by Chuck Dixon
The newcomer wore a wrinkled polo shirt, baggy jeans and flip-flops.
Johnny.
Levon picked up his canvas bag and left the hide on the supermarket roof.
13
* * *
The bar looked like a different place with the lights on and muted sunlight coming through the tinted front windows. Cracks in the linoleum and places where the upholstery was patched with tape. Stains in the ceiling tiles and the over-all used, sad appearance of the place swept away the boozy luster that darkness, music and drinks provided. A sharp stink of cleaning chemicals overrode the smell of stale beer. The bar top was clean. The glasses gleamed in racks. The floor had a dull luster that shrank away as the sheen of mop water dried.
Two men sat in their own Marlboro haze counting and re-counting cash at a booth. They looked up at a rapping sound from the steel door. The younger set down his sheaf of bills and went to the door.
“Who is?” he shouted.
A muffled voice came through the steel and the younger man turned the keys to open the locks and pushed the door open. Johnny entered.
“You on days today?”
“No, Freddy. I lost my keys somewhere. Came to get my spare ring,” Johnny said.
“You have rough night?” Fedir said.
“Picked up a blonde. Least she said she was a blonde. I found out different,” Johnny said, making his way behind the bar.
“She fuck you good?” Fedir grinned showing a gold incisor.
“Then she fucked me over good. Woke up with my keys and wallet gone down at the Doubletree.” Johnny retrieved a ring of keys from a drawer under the bar.
“She rob you, Johnny? For real?” the older man spoke from the booth, hands riffling bills, never losing count.
“Bitch moved like a fucking ninja. Took my cell too. I never heard a thing, Pat.”
Pavlo laughed and waved Johnny over to the booth.
“She quiet in bed too?” Pavlo said.
“Screamed the fucking ceiling down.” Johnny shrugged.
Pavlo laughed around the butt in his lips, spraying streams of blue smoke. Fedir took his place in the booth and picked up the count where he left it.
“Now I gotta cancel my cards. Get a new driver’s license. It’s a pisser. I’ll never fucking learn.”
“You think with your dick, Johnny. Is okay. Makes you a man,” Pavlo said and stripped a few fifties out of the stack he was counting. He held them out to Johnny who took them with a shaking hand.
“Thanks, Pat. You’re doing me a solid,” Johnny said.
Pavlo pursed his lips and tilted his head like a dog.
“A good thing. A solid is like a favor. Thanks for the favor, Pat,” Johnny said. He was talking too fast. Sweat was standing on his forehead and upper lip despite the ice cold air pumping down from the ceiling vents.
Pavlo’s head tilted at a more acute angle. His eyes grew darker and he studied Johnny’s face.
“Nobody move.”
None of them heard the guy enter. It was like he appeared in the aisle between the stools and booths like a ghost. A slender guy in a button down shirt, jeans and battered work boots. Plastic gloves holding a twelve-gauge with a cut-down barrel. The lethal black tunnel was unmoving and trained on the booth’s occupants.
Pavlo turned from the newcomer to Johnny. Johnny raised his hands and shook his head. His eyes said, I don’t know this guy. I’m as surprised as you are. As a performance it was unconvincing.
“You rob? You trick us?” Pavlo said to the shotgun man standing in the aisle behind his cousin. His eyes flicked to his cousin Fedir who was moving his left hand like a slow-motion spider for the automatic snug in the pancake holster on his right hip.
“Johnny. Sweep the cash into the bag,” the shotgun man said.
Johnny’s head swiveled from Levon to Pavlo to the money and back around.
“I don’t want to get blood on it,” Levon said.
Pavlo bit through his Marlboro. Fedir’s spider-hand freeze-framed on its way to the butt of the nine. Johnny jumped to and used an arm to rake the cash into the open bag sitting on the floor. A rubber-banded bundle of twenties missed the opening and slid over the tiles. Johnny stepped away from the booth to reach. Fedir jerked the automatic.
Levon fired through the bench back taking Fedir through the pleather upholstery with a load of buck. He lightning pumped two more loads that punched Pavlo’s ribs to splinters and removed his head at the shoulders.
Johnny stumbled, falling back into the stools. Levon chambered a rifled slug and let it fly into Fedir’s chest. He plucked the shiny nine millimeter from the younger man’s lifeless fingers. He tossed the empty shotgun to the tabletop. He stepped away and kicked the cash bag clear of the pool of blood spreading from under the booth table.
“You’re fucked, asshole. You know who they are?” Johnny said.
“They’re who you told me they are.” Levon moved the slide back on the nine to see the gleam of brass in the chamber.
“This isn’t over. They’re gonna send more people,” Johnny said.
“That’s what I’m counting on,” Levon said.
He raised the nine and fired a three round volley into Johnny center mass. He dropped the pistol to the floor, picked up the bag of cash, and walked out the way he’d come in.
Gunny Leffertz said:
“You don’t get to say it’s over until there’s no one left but you to say it.”
14
* * *
Just before noon cars started pulling up to park in front of Skip’s. A few got out their cars and tried the door. They leaned on the window, shading their eyes with their hands. The tinted glass hid the mysteries inside. Some drove away when they found the place still closed. Others lit up smokes and waited. Noon turned to one and only two diehards were left waiting. They sat on the curb sharing a six pack of Icehouse one of them picked up at the Shell station at the corner. This was where they drank, damn it.
Creatures of habit. Like barnacles.
Around one thirty a four-door Mercedes pulled up to the curb. Two guys got out of the front and shooed the pair of beer drunks away. One held the door and an older guy levered himself out of the backseat. They looked like the two he’d left dead in the booth inside. Except the two young guys had bleached blond hair worn long. They could be twins. They even dressed alike in cotton camp shirts that showed off gym muscles. The man in the rear was older by thirty years or more, his hair shot through with gray.
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 pick-up 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 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 niggers,” Vanko nodded.
“They left the shotgun. Why would a robber leave the shotgun?”
“Who knows, uncle? Some nigger 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 nigger 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 open 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 angry 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 whole life 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.
