Filed to story: Return of the Reaper Story
“They call me Dean,” Dimi Kolisnyk said.
“Bill Coates,” Isaac said.
The other man didn’t offer his hand or a smile.
“Cold, yes?” Dimi said hunching his shoulders.
“It’s the water,” Isaac said.
“Still, warmer than Ohio, yes?” Dimi’s eyes weren’t smiling any more.
“You ran my plates,” Isaac said.
“We know you are not called Bill Coates. But it is okay. If your money is good you call yourself whatever you like.” Dimi laughed at his great joke. He was alone in his mirth.
“It’s good.”
“We see, yes?”
The other man pulled the Nike bag to a place on the ground between them. He unzipped the bag and pulled aside the t-shirt lying atop the stacks of cash bound with rubber bands. Dimi leaned over to run his fingers through the bundles.
“We good?” Isaac said.
“Good. Very good.”
“Where’s my goods?”
Dimi slid a plastic card with a key atop it over the steel table top.
“Is in a locker at Gold’s Gym. The one off Waters. You can find it?”
“I’ll Google it.”
“Yes. Google it,” Dimi said, amused. “Your stuff is in the locker with this number. The card is a one-day guest pass. Come and go. Stay and work out. Whatever.”
“What if I want to reach you again?”
“You use burner that Dutch gave you. He tells me. We set up deal.”
“He tell you this is a once a month deal?”
“He told me. You like the shit in locker we do more business.”
Isaac sat regarding Dimi. The tourists moved past like fish in a pool, colorful and slow. Dimi’s lips thinned and eyes narrowed.
“You leave first. Go back to Ohio. Shovel snow,” Dimi said, no smile. He waggled his fingers in a shooing motion. The other guy smiled for the first time.
Isaac moved away through the crowd for the exit, never looking back. He brushed right by one of the leather jacketed watchers who eyed Isaac all the way down to the street.
He crossed to the parking tower and walked to where the Avalanche was parked. A panel-sided van was parked in the next slot. Isaac stopped to turn.
A flash of light turned his world to an explosion in luminescent white before going black.
He’d been tazed before. The trick was to go limp early. Possum up.
His thoughts were coming back together. The muscles in his legs and arms starting to answer to his brain. The burning in the joints was subsiding. The crushing fatigue was still to be overcome.
Fuck that. Fight through it.
Isaac was in the back of a van and it was moving at speed. Two figures were trying to turn him on his back. Arguing in Ukrainian. He opened his eyes.
Danny and Van. The blond twins. Danny was pulling Isaac’s wrists together. He jerked an inch-thick tie-wrap tight around them. Van was crouched at Isaac’s feet trying to join two tie-wraps to bind his ankles together.
Danny was telling Van that he got his done first. Van was bitching that he couldn’t get the two bands to connect.
Isaac brought a knee up and drove the heel of a work boot into Van’s face. A snap of gristle. A spurt of blood. With the same motion he brought his joined hands up to drive deep into Danny’s crotch. He grabbed a double handful and twisted hard. Danny howled.
Maintaining his death grip on Danny’s genitals, Isaac rolled, carrying the now shrieking man with him. Danny was atop him, providing cover. Van was backed against the rear doors of the van, rising to his feet. A hand to his nose to staunch the gout of blood running into his mouth and over his chin.
The van came to a violent, slewing halt. Isaac and Danny, joined by Isaac’s grip, went airborne and crashed against the cage mesh separating the rear of the van from the driver’s cab. The driver was unbuckling. Isaac head-butted Danny in the mouth. He felt the other man’s jaw separate with a pop. Danny shrieked in his ear with a gush of fresh blood and broken teeth. Isaac relaxed his grip on the man’s junk and yanked an automatic from the holster in Danny’s belt.
More shouting. The driver and Van. A new weight pressed atop Danny and down on Isaac under him. Van was in the fight.
Isaac levered the end of the pistol against flesh and pulled the trigger again and again. The weight came off him. Van leaped back crying out, holding both hands to a spreading stain on his thigh. Danny, shuddering, rolled off of Isaac leaving him drenched in blood. The van filled with the smell of hot piss.
Lying supine, Isaac stabbed the automatic toward the driver’s compartment and emptied it through the mesh. A grunt followed by an abbreviated bleat of the van’s horn.
Van was trying to get at his own handgun left-handed while maintaining pressure on his thigh. Isaac was up and charged across the confining space to shoulder-check the man into the back doors with all his weight. Isaac dropped upon the unmoving Van who was going white, bleeding out. Blood pooled in the recesses of the van’s floor grid making the surface greasy slick.
Isaac yanked a black Sig Sauer from Van’s waistband. The man was shivering with the chill that blood loss brings. Isaac crawled over him to drop the latch on the back doors and climbed out onto the road.
The van was on the verge of a two lane with nothing but saw grass and pines visible either side. Isaac used the butt of the Sig to break the driver side glass. He reached in over the slumped form of the driver and slid the gear shift to neutral. With a shoulder to the door and a hand holding the wheel to the right he nudged the van rolling onto the grass. He stepped back and allowed the van to continue down the slope and into a swale filled with black water. It settled in the mud with water up to windows. The water downflooded through the break Isaac made in the glass. The van sank further in an explosion of escaping air until only the top of the roof was visible. Big white birds rose from the surrounding shallows to flap away toward the trees.
Isaac was covered in a spray of blood already growing stiff and tacky as it dried. He pulled the buckle from his belt revealing a spade-shaped blade. The razor sharp edge sliced through the tie wraps on his wrists. He checked his pockets. Wallet and keys were gone. His long slide was probably in the sunken van as well.
There were no rooftops or lights in sight. Only a lonely cell tower a few miles west. He started back up the road the way the van had come. His legs felt like he was dragging sacks of sand behind him. It would take a long hot soak and a long deep sleep to shake off the tazering.
He had a long walk ahead of him before that could happen.