Filed to story: Return of the Reaper Story
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 Isaac to Pavlo to the money and back around.
“I don’t want to get blood on it,” Isaac 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.
Isaac 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. Isaac 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.” Isaac 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,” Isaac 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.
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 CLOSEDsign 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.
Isaac 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.