Take the Money and Run

by Drew D'Amato

  Gloria noticed Reggie was speechless. She wondered if he knew what was going on. Can he be trusted? He had helped out the mayor before with his other dirty laundry. But this was different. This was big. She did not want to ask, because if he didn’t know, she didn’t want her tongue to be what exposed him to the scheme.

  When they pulled up to the dock, he got out with her and started making his way to the Mayor’s boat along with her. He had never accompanied them on the boat before.

  “Reggie, are you coming aboard?”

  “Yes, Gloria.” He smiled back at her. She knew then that he was in for the ride. She didn’t like cutting the money three ways and would be damned if Reggie got an even cut. Money split three ways was a lot less than two.

  Gloria and Reggie met Thompson on the boat. The three of them each had every intention of splitting the money only two ways.

  Jose drove them both down Townsend Avenue toward Tweed airport when they were sideswiped from the right by an SUV coming off a side street. Jose died on impact when the Honda driver’s door crashed against a telephone pole.

  Hiram couldn’t feel his legs. Blood ran down his face. He didn’t even think about getting his gun. He had no idea what had just happened. Then the passenger’s door was opened from outside.

  He looked up to find himself staring down the barrel of gun. Rios was on the other end of it. Two big Ecuadorians stood behind him.

  Collude.

  “Rios?”

  “You fool. You think you can just kill two cops and no one will notice. New Haven pigs will tear up Fair Haven looking for every last one of us.”

  “Rios, the money… the money… I know where the money is. The cop’s wife made off with it. She’s going to Tweed now. We can still get her. It happened soon, she’s probably still there.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Gloria Thompson.”

  “Well, we have a jet waiting for us at Tweed. The Cincos are finished now, thanks to you and your selfish friends. They are going back to Ecuador and I am coming with them. I do not want to be here when the cops discover their fallen brethren. But before they can take me in, I must prove my trust to them.”

  Rios emptied one point-blank shot into Hiram’s face. His brains exploded all over the back of the Honda. Rios left the gun.

  Thompson was nervous. He waited until his Spindrift, a 40-foot yacht, was out of the Long Island sound and into the Atlantic Ocean proper to ask Gloria to open the bags.

  A boat, $10 million dollars, and a smile on a sexy, married woman’s face. Thompson couldn’t think of anything sexier.

  “So where are we going, Captain?” she asked him.

  “South.”

  Gloria leaned in closer to him. “I really wasn’t planning on splitting this three ways.” She nodded over at Reggie who was steering the boat.

  “Neither was I.” He smiled. “Reggie.”

  Reggie walked calmly away from the wheel. Gloria stood next to the stern of the ship. Thompson nodded to Reggie.

  Reggie pulled out a gun from his jacket. He shot Gloria twice, once in the head, and once in the chest. The body shot knocked her off the boat and into the Atlantic Ocean behind them.

  Reggie got back to the wheel and brought the boat to full throttle. Thompson made his way down below.

  Rios and the two Ecuadorians went to Tweed right after they killed Hiram and Jose. The accident on Townsend Avenue was only a few blocks away from the airport. They checked to see if she was a passenger on any flights. They also had Gloria Thompson paged. No one showed up. They searched for her on Facebook from their Droid phones. They uploaded pictures of her. They found no one at the airport that looked similar to her.

  They couldn’t stick around. Blocks down the road were a crashed Honda and two dead Ricans. Their private jet was ready for Ecuador. They left within an hour. They had no idea where that cop’s bitch of a wife was. She wasn’t at the airport.

  Rios felt safe when he boarded the Ecuadorians’ private jet. He felt safe when he shared a toast of champagne with the Ecuadorians. There was something in his glass, not in the booze. It knocked him out. He never had another conscious thought. Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean the door to the little Cessna opened up and Rios was thrown from the plane.

  They fed Rios bullshit when they told him he could earn their trust if they all followed Hiram and Jose around. The truth was they knew that if Hiram and Jose got the money they weren’t coming back to Rios with it. Those two were going to finish their plan and escape with it. They didn’t want those two putos out of their sight.

  The Ecuadorians didn’t care too much about the money. They would make $10 million dollars by the end of the week, but three of their men had been killed. They wanted justice. They wanted those two dead. But justice wasn’t why they killed Rios.

  Rios had made the decision to use those men for the meet, so he was still responsible for them. He also abandoned the gang he himself founded, and instead escaped with the Ecuadorians. They knew Rios wasn’t behind the double-cross, but he was incompetent and untrustworthy. He was useless to them. That’s why the killed him. He wasn’t someone to collude with.

  Collude.

  Thompson offered Reggie $2 million to kill Gloria and steer the boat down to the Cayman Islands. It was a better split than half with Gloria and spending his life with her. Just the way $10 million wasn’t enough to be with Marco, Thompson felt the same with Gloria. Plus, there would be heat. Her husband was either dead and then her whereabouts would be of some concern, or he was alive and he would know to look for her.

  It was better with her out of the picture. The trail for the Cincos and the cops ended with her, and now they might spend forever trying to find her. In the meantime the boat made its way south. He would stay down in the cabin, while Reggie steered the boat to avoid anyone spotting him. Reggie would also be the one to get off the boat and gas up when necessary. If anyone asked whose boat it was, he would just tell them it was his employer’s. He let him borrow it for a week.

  Reggie saw something on the horizon and slowed the craft down. He moved away from the wheel and made his way to the cabin below.

  “Reggie, did we stop?” Thompson said.

  Thompson’s back was turned to the bow. He didn’t see Reggie behind him. He didn’t see the gun.

  Reggie brought down the handle of his gun hard against the back of Thompson’s skull. He was knocked out cold. Reggie walked back up to the deck.

  “Take the gun with you,” Doc said. He and five young guys from the family stood on a boat right next to the mayor’s. “We’ll throw it overboard much farther south.”

  Reggie got onto Doc’s boat carrying the two duffel bags with him. The five men climbed aboard Thompson’s craft with bags full of different tools. The five of them went underneath and Reggie could hear from Doc’s boat the sound of them going to work. Sledgehammers, jigsaws, and large drills.

  “He had no business killing that girl,” Reggie said.

  “None of them had any business with that money,” Doc said through the cigar in his mouth.

  “There were all so greedy.”

  “Money does that.”

  The young men got back onto Doc’s boat. One of them held his bag filled with tools open at Reggie. He got the hint. He dropped his gun in it.

  They pulled away from Thompson’s boat, but stayed within sight of it. They watched the boat sink. Water poured into the cabin, surrounding the unconscious mayor of New Haven. Doc and Reggie watched it sink. In the silence, as the seven of them watched Thompson’s boat sink, Doc said just two words.

  “Bad juju.”

  A few hours and many miles later, the men dropped into the water the bags containing their tools and Reggie’s gun. The crew did not say much on the eighteen-hour ride down to the Caymans. They had avoided any Coast Guard patrols. They were focused. This led Reggie to be uneasy. Part of him expected a bullet in the back of his head. Thank you nigger for the $10 million, we will honor you with
a burial at sea. Instead Doc offered him a cigar once they started to port into Grand Cayman.

  Reggie was alone with Doc at the stern of the boat as his men were busy pulling into port. Reggie had a chance to speak with him.

  “So what happens next?” Reggie asked.

  “Come with us. Our man down here will have a new identity for you, and tomorrow you deposit your lion’s share into the new bank account our friend down here will open up for you. From there, you enjoy your new life.”

  “I expected you to kill me.”

  Doc blew out the smoke from his Dominican cigar with a laugh. “No, that would be bad juju.”

  “What do you mean by bad juju?”

  “Kid, I’ve been in this game for years. The old timers told me this early on, and it has proven true: ‘Don’t get greedy with a hustle. It’s bad juju.’”

  “Pigs get fed, hogs get slaughtered. My mom used to tell me that.”

  “Yeah, pretty much the same idea. All of this shit we make money on—drugs, gambling, ATM machines, garbage pickup—it’s all found money. Stupid money that we are always going to make because the need is always there and we provide it. Keep drugs illegal, they are just going to be worth more. Prevent sports betting from being in casinos, people are just going to turn to us. It’s easy money, and easy money is the easiest to get greedy about. The people who get whacked usually do one of three things: they betray their oath of omertà, they do something amazingly stupid like call attention to themselves, or they get greedy. Guess which one is the biggest killer?”

  “So even though you could have killed me all that time on the ocean and got away with all that money, you didn’t do it because you thought it was bad karma.”

  “Well, it’s not just that. You are getting to keep three million, sure, but we keep seven. I only asked for three from O’Keefe. Now two million will go to me and my men here for a finder's fee, and then we are going to give back five million to the Ecuadorians as a gift. It is a sign of good faith, and now the Consiglios will be in the ‘direct line.’”

  “Won’t they figure out that you guys ended up with their money?”

  “Fuck ‘em if they do. We had no loyalty to them or any of this money. They should be thankful we are giving any of it back to them.”

  “But you’re not going to tell them it’s their money.”

  “Of course not, but if they think it is, it will only help us get more respect. We run New Haven. Shit falls into our lap, so do business with us. And from that five mil and an in to the direct line, we will make our money back in spades. Everybody wins.”

  The boat started to come to a stop.

  “I gotta ask though Reggie, why did you decide to kill your boss and collude with me? Was it greed on your end for more than the two mil he offered you? Was that why you called me when you went to pick up that cop’s wife?”

  “No, greed had nothing do with it. He had no business killing that girl. Fucking chickenshit made me do it. He had fucked her for years, they were close. And then he just kills her for money. If he had let her live, I might have never called you.”

  “But you did kill her?”

  “Yes, that was what you said I should do. To play it that way.”

  “Yes, you had to. She knew too much and she couldn’t be trusted. Both of them had to die. They decided that fate themselves.”

  “Greed kills.”

  “Yes it does. She could have lived if she didn’t sell out her husband. Her husband and his partner would be alive today if they made a deal with us. They could have had our protection. We knew the Cincos were coming after them, but they were greedy, and now they are dead.”

  Reggie took a look back at the horizon as he started to get out of the boat. He could have killed the mayor himself and made it down here with all of the money. But he wouldn’t have been set up as well on the island as he is now with Doc’s friend. He may not have all of it, but he had enough.

  He thought about everyone who tried to make off with this money and was now dead.

  Bad juju.

  An now an exclusive preview of the upcoming novel

  Bloodlines

  By

  Drew D’Amato

  Available Late 2011, exclusively on the kindle

  Log onto Drewdamato.com

  for upcoming news and events.

  Book I:

  THE SITUATION

  ONE

  1

  A sense of malice hung in the London air. This unholy ambience felt like a second form of night, hidden behind the visible one like a carbon copy behind an original—you couldn’t see it, but you could feel it. Something was hiding. The power of pure evil is its ability to cloak itself until it’s too late.

  Five creatures giving the appearance of men stood outside a club in London, sensing the evil. The club, Domas, got its share of strange creatures, but these creatures were a first for the club. Dressed in black, from their silk shirts to their leather trench coats, they waited in the VIP line. They were not from this area of the world. They did not look like the regular club-goers with loud short-sleeved shirts with print on them and short, spiked, gelled hair. Their hair was long, and most of them had it pulled back into ponytails.

  Their eyes beheld the landscape of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. This area had been redeveloped since they were last here over fifty years ago. This was the Docklands, and now the stores were closed, and the clubs were open. A lot of history was in this city, and these five creatures had a lot of history in them also. It was a still night, no wind, and a full moon illuminated the shadows of the city where the street lights missed. They didn’t need the light to see, but it helped. They searched for anything out of the ordinary. They did not want to be surprised by anyone they knew. They knew few people in this part of the world and fewer of them were friends.

  Jericho was the tallest of the five and held the most respect. He was the de facto leader. He had a thin build, a pair of deep blue, threatening eyes, and pale skin. His blonde hair was pulled in a ponytail with a few bangs dangling in front of his face that stopped a little before his chin. His leather trench coat ended at his knees. He took a strong pull from his cigarette and looked at Michael—a dark, brown-haired man, a few inches shorter than Jericho. Michael’s long hair was slicked back, but not in a ponytail, and he wore three gold loop earrings in each ear. He stood behind Jericho in line.

  “You think this is cool?” Michael asked Jericho.

  “I don’t see anything that seems funny,” Jericho responded. “It’s been quiet for a little while now. These times happen, they come—then it’s going to be hell again.”

  “It may sound fucked up, but I’m starting to miss the hell.”

  “That’s because we know nothing else.”

  “Next two in,” said the doorman, a big, black man without an English accent. He wore an earpiece with a microphone on it to talk to the other bouncers inside the club for security reasons. Michael and Jericho walked through the door first, leaving their three comrades outside in the cold. It wasn’t so rude to their friends as it might seem; none of them could feel cold.

  Industrial dance music played inside the club. It sounded as if the Transfomers had decided to create a band. From the outside it was like background music, but walking in, the sound rose as if putting on headphones. They entered the vestibule. To their left, a few steps were covered in a red carpet that led down to a door. At the bottom of the steps stood Ed, another bouncer. He was a large white man. He paid attention to the same thing Michael was looking at—breasts protruding through a white shirt that bounced on the keys of a cash register. A sexy brunette was behind the pair. She was to their right. Michael gave her a wink as he paid their entrance fee. She couldn’t help but smile, and when he walked off, she found something had come over her that made her want him.

  Next, Ed started to check them for weapons with a metal-detector wand. Jericho looked into the eyes of the three-hundred-pound bouncer. Ed abruptly decided the wand
was not necessary for these two and let them pass. Every other male who entered the club had to pass the weapons check, but not them. The cashier might have said something, but she was too busy watching the back of Michael as he disappeared into the club. The next three to enter would perform the same trick.

  They walked with a strut as Jericho swung the heavy, black, windowless door open. From there they walked up a flight of stairs, also covered with the same red carpet. At the top of the stairs, a petite blonde attended the coat check. Normally everyone had to check their jackets, and she would give them a ticket in exchange. However, she was overcome with a sensation—similar to one the cashier felt when she looked into Jericho’s eyes—and decided to let these two pass. She would have a second helping of this feeling when their three friends followed in after them.

  They walked through the last set of doors, into the club proper and the hedonism of the place could now be taken in by their sensitive noses. The ceiling of the club reached thirty feet in the air. A battery of different lighting systems hung from it. The dance floor was made of white squares that lit up on and off when one stepped foot on them. The floor was full of dancers, and half the tiles were lit up in a random pattern. As they walked across the dance floor, the unlit tiles did not light up as they were stepped on, and the lit ones did not change either—thankfully, no one noticed. There was a smooth quality to their strides. They both managed to not bump any of the happy dancers as they moved across the floor.

  The dance floor itself was about half the size of a basketball court. They had entered from the north end of the building. The east and west walls of the club had mammoth stained-glass windows that ran the height of the walls; four on each side. The idea was to give the impression that everyone was dancing inside a church—there were not religious illustrations on the windows, but the association of stained-glass windows with a church occurred in almost all of the patrons when they entered. These two were not above that correlation either.