“Why? You didn’t show any to my mother,” Bill barked in retort.
“I didn’t know until afterwards. I swear. Your mother was an accident,” Generilli groveled.
“That’s bullshit and you know it. But even that wasn’t enough for you. You had to steal the condo deal my father was working on. You stole my money. Fifty million!” Bill bellowed.
“Look, Eduardo, isn’t it?” Generilli’s lead protector spoke up now that he edged himself to a sitting position and was eyeing the gun just out of reach. “Mr. Generilli can make you whole as far the money is concerned. You know, with the usual juice. His family is innocent and our code requires we spare the children and their mother.”
“Who the fuck are you? Did I ask you a question?” Bill then gave me a look and screamed, “Why isn’t he dead? He’s right there in front of you. What? Have you lost your balls?” The guy leaned forward and now was within striking distance of the gun. Bill must have seen it out of the corner of his eye because in a quick, smooth flick of his wrist, Bill brought the gun to bear on the guy, fired, and had it back at his wife’s neck once again in a flash.
“Why didn’t you kill him?” Bill snarled at me.
“The firing had stopped when I realized he was alive,” I replied.
“You really are a fucking idiot.”
“I just didn’t see the point in it after the firing stopped.”
“Shut the fuck up, moron. Just shut the fuck up.”
I stood riveted in place as I looked at Bill or Eduardo—whoever he was today. He really was an animal.
After he took a deep breath, Bill began again. “So what do I do, what do I do?”
“Take me and go. You can do as you like with me. Just leave them out of it,” Generilli offered again.
“Oh, no, asshole. That would be far too easy for you and far less painful than it needs to be. You destroyed my life when you had my parents killed. You took away a young boy’s dreams. So I am here to take away your dreams—the dreams of a whole generation.”
Bill reached out and yanked the boy child off the floor and held him up by one arm. Generilli started across the bed toward Bill but stopped when Bill jammed the gun into the boy’s head, causing the boy to cry out from fear and pain.
“What are you doing?” I barked loudly, so that Bill’s attention was drawn to me. He then pointed the gun at me and barked back.
“Didn’t I tell you to shut the fuck up?”
“You never said a word about the kids. You know it isn’t right. Let the kids and their mother go. You got the guy who was behind it all.” I hoped to get Bill to settle down by reasoning with him.
“Shut the fuck up. Your job is to be my ass watcher. That’s it. Don’t think that just because you managed not to get killed that you’re suddenly something special. Your ex-wife was right to dump your ass. You’re a waste of space in my book. You were here to save my ass, but I had to save yours four times just to get you to fire your gun once or twice. So shut the fuck up, and wait in the hall, you ball-less wonder.” Bill was extremely vile in his response.
I stood looking at Bill as he stared back at me with that wicked grin plastered on his face. I immediately felt the chill run up my spine, and for the first time since I’d come to know this piece of human shit, I wasn’t afraid. I was repulsed.
“Fuck you,” I stated. As I turned and started to walk away, his gun phiffed. Feeling a sharp pain in my right shoulder, I spun around to face him. He stood grinning with his gun pointed directly at my head.
“Don’t make me rescind our friendship,” Bill snarled.
“This is what you call friendship? Talk about being fucked up. You just shot me. Why? Was I threatening you? What? You couldn’t stand to be left alone? Friends don’t shoot their friends. Friends don’t threaten their friends daily with death. Friends don’t disregard their friends’ advice when they’re making major mistakes!” I bellowed at him, hoping he would forget about the wife and kids.
Instead, he fired another shot in my direction, missing my head by a few millimeters and then began screaming at me again. “You’re all high and mighty, Mister Principled Man. You have all these ethics and morals that you can’t overlook even if it means it’ll make you rich. Hell, I don’t know how you live with yourself, knowing that every last cent I’ve given you is blood money. It’s dirty money. You are such a loser. You can’t even figure out the real reason I allowed you to be around me. You can’t even live up to your precious morals, doing drug deals as a way to get more cash.
“You would walk out of here and let me shoot the children, wouldn’t you? Yet you say I’m the crazy one? You’re just another pathetic loser. Get on your knees and watch how a real man handles it when someone fucks with him.” Bill wiggled his gun as if I would willingly kneel. He then gave me his most intimidating look and settled the gun squarely on my forehead. The tension was mounting, and I was sure I was about to die, but I wasn’t going to kneel to him. Just as I could see his hand begin to tense, the little girl broke away from him and jumped to her father.
Bill swung around and fired his gun at Generilli striking him in the shoulder and knocking him backwards. His daughter remained locked in his other arm.
Bill’s face was a mask of rage, and he turned his wrath toward the mother, grabbing her by the hair and screaming, “This isn’t going to work! I’ve had enough of this talking crap. This bitch is going to die now and then the fucking kids. You’ll beg for death,” he spat at Generilli, “but I’ll drag your death out. I’m going to enjoy taking my time with you. Tell this bitch goodbye, asshole.”
Bam! I fired the gun I’d picked up in the main salon. I fired it into the ceiling.
The report was loud, almost deafening compared to my silenced gun. Bill stopped in his tracks. Slowly, he turned toward me and smiled his wicked, evil smile at me. He continued to point the gun at the woman’s head as he stood eyeing me.
“Let her go,” I stated firmly.
“What? Did you grow some balls, finally?” he mocked me.
“Let her go,” I stated again.
“And then what? We’ll just high tail it out of here and be friends for evermore?”
To tell the truth, I hadn’t thought about what I would do next. It was all I could do to demand that he stop. “Just back away from the woman and the kids. Leave them alone.”
“You sound like a broken record. The only way I don’t kill them all is if I’m dead, so you better decide what you’re gonna do, bucko. Can you pull the trigger? Can you kill me? You ain’t got the balls, you pissant. So just go stand in the hall and wait for your daddy to finish up his work. Now, git.” Bill turned his back on me and went back to terrorizing the woman.
“Now, this here bitch deserves to die just for having your demon seed.” He was staring at Generilli. “You son of a bitch.” Bill yanked her hair hard and slammed her into the bedroom wall.
I yelled for Bill to leave her alone. I was still pointing the gun at him as I screamed.
“Shut the fuck up before you make me…” Bill fired his gun and shot the woman in the leg. “Oh, see what you made me do, motherfucker? You’re a real pain in the ass, and I’ve had...”
Bam! I fired my gun.
Bill’s eyes grew very wide, very quickly, as he looked down at his chest. A large hole was neatly punched center left in his chest. He then looked up and slowly began raising his gun. “After all I did for you. You betrayed me, and now you’ve shot me. Son of a bitch, now I have to kill you, you dumb bastard.” And he raised the gun up and fired. I was lucky he missed by a good foot and blew a large hole in the wall of the room. I squeezed the trigger on my gun again before he could correct his aim, and the loud report, Bam! filled the room once more.
I stood and watched as Bill fell backwards against the wall. Then slowly, he slid down to the floor. His gun trickled out of his hand, and his face froze in the look of shocked surprise. I’ll remember that face until I die and maybe even after that. I don’t know how
long I stood there, but I remember suddenly the little boy was standing in front of me asking if he could go potty. I looked down and smiled at him. I patted him on the head and said, “Sure. You go potty.”
I knew I had to run and run now. Any minute, someone or something would rear its ugly head, and I didn’t want to be here or anywhere around here when it did. I took a quick look at Generilli and then at his wife.
“I’m out of here. I don’t want to see you again, and you won’t see me again. Don’t worry about me coming back because it will never happen, unless you send someone to find me. If I get that feeling, I’ll be back, and we won’t play shoot ’em up. It’ll be bang, bang, you’re dead.” I dropped my gun on the bed, picked up the silenced machine gun and started to walk out.
Generilli, with great effort, leaned forward and reached for the gun. I flipped the machine gun up and pointed it directly at him. “Don’t push it,” I stated, and I walked out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I followed the GPS directions back to the warehouse. I didn’t bother to save the Sea Sled. I just left it floating where the boat had been anchored. The machine gun went over board as soon as I managed to get away from bright lights of Generilli’s Cape May. I couldn’t help but think Generilli already had a dozen teams of men out looking for me now that the sun had come up.
I parked the boat and then quickly went inside using the key Bill had given me. I went straight to the Escalade that I’d been driving for months. As I started the vehicle, I suddenly realized that this was Bill’s vehicle, and if someone were to start looking for me, Bill’s vehicle was a good place to start. Then I remembered that I was still wearing my wetsuit, blood splatters and all. I changed back into some clothes I’d left here for after workouts and headed back to the Escalade. I’d decided that I’d take it back to the condo, gather my stuff, then find a car dealer and get a new ride in the name of Jake Keys, but as I passed the old vault, the door suddenly swung open.
I must have jumped ten feet up and ten feet out. My heart felt as if someone had just torn it out of my chest. I stood frozen staring at the open door, and I wasn’t sure if I stepped into it I wouldn’t be killed in some horrible way. I looked around and found several of the lead weights and used them to block the door open. Once I felt comfortable that the door wouldn’t close on me, I took a few slow, tentative steps, until I had crossed beyond the plastic curtain.
The walls of the vault were lined with weapons—lots of weapons. Everything from handguns to hand-held rocket propelled grenade launchers. Damn! There were all kinds of very high powered weapons, all of which appeared to be military grade. There were dozens of boxes of ammo in assorted sizes and even a box of land mines.
What really drew my attention though wasn’t a weapon but an envelope taped to the wall. My name was on it—JAKE. It was from Bill. I gently removed it from the wall, the scotch tape coming with it, and I stepped outside the vault and sat down in the recliner that had been my school chair for the last few weeks. I put my legs up and got comfortable.
Jake, If you’re reading this, I’m dead, killed by either Generilli’s goons or by you. I’m hoping it was by you. That was the real reason I picked you. I had become a monster, a plague upon mankind. I had to be stopped, but I knew the police would never get close enough. The mob certainly wouldn’t get anywhere as near as the police might. No, it had to be someone close to me, someone I could trust to do it when the time was right.
You were the perfect person to do me in. You have morals and principles, provided I haven’t robbed you of them. You have an inner strength that I now suspect is back in full bloom. Now that you’re a man of means, the world had better look out. You just might make this a better place to live.
All the business transactions that we completed in the last few weeks, you need to sell them right away and resell to another holding company; and then next week, sell them all again. Make sure every company is a shell company. Nothing there but an address, which is a post office box. Always sell them at a loss to yourself to keep the taxman at bay and then just keep repeating.
Go to the Cubans and sell them the warehouse and all the contents. Ask two million dollars and stay firm. It’s a sight-unseen deal. I would leave all the weapons and vehicles behind but take the ammo boxes with you. They contain the type of ammo that you’ll appreciate in your old age. Have the Cubans throw in two new IDs with all the trimmings as part of the warehouse deal.
The condo should be safe for a long time. It was transferred three months ago from me to you and three times since then. Get a new attorney in a different town, then transfer it three more times. Make sure it ends up in one of your new ID’s business portfolios.
The attorney will still have to get you the money from my estate in seven years unless Generilli kept the body and is having the police try to ID it now. That is, if you left him alive. You probably did. Dumb, real dumb.
Anyway, the ammo boxes contain about fifteen million, all small bills, unmarked and used. Add that to your ten to twelve million you already have and now you have real money. The business attorney should be safe enough to keep developing the Port-o-Call restaurant chain, but keep a low profile. Remember to let the other people do the work. Now that you have money, your job is to count it and provide ideas to make more. Let the other guy work hard.
It may seem strange, but this is a thank you note. Thank you for stopping me. Now, go live the life you should have had the first time around. By the way, this was God’s job for you.
Eduardo
EPILOGUE
I sold the weapons to the Cubans and then called in an anonymous tip to the Miami Dade Sheriff’s department about drug smugglers using a warehouse in Hollywood as their headquarters. Six months later, they busted the gang and took the weapons off the street along with a half-ton of coke.
Generilli let sleeping dogs lie. He had his men dump all the bodies overboard, including Bill’s (or rather Eduardo’s), and the private doctor, the same one that Bill had used, fixed him and his wife up as good as new. It turned out she was the one who forced him to let me go. I did save her life and the lives of her children, plus I let him live. The Cubans killed him anyway by blowing up his yacht while he and his lieutenants were having a meeting five months later. They used a mini submarine to make the attack in international waters.
The businesses I got from Bill as part of the real estate transactions before he died worked exactly as he said they would, and they began pumping a million dollars a month minimum into my bank accounts each and every month. It was more like twenty million, but who’s counting? My kid and grandkids receive an anonymous package every month, on the first of each month, with twenty-five thousand dollars in it. I intend to stop in to see them at Christmas and see if they would like to get a whole new start on life. Three phone calls, and it would be done.
I also went back to Ft. Myers, and one stormy afternoon, burned the Apollo Road house to the ground. As it burned, I could help but wonder what my life would have become if I hadn’t found Apollo Road and driven down it. That night, I looked up that pizza delivery woman and asked if she still wanted to help me sort out the ordering process. We got married in Vegas last month, while I looked into investing in a condo project out at Lake Mead. It’s only a little one—it’ll probably make somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred grand a month. I can hear Bill now, calling me a dumbass for not charging more.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cliff Roberts is originally from Michigan but currently resides at the foot of the Great Smoky Mountains in Sevierville, TN. Cliff is married to Donna, who is his biggest fan and his true inspiration. Between them they have six grandchildren: Dante, Nate, Natalie, Dillon, Jake and Trevor. Cliff tries to name characters in his books after them as often as possible.
When Cliff isn’t writing he’s usually reading or playing with his grandkids, but he also loves to travel as well as enjoy photography, woodworking, movies, inventing, fishing, boating and football.
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