Filed to story: Return of the Reaper Story
Symon did not tell the fat Georgian about the missing girl and her building contractor father who’d paid this Kane to find her. Soshi would be on the phone to everyone. There was no need for all to know what had brought this curse upon them. And the father-in-law. Symon needed to think on that one.
“We should give Kane’s name to the police. Let them find him,” Soshi said.
“No. We will not do that. That is not our way,” Symon said.
“How do we find him?”
“We are many. He is one.”
“Exactly, Symon. How do we find one man in a city? It is like finding one louse in your bed. Remember the lice in the camps?”
Symon grunted that he did.
“This man knows where to strike us, how to hurt us. We can use all our men to look for him and leave our interests unguarded.”
“Then what do I do, Soshi?”
“Give him what he wants and be rid of him.”
“And let Danya and Vanko’s deaths go unanswered,” Symon said.
“Give him Dimi. It is Dimi who brought this on us. Let Dimi pay for all.”
Symon ended the call without a farewell.
The driver stood well away from his semi as the gantry lowered the Conex over his truck bed. The sun was warm but the wind off the bay waters had a chilling effect on the Port of Tampa. The driver was not used to this kind of cold. Florida was supposed to be warm,hermano.
He was up from Honduras with papers that identified him as a fully licensed transport driver named Irwin Birnbaum of Circe, Arkansas. He worked for Don White Freight. He didn’t know who Don White was. He didn’t know Don White was a total fiction created as the founder for a company owned by Bayside Transit through a Delaware corporation called Morgantown Trucking and all of those bodies a part of Stoneforge Ltd, a closely held limited partnership in which all the partners were named Yuri Baghdasarian, a member of the same Vor brotherhood as the Kharchenkos and Kolisnyks.
The container inched lower and lower onto the chassis until it was in place and secured.
The import manifest described the contents of the container as organic fertilizer. According to its paperwork, the forty foot cargo container was filled with stacks of bagged primo cattle feces from Brazil.
In truth the steel box was packed floor to ceiling, back to front, with cases of counterfeit Marlboros from China. Manufactured in a hidden factory in rural and remote Yunxiao province, each pack cost under twenty cents to produce. Even with shipping, bribes and distribution there was a two thousand percent profit to be made. And the profits got sweeter the further north the cigarettes travelled. The taxes on a carton of butts rose astronomically depending on where the truck wound up. The contents of the container on Irwin Birnbaum’s truck was worth twenty million dollars in New York.
The truck pulled away from the gantry area and made its way around to the checkpoint where it stopped for radiation scanning as ordered by Homeland Security. Irwin’s paperwork was glanced at by a customs agent and waved through. The load of Fauxboros was on its way to New Jersey and then into delis, drugstores, convenience stores, hotel lobbies and markets all over the five boroughs.
The driver geared up and took the truck down the long lane lined either side by a mile of stacked Conex boxes rising either side of the road like steel Matterhorns.
He was out on a surface road heading for the on-ramp that would take him to I-4 and then I-75 for the two-day straight haul north.
A Range Rover pulled out from the lot of a derelict Tire Kingdom and fell into the truck’s slipstream. The truck driver, bouncing to the Garifunka coming from his radio, never saw the SUV following at a discreet distance. Not even when the Rover followed him into a rest stop north of Wesley Chapel.
Hours later, county deputies and state troopers responded to calls about an explosion and fire out at the end of an unpaved road above Dade City. A truck and Conex container sat in a sandy area far from any houses yet the blast was heard and felt for miles around. The whole mess was burning now, sending a thick pall of white smoke into the sky.
The cops sniffed the air. The smokers among them recognized the smell. Even the committed ex-smokers felt the old cravings returning.
The registered driver was found duct taped to a toilet in a stall at a rest stop down on 75. The two staties who took his statement understood enough of his frantic Spanish to understand that he didn’t see anything. Irwin “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me” Birnbaum swore that he was taking a piss at the urinals and that’s the last thing he remembered before he came to bound and gagged on the cold porcelain of the excusado.
Symon Kharchenko received another FedEx box with another cell phone inside. No note this time.
“Yeah.” The voice on the other end answered. The same man.
“All you are doing is digging a deeper grave for yourself,” Symon said. He bit off every word.
“You have to ask yourself how much Dimi Kolisnyk is worth to you. My guess is that he’s already cost you too much.”
“You are a dead man.”
“Give me the girl. Or give me Dimi.”
“You think you will walk away from this?”
“Will you?”
The call ended.
Symon gripped the phone in his fist until the blood drained from his hand. He then set the phone down on the kitchen table.
His own phone rang. He keyed the cordless to talk. It was Yuri.
“We must meet. Now.” Yuri was speaking between clenched teeth.
Yuri disconnected.
The meeting was in a private dining room at the back of a diner near the Clearwater causeway. About the table there were only old men this time. Soshi, Yuri and Oreske were already there when Symon arrived. There was a chair for Wolo. A glass of vodka set at the empty place.
They dispensed with the usual etiquette and niceties.
“How will you pay me?” Yuri demanded, a fisted hand on the table.
“I will buy you a new truck,” Symon shrugged.
“Fuck the truck! I am down fifteen million! Where is that? Where is my money?”
“You will get it. You have my word,” Symon said.
“Your word!” Yuri struck the table top. Vodka sloshed from the glass before Wolo’s chair.