Filed to story: Return of the Reaper Story
“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.
Isaac 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.
Isaac 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 painted 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. Isaac 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 Isaac 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. Isaac 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. Isaac 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. Isaac 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 BOARSand SOWS.
He was washing up when one of the bikers joined him in the two-sink, two-stall head. The guy was wearing a Jack Daniels t-shirt with the sleeves torn off. It showed off arms covered in tats in a spider web theme. The guy leaned back against the door. No one was coming or going without getting past him first.
“You a jumper?” The guy nodded at the chute and wings inked on Isaac’s forearm.
“A few times here and there,” Isaac said. He leaned back on the sink shelf, making no sign that he was eager to leave.
“LALO? HALO? Or just enough to qualify?”
“I’ve seen the stars in the daytime. Best three minutes of my life.”
“Screaming Eagles,” the guy said and pulled his collar down to show part of a tat of the eagle head of the 101st Airborne.
“I jumped with them once at Fort Campbell. They mostly stay in the planes these days.”
“What brings you to Cotton Lake, brother?” the guy said without brotherly warmth.
“You the official greeter?”
“Nobody comes here unless they mean to. Nobody stays unless they’re looking for someone.”
“I don’t know anyone here.”