The Replacements

by David Putnam

  “Four or five then?” I asked.

  “Yeah, four or five is all that’s going to be there on Saturday.”

  “Saturday?” Marie screamed. “Are you kidding me?”

  “What’s wrong now?” Drago said.

  “No, numbnuts, it’s Thursday,” Marie said. “Today’s Thursday.” She turned to me. “This isn’t going to work. Nothing about this idea’s going to work.”

  “It’s all we got, it has to work,” I said.

  The Black Sabbath t-shirt wrapped tight around Drago’s leg had turned darker, and blood ran in a little rivulet down his leg. He didn’t show any sign of pain, nor did he seem to care any longer that he’d been shot.

  “Are you a member of the SS?” I asked Drago.

  “Hell no, man. Are you kidding? Those old boys are some crazy, violent assholes. So what if today is Thursday, what difference does it make?”

  I didn’t answer and asked, “If you’re not a member, then how did you get into the clubhouse twenty-five years ago to stash the money? And how do you know it’s still there?”

  “Okay, what? You need the whole, sad story right here and now?”

  “That’s right, and we’re running out of time, fatso, so get to it,” said Marie.

  “She’s feisty. You shouldn’t let her talk like that. Before too long, she’ll be runnin’ your game.”

  I didn’t want to tell him she already did, and I liked it that way.

  She reached for the Glock in my hand. I put my hand gently on her chest and moved her back a step. To Drago, I said, “So, how did you get in the clubhouse twenty-five years ago?”

  “Back then, me and Clay Warfield was prospects, we were buds. Back then. Now he’s the president of SS International. You believe it? President of the world. Man, did he get lucky or what?”

  No luck had entered into Warfield’s ascendancy to infamy. He rose in the ranks of the most dastardly outlaw motorcycle gang in the world through blackmail, tyranny, mayhem, and cold-blooded murder. The FBI wanted him worse than any other crook, almost more than the top man in Al Qaida.

  Drago continued on, “Another buddy a mine, he worked for a big-time locksmith, an affiliate of the SS. I helped him install the clubhouse safe, this big double-door monster. Weighed at least two thousand pounds.”

  “You hid three hundred thousand dollars in the safe of the Sons of Satan clubhouse?” I asked.

  “No, not exactly. Okay, look, I guess I’m gonna have to explain the whole thing.” He paused, waiting for us to tell him to go on, to beg him.

  Marie put her hands on her hips and turned and walked away a few steps to cool off.

  “Come on, Drago, keep going,” I said.

  “What kinda bug flew up her ass?”

  Marie spun around and pointed a finger at him. “I do not like this man.”

  “Drago.”

  “All right. All right. Look, I did the armored job with this other bud a mine. And later that same week he took a fall for his third B and E. I knew he was gonna flip and give me up. I knew I was goin’ in for a good long jolt because of the thing with the guard. So I needed a safe place to hide the money, a place that was going to still be there when I got out. You ever see the movie Thunderbolt and Lightfoot? The dude hid the money in the wall of the old schoolhouse, and they moved the whole damn schoolhouse. You see that movie?”

  “Drago.”

  “Man, you’re worse than a woman on the rag. Okay, so I think, what better place to—”

  Marie stepped back over. “We got all that. You hid it in the clubhouse safe, great. How do you know they haven’t already found the money? Why wouldn’t they find a big bag of money like that? This doesn’t make any sense.”

  “The guy who helped you out on the armored car job,” I said, “his name was Stanley Granville?”

  “Yeah, that’s right. How did you know?”

  Granville, aka Big Grandy, had been Drago’s second murder victim, the guy he killed his first time out on parole. “Go on,” I said.

  “I’m with ya about them finding the money, but not a chance in hell,” said Drago. “They haven’t found it, guaran-fucking-teed.”

  Marie shouted, “Why?”

  Drago looked at her, paused, then said, “Because I thought this whole thing out, believe me. Listen to this, I bought gold with the money, melted it down into this big doughnut-ring-looking kinda thing, and painted it black so it looked like steel. My bud, who I helped put the safe in, didn’t even know it was gold. No one knows it’s gold. We had to anchor the safe to the floor, to these large bolts, preset in concrete. I told this bud o’ mine that the doughnut was like a washer, a spacer kind of thing between the safe and the floor so the safe wouldn’t rock. I did it with the SS standing right over us watching the whole time. The dumbasses.”

  The simplicity of his plan was brilliant and at the same time ballsy. No one in the world would find his stash. But what made it safe, made extraction a problem. Getting the doughnut out while keeping your skin. The caper’s plan now went from a sneak and peek to running into a lion’s den with five or six hungry lions in residence, grabbing a forty-pound haunch of lamb, and escaping without getting your ass eaten.

  While I pondered Drago’s grand design and the consequences of failure, my mind worked subconsciously. “Wait. Wait a minute,” I said. “You bought gold twenty-five years ago? How much was it an ounce?”

  “What? Hell, I don’t know. I knew this fence who traded me gold for the cash. Gold melts real easy. I mean not real easy, but with not as much heat as you’d think you’d need. I used a blowtorch and poured it into a sand mold, little at a time. Took forever.”

  “How much? What was the weight?”

  “Forty pounds. You’d have thought three hundred thousand would have bought more than a measly little forty pounds. You should have seen how small forty pounds was.” He made a motion with his hands indicating a small pile. “It was sad, man, I’m telling you, a damn shame, really.”

  “So, this doughnut thing you smelted, it weighs forty pounds?”

  “Yeah, that’s right. What’d I just say? In fact, the fence discounted the money ’cause it was hot. He wouldn’t give me the whole three hundred thousand in gold. He said the cash was hot. What a bunch of bullshit. But what could I do?”

  Marie had caught on to where I was headed with my questions and jumped in. “So, you’re sure about the forty pounds though, right?”

  “What’s the matter with you two idgits? That’s what I said. Two hundred and sixty-two thousand dollars, after Mad Mike took his cut, got me right around forty pounds, give or take an ounce.”

  Marie looked away as her mind went to work. I stepped closer. Her brainpower far surpassed mine. So as not to disrupt her, I quietly said, “Sixteen ounces in a pound, how many ounces in forty pounds?”

  “Six hundred and forty,” she said. “What’s the price per ounce today?”

  “Seventeen-fifty.”

  When you lived with a bunch of expats who watched commodities like a kettle of hawks, you tended to pick up on that sort of mundane minutia.

  Drago’s voice went up to just short of a yell. “Wait. Wait. What’s seventeen-fifty? No way. You’re sayin’ an ounce of gold is going for seventeen hundred and fifty dollars?”

  Marie waved her hand for us to be quiet as she tried to compute the large figures in her head.

  “I thought gold went up and down a little,” Drago said, “but stayed pretty close to the same price. That’s what Mad Mike Farris told me. He told me that twenty-five years ago when we made the deal, that gold stayed pretty steady.”

  “Sssh,” I told Drago.

  Marie looked up.

  “Well?” I asked.

  “One million, one hundred and twenty thousand.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  “A million two?” Drago yelled. “You’re shittin’ me, right? That can’t be right. A million two.” He started to mutter to himself.

  I pulled Marie far enough away f
rom the van that Drago couldn’t hear, but close enough to keep the Glock on him. “What do you think?”

  “I’m no good at this kind of thing, Bruno. I don’t know.” She thought about it for a moment. “What was that thing about Granville? What was his first name?”

  “Stanley Granville, Big Grandy. I didn’t put it together until just now. I asked Mack why the Feds were involved in watching Drago. He said the money from the armored car was federally insured. That story didn’t sound right, not for a twenty-five-year-old robbery, but I went with it. Granville pulled the job with Drago.”

  “At first Drago said a bud, and didn’t give a name,” said Marie.

  “Right. He’s trying to keep the details down on the fabricated part of the lie so it’s easier to remember. Drago went in for twenty-five to life for the armored car robbery and got out on parole the first time after doing twelve years. He came out, killed Stanley Granville for ratting him out, and went back in for another twenty-five to life, did another twelve and got out this time.”

  “Okay, and?”

  “Twelve years ago, Granville was the president of the SS.”

  “Honey, I know I’m missing something here, so just spell it out,” Marie said.

  “Drago was the FBI’s staked goat. They were waiting for Clay Warfield, current president of the SS, to order the hit on Drago for killing their past president and for the hit to be carried out. Then they would have a dead Drago, no loss there, and a conspiracy to commit murder with a RICO violation on the Sons of Satan. The FBI could dismantle a large chunk of the SS and make a huge splash in the news.”

  Everything fell into place. That was why they had kept Mary Beth in the surveillance room when everyone else had been reassigned. They didn’t want her to follow Drago if he left. They wanted her as a witness to his death.”

  “How does this thing with Granville impact what we have going?” Marie asked.

  “The SS will have a ‘shoot on sight’ order out on Drago. I don’t know how he survived in prison this long. They must have kept him segregated for this very reason.”

  “I know how he survived, look at him,” she said. “The man could pick up a small horse and dunk it in a basketball hoop without breaking a sweat.”

  Maybe a few years ago, but not now. Drago had gone to fat. No doubt, even shot, he was a formidable opponent, but not to the degree she thought.

  We moved back closer to Drago. “You mentioned that we could help you get this golden doughnut,” I said. “You have something in mind, don’t you?”

  Drago quit muttering. A large smile broke, filling his flat, pie-pan face. “I gotcha, don’t I? You’re gonna do it, aren’t ya?”

  Marie said, “Shut up, fatso, and answer him.”

  He eyed Marie a moment and said, “Your firecracker little bitch said the gold’s worth one million, one hundred and twenty thousand. You need the million. I ain’t gonna be good with no one hundred and twenty thousand for my end.”

  “We don’t want any of the gold, none of it,” I said. “We told you that. The deal here is that we help you get the gold. We take that risk. In exchange, you take the risk of possibly losing the gold when we trade it for the kids. On that end your risk is much smaller. We’re dealing with one twenty-five-year-old psychotic, and not with an international urban terrorist organization. It’s a fair trade.”

  Drago didn’t say anything for a minute. “Okay, deal. But when it comes to makin’ the trade—the gold for the kids—I get a say in how we handle it. You don’t just get to piss away all my gold. I get to be part of the plan.” He held out his hand. I took it and shook.

  “Now, tell us this great and wonderful plan of yours,” Marie said.

  Drago slid off his perch from the back of the van, keeping his weight on his good leg. He hobbled around to the passenger side of the van, opened the door, and brought the FBI bag back around. He sat in the same place and said, “With this.”

  He unzipped the bag. His hand turned into a blur of speed and came out with a .40-caliber Sig Sauer pistol. He pointed it at me and smiled.

  “You son of a bitch,” said Marie.

  I nudged her with an elbow. “Where’d you get this language? I don’t like it.”

  “Yeah, well, dipshit’s holding a gun on us and he’s going to shoot us any second now, so I think I’m entitled to use any language I want.”

  “No, he’s not,” I said.

  “I’m not, big man? Tell me why I’m not.”

  “Because you want us to dress up like FBI agents to infiltrate the clubhouse. You need us as much as we need you. You could never pull off looking like an FBI agent. And you need a partner to make it look legit.” I’d figured out his plan as soon as he picked up the bag.

  He chuckled. “That’s right.” He set the gun down on the floor beside him and pulled out a windbreaker and a vest, both dark blue with large white letters ‘FBI’ emblazoned on the front and back.

  “You’re pretty smart for an Anus Africanus.”

  “Don’t you call him that,” Marie said. “Next time you call him that, I’ll take you down, you understand?”

  He chuckled again. This time his whole body jiggled and rolled. “Looks like the first order of business is getting ol’ Drago here some clothes.”

  “Toss me that gun,” I said.

  He eyed me as if trying to decide how far to push his newly found freedom. Then he picked up the gun and tossed it to me. I tossed it right back. He caught it, surprised. I took the loaded magazine out of my pocket, the one I’d taken out of the gun earlier, and tossed it to him. “The gun’s no good without bullets.”

  He pointed his finger at me and smiled. He stuck the magazine back in the gun and pulled back the slide to charge the breech. “You know, I might have to change my mind about you Anus—”

  “Don’t do it,” Marie said. “Don’t you say it.”

  “Come on,” I said, “we have to get some clothes and make a phone call.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  I moved Drago up into the front seat next to me while I waited in the Walmart parking lot for Marie. No matter how hard I tried to put the feeling out of my head, I couldn’t help but think this guy was going to make a move on me at any moment. In the front seat was bad enough; you add in leaving him unrestrained by handcuffs—that just went against the grain of twenty-five years chasing his type.

  Marie carried the cash she’d brought from Costa Rica and size orders for clothes. She was also going to make a stop in the pharmacy area and pick up some supplies to treat the gunshot wound.

  Having the lion sitting in the seat next to me kept my adrenaline pumping, which kept fatigue at bay, which kept my thoughts clear. Somewhat, at least.

  “You know,” I said, “this gold thing changes the scenario. We aren’t going to have time to convert it to cash. I’m going to call Jonas and ask for a meet.”

  “Jonas is the one? This shitass punk who took these kids?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Good, maybe we can get your end of the deal settled right away before we even get to mine,” Drago said.

  “No, I don’t want you to do anything, and I mean nothing at all to spook him. You understand? If this goes down the way I think it will, I just want you there to verify that we’ll have the money coming, but in the form of gold. I want you to tell him the story you told us about how and what you did with the gold.”

  “Let me get my hands on him. Believe me when I tell you, he’ll give up his grandma when I’m done with him.”

  “No, I’ve already tried that and it didn’t work.”

  “What, you think you’re me? You don’t understand—”

  “I want your word you won’t try anything. This end of the deal is mine and mine alone to call.”

  He looked at me for a moment and then nodded.

  “No, I want to hear it. Tell me I have your word.”

  “All right, ease up on it, homeboy. You got it. You have my word on it. And don’t think for a
minute that I believe that you and your slit don’t want the money.”

  “Her name is Marie, and you will refer to her as such, or we are going to have a big problem.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I gotcha, I’m sorry. I didn’t really say it on purpose, it just comes out. It’s hard to talk different after twenty-five years in the can. You know what I’m talking about, right?”

  I did know.

  I hit the speed-dial number on the burner phone Jonas had given me. One ring and someone picked up. “Yeah?”

  Drago leaned over to listen in, his breath sour and hot, with burnt pepperoni and kung pao chicken. I didn’t like him that close, and involuntarily tensed in anticipation of a knife slipping in between my ribs.

  “It’s me,” I said.

  “I know, Deputy Johnson, no one else has this number. You’re not supposed to call until you have the money. No way could you have the money, not this quick. Not unless you’re working with the Feds with a phony bag. You working with the Feds, Deputy Johnson?”

  “No. And I think you know me well enough that I wouldn’t do that. All I want is to get those kids back safely. I’ll give you the money, you give me the kids, and we are done with each other.”

  “Heh, heh, right. Who’s to say we’re done? What if I do this again?”

  I didn’t know the answer, the one he wanted, anyway. “I guess I’ll have to deal with that problem if and when it comes up.”

  “So then, I’ll ask you again, Deputy Johnson, why are you calling? Do you have the money?”

  “No, I don’t have the money, but I have something better.”

  “What?”

  “Forty pounds of gold.”

  Jonas didn’t say anything for a long moment. He was mad at the change of plan and was deciding if he would hang up, walk away from the whole deal, leave the children down in some hole to smother, alone and scared. My imagination ran full tilt. Sweat broke out on my brow.

  “One million, one hundred and twenty thousand,” he said.

  His words sent a chill down my back. How had he computed that figure so quickly? He not only knew the price of gold, but he’d computed all of the figures in his head. Jonas Mabry was far more intelligent than I had thought. With intelligence came a higher risk assessment and threat level.