Filed to story: Return of the Reaper Story
Night was good. Night was a friend.
But some game only came out in the bright of the sun.
Tomorrow was another day.
Isaac 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 jefein 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.
A school bus made its way along the road to the cul-de-sac and back. A few cars departed the subdivision for the county road. A landscaper’s truck pulled a trailer with a pair of riding mowers behind it.
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 Isaac’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.
Isaac 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. Isaac 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.
Isaac 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 Isaac 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.
Isaac had his work cut out for him.
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.”