosetta Stone, was spending his second day in a two-person cell in county. There were currently six men in the cell awaiting trial. Dr. Hernandez spent a sleepless night on the cold concrete floor.
When he did doze off, for what felt like seconds at a time, he'd be shocked awake by the noises around him. The other men in the cells seemed never to sleep. They argued, sang, coughed, farted and laughed. He awoke one time to find himself looking up into the face of a man in dreadlocks seated on the steel toilet defecating noisily into the bowl inches from his head. The man fixed him in a gaze of pure contempt, eyebrows beetled and nose wrinkled. The cell filled with an invisible cloud of beefy vapor.
When the deputy called his name, his real name, from the cell door he sprang up. He was eager to be taken anywhere that meant he could leave this tiny room filled with smelly, dangerous men.
He was cuffed and led from the cell area to a windowless room two floors below. The cuffs were secured through a ringbolt set in a heavy table. The deputy left him alone to look at himself in the wide mirrored pane set in one wall of the room.
He barely recognized himself. His face was creased with wrinkles from days in the sun. His head seemed large atop a neck thinner than he recalled. The goatee needed trimming. His eyes sunk deep into his face; lids heavy. The black and white striped jumpsuit hung off his narrow shoulders. He looked like a pantomime of a chain gang convict. What a barbaric place Florida was.
There would be someone or several someone’s watching him through the glass. They knew who he was now. But what did they see? What did he look like to them? A fallen man? An unredeemable criminal? Or did they see him as he saw himself, a man out of place in circumstances not of his own making — a man who, with all other options taken from him, chose the easiest path.
There was a knock at the door, a pretense at civility. The door swung inward. A man entered. Tall in a dark suit, a laminated ID card swinging from his neck on a thong. His suit smelled of a hint of cigarette smoke. He had the dark eyes of a predator. He took the seat opposite the doctor and set a digital recording device between them.
“Anthony Marcoon. United States Treasury. Interviewing Dr. Jordan Roth. The time is two-fifteen PM on October twenty-fourth.”
“Is this about my wife?” Dr. Jordan Roth said.
The tall man’s eyes glittered for an instant.
“Part of it. Mostly I want to talk to you about your son-in-law. Levon Cade.”
Levon’s War
Chuck Dixon
Kindle edition
© Copyright 2019 (as revised) Chuck Dixon
Wolfpack Publishing
6032 Wheat Penny Avenue
Las Vegas, NV 89122
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, other than brief quotes for reviews.
Special thanks to Alan Gordon and John Quinn of The Suffolk Sportsman for the loan of the Kalashnikov.
And a burst of automatic fire into the air for Steve Lowenthal.
Gunny Lefferitz said:
“A man only has two things he truly owns. His soul and his word. And he can’t keep one if he loses the other.”
1
They heard gunfire in the night.
That was nothing new. The sound of guns in the desert was as common as the call for prayer.
Over the next day and night, the gunfire grew more frequent. The thunder of explosions drew closer.
Rona wanted to go to school. Kani wanted to play outside.
Their mother told them that there was no school; it was not safe to play outside. They shuttered the house and sat in darkness. The radio their only link to the outside. They heard no mention of their town.
And then there was no radio. Trucks moved on the streets outside. Then the helicopters boomed by to circle overhead. The gunships made long loops in the sky. The wind from their blades buffeted the house, making the shutters bang in their frames. There was a whooshing sound, over and over, from above. The rumble of distant explosions.
Pejma prayed for her daughters. She prayed for the return of her husband. She knelt and prayed to Melek Taus, the angel of God, to deliver them from evil.
The helicopters went away. The gunfire died to silence. For the rest of the night and into the following morning, there were no sounds from outside.
“Mother, I am hungry,” Kani said. She was the youngest, with all the selfishness of an eight-year-old child. All that she knew was that her belly was empty.
“I will go down to the market,” Pejma said.
“No,” Rona said. She was four years older than her sister, with an understanding of the world beyond her years.
“It will be fine. I will buy some bread and cheese and be right back,” Pejma said. She freed her arm from her daughter’s grip.
“Then take us with you,” Rona said.
“It will be faster if I go alone,” Pejma said.
She left her daughters and unlocked the door to step into the brilliant white light of the desert sun. She opened the gate to enter the street. It was a winding lane lined with houses concealed behind curtain walls. The houses were all shuttered just as hers was. No cars moved. The streets and walks were empty. A ribbon of black smoke moved across the sky somewhere down near the river.
She looked back at her own house. It was the finest home she had ever lived in, paid for by her husband's job at the refinery. A room for the girls alone and a bathroom with running water. Her husband was gone now to Mosul with the militia. She wished that he was here. She missed him with a physical longing. If he were here, she would not be afraid.
Pejma walked on toward the oil company store, the closest market to their home. Over the rooftops, she could see the stacks of the refinery. Something new fluttered from the tallest stack.
A black flag sewn with white letters in Arabic.
The men of the new caliphate were here, in Baiji.
But the soldiers promised them. The president promised them. The oil executives promised them. Baiji was too remote. Too small for the invaders to be interested in.
She wanted to believe that, that their size and location would keep her family safe an
d away from the fighting. She knew, in the end, that the oil would bring them here.
Voices came from around the turn in the lane ahead. Voices followed by the hum of a truck motor.
Pejma dropped behind the trunk of a palm and watched the men come around the curve and into view. Men in black weighed heavy with ammunition and carrying rifles. The truck that followed had a large black gun mounted in its bed. A smaller version of the black flag that flew from the refinery swung on a pole over the cab of the truck.
In front of the armed men trotted a man Pejma knew. Mr. Fakhoury, the man who ran the company store. She often saw him on her weekly trips to the market. Smiling and friendly and a few times allowing the girls to take free sodas from the cooler. He always asked after her husband. She would tell him of the most recent letters from Bazît, fighting somewhere with the YBS. Now the shopkeeper was leading the black-clothed men down the street toward her home.
Mr. Fakhoury was pointing at houses along their path. Each time he pointed a group of the men would break off to kick their way into that home’s courtyard. She recognized the homes as belonging to either fellow Yazidis, Shi’ite families or foreign oil workers.
Pejma was up on her feet, moving fast along a wall back toward her family’s house.
She was not fast enough. Mr. Fakhoury called out to her, called her by name.
2
“Anthony Marcoon. United States Treasury. Interviewing Dr. Jordan Roth. The time is two-fifteen PM on October twenty-fourth.”
“Is this about my wife?” Dr. Jordan Roth said.
The tall agent’s eyes glittered for an instant. He coaxed a cigarette from a pack taken from his jacket pocket.
“Part of it. Mostly I want to talk to you about your son-in-law. Levon Cade.”
“Could you please not smoke?” Dr. Roth said.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“This is a no-smoking facility, isn’t it?” Dr. Roth said. He nodded toward the sign by the door of the interrogation room. It confirmed the rule.
Prick, Marcoon thought. He hoped Roth could read that in his eyes.
“You’d rather be back in your cell, huffing bean farts? You can stand a little secondhand smoke.” Marcoon fired up the Marlboro.
“What’s your interest in my son-in-law? My daughter has been dead for years.”
“You still have ties. Your granddaughter.”
“I lost that fight when I had to go into hiding.”
“And why was that, Doctor? Because you murdered your wife?”
Dr. Roth began to speak but decided against whatever he was about to say.
“Relax, Doctor. I’m not interested in who killed who. Huntsville homicide can clear all that up. I’m sure the Bureau will step in to help get you out from under those charges. And you can stop pretending to be a Cuban G.P.”
“In exchange for what?”
“I need some blanks filled in. Levon Cade’s record is spotty. Lots of redactions. Some of it is all redactions. Help me get a better picture of the man.”
“Is he in trouble?”
"If there's trouble he's not in, I haven't heard of it."
Dr. Roth smiled.
“What do you want to know?”
Tony Marcoon blew a stream of smoke to the ceiling before smearing the cigarette out on the tabletop.
“See? That wasn’t so hard,” he said.
“We’ve been looking in the wrong place,” Marcoon said.
“For Cade?” Nancy Valdez’s voice came from the speakers of the rental car.
“The only damned detail in his file we thought was right is wrong. Cade’s an Alabama boy.” Marcoon sat at a light, waiting to make the turn into Miami International. Cars in front of him gleamed like beetles under the afternoon sun. He lowered the window to allow a blast of heat in through the crack. He tipped ash off his cigarette against the top of the glass.
“He was born in North Carolina.”
“Born, sure. His mother had him at a hospital in Raleigh. She was staying with cousins living there at the time. Cade’s father was not the most reliable guy in the world.”
“And Cade told this to his father-in-law?”
“No. His daughter told him. Cade’s not much of a talker, according to Roth. The Gary Cooper type.”
“Who’s Gary Cooper?” Nancy said.
“Ha ha. Old man joke. Fuck you too, Valdez,” Marcoon said and swung the wheel through the light onto airport property.
“So where do we look?”
“Roth says Cade was a pure hillbilly. Raised in a bumfuck town somewhere in the northeast corner of Alabama.”
“He couldn’t do better than that?”
“That’s all he could remember.”
“That’s it? Not much.”
“Oh, and his granddaughter loves Wendy’s. Not much to go on.”
“What did you promise him, Tony?”
“I told him we’d put in a word in exchange for his cooperation. You know. Blah blah.”
“You’ve been down there for two days. Just grabbing some sun by the pool?”
“Naw. Took longer than I wanted. He was going to lawyer up. Wanted me to sign something, rope in a federal judge.”
“Nothing like that’s crossed my desk.”
“He gave all that shit up for a solo cell.” Marcoon pulled into one of the queues at Budget Rental and honked the horn for an attendant.
“Good man. Not much to go on but better than what we had. Hurry back,” Nancy said. She broke the connection.
A chubby attendant, face shiny with sweat, took the rental papers from Marcoon. He glanced from the Marlboro in Marcoon’s fingers to the sign on the dash thanking renters for not smoking.
3
“Will it hurt?” Merry said.
“It’s just a cleaning,” Levon said.
“Why do I need my teeth cleaned? I brush and floss and all that.”
“Because the dentist can get things you can’t get. And take x-rays and like that.”
Merry settled back into her chair to work on the Sudoku book she brought along. A habit she picked up from her Uncle Fern. Two moms were talking together in the waiting room while their kids, younger than Merry, played with a wooden train set. CNN was on with the volume down on a big flatscreen mounted on a wall decorated with cartoon bears and clowns.
“Mr. Cartwright?” the receptionist at the counter called. A pretty girl with short cropped blonde hair and glasses with big cat’s-eye lenses.
“Yes?” Levon stepped to the counter.
“You didn’t fill in any insurance information,” the receptionist said. She held up the clipboard of forms he’d filled out with lie after lie.
“We don’t have dental,” he said.
“How will you be paying? Check or charge?”
“Cash.”
“I hope we have change here.” The eyes behind the cat’s-eye lenses blinked.
“Moira?” a dental hygienist in a colorful smock said. She pronounced it ‘MY-rah.’ An attractive Asian girl. Levon wondered if the dentist was married. She stood in the waiting room eying Merry with a professional smile.
“It’s MOY-rah,” Merry said. She rose and unhappily followed the hygienist toward the cubicles at the rear of the practice.
Levon retook his seat and idly watched the TV. A commercial for the best pillow you'll ever own ended and the newscast returned. The host and two others argued at length over some minute change in the rules of order in the Senate. The discussion grew heated until the host ended it to turn to a breaking news story.
With greater interest, Levon watched a report from Iraq about an ISIS assault in the region of Mount Sinjar. A correspondent spoke over B-roll footage of black-clad terrorists firing a variety of weapons at unseen targets interspersed with what was supposed to be a terrorist training camp where unfit men dressed like ninjas swung along monkey bars.
“The targets here, the victims, are the Yazidis, a local Christian sect that has called Sinjar home for mi
llennia. The choice for these locals is clear. Convert to Islam, pay the tax that ISIS demands or face execution. Tens of thousands have fled into the heights around Mount Sinjar, adding to what is already a humanitarian crisis that demands the world’s attention.”
The reporter, speaking from a location hundreds of miles from the events of the story, fielded a few questions from the anchor before the segment ended. The anchor shared his deep concern for the people forced to flee before turning to a teaser about a celebrity putting her mansion up for sale which led to a commercial featuring a young couple complaining about their car insurance.
Levon's eyes stayed on the TV but he saw something far beyond the images there. He became aware of someone standing by him. The pretty hygienist with Merry by her side.
“Moira did very well.” This time she pronounced it correctly. “No cavities.”
“Told you,” Merry said. She flashed gleaming whites.
“She could spend a little more time flossing her back molars. Plaque,” the hygienist said.
Merry squinched her face.
They ate at Wendy's in Haley before driving home.
Merry told him a joke the dentist had told her. Levon only half heard her.
“Isn’t that funny?” she said after the punchline.
“Sure was, honey.”
“You didn’t laugh.”
“I’m laughing on the inside.”
“I guess it wasn’t that funny,” she said. She mopped up some ketchup with the end of a fry.
“Sorry, honey. I don’t know where my mind is.”
“I’ll bet you do.”
“Do what?”
“I’ll bet you know where your mind is,” she said. Her eyes were on his.
“Just thinking about something a long while back,” he said.
They finished up in silence before clearing their table and returning to the truck. They didn’t talk much on the ride back to Uncle Fern’s. Merry knew her father’s mood and thought it best to let him be. She worked her last unfinished Sudoku in her head as the trees flashed by either side of the two-lane.