Filed to story: Return of the Reaper Story
Two uniformed Tampa cops found Symon Kharchenko in the communal steam room at his bay view condo complex. He was with a pair of men of his approximate age. All three were covered in tattoos. Prominent on Symon’s chest was a snarling tiger. The three men were dressed only in the ropes of gold chains draped about their necks.
The cops stood sweating in their body armor under their starched uniforms. They politely asked if Symon would get dressed and meet them by the pool. Symon twisted his lips and nodded to his tovarichesbefore standing and exiting his naked ass out of the hot box.
They weren’t arresting him. So it had to be bad news. He showered off, put on a robe and sandals and joined them in the sunshine by the pool.
The cops told him what they came here to tell him. Symon’s granite façade shifted for only a second before regaining his usual impenetrable expression. He thanked the police officers and promised to cooperate with any further questions they may have in the future. The cops left for their patrol car and Symon took the elevator up to his one-level dacha on the eleventh floor.
Once inside he fell to his knees in the deep pile carpet and wept into his fists while the sun sank over the golden waters visible through the window wall that overlooked the bay. The sky and water were dark and pearls of light along the shoreline were twinkling to life when he lowered his hands from his face. His eyes were red-rimmed and his lips pale. Though damp with his own tears, his expression had regained the density of a sphinx, unreadable and placid.
Only now there was a heat in his eyes; a fire that would consume anything his gaze fell upon.
He would swear to God and Jesus and all the saints that from this day forward his life was divided in two parts. All the days before this day and all the days that would follow. His life with his two boys and his life, from here, without them.
The days left to him would be solely for finding answers. And once he found them, the rest of his life was God’s.
But before that, he would get drunk.
Symon made a single call on a cell phone while pouring his first tumbler of Platinka.
“Find Dimi. Tonight.”
He tossed the phone to a chair and took a long, burning pull of vodka.
He was hungry, horny and sober. Three conditions he found intolerable.
Dmitry Kolisnyk tossed the remote across the room.
Dimi to his family. Dean Collins to his friends.
There was serious shit coming down and his Uncle Symon wanted to talk to him. They dragged him out of a strip club on 19 in the middle of a private session. All drama, these Old World assholes. Have to make a thing out of what could be accomplished over the phone.
For now, he waited.
He threw himself back in the king-sized bed and looked at himself in the mirrored ceiling. He wore Buccaneers warm-up pants and jacket. His gold crucifix glowed on his spray-tanned chest. He ran a hand over his gym-rat abs. No prison muscle for him.
His father and his ‘uncles’ were proud of their years inside. They wore getting caught like a soldier wears his medals. Their ink told their story in a kind of illustrated code. Something they should all be ashamed of and they turned it into a club. Smart criminals didn’t get caught. Smart criminals skated. The only ink on Dimi was a Bacardi bat on his right forearm and a winged pixie with big tits on the other. Jesus, he was drunk thatnight.
The red walls of the room were making him crazy. As was the faux gold trim on the heavy Mediterranean furniture and the ankle-deep carpet on the floor. There was nothing on the TV at this hour of the day. Niggers arguing in phony courtrooms and white people arguing at tables. He couldn’t even look out a window. The black velvet curtains that covered one end of the room hid a bare cinderblock wall.
This place looked like a hotel room but it was all just a set. It was a property Uncle Symon owned in an industrial park in Largo. He leased it to some Lebanese outfit and they set it up as a porno studio. The Arabs divided it into separate rooms each equipped with HD cameras sending out a live feed of whatever was happening in the rooms. How many couples, threesomes and gang bangs had happened on this bed?
When Symon found out about the operation he sent his Cossacks to throw the Lebs out on their asses. The Vor was puritanical like that. They’d steal the coins off a dead man’s eyes and take the change out of a poor box. They’d kill and smuggle and extort and defraud without losing a moment’s sleep. They ruined lives and bankrupted businesses. But they didn’t like dealing drugs and they didn’t like whoring out women.
Dimi wondered at that. Most Vor never married. They would keep a woman, sometimes many women, but few stood before a priest or rabbi to take the vows. Their children were all bastards. They owed an allegiance to each other that was deeper than the bonds of marriage or family. Women and kids could come in the way of that; make a man consider choices that were not in the best interest of the brotherhood. Only one loyalty was tolerated. The Vor was all.
One of the many reasons Dimi rejected his father’s life. It started as youthful rebellion. Over time, Dimi saw no value in the company of men who shared a union created in prisons and camps in places so far away. He wanted to be free to do what he wanted; to chase pussy and make money in drugs.
He leapt from the bed and stormed to the room’s only door.
“Hey! I am going insane here!” he called to the two men seated at a table in the large open warehouse area outside the row of faux hotel rooms, kitchens, bathrooms and even a phony horse stable with real hay on the floor. The two guys, big guys, were playing cards and watching a live stream of a hockey game from Belgrade.
“Go to sleep. Watch the television,” Tupo, a half-Turk said glancing from his hand to the screen.
“Fuck that! The roomis making me crazy! It smells like shit! There’s probably AIDs everywhere from all the faggots fucking each other in there!”
“You want to switch rooms?” Yvan, a Khazaki who looked like Charles Bronson’s meaner brother said, laying his hand down to regard Dimi without compassion.
“They are all the same! Dicks and asses and pussies rubbed everywhere! How long do I have to be here?”
“As long as Symon wants you to be,” Tupo said.
“Has anyone hurt you? Do you not understand that we are keeping you safe?” Yvan said.
They had not hurt him. They had only dragged him from the club in Clearwater and driven him here the day before. He could not leave. They told him someone was looking for him. That someone killed his father. He was safe for now.
Only Dimi had to ask himself, safe from who?
“Want us to order some pizza?” Tupo said, taking a real interest in the conversation for the first time.
“I don’t want any fucking pizza. I just don’t want to sit in that jizz-painted room any more!”
They let him sit with them watching the game. A Serbian team versus Moscow.
That’s where he was when the garage doors at one end of the building opened and Uncle Symon’s Mercedes pulled in.
His uncle was out of the rear and walking fast over the warehouse floor. Two of his ‘brothers’ trotted behind to keep up. Symon had Dimi out of the chair and was shaking him. The toes of Dimi’s sneakers were squeaking off the polished concrete as he kicked his legs like a man fighting back to the surface of a lake.
“Who is this man? What is this man to you?” Symon said. The tough old bastard dropped Dimi on his ass and stood over him, hands fisted, knuckles bleached white.
“What guy? I don’t know who you’re talking about!” Dimi shouted in English.
“He knows you. He fucking knows all about you.” Symon breathed in and out through his nose.
“What’s he done? How’s he connected to me?”
“You sold drugs to him? Cheated him? Did something to piss him off enough to come here and start killing people?”
“I take the drugs from the Mexicans then sell them to the guys in Cotton Lake. I don’t cheat anyone. I only take my cut. This guy’s not Mexican, right? Maybe the bikers know.”