An old guy shuffled along the verge of the road behind a little white dog on a leash. The dog stopped to snuff and sniff in the direction of Levon’s hide. The old man muttered something and towed the dog away. On the return leg of their walk the dog pranced by without turning its head.
The center door of the four-car garage at the Collins’ house trundled open. The Mercedes sedan rolled out. The twins were in the front seat. The deeply tinted windows on the sides hid the backseat from view.
They were gone a while when a van pulled up the road and into the driveway. It was marked Eeezy Breezy Cleaning but wasn’t the same van as the day before at Skip’s. A man got out of the driver’s side and slid open the bay door of the van. A woman joined him. Together they carried a tank vacuum cleaner and plastic tub of cleaning tools to the front door and rang the bell.
Levon moved low and slow to where he could see the front door through the spiky sago fronds. The older man from the day before opened it and held it open for the cleaning couple who entered. He settled back down in his natural hide and drank a bottle of iced tea and ate an egg biscuit sandwich he’d picked up on the way here.
The cleaners were there little more than an hour. They packed the vacuum and attachment back in the van and backed out onto the road. They turned for the exit from the subdivision at the county road. This was their only account in this neighborhood. Levon waited until they were away around the curve and walked fast for the front door of the rancher and pressed the doorbell once.
The gray-haired man from the night before swung the door open. He had a second to register shock that it wasn’t the cleaners come back for something they’d left behind.
Levon drove a fist into the man’s face then stepped inside to catch him as he fell limp. The man was muttering through bloody lips as Levon lowered him to the floor and kicked the door shut at the same time. He drove an elbow to the man’s jaw, bouncing his head off the terrazzo tiles. The man stopped muttering and sagged to the floor.
He shot the deadbolts closed and tapped the button on the security system to re-arm it. He took the man under the arms to drag him deeper into the house away from the foyer with its floor-to-ceiling windows of beveled glass. The guy was still toned for his age and heavier than he looked. He was no figurehead boss, this guy. He was muscle once and still a hard man.
Levon had his work cut out for him.
Gunny Leffertz said:
“Not every man has a price. Only all men have something to trade. Most times pride is the last thing on the table.”
18
* * *
His head was pounding as he came around. There was blood in his mouth. A tooth wiggled in a socket. He went to move and couldn’t.
Wolodymyr Kolisnyk came around in the sunlight on his own lanai. He was seated upright on one of his own steel lawn chairs. The pad had been torn off. He sat on the bare metal frame. His wrists were duct-taped to the armrests. His ankles to the front legs. There were bands around his chest securing him in an upright position. A strip of tape held his mouth closed. The chair had been moved so he was out on the pool apron with his back to the water.
A white guy sat on the edge of a chaise in the shade of the overhang. He wore jeans and a work shirt under a cotton hoodie. There were working man’s boots on his feet. The man was lean but not skinny. There was scar tissue around his eyes, skin long ago broken and left to heal on its own. The man studied Wolo from under the battle-torn brows.
“I’m going to take the tape off. You’re going to speak in a normal indoor speaking voice. You yell and you go into the pool. Nod if you understand.”
Wolo nodded.
“You sure you understand? You let out a yell and I kick you into the water. No one’s going to come help you. You’ll drown before I’m off your front walk.”
Wolo nodded deeper, boring his gaze into the other man’s eyes. The man did not blink under his gaze.
The man sat a moment as though making up his mind. Then he stood and tore the tape from Wolo’s mouth. The motion brought new pain to the old man’s jaw.
“Do you know who I am?” Wolo said low, following the simple rules of quiet the man demanded.
“That’s why I’m here.”
“Do you know who you fuck with?”
“That’s what everybody keeps telling me. If it makes you happy you can tell me who I’m fucking with.”
“I am a brother in the Vor. You know the Vor?”
“I do. Some kind of prison gang.” The man stood over Wolo, making him look up.
“Is no gang. Is a brotherhood. Is a sacred trust.” Wolo spat a stream of blood that missed the leg of the man’s jeans by inches.
“I’m not here for that. I’m not here for you. I want to know where your son is.”
Dimi? This was about Dimi? What had that little shit done now? Was he the one who robbed Skip’s yesterday? Was this a partner of his? Or someone he cheated?
“I do not know where he is.”
“I think you do. I think you should tell me right now.”
“What is this about? Who is Dimi to you?” Wolo searched the man’s face.
“He’s someone I need to find. When is the last time you saw him?”
Wolo had no intention of telling this asshole anything but he could not help but search his mind for the last time he saw his son.
“The girl. This is about the girl. The one at the bar. The one the police were looking for,” Wolo said. The skin around the man’s eyes tightened just for a second.
“Where is he?”
“All this for some little whore? You come to me in my house. You threaten me. Over a woman? Is this what this is?” Wolo said, a mocking edge in his voice.
“Do you know where she is?”
“In a grave. In the bay. In a whorehouse in Plant City sucking cocks. Do I care?” He shrugged as best he could taped down tight in the chair as he was.
“The last time you saw your son it was about the girl. Was she dead? Was she alive?”
“I cannot remember. I would not help him. He deals in the drugs. The meth. He is no son of mine. He is not Vor,” Wolo said.
“You won’t help me.”
“I cannot help you even if I could. Go see his friends in Cotton Lake. Ask them where he is.”
The man put a booted foot on the chair frame between Wolo’s knees and shoved. The chair went over backwards into the water. There was no time to call out. No time to take a breath. Wolo’s head struck the bottom and lay in the shallow end with his bare feet waggling exposed on the surface. Wolo stared up through water stained with his own blood and willed the man to return with more questions.
The man was gone. He had not stayed. He got what he came for.
19
* * *
Danny and Van found out two things about Oscar Dumont, the afternoon man at Skip’s.
He could take a beating.
And he didn’t know anything about the robbery.
Van dropped the plastic sack of lemons he’d been beating Oscar with and told Danny to let the man go.
Oscar sagged away to lean on the bar, a hand to his gut. For sure he’d shit blood for a few days. But he didn’t go to his knees.
“You are okay to work today?” Van said.
“I can work,” Oscar said turning his face away.
“You one tough motherfucker,” Danny said.
Van peeled five one-hundred dollar bills off his roll and laid them on the bar. The two of them went out the front to the Mercedes. Van used his throwaway to call Uncle Wolo. No answer. He tried the landline. No answer there either.
“Maybe he is taking a nap,” Danny said from the wheel.
Van tapped fingers on the console.
“Forget the pick-ups till later. Let’s go have lunch at his house,” Van said.
They found their uncle sitting at the bottom of the pool looking up at them like he was surprised to see them.
“This has something to do with the robbery,” Danny said.
/> “You are thinking that? Serious?” Van slapped his brother across the back of the head and wondered, for perhaps the millionth time, how they could have been born seconds apart.
They called the cleaning crew. Then they called their father.
Gunny Leffertz said:
“Like your boxing coach taught you. Stick and move. Stick and move. Never be where they think you are.”
20
* * *
“How’s my honey?”
“Daddy!”
“I miss you.”
“I miss you too! Will I see you this weekend?”
“I hope so. I still have some work to do.”
“For your boss?”
“For my boss. But I’m going to try and get back. I promise.”
“Where are you? Far away?”
“Not too far. Florida. Do you know where Florida is?”
“Where Disneyworld is?”
“That’s right, honey.”
“Are you at Disneyworld, Daddy?”
“Without you?”
“We can go there someday?”
“We will. When I’m done with this work we’ll go to Disneyworld.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
“Then work hard and come home soon!”
“I will, honey. I just have to see a man and then I’m coming home.”
Gunny Leffertz said:
“Never underestimate the power of fucking up the other guy’s day.”
21
* * *
Symon Kharchenko sat chewing a cigar and watching surveillance video on the big screen in the den. His son Danya started to tell him that Uncle Wolo didn’t allow smoking in his house. Vanko elbowed him and gave him a sharp look.
Out by the pool the cleaning crew had Wolo out of the pool and lying on his back on the tiles. Two of them cut the tape from his arms and legs. A third opened a body bag. They’d already brought Symon the contents of his brother’s pockets. They lay in a popcorn bowl on a coffee table before the sofa.
The big screen was divided into a grid of six panels like a live action comic book page. In one panel a camera above the front door caught the couple who cleaned the house leaving. This was swiftly followed by the arrival of a man who rang the door then punched Wolo senseless. The man wore a ball cap and the bill hid his face from view. He was white and clean shaven. His clothes were cheap and plain and without distinction. Symon guessed his height at six foot give or take an inch. He was big enough to drop Wolo with a single sucker punch. Wolo, despite his age, was still a very hard man.
The camera over the pool was of no use. It was trained on the pool area but left much of the lanai out of frame. They could clearly see Wolo being slid out to the edge of the pool in the chair but the stranger was only seen from behind and above. He appeared as shadow silhouetted by the sun glare off the water and only momentarily in a corner of the frame.
Wolo went out well. Though there was no audio, Symon could tell his adopted brother remained stoic and defiant up to the moment where he was tipped back into the water. Symon turned off the image. The sight of Wolo’s pathetically wiggling toes above the slopping water was making him sick with rage.
“One white man. You told me you were looking for two niggers,” Symon said.
“You think this is about what happened at Skip’s?” Vanko said.
“Ten years in Tampa and not a drop of blood shed. In two days we have three of our own dead. You are the smart one. Use your brain,” Symon said.
Danya grinned at his brother getting shit on by the old man.
“There is no sound. We do not know what they talked about,” Danya said stating the obvious.
“He was talking about Dimi,” Symon said.
“How can you tell, tato? You read lips?” Danya said.
“I know him well. He made the face he only makes when he talks about his worthless son.” Symon flicked a new flame from a gold lighter to bring his Cuban back to life.
“What has Dimi done? Who has he pissed off?” Vanko said.
“Who knows? He deals the drugs. He breaks the code of the Vor and his father’s heart and it comes to this,” Symon said puffing on the black cigar as thick as his thumb.
“We find who he has made angry then,” Vanko said.
“No. You find Dimi and make him tell what he has done and who he has crossed.” Symon blew a stream of creamy smoke at the ceiling before standing.
“Then what do we do, tato?” Danya said.
“You have him take you to this man. You kill him. Then you kill Dimi. Must everything be explained to you?”
Symon watched the cleaning crew carry the dripping body bag into the house and through the door leading to the garages where their van was parked out of sight. The crew had been busy the last couple of days. The clean-up at Skip’s and now the removal of Wolo Kolisnyk.
The pride of the Vor was their invisibility. They ran under the cover of legitimate businesses. They paid taxes. Their public face was holding companies that owned fast food places, bars, coin laundries, car dealerships and commercial cleaning companies. These were all used to launder the gains from their true professions of stealing, smuggling and shakedowns. They never wore suits or ties but were the consummate white collar felons. A criminal conspiracy that has learned to operate in a police state like the Soviet Union easily maintains a low profile in the naïve world of the Americans. The Vor were thieves and extortionists. They never used violence as a tool of their trade. Violence drew attention from the law. The Vor was more comfortable moving unknown and unsuspected through a world of sheep.
Though they could be wolves when needed.
“I want this over quickly. I do not like this risk of exposure. So far, this stranger has wished to keep his actions hidden from the eyes of the law. He is sending a message meant only for us,” Symon said to his sons.
“We’ll take care of it, tato,” Danko said.
“I need your help?” Symon shifted his eyes to his youngest by twenty seconds.
“Tato?” Danko said with the voice of a small child.
“I will take care of this. You will drive and you will hold my coat. It is I who will see to the pig who did this to Wolo,” Symon said and pointed to the popcorn bowl filled with the detritus from Wolo’s pockets.
“Half of what is in the wallet is mine,” Symon said and followed the pallbearers to the garage.
22
* * *
Levon drove south on 75 toward Sarasota. He made the exit for Cotton Lake and drove inland on a flat county road. Upscale strip malls and gated communities gave way to dense marsh woods and trailer parks. More and more of the crossroads were unpaved out here. They were just raised sand causeways leading back into wetlands to end at subdivisions or eventually join another county road somewhere.
Cotton Lake turned out to be a crossing of two county roads. There was a gas station attached to a tire store, a no-name convenience store, a combined coin-op laundry and car wash, and a boarded up two-window soft ice cream place with a roof that was meant to look like a swirl of vanilla but, after years without maintenance more resembled a giant dog turd.
Set back on a gravel drive off the crossroad was a long block building with a steel roof. There were satellite dishes atop the roof and a tall radio mast. Looked like some kind of cracker NASA operated out of here. The metal sign out front, punctuated with bullet and shot holes, said HATTIE’S. There was a steel-roofed portico with rows of picnic benches to one side of the lot. An outdoor barrel-type grill was going hot there and the smell of barbeque was strong. The smoke of it drifted into the slash pines like a fog.
Levon had had his Avalanche lifted and fitted with fat tires after he’d bought it used. But he felt like he was pulling onto the lot in a two-seater MG as every pickup here was raised to the max on tires half as tall as he was. These were swamp runners made to keep moving in mud up to the door panels. Some were beat to hell and splashed with primer or spray painte
d in camo. Others looked showroom new with chrome everything and dressed up with name brand accessories.
In addition to the too-tall trucks were a half dozen motorcycles. All Harleys and all custom. One of them had a sidecar with a pit bull sound asleep in the bucket. Levon gave that ride a wide berth. He stepped under the big Confederate battle flag hanging like an awning before the entrance and stepped inside.
The sound system was playing something country from the ’70s. Merle Haggard maybe. The interior was dim and cool. There were a few men at the bar at one end of the long hall. The biggest wild hog head Levon had ever seen hung mounted on the wall above the bar. Long ochre tusks and yellow glass eyes that reflected the neon trim lights around the bottle racks.
More men sat at tables spread in no certain order across the open floor. Levon heard a woman laughing but couldn’t see her. No one paid any attention to him as he stepped to the bar. The song ended and a new one began. Still country but more of a rocking beat. Levon didn’t recognize it.
A skinny girl in an aloha shirt worn open over a bikini top stepped away from where she was talking to two guys in straw hats.
“Help you?” she said neither this way nor that. She could be Hattie. From the age of the sign out front more likely Hattie’s granddaughter.
He asked what was on tap. She told him. He ordered a tall Yuengling. She put it in front of him, slid a bowl of boiled peanuts within his reach and returned to her conversation with the straw hat pair.
Three in the afternoon on a weekday and the place was a quarter full. He walked his beer and peanuts to a table and took a seat. Nobody seemed curious about him. But then they were all still mostly sober.
The music mix shifted from country rock to heavy metal favorites as the sky outside darkened. A big screen in the hall blinked on for a mixed martial arts pay-per-view ticket. The pickups departed and more cycles rumbled onto the lot. Levon ordered a second beer and a BBQ sandwich and side of slaw. He took his time finishing that before heading to the men’s room in the back. The rest rooms were marked BOARS and SOWS.